Hamilton Park

A sermon preached before the congregation at Hamilton Park UCC, Lancaster, PA on February 19, 2012 by Rev. Catherine M. Shiley

“Down Here” ~ Mark 9:2-9 

Renowned theologian Joan Chittister makes the following claim ….. There is no doubt about it, in a society of gross imbalances somebody has to ask, “What is the role of religion? Should it be a private refuge … or a public presence … and how will we ever know?”

The Vietnamese tell a folk tale that I think goes right to the point of the question. The Vietnamese say that there is only one difference between heaven and hell. In hell, they have chopsticks three feet long and so the people can’t eat. In heaven, they have chopsticks three feet long but the people feed each another.  That’s the only difference between heaven and hell.

The purpose of holiness …the point of our religion … is not to protect us from our world. The purpose of holiness is to change the way we live in the world, not for our own sake but for the sake of others. Jesus demands the same thing. For some reason or other, we often miss that point. We are more inclined to want a religion that comforts us than challenges us. Why? Where did we ever get that idea? Maybe it’s because we have misunderstood, or at least forgotten, the meaning of Sabbath, the importance of mountain symbolism in religious literature and the effect of the very placement of gospel text.

Let’s look at each for a minute. Sabbath, the rabbis teach us, doesn’t exist because God needed rest. God doesn’t need rest. The rabbis tell us that the Sabbath exists because God demanded rest. God wanted Sabbath to equalize the rich and the poor, so that the poor could be free for at least one day and the rich could no longer oppress them. God wanted Sabbath to give us time to evaluate our work as God evaluated God’s work, to see if our work was equally good.

Finally, God gave us Sabbath to give us time to reflect on the meaning of life. Sabbath is one-seventh of every week. It is one-seventh of every life. Sabbath is fifty-two days a year, over 3,500 days in a lifetime of seventy years, or over ten years of the average life. Sabbath is time for thinking, it is time designed to change us. Sabbath is important, then, to all of us in our worlds. Week after week after week, we have to ask the questions, “What changes are demanded of us now?” That answer, I think, depends on how we see the role of religion.

The scripture story about the Transfiguration of Christ gives us an idea, perhaps, of the answer. In the story of the Transfiguration, remember, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain. Mountains, you may know, in Greek, Hebrew, Roman and Asian religious literature, were always places where the human could touch the divine. Sure enough, at the top of that mountain with Jesus, a wonderful thing happened. The apostles began to see Jesus a new way. The apostles got a brand-new insight into who this Jesus really was — dazzling, consuming, literally enlightening. They began to see Jesus differently.

What they see at the top of that mountain is, at the very least, unexpected and certainly disturbing. You see, at the top of that mountain before those apostles, Jesus does not appear with Aaron the priest, who was the interpreter of the law. Jesus doesn’t appear there with David the King, the defender of the state. Jesus does not appear with symbols of royalty or ritualism. Jesus appears to those apostles with Moses, Elijah, the prophets. Moses, who led the people out of oppression; Elijah, whom King Ahab had called, “that trouble of Israel,” because he condemned the people’s compromise between true and false gods as the underlying cause of their problems.

In a gospel apparently about the mystical dimension of religion, there is an undercurrent of turmoil, a struggle between piety and real Christianity, a struggle between religion for real and religion for show. The gospel shows us that Peter, in your name and mine, opted for piety. “Let’s settle down here, Jesus, and build three booths.”

Peter, in other words, was opting for a religion of temples, institutions and shrines. Peter was opting for a religion that transcends the world, but the scripture reads that before he could even finish speaking, God interrupted and said, “Listen.”

Then something happens that we too often forget. The gospel is completed by a portion that is usually unread, too little remembered, too much unfulfilled. At the very moment, when it would seem that Jesus is emphasizing the mystical and transcendent dimension of religion, Jesus himself takes the apostles away from visions, away from privatized religion, to meet the ones who needed them most – down in the town.

Jesus takes them to the man whose son was possessed by a demon. Jesus himself leads them down to the bottom of that mountain to the hurting people, unbelieving officials, the ineffective institutions and the demons below.

Real religion is not about building temples and keeping shrines. Real religion is about healing hurts, speaking for and being with the poor, the helpless, the voiceless and the forgotten who are at the silent bottom of every pinnacle, every hierarchy and every system in both state and church, church and state.

Real religion, the scripture insists, is not about transcending life; real religion is about transforming life. The gospel of the transfiguration calls us to Sabbath; calls us to become enlightened; calls us to change our attitudes about the role of religion; calls us to understand the nature of religion itself; because the so-called rational has failed.

For instance, they say that militarism is rational. How else can we defend ourselves? Never before in history have we spent so much money on defense and never before in history, have we been so vulnerable because of it. The people below, the people at the bottom of our mountains, wait to be healed of the diseases that spring from our spiritual darkness. The poor wait for jobs; the homeless wait for shelter; children are waiting for food; young people are waiting for education and job training; the elderly are waiting for care that we say that we can’t afford in the richest nation in the world.

Every year we go on in peace time spending more money on instruments of destruction than on the development of peoples. We create the end of the world and store it in the corn fields of Kansas while the working poor, the people who suffer under part-time pay for part-time work or double-time work for part-time pay, get poorer and poorer in this country and around the globe.

Religion does not call us to the rational. Religion calls us to the Beatitudes, to the works of mercy, to the casting out of demons, to the doing of miracles for those in need, to the act of irrational love and the burning justice of God. That is what the Transfiguration is about, that is what religion is really about … changing ourselves so we can change the world.

Once upon a time a group of disciples asked an elder, “Does your God work miracles?”

The elder said, “Well, it all depends on what you mean by a miracle. Some people say it’s a miracle that God does the will of the people. We say, it’s a miracle when people do the will of God.”

We end where we started ….. What is the role of religion in society ….. private refuge or public presence? Transfiguration means that the role of religion demands enlightenment. The role of religion is to bring us to an awareness of life. The role of religion is to transform the world, to come to see the world as God sees the world and to bring it as close to the vision of God as we possibly can. Why? Scripture is very clear. What God changes, God changes through us.  Amen.

Thanks for the inspiration to Sr. Joan Chittister, 30 good minutes

A sermon preached before the congregation at Hamilton Park UCC, Lancaster, PA on February 12, 2012 by Rev. Catherine M. Shiley 

“The Body of Christ” ~ 2 Kings 5:1-14

Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Poor Naaman!  Don’t you just have to feel sorry for this guy at first glance?  Everybody knew how important he was and what great things he had done.  Even God had used him to “give victory toAram.”  Think about that…..God had used this foreigner to put the Israelite people, “God’s chosen people,” in their place when they had found disfavor with God.  Here was a man who was used to proving himself in the face of great challenges, challenges that would have forced someone less capable  to run for cover. Read the rest of this entry »

“Eyes on the Prize” ~ February 5, 2012

 by Jennifer Fair, Seminary Intern

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

            Okay, I admit it; I love football!  Or, more correctly, I love the experience of football.  Even through it’s hard for me to understand the finer points of the game, I still love watching it: the tension of seeing the team that has been chosen to represent some group I’m a part of take the field to fight with another team is akin to a small-scale battle or an ancient gladiator match.  I love the ritual, the liturgy, that is enacted when I cheer on a team that represents something I love.  This excitement driven to a climax today, Super Bowl Sunday, the game to determine the best football team in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

A sermon preached before the congregation at Hamilton Park UCC, Lancaster, PA on January 29, 2012 by Rev. Catherine M. Shiley 

“A New Authority” ~ Mark 1:21-28 

Will you join me in prayer?  Good and holy God, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

Are you comfortable or are you uncomfortable with talk about people being possessed by demons?  Some people seem to find this kind of talk completely natural, but – for me – it’s a pretty unsavory conversation topic.

I often come in contact, both in scripture and in popular literature …… and I’m talking both Christian and secular literature …… with accounts of people being possessed by demons or evil spirits …… or by accounts of demonic forces at work in our world.  The Harry Potter series is a more current example, while the Chronicles of Narnia remain with us from the mid twentieth century.  Both series make for fascinating reading and I enjoy both … but their language and metaphors remain part of a fantasy world for me, not something I’m likely to repeat as part of an everyday conversation.  When I’m engaged in conversation with people who naturally use this kind of language, I tend to get uncomfortable and try to steer the conversation to lighter topics. Read the rest of this entry »

Second Sunday After Epiphany, January 15, 2012

HamiltonParkUnitedChurchofChrist

John 1:43-51; I Samuel 3:1-20

Called and Recalled ~ Rev. John F. Esbenshade

On the UCC Desk Calendar and Plan Book – the theme for this Second Sunday after Epiphany is called and recalled.  Now when I hear the word recall, I think of notices that manufacturers send to owners of their product, particularly automobiles.  You receive a recall notice in the mail, then contact the dealer to schedule an appointment, have the item serviced and in effect correct the error. Read the rest of this entry »

A sermon preached before the congregation at Hamilton Park UCC, Lancaster, PA on December 4, 2011 by Rev. Catherine M. Shiley

“Prepare the Way” ~ Mark 1:1-11

Please join me in prayer: “Holy God, help us to give voice to the wonderful news … you, yourself are coming to dwell among us!  Quicken our imaginations to find new and creative ways to proclaim Christ’s coming.  Amen.”

There’s a short poem in our “Seasons of the Spirit” curriculum that has, I believe, profound things to say about this morning’s reading from Mark’s gospel.  Listen, if you will, to this piece about Jesus’s pending baptism.  It’s called “The Crossover Point. Read the rest of this entry »

First Sunday of Advent

November 27, 2011

HamiltonParkUnitedChurchofChrist

Mark 13:24-37

COMATOSE OR CONSCIOUS? 

Let me tell you.  I’m sure I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again.  I don’t like preaching in Advent.  Apocalyptic literature is simply not my forte’.  But that’s what gets dished up in this season – and I remember the words of my mother as we sat at the table.  She’d make a new recipe, put in on the table and when we turned up our noses, she’d say, “Eat it – it’s good for you.”  And I can hardly avoid or ignore those passages of Scripture that are tough to chew and equally hard to swallow.  As a preacher I must eat and digest the text, even if I don’t like it. Read the rest of this entry »

Sermon on Matthew 25:31-46

Jennifer Fair, Seminary Intern, Nov. 20, 2011

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Let us pray. 

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

            In many ways, one of the last things I want to do this morning is preach an “end times” sermon to you.  Recent “end times” talk has caused many liberal and progressive Christians some discomfort, and not without reason.  When cult leaders attract media attention by “predicting” the end of time, and are, of course, wrong, the embarrassment to our religion causes the understandable reaction to avoid the topic as much as possible.  However, this reaction, though comprehensible, only perpetuates the problem it hopes to shun; by evading “end times” discourse, liberal and progressive Christians are left unarmed when attacks concerning the Christian teachings about the “end of time” come from both outside the Church and from deceivers within the Church.  Read the rest of this entry »

A sermon preached before the congregation at Hamilton Park UCC, Lancaster, PA on November 13, 2011 by Rev. Catherine M. Shiley

“Talents” ~ Matthew 25:14-30

A familiar quote from Marianne Williamson makes this claim about our talents and how we use them in our daily living:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

 We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?”

Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your “playing small” doesn’t serve the world.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.  And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sermon on 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

October 30, 2011

Jennifer Fair – Seminary Intern

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Will you pray with me?

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts to pleasing to You, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer.

            While I was studying the texts for this sermon, the last in the series “What It Means to be a Christian”, a new song from one of my favorite American punk rock bands, Blink 182, came on the radio and stuck in my head.  The words to the song went something like this:

Everyone wants to call it all around our life with a better name.

Everyone falls and spins and gets up again with a friend who does the same.

Everyone lies and cheats their wants and needs and still believes their heart.

And everyone gets the chills, the kind that kills when the pain begins to start.

            What I find ironic about this song coming on the radio when it did was because I was in the midst of trying to think about what “integrity” really means.  “Integrity” is a word that seems tossed around a lot by politicians and ad campaigns without much thought about what the word actually means.  So, of course, I turned to my handy-dandy Merriam-Webster dictionary and found out that there are three “official” definitions of integrity.

1. Firm adherence to a code of moral values.
2. An unimpaired condition.
3. The quality or state of being complete or undivided.

In other words, as the dictionary defines it, “integrity” has three aspects: incorruptibility, soundness, and completeness. Read the rest of this entry »