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September 2015 Sermons:
The Reverend Joyce Smothers

"Talking Back to Jesus?" — September 6
"The Greatest Adventure" — September 13
"Firsts and Lasts" — September 20
"An Ordinary Disciple" — September 27


“Talking Back to Jesus?”
September 6, 2015
First Presbyterian Church of Hokendauqua
The Reverend Joyce Smothers

Mark 7:34-37

It would be hard to find more of an outsider than the woman who begged Jesus to heal her daughter. In the Holy Land in ancient times, women didn’t just march up to rabbis like Jesus and make personal demands. The Jewish law didn’t allow a man even to speak to an unescorted woman, and vice versa.

Besides being a woman, this person was an outsider because of her nationality. She was from the country to the north of Israel, known as Lebanon today. Even back in those times, there was hostility between Israel and the northerners. Syrophoenicians lived on the wrong side of the tracks. Jews thought of them as “dogs” from an unclean nation. The comments made by the people of Lebanon about the Jews were just as uncomplimentary.

One more thing that made that woman an outsider was that she had a daughter who was possessed by demons. We aren’t told exactly how the demon affected the little girl. But the child’s affliction contaminated her entire family, according to the law. The Jews of Jesus’ time believed that a child’s illness was a punishment for the parents’ sin. From every direction that Jesus looked at that woman, she was an outsider. And Jesus told her so, in words that shock us today.

This is one of the most difficult stories in the New Testament. We always assume that Jesus automatically helped everyone who asked Him. But when that woman begged Jesus to go and heal her demon-possessed daughter, He rebuffed her in so many words: "Leave me alone. Can’t you see that I have my hands full, just taking care of my own people, the children of God? I can’t be bothered with the problems of dogs, like you."

This doesn’t sound like the “nice” Jesus we know. But if you think about how you feel after working around the clock, day after day, you’ll understand how Jesus might have felt. He had probably taken this trip up north, to get away from the crowds. He had healed and taught thousands of people, and now He needed a break. He had had His hands full, without this foreign woman pulling at Him.

There are times in our own lives when we reject interruptions because we want to be alone. At those times, we set limits on how much we are willing to do. I think this comes from a healthy, self-protective instinct. When we’ve been pushed to our limits, we need to put ourselves first and take a rest.

There’s another important thing to understand about Jesus’ remark to this woman. When He spoke to her of “God’s children,” He was talking about the Jewish people. His ministry had been spent entirely among the Jews. Jesus understood His mission from God to be about serving them exclusively. Whatever strength He had, whatever powers to work miracles, should belong to them, He felt. This woman wasn’t Jewish, but Greek. In Jesus’ mind, she and her demon-possessed daughter had no right to His time.

But this desperate woman didn’t give up on Jesus. She loved her daughter that much. Have you ever wanted something for your child—something as important as healing? She responded to Jesus’ insult by saying, in effect, "You call me a dog. And maybe that’s all I seem to you. But even the dogs under your table get to eat the scraps that fall to the floor. So if you don’t want to welcome me to sit down at your table, fine. But at least give me your crumbs. Because your crumbs are more than I have right now."

When the woman spoke up to Jesus, it seems to have surprised Him so much that He ended up changing His mind about helping her. She is the only person in the entire gospel of Mark who gets the best of Jesus in an argument. Her remarks tell us that she was quick-witted, and that she had a sense of humor. Can you picture Him nodding His head in admiration?

Rabbis had heated scholarly arguments all the time; but, like lawyers on opposing sides in the courtroom, they stayed friends and respected each other. In an indirect way, Jesus was honoring this woman’s intelligence and faith. He was putting Himself in jeopardy with the Pharisees by daring to argue with her as an equal. Women were not ordinarily allowed to be in sparring matches with educated men of the cloth. Don’t forget that, according to the Jewish law, He wasn’t even supposed to speak to her.

Jesus granted her wish by healing her daughter. In the process, He, Himself, was changed. He had thought He was getting away from work by getting out of town. Instead this foreign woman had reminded Him that there was work to do, in lands beyond Judea. She had challenged Jesus to see the world in a new way. He was forever changed by this encounter.

Jesus was God, but He was also a man. We assume that when Jesus was born, He knew everything there was to know about being God’s Son. But I believe this story tells about one of those times when Jesus learned a powerful lesson about Himself and about faith. It took time and experience for Jesus to learn what it meant to live as the Christ, the Son of God. There is a passage in the book of Hebrews that says that Jesus learned obedience through suffering. He’s the one human being who got it right! Sometimes, though, we think we would rather have a Savior who is a superhero, not a real person who shared the human condition with us.

The salvation God extends to us in Jesus, doesn’t exempt us from our own weaknesses. Many of the lessons we learn in life, come from our clashes with other faithful folks. We will always be tested by people whose needs and backgrounds are different from ours.

Both the Syrophoenician woman and the deaf man, in this chapter from Mark’s gospel, are outsiders. People with disabilities were rejected by the faith community that had nurtured Jesus and His disciples. But, if we believe that our God is the only God there is, then that God is the God of outsiders, too.

Healing is a gift of God that we can give to anyone. When church members visit the sick and hospitalized, they heal the loneliness that illness brings. Or when people have made bad choices in their lives, they may discover forgiveness from the congregation. This is serious healing. Many people show up at church after the death of a loved one, feeling that life is empty of meaning. Grief has disrupted their lives. In church they discover that God walks with them in their grief. In church they receive the sympathy of the congregation, many having been where they are. These people hear the message of everlasting life, and in all of this there is healing. Always remember, every time you help someone in need, healing takes place.

Let us pray. Lord Jesus, through your healing acts, you have made your love known to us. You reached out across boundaries and put other people’s needs before your own. Help us to come to you in our need. Also, help us to bring desperate people to you, so that they might also be blessed by your love, and grow in their faith. AMEN


“The Greatest Adventure”
September 13, 2015
First Presbyterian Church of Hokendauqua
The Reverend Joyce Smothers

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Is your day full of questions? Every day total strangers ask us to give quick answers: “Sweetened or unsweetened?” "Credit or debit?" "Paper or plastic?" What about the questions we answer, without thinking? Some examples: “How are you?” “Fine, thanks!” "Thank you." "You're welcome." "I love you." "I love you, too." "I'm sorry." "It's okay.” Give the expected response, and it saves you time and energy.

There are Christian responses we’ve been taught to say. They are automatic, too, but more important. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." "And also with you." "Lift up your hearts." We lift them up to the Lord." We don’t usually think about our responses, although we should. If you DO think about it, “lift up your hearts” is a command from God!

What do you do when a question comes along that you're unprepared for? Suppose you respond to, “How are you?” with, “I just got a pink slip!” The person might wish he or she hadn’t asked! What do you do when somebody asks you a question that puts you on the spot? You are asked if you passed your law boards and you didn’t. What do you say? “Don’t ask!” works if you say it with a smile. I remember when a third-grade classmate asked me which of my grandmothers I liked better. I loved them both too much to give one a better rating than the other one. I said, “Don’t ask!”

How do you respond to a challenge to your way of life? A call from God can be the most difficult of all. God calls the prophet Jeremiah in today’s Old Testament passage, when he is a young man, around twenty years old. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you," God says to Jeremiah, "and I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations."

As Jeremiah struggles to understand God’s call, he protests at first: "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how." That's the first thing Jeremiah says in the book that bears his name: "God, I do not know how to do what you are calling me to do. I don't know how to speak for I am only a boy.” Jeremiah is convinced that he is not qualified to be a prophet to the nations. "God, you need to look for someone else.”

But God's not buying it because God knows that Jeremiah IS qualified. The direction of our lives is God’s idea. Jeremiah is qualified because of who God is. Jeremiah is able because God is able. Left on his own, he’s too young and too poor a speaker. Left within his comfort zone, Jeremiah can’t respond to God's call. But God's point in speaking this word is that Jeremiah will not be left on his own. God says, "I'll tell you what to say and I will be with you."

What does this young prophet, Jeremiah, end up doing? He helps to guide the southern kingdom of Judah during and after their exile, and ends up giving them a vision of a new covenant that God will write on their hearts—and on our hearts, also—the promise of the messiah, Jesus Christ.

Maybe God is calling you in a way that you can hardly believe because it doesn't fit neatly into the categories of your life. Maybe it's disorienting you and you don't know how to respond. Maybe it's a call to accept a new position of service or leadership. Maybe it's a call to restore a relationship, to set new priorities, or to take a fresh approach.  God calls Jeremiah "to pluck up and pull down, to destroy and to overthrow". Maybe God is calling you to dismantle a structure that no longer works, a worn-out way of doing things. For example, the wall in Berlin had to come down before democracy could take hold in Eastern Europe. There are so many things that need to be plucked up and pulled down. Maybe you are being called to be a voice for change. People don’t like change. But if you are willing, God is willing. It is naïve to think you can be in this world and not change it.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the son of a Presbyterian pastor in Stanton, Virginia. He was a bookish young man, not an athlete or social leader. After serving as a college professor, he was called to be the President of Princeton University, then the Governor of New Jersey—with no experience in politics, in the most corrupt state of the union. The Democratic Party called him to run for President of the United States in 1912. You might say he was in all the right places at the right times. He kept us out of World War I until 1917, and built up the armed forces, then helped the Allies defeat Germany. He was the last U.S. President to write all his own speeches and type them himself, without speechwriters or secretaries. Wilson was far from perfect, but he used his greatest God-given talents— to write and to speak.

Wilson refused to do the bidding of political bosses who had gotten him elected. He felt that God was calling him to follow Christian teachings. He supported the struggle for women’s suffrage and started the first federal income tax since the Civil War. And yet, he couldn’t turn around the traditional isolationism in our country. And so, during his Presidency, the treaty he had negotiated, and his pet project, the League of Nations, weren’t ratified. By the age of sixty-four, Wilson’s health was broken, but his vision of world peace lived on. Twenty years after his death, the United Nations was founded. You can read the story of President Wilson’s call, and his struggles to make a difference, in a biography by Scott Berg, entitled Wilson, which I just finished reading.

None of us have the power to address global problems the way President Wilson did. What can we do? David LaMotte, a Presbyterian workshop leader, suggests we ask ourselves questions, in this order: What do you care about? What do you bring? Where is your community—the people who think the way you do? What will you do first? Then, La Motte writes, we should do that thing. What if we develop a mental bloc? LaMotte says to write the small thing God is calling you to do, on a slip of paper, and carry it around until that piece of paper starts to annoy you. Then do it. And afterwards, go back to step one. Do a bigger thing.

Nothing can happen until we are willing to drop our automatic responses, like Jeremiah’s words, “I’m too young and I don’t know how.” We can respond not because of who we are, but because of who God is. We’re able because God is able.

Can God break through your comfort zone with a promise? Will God enable you to do something you could never have done on your own? How is God calling you? In a broken world it’s hard to know where to start. Listen closely when you speak with God. Figure out what changes you are called to make, and get to work.

Lord Jesus, help us be ready to hear your call. Give us the courage to venture forth at your leading. Use our lives and the talents you have given us, in your service. AMEN


“Firsts and Lasts”
September 20, 2015
First Presbyterian Church of Hokendauqua
The Reverend Joyce Smothers

Psalm 1 Mark 9:30-37

Jesus makes a shocking prediction in today’s gospel story. I will be betrayed. I will die. I will rise again. If you were one of Jesus’ closest friends, wouldn’t you be hanging on His every word? But the disciples are too frightened to listen. At the same time, they’re hoping to be honored as the next leader. Each one wants Jesus’ power and popularity for himself. They argue loudly, all the way to Capernaum. Which one of us is the greatest?

When they arrive and Jesus asks what they’ve been arguing about, they’re embarrassed to tell Him. It’s surprising, isn’t it? Not too long before, the disciples had been fishermen and tax collectors. But now, they’re jockeying with one another to be His top-rated follower. As they bicker, they completely lose focus on Jesus and His words. How much more childish can grown men act?

To their credit, these men know they’ve behaved badly, and they seem ashamed. When Jesus questions them about their conversation, you can picture them avoiding eye contact, kicking the dirt, and mumbling. Jesus takes advantage of this teachable moment. He brings a child into their circle of conversation. Calmly, He teaches them how wrong they are to jockey for status, because God measures status by service to all. Anyone who receives a child with love, and gives his or her full attention to that child’s needs, receives Jesus Himself. Now, picture the disciples, looking up in surprise and leaning forward to make sure they hear Jesus right.

Then to drive the message home, Jesus sits down and calls all of them to His side and says, "Whoever really wants to be first will need to become last of all and servant of all." In Jesus’ day, children had no power. Only slaves had less status than women or children, in the culture of the ancient Middle East.

Jesus says to them, "Do you see this child? When you welcome one such little one, it is as if you have welcomed me, and not only me, but the one who sent me," who would be, of course, God, His Father. Jesus identifies with the vulnerable. If you want to find me in this world, He says, don’t focus on your own importance. Find ways to open your arms to the least among you. For I have come to save the first, the last, and everyone in between.

It doesn’t get much simpler or clearer than verse 36 of our gospel lesson. Christ welcoming a child, was a radical sign of welcome for those who weren’t normally welcome. Greatness is not about status or power, or even about adhering to the letter of the law. Greatness in the eyes of Jesus is about welcoming the often ignored members of society.

Can you imagine how the disciples felt? These men, who were supposed to be teachers and role models but for the whole world? For the ones who understood what Jesus was saying, about where true greatness lies, it must have been a humiliating, but important, lesson.

The disciples miss out on some key moments of learning by letting selfishness get in their way. We are more fortunate than they were. We have the benefit of learning from the disciples’ childish behavior through the stories in Mark’s gospel. When we see their mistake, in competing with each other for the wrong kind of reward, we can see the way Jesus challenges us to live as faithful leaders.

Greatness and then happiness. In our Old Testament reading for today, the First Psalm, the psalmist writes, "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or sit in the seat of scoffers, but their delight is in the law of the Lord."

In the Bible, happiness is not equated with being the best, or even with getting your needs met. Happiness is a state of blessedness. What is blessedness? It means being lined up with what you know to be the good, as God has revealed it. The happiest people are those who know who they are, and who know that they belong to God.

Think about those agitated disciples on the road to Capernaum. They were anything but content. Jesus wanted them to be content, in the sense of having priorities that were lined up with the priorities of God. Nothing gives more meaning to life than digging deep and discovering the best that is in us. Most of the disciples—with the exception of Judas-- ended up doing that. The psalmist says that if we are grounded in the ways of God, we will be as strong as trees planted by streams of water, and we will yield fruit in our season.

And yet we love, even worship, personal status. Americans are bombarded with listings that rank the best and the worst, from the top ten party schools and the best small cities for retirees, to the worst states for health care. We look at them to see how our own schools and cities and states rate, in the judgment of experts. John’s and my undergraduate school, Allegheny College, is ranked the 72nd best college for 2016, according to US News and World Report. That isn’t something I’d brag about, personally, but it’s the first thing you notice on our college web site. It’s big deal that that the college rose eight points from last year’s rating. Now it’s tied with Muhlenberg College. I’m sure the President and the Director of Admissions have vowed to move Allegheny into the top fifty for 2017. One of the ways alumni leaders ask graduates to give, is by saying, “Don’t you want your school to be “on top”?

There’s really nothing wrong with measuring greatness, but too many of us judge by superficial standards. We know there is a wide gap between the status we strive for, and the beautiful life that Jesus reveals in the gospels and that God makes possible through Him. We’re here in church because we want to close that gap. True greatness isn’t about rising above others. It’s about how far we are willing to go, to care for others in Jesus’ name.

What do we really want? All of us want to live the best life we can. We all have goals which we think and hope will bring fulfillment, but every now and then we wonder, "Are these the right goals?" What is God’s purpose for us? People who want to sell magazines tell you what’s best. Advertisers who want to control our habits, bombard us with foolishness. Buy your Halloween candy before Labor Day. Be prepared for the trick or treaters and get twenty percent off. We need encouragement to tune out all these silly distractions—and the best way to do that is to talk to God and to learn from the Bible.

When God tries to tell us something, how good are we at listening? Are we prepared to pay attention to people’s needs? Jesus turns our understanding of winning and losing upside down. "To be first, is to be last." We’ve known since before He was born that Jesus would be the human embodiment of God, who “has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.”

Life is a journey, not a contest. Success isn’t measured by a gain of eight points, or even fifty points, in status. It is about being a community together—a community of service.

Let us pray: Help us to set aside our own self-importance, God, and live lives that are to your glory, not to OUR glory. Amen


“An Ordinary Disciple”
September 27, 2015
First Presbyterian Church of Hokendauqua
The Reverend Joyce Smothers

Esther 7: 1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22

When the Pope spoke to both houses of Congress last Thursday, he mentioned four American Christians who used their power and faith to help people: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton. They were all faithful folks from humble backgrounds. The pope’s message was that goodness is rooted in God.

We tend to think of the Old Testament as full of violence, but it has wonderful stories of ordinary people who help others. There’s a book named for Queen Esther. It’s an exciting story you can read in an hour. Many of its historical details are accurate, according to court records.

Esther is a poor Jewish woman who becomes Queen of Persia in the fifth century BCE and saves her people from being destroyed. The other players in her story are her cousin Mordecai, the evil Haman, Queen Vashti, and King Ahasuerus of Persia, better known as Xerxes. The king is the only person in the Bible whose name begins with X. There’s not much else you can say for Xerxes. He’s not the brightest star in the firmament. Esther is the only book in the Bible that doesn’t mention God at all. That’s why Martin Luther didn’t want to see it in the Old Testament. But I can see God there, working behind the scenes.

As our story opens, King Xerxes decides to throw a six-month-long party for the most powerful men in the world. As far as expense goes, the sky is the limit. Queen Vashti, not to be outdone by her husband, throws a separate party and invites all the women.

On the last day of Xerxes’ party, the king decides to show off Vashti. She’s a beauty, and he wants to parade her around the palace. When he commands her to come in a hurry, she turns him down flat. She has no interest in being displayed to drunken kings. Xerxes’s pride is dealt a crushing blow. He divorces her on the spot. Queen Vashti keeps her self-respect, but loses her throne. She disappears, never to be seen again.

The king sends out a royal decree that beautiful young women should sign up immediately for his own Miss Universe contest. The winner will get a crown she can wear until the king decides to have another Miss Universe contest. When Xerxes lays eyes on Esther, the competition is over. Esther becomes Queen. She keeps it a secret that she is a Jew, because Xerxes’ right hand man is a raging anti-Semite named Haman who has been plotting to destroy the Jews. He’d be shocked to discover that Esther is Jewish.

Haman hates one particular Jew—Mordecai, who has raised Esther, his orphan cousin. One day when Haman parades by him, Mordecai refuses to bow down like everybody else. This is the break Haman has been waiting for. He tells the king about Mordecai’s insubordination and says it is an example of how the Jews as a whole are disobedient to the king. The only laws they respect are their own, he claims. Haman offers Xerxes ten thousand in cash for the privilege of exterminating the Jews of Persia.

When Esther finds out about Haman’s plan, she tells Mordecai that she can do nothing to save her people. Her cousin, a man of faith, answers by challenging her to action: “If you don’t do anything, deliverance will come from somewhere else, but maybe you’ve been placed where you are, in this kingdom, for just such a time as this."

The safety and hopes of the Jews rest on Queen Esther. She prays, and asks her people to pray for her before going to the throne room to plead for their lives. She speaks courageously, "I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish." This teenage girl is risking a trip to the gas chamber, taking her life in her hands. Xerxes has a short fuse—and, what’s even more frightening, his wives aren’t allowed in the throne room unless he has summoned them. Showing up there without being called, is punishable by death.

Esther has learned how to handle her husband. She asks him to bring Haman to a dinner party in her rooms at the palace. When Haman gets his invitation, he’s sure he’s now in the good graces of the queen as well as the king. Haman brags to his family and friends about the invitation. They say, "Now is the time to build the gallows on which to hang Mordecai." At dinner when the king asks Esther what he can do for her, she falls at his feet with tears in her eyes, and cries: "Haman plans to kill my people."

Haman starts begging for his life, but it’s too late. Xerxes orders that his advisor be hung on the same gallows that he had built for Mordecai. Unfortunately, the rest of the story is more typical of Old Testament violence. The lives of the Jews still hang in the balance, because the king’s proclamation against them can’t be revoked. This seems a silly law, but there it is! The king authorizes the Jews to defend themselves. Their enemies are defeated and slaughtered. Mordecai becomes second in command in Persia.

I would imagine that God is pleased to be left out of this ending of the story of Esther. Yet people with the eyes of faith see God at work in this brave queen. Esther is the origin of the Jewish holiday of Purim. Her courage is celebrated each March with a festival, and a children’s costume party in many synagogues. Some Christian writers compare Esther to Jesus because they both save their people through personal sacrifice. But there’s a big difference. Esther doesn’t die.

The enemies of goodness may win for a while, but in the end, the victory belongs to God. God is at work—sometimes even in spite of us! Good triumphs over evil when faithful people like Esther and Mordecai show their courage.

As we grow in our faith, we begin to understand that God works in more ways than we know. God is healing the sick, caring for the lonely, helping people love each other. God has purposes beyond our personal needs. The wickedness in the world shocks us, but we should also be amazed by its goodness. The world is filled with poverty, violence and hatred, but there is also peace, hope, and love. God works through ordinary people like us.

Wherever people show compassion, God is there. We can feed the hungry and help heal the sick. We may never find ourselves in positions like those of Esther, Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, Jr. But God calls all faithful people to be holy. Esther lived in an alien culture in Persia. We Christians feel like aliens in the culture we live in. We are where we are today, “for such a time as this.” Doing good is part of being holy. If we open our eyes to see God at work, we’ll discover that God is working in us.

Lord Jesus, strengthen us to be faithful disciples of your way. Prepare us to be strong and courageous in our witness to you. Overcome our fears so we will be able to stand up and be counted. In your name we pray, AMEN


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