don't eat alone

I preached again today at the First Christian Church, Congregational of East Haddam, Connecticut—a wonderful congregation. My text for today was John 15:9-17.

I was a high school English teacher for about ten years. One of the things I was determined to differently than those who had taught me was the way in which I helped my students encounter plays. My teachers had assigned us reading to do at home as preparation for class discussion, much the same way they did with novels; that approach works well for novels, but not for plays because you don’t read a play you watch it, or you perform it to fully engage the story. So when we came to Shakespeare in my classes, I assigned parts each day and got the kids up out of their seats and thinking about how they would move and encounter one another in the drama. I even taught them how to stage a sword fight using wooden dowels, which quite surprised my principal one day when he turned the corner and we were all out swashbuckling in the hallway.

I wonder sometimes if we need to take the same approach with scripture readings. Much like reading a play, we have to pay attention to the context to get a sense of how the words were being offered and received. Matthew 5-7 gives us what we have come to call the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew said when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up to the top of a mountain, sat down, and began to teach his disciples. Imagine them following him up the slope of the hillside from the Sea of Galilee until he came to a place where they could gather. Perhaps there was a gentle breeze blowing off the water. Jesus sat down and they gathered around him. At the very end of the sermon, Matthew says the crowds were astounded. People had continued to gather as he spoke, by the time the sermon was over, the hillside was covered with people.

Our reading from John 15 this morning is a part of a five-chapter discourse Jesus gave his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. It reads, in many ways, like his words in Matthew unless we put ourselves in the play, if you will. John doesn’t offer any stage direction, or give us any scene descriptions other than we know they moved from the familiar security of the Upper Room after what became their last supper together to the somewhat sinister sacredness of the grove of olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane, their twisted branches casting shadows down into the Kidron Valley. There was very little light other than the moon. Perhaps Jesus sat down as he had done on the hillside. Or maybe they walked among the trees as he talked.

Jesus was not preaching to them. He was imploring them to pay attention. He was working hard to see if this ragtag group of followers had grasped what he had been telling them. So he gave them metaphors, he prayed for them, he prayed with them, he washed their feet, he gave them the bread and the cup that we will share this morning, and he spoke as clearly and directly as he could: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Then he gave them another word picture: there is no greater love than this—when a person lays down their life for a friend. I imagine he paused to let his words sink in, and then looked around the circle so he saw each person’s face. Then he said, and you are my friends.

What does it mean to be a friend?

A number of years ago, I heard an African pastor who was a guest preacher at a church in Texas. He began his sermon by pointing out a significant difference in the way Africans and Americans use the word “friend.” He said, “I was in a church recently where they welcomed visitors by saying, ‘There are no strangers here, only friends.’ as though an acquaintance is the same as a friend. In my country, friendship is something borne out of struggle, something that is demonstrated over time.”

Those in my life whom I call friend are people I can trust, people I can call on when I need help, people who let me share in their lives, people who work to stay connected. My definition is by no means exhaustive. We could go around the room this morning and add to it, I’m sure. I am also sure what would happen is we would soon be telling stories rather than offering adjectives or descriptions about what it means to lay down our lives for one another, much like I talked about how acting out a play was better than reading it. Our stories make our pictures of love come to life. Like this:

My father died almost five years ago in Waco, Texas, where he lived. He died early in the morning. I began to send out text messages to friends somewhere around 7:30, as best I can remember. Two friends from North Carolina, where Ginger, my wife and I lived at the time, happened to be in Dallas, which was about two hours away from Waco. They met me for breakfast in Waco before ten o’clock that morning. They laid down their plans for the day and came to find me.

Laying down our lives is not as much about dying for one another as it is about living for one another. It is going through our days looking for ways to lay down our lives, to live out our love for those around us in Jesus’ name by loving one another as Christ loves us. It means choosing to be connected over anything else. True friendship has some miles on it. Jesus didn’t call them his friends until the end. Friendship is love that has stood the test of time. It’s like James Taylor and Carole King sing,

you just call out my name
and you know wherever I am
I’ll come running to see you again
winter, spring, summer, or fall
all you have to do is call
and I’ll be there—you’ve got a friend

Jesus said he was telling his disciples all of these things so their joy would be full. The word for joy is the same one used to describe how the shepherds felt when they saw the baby in the manger, and how the women felt when they discovered the tomb was empty. When we love one another—when we befriend one another—we connect with the expansive and creative love of God that is at the heart of the story of our faith. In the middle of all that is wrong around us and within us, in these days of difficulty and uncertainty, in all that we have done and left undone, we are called to be friends, to love one another, so that we might know the joy of the Risen Christ in the dailiness of life—in the simple interactions that build trust between us.

As we gather once again to pass the bread and the cup to one another, let our gestures be promises that we will pass love to one another just as intentionally. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

PS—Since I quoted the lyric, how can I not include the song?

I preached this morning at the United Churches of Durham, Connecticut–a lovely congregation. Here is my sermon, “This is What Love Looks Like.”

Our choice of scripture today follows the Revised Common Lectionary, which offers a psalm, an Old Testament reading, a reading from one of the gospels, and a New Testament reading. Out call to worship this morning was based on the Twenty-Third Psalm, which is, perhaps, one of the most well-known passages of scripture: the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. It is a profound statement of faith and hope. Both the psalm and the Gospel reading are about shepherds. The verses from the tenth chapter of John, which we are not reading in full this morning, quote Jesus: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.”

It was a metaphor that would have spoken clearly to those gathered around Jesus. They knew shepherds. Some of them were shepherds. They understood what it meant to take care of a herd of sheep, particularly in the semi-arid climate of Palestine. On this bright Sunday morning, I bet it is fairly safe to say most of us do not have first-hand experience tending sheep, so our understanding of what it means to say, “the Lord is my shepherd” is a bit more romanticized, or at least has become more of an idea than an experience.

Our New Testament reading this morning is from 1 John, one of the letters written to the churches in Europe and Asia Minor. Like many of the letters we have in our Bible, it is full of practical advice on how to live a hands-on faith. Listen to our reading for this morning.

We know what true love looks like because of Jesus. He gave His life for us, and He calls us to give our lives for our brothers and sisters. If a person owns the kinds of things we need to make it in the world but refuses to share with those in need, is it even possible that God’s love lives in them? My little children, don’t just talk about love as an idea or a theory. Make it your true way of life, and live in the pattern of gracious love.

There is a sure way for us to know that we belong to the truth. Even though our inner thoughts may condemn us with storms of guilt and constant reminders of our failures, we can know in our hearts that God is greater than any accusation. God knows all things. My loved ones, if our hearts cannot condemn us, then we can stand with confidence before God. Whatever we may ask, we receive it from God because we follow God’s commands and take the path that pleases God. The command is clear: believe in the name of Jesus and love one another as God commanded. The one who follows this teaching and walks this path lives in an intimate relationship with God. How do we know that God lives in us? By the gift of the Holy Spirit. (I John 3:16-24)

I know. No shepherds. Not even any metaphors. Instead, there is a rather pointed question: “If a person owns the kinds of things we need to make it in the world but refuses to share with those in need, is it even possible that God’s love lives in them?” I guess neither poetry nor subtlety was John’s strong suit. So I spent some time this week wondering what made those who created the Lectionary put these passages together, as well as trying to see what connections I could find, since I was preaching this morning.

Reading the passages about shepherding made me think of my father, who was a pastor and loved to joke that Jesus calling himself a shepherd was not a compliment to his followers since sheep are not known for their intelligence. In my studying this week, I looked up some of the recent research on sheep, which is showing sheep are not quite as dumb as we have thought they were—there is more to them than their “herd mentality” that means they will just go wherever the flock is going. They adapt to their surroundings, form relationships, and pay attention to details. Their tendency to flock together is not out of stupidity, but out of an understanding of the importance of community. They can learn and grow. So can we—and I think that is what John assumed when he wrote to tell the young churches how to take care of each other. They didn’t need metaphors. They needed practical advice. They needed specific images of what love looked like in their lives. So he said, it is as simple as this: if you have what people need, share. He didn’t say, if you have more than you need, share, but if you have what others need, share it. Be like sheep. Realize that without the flock all of us are vulnerable. Unless we take care of each other, we will not survive.

I am not a shepherd, and I don’t know any first hand. The closest I have gotten to farming recently is I went out last week to a friend’s farm to play with their baby goats. She and her husband have a small farm where they are growing vegetables and raising goats for milk and chicken for eggs. Even my limited agricultural experience helps me to understand that it is practical work. You feed the animals. You make sure they have shelter. You clean up after them. You protect them. While we stood in the goat pen, a bald eagle flew overhead, checking out the goats and chickens. You care for your animals in hands-on, tangible, even visceral ways.

John may have said nothing about sheep when he wrote his letter, but I think I see the connection with the other passages because he spoke in practical and tangible terms. Share what you have with those who need it. Live as though you trust that God will see you through, rather than living a life of scarcity and fear. Of course bad things will happen. Of course things will not go as expected. But you are not alone. God is never not with us. So share. Ask for help. Lean into one another in Jesus’ name. Love one another.

I am one of many in the world who live with depression. I first began to come to terms with it in my life in 2001. A couple of years later, a singer named Patty Griffin released a song called When It Don’t Come Easy. The chorus says,

if you break down, I’ll drive out and find you
if you forget my love, I’m here to remind you
and stand by you when it don’t come easy

I listened to that song over and over. One day I said to Ginger, my wife, “This song says what you do for me. Each day, I feel like I break down and you drive out and find me. That is how I am making it through.” She didn’t come find me because life was great for her and she was being generous. I think it’s harder for the person living with the one who is depressed than it is to be depressed. She finds me everyday because she loves me. That’s what love looks like.

Yesterday was our twenty-eighth wedding anniversary. We went to the Bronx Zoo and had a wonderful time. On the way there, we stopped and at breakfast at Poppy’s Diner in Rye, New York and then walked around the little downtown there. We wandered into a little market and saw one of those wooden art pieces that has a saying written on it that said:

Life is simple, it’s just not easy. Be kind because everyone is fighting a hard battle.

The quote has been important to us since Ginger used it in a sermon years ago. The sign became our anniversary gift to one another, and it is a word I pass along to you in the spirit of the psalmist and John, in both the gospel and his letters. To be a follower of Christ is simple, but it is not easy. Both life and faith are team sports. If we have what someone else needs, we are called to share it. And we have what others need because we can love them. We can drive out and find them. We are all in this together. That’s what love looks like. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

PS–Here’s Patty . . .

I preached at my home church yesterday and afterwards we shared a pot luck meal called “Every Dish Tells a Story . . . .” We asked people to bring food that had a story attached to it, and then we ate together and talked about our lives. We had a great day. Here’s the sermon; you can also listen to it here.

“First Breakfast”
John 21:1-17
A Sermon for First Congregational Church UCC, Guilford, Connecticut
April 8, 2018

I learned a lot of important things from my father.

A number of them had to do with food—but I’ll have to save those for another time. I learned to love to read by watching his example. He devoured books. And he remembered them. As a child, Doctor Seuss was a favorite at our house, and of the one he loved best was called On Beyond Zebra. The story centered around one boy telling his younger friend how much more he could imagine if he refused to be confined by the prescribed alphabet: there were words and worlds to discover if one kept going “on beyond zebra.” Dad read it as a metaphor of faith. He was on to something.

“In the places I go there are things that I see
“That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z.
“I’m telling you this ’cause you’re one of my friends.
“My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!”

For us to show up today to mark the Second Sunday of Eastertide is kind of like coming to terms with a new alphabet. Up until Jesus’ resurrection, our alphabet ended at death. But Jesus’ life and death and resurrection requires language that is new to us, as we can see in the gospel stories of those who encountered Jesus after his resurrection. Listen, now, to one of the stories on beyond Easter.

After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.

When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”

Alright—I’m going to begin with pointing out my favorite detail: Jesus did something on beyond Easter that he had not done before: he cooked. He carried out his earthly ministry, endured the cross and the grave, came back from the dead, and made breakfast. I love that.

Jesus had made three or four other appearances to those whom he loved before we get to this moment on the shore, but his followers were still reeling. He spoke with Mary in the grave yard, walked along the Emmaus road, and showed up twice in the room where everyone was gathered—the second time to make sure Thomas got to see him. Each time, including our story for today, they didn’t recognize him at first. Things were not as they had been before his death. He was alive, yes, but they weren’t hanging out or taking trips together. He wasn’t with them all the time. The Resurrection had not erased the grief. They were all indelibly marked by the Crucifixion and all that had happened around it. Judas was dead. Peter still carried the weight of his denial. There was Before; this was After. They had the memory of their last supper with Jesus, but that things had not been right since. They had run out of letters in their alphabet of hope. So they went fishing. They went back to what they knew how to do, hoping something would make sense.

They fished all night and had nothing to show for it as the sun was coming up. Who knows why they didn’t catch anything, but the futility of their enterprise appears to have been excruciating. Things were broken and they couldn’t be fixed. Life was never going to be like it was before ever again.

Then they heard a voice call out from the shore, asking if they had caught anything. When they reported their failure, the person told them to cast the net on the right side of the boat. They had nothing to lose, so they followed the instructions that came our of the fading darkness and came up with a net so full that it almost sank them.

Peter said, “It’s the Lord.” No one, it seems, had recognized who was calling out to them until that moment. He dropped his net and swam to shore, where he found Jesus cooking fish on the beach over an open fire.

Maybe it mattered that the last time a charcoal fire showed up in the story, Peter was in the courtyard denying he had anything to do with Jesus, or, perhaps, he had been around one of those fires at every day since. Maybe it mattered that Jesus served bread and fish, much like the lunch the little boy had offered when they ended up feeding over five thousand people and had baskets and baskets of leftovers, or, perhaps, they ate fish at most every meal. Maybe it mattered that they caught one hundred and fifty three fish and, perhaps, they just caught as many as the net would hold. Maybe it mattered that Jesus asked Peter if he loved him three times — as many times has Peter had betrayed him — or, perhaps, it mattered, mostly, that Jesus made breakfast and fed the friend who had disowned him, offering him the grace to know his betrayal was not the last word, and to know that there was something on beyond the courtyard, the cross, and the cemetery, even on beyond the fretful night they had just lived through.

The gospel writers offer us two incredibly important meals that happen within days of each other. One we mark regularly. The Last Supper became the Lord’s Supper and is, for many Christians, both primary meal and metaphor. It is the one thing that happens across denominational and cultural divides. We have come to the Table in an unbroken line since that night when Jesus first broke the bread and poured the wine and said, “As often as you do this, remember me.”

In the first couple of hundred years after Jesus, the communities of faith gathered around a meal. The shared supper was less like the silver trays we pass and a lot more like the pot luck meal we will share together after worship. They told old stories, new stories, and remembered—they put themselves back together again in Jesus’ name, much like Jesus did with Peter and those gathered around the fire that morning. Paul even wrote to the church in Corinth and said, if you have something wrong between you and someone else, make it right before you come to the table. Give yourself a story to tell.

I want to tell you a story about the dish I brought for lunch today: my mother’s taco salad.

As many of you know, I grew up in Africa. My mother was willing to give up lots of things to move ten thousand miles away from her Texas home, but I think the thing she missed most were Fritos corn chips. After three or four years, she wrote the president of Frito-Lay, whose headquarters were in Dallas, and told him her story and we received two boxes of Fritos, in vacuum-packed in coffee cans. There were eight cans to a box. She gave each of us two for our personal consumption and kept the rest in the kitchen to make Taco Salad.

When we moved back to the States for good, we had it every Saturday.

When I was in my twenties, my parents and I had a hard time finding a way to communicate effectively. However distant I felt from them, or even angry, I was reminded of what I needed to remember every time I walked down the potato chip aisle. Now that they have both died, the meal offers healing in a different way, on beyond Saturdays, on beyond Fritos, and on beyond being an adult orphan.

Though pretty much every one of the disciples bailed out in one way or another when Jesus was arrested, the two that get the spotlight are Peter and Judas, the denier and the betrayer. Such harsh words. I don’t think either one was malicious. Peter was in the courtyard because he was trying to stay close to Jesus and he just outran his courage. I think Judas expected Jesus to actually take on the oppressive government and was trying to call Jesus’ hand and make him act. Whatever their motivation, the biggest difference between the two is Judas never made it to breakfast. If he had, there would have been forgiveness for him as well.

Each time Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” and Peter answered, “Yes, Lord,” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep,” leaning into a metaphor Jesus used throughout his ministry. What I hear in his words is, you know what it feels like to completely screw up; you know what it feels like to feel hungry for hope; you know what it feels like to be fed by grace, and to be loved back into being. Now go do that for someone else.

Our story today makes me wish we observed not only the Last Supper but also the First Breakfast as a part of our sacraments and rituals. We don’t need more silver platters, and we don’t necessarily have to grill fish. But we do need to hear the call to go on beyond Communion, on beyond the Cross, on beyond Easter, and meet each other for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to re-member one another in Jesus’ name, to keep looking for new ways to say, “I love you,” “I forgive you,” and “Forgive me”—“Now pass the potatoes.” Amen.

Peace,
Milton