Plymouth Congregational Church of Fort Wayne, UCC
January 31, 2010
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Scripture Lesson:  Luke 4:21-30

 Thrown Out

"And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things,
were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust him out of the city ..."
(Luke 4:28-29, KJV)

Prelude

Our worship this morning is patterned on a service

included in the Book of Worship - United Church of Christ -

called Order for Healing for Congregational Use.

The Book of Worship includes other orders:

(a) Brief Order for the Service of Word and Sacrament for One who is Sick; and an

(b) Order for Healing for Use with an Individual.

If we look closely we see

the framework for all our worship,

the design of our approach and appeal

for communion with divinity,

springs from but a few vital themes of Christian faith.

Every service models belief in

forgiveness of sin and fullness of grace;

every service invites trust in the mercies of God;

every service declares God to be great and God to be good,

every service has progression, expectation of an advance,

that in as much as we link with God,

in so far as we connect,

we attain that into which we hope to stride:

a state of reconciliation, a peace of mind,

a restoration of a good and right spirit within us. 

The Order(s) for Healing accentuate and magnify

the grid of grace upon which all worship flourishes. 

The service we are, in part, following this morning

includes this teaching in its introduction:

"Healing, in the Christian sense, is the reintegration

of body, mind, emotions, and spirit that permits people,

in community, to live life fully in a creation honored by

prudent and respectful use."

In the course of a year, there are four months that include five Sundays.

It is our hope to make use of the 5th Sundays (January, May, August, and October),

to work with Order for Healing for Congregational Use.  After preaching,

well after the offering,

and after a confession,

members and friends are invited

(neither obligated nor required!)

to come forward to a prayer station

where a church deacon will be

with church clergy.

One can come to receive an anointing,

either out of personal need,

or as an intercessor for another.

Together there is opportunity for to pray for what is needed,

which is always some degree of reintegration

of body, mind, emotions, spirit.

          *****                   *****                   *****

Permit a word on this term:  reintegration.

It isn't common in our glossary of faith.

We may be a bit more familiar with its opposite.

The condition of sin,

imposed from without,

inflicted from within,

causes disintegration in our lives.

Amazing grace is reintegration,

a measure of health and wholeness

desired by God.

If you are asked:  how was church this morning?

And you reply:  Great, I was reintegrated!

You will, no doubt, receive an odd look,

and the conversation will be short. 

The intent here is simple to acknowledge what we

know to be fundamentally true.

We are mortal beings, quite fragile.

Isaiah speaks: we are clay, God is potter (Isaiah 64:8);

Jeremiah speaks: we can be broken down,

and we can be built up

but by a word from God (Jeremiah 18:1-11);

and Job gave voice to this cry to his Maker:

"Remember that you fashioned me like clay,"

even as he posed the question:

"will you turn me to dust again?"

(Job 10:9).

Many of us know something about being broken

and may also know something about endurance,

testing times and long trials, and then sweet grace,

and being restored, reconciled, reintegrated

through the love of God.  Whatever else it may mean,

reintegration is being able to say,

"It is well with my soul."

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A Lot of Disintegration

We do not lack for prayer concerns;

our list of intercessions runs long.

We face so much disintegration,

that it is tempting set up screens for the soul

and filter what we will admit into our worlds;

and ration out our compassion,

so as not to deplete our reserves.

And quite possible, too, is the experience

of simply being exhausted, overwhelmed by all

the misfortune we find ourselves trying to process.

In a conversation just this week,

I heard expressed a deep yearning

for restoration of a faith

that is simply depleted.  

"I look, and behold, I can't find God

anywhere in the mix."  That's what

we call running on empty.

My prayer teacher, Flora Slosson Wuellner,

in one of her books makes mention that we often

underestimate the depth of disintegration that can

afflict us, resulting in what she called "misused prayer,"

prayers that focus upon symptoms rather that the

real, sub-surface concerns.  And so there are massive

amounts of prayer seeking a correction of behavior,

rather than prayer for healing of the condition in which

the behavior thrives.  To change a habit, you first need

a change of heart; to change a way, you need a will.

You want peace, you need to "get your hands dirty" and

pursue the thing that makes for justice (Archbiship

Eias Chacour). 

I mention the dear Dr. Wuellner for she made an astute

comment in her book (Prayer, Stress, & our Inner Wounds,

p. 59).  She states:  "God waits for our consent, not just

individual consent, but the community consent and openness."

Here is what she is saying:  If we live and move and have

our being in communities permeated with fear, and prejudice,

and ignorance of God's love and desire to heal and make us

whole, then it is going to be difficult (she does not

say impossible, just difficult) for the full measure

of grace God desires to be experienced.  We cherish and

value our individuality here, there is dictation designed for

conscience in matters of faith.  Yet what we embrace and

affirm as community does not matter - to help heal,

to help reveal, to intercede on behalf of those who are

lost and lifeless.

I mention this as segue to the morning lesson.

Jesus came face-to-face with a community that apparently

withheld its consent to the ministry he was intent upon

implementing, and the interpretation of gospel he was

proclaiming. 

Let's get into this chapter 4 for just a moment.

I remind you, Luke had staged quite a drama.

Jesus had read from Isaiah 61:1-2, a reading that

makes reference to God's favor, and the inauguration

of jubilee, complete with release, recovery,

and we might say

(the text does not)

a reintegration of those too long outside

the upside of God.

We read:  the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Jesus.

(as a preacher, I can assure this is a rare thing!).

The eyes were "fastened" (KJV);

everyone ... "looked straight" at Jesus.

They spoke well.  They were amazed.

Yet something didn't mesh. 

We know Nazareth could be a tough crowd to please.

Outsiders (Nathanael) looking in upon locals didn't have high expectations:

"Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46).  Yet here we

have Nazarites looking upon one of their own. 

And what we find is disintegration,

a lack of communal consent

to embrace one of their own.

This is, we might say, a face-off,

reintegration and disintegration:

what will prevail?

Jesus states his case:  once upon a time,

when there was a natural calamity afflicting the people,

when Elijah was walking the earth, and the heavens were

shut and water was rare, and food was scarce,

Elijah was sustained, due to a foreign widow,

at Zarephath in Sidon.  And once-upon-a-time,

when the mantle was upon Elisha, a military

man by the name of Naaman came calling to

an Israeli Redi-Med staffed by a servant of God,

because he had leprosy, and could not get clean.

And while a lot of Israeli folks suffered, it was the

Syrian, the outsider, upon whom God showed mercy.

Jesus, anointed, a Spirit upon and within,

is clearly aligned with a theology of reintegration.

He had been to Sunday School, learned these stories,

and was telling them to the very people who had

taught him.  He wasn't simply telling, he was working

the stories.  He was living the stories.

And the community would not, could not consent

to the idea that the God in me, is the God in you,

and the God in us desires our good, our health.

They were furious; enraged.  And so, they threw him out. 

They sought to hurl him off a cliff and end the threat he posed.

It is an example of suffering the scandal of grace. 

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God at Work:
Creating a Future - Whatever it Takes

I serve on the Board of Directors of Crossroad,

related by history to the redemptive mission of the UCC,

and a member of the Council for Health and Human Services

Ministries (CHHSM).  Crossroad summarizes its mission in

the statement:  "creating promising futures for children -

whatever it takes." 

It doesn't come easy. 

Life in Christ can be noisy, messy, complicated! 

Imagine:  God working through us,

creating promising futures for children -

whatever it takes. 

Imagine:  God working through us,

creating promising, hopeful, loving futures for children -

whatever it takes.

Imagine: God working through us,

reintegrating, restoring, reviving, resurrecting us -

creating promising, peaceful and just futures for children -

whatever it takes.

Imagine:  God working though us,

in Christ, with Spirit, through cross and grave,

creating promising futures, with our consent,

that we might do whatever it takes,

reaching whoever we can reach,

healing whoever we can heal,

helping whoever we can help,

encouraging whoever we can encourage.

I close with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut,

who once said:  "I want to stand as close to the edge

as I can without going over.  Out on the edge you

can see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."

Some of us have been on the edge, never really seen,

or known.  But Jesus goes to the edge.  Indeed, Jesus

does whatever it takes, to save us our disintegration,

and restore us to life. So may it be for each and all this

morning.