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September 2013 Sermons:
The Reverend Joyce Smothers
"Table Talk" — September 1
"There's No Saying 'No!'" — September 8
"Religious Recycling" — September 15
"Foolproof Investment Advice" — September 29
“Table Talk”
September 1, 2013
First Presbyterian Church of Hokendauqua
The Reverend Joyce Smothers
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Sharing a meal with another person can have powerful meaning. We know that’s true of the Lord’s Supper, but everyday meals can be times of social bonding, too. During a school lunch, if a child breaks his candy bar in two and gives half to the child sitting next to him, that gift has the power to strengthen their friendship. Or when a young man brings his girlfriend home for dinner to meet the family, you know that’s a significant event.
In the ancient world, breaking bread together was a big deal, always! There were no refrigerators or grocery stores. There were no microwave ovens, and no meals on the run. Common people spent the better part of a day, raising, gathering, and preparing their dinners. Making dinner was labor-intensive. For the gospel writers, and for Jesus, dinner was important. For instance, in Luke, there are twenty-four chapters. And in the chapters that tell about Jesus’ life, I counted nineteen times when Jesus eats dinner with other people. The scene from today's scripture lesson took place in the dining room of a well-to-do Pharisee. The table was set with the Middle Eastern equivalent of finger bowls and bone china. Jesus was one of the guests. He knew you could learn a lot from watching people eat together.
I think any one of us would have been happy to be a guest at this dinner party. The Pharisee host was welcoming, the food was well- prepared, and the company was intelligent. But there was a kind of contest going on at that table. This was a status-conscious society. In Jesus’ day, you had to be careful where, and with whom, you sat. Other people judged you during those dinners, carefully assessing your social position from what they saw. The seats of honor were near the host. The farther down the table people were seated, the farther down the pecking order they were.
We don’t know where Jesus was seated at the table. But you can be sure that the people near Him were “watching Him closely.” I can imagine one of the guests telling a friend about that banquet, the next day, with these words: "What a night. It started out as a perfect dinner party. There was a young teacher named Jesus whom we had heard about, and He said some remarkable things. We were all listening to Him--it's so good, isn't it, to hear the young people taking religion seriously when so many of our youth just don't care anymore?--and this young teacher made some remark about the kingdom of God in the next life. Then, He surprised us all. He implied that something about our dinner party wasn't right, and He seemed to be saying that we don't know what faith is all about! And it spoiled the mood of our party." In other words, for Jesus the party turned into an illustration of “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.”
Think about the banquets you've attended in your life. Think about holiday meals, and the tremendous effort many of you make to ensure that these are happy times. When it all goes well--when the pie crust is perfect and the roast is tender and the turkey is golden and everyone sits together without arguing-- you feel like you've been to heaven and back. If you had to imagine the table of the kingdom of God, wouldn't it be like your memories of a table lined with food and family and holiday cheer?
I think Jesus must have struggled at this party. Remember: He liked to eat. He and His disciples were homeless wanderers, and constantly hungry. They accepted every invitation to dinner. Jesus’ manners were probably fine most of the time—they had to be. But imagine Him sitting there listening to the other dinner guests. They were probably saying, "Isn’t this a piece of heaven, right here! This is all we could ever want. I'll bet this is all God could ever want!"
Jesus said, in effect, “No, this is not all that God wants. Yes, it's wonderful to be together tonight. But this isn’t all there is to life together. If you think that God's table is only big as your table, and God's guest list as long as your guest list, then you are wrong on both counts.” Were the party guests really so narrow-minded and smug as Jesus thought? And are we?
Emily Post write about our obligation to invite people who have invited us. The ancients believed this, too. Jesus had a different take on hospitality. He thought His followers should imitate the inclusive love of God.
Remember the high school cafeterias of your youth? You would never see the cheerleaders “brown-bagging” it with the nerds. In other words, our meals together should be the opposite of the high school cafeteria! As Jesus said, those who try to exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Jesus tells a disturbing story to the party guests. A man gives a party, and invites friends. At the last minute this “would-be” host learns that none of the guests he has invited, are actually going to come. Their excuses sound valid, but nonetheless, they won’t be showing up. So the man invites the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. He doesn’t care if they don't have the right clothes or social status to go to his house. He won't take no for an answer. He insists they sit at his table. The host, of course, is God.
The point of the story is that there are millions of people in the family of God—not just our closest friends. God keeps asking us to come to the banquet and meet all His children, and we keep finding excuses not to go. Some excuses are good ones: I have to work late, the baby’s been sick, I have too much homework, we’re too tired, and we’re very sorry. But we’re missing something that is so magnificent that our own dinner parties will never compare to it.
Real hospitality runs deeper than following rules. It boils down to thinking less about ourselves, and thinking more about other people. Yes, it's good to smile at the new kid, but it's even better to ask him to eat lunch with you. Best of all, you introduce him to your friends and hang out with him. For adults: It’s a good thing to wave to your new neighbors when the moving van pulls up. But why not also take a loaf of fresh-baked bread to them or invite them over for a picnic? The guests at that Pharisee’s party were missing out on the deeper meaning of hospitality. Our excuses sound so good—especially the most common excuse, “I have no time!” Thinking that our priorities matter more than God’s—where is the humility in that?
The sacrament of Holy Communion is one opportunity for Christians to connect directly with God. The sacrament of Baptism is the other. God’s Spirit is reaching out to Jayden Anthony today. The Walters family has been in this church family for years. Shannon and Nicole attended Sunday School here. Randy’s beautiful deep voice was heard in the choir, and Michelle shared in fellowship with our congregation. During Jayden’s life, he will pass through the waters, the fires and the rivers, as we all have and we all will. In the words of Isaiah, God knows him by name. This little boy is God’s special guest, and ours. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord Jesus, you have given us the gift of salvation. Help us to open our hands and give the gifts we have to give, and to receive the gifts you give us. As Jayden grows, may we love and encourage him in Jesus’ name. AMEN
“There's No Saying 'No!'”
September 8, 2013
First Presbyterian Church of Hokendauqua
The Reverend Joyce Smothers
Philemon 7-21
We all know what it is to have a sleepless night. The harder we try to sleep, the wider awake we get, and the more we toss and turn. We all know you can’t force sleep. Sleep experts tell us to try strategies like these: Don’t fight it. Don’t look at the clock. Get up and read a book. Drink a glass of milk. Surf the Internet. And quit trying so hard.
I wonder how much sleep Philemon lost, after receiving this letter from his friend, Paul. It’s one of the shortest books in the Bible; there aren’t even any chapters. Paul wants Philemon to free his runaway slave. Onesimus, the slave, had disappeared from Philemon’s household and, later, turned up to help Paul survive in prison.
To follow this story, it helps to fix these names in your mind. Onesimus is the runaway slave. Philemon is the slaveowner. The slaveholder was a new Christian. It seems as though Paul had baptized this runaway slave. Among Christians, there is neither slave nor free. Those are Paul’s own words to the Galatians. And there you have the message of Paul’s letter to Philemon.
Where was Paul being held? We don’t know—maybe Rome, maybe Ephesus. In Paul’s time, you could be in prison for years, waiting to be sentenced. If you were incarcerated, you depended on people from the outside, for food and medical care. Paul, a traveling tentmaker, had no family or friends to help him – until an escaped slave named Onesimus showed up, from out of the blue, to care for him. In the process of doing that, the young slave became Paul’s good friend—almost a son to him. And he became a Christian.
In the Roman Empire slavery had nothing to do with race. It was very different from the American South before the Civil War. The Romans didn’t believe that certain ethnic groups were inferior and therefore meant to be slaves. More than a third of the population of the Roman Empire was enslaved. Slaves were the foundation of the economic and social order. How did human beings became slaves in ancient Rome? Some were born slaves. Others were captured in war. Many slaves were born free, but got so deeply into debt that they couldn’t get out of it. Slaves did the work that no free servant was willing to do in a household—work like foot washing. Some of them got a good education, at the owner’s expense. The lucky ones ended up managing their owners’ fortunes – but that didn’t change the fact that they were slaves and had no control over their lives.
Paul knew there was nothing he could do to change the social fabric of the Roman Empire, where running away was a capital offense for a slave. The owner of an escaped slave had the right to have his runaway slave tortured or put to death. Because he was so fond of Onesimus, Paul tried a risky maneuver! He wrote this letter to Philemon. And then, Paul sent the young slave back to Philemon, carrying this letter in his hand. There was no mail service. Every letter had to be delivered by a messenger.
Paul was a master of persuasion when he wanted to be. He pulls out all the stops in this letter, addressing Philemon as “our dear friend and co-worker.” Respect for age was important in Roman culture, so Paul mentions that he is old. Status and rank were important, too. Paul pulls rank here as Christian leader. As an apostle of Christ and Philemon’s mentor, he has the power to command this Christian convert to free his slave, and Philemon knows it. But instead of throwing his weight around, Paul appeals to Philemon’s faith.
Paul writes to Philemon that Onesimus has become like a son to him. His name means ‘useful’. Paul suggests that Onesimus could be useful to Philemon’s church as a brother in Christ. Good church leaders were needed back then, just as now. But if the loss of property would be too much for the slaveowner, Paul writes that he is willing to pay for Onesimus’s freedom.
Is this an empty promise? We wonder if Paul really has enough money to buy a slave’s freedom. And if that weren’t enough to make Philemon lose sleep, what makes it worse is that there’s nothing private about this letter. Paul has written it as a sermon, to be read as part of a worship service. It’s addressed not only to Philemon but also “to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house . . . ” Apphia seems to be Philemon’s wife. -And Paul sends greetings from well-known Christians who are with him in prison. You didn’t hear the first part of the letter because it wasn’t part of the epistle lesson Donna read. Two of the people who send greetings are gospel writers. What Christian would want to disagree with Paul, Mark and Luke?
Philemon did have plenty of social and economic power in Asia Minor. He was the head of a family group of more than a hundred people, including family, friends, artisans, poets, servants, and slaves. He was head of a house church, as well. For “Downton Abbey” fans, compare Philemon to the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants. Philemon was the lord of a manor. The estate and the town were interconnected. And Philemon was the big boss—but not the biggest, in Paul’s estimation. God was in charge.
Christian congregations in the first century seem to have consisted of several households that made up a larger body. Many new Christians were slaves. Paul couldn’t have done away with slavery. But he could tell Philemon and his church that Onesimus was his brother in Christ. In Christ, the barriers between slave and free are done away with, and the the one who is greatest is a servant to all.
Paul expresses the heart of the Christian faith when he writes to Philemon, “If Onesimus has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account, and I will repay it.” Listen to that sentence again. Doesn’t it sound familiar? I believe it expresses the meaning of the cross. Christ says, on our behalf, to God, “If any believer has wronged you, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.” Freedom in Christ is no cheap grace. It is the death-defying power of divine love, which forgives and renews us all.
So what did Philemon do when he got Paul’s letter? We don’t know, because we have only half of the conversation. Onesimus doesn’t appear again in the Bible. But I want to share with you a historical footnote. Fifty years after Paul’s death, a bishop named Onesimus was appointed to serve the church in Asia Minor. How many people could there be, named Onesimus? The former slave would have been old by then, but most bishops in the early church were in their sixties and seventies. And how about the fact that this letter was preserved for hundreds of years and later included in the New Testament? There’s another clue that his story had a happy ending. I want to believe that Philemon did the right thing and gave Onesimus his freedom. Only God knows for sure. Thanks be to God.
Help us, O God, to remember that where two or three of us are gathered, you are there also; to remember that we are messengers of your love and grace which calls us to extend the hand of fellowship not only within these walls, but beyond; to remember above all that the cross is a radical commitment to a way of life, and we carry it in the name of Christ, our Lord. Amen.
“Religious Recycling”
September 15, 2013
First Presbyterian Church of Hokendauqua
The Reverend Joyce Smothers
Luke 15:1-10
My mother may have invented recycling. She had a talent for turning trash into treasure. She could always find a new way to use things my brothers and I tried to throw away. For example, she made us squeeze together all our little bars of “almost-used-up” soap, and then use the stuck-together slivers in the bathtub before we were allowed to open a new bar of soap.
My mom lived for the moments when she could retrieve a piece of trash—like an egg carton or an empty candy box or a shriveled piece of aluminum foil— to use again. She would say: "See, I knew we would need this someday." She was so well-organized and so creative. It never took her more than a couple of minutes to find, say, a cigar box, to recycle into a cash box for our yard sale. She grew up during the Great Depression, and during the Second World War her family had to ration their sugar and margarine. But I think it was her arts and crafts training as a nursery school teacher, that compelled her to save all those throwaway wrappers and containers.
My mom saved bigger things, too! Her wedding dress was recycled for her twin sister to wear at her own wedding in 1945. Our daughter wore that dress to a party more than sixty years later! We still have it in our closet. She challenged her whole family, not to waste anything. There’s a lesson for our church family in that.
God is very heavily into recycling! God finds value in all that He created. So it makes sense that God doesn’t want to waste anything, or any person. The two parables in our gospel lesson, show that God cares for every part of creation. In these stories, Jesus uses two metaphors. The first is a shepherd. Remember with whom Jesus has been speaking: grumbling Pharisees and scribes. He puts the question to them: Which of you, having a hundred sheep..?" That’s a subtle putdown. The Pharisees weren’t shepherds. In fact, they looked down their noses at shepherds. Shepherds were not the intellectual elite of ancient Palestine. They had no education and lived like hermits in the hills, and probably smelled bad too. Making a shepherd a hero is like making a Samaritan a hero—because the Pharisees looked down on the Samaritans.
The shepherd in Jesus’ first story, really loves the one sheep that is lost. He cares enough to risk losing the rest of his herd in order to find that one lost sheep. And when he finds that sheep, he rejoices.
Of course the Lord is the shepherd in the story, just as He is the shepherd in the twenty-third psalm. God loves those who wander off. God cares about those who are not considered "part of the flock." Faithful followers of Christ go out and seek the lost ones in our society. We rejoice when they are found. It takes time to reach out to someone who is lost. It’s risky, too. So we don’t reach out as much as we should.
The story of the woman who has lost a coin has the same lesson for us.
She goes to great lengths to find that coin. Once again, she demonstrates God’s active caring for the lost. She burns the midnight oil and tears up the floor. She takes time to look for the lost coin in the dark. She’s very thorough. She pulls up clumps of dirty straw. (Floors in those peasant huts were covered with straw.) It’s interesting that Luke, the gospel writers, pairs a story about a man with a similar story about a woman. This happens many times in Luke’s gospel. Making a poor woman stand for God, shows that he values women a great deal.
The Pharisees and the scribes probably wouldn’t have approved of my mother retrieving and re-using junk. They would have thought that this woman’s search for her coin, was ridiculous—and that the shepherd was acting very foolishly. Jesus’s parables make small things, like a sheep and a coin, so important. You’ll remember that the scribes and the Pharisees are shocked that He eats with sinners, too. They mutter, in the gospel reading, that no proper Jew, especially a rabbi, should associate with such riffraff.
But Jesus is saying that God’s love is an active love. To God, the lost ones—who seem worthless to the Pharisees—are the very same people who will inherit the kingdom of heaven. As Jesus describes it, the heavenly kingdom will be an upside–down world where one sheep is worth the energy normally spent on caring for a hundred animals, and one coin is worth searching every inch of the floor.
For two thousand years, the Jewish people had survived persecution and enslavement by strongly emphasizing their identity, as God’s unique and chosen people. They had to be big on control. Their leaders believed in drawing lines, so to speak, to keep sinners out of the inner circle. Hundreds of laws from the Torah helped congregations determine who was “in” and who was “out.” People who obeyed the laws were “in,” and the unclean and the disobedient were “out.” Jesus, Himself, was Jewish and liked to challenge the lawgivers. He was their loyal opposition. Jesus thought the ancient laws were good, but believed that the Pharisees were too strict and not loving enough in interpreting them.
The Pharisees called people “sinners,” and blamed their troubles on their sinful natures. Jesus never used the word, “sinners.” He called them “the lost.” Jesus challenged them, and challenges us, to minister to those who have wandered away.
There are two messages of grace for us in these stories. The first is that God loves all people, and challenges us to love all people, too. The second message is to us personally. Do you ever feel lost? Everyone is poor in Spirit, at one time or another. There are times when we feel like lambs wandering in the wilderness, or like lost coins stuck under the dirty straw on the floor. When we lose a job or a beloved friend, or realize that we cannot do what we want to do, we feel separated from God. There are other ways to feel lost. We may not even realize how lost we are. Some of us just get carried away, running after a promotion, a degree, a raise, or a special award. Before we know it, we have lost our way.
We should never feel worthless. God loves us. Wherever you are, God is on the way to finding you. However lost you might feel, God has dropped everything, and won’t rest until you are found. Being lost and found—that’s what faith is all about. Know that God actively seeks to bring you home.
We should also never forget that Christ has a body, and His body is the church. The Apostle Paul writes about Christ’s body in First Corinthians, Chapter Twelve. Did you know that the word, “pastor,” is Latin for “shepherd”? In a sense, we Christians are all called to be pastors, or gatherers of lost people. No one is trash. Everyone is a treasure! May God give us diligence to search for the lost. Or if we are the lost, may God give us the wisdom to let ourselves be found.
Let us pray. Gracious God, you search for us and never give up on us. Your gift of love is relentless. In distant places, you seek us out. As Jesus welcomes us with outstretched arms, help us to welcome others. Help us to rejoice with all your people and to celebrate your love for all people. In Jesus’ name we pray. AMEN
“Foolproof Investment Advice”
September 29, 2013
First Presbyterian Church of Hokendauqua
The Reverend Joyce Smothers
I Timothy 6:6-19
Throughout the history of the church, Christians have wondered what happened to the original twelve apostles after Jesus ascended into heaven. In the case of Thomas, whom many of us know as Doubting Thomas, one legend says he traveled to India and preached the gospel there. Many churches in India, today, take pride in tracing their roots back to Doubting Thomas.
According to one story, Thomas sailed to the west coast of India, where a king drafted Thomas into his service. He commissioned Thomas to build a huge mansion, so splendid that no other mansion would ever compare to it. And toward that end, the king furnished Thomas money to buy whatever he needed. He spared no expense.
But each time the king gave money to Thomas, instead of using that money to buy wood or stone or gold for the new mansion, Thomas went out into the streets. Quietly, he gave away the king’s money to needy people – the hungry, the poor, and the sick people of India. In time, the king found out what Thomas was doing. "I ordered you to build a mansion for me," the king fumed, "but instead you gave my money to beggars!" Immediately he had Thomas thrown into prison.
Well, about the same time the king’s brother became seriously ill. The doctors were sure he would die. But one day the king’s brother miraculously recovered. When he awoke, right away he called for his brother, the king. The king’s brother said, "O King, I have just seen an amazing vision. An angel of God carried me off to heaven where he showed me many mansions. But one of them was more spectacular than all the rest. When I asked the angel who it belonged to, he said it was yours, O King. He said that mansion had been built for you by your servant Thomas."
Churches in the first century struggled with money concerns, like we do today. Paul wrote his first letter to Timothy, his young colleague in ministry, from his prison cell in Rome. He was telling Timothy how to debate with false teachers, who were preaching the gospel of prosperity in Ephesus. These teachers were gaining many followers in the Roman Empire. They were entertaining and upbeat, like some of our televangelists today. Imagine an energetic young man in a thousand-dollar suit. Who wouldn’t find such a person compelling, in a superficial way? These charismatic preachers told their listeners that wealth was a sign of God’s favor. People in his congregation were impressed. Timothy was worried.
In this famous passage that John read, Paul is describing how the people of God can store up “the treasure of a good foundation for the future.” When we hear those words in our time, we imagine financial products that promise a favorable outcome –enough of a yield for us to buy a second home in Florida and to help our grandchildren pay for college. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t think about the church, or Christian education, as investments at all. But they should.
Paul’s advice has nothing to do with stocks and bonds. Are you surprised? Paul writes to Timothy, and I quote, “There is great gain in godliness, combined with contentment.” His financial advice to us is not to increase our income, but to reduce our expectations of material wealth—which we can’t take with us. What’s more, Paul writes that Christians should “be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.” That’s not a tip that would get you anywhere on Wall Street, but it’s right there in the Bible. Over and over, Jesus preaches that the more we give away, the richer we’ll become in this life. Take a look at the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. Greatly honored are the poor, the humble, the meek, and the powerless! Do we really honor people in need, as fellow human beings, or do we honor the false prophets in expensive suits who promise salvation to people who can afford expensive stuff? Paul never says that money is the root of all evil. Did you notice? He says, “the LOVE OF MONEY is the root of… evil.”
What if God were an investment advisor? How would He see us? Our country has the largest accumulation of wealth the world has ever known. God would see something very different from what we see. God would see our wealth as power—not power to buy, or to trade, but power to do good.
That’s what Paul is saying in the First Letter to Timothy, when he advises Christians to be rich in good works. There is tremendous, untapped potential in our assets—even if they seem small to us. They are more than just dollars because they can buy food, clothing, and shelter for the destitute. We don’t need to be Warren Buffett or Bill Gates to help people. Yesterday I dropped off a carload of nearly new, size 8 shoes and boots, still in their boxes, all pre-owned by a recently-deceased church member, to a needy teenage girl and her mom. They wear size 8 shoes—the same size our deceased member wore. As for me, it felt good, to give a gift on your behalf---a carload of new shoes worth several thousand dollars when they were bought at Boscov’s. And it didn’t cost me a penny.
This is a very different message from the one we hear on television and in the newspapers. Advertisements give clever, creative appeals to spend more money on ourselves. Cure those wrinkles, upgrade your smartphone, and use our coupons to spend money on yourself before tomorrow, when it will be too late. Pile up the appeals to selfishness on one side of the scale, and pile up the New Testament passages, encouraging us to give generously, on the other side of the scale. It’s not hard to see why generous giving is endangered—and why the missions of our church are vital to the salvation of humankind.
We celebrate William’s baptism today. Paul would be pleased to know that we will be teaching this little boy to “fight the good fight in the faith.” As he grows, I pray that he will learn to share. I pray that this congregation will teach him humility.
The Greek words for generosity and fellowship come from the Greek root word, koinonikos. You’ve all heard the word, koinonia, which comes from that word. Generous people know what it’s like to live in fellowship with others. The radical individualism of our culture, sends the false message that personal property is our absolute right. By contrast, the Bible says we hold our wealth as members of a community.
We have much to celebrate: a new baby, a strong fellowship, and a heritage of spiritual abundance! Paul’s letter calls us to keep our giving generous, and to keep our vision of the future, broad. It calls us to thank God for our abundance, and to give, from that abundance, to those in need. That is God’s investment advice.
Loving God, we come to you in thanksgiving, knowing that all we are, and all that we have, are gifts from you. In faith and love, help us to do your will. We are listening, Lord. Speak your words of life into the depths of our souls, that we may hear you clearly. Give us wisdom to understand your will for us and the strength to carry out our own good intentions. Help us to reach out to others, as you have reached out to us. AMEN
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