Seatbelts, Lifejackets, and Bike Helmets - Sermon from August 10, 2014

“Seatbelts, Lifejackets, and Bike Helmets”

August 10, 2014

Rev. Katelyn B. Macrae

Richmond Congregational Church

Matthew 14:22-33

Prayer: Dear God, may the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. O God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.

By a show of hands, how many of you consider yourselves safety conscious?

Growing up my parents were always very safety conscious with my sister and I. We held hands and looked both ways before we crossed the street. We buckled our seatbelts before the car moved and sang “Buckle Up for Safety.” We wore bike helmets for riding bikes, and lifejackets for boating. I started wearing a ski helmet long before they became the norm, and I still remember the neon yellow and pink knee and elbow pads that I had for my roller blades. Wearing safety equipment was just part of what we did in the Macrae family.

Though my parents were safety conscious, they also encouraged my sister and I to play and explore outside.

One late spring day when I was in second or third grade, my dad and I were out in the river and a gust of wind came up and our little row boat capsized. The water was cold. Another boater came over and pulled us to safety. We were okay. But this incident has forever cemented my belief in wearing life jackets when boating!

I can imagine that if life preservers did exist two thousand years ago, the disciples would have been happy to be wearing them.

This story that we read today appears only in Matthew’s Gospel. It’s the second time that Jesus ministers to his disciples in the boat. The first time they’re in a boat going across the sea, and the storm is raging. Jesus is asleep through the storm, and so they wake Jesus up and he calms the storm.

This time, the disciples are by themselves in the boat. This story from Matthew follows on the heels of our story last week where Jesus and the disciples fed the 5,000. Jesus tried to get away to a quiet spot after learning of John the Baptist’s death. But, the crowds followed him and he didn’t get a chance to mourn. So now, after the day of healing, and an evening of feeding, Jesus finally gets away to a quiet place to pray. He sends the disciples, who are also tired and grieving, across the sea so that they can continue ministering.

The storm rages all night long as they journey to the other shore. In this time period, the sea and nighttime were associated with evil spirits, and the devil. You can imagine the disciples’ stomachs sinking with fear when, at around 3 AM, they see this shadowy figure coming towards them in the mist – walking on the water.

Who is it? What is it?

 They are wrapped in fear - “It’s a ghost.”

Jesus calls back, “Take heart, It is I; do not be afraid.” Other translations render this phrase as “Take heart, I am, do not be afraid.” Calling himself “I am” links Jesus with the name of God used in the Hebrew scriptures, “I am who I am.” This is quite the opposite of what the disciples may have thought was coming towards them in the midst of the storm.

But even with this reassurance, Peter decides to test the shadowy figure in the mists -

He calls to Jesus, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”

So, Jesus calls Peter, “Come.”

He climbs over the gunwale, and his feet touch the surface…

He takes a few steps…

He’s actually walking on the water!

But then, then a gust of wind comes up and Peter gets scared, and it’s only then that he begins to sink…

He cries out, “Lord, save me.”

Immediately Jesus grabs his arm and pulls him up and out of the deep, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Then Jesus and Peter get into the boat with the disciples, and the wind subsides.

The disciples recognize Jesus as the Son of God and they worship him.

The theological term for this kind of a story is a “theophany” - a story of God appearing.

This story gives us a glimpse of the intimate relationship that Jesus had with his disciples and the way that he cared for them. It also gives teaches us about human behavior. Peter’s actions remind us how quickly we can go from confident and cocky to crying out for help in the face of our fears.

One message we can take from the story is that we should try to avoid what Peter did. He let his doubt and fear get in the way, and began to sink. Therefore, if we can just keep our eyes on Jesus, no matter the storms, and just have faith, we won’t sink. But the reality is that very few of us will ever cultivate such a singular and unwavering faith. 

Sometimes, like Peter, we balance between faith and doubt. We can get distracted by the waves and the wind of family concerns, economic hardship, illness and disease, broken relationships, and news headlines. We feel the need to challenge and test Jesus to see if he is real. This story reminds us that even with all of our fears and doubts and questions and challenges; Jesus wants to be in relationship with us.

Jesus responds to Peter’s challenge with an invitation… “Come.” 

And Peter is doing fine walking on the water, until suddenly he’s not. Peter is literally in over his head when he realizes Jesus for who he is. Jesus comes to Peter, Jesus saves Peter, just as Jesus comes to us -

And through the questioning, struggle, challenge and the embrace, we, like Peter, can arrive at a greater and deeper understanding of who God is, and how God longs to be in relationship with us. Our relationship with God, like bike helmets, seatbelts and lifejackets doesn’t guarantee that we’ll always be free from harm.

But it equips and empowers us to grow, to explore, to try new things, to question, to take risks, to get out of the boats and walk beyond our comfort zone.

Our relationship with God, challenges us to try seemingly impossible and foolish things –

o   Like feeding 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish

o   Walking on water

o   Or, Being a community of faith, changing people’s lives, advocating for peace and justice, and abundant love, in a dominant culture that says the church is no longer relevant.

That’s the God that I want to be in relationship with -

God who comes to us in our deepest nights,

God who calls us beyond our comfort zones and challenges us,

God whose hands save us from our foolishness and whose love wraps around each of us like a life  

     jacket we can never remove.

God who climbs into the boat with us to ride out the wild storms.

Thanks be to God for this relationship.

Amen.

In God's Garden

Rev. Katelyn Macrae

July 13, 2014

Richmond Congregational Church

Text: Isaiah 55:10- 13 and Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23

We had a kid once who came to camp. He was a city kid, and this was his first time in nature, his first time with bugs and grass and lots of trees, and swimming in the lake. It was all new to him.

We also had camp pigs that summer on loan from the Heifer Project. He loved to walk by the pig pen, any chance he could get.

Which was great, except for two things -

One, he could have spent all day at the pig pen, which made it hard when the campers were supposed to be doing other things.

Two, the pigs weren’t so good at staying in the pen.

No matter how much reinforcement was put in the fencing, the pigs, mysteriously, found a way out. They would run around camp and then the staff would have to go chase the pigs and put them back in the pen.

Have you ever chased a pig?

Pigs do not want to be caught, let me tell you that!

I think that God’s love is kind of like the pigs escaping from the pen, no matter how much reinforcement is put on the pen – God’s love wants to escape, it can’t be contained. Or maybe God’s love is a versatile, grow anywhere, GMO-free seed.

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Our story today comes from a series of parables in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus used everyday objects - mustard seeds, coins, fish nets, seeds and soil – in his parables to illustrate his lessons. Today there were so many people gathered to hear Jesus’ that he had to go out in a boat in the middle of the lake just to be able to see everyone and teach them. Jesus was attracting a lot of attention.

Writer Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that Jesus used these everyday images in his parables to stand in for other things so that he would not get arrested while teaching. He taught in such a way that he people who knew what he was talking about would get his point, and those who were out of the know would just shake their heads in confusion.

Today’s parable is one of the most recognizable – it’s called the Parable of the Sower.

This is the title, but yet so much of the focus of the story seems to be on the ground that the Sower visits – a well trod path, rocky ground, thorny ground, and finally, fertile soil.

As I hear this story, I can’t help but wonder – how do I get to be the good soil? Am I the rocky soil? Am I full of thorns?

In fact, I was going to bring in some compost today for the children’s sermon and have a conversation about what makes for good soil. I was going to have mix all of this stuff up together and see what happens as the compost decomposes. However, I didn’t think that the Trustees would be too keen on having a compost bin in the Sanctuary!

In her book Seeds of Heaven, Barbara Brown Taylor, writes that we have a 1:4 chance of getting to be the right kind of soil. Who doesn’t want to be the good, fertile soil?

But if we keep our eyes on the dirt, we’re likely to get lost in the weeds, and miss the greater point of Jesus’ parable.

It’s called the Parable of the Sower, not the Parable of the Soil, for a reason. Notice that the sower sows seeds everywhere, not caring where they will land, how evenly spaced apart they are, or what kind of fruit they are predicted to yield. Imagine God as the sower, sowing seeds extravagantly, indiscriminately.

Season after season, God sows seeds in fertile fields, and war zones, and well trod paths. God sows seeds through the shopping malls and parking lots, and hospital rooms, and even pig pens at camp. God sows seeds of God’s word, and when these seeds take root, they bear the Fruits of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, patience, self control, generosity, and faithfulness.

They bear the fruits of the spirit in sometimes unexpected places.

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 It was not an easy week at camp for our city kid. He had to go home a bit earlier than the other campers. As a staff we wondered, did we fail him because he didn’t make it through the full week? We had to ask ourselves, how do we define “success” at camp? Is staying through the whole week the most important thing? In the days that the camper was here – what kind of community did he experience?

When we started to think about it this way, we realized that whether or not he stayed until Saturday, he still got to come to camp, and discover new things, play outside, and be a part of a community who loved and cared and supported him the best ways that we could.

Our job as camp staff was to help create experiences where our campers might be recipients of some of God’s seeds. We showed this camper God’s love – and maybe, maybe, something took root in him.

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Yesterday I attended the 25^th anniversary celebration at Covenant Hills Christian Camp near Cabot, VT. Covenant Hills is a camp co-founded by the Vermont Conference of the United Church of Christ and United Methodist Conference. Former Richmond Congregational Church Member Fran Walker sold some land to the camp to help make it possible.

It was my first time at Covenant Hills, but as I listened to people speak about the power and the importance of this camp and its impact on their lives, I was continually impressed with the similarities with my own experience at UCC camps in Maine and Connecticut.

One of the statistics that Jeff, the camp co-director, highlighted is that if a child attends Sunday School every Sunday for a year, they get about 52 hours of faith formation. But, if a kid attends camp for one week – they get about 130 hours of hands-on faith formation, learning how to be a part of a community, experiencing nature, and learning about the connections between Creation and our Creator. That is more than double what a child will get if they attend Sunday school every Sunday. As a local church is so important to support this camping ministry, encourage our kids to go to camp, and support them with scholarships.

As demographics shift, and people, especially our families, have more and more choices about where and how to spend their summers, and their Sunday mornings, we must also be open to new ways of being church, so that our camps, and our churches, will have a future 25, 50, 100 years from now.

Jim Thomas, a staff member at the Vermont Conference, came and preached here at Richmond Congregational Church in March. One of the challenges he issued from this pulpit, is that we need to be out and visible in the community. We need to go where the people are, and be out and visible in the community. Similarly, one of the goals of the new directors at Covenant Hills is to make their programming more accessible and open to people of all ages by offering more opportunities for retreats, intergenerational camping, and possibly a series of Confirmation retreats for churches across the state.

It sounds like a Sower approach!  Taking seeds out and sowing them about joyfully all the while knowing that some will land in rocky places, some will land among the thorns, and some will land in the fertile soil and take root.

Only God knows what the soil composition is. There’s not a special way to measure success in the Kingdom of God. Even the parable says that the yields will be different, some thirty, some sixty, some hundredfold. Likewise, we can’t necessarily measure success with predicted yields or only look for the most fertile soil.

In Tielhard de Chardin’s poem The Slow Work of God he writes, “We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time.”

De Chardin encourages us to trust in God working in our lives in God’s time, and to

remain open to the process.

As we move together as a faith community in this new relationship together, and dream and vision how God is calling us,  let us be sowers, casting about God’s seeds of love – freely, indiscriminately, joyfully – wherever we go.

May it be so.

Amen. 

Planting Seeds of Hope

“Planting Seeds of Hope” AUDIO RECORDING
Psalm 23; Acts 9:36-43
Hope UCC, Alexandria, VA
Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 21, 2013
Katelyn B. Macrae

Prayer: O Great Creator, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Amen.

Earth Day and the UCC’s 4/1 Earth Campaign invites us to pause and focus our attention on the beauty of creation and the amazing work of our Creator.

Today is an opportunity to give thanks for beauty and nature’s bounty that reminds us just how wonderful and creative God is. But more than just focusing our attention on the nature’s beauty – on the bright blue of the bird’s wings, Or how the suns rays fill the sky at sunrise, Earth Day and the UCC’s 4/1 Earth campaign also call us to account for the ways that our living on this sacred and hollowed ground has also led to environmental degradation and destruction, and how our religious tradition can contribute to earth’s destruction as well as earth’s redemption.

In my final semester at seminary, I took a class with about religious and environmental ethics. In the classroom we were a mix of theology and environmental science students. Mary Evelyn Tucker, one of our professors, cautioned those of us coming from the Divinity School about how the stories from our religious traditions has wrought danger on the environment. She asked us to look at our stories of origin, how our universe came to be - our cosmology – such as the story from Genesis that we shared in the Call to Worship.

Tucker says, “the story of cosmology gives us a sense of our place in the universe. And if we are so radically affecting the story by extinguishing other life forms and destroying our own nest, what does this imply about our religious sensibilities or our sense of the sacred?” (Worldly Wonder 1).
 
What does it imply for our sense of the sacredness of creation if we are destroying it, and perhaps ourselves in the process?

The before and after pictures Alberta Tar Sands in Canada shows how the boreal forests are destroyed after it has been strip mined for tar sands, which are processed to make oil. When we consider the proposed Keystone Pipeline XL this is where the oil is coming from. 

In addition to increased energy demand, global warmings’ impact is shown in the melting of the polar ice cap. Since 1979, the Polar Ice Cap has decreased 20%. The red boundary line marks where the ice cap was in 1979.

Warmer oceans and rising temperatures impact all of God’s creation.

Our West Virginia mountains have a hard time praising the glory of God after their mountaintops have been removed.
And birds of the air find it difficult to soar to the heights of the heavens after their wings are coated in oil. (BP Deepwater Horizon disaster).

Friends, these pictures confront me with the very real consequences of living in a country, and in a world that has an incredible dependence and an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. These images also remind me that things I do as part of everyday living - when I drive in my car, or turn on the light, or check my email – are part of much larger and more complicated systems.
 
Did any of you see the documentary – No Impact Man? It came out a few years ago and was streaming free on Netflix. The documentary follows a writer, Colin, and his family living in New York City, on their quest to have a zero Carbon Footprint for one year.

Colin stops taking the elevator and public transportation, the family even washes their clothes by hand in the bathtub, and only buys local food. Colin uses a solar power generator for his laptop so that he can blog about the experience. The movie is both funny, and very serious, as illustrates just HOW enmeshed our daily activities are with carbon consumption and how complicated it is to extricate ourselves from these ways of living.
 
On Earth Day, we remember that we are a part of creation, and how we live on this earth has an impact. We can’t just turn and point the finger of blame at past generations, or governments or corporations, and act as if it’s always someone else’s fault or someone else’s responsibility to clean the world up. We are all in this “mess” together.  

On Earth Day, like on Good Friday, we take the time to acknowledge the places in this world where no life seems possible.

Psalm 23 provides familiar comfort in such times - The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want….Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil for thou art with me…”

While we take in the barrenness of this landscape, we acknowledge that there is death and loss and environmental destruction.

But the story doesn’t end here. These psalmists’ words also give us comfort and hope. 

For yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear no evil! We are not alone! God, our shepherd, is with us as we walk!
 
Christina Hutchins writes that we don’t know much about the valley in Psalm 23.

“We don’t even know if the valley of the shadow of death is the very same valley as that of the green pastures. Is it one place in two different seasons?… Is the grass-blooming valley a return to what had been previously demolished, the way that nature, when we let it, with time and a cessation of active destruction, heals itself and may heal us?”[1]

Death Valley, which you see above, looks completely different from the previous picture – and yet they are the same place.  In observing nature, we learn how possibility blooms in places that seemed barren and desolate.

In the cycles and seasons Nature teaches us how life and death are intertwined. A fallen tree becomes a home for bugs who eat the tree, and help it decompose to become soil that provide nourishment for other trees and in the forest. Or, for those who like to garden, think about how this year’s compost becomes next year’s garden fertilizer.

Like nature’s cycles and seasons, this story from Acts that we heard this morning also shows the movement from life to death to life. This story of transformation shows the power of God’s community gathering together to work for change.

Dorcas was a generous woman who shared her resources with those in need. When she died, the whole community experienced a loss – but they weren’t ready to accept her death. And so they took all of their resources, all of their energy, and went to get Peter. And as Peter was inside with Dorcas praying and doing his work, the community waited outside and prayed too. Dorcas lived again!

 
Biblical scholar Stephen D. Jones suggests that while the obvious miracle of the story is that Dorcas is revived, the underlying miracle is the miracle of the community who mustered all of their resources together. It was because of their persistence, and God’s grace, that new life was possible again.

Just like that community in Acts - when we combine our energy and efforts and act together for one Earth, through planting the vegetable garden at Hope, writing advocacy letters, and singing and praying about the wonders of creation, our collective actions proclaim that death and destruction and degradation do not have the last word. We are people of Hope, and we believe that with God’s help and the work of our hands, new life, and new growth are possible!

In your bulletin today you should have received a piece of butterfly paper. I invite you to pull it out now and hold it in your hand.

This paper is full of possibility – because it contains the seeds of Hope!

As you hold this paper in your hand, take a few moments to think about where you would like to plant some Hope in the world. It has been a difficult week, especially for those of us with ties to Boston. Is there a place, or a person, or a cause that comes to mind? If so, please write this down on the paper.

These butterflies are made of paper with wildflower seeds. If you take it home and put the paper on top of some soil in a cup, and water it - seeds will sprout in a few days!

Then you can go out and actually plant these seeds of hope in a place that could really use it! Or, if it’s not a physical place that you have in mind, or it’s too far away, consider planting these seeds in a place where you will see them often. Then each time you see these seeds of hope blooming you can say a prayer for your concern.

In the coming weeks, as we continue in the 4/1 Earth campaign let us plant seeds of hope and water them with our prayers. Let us sow these seeds freely and wildly, for God knows the world needs it. Amen.

 

 

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[1] http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/april-21-2013-1.html, Dr. Christina Hutchins
Pacific School of Religion
Dr. Riess Potterveld
Pacific School of Religion

 

Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones

 

“Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones” 

Katelyn B. Macrae

Christ Lutheran Church, Washington, DC

September 30, 2012

Mark 9:38-50

Prayer:  All Powerful God, even though we may ask you for a deal, you give us grace at full face value. Thank you for never giving us a discount on your love. As we recover from Day 1 of the Yard Sale and think about the people lining up outside – help us quiet our minds and refresh our souls while we tarry awhile here in worship of you. May the words of my mouth and meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O Holy One. Amen.

Sermon:

I’ve been thinking about my Aunt Kathy a lot lately.

She had a stroke recently, and so she’s been on my mind, especially when I cook things.

She loves yard sales and estate sales.

I bet she would enjoy the sale here at Christ Church because she enjoys taking old, used up items and turning them into something new and beautiful.

Her specialty is refinishing kitchen things.

She bought a Dremmel tool just so she could sand and refinish pots and pans!

Aunt Kathy has stocked my kitchen, and the kitchens of all of my cousins.

She has a gift to see the potential in things others might overlook.

Whoever started the yard sale back in 1981 at Christ Lutheran also saw the potential in stuff that others might overlook.

They imagined that used furniture, clothing, and kitchen items could be sold as a fundraiser. 

But in your yard sale this “trash” becomes “treasure” not to one, but at least two people.

1)      There’s the treasure for the people who buy it,

2)      Treasure for the people who are positively impacted by the charities who receive the yard sale proceeds

3)      Treasure for the charities that glean leftover items

4)      (And as someone pointed out after worship – treasure for people who donate items and get the stuff out of their house!)

What I find most amazing is that it’s all volunteer labor.

You spend all year getting ready for the sale.

And then you turn around and freely give away the proceeds!

Since 1981, funding has been disbursed to 247 organizations.

Total funding raised by the Yard Sale since then is more than $650,000.

And I hear reports that this year is better than ever!

As we turn to our story from Mark, let us hold these positive images in mind.

Last week in the Gospel of Mark the disciples were in Capernaum arguing who is the greatest among them.

Jesus flips their argument on its head by placing a child in the center of the circle and saying, “Whoever wants to be greatest of all must be servant of all. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me.”

The story we read from this morning picks up right after that.

Despite Jesus’ visual parable about humility and radical reversal, it doesn’t seem to stick with the disciples. Not even one verse later they’re having a hard time seeing beyond the immediate situation.

The story begins with John talking to Jesus.

John says, “Teacher we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

Now we should give John a little credit here.If we consider the cultural context, this was a legitimate concern to the disciples for others to be healing in Christ’s name.

In those days, lots of people were healing. It was common practice to invoke a revered name while healing.

The disciples were a small group and whose movement was just beginning to gain traction.

They were concerned that others healing in God’s name, but who weren’t part of their group, might undermine their credibility.

But Jesus, ever the teacher, invites them to see the potential and possibility beyond their obvious concern. He says, "Do not stop him (from healing), for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Whereas the disciples’ emphasize drawing boundaries around who can do God’s work, Jesus emphasizes the expansiveness of God’s love.

And isn’t it true?

We don’t know the impact that our actions will have and how they might help someone to have a positive experience of God.

We don’t know the impact of the Yard Sale and how it may transform someone’s life.

It would be much easier for all of us if the passage ended there – but it doesn’t.

Just as we don’t know how our actions might positively impact others, the reverse is also true.

Jesus’ uses some graphic imagery to caution the disciples against erecting stumbling blocks that keep people, especially children, from having a positive experience of God.  When he talks about chopping off hands, cutting off feet, and tearing out eyes, He’s using hyperbole – exaggeration. And as challenging as these images, they also serve a purpose in getting our attention.

Biblical scholars suggest that Jesus was addressing the issue of child sexual abuse and other sexual transgressions in his community.

As twenty-first century followers of the way of Jesus, we too have a responsibility to take care of the most vulnerable members of our community - both here within these walls – and out beyond them.

We are called to care for children, orphans, widows, people living on the margins, in poverty and situations of abuse.

We are called to care for the hungry, the hurting, and the aching.

We are called to be Christ to one another.

As the song we will soon sing says, “Won’t you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you.”

But in order to be Christ to one another, in order to work for transformation in the world, we also need to be open to God’s transformation in us.

Sometimes we might feel like rusty pots and pans overlooked at the church yard sale.

The Good News is that God sees the possibilities for transformation in us, even when we cannot.

Over the past few months I’ve struggled to find work.

I ended up working at the YMCA in Alexandria, at the front desk greeting members and checking them in early in the morning.

At first I was ashamed of my work. I wanted people to see me for more than the girl behind the front desk. I have a Master’s of Divinity degree and I wanted to use it!

Sometime in early September I realized that my pride was getting in the way of my ability to just receive the grace and joy of being with really lovely people.

I was spinning my wheels in frustration until, through talking to one of my co-workers, I realized that I was my own problem! With this awareness, I found myself more open to having deep conversations with Y Members about their families and the concerns of their lives. I realized I didn’t need the title of “Minister’ to be doing ministry.

In hindsight I see how God has been working in my life to turn my stumbling block of pride into a stepping stone. I had to get over my pride in order to experience the grace of the space I was in and begin to move forward again.

What about you?

Are there any rusty pots in your life pantry that you’re overlooking?

Where has God helped turn your individual and collective stumbling blocks into stepping stones?

And what helped you move forward? Or, what might be keeping you back?

I don’t have any easy answers.

But I do know this – There is deep power to be found in the power of prayer.

There is deep power to be found in a community such as this one where God’s love is freely given and received.

There is grace in this space if we will be open to it.

For God is ready and waiting to sand off the rust and shine us up.

God wants to help turn our stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

And God is calling us to use all of our hands and feet,

our eyes and our ears,

our hearts and our minds

to help clear the path for others,

especially the most vulnerable,

So that we may all walk together as travelers on the road.

I pray it may be so. Amen.