Hamilton Park

Unity in Community

May 13, 2012 ~ Jennifer Fair, Seminary Intern

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to You, oh LORD, our Rock and our Redeemer.

            A few months ago, I found myself watching a film titled The Village.  While I hate spoiling movies for people who haven’t seen them, some background on the movie will help make my point.  The title refers to the setting of the story: an isolated village in 19^th century America.  In the beginning of the film, we learn that the village is surrounded by werewolf-like monsters, with whom the villagers have an uneasy agreement: we won’t encroach on your territory if you don’t encroach on ours.  This makes the village a very insular community; no one comes and no one leaves.  The village is, therefore, a place with a strong social cohesion; people feel connected to each other, and everyone has a “place” in the social order.  It is only as more people become ill that a young man suggests leaving the village in order to seek medical treatments for the sick. Read the rest of this entry »

Third Sunday of Easter

April 22, 2012 ~ Luke 24:36b-48

Rev. John F. Esbenshade

Hamilton Park United Church of Christ

You Are Witnesses – Now Get The Heck Out Of Here

When we read the Gospel accounts, we get a picture of Jesus as someone who was alive – he spent his time on this earth – walking and talking; preaching and teaching; eating with disciples and sinners; sleeping in boats, praying, spending time alone, casting out demons and performing miracles.

Jesus had been executed on a cross and that event was witnessed and recorded.  People saw it and were dramatically impacted by his death.  His body was removed from the site of the execution, wrapped in cloths and placed into a tomb.

A few days after the execution, the tomb is found empty and we hear reports that Jesus is risen. And then we get accounts of the risen Christ appearing to his followers.  We hear about him walking through walls or simply materializing in the midst of his disciples.  And we hear about him eating – breaking bread and eating fish with the disciples. Read the rest of this entry »

A sermon preached before the congregation at Hamilton Park UCC, Lancaster, PA on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012 by Rev. Catherine M. Shiley

“Resurrection Faith” ~ John 20:1-18 

Please join me in prayer ….. “God of Easter Sunday, transform us.  Transform us from a people of inner torment to a people of inner joy.  Let that joy explode in new life for us.  Amen.”

How was it for you this Lent?  I ask that question in full awareness that the reason we meet this morning is not to dwell on the rigors of the lenten season.  We come together on this Easter Sunday morning – the day that is the bedrock of our Christian faith – to both declare and celebrate our “Resurrection Faith.”  To shout our “Alleluias” and to greet one another with our claims of “He is risen.”  To contemplate the empty cross.  To gather at the communion table and to sing our hymns of praise. 

All of that is appropriate and quite important if we are to carry on in good spirit as the Body of Christ in our world ….. but before we move to celebrate our resurrection faith, I want us to take a look back to the Lent through which we’ve just traveled.  What was it like for you?  Did you come through it unscathed?  Whether you gave up something, or took on something, or simply opened yourselves to the “others” who share our human condition, how was it for you?  Read the rest of this entry »

Maundy Thursday ~ April 5, 2012

HamiltonParkUnitedChurchofChrist

John 13:1-17, 31b-35 ~ Rev. John F. Esbenshade

A Revolution of Service

It is interesting to me that we have a composite picture of Jesus, which happens when we combine all of the Gospels.  But it is equally interesting to see what each Gospel includes and excludes.  Mark, for example, has no birth narrative and the shorter version ends with the two Marys at the empty tomb receiving a message from a young man who tells them that Jesus has been raised and they are to go and tell the disciples and Peter.

In a like fashion, John has no birth narrative either and he has no last supper as we know it, where the elements of the Eucharist are instituted. John is in sharp contrast to the image of DaVinci’s fresco of the Last Supper.  John plays down the Last Supper and that mental picture we may recall of the disciples and Jesus gathered in the Upper Room for a meal.  In the account from the other Gospels, Jesus identifies the bread and the cup with his body and blood and his impending crucifixion. Read the rest of this entry »

A sermon preached before the congregation at Hamilton Park UCC, Lancaster, PA on March 25, 2012 by Rev. Catherine M. Shiley

“No Matter What” ~ Psalm 51

Please join me in prayer … For risks not taken, for fears that paralyze us, for living shallow when the times are deep, God forgive us.   Amen.

Perhaps more than at any other time in the Christian year, Lent is a call to look inward.  These holy days call us to take a journey to our own, hidden interiors where we encounter and confront everything that causes separation between ourselves and God.

Ash Wednesday begins the season, as it calls us to a personal and private journey in the sense that we look deep within ourselves – not at others.  We compare ourselves to Jesus Christ, not to our friends – or our neighbors – nor to the thieves and the scoundrels of our world.

This season of Lent is about a singular, focused, question: “How is it with you and God?”  If there’s only one thought you take away from our time together today, please make it this question: “How is it between you and me, God?” Read the rest of this entry »

March 18, 2012 ~ John 3: 14-21

Hamilton Park United Church of Christ

Rev. John F. Esbenshade 

STEPPING FROM THE DARKNESS

Last week we went through the semi-annual exercise of messing with the clocks.  The spring ritual is a call to turn the clock ahead one hour.  I believe this is some hoax foisted upon the general public under the guise of giving the farmer more hours of day light and making travel to and from school safer for children.  Now let’s be real, there just aren’t that many farmers any more to cause the whole nation to turn clocks forward or back.  And the Amish among us don’t bother with time changes because it messes up their milking herds.  And lets be honest, most school buses that I see are less than half empty, kids are driven to school.  The end result is that we have more hours of daylight at the end of the day than at the beginning. Read the rest of this entry »

Dare to be ….Stupid?

A sermon preached on May 11, 2012 by seminarian Jennifer Fair

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Let us pray.  May the words of my mother and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You, oh Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen

It’s no secret that I am a fan of Weird Al Yankovic; I grew up listening to his lyrics that lampoon famous songs while at the same time poking fun at life in general.  One of my favorite early songs of his is a song called “Dare to be Stupid”; it’s a song that encourages his listeners to do things that are considered dim-witted by society.  To give you a taste of the song, here are some of the lyrics: Read the rest of this entry »

A sermon preached before the congregation at Hamilton Park UCC, Lancaster, PA on March 4, 2012 by Rev. Catherine M. Shiley

“Losing Lives” ~Mark 8:31-38

Please join me in prayer … May we develop our discipleship through study and prayer, through worship and witness.  May we live the love of God.  Amen.

“Those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

What a confusing and disappointing announcement that must have been for those disciples traveling with Jesus that day.  Mark’s Gospel portrays the disciples, generally, as being slow to understand –  BUT…..they’ve just had a rare moment of clarity, when asked to claim him for all that he is.  Do you remember which text comes before this one?  It’s the one where Jesus and these same disciples are walking along and Jesus asks them the question, “Who do people say that I am?”  After hearing that some people think he is John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets, Jesus asks, “But who do you say that I am?”  Peter responds, “You are the Messiah.”

Once Peter had uttered these words, there was no taking them back.  It was, in a sense, the disciples’ first real recognition of what their call was all about.   Think back to what you know of the Jewish people and their understanding of who the Messiah would be.  There was kingship and salvation and deliverance from their enemies all rolled up into their understanding of Messiah.  There were visions of grandeur, both for the Messiah and  for his close associates.  The disciples must have been starting to get a little giddy from thinking about their own role in the fulfillment of such promises.

Jesus doesn’t let them wander too far or too long on this path, though.  Immediately after their recognition of him we come to today’s text:  Remember how it begins?…….“Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering,…..and be rejected…..and be killed…..He said all this quite openly.”  No wonder Peter felt it necessary to take him aside and rebuke him!  Not only were their hopes and expectations for him and for what he would accomplish being squashed, but the lives they had envisioned for themselves, even in that brief period of time …. from their recognition to his teaching, were being lost to the reality of his call, his stronger claim on their lives.  They knew they were called to follow him but up until now they were not really sure what that meant.  They were just beginning to see the scope of challenge and change involved in this call.

“Those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel will save it.” 

Here is where the  “good” news just keeps getting “better” for the disciples and for us, also!  What exactly is God asking of us here?  Jesus tries to get the disciples prepared by telling them that they will be expected to deny themselves and bear crosses, dreaded words in this culture of theirs where bearing crosses is a promise of tortuous suffering and death.  It’s a little different than the “bearing crosses” of my childhood, when every time I complained about something my mother told me that “we all have our crosses to bear”.  Is God really asking us, in requiring us to bear crosses and to deny ourselves, to give up everything, even life as we know it? 

Denying ourselves is language we’re familiar with during this season of Lent, when many of us “give up for Lent” something that we ordinarily enjoy on a regular basis.  We both deny ourselves the pleasure and deny that part of ourselves that is identified with the item or practice that gets forfeited.  But when giving up our whole life is the way we are asked to deny ourselves, what is our response?  What is God really asking?

Could it be that what God is asking really is that we give up all the attachments to people and things that keep God from being first in our lives?  The clearest example I can think of in scripture is perhaps the text I struggle with the most……. where God asked Abraham to make the ultimate sacrifice by denying himself the life of his son Isaac.  Not only was Abraham asked to make the decision to symbolically lose his own life by sacrificing Isaac (and Abraham probably would have considered himself as good as dead had God let him go through with this sacrifice), he was asked to make this decision for his son as well.  Because Abraham obediently took the steps necessary to give up his ultimate human connection, was following the command to literally lose the life that was dearest to him in order to put God first, God did an amazing thing in Abraham’s life.  God entered into covenant with Abraham and gave him a far richer life as the ancestor of a multitude of nations.

But what does it mean to us, today, to lose our lives for the sake of Jesus Christ and for the sake of the gospel? 

            Consider the story of the Congregational Church of Algonquin, Illinois.  In 1980, this congregation had 200 members – half of whom were not attending worship.  Today the congregation has 1,300 members, most of whom are active participants in weekly worship!  The amazing thing is that this congregation has grown and flourished by losing its former life.  Where it used to be closed in and self-focused, its members made a conscious decision to reach out through a program called HELPING HANDS, an offshoot of theirMissionand Social Action Committee.  Instead of looking only at their own needs and shortcomings, they looked outside their smaller circle to find abundant need in both local and wider mission.  People were naturally drawn to them and the gospel is spreading rapidly because of their “lost” lives!  So, intentional involvement in mission is one way of taking seriously Jesus’s direction to lose our lives for his sake and for the sake of the gospel.

What else does it mean today, to lose our lives for the sake of Jesus Christ and for the sake of the gospel?

            A newspaper story tells about the process families go through in adopting children.  The story tells of the large number of couples wanting to adopt, the much smaller number of “desirable” children, the extremely long waiting lists, the high legal fees, the red tape, the resulting increase of interest in “surrogate parents”, and so on.

            BUT…..the story also told of the Smeltzer family.  Sue and John Smeltzer have adopted four children so far, and they hope to adopt at least one more child in the near future.  For the Smeltzers there have been no delays and no waiting lists.  The reason is that all of the children they have adopted are disabled.  One son is severely retarded and the other three, two daughters and another son, had major birth defects.  All four children are what the adoption agencies call “hard to place.”  In a world where virtually every prospective parent dreams of a bright, beautiful, and perfect child, Sue and John Smeltzer have chosen to give their parental love to children almost no one else wanted.  Sue Smeltzer makes the claim, “These children are our greatest joy.  Caring for them is what God put us on this earth for.”  There are those who would say the Smeltzers have gone overboard, that they must be crazy to willingly take on such a heavy burden,……and there are those who would say that they have lost their lives for the sake of Jesus Christ and the gospel……and that by doing so they have saved their lives.

One last example of how people today are losing (and thus saving) their lives:

            Patricia Hersch is a journalist who has written an important book.  A Tribe Apart is appropriately subtitled “A Journey Into the Heart of American Adolescence”, because that’s exactly what this author did.  It took Ms. Hersch six years to write this book, which is so much more than a detailed study of American adolescent life in the 1990′s. 

The backdrop of the story isReston,VA, a middle class suburban community much like so many others across the country, and the place the author and her own family call home.  Intrigued by the young people she saw coming and going as she also pursued her daily routine, and by those who were friends of her own 3 teenage sons, Ms. Hersch wanted to know more.  There was so much bad news about teenagers…….she wanted to know where it came from and whether or not it was true.  She also wanted to know what caused the bad news and how it could be turned into good news.  The only way to do the job she had created for herself was to really get to know these teenagers.

The only way to really get to know anybody is to spend lots and lots of time with them ….. quantity time AND quality time, so the author enlisted the cooperation of the school officials and divided her time between the local middle school and high school.  Although she spent time with all the kids who would associate with a middle aged woman who was writing a book about what it was like to be a teenager, there were 8 students in particular that she followed completely for the 3 years she spent in the schools.  Another 3 years were devoted to writing and doing follow up interviewing with the 8…….regular calls and meetings to ask “Did I get this right?” and “Are things different now than they were last year?” and “How are you handling the harder things right now?” 

She describes chaperoning school and community dances, working the concession stands at sporting events, spending lots of time at the mall, eating more pizza, subs, and hamburgers than she would have thought possible, and late night phone conversations that stretched her bedtime well past reasonable hours!  Her findings are pretty sobering, but that’s another story for another time.  The point today is that this woman “lost” 6 years of her life on this project and she doesn’t seem to have any regrets about having done so.  There are those who might call her foolish…… just think of the life she could have been enjoying during those 6 years of hard work.  As a middle class, suburban, professional she could have spent her time pursuing interests that our society values more than it values what she did.  And this is exactly why she felt compelled to do what she did……because the bulk of our society does not understand the importance of her contribution.  Affirmation that she “lost” this part of her life for the sake of Jesus Christ and the gospel comes from the youth themselves….. She writes:  ”Talking to you has helped me tremendously,” Jonathan told me one day, after a long conversation for my book.  “Nobody has a chance to really talk to anybody about what they are thinking,” he continued.  “You need to break down walls.  People need to feel all right about feeling good or feeling bad.” (End of quote) 

In the final analysis, there’s plenty of evidence that people are losing their lives all over the place for the sake of Jesus Christ and the gospel.  This doesn’t mean that it’s easy, but it does show that it’s possible.   Whatever God is calling you to do, it is guaranteed that there is a challenge and a change, a losing of your life as you now know it, or it is not a call.  Following is not easy –Jesus warns the disciples, and us, accordingly.  But he still asks us to do it.

Amen.

A sermon preached before the congregation at Hamilton Park UCC, Lancaster, PA on February 26, 2012 by Rev. Catherine M. Shiley

“God of Covenant” ~ Luke 4:1-13/Mark 1:9-15

What tempts us the most?  What is the one thing in this vast world of ours that we find the most irresistible?  Think about it.  But before I get into that question, let me ask another question … a question of definition.  What is temptation?  How do we define it?   We often think of temptation as being drawn to do something that we would not characteristically do, don’t we?  But underneath the temptation to do something, lies the temptation to be something, or someone, other than what we are called to be.

Using this definition of temptation, let’s address the first question ….. what tempts us the most?  In the story of our primal parents, the question persists: why did they disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit?  Wasn’t it because of the empty promise of the tempter … the promise that they would be like God?  I say that the promise was “empty” because, in a sense, Adam and Eve were already like God.  They had been created in the image of God.  They enjoyed god-like gifts. 

Even though they were creatures, they could already exercise creative power over the rest of creation; they did this by naming things.  When you name something you have some control over it.  You define it by naming it.  Our original parents could also act with a freedom that was not available to the other creatures.  It was their choice to take the forbidden fruit.  So they were being tempted by something they already were but thought they would like more of … they were tempted with the idea of being like God.  In a sense, you could say they were tempted to corrupt the power they already had.

The same temptation came to Jesus after his baptism ….. during his preparation for ministry in the wilderness.  He was already the Son of God; Remember? ….. the voice from the cloud had designated him as Son of God at his baptism.  He didn’t need the devil to raise the issue, “If you are the Son of God.”

But what did it mean to be the Son of the God who sent him on his mission into the world?  Wouldn’t that depend on what Jesus’ understanding of God was?  Did Jesus understand God as merely “all powerful?”  Certainly the God who created the heavens and the earth was all-powerful, and that power was available to Jesus … he knew that.  But what did Jesus know about how God used God’s almighty power?  And what did this knowledge say about how he ought to reflect God?  Should he satisfy his hunger by turning stone into bread?  Should he gather followers for his mission in the world by performing feats of religious display?  Should he take a short-cut to bringing the world back to the true God by worshiping the one perceived to be the real ruler of the world? 

Obviously, doing any of these things would be abusing the power that the Son of God had.  And you know that once you start abusing power, it’s hard to stop.  You become possessed by that power rather than possessing it.  That’s what makes the abuse of power so demonic, so evil.  Its evilness is not just in how it affects the person who is the object of abuse, but also how it takes captive the abuser and turns good, decent people into evil, demonic people.

We 21^st century people understand the temptation to abuse power very well.  None of us are completely powerless.  Even the seemingly powerless infant can exert control over parents.  Even the seemingly powerless senior can find ways to exert control over his or her children.  All of life becomes a struggle of competing power-relationships – in the family, in the workplace, in politics.  We all know people who become possessed by the power they possess.  Just look to the rash of local news stories about teachers using their positions to have “inappropriate” relationships with some of their students.  A sacred trust turns into an abuse of power and lives are forever changed.

The implication of the story of Jesus’ temptation is that to abuse power by treating it as a god is to be possessed by it.  This is signified by the temptation to possess all the kingdoms of the world by worshiping the devil.  The stories of Faust and Don Juan are built on the theme of acquiring all power, whether it be the power of knowledge or the power of passion, by selling one’s soul to the devil and finally being in the devil’s possession. 

Worship is indeed the issue, and in Luke’s account of this event, and I’m drawing more from Luke’s Gospel this morning because he offers more details, Jesus finally expels Satan by citing the text from Deuteronomy 6:13: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”  Two different Greek words are used in this text.  One, translated as “worship,” means specifically to fall down on one’s knees or even on one’s face.  The other, translated as “serve,” suggests serving God through cultic rituals … cultic in the positive sense of the word, meaning the liturgy of worship.  When you’re down on your knees before the true God or taking part in liturgical rituals intended to honor the true God, it’s hard to put other gods first.  When you’re acknowledging the Creator and giving God the honor due only to God, it’s hard to practice idolatry.

That’s why worship is the most fundamental condition for serving the true God.  When Moses led the people ofIsraelout ofEgypt, the first thing they had to learn to do was to worship the God who had liberated them from bondage.  Corporate worship is as important as individual worship because we can just as easily be taken possession of corporately.  I suppose the most obvious example in modern history is Hitler’sGermany, although there are less obvious examples closer to home (and if they’re less obvious, they’re more insidious).  We’re tempted to worship the power of the state that supposedly gives us security (often at the expense of freedom), and we end up not only being incapable of acting morally but even of distinguishing for ourselves between good and evil.  From this idolatry flows the inability to speak and do the truth in other areas of life also.

Yet even in Hitler’sGermanycertain prophetic figures were able to break through the moral blindness of society as a whole.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer is only one who comes to mind.  The important question is … how did they manage to break through?  And the follow up question is: How can we be liberated from the false gods we have worshiped and which have taken possession of us?

We need a victory over temptation – and a pattern of victory that can be applied to us.  This is where Jesus’ victory over Satan is so important to us.  It shows Jesus choosing one course of action rather than another.  The temptation stories … and I’m drawing from Luke’s account here, simply because it gives us more details … these stories of Jesus’ temptation show the choice of one approach to the use of power over another, which would be an abuse of power.  Jesus refuses to exercise power demonically.

Jesus has chosen one pattern of life over another.  He has chosen the path of obedience to the God of creation.  That is the path he invited his disciples to choose.  That is the pattern of life those baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection are called to embrace.

Let me conclude by saying three things about this.  First, choice ….. choice makes the life of suffering not just something that is passively submitted to.  In the Gospel of John Jesus is the chief actor in his passion; he’s the one who brings it about.  It is his final assault on the powers of sin, death, and the devil.  The whole pattern of life Jesus exemplified made possible his final act of obedience “unto death on the cross.”

Second, the devil is not done with Jesus yet.  The tempter gets at Christ by getting at his baptized people.  When we are tempted, it is Christ who is being tempted because we are baptized into Christ.  When we withstand temptation, it is again Christ who is victorious over temptation.

Third, we can withstand temptation because, as Martin Luther put it, “one little word” spoken by us can subdue the tempter, because that “little word” is nothing less than the all-powerful Word of God against which the tempter has no defense.  In every instance, Jesus repelled temptation by saying “it is written.” 

If we are going to withstand temptation, if we are going to make better choices than our original ancestors … choices about making peace and embracing all people as God’s people, about restoring the dignity of all humanity, choices about preserving our environment for the next generations, then we had better know the scriptures at least as well as the devil does.  That means knowing not just the letter of the text, but also the God of scripture, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thanks in part to Frank C. Senn, as printed in “Homily Service,” February 2007

A sermon preached before the congregation at Hamilton Park UCC, Lancaster, PA on Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2012 by Rev. Catherine M. Shiley

“A God-Chosen Fast” ~ Isaiah 58:1-12

In her book of sermons, Gospel Medicine, the Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor asks an important but, in my opinion, downright scary, question.  That question is this …..  Do you remember the first time you felt that God had let you down?  I’d venture a guess that almost everyone has their own story to tell about this most disappointing of all human experiences, this end to being comfortably naive about who God is and how God acts in our world.  Were you ten, or fifteen, or maybe you had gotten all the way to twenty years old before it happened?  Maybe you knelt beside your bed, folded your hands just as you had been taught, and prayed with all your heart. You held nothing back, made promises you couldn’t possibly expect to keep, if only God would grant you this one, important, all-consuming need.

Perhaps you asked God for a sign of some kind, for a helping hand in a matter that was overwhelming to you, maybe your prayer was for a sure-fire way out of your troubles or perhaps you begged for a cure for yourself or another ….. and you waited, confidently, for God’s answer to your prayer.  But the expected answer never came.  God did not directly address your need ….. at least not in any way that you recognized as an answer to your prayer.  What did you do?  Did you learn to pray another way?  Or did you give up prayer altogether, because God turned out to be more distant (or more stubborn) than you thought God was supposed to be?  Perhaps you felt the distance or the stubbornness ….. or both ….. made prayer an unrealistic activity – a “pie in the sky” enterprise ….. and you are clearly too sophisticated for such things.

“Why do we fast, but you do not see?” God’s people ask in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah.  “Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”  It’s not just an individual complaint; it’s a human complaint that affects our lives in community as well as our lives at home.  “Why do we worship, but you do not reveal yourself to us?  Why do we pray, Sunday after Sunday, for peace, for health, for safety, but you do not give us these things?  Why is the world so far from our desires for it, and why don’t you speak – loudly and clearly – so the whole world can hear you?”

God’s silence is frustrating ….. especially so for those of us who don’t know how to keep silent.  Maybe we think we can solve the problem by making more noise ourselves.  But it’s only when we really stop and listen ….. that the silence can teach us anything.  And what can the silence possibly have to teach us?  Maybe we are meant to learn ….. in the silence ….. that our disillusionment is not such a bad thing.  Take the word apart and you can begin to hear what it really means.  Dis – illusion – ment.  The loss of illusion.  The end of make-believe.  Is that a bad thing?  Or a good thing?  To learn that God’s presence is not something we can demand ….. that it’s not God’s job to reward our devotion ….. that God may have an agenda that is, in fact, quite different from our own.  Is this a bad thing or a good thing to know?

“Announce to my people their rebellion,” God says to the prophet Isaiah, “to the house of Jacob their sins.  Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God.”  That was God’s answer to the chosen people when they demanded to know where God had gone ….. it’s an answer that sort of makes you prefer the silence to the answer!

It is not I who have forsaken you,” God says to the people, but you who have forsaken me.  If you cannot hear me, it is because you have strayed far from my voice.  It is not I who am ignoring you, but you who are ignoring me.”

The big disillusionment for the chosen people was that God was not where they thought God was supposed to be.  They thought God was supposed to be with them primarily when they prayed and fasted and studied the scriptures.  They believed that nothing on earth pleased God more than to find them on their knees, dressed in sackcloth and covered with ashes.  But they were wrong about this.  And when we believe this ….. we’re likely to learn that we are wrong, too.

God ….. they learned ….. was active elsewhere.  Rather than hanging around at their altars and shrines with them, God was out in the streets ….. warming his hands over a can of burning trash with a bunch of homeless folk, delivering sacks of groceries down at Crispus Attucks, taking kids from Milagro House back-to-school shopping, tutoring students over at the neighborhood junior high or elementary school, handing out blankets to those who slept shivering in the bushes.  God was not parked in their sanctuaries, just waiting around for one of them to stop by to talk.

God was in the emergency room of the city hospital ….. in the lobby at the police station ….. in the kitchen at the rescue mission ….. not only to comfort those who were stuck there, but also to stir them up – reminding them of their birthright, their inherent nobility; reminding them that they were the long-lost sons and daughters of heavenly royalty, who were meant for more excellent lives.  Reminding them that they are our kin.

“Is not this the fast that I choose,” God said to God’s people, “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke?”  The big disillusionment for the chosen people was that they could not serve God without serving their neighbors.  Their relationship to God was not separable from their relationship to other people, especially the least of them.  They had hoped they could keep their faith a private matter between them and God, but that turned out to be an illusion.  They experienced dis – illusion – ment (loss of illusion) in a big, attention-grabbing way.

“It is a great mistake to suppose that God is chiefly interested in religion,” wrote an archbishop of the last century, and Isaiah seems to agree.  God is not particularly interested in religion, but God is interested in human beings ….. particularly in the destruction of our illusions ….. our illusions that we can hold ourselves apart from one another, our misconceptions that we’re not related to one another, that some people are simply destined to be winners and others to be losers and that there is nothing to be done about it, except perhaps to build some strong walls and install some security systems and relocate some neighborhoods in order to keep the one from spilling over into the other.

Isaiah reports that God’s inquiry into what kind of fast is acceptable, what kind of fast is in fact chosen by God, includes an indictment against hiding from our own kin.  Hiding ourselves from our kin is not an issue of living in the city vs. living in the suburbs vs. living in the country.  It’s not a “location” issue at all, but a human issue, and living with that fact is like living with a sore that won’t heal.  Everywhere you turn, it hurts.  In order to hide from your brothers and sisters, you have to look away a lot.  You have to learn when to look and when not to look.  You have to plan your routes through town very carefully.  Tinting your windows helps, or wearing dark glasses.  Better yet, you can stay home altogether, or live somewhere with a guard at the gate.  We can do that.  That’s one of our choices, but if we do, then we should not be surprised when we call on God and get no answer, or leave a message that is never returned, because we cannot hide ourselves from our kin without hiding ourselves from God.  And this is the hard thing for many of us to realize ….. We can not defend ourselves against each other without defending ourselves against God.

God has shown us another way, a way as old as Isaiah and as up-to-date as this evening’s news.  We can surrender our illusions of separateness, our illusions of safety and superiority.  We can leave our various sanctuaries and seek God where God may be found, gathering in the streets – or in the homeless shelters, or the schools, or the police station – to figure out how to untie the knots of injustice and how to disassemble the yokes of oppression.  We can pool our resources so that the hungry have bread and the homeless have houses and the naked have something to cover their shame.

Above all else ….. we can learn to claim our own kin, asking them what their names are, telling them our own names, and refusing to hide from them anymore.  “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,” says the Lord, “and your healing shall spring up quickly.  Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.”

If God is silent, it may be because we are not yet speaking God’s language, but there is still time.  God has taught us how to break the silence and has even given us the words.  “Here I am.”  They are the words we long to hear, but they are also the words God longs for us to speak – to stand before our kin and say, “Here I am.”

Those of us who decide to try it should listen real hard when we’re through, because there’s likely to be an echo in the air – not silence anymore, but the very voice of God, saying, “Yes.  Welcome home.  Here I am.  Here I am.”  Amen.

Thanks for the inspiration to Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine