“Created To Be Disruptive”

July 28, 2024 - Cobleskill United Methodist Church-Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Luke 5:17-26

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 5:17-26

Jesus Heals a Paralytic

One day, while he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting nearby (they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem); and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. Just then some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. When he saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you.’ Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, ‘Who is this who is speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ When Jesus perceived their questionings, he answered them, ‘Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, “Your sins are forgiven you”, or to say, “Stand up and walk”? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the one who was paralyzed—‘I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home.’ Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God. Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen strange things today.’

If this is your first Sunday with us this summer, we’re picking up themes during our sermons from the camp curriculum being used at our church camp this summer.  It’s a Created to Be series.  We’ve done Created to be Free, Created to be Authentic, and Created to be Disciples so far.  I led these day by day when I served as Chaplain at Skye Farm a few weeks ago.  But today’s theme, Created to be Disruptive, hit a little differently.  It feels a little confusing for most of us who aren’t disruptive on a daily basis.  I remember the Middle School group I was leading Bible Study with, though, and they weren’t confused at all about disruption.  In fact, they thought it was pretty cool.  

The theme comes out of the Bible passage we just explored during our story time on the rugs, about friends disrupting a big event just so Jesus would care for their friend.  And about how Jesus’ ministry, illustrated in this one story, was about disrupting the status quo.  Finding all the bad rules in his society and in his faith tradition and breaking them.  In today’s passage, the people in charge tried to tell him he did not have the authority to forgive sins and heal a crippled man’s body.  And yet Jesus proved them wrong.  It’s almost like his ministry needed to be disruptive to break through.  The world around Jesus was a world where hurting people were not invited in.  It was a world where religious laws and proper behavior were more important than actual people, especially people that didn’t fit in. 

John Lewis, the civil rights activist turned Congressman from Georgia, coined the phrase “good trouble” in reference to the work he did as a student organizing and leading non-violent actions that disrupted the status quo.  Why was he disruptive?  Because the status quo wasn’t letting everyone in.  The status quo said that some people were more worthy of rights than other people.  Specially, the status quo dehumanized people simply because of the color of their skin.  And so Lewis and others in the civil rights movement organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and bus boycotts for buses that made black people sit in the back.  This was good trouble.  And sometimes it’s exactly what’s needed to break-through. When there are unjust laws, they need to be broken.  

I spent some time with my family on Friday watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics.  It was a really beautiful celebration of sports and culture and solidarity.   In these games it really does feel like the world gathers and there’s something that holds us all together. 

Perhaps that’s also why the Olympics have been the stage for provocative art and actions.  People or actions that disrupt the business as usual of the Olympics get a lot of attention and sometimes this can be good.  Other times disruptive actions have hurt people and they are not good.  But today I wanted to highlight a few of the disruptions that we look back on now and see as “good trouble.”  Disruptions that moved the needle, even if just a little, in how the world treats itself. 

1906   Irish triple-jumper Pete O’Connor protests being labeled as a British athlete rather than an Irish athlete and climbs a flagpole with an Irish flag after being awarded his gold medal.  This effort to articulate identity, reminded those who watched his disruption that empires, like Britain in the early 20th century, don’t speak for everyone.  That some, in fact, many felt oppressed by their rule.  

1936  Jesse Owens, German Olympics.  The USA was going to boycott, but decided to compete instead.  Despite a flood of Nazi propaganda that championed so-called Aryan superiority, Jesse Owens, a black athlete from Ohio won four gold medals literally before the eyes of Adolf Hitler, disrupting a false narrative that said he wasn’t good enough. 

1968  Two black track and field Olympians, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, win gold and bronze for the United States, but bow their heads and raise their fists during the national anthem as a protest of racial inequality in their homeland.  They are kicked off the US team and sent home. It was a relatively small act of disruption and yet combined with the reaction it caused, it was no-doubt a moment of reckoning for this country, where racial inequality was rampant.  

Among these individual examples, there have also been many examples of entire countries boycotting the games or being expelled from the games as a way of disrupting the status quo.  Notable examples include the exclusion of countries that break rules around doping, and countries that are engaged in human-rights abuse, like South Africa through the 70s and 80s and Russia today.  

And one more example that I think is worth mentioning.  In the 2020 games, held in 2021 because of the pandemic, Simone Biles shocked her country and the whole world with a disruption no one saw coming.  She backed out of the competition because the pressure of the mental game had started to undo her.  And so rather than force her body and mind to perform and potentially be hurt when they weren’t ready, she stepped back.  Her disruption was so that she could be restored in body and mind.  

We are created to be disruptive when the situation around us is harmful to ourselves or to others.  We are created to be disruptive when walls have been put up that separate us from God.

The problem with disruption, though, is that it’s difficult to do in a way that doesn’t cause more harm.  If you’re trying to disrupt an unhealthy or unfair situation to make a point about it being unhealthy or unfair, the disruption cannot then add to the problem.  It cannot create more harm or it has lost its effectiveness. If the friends on the roof had been less careful, they might have hurt people in the room in the process of trying to help their hurting friend.  

Good trouble, holy disruption, requires discernment and prayer.  Perhaps that’s why John Lewis and Martin Luther King’s movement was so rooted in the church.  A church where they learned about Jesus and the non-violence he taught.  

Standing up to injustice doesn’t take violence, or a large army, or a lot of money.  It takes creativity and bravery.  And it takes just one person who has the courage to stand up and say no to actions that hurt people.  

The enormity of the world’s problems can seem so huge.  And yet God didn’t ask us to fix everything.  God asks us simply to do something. 

In an ancient collection of Jewish teachings called the Talmud, it says this in reflection on Micah 6:8 

In a world of enormous grief and injustice, how are you being called to make good trouble?  What if your one action, what if your one voice, saying “no” to something you know is not right, gave someone else the bravery to also say no, and then someone else to say “no”?    

I think I saw this on the bumper of a car recently: 

When hate speaks loudly, love must not be silent.  

May it be so.

Grace and Peace, 

Pastor Anna

“Created To Be Disciples”

July 21, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Matthew 11:28-30

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Today we have one long, extended children’s time for the message.  

A long time ago, instead of tractors to plow the fields there was another way.  Does anyone know how fields used to be plowed?  (Ox, or cows or horses)

And if you wanted more than one animal to work on the project together, they would have more power.  But can anyone guess what the problem might be with having two different animals working together on plowing at the same time?  

(they would each have their own way of doing it and probably wouldn’t stay together very well)

This is where a special tool came in handy.   

This is yoke.  Not like the yellow part of an egg.  It’s spelled:  Y O K E.  Yoke.  This tool helps two strong, working animals to be fixed together so that they might go in the same direction at the same time, doing the work together as one team rather than going their separate ways.   Another really important thing about this tool is that it helps two animals share the burden of the work and it makes it lighter.  

…

I have a tool that I use that is meant to kind of look like this and act like this.  

(Show a stole.). This is called a stole.  And I bet you’ve seen me wearing one before.  I actually have many different stoles in different colors.  Color helps us connect to different seasons of the year.  When pastors wear a stole, it’s meant to resemble a yoke that working animals might wear.  We wear it to remind us that God is working alongside us as our partner and teammate to help lighten the load.  I am helping to do God’s work in the world and God is helping to lighten that load so I know I don’t have to do it alone.  I have God working alongside me and God has me working alongside God.  When pastors become ordained this is the promise they make by wearing this yoke.  

I’m not the only one who is yoked to God , though.  Any time we decide to let God help carry our burden, God puts a yoke around us.  In fact, our scripture lesson for today tells us exactly what happens when we are carrying a heavy burden.  Shall we have a listen? 

Matthew 11:28-30

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

In this reading Jesus is saying, “come to me” everyone who is feeling heavy and sad and like you’re carrying a heavy burden.  Have you ever felt like you were carrying something heavy or sad?  

Sometimes when people don’t have a safe and healthy place to live, they feel like they are carrying a heavy burden.

Today we’re going to do a show and tell for our sermon time.  Have you all ever done a show and tell?  Today we’re going to do something like that.  We have some folks in our congregation today that worked really hard over the last two weeks during our Operation: Home Repair. They worked so hard, kind of like the farm animals who might wear a yoke. They were working hard to help repair houses in our neighborhood so that people living there could have a better life.  This kind of work was a mission sent to us by God.  In order to tackle this mission from God, our volunteers needed help with their work.  I don’t think any of them used a tool like yoke in their work, but they did all have other tools that helped them.  Today we’re going to do a show and tell with these volunteers and the tools they used.  They can tell us a little more about the projects they did these past two weeks. 

Carrying the yoke with God means finding a way to serve God’s goals but in a way that we aren’t having to carry the burden by ourselves.  

This is what it means to be a disciple.  Someone who dedicates their life to following Jesus.  It means picking up God’s work to lighten the burdens our of our neighbors around us and know that God will give us helpers and tools to make the job easier.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna

“Created To Be Authentic”

July 14, 2024  Cobleskill United Methodist Church - Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Luke 10:38-42

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 10:38-42

Jesus Visits Martha and Mary

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’

When I had the idea of doing a bluegrass Sunday, I was connected with this gentleman right here, Pete Enders, who shares my love for this kind of music.   When he and I met for the first time I mentioned that I was from the bluegrass state, particularly southeastern Kentucky, and that’s a big part of why I feel connected to this music.  What I then loved about Pete, is that after our first conversation, he came back to me with a suggestion of how today’s service could be themed.  How about we use the idea of an old-fashioned southeastern Kentucky tent revival they used to do in the early 20th century.  It was a neat idea and I think we kind of have the tent part covered with our Catalpa tree, we certainly have the good music.  That said, I will spare you the three-hour sermon and we’ll take a hard pass on snake-handling.  

But thinking about Kentucky tent-revivals brought back a not-too-distant memory of our 2018 trip to southeastern Kentucky when a group of 29 strangers from 10 United Methodist churches around Schoharie County Trip traveled to Red Bird, a mission outpost in the southern Appalachian Mountains. 

We were sent out to work on homes in the surrounding mountains, some of us replacing a roof, others working on a kitchen floor, and others replacing a set of stairs.  Like those early 20th century Kentucky tent revivals, some of the job sites even had a few copperheads. 

Snakes notwithstanding, it was a powerful and memorable experience.  We worked in homes and made connections with the people that lived there and with each other.  It was striking to visit another part of the country with fresh eyes and take in the amount of need that was present.  

As we talked around the dinner tables and campfires at night, the idea began to circulate: “you know, Schoharie County also has a lot of need that we often don’t see because we’re around it all the time.”  In other words, what if we looked at our own home area with fresh eyes like we were doing in southeastern Kentucky.  What would we see?  

The 29 strangers that left for Kentucky that summer came back as 29 friends and 29 collaborators ready to find a way to use our friendship to look at our own home county with fresh eyes.  It was a revival, of sorts.  Neighbors helping neighbors breaking the expectation that mission work has to be something you travel faraway to do.

Don’t get me wrong, it was powerful to go on a mission trip to a faraway place and see the hardship of folks in that place firsthand.  And southeastern Kentucky certainly has its share of hard living.  And I’m not sure we would be the same cooperative parish of churches had we not gone on that trip and witnessed both the hardship of that place and the community amongst us that it forged.  But it’s almost like we had to take that trip in order for us to realize that to be true to ourselves, we had to return to our own community and open our eyes in a new way to how we can be helpful.  

It's been a journey of authenticity.  Finding out who we are by working together on what we are becoming.  Neighbors that care about neighbors.  Churches that work side by side.   We are here in Schoharie County, the northernmost county of Appalachia- although you all typically say the word differently.  Being authentic is about looking inward and discovering that who you are, where your home place is, is both a place needs and a place of asset.  Operation: Home Repair, a project now in its second year, and right now between its first week and its second week has been a product of this revival in authenticity; a project of figuring out how to match the needs all around us with the assets all around us.  Bringing them together with fresh eyes.

Today, we continue our summer series of “Created to be”… by looking at what it means to be “Created to be authentic.”   What it means to find your true self even if it means breaking expectations.  

And to illustrate the theme, we’ve heard a story about breaking expectations.  It goes like this.

Jesus is passing through the town of Bethany.  He comes to the house of Mary and Martha and he knock, knock, knocks.  Now I’m not sure what you do when a Very Important Person happens to show up on your doorstep unannounced, but clearly this was a big moment for the household.  And the two sisters inside take two very different approaches.  Martha, who meets Jesus at the door, takes the traditional role.  She immediately busies herself with the domestic chores a woman in the household might have been expected to do.  We don’t know what she does, but we know it was many things.  And if you're a woman in 2024, you still probably understand the cultural expectations that continue to follow us when it comes to hosting.  What’s for dinner?  Is the house clean?  Are the beds made? Is everyone comfortable?  Can I get you anything?  

Mary, the other sister, takes a different approach.  The Bible doesn’t say if this was something she had to deliberate about or if it was an automatic response.  Nonetheless, she chose to take the Very Important Person, Jesus, to a place where they could sit and talk.  She chose to listen to his stories and hear about his ministry.  

The cultural expectations were no different for Mary than they were for Martha.  As a woman she would have been expected to help with the household chores.  And so, it’s not surprising that Martha interrupts the conversation between Jesus and Mary with a little bit of annoyance.  

“Um, Jesus, do you not care that Mary has left me with all the work to do?! Can you ask her to help me!”  

But Jesus does the unexpected.  Instead of asking Mary to carry out her cultural duties as a female in the house and get busy with the chores, he suggests to Martha that Mary has found a more authentic way to welcome him into their home. She’s chosen the better way, to listen to him as a person, not just prepare for him as a guest.  Mary is being more authentically herself, rather than conforming to expectations.  And Jesus notices and affirms her choice.  

Mary wasn’t the first to break expectations and be authentically herself, and she certainly wasn’t the last.  

Have you ever heard of a woman named Catherine Booth?  Catharine Booth believed that God was calling her to use her voice to preach the Gospel of Jesus.  There was only one problem.  The year was 1860 and it was unheard of for women to speak up in church, let alone preach. And yet Catherine didn’t give up.  During one of her husband’s sermons in her Methodist church, she timidly spoke up and asked if she might share a word, also.  Her husband, to his credit, recognized her calling and gave her the floor.  She was choosing to break expectations and this was, for her, the right thing to do.  “The better part,” as Jesus would have said.  Catherine’s preaching drew crowds.  It was meaningful and challenging in a way that was unique to who she was both as a woman and a person.  She was convinced that women had an equal right to speak and that their voices would add to the fullness of God’s church.  

Being our authentic selves takes courage. Catherine went on to be known as the Mother of The Salvation Army, instrumental in bringing equity and change to the lives of many within the organization and in communities across England, where she lived.

I believe God is always calling each of us to be more authentic.  To reach down deep inside to figure out who it is that we are here, and to strip away everything else that might try to hide that. 

Maybe it’s about reconnecting with music that connects you to your roots.  And maybe it’s about reconnecting with your neighborhood on a new level and being part of community home repair project.  Maybe it’s about charting a path that feels right, but may be unpopular.  Standing up for someone who doesn’t deserve it or who has been left behind.  Putting people before things.  

Whatever becoming more authentic means for you, I guarantee you it begins by figuring out what’s most important to you and then living your life with integrity so that you can uphold your values, even when it’s hard.  

Quite honestly, we need a revival of authenticity.  A new wave of people being true to themselves, even if it requires vulnerability.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna  

“All Together Now”

June 30, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

1 Corinthians 3:1-9, 16

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

1 Corinthians 3:1-9, 16

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, ‘I belong to Paul’, and another, ‘I belong to Apollos’, are you not merely human?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

This week we celebrate a national holiday.   Independence Day.   Ostensibly this day has always been about celebrating our independence from the powers of tyranny and colonial control that tried to rule over us without any representation or input from us.  In theory that’s what the holiday is about.  

In practice, though, the American experiment has, in many senses, internalized this holiday almost as a way of being.  Independent.  Self-made.  A rugged individualism kind of ethos that has been a defining value upheld in this country.   We like a good cowboy lone ranger story and we publicly venerate those who “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” 

Independence is a national value, I guess you could say.  Part of our identity.  So much so that we fall into the trap of judging those who ask for help or admit weakness.  We praise the victor who appears strongest, most self-made.  We blame those who have been dependent in any way on systems of support.  We support a culture that for centuries made seeking mental health care taboo.   We consider success and wealth to be something that independent and self-motivated people can just choose if they have enough grit.  Sometimes, even subconsciously, we push through things alone because we feel like it’s what’s expected of us.  

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Maybe it’s because I share a birthday with the national holiday this week and was often called as a child by well-meaning people “a little Independence Baby,” or maybe it’s because I’ve rediscovered something about my own faith in God or the nature of Jesus’s teachings, but I’ve always felt free and maybe even compelled to offer some commentary on independence-loving nature of ours.  Last year, in a sermon, I even suggested we Christians think about rebranding the holiday Interdependence Day.  Not to say we shouldn’t always want to be free of tyranny in all its forms, but rather that an obsession with the virtue of independence can be a form of tyranny and actually a dangerous myth.  

We’re in our final installment on gifts this week and I want to use this last Sunday in the series to convince you that we need a different way.  The myth of independent individualism that has become mainstream in this country of ours is not only dangerous, it's also antithetical to Jesus’ teachings and the Spirit of God we’ve been finding in this Pentecost season.

 The myth is:  

I can do anything and everything by myself.  And I should.  I don’t need help.  I don’t need rest.  I just need to be strong and independent and everything will work out fine.  And I might even be rewarded for my efforts. 

The reality is: 

We must do it together.   

And if you don’t believe this renegade “Independence Baby,” here are just a few reasons from the old Bible that dispel the myth of independence:

Remember back on the day of Pentecost, many different people were gathered from many different lands and they all had different languages.  But instead of the Holy Spirit sweeping in reducing their diversity to one single language, everyone was given the gift of understanding and accepting everyone else’s difference.  In other words, we need what one another offers, even if it’s different from us.  

And then remember when God appeared as a burning bush and asked Moses to lead his people, Moses told God he couldn’t lead by himself.  So God sent him Aaron to help, saying that each of them possessed different gifts that would help them be a team together.

And then remember when the disciples wanted to send the crowds away to find their own food, each person for themselves, Jesus said “no, you feed them” and they worked together with the crowd to make sure everyone was taken care of by sharing what portions they did have.  

And then remember last week when we heard about how a body has to have different parts in order to function properly.  We can’t all be the eye.  The body won’t work if the feet go at it alone without the brain. We must work together in order to be the body of Christ.

Interdependence is not a new-fangled concept and it’s not a radical idea.  It’s a Biblical idea. 

So, with that said, let’s talk about conspiracies.  Sorry I didn’t really know a better way to transition that.  When I say conspiracy, what comes to mind for you?  

.. Secretive?… skeptical?…breaking the law?... undermining something because you don’t trust it? … Yes, exactly.  If you thought these things you are alive in 2024 and paying attention.  Conspiracy can be a loaded word.  

In a decision that most days I regret, I decided to study Latin as my language in High School.  It seemed like an interesting endeavor at the time but it didn’t take long in the real world to realize that dead languages have very limited use.  But today, HaHa!, I will get use some of this dead language knowledge to help reclaim this word that has gotten kind of a bad rap.

The word conspiracy is actually a simple combination of two Latin words.  Are you ready for it? Con which means “with” and spire which means…. Breath.  Three years of Latin and this is my crowning achievement.  Conspiracy simply means “with breath.”  Spire is also the root word of … wait for it… Spirit.  In this sense, a conspiracy is something done together with breath, life, energy, spirit.  We talk a lot about the Holy Spirit during the season of Pentecost and so connection dawned on me.  A conspiracy doesn’t have to be secretive or nefarious but the reason conspiracies are often thought of as nefarious is because they’re subversive.  They go against the status quo for the purpose of bringing change.  Conspiracies bring people together who have energy and passion for a specific intent of subverting the status quo.  

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, I just wanted to come to church today, not sign up for a conspiracy.  So, instead of looking for the nearest exit, hear me out.  You came to church today, I think/hope, because you believe in a God that is working through us to make the world a better place.  Is that fair?  And is it then possible, that in order to make the world a better place we have to stand up to some status quos that are working in opposition to God’s values.  In some circles, we might call this subversive behavior.  Before you jump to any conclusions that subversive behavior is always bad, let me remind you that one way subversive behavior can take shape is by fighting prevailing myths in our society.  Like how we can and must do everything on our own.

Last week we did something brave.  We took some time to write down our gifts and we added our name to them.  The conspiracy comes in when these gifts don’t just hang on a tree and remain unused and unshared.  The conspiracy comes in when these gifts cross-pollinate to create fruit.  The conspiracy happens when we collaborate together with the Spirit to make our neighborhood a better place.  With your sense of humor and your love of legos and her passion for growing food, their love of cooking.  How can these things come together in surprising ways?

Part of this involves looking strategically at the whole, like a pan of food that needs a well-matched Tupperware, and making connections where they best fit.  We have a team of folks tasked with this kind of balcony view of gift assessment.  But the other way this can work is for you, as the possessor of a gift, to take initiative for pairing your gift with the gifts around you.  What good things could come out of your collaboration.  Don’t wait for the pastor to ask, look for ways on your own.

For example, every summer we have a tradition of hosting a camp for our neighbor children.  Compassion Camp, as we’ve been calling it, is now in its third year.  For three years we’ve purchased a curriculum to shape the camp.  This year, five people with gifts for teaching and lesson-planning said: what if we wrote our own?  We could include just what we think is most important for our neighborhood children to learn about and we’ll make it our own.  Now, on the verge of summer, I’m happy to say we have a camp planned called “Let Us Build a House for All” where children will learn about inclusion and the need for a community to come together to help make sure everyone has a home.  

Theologian Frederick Buechner defines vocation as the place where “your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.”  Where your gifts intersect with the need around you.  This requires subversive behavior in two ways.  First, we will need to admit that we all have a gift that we can share. And second, we will need to admit that there are also times when we have needs.  

Both of these things: sharing a gift with others and asking for help when needed demand patience and humility.  They require taking initiative and standing up to the status quo that says you’re better off on your own.

I want to go out on a limb and suggest that maybe Pentecost was actually a conspiracy.  And what I mean by that is, a group of people filled with energy and passion for a specific intent.  People with breath.  People with spirit.  People with energy.  And the subversive part of it all, the conspiracy, was that this Spirit had come to subvert the status quo.  It has come to break down ingrained ideas that independence is more valuable than community.  We are better when we’re together.  This is not just any conspiracy, this is The Biggest Conspiracy of All.  In the Spirit of God, we are better together.  When the media and culture around us tells us we must stand on our own, the Spirit of God sweeps in and reminds us that we don’t have to be heroes with grand acts to change the world.  We just have to be there for each other.  Sharing what we have, and lifting up one another’s needs.  Together millions of small collaborations will change the world in the Biggest Conspiracy of All.  The conspiracy of gifts.  

After church and during social hour, I invite you to come and look over these gifts.  See where future collaborations could be.  Use your fellowship time together as a time to get to know one another’s gifts.  Not just today, but as a habit.  This is not just a social club, this is a church.  I am the church.  You are the church.  We are the church together.  

Let us pray.

“Abundance Over Scarcity

June 9, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 6:30-44

Feeding the Five Thousand

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ And he said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’ Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

I took this picture in May of 2009. 

 It was southern California along the Pacific Crest Trail and Garrett and I were hiking northbound.  The trail had been closed in this section just months earlier as a wildfire consumed this and hundreds of other acres of land.  It burned trees to a crisp and left the ground desolate and empty of all its underbrush.  It scattered the wildlife and diverted the hikers.   When the trail finally opened back up after the fire, it was kind of like walking into a twilight zone.  I had never been in a wildfire zone so soon after the fire ended.  But what I saw is not what I expected.  I expected the ground to be black and barren, maybe even still smoldering, definitely covered in ash.  

Instead, we saw this.  Yes, the trees were black crispy twigs of their original selves, but the ground was… green.  And everywhere you could see there were wildflowers coming up and the sun was catching their petals like stained glass windows.  A landscape that I thought would only be hopeless and yet the earth responded with something else entirely.  New life.  Hope. 

We’re using wildfire and the unexpected newness it brings as a metaphor this month.  Talking about how God kindles inside of us something at Pentecost that burns into being new potential.  How this itself a gift.  And for each of us, our gifts look different.  What gets stirred up in me might be different from what gets stirred up in you.  But when we collectively recognize that God is giving us the potential to change the landscape, amazing things happen.  

There is really no better story in the Bible to illustrate this point than the story we call “The Feeding of the 5,000.”  We read it from the Gospel of Mark just now, but we could have read it from any gospel because Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all have an account of this event.  And there is no other Jesus story than can claim that status- occurring in all four gospel accounts- not even Jesus’s own birth story! 

It’s a familiar story to us with those legendary five loaves and two fish etched into our mind as the ultimate superfood.  Yet if you are anything like me, you can read this story over and over and it still leaves you scratching your head.  He fed how many people with how much bread and how many fish?  

If you have ever wondered in your mind about how this could have been possible, you are not alone.  Smart biblical scholars have wrestled for centuries over how to make sense of what seems physically impossible.  Some might say it was a dramatic exaggeration of the numbers for the sake of a good story.  Others might say that it was truly a miraculous multiplication done in a supernatural way with Jesus waving his hands over the food.  Still others might say that the whole story as it was recorded and passed down was merely a metaphor for the kind of ministry Jesus was leading…healing and feeding thousands with just a symbolic token meal.  

But for me when I read this story, regardless of whether this account is historically accurate or how exactly the math all worked out, there is a fundamental Truth with a capital T.  For me there is no magic to what made this story miraculous.  

The people followed Jesus into the wilderness.  They were hungry.  The disciples were hungry.  The text literally says- they had no leisure to eat.  They were running on fumes.  And when the disciples come up with not a bad idea- pooling their money and going to town to buy something to eat- Jesus says “no.”  You give them something to eat.  Confused, the disciples again ask “do you want us to go and buy bread to feed all these people?”  But then Jesus says this:  You don’t need to buy anything.  Find out what gifts you already possess and go from there.  

Our story says that the disciples found two fish and five loaves.  It was more than they started with! And so over that small but precious gift, Jesus said a blessing.  And this is where the real miracle gets started.  Jesus blessed the small amount that had been collected and suddenly the baskets began to fill up.  Other pieces of bread and fish started coming out of the woodwork. One little boy started by sharing his own lunch and suddenly others in the crowd were inspired to dig a little deeper into their own pockets to see what they might also be able to contribute to the meal.   Before anyone knew it there were heaping baskets of what had been mere bits and pieces in the satchels and pockets of the crowds now turned into a feast that could feed 5,000 men plus women and children.

It’s an incredible story of God’s provision in the face of scarcity.  Why?  Because Jesus empowered the people to discover their own potential.  If you expect a miracle.  Be the miracle. 

One of my favorite stories about my grandfather is from a bright sunny day in July about 15 years ago when he and my grandmother and some other family met us on top of Max Patch, a grassy bald mountain, while Garrett and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail through North Carolina.  No wildfires in this story, but there was a different kind of scarcity.  It was hunger.  Hiker hunger.  And, yes, I was excited to see my family but you know what else was exciting?  They had brought a big bucket of Kentucky fried chicken.  Garrett and I had been hiking for weeks and we were really craving a meal like this and we put a pretty decent dent in what they had brought.  As we were sitting there eating our picnic, I noticed a couple of other hikers who made it to the top of the mountain and collapsed to catch their breath.  It was just about then that I decided I would eat another piece of fried chicken in their honor, when I noticed that our bucket of leftover fried chicken was no longer sitting on the picnic blanket but was instead in the hands of my grandfather who was making his way across the bushy field to the hikers.  They were just leftovers, scraps, really, from what had been our own private picnic, but my grandfather- who had the biggest heart I’ve ever known-  knew that our own gift of food wasn’t a gift at all until he had shared it with everyone on that mountain.  A preacher by training, he probably wouldn’t have said that he was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in that moment because he is a humble man, but he was.  Because that’s what it’s all about.

It’s about looking at what you have to give and matching it with the need that’s right in front of you. A barren landscape of ash and dust?  The wildflower seeds go crazy germinating.  A crowd of hungry people?  The crowd themselves, blessed by Jesus, dig into their own pockets.  A world where some have and others have not?  Share!  Jesus said, do that, and you’ll watch the kingdom of God grow right before your eyes.

This is the message for us this morning.  Too often we often find ourselves stuck in an attitude of scarcity.  And what I mean by that is, we get caught up in a culture that assumes that there is only so much of anything in the world and that if you want some, you better get it before it is gone. Or if you already have it then you better hold on tight lest someone else try to take what is rightfully yours.  We are living through a political culture right now where it’s more popular to rant about what we don’t have than start imagining what we want.

If you expect a miracle.  Be the miracle.  Don’t just stand around complaining about how the miracle isn’t happening.  If you expect a miracle.  Be the miracle.  God’s fire burns in us to empower us with gifts to make miracles happen.  

What does this look like for us?  

• It looks like people walking circles around a track raising pennies for each step so that eventually a large amount of money can and will be raised that will change a cancer patient’s life.  

• It looks like a handful of people saying I don’t mind climbing a ladder and I can use a paint brush and I can make sandwiches and if we combined our gifts what if we could repair our neighbors homes right here in Schoharie County.  

• It looks like several people getting together after church and bringing their plant starts down so that a little container garden behind the church this summer can produce vegetables for our Summer Lunch Program.  

• It looks like one person having a dream for what the world could look like and that one person is joined by another person who digs deep down and finds they, too, have something to contribute to that dream.  And then someone else adds and someone else adds.  And together the crumbs become a feast.  

If you expect a miracle.  Be the miracle. 

And never underestimate the power of God’s provision. For where there are willing hearts who say “yes, why not?  we can make that happen,” God swoops in and multiplies our gifts.  If you haven’t yet had a chance, write on your piece of branch bark what kind of dream you would dream for the world if you embraced God’s abundance and let go of a scarcity mindset.  If there were no limits, what would you hope for?  

Grace and peace,

Pastor Anna

“Gift, What Gift?”

June 2, 2024 - Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Exodus 3:1-15, 4:10-16

Second Sunday after Pentecost

Exodus 3:1-15, 4:10-16

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 

Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 

Then the Lord said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ 

But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ The Lord said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’

But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you”, and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ 

But Moses said to the Lord, ‘O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.’ 

But he said, ‘O my Lord, please send someone else.’ 

Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, ‘What of your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he can speak fluently; even now he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you his heart will be glad. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do. He indeed shall speak for you to the people; he shall serve as a mouth for you, and you shall serve as God for him.

Who would have thought that acres of pine trees and sand in the middle of Albany County could be so interesting?  I can’t tell you how many times I drove by the scruffy fields of pine trees before ever stopping and learning about the Pine Bush Preserve or walking its trails.  It doesn’t look magnificent like some of our national treasurers, but perhaps it’s for that reason that when you really stop to look, its rarity and beauty becomes even more impressive.  You see, it’s a rare ecosystem because of its sandy deposit left by the glaciers millions of years ago.    And because of the scruffy pine trees and wide meadows of hot sandy soil, forest fires are not only a common occurrence in pine barren ecosystems, they are actually critical to the survival of these ecosystems.  

The fire clears out the underbrush and its heat activates certain species of plants that only flourish under these conditions…just like we saw during children’s time in the video.  Pine trees, yes.  But also much more rare plants like the lupine, a beautiful flowering plant with a large root system which provides the only habitat for the now endangered Karner Blue butterfly.  The fire is critical for both the ordinary pine tree and extraordinary Karner Blue, both members of this ecosystem, to thrive.  

Nature has a lot to teach us.  You might even call the natural world “God’s First Testament.”  There’s something poetically beautiful about the way fire- a force that can often seem disruptive and harmful – can actually be an activator for what is new to emerge.  

We are in the season of Pentecost now, and the remnants of our party two weeks ago are still scattered across the altar.  The flame balloons have lasted longer than I thought they would and I’m glad, because the fires of Pentecost aren’t meant to be so quickly forgotten.  In Pentecost we talk about how God gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit, a presence of comfort and encouragement meant to give us resilience as Jesus-followers.  The sign of this Holy Spirit being with us on Pentecost is fire because this divine presence with us is a burning, bright light, giving off warmth and energy -and, get this- activating what unrealized gifts have laid dormant.  

Nature can be a powerful teacher when we stop and pay attention. In this morning’s scripture we heard the other most famous fire story in the bible.  Moses and the burning bush.  But the story is puzzling, if we’re honest.  Moses notices a strange sight.  He’s just walking along and out of the corner of his eye, he sees a bush caught on fire.  He stops and turns.  He doesn’t run the opposite direction as I might have been tempted to do.  He goes closer.  Something about this fire is different.  The scripture doesn’t tell us one single thing about how the fire started, why the bush was burning, why it never burned completely up, or if the fire was ever put out.  But what we do know is that in the fire Moses found God.  And out of the burning, he receives a gift.

In this week’s Saturday email, I had fun imagining a conversation between me and you in my head where I asked you how many gifts you got for Pentecost.  And you said… ?   Right, I imagined this question being weird.  And it is.  Pentecost is not a traditional gift-giving holiday.  There is no flame-themed wrapping paper that I know of, although that would be very fun.  We don’t typically have helium flame balloons in our houses under which we look for gifts on Pentecost morning.  

But!  Do you remember how in the Pine Bush, it’s only when the flames come through – whether they are a controlled burn in 2024 or a natural burn in the millennia past- it’s only when the flames come through that something significant happens “under those flames.”  Something changes.  The fire activates what has laid dormant.  The fire gives a gift.  And something new emerges from the ashes.   The fire gives the gift of ecosystem diversity, many new things sprouting and growing into new found possibilities.

When Moses found God speaking to him out of the fire, he too was changed.  He, too, was left with a gift.  For Moses, it was the gift of leadership.  For Moses, through the flames, God was helping him to identify that the present moment was the moment he had been preparing for all of his life.  You may remember the Moses story from Sunday School.  He had been born in Egypt to Hebrew people living under captivity; secretly given up by his Hebrew mother in little basket floating down the river so that he could land in the hands of Pharoah’s family where he would be emersed in the culture.  As Moses grew he realized his unique position.  A man who knew Egyptian culture and yet still felt deeply the pangs of injustice as he watched his people endure slavery in Egypt.  After trying once to stand up to this injustice he fled, afraid.  And this is where God finds him.  His gift of leadership lying dormant.  God comes to Moses in the flames of the burning bush and reminds him of what he maybe already knew deep down inside.  There was something inside him that was worth sharing.  It was time for him to come out.  To stand up to Pharaoh and lead his people out of their bondage.

We are thousands of years removed from Moses.  His story comes to us from a culture and circumstances that feel very, very different.  And yet, is there not a universal truth here about the power of God to expose in us some potential we did not know we had?  Is there not a universal truth here that God can speak to us still through the power of fire as we behold the lessons nature can teach us.  That sometimes the underbrush needs to be cleaned out so that we can see who we really are. Sometimes we need to be distracted from our normal patterns so that we can glimpse the divine call to us.  So that what is lying deep inside of us can be activated to grow and bloom and bear fruit.  

Gifts at Pentecost?  You bet.  You got one; I got one; he got one; she got one.  Pentecost is the gift-giving holiday because Pentecost is about empowerment.  God sending God’s activating energy to us, so that we might carry the vision of a better, more just, more kind, more peaceful world forward.  The only way to see God’s kin-dom come, as we pray every week, is to accept that we are the ones God’s been waiting for to do this holy work.  And through the Holy Spirit, God has given you exactly what you need to be the person God wants you to be.  And that, my friends, is your gift.  

The beautiful thing about gifts is that, like a rare ecosystem, everyone’s is different and purposeful.  The mysterious thing about gifts, though, is that we could be 9, 39, or 56 or 94 and still be figuring out what the gifts are that God has given us.  

This figuring out, this discernment of what it is God activates within you is sacred work.  And over the course of the next 4 weeks we’ll work together on figuring out what our gifts are.  Our services will be interactive and conversational, we’ll continue working together to build something new out of the ashes of fire, and the best part of all of this:  None of us have to build God’s kin-dom alone.  We’re in this together.  When we question whether or not we have what it takes, there will be people in our lives, like Aaron for Moses, whose gifts will compliment our gifts.  Kingdom work is collaborative work.  Your gifts and my gifts, working together in a conspiracy to make this earth look a little more like heaven. 

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna

“Catch the Spirit”

May 18, 2024 - Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:“In the last days it will be, God declares,that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,   and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,and your young men shall see visions,   and your old men shall dream dreams.Even upon my slaves, both men and women,   in those days I will pour out my Spirit;     and they shall prophesy.And I will show portents in the heaven above   and signs on the earth below,     blood, and fire, and smoky mist.The sun shall be turned to darkness   and the moon to blood,     before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Yesterday, June and I were blowing up some balloons in preparation for today.   I blew up one red one just for her to play with and when I was done, I batted it over to her.  She caught it and exclaimed that it was like she was catching a piece of me because my air was inside.  

At which point I thought to myself, now that’ll preach.

Friends, today is Pentecost.  Undoubtedly it’s a weird word you don’t hear in everyday language.  It means 50th in Greek and it refers to the 50th day after Easter.  On one hand, Pentecost is like a bookend to the story of God-With-Us that began with Advent.  Jesus came, Jesus lived, Jesus loved, Jesus died, Jesus rose, Jesus ascended to be with God, and on Pentecost, God sends the Holy Spirit as a companion to be with us in our daily lives as we move forward in community without Jesus physically with us.   But as much as it is a conclusion to this season of the church year when we celebrate Jesus being with us, it’s also a beginning to the journey we do as a church in the ordinary days of our lives.  It’s a beginning to the life we live in community trying to follow in the footsteps Jesus left us.  Without Jesus here to physically hold our hands and guide us forward, God sends an intangible wind, a burning passion, a holy ghost, to fill us up.  And filled with that presence, we are empowered to hold each other’s hands as we move forward together.  This, my friends, is what we call the church. 

And it’s kind of like catching a balloon filled with the breath of God.  A gift passed to us not for us to just hold, but for us to keep passing.  

Just now in our scripture reading we got to hear the story of Pentecost and we also got to experience some of the feeling of Pentecost.  A feeling of chaotic speaking, confusion, then clarity, understanding, appreciation.  People had assembled from all over the known world (did you hear all those places? Great job, Sarah, tackling all the place names) …. People had assembled from all over the known world and God wanted them to hear the good news.  But there was a problem.  These people did not speak the same language.  They are all different.  And this is what’s miraculous about this day.  When the Holy Spirit arrived, it rushed through the room like a wind and the people were aflame with the sense that God was with them and empowering them for understanding.  And what could have happened is that all these different people from so many different places gathered together with the disciples in Galilee and God could have made the miracle go the other way.  God could have allowed everyone to understand the one language of the Galilean disciples.  Pentecost could have been a flattening of all that diversity into uniformity.  A return to a monolith.  A time when everyone spoke the same language.  But that was not the miracle of Pentecost.  The miracle is that everyone heard everyone else’s different language and understood all of them.  The Spirit’s gift was the celebration of diversity.  And it was chaotic and a bit confusing at first.  But in the midst of the chaos, the Spirit made space for understanding. 

We cannot take the miracle of Pentecost for granted.  

Because even though everyone brought their full, different, beautiful selves, on Pentecost they had a common denominator.  The Holy Spirit was bouncing around them all like a room full of balloons filled with God’s breath.  That spirit united them, brought them joy, gave them focus, and ultimately, forged bonds between vastly different peoples.  If that miracle could happen 2000 years ago, can it not happen again today?  

What if, in a world where people still try to separate us by gender roles, country borders, religion, political parties, partisan ideologies and doctrines, us and them…what if, we claimed our roots as Pentecost People.  What if we used this annual birthday party to launch ourselves anew as diverse and beautiful people made by God to belong to each other through the transformative love of Jesus?  What if creating spaces of belonging for diverse people was the mission and purpose of our church?  

Is that the kind spirit you can catch?  Because that’s what God’s sending.  

Church, will you take a big deep breath with me.  Fill your lungs from the top to the bottom and then let it all out. This is the moment when the mantle of Jesus’s liberating work of peace and justice on this earth is passed to us.  

Let us pray with the fullness of God.   

Fill our lungs, Holy Spirit.  Fill our hearts with your story.  Fill our bones with your birth, your living, your loving, your justice, your healing, your peace.  Fill our souls with your victory over death itself.  With this fullness of your holy story, 

we breathe in 

and we breathe out.  

We exhale with relief that we are not in this alone. That your breath sustains us.  We exhale with the enduring promise that through you we find our place in this community of barrier-breaking, justice-seeking, neighbor loving people.  We exhale knowing we belong.  

O God, in the exchange of this air, in the movement from mountaintops to valleys, in the ups and downs of our actual lives, root us in our identity as your beloved community called to be diverse, and colorful and full of life.  Root us in your belonging.  

And all God’s people said Amen. 

“Plastic Jesus”

April 21, 2024 - Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Exodus 20:2-6; Romans 8:19-23

Fourth Sunday of Easter 

Exodus 20:2-6

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Romans 8:19-23

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

 Hi.  Good morning.  This is a weird title for a sermon, don’t you think?  Plastic Jesus.  What’s that about?  Jesus isn’t made of plastic.  Why would Jesus be made of plastic?  That would be cheap and, honestly a little kitschy.  Like the kind of knick-knack you might find gathering dust on the shelf of a church library established in 1963.  Or a dashboard decoration in a taxi-cab.  Or a toy inside a plastic easter egg.  When we like to think about God in more serious ways, like in worship and or in other special spots that feel sacred, plastic isn’t usually a factor in the equation.  

Plastic Jesus as a sermon topic?  What could it mean?  

Do you remember this moment?  This was November 19th on the Sunday when we introduced the idea of weighing plastic bags.  Why?  Because even though these big puffy bags of bags only weighed 1.75 pounds on John Jarvis’ fish scale, we believed that it might be possible for this community to save bags that would have normally been trashed, and ounce by ounce to add them up to meet a 1,000 pound goal.  What we didn’t know in this picture on November 19th, is that we would reach this goal in four short months.   Which tells you two equally true things.  You all have been amazingly diligent in saving your plastic.   AND, we use a lot of plastic.  

We’re zeroing in on plastic today because it’s something I think we’re all much more aware of after our journey to 1,000 pounds.  I’ve heard your stories about meticulously washing out food bags that you use to toss in the garbage.  I’ve heard you say you talked to store managers and construction crews about saving the industrial plastic wrap that they were just putting in the garbage and then bringing it into the church for recycling.  I’ve heard you say your children speak up when a piece of plastic is being put in the trash reminding you that it could and should be recycled instead.  I’ve even heard some of you took plastic out of the neighbor’s trash can when it clearly should have been recycled instead. 

The dedication with which you and the community as a whole have helped the church to achieve this 1,000 pound pile of plastic is simply breathtaking.  Part of it might have been the incentive of getting something tangible in exchange for our labors; seeing the transformation in action: plastic bag to plastic bench.  It has a nice symmetry.  It makes us feel warm and fuzzy and helpful inside.  Instead of filling up our trash bag now our plastic makes a place to sit in our church yard.  I think the bench was a big part of it.  

But when we step back and see what’s been accomplished, the bench is really a very small part of it.  Because what’s actually happened is that all of us who stepped up to this challenge have suddenly become conscious of how much plastic is in our lives.  And three months of noticing what plastic we’re using and studying it to see if it’s recyclable changes habits.  It will be hard for you to throw a bag into a landfill where it will sit for 500 years knowing that it could have instead been recycled.  We are, by the way, still collecting, as we help our elementary school toward their 1,000 pound goal.   But more than that, there is something morally significant about considering what we do with the plastic we use knowing there are options besides the landfill.  

I’m proud of you.  But this is just the beginning. 

You want to know why I’m preaching a sermon called Plastic Jesus?  Because plastic has become something like an idol for us 21st century humans.  One definition of an idol is misplaced dependency.  Leaning so heavily on something for convenience, or support, or salvation, that it quickly replaces something else more important.  I know none of us would admit out loud to worshipping plastic, but our dependency on it and our choice again and again for the convenience it offers, elevates it to a level of dangerous importance in our lives.  A dangerous level that, in practice, challenges other values we claim to hold dear.  We sometimes act like it's plastic that’s here to save us, not Jesus, subconsciously trading quick and easy for mindful and slow.  

Think about it: In the course of 7 decades (that’s less time than some of you have been alive) plastics have gone from being non-existent in our lives and homes to present in almost every imaginable product.  Try to find one thing that isn’t made or packaged with plastic and you’re going to have to look very hard.  

Since the 1950s when plastic was first mass-produced, its production has grown exponentially every year.  By the year 2019, 460 million tons of plastic were produced annually.  And while recycling is good, it has not been able to keep up.  It’s estimated that 2/3 of all the plastic that has ever been made in the 70 years of the “plastic age” we now live in… 2/3 ….has been released back into the environment and remains there in some form and will remain there in some form for the next 30 generations.  And even when it does begin to decompose, the plastic becomes debris floating in the oceans, micro- or nanoparticles in the soils, microfibers in water supplies, and microparticles in, yes, your body.

And the worst part of all of this, is that it’s us that all of this plastic is being made for.  Our demand keeps growing.  In the last 15 years alone, half of all plastic ever created has been made.  The primary reason for this incredible escalation?  A new phenomenon that our Tupperware-party hosting mothers and grandmothers couldn’t have even imagined.  The wide, wide world of plastic that you use only one time and then throw away.  They’re called single-use plastics and they are the biggest contributor to plastic waste.

A straw with our soda, a plastic bag to hold our produce in our shopping cart, a wrapper around our candy bar. Taken individually, each seems harmless. These modern conveniences are so common—and so quickly thrown out—that they hardly register in our minds. But single-use plastics come with a heavy cost.  A straw used once won’t ever go away.  And we must ask ourselves, is it worth it?  

The Hebrew Scripture is filled with warnings against worshiping things that are made with human hands. The prophets point to this as idolatry, as a key thing that leads people away from both God and neighbor. The quintessential example of this is found in Exodus 32 when, in Moses’ absence, the Israelites built a golden calf to worship, claiming that it was this thing that they had created that truly saved them from their enslavement. Plastics are a human invention that we often credit for much of what we consider to be progress in our society. And yet, as we look at the costs of extracting oil for its production, or the heavy toll that Creation bears in its disposal, we see that we have turned our backs on the true source of life in order to chase after a false sense of achievement and convenience.

Several years ago, I got this for Christmas.  It’s a bamboo cylinder that holds….. three metal straws in three convenient sizes.  Regular, medium and extra big (for milk shakes, I presume).  It was a really thoughtful gift with an eye toward helping me be more prepared to say no to plastic straws.  What happened, though?  This found a nice little spot nestled in my kitchen drawer.  It became a gift that I felt good about receiving because I liked its intent.  A souvenir of my good intentions.  But it didn’t lead to a change in my practice.  I’ve used it about one time for the simple reason that I don’t typically use straws at home.  I would need to get into a habit of having this with me in the places where I’m tempted to use a straw… restaurants, drive-thrus, milk shake stands. 

I give you this illustration to say, I feel like I’m preaching to the choir.  You all know plastic is a problem in theory.  It’s just that even when we know what the right thing is, putting it into practice means intentionally accepting that it will be inconvenient and it will take a change in habits. 

But we’ve done it before.  Four years ago when New York State banned plastic bags I didn’t know how I’d ever remember to bring bags with me to the grocery story.  Now it’s second nature and I’m guessing this is true for you, too.  We need to learn from that.  Even though the laws aren’t mandating it, we need to find ways to say no to the convenience of single-use plastic.  And maybe it starts by carrying a metal straw in your purse or glove compartment.  Or maybe for you it starts with getting a refillable water bottle so you aren’t buying so many plastic bottles of water.  Or maybe for you it means carrying a cloth bag to the grocery store to hold your veggies in the shopping cart.  Or maybe for you it means refusing the plasticware that comes with your take-out because you have a reusable set in your car.  

Straws, bags, plastic ware, bottles and cups are an easy place to start.

Over the last 70 years, and especially over the last 20 years, we convinced ourselves that we need and even deserve the convenience of plastic.  What we need though, is to understand that it is us that caused this problem and it’s us who bear the responsibility to solve it.  Creation waits for us.  God waits for us.  It’s up to us. 

Don’t stop recycling.  But before you recycle, consider some of these other important R’s. 

Reuse! Before you ever put anything in the recycling bin, first consider: is there some way this can be used again by you in your house?  Reduce! Buy less things in the first place.  Can you make it or grow it yourself?  Can you buy in bulk and conserve packaging?   Refuse! Say no to plastics when you have an alternative.  Buy your produce locally from a farmer who doesn’t shrink wrap it.  Go without a straw or bring your own.   Repair! We live in a disposable culture.  Don’t be so quick to throw that broken plastic thing away.  Have you ever used gorilla glue?  It’s amazing!  Better yet, consider spending a little more to buy a product that is made well enough that it won’t break.

 Restore! Plastic is all around us.  Pick it up when you see it on the ground.  Our church gathered 6 full bags of trash from the side of the road between here and Lawyersville and that wasn’t close to all of it.  

It doesn’t stop there.  Regenerate, rethink, review and remember. Remember who you are and Whose you are: You are a beloved child of God. The very first commandment God gave humanity was to care for creation (Genesis 1–2). In your approach to all things created by God and by humans, remember you are a caretaker. Let that sacred charge be your guide.

Let us pray: 

O God, 

We know there is much to be thankful for, even in our plastic crisis. We acknowledge that plastic is a useful resource when used appropriately, as in many life-saving medical applications. We can also give thanks for the many people leading the way in tackling the misuse of plastic and uniting to take action to be good stewards of your Earth. 

Thank you, God, for organizations that fight tirelessly for the betterment of us all. Organizations that honor Indigenous voices and wisdom as they do the crucial work of making connections between these dangerous impacts on the human, plant and animal health and the fossil-fuel driven production of plastics in the region. 

Thank you, God, for the thousands of people worldwide who take part in plastic-free efforts, reducing their own reliance on single-use plastic and encouraging others to understand the damage plastics are doing to creation and our global neighbors. 

Thank you, God, for the new global plastics treaty negotiations that are taking place during 2023 and 2024 and the opportunity to tackle our plastic crisis as a global community. 

Thank you, God, for people of faith for whom love of creation and care for God’s world is a core piece of their identity and their faith in the Lord, and who are using their creative gifts to reduce reliance on plastics and encourage others to bravely go against the flow of society standards. 

The rising levels of plastic pollution that bring destruction to the oceans and their inhabitants deeply sadden us, and we recognize that it grieves our Creator. We give thanks for all the voices working and praying for the day that will bring real change. 

Amen.

“Brother Sun, Sister Moon”

April 14, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Psalm 19; Luke 24:36b-48

Third Sunday of Easter 

Luke 24:36b-48

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

Happy Easter!  Today is the third Sunday of Easter and we have a tradition in the UMC of recognizing and celebrating Native American Ministries on this day.  And so, with that in mind, I want to tell you a rich story.  We tend to think of the Haudenosaunee peoples, the five nations of the Iroquois confederacy, as a united collection of peoples.  But that wasn’t always the case.  For a long time, there was conflict among the Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida and Onondaga peoples.  Tradition says that among this conflict the Creator sent a Peacemaker. “Gradually,” the story goes, “he turned each nation to peace, yet the Senecas remained unconvinced. During a conflict involving the Senecas, the sky suddenly darkened as an eclipse took place and halted the violence. Witnessing this awe-inspiring cosmic event, the Senecas embraced the Peacemaker as the emissary of the Creator, catalyzing a collective resolve towards unity. With that eclipse as a divine omen, the five nations of the Haudenosaunee convened, acknowledging it as a sacred moment, which inspired them to follow the Great Law of Peace.”  The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the earliest known democracy in our world, became a system of cooperation and governance rooted in equality, justice and collective decision-making.  This unifying eclipse is believed to have happened in the year 908 AD. 

The skies captivate us.  Rainbows, dark thunderclouds, brilliant sunsets, early morning first light.  And what’s truly amazing about us as a human race, is that the skies have always captivated us.  At the beginning of worship, we used words from St. Francis of Assisi in our call to worship who wrote a Canticle of the Sun in 1225 to praise God by noticing the heavenly bodies God has made and even affectionately see these bodies as part of our family.  Brother Sun, Sister Moon.  And then just now we just heard about the Haudenosaunee who in the millennia before that were so astonished by an eclipse that they put down their weapons and made peace.  And if we go even further back into the millennia before that, we have the Hebrew Psalter, an ancient book of songs.  And there is Psalm 19, a song written by David, a hymn in tribute to the majesty of the sky.

“The heavens are telling the glory of God;   and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.Day to day pours forth speech,   and night to night declares knowledge.”

(Ps 19:1-2)

It’s not just that the skies captivate us, it’s that they tell us something we can’t know on our own.  They point to a truth that is greater than us.  They show us beauty, majesty, wisdom, glory, and mystery.  But the most important word in that sentence is the plural pronoun us.  They show us beauty, majesty, wisdom, glory, mystery.  The sky is a giant tapestry that we cannot decide to live apart from.  Because we’re all under it, it makes a universal experience bond.  

On Tuesday, the NY Times published coverage of the eclipse and the article was entitled ”Looking Up, Together.” Through pictures and stories, it told us what we already knew.  In a giant swath of land cutting across the very middle of America, people of every kind were looking in the same direction at the same time.  For once it seemed there was something that could transcend us as individuals and subgroups, political parties, religions, generations, and races.  There was something bigger than us, uniting us.  It was called beauty, majesty, wisdom, glory and mystery.  A display of Divine proportions.  And even though we may have more scientific understandings of why eclipses happen now, the glory of the skies is no less universally captivating.  When the eclipse began, it really did feel like the moon could be our sister and the sun could be our brother, and everyone looking up together also related to each other in inexplicable ways.  When we all stand under the same sky and witness the same majesty, are we not all more alike than we ever thought?   Are we not all witnesses to the Divine, siblings in some way tied together?

I have to think this must have been the wisdom that led enemies to put down their weapons.  The wisdom that led to poems, canticles, hymns and psalms to be composed.   The wisdom that caused crowds of strangers to start clapping their hands together on Monday and cheering out loud, as if Sister Moon was somehow getting our encouragement and praise to say hello to the Sun. 

The eclipse happened a full week after Easter Sunday, but in our tradition the Easter story gets spread out over 50 days.  And in that sense, I would like to officially reframe this eclipse as an Easter Eclipse.  You know why?  

Because it’s mysterious, astonishing and totally hard to understand.  And that’s the way Easter feels, too.  Totally unbelievable.  Like, did that really just happen?  A man who was dead is now alive again.  Is there a scientific way to explain this?  Neil, can you help with this one, too?   

No, there’s really not.  And there’s something about the mystery of it that will have to be okay.  That’s what I like about today’s scripture, a continuation of the Easter story.  It’s actually still the same day.  Even though two of our weeks have passed, it’s still Easter day in this story.  Easter is such an important day we’re just going to stretch it out as long as we can.  

So, here’s how it went: Bright and early, the women found the empty tomb, astonishment.  Later in the day Jesus appeared on the road to Emmaus with friends who didn’t recognize him. They invite him in for dinner.  He broke the bread; they suddenly recognized him.  More astonishment.  And then while the disciples are talking all of this over late that evening, Jesus shows up again!  Right in the same room.  And they’re like: you’ve got to be kidding me!?   What’s going on?  And it’s a totally relatable response.  You’ve got to be a ghost or something, they say.  But Jesus is all about making it real.  Look at my hands he says.  And then don’t just look at them, touch them.  I’m real.  This is really happening.  And then it says in verse 41, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.”  In other words, he was standing right in front of them, they were touching his hands, and still they were not sure.  

And so then Jesus does what Jesus the only thing left he can do.  He asks the bewildered disciples for something to eat.  And suddenly in this very common act of expressing hunger and being shown hospitality (they gave him a piece of broiled fish), suddenly something in the room shifts.  Something that seemed impossible somehow becomes possible.  It’s at the table of shared hospitality and shared humanity that the disciples can let their guard down enough to have their minds opened.  And by the end of the evening, they are no longer stuck in doubt and astonishment, they have transformed into witnesses of something bigger than themselves.

On Monday, I too was doubtful.  I wasn’t sure it was really worth driving two hours north right after getting home from another long trip.  I was pessimistic that the traffic would be bad.  And on top of all of that we stopped at about 10 different places looking for eclipse glasses and there were none.  Everyone was out.  What would be the point of going to the eclipse if we couldn’t even see it?  

 But my family convinced me to go anyway.  We drove straight north into the Adirondacks on small country roads.  When we finally got to the little town of Blue Mountain Lake, it was actually not completely overrun with people as I feared and we even found the parking lot of the little United Methodist Church there to be empty.  So, we accepted that as a first sign of hospitality.  In walking around this little town, we quickly found that the fire department was offering their bathrooms and the art center not only had corn muffins and soup for us but also a huge stack of glasses they were happy to share.  Everywhere you looked people were coming together on lawns.  More offers of glasses.  Laughter, community among strangers.  And when the first bit of moon showed up against the sun, the news passed like a ripple down the street.  Get your glasses on!  Look up, everyone!  When the moon had made it to its spot, the community cheered and clapped.  And then we stood there in silence and awe as darkness embraced us.  

It would have been one thing to watch the eclipse and then to have told no one about the experience.  But that would not have really captured the moment.  The moment was extraordinary, in part, because it was shared.  Whether you watched it with someone else, or a whole group of people, or you saw it alone and then got to share about what you saw with someone else later that day.  We, too, like the disciples in the Easter story became witnesses to a divine story that was bigger than us.  And the story is not just about majesty in the skies and the movement from disbelief to awe, but the story is about shared humanity, hospitality, and the universal experience of sharing a sky with strangers all across the state and nation and planet.  The Divine is interwoven into our shared experience of living under the same sky and recognizing that that alone makes us related in the most fundamental way.  

Let us pray.

A prayer

By Jeff Ramsland, Mohawk  

Creator God, you have made all that is and proclaimed that “it is good.” Help us to discover in all You have made in Nature, the good wisdom about the interconnectedness of all things, about balance and about living in harmony. Remind us that we are not above nature, we are part of Creation; we live by the same laws as all of nature, and need to learn from what God has made. Creator, help us discover the power that lies in the wisdom and understanding of our role in the Great Mystery, and in honoring every living thing as a teacher.  May our spirits be in harmony with Yours.  Amen and amen.

“Let Yourself Be Surprised”

March 31, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church- Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

John 20:1-18

Easter Sunday

About 6 years ago April Fool’s day fell on Easter Sunday.  I was serving Warnerville UMC at the time and a member of the church offered a few weeks before Easter that she had baby chicks and would I like to include them in the service.  Without a moment of hesitation, it was a resounding YES.  I mean, why not?

Turns out a few weeks make a lot of difference in a chick’s life.  When Easter rolled around, in came the laundry basket of chicks, except now instead of cute little yellow fluff balls, they were long, leggy teenage chickens.  And boy did they know it, too.  While we had fun seeing them at children’s time, the laundry basket “container” only worked so long as the service progressed.  One by one they figured out how to climb out and by the time people came for communion there were teenage chickens wandering all over the front of the church.  It was a mess afterward, but it was the kind of Easter no one at that church will remember for a long time.  And you know why?  Because the whole ordeal was delightfully out of the ordinary.  It was a surprise, even for me and I had “planned” it.   

These days surprises are pretty hard to come by.

We have weather people who tell us what to expect tomorrow and most of the time they’re right.  I now have a little notification on my phone that pops up to stay, “You can expect the rain to begin in 15 minutes.”   We have traffic apps that will tell us which roads to avoid because of traffic and even where the cops are parked along the interstate.  I was even checking updates on scores for the March Madness game this weekend on ESPN and I noticed in the corner a little line that gave the percentage chance that each team was going to win.  I’m not saying these things are always right, but the point is, we have a tendency to engineer surprises out of our lives.

For people and a culture that likes to be in the know and have things under control, surprise is inconvenient, at best, and terrifying, at worst.  I don’t want to be surprised if I don’t have to. If you’re throwing a birthday party for me, I’d rather be prepared, have myself put together, and count down the days to it rather than be caught completely speechless in the moment.  

However, life doesn’t  fit very well into a neat and tidy box of predictability.  And herein lies the challenge / opportunity.  

For those of you who haven’t been with us the past few weeks and even those of you who have…. We’ve been doing a series of messages around the idea of waking ourselves up to God with different spiritual practices. We’ve been adding colors to our altar because the world outside was too gray and white and because the different practices that we were trying were designed to bring joy into life by bringing us closer to God. 

We don’t talk about waking up to God because it sounds nice or because it’s a happy topic.  We talk about it because we have to.  Ordinary life is like tunnel vision.  It’s a slog to get through one day and then on to the next.  What’s the point in living like that?  There has to be more to this life than just getting through each day.  That’s why we must open our eyes. The meaning in life that we long for comes when we look beyond ourselves.  I hope those of you who tried to do something outside of your ordinary routine this Lent found some small piece of joy.  I hope you noticed that God was already waiting for you there in that moment.  

I was out for a morning walk this week.  I decided to resume the practice of listening to public radio during my walk for this week as our spiritual practice for the week was community.  It didn’t take very many blocks for the main headline on the news to stop me dead in my tracks.  A boat twice the size of a Cobleskill village block had knocked down the Key Bridge in Baltimore.  I, like you probably, immediately searched for the video.  It was a surprise that seemed too shocking to be true.  Over the course of the next few hours and days there were many levels of tragedy that unfolded.  But in those initial moments of shock, it suddenly felt like the only thing to do was to stop and just be.  I don’t know how long I stood there on the side of the road but it was long enough for the story to finish and my fingers to get cold.  And that was okay.  

There’s nothing good about tragic surprises.  But the act of letting ourselves be surprised is actually really important. I would even venture to call it a spiritual experience.  What’s hard about surprise is that it makes us feel vulnerable.  It causes uncertainty.  Yet those very things that make us uncomfortable, are, actually necessary to staying present to the impact of the moment.  At its most basic level, surprise is like a crack in our togetherness.  Individually, or communally.  Surprise is a crack in our control.  A crack that cuts through any façade we might have had up to keep the unexpected at bay. 

I think we’ve all developed a kind of callousness.  I’m only 39 years old and I’ve seen more terrible, horrible things happen in the world than I would ever care to tell you about.  With each piece of bad news that comes over the air waves, I can feel myself adding a layer of protection.  A new piece of armor to shield me from the emotional distress of another heart-breaking piece of information.  The armor we put on is what we think will help us push through and stay strong in the tunnel of our lives.  It’s the armor that we think will protect us from pain and sorrow.  Until one day a tiny crack in that armor will let something unexpected through, and it will go deep… deeper than we could have imagined, and we will wake up and realize our whole body aches from the weight of that armor.   

That crack in your armor is the spiritual experience of surprise.  And it’s not a defect.  It’s a gift.  

I can think of no better a day to rekindle the spiritual experience of surprise than on Easter.  We hear the reading from John and we try to imagine what it must have been like for Mary to first come to an empty tomb and then later to see a man she believed to be dead standing before her eyes, living and breathing. If that’s not a spiritual experience of surprise, I don’t know what it is.  

You probably didn’t walk in here this morning to hear about Jesus’ resurrection for the first time.  You weren’t born yesterday.  Easter comes every year.  The stores switched over to pastels and Reese Eggs months ago. In 2024, almost 2000 years after Mary’s encounter in the garden, there is very little about Easter that comes as a shock.  Yet, still, somehow, 2000 years later the story should still have the power to stop us in our tracks. Because it’s the greatest story that’s ever been told.  

Another pastor I know met a woman on Friday who happened to be wondering out loud what this business with “good Friday” was all about.  And my friend told this woman, who was hearing for the first time, that on Good Friday, Jesus Christ—God’s own child—died, was killed at the hands of people who were disgusted by the unconditional love he offered to everyone he met.  My friend said after she told the woman this, it brought tears to her eyes.  

Those cracks in our armor are risky.  Because it is through those arresting moments of awe and wonder and genuine surprise that we open ourselves up to emotions that go deep, really deep.   And that’s scary.  And that’s why I think it’s so easy to plan surprises out of our lives.  To callous ourselves from experiencing feelings that might scare us.  

But this is the promise that God wrote into the sky with all the colors of the rainbow.  The worst thing in life is never, ever, the last thing. It can’t be.  That’s what the empty tomb is there to tell us.  If that news doesn’t surprise you, then you need to listen a little closer.  This whole thing, this Good Friday to Easter Sunday thing is about death and life.  It’s about how God continues, to this day, to reach into the armored suits we make for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, saying everything is going to be okay.  It’s about hearing that crack and saying with surprise and joy: Christ is risen.  He is risen, indeed.

It’s okay to feel things.  It’s okay to be surprised.  It’s okay to wake up in the morning and have your breath taken away by the reality of being alive for another day.  It’s okay to weep during the evening news.  It’s okay to gasp out loud when you find flowers growing where the snow just melted.  It’s okay. In fact, it’s good.  Very good.  

Now, please don’t hear me saying go crazy tomorrow with the April Fools pranks.  I hope my own family is listening to that.  But what I am saying is sometimes a little surprise in our lives is not terrible when the alternative is being too numb to feel either pain or joy.

---

Amy Oden, in her book, God’s Welcome, tells a story from the ancient desert mothers and fathers of the 3rd century. A novice asked the teacher “Holy one, is there anything I can do to make myself closer to God? The elder replied, “As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.” The novice responded, “Then of what use are these spiritual disciplines of prayer? The teachers answered, “To make sure that you are awake when the sun rises.”

There is nothing you can do, or anywhere you can go to separate yourself from the love of God.  Not even in death.  But if you are not awake when the sun rises, you might miss it all.  Let your guard down, be surprised, weep, laugh, mourn, be in awe.  God is with you.     

“Solidarity Overcomes”

March 24, 2024 - Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Mark 11:1-11

Palm Sunday

Mark 11:1-11

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2and said to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. 3If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.” ’ 4They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, 5some of the bystanders said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ 6They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. 7Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. 8Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. 9Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,‘Hosanna!   Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!10   Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

11 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Color….  Why color in Lent?   Because spiritual practice is not one-dimensional and Lent doesn’t need to be depressing.  When spiritual practice is something you want to do instead of something you feel obligated to do, it just hits differently.  

Practices – Creativity, Waking up to God, Fasting, Justice, Simplicity, Compassion.  Each week we talked about practical ideas for how to bring these practices into your daily life.  In just a moment I’m going to ask if you had an experience with one of the practices you’d like to share about.  

But first, I’ll share this.  Trying things out collectively has been fun.  I mentioned early on in Lent that there is kind of a stereotype of some spiritual practices in Lent… like no red meat on Fridays that have been ingrained because of other Christian traditions.  And while the whole thing of what we are doing this year is to mix it up and try new things, there is something powerful about trying the same things at the same time as other people.  On the day during our week of simplicity when we went meat free, it was fun thinking about others of you being creative in your kitchens.  We even shared recipes on our church Facebook page.  Community practices not only accountability but also solidarity.

So, what did you take away from Lent this season.  Where there any practices that left an impact on you?  Maybe it was one in our color wheel, and maybe it was something different.  

___

Red- It’s been a colorful journey.   And it’s not over yet.  One more color was added today, red.  The spiritual practices haven’t really had a specific connection to the colors thus far this lent.  Except for today.  This week’s spiritual practice is community and the color red lines up with the liturgical color for this week in the giant color wheel of the church year.  Why red?  And why community?  

Palm Sunday is a pivot point in Jesus’ story and community is a key piece today and this week.  Word had really spread near and far about Jesus.  His teaching, his healing, his radical love. And people were excited to not just see him, but to be in solidarity with him.  Some historians have noted that on the day Jesus entered Jerusalem there was not just one parade, but two.  One for Roman governor Pontius Pilate, coming into the city with his war horses and suits of armor in a show of force before the Passover holiday.  And on the other side of town, there was Jesus intentionally riding a humble donkey low to the ground, knowing full well that in this city he had enemies.  But instead of a suit of armor, Jesus came ride in with something stronger: community.  

Mark tells us that many people gathered to line Jesus' path. They cut palm branches to wave as he passed by and they lay their cloaks over the dusty road, a humbling gesture of respect.  

But the parade was just the beginning and marked a pivot point between a festive and celebrated entrance into the city and something much more painful to come. The color of this week, Holy Week, is red because Palms give way to passion.  Passion in the sense of suffering.  Upon entering the city it’s clear that Jesus’ message of table-turning love and justice has turned the authorities against him to the point that they are willing to do anything to get rid of him. His community sticks with him, but it’s hard for everyone to stay.  Some feel like they might be in danger just by associating with him.  Others wonder if backing away slowly might make their departure less noticeable.  But still others remained.  His disciples risk a lot just to have a goodbye dinner with him in the Upper Room on Thursday.  And when Jesus falls under the weight of his own cross, a member of his community stepped off of the sidelines and helped carry the weight.  Several gospel accounts speak to how a group of women stayed with Jesus right until the very end.  Others in his community may not have been at the foot of the cross, but they were working in the background making arrangements for a respectful burial and standing up for his teachings in the days and years to follow.  

It's actually the hard turns in life that show the true significance of community.  Yeah, the high moments like parades and celebrations are fun and festive, but the community that sticks around when the parade has ended is the true blessing.  

And here in lies the message for us today.  Community is about solidarity.  And solidarity overcomes the hardest of things.  We show up here week after week not just because the snacks are good, though they are.  Not just because the music fills us up, though it does.  Not just because we individually get something out of the message, and maybe sometimes you do.  We are a community of Jesus-followers because this was never a solo-sport.  Gathering together as a group not only continues the tradition of solidarity with Jesus, but extends that solidarity to one another.  When you show up here, you never know who is going to be uplifted by your smile.  You never know who will hear your story and be inspired.  You never know who desperately needs a kind word today.  When we show up here in church as a community, we show up not for ourselves, but for each other.  

We’re entering the most difficult week in our Christian faith.  A week filled with deep sorrow and longing as we see God incarnate suffer and die for loving too much.  The most important thing to do this week is to gather.  This is when community matters most.  You could skip from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and never even wonder about what you missed.  You could, but you’d be missing something irreplicable.  Community is not just about the high moments, but also the lows.  Collectively we bear witness to suffering and show up for each other even when it’s hard.  That’s the kind of solidarity that overcomes even the greatest odds.  

As we sing our next hymn, I’m going to invite our children to come forward and help as we prepare our sanctuary for Good Friday. Our ushers will also move through the room to receive your offerings.  

But first, let us pray.  

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna

March 17, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

John 12:20-33

Fifth Sunday of Lent

John 12:20-33

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew, then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

27 “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say: ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people[a] to myself.” 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

This is a dill seed.  It grows on a stalk like this.  Dill is an herb with a really lovely, delicate flavor.  Its seeds aren’t really edible, but they also give off the flavor and sometimes we use them when we make pickles.  But if you let a dill plant grow until it gets to this point with its seeds, and then if you leave it alone even longer, the seeds will eventually scatter.  

I learned this not the first year I planted dill, but the year after.  What began as a little corner of my herb garden where I’d planted a small dill plant, turned the following year into a dill forest that towered over everything else all throughout the entire garden.   The dill was growing everywhere.

I didn’t mind at all.  I love dill.  I cut bunches of it and dried it in our house and we had dill all winter.  But what to do with the seeds?  If one small plant had produced this much spread from one year to the next, surely all the seeds produced by this forest of dill should not just be scattered to the wind to grow in the grass and get mown down.  So June and I decided to carefully harvest all of the seeds.  

And it made a giant bowl full.  That Christmas we had an idea. Not being much of annual Christmas card senders, it seemed like a good year to do something different.  We put a small handful of seeds into tiny bags and we taped them onto cards that we sent to all of our faraway friends and family.  It was like our giant dill forest was blowing its seeds far and wide.  

For months and years afterward people kept telling us, “we planted your dill seeds and they grew well!”  Now I’m sure not everyone planted them and I’m sure they didn’t all grow well.  But it was fun to think about spreading seeds through the mail near and far from our Cobleskill dill plants.  

Seed metaphors show up fairly often in Jesus’ teachings.   What do you think it is about seeds?  

• They’re small but have a big potential.  

• They represent life.  

• They can lie dormant for years and then, in the right conditions, spring into life.  

• They do their best work in the dark.

• And, finally, and perhaps most relevant to our story today, the seed has to undergo a change in order for it to grow and spread.   

Jesus was a wise teacher.  He knew the power of seeds.  And what we heard today from the Gospel of John was Jesus’ last public teaching.  With Holy Week beginning next Sunday, the end is in sight.  A change is coming. “The hour has come,” Jesus says.  And we may assume Jesus means the hour has come for him to die.  But instead Jesus says the hour has come for him to be glorified.  And then he uses a seed metaphor.  

V. 24 “…Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.”

What?  Unless the seed gets buried by the darkness of the earth and transforms, it is still just a seed.  But if it lets the darkness change it.  If it leaves its old self behind, something new sprouts up.  In other words, Jesus says: 

v. 25 “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 

What we may see as suffering, Jesus sees as transformation.  And he’s not just talking about himself any more.  Any life that is freed from self-centered isolation can transform into generosity and compassion for the flourishing of the greater whole.  

Compassion literally means to suffer together. It is the desire to see someone else’s suffering and join them in it.  And you know what that requires, putting something of yourself down so that you have the capacity to help carry the load.  It’s like a seed.  A small but mighty action where we put our own needs aside so that we can be with someone else in their darkness.  And what always happens, is that when we enter that darkness alongside those who suffer, we are changed.  We begin to understand what it means to truly live.  And sometimes, oftentimes, the situation is itself transformed.  

There’s a psychologist named Dacher Keltner, who has been studying the compassion instinct in humans.  He found that mammals, all mammals, have a unique survival mechanism. The only way this species survives is because we are biologically wired in our vagus nerve, deep inside our brainstem, to respond to the cries of our children.  And not just our own children.  We are primally wired to respond to distress signals from the vulnerable.  It’s what has allowed our new generations to survive and it's fundamentally part of who we are as living beings.  

So why is compassion something we need to practice in this fifth week of Lent?  Why do we need to add it to our color wheel of spiritual practices if it’s something that comes so naturally?  This is why: even though it’s part of our human nature to respond to the cries of the vulnerable, we have become really good at figuring out ways to deny and ignore this core part of our humanity.  So good in fact, that if anything has the power to help our species decline, it will be our willful ignoring of our compassionate instinct.  

We don’t have to look very hard to see this trend.  How much easier it is to ignore the suffering of others, to pretend like it’s too far away for us to hear, to assume someone else is attending to it, or even, sometimes to use it for our own gain?  

But if compassion means meeting someone in their suffering and allowing ourselves to be changed in the process, then we cannot rely solely on our instincts.  We must accept that it also takes bravery.  Just like our children sang.  It will take bravery and it will take practice.  

So, what are some ways we can practice compassion this week?   

• First, today is UMCOR Sunday.  You might remember that two weeks ago we took a “Love your Neighbor” offering.  We raised $600 in one day’s offering.  That’s amazing.  And we promptly sent this money directly toward International Disaster relief where the United Methodist Committee on Relief is working for short term and long-term solutions for justice in hurting places around the world. Today is the Sunday when we, as a body of congregations across the globe, collect an offering to cover UMCOR’s administrative costs.  We do this separately so that 100% of what we raise on other occasions can go directly to the need.  I invite you to find the envelope in your pew and give what you can.

• Volunteering for Operation: Home Repair.  This time of service to our neighbors is coming up July 8-19.  We take part in critical home repairs for neighbors unable to live safely. Consider committing to this mission project by volunteering.

• Homework sheet found in your bulletin!

Holy Week begins next week.  And I’ll be honest and say this is not always an easy time to be a Christian.  This whole part of our Christian faith, this part where Jesus, our Savior, goes through unspeakable pain and suffering, and eventually dies at the hands of people who he loved and longed to help, is really difficult.  But if we look at it through what Jesus is saying today, we see something different.  The cross is actually an act of divine subversion.  They thought they were killing him, but really they were making possible the “lifting up” of something better.  They thought they were burying him in a grave, but really they were planting him like a seed. And this is how compassion works.  We enter the darkness alongside those who are suffering and together with God’s grace, something new rises.

Grace and Peace to you.

Pastor Anna

“Simplicity as Resistance”

March 10, 2024 - Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Matthew 6:19-21, 25-34

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Matthew 6:19-21, 25-34

‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

This week two different people recommended the same book to me.  Given that our theme today is simplicity, I don’t think it was a coincidence.  The book is called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and as I began to scan the pages, this jumped out at me:

Meister Eckhart, a thirteenth-century spiritual teacher once said, “There is no greater obstacle to God than time.”  

There is no greater obstacle to God than time.  

I haven’t read much of the rest of the book but the premise is compelling.  Our obsession as a culture with hustling and rushing and worrying our way toward some future moment robs us of the present moment.  And when we lose touch with the present moment, we lose touch with God.  

Time is indeed a great obstacle to God.  

Have you heard of Hustle Culture?  It’s hustling and rushing and worrying our way toward some future moment or some future outcome.  It’s idea that there is always more and that more is better.  The harder you work, the more you can have.  The more you have, the better your life.  And it all starts with a good hustle today to make sure tomorrow works out as planned.  This isn’t just about the events on your calendar.  It’s about the worry we put into our retirement savings, the stress we invest in our children’s future wellbeing, the angst we find when we think we’re not doing enough, the fear we experience when confronted with pain.  Hustle culture is about staying in front of all of this.  Being on top of it.  Being in control.   

--

No better time to talk about hustle than on the weekend when we lose an hour, am I right?  Man, I really don’t like time changes.  I don’t like the way losing an hour makes me feel groggy for days.  I don’t like the mind games the switch plays on me when my whole body is adjusted to certain levels of light equaling certain times of the day.   And I really don’t like waking up in the dark again.  

But if there was a flip side, this is what it would be.   If we can be so willy-nilly with our clocks moving them up and back throughout the year, doesn’t that just prove that time is nothing more than an illusion?  

And now it’s time for the meme of the day. “Don’t forget to set your clock on fire this Sunday.  Time isn’t real.”  

I’m probably not the only one who wanted to set their clock on fire this morning when it was asking me to wake up at an ungodly dark hour.   

Time is so deceptive, though.  I especially feel this as the parent of a younger child.  The passage of time brings so much angst.  We watch the minutes turn into hours, hours into days, days into years and suddenly we realize we spent so much time worrying that time was going by too fast and hustling through the challenges of the day, that we missed being in the present moment.  

I’m the first one to say time is precious, but what I really ought to mean is that the present moment is precious.  And when we let our obsession with what comes next and how we’re going to get there distract us, we lose awareness of how irreplaceable the present is.

This is what Jesus meant when he said 

Do not worry about tomorrow.  Tomorrow will take care of itself.  

---

Today is the fourth Sunday in Lent.  And we’re working our way through a color wheel of spiritual practices.  We’re exploring different ways to access the spiritual world this Lent and thinking outside the box when it comes to traditional spiritual disciplines.  

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably noticed a subtheme here.  Every spiritual practice we’ve introduced has had an element of being counter-cultural.   Because let’s be honest.  For a nation and culture that often identifies predominantly as Christian, we’re actually not very good at the spiritual practices Jesus teaches, whether it’s paying attention, or fasting, or turning tables or, this week, simplifying.  We need practice.  Lent doesn’t have to be a drag.  It can be a colorful exploration into the patterns and habits that fuel our everyday life. And when we see things that are actually doing more to separate us from God, Lent gives us the opportunity to push the pause button.  To step back from the cultural expectations around us and recenter on the counter-cultural message of Jesus.  

And this week is one of the best/ hardest messages to hear because as important as time is to the conversation, that’s not just where Jesus’ radical call to simplify ends.  If time is an obstacle to God, so too is our obsession with materialism.  Stuff.  Things.  Money.  Comfort.  

And these things are linked together with time in Jesus’ message as all being related to the want for more.  And it’s the want for more that pulls us away from the present moment and any concept of how blessed we already are.  How we are enough.  And that we have enough. 

When we store up treasures on earth and spend our days worrying about the future, we rob ourselves of the peace God wants for us.  God wants the luster of hustle to fade so that we see the beauty of what’s right in front of us.  God wants the obsession with the future to go away so that we replace worry with gratitude.  

In other words, simplify.  

If I were to ask you, “What, at this moment, is lacking?”  What would you say?  

--

Yesterday we noticed outside of the parsonage that there was a horse and buggy tied up to the telephone pole in our yard.  It’s not the first time I’ve seen an Amish vehicle like this parked so that its owners could shop in our church’s thrift store.  

When I see the Amish, I often think, ah, now that’s the simple life.  I have tenderness for the ways the Amish interpret the teachings of Jesus to resist so many of the trappings of our materialistic, chaotic hustle culture.  

But the temptation is to think simplicity is all or nothing.  As if to say when a buggy passes us, now that’s simplicity… and everything else is too far gone.

But this is simply true.  And also where the resistance comes in.  Simplicity is not all or nothing.  Simplifying our lives means making small decisions every day that resists the dominant culture of hustle and worry and materialism.  

Here are a few examples:

I’ve been watching a lot of college basketball lately, well really only one team, but still.  But the commercials drive me crazy.  So after not having a working remote for the last 10 years, we found out we could get a universal remote for a small amount of money and now we can mute the commercials.  So instead of being assaulted by all the things the world thinks I need to make my life better and more, I can have silence.  This isn’t the simplicity high road here, but it’s a small step.  

Here's another example.  

Observe without documenting.  This is a message for anyone who finds themselves filling up their phone with 10 angles of the same scene.  The root of this behavior is that we fear not preserving the moment in just the right way.  And so we spend the moment documenting it.  We think we’re preserving it.  But we’re actually losing it.  This week, can you observe a beautiful moment without feeling like you need to document it?  

How about this: 

Don’t brag about your busyness.  It’s not a badge of honor.  Brag instead about how you rested.  Or how you spent the day at home with your family.  Or how you said no to something.  

The list goes on and on.  There are so many small things we can do to bring simplicity into our lives from eating less fast food and growing more slow food in our gardens to mending and repairing things that are broken instead of just automatically tossing them out.  

I’d like to finish our message time together today by inviting Suzanne up to lead us in a practice of being present to the moment right in front of us.  Suzanne is going to lead us in a guided meditation.  

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna

“Turning Tables”

March 3, 2024

John 2:13-22; 

Third Sunday of Lent

John 2:13-22

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

So I’ve got a little Lenten joke for you not based at all on anything real.

It was mid-March and a couple of friends are talking about Lenten fasting.  The one man tells his friend: I decided to give up procrastination for Lent this year. 

His friend responds:  That’s great. How’s it going for you?

The man says: Yeah, pretty good, you know, I’m still working on it.  

If that joke were less like real life it wouldn’t be nearly as funny.  Here we are in the middle of Lent and we’re talking about how we can use this season as a time to try new spiritual practices.  Try being the operative word.  And after a week of discussing fasting and the hard work of denying the things we depend on the most in order to renew our dependence on God, I gotta say, I’m still working on it, too.  It feels like good and important spiritual work, but it’s hard.  

This week we’re continuing our series exploring a color wheel of spiritual practices, but we’re pivoting a bit.  For the past two weeks we’ve focused on practices that were quite individual.  Waking up to God and Fasting are about shifting your own personal life to stretch and make more room for God.  And this is traditionally what Lent has been about: Personal growth.  Personal lengthening, stretching, as the days lengthen around us.  

The pivot this week is unconventional in Lent tradition.  This week, instead of looking inward to our hearts for growth and change, we look outward toward the public square.  And you thought conventional Lenten practices were hard?  When we turn outward we open ourselves up to a whole different world of temptation, procrastination and apathy. 

It’s hard, and perhaps harder, because the world is big and bringing love to the public square includes some inherent risk.  This is the nature of justice, our spiritual practice for this third week of Lent.  Cornell West famously defined justice as “what love looks like in public.”  It’s not complicated but it feels risky?  How do we bring love into the public?  How do we bring our Christian value of “Love your neighbor as yourself” into the broader world?  What does it look like?  And even more so, perhaps, where do we start?  

Most of you are probably familiar with the popular Christian saying: “What Would Jesus Do?” conveniently abbreviated WWJD so that you could wear it on a necklace or a bracelet as a reminder.  It was really popular in the 90s when I was in elementary school and I remember how it was almost even cool to decorate brightly colored bracelets with the iconic letters WWJD.  As honest as the question is, I really think this pop-Christian WWJD trend was mostly geared toward curbing adolescent mischief. 

And that’s why, with this in mind, it’s now time to show you one of my favorite memes on the subject. 

I like to pull this out and dust it off when we have the privilege of reading the John 2:13-22 account of one particular “What Jesus Did” moment.  

If anyone ever asks you “What Would Jesus Do?” remind them that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibilities.  I’m pretty sure no one really meant that when they encouraged us to make sparkly WWJD bracelets.  

This is all ties together, I promise.  

When we see our discipleship as being only about our own personal relationship with Jesus, whether it’s through WWJD bracelets or Lenten disciplines that never take us outside of our heads, we miss the opportunity to see what Jesus himself was trying to show us in moments like this.  

Sometimes what love looks like in public is this.  Because sometimes when we actually get outside of our heads and the walls of our sanctuaries we see that the public square has gotten pretty … distracted… from love.  

When Jesus entered the Temple in Jerusalem, he was essentially coming into the public square of his day.  The Temple was the religious and cultural center of life.  Jesus was likely coming there, along with throngs of other worshippers, because it was Passover, a high holiday and ancient traditional gathering celebrating God’s salvation in their exodus from Egypt thousands of years prior.  And so for many centuries traditions around Passover had become formalized and ingrained, in ways any member of any Christian church is already familiar with.  We find ourselves doing certain traditions because it’s what we’ve always done and it’s what we believe we’re supposed to be doing.  And yet the practices themselves had eclipsed the spirit of the tradition itself.  

This is what Jesus walked into.  He’s come to worship but instead he’s confronted in the public square of his faith with traditions that put boundaries around who can worship.  First you had to get your money changed into Temple currency and then you had to buy an unblemished animal to sacrifice.  And no matter the price, you were stuck paying it.  All traditions and rituals that had been encouraged by the Temple leaders, and likely they thought they were doing the right thing.  But it’s amazing how Jesus with his fresh eyes and passion for the spirit of the faith, not the letter of the law, saw this scene.  

To Jesus, this was the opposite of love.  This cheapened God’s house because it put unnecessary hurdles around God’s love.  We don’t have to wonder What Would Jesus Do?  because we know what did Jesus did.  This is one of those rare stories about Jesus that makes it into every Gospel account.  Jesus got angry at the sight of injustice in the public square.   And he didn’t just pray about it.  He also took action.  He disrupted the status quo.  And, not only that, he gave his disruption as a sign of things to come.  The place where we gather to worship will never be a building whose access is controlled by a few and whose traditions become stumbling blocks.  The essence of our worship will be through our God who choose to take on flesh and live among us and with us.  A God incarnate in Jesus Christ who took his love into public by leveling the playing field.  

Jesus valued justice.  And not just the justice of a few, the justice of the whole.  The dignity and equality of all humans, women, children, refugees, those with sickness, those with shame, those with grief, those with nowhere else to turn.  

As Christians, we sell ourselves short when we reduce Jesus to only a personal savior for our own journey to eternal life.  Jesus didn’t just die for our sins, he lived to fight against the sins of society so that barriers could be broken down and tables built longer.  

We spent last week talking about Fasting and the role of intentional denial in a world of over-consumption.  We talked about how easily Fasting can slip into a pursuit of vain goals.  We can become so consumed with our own holiness, that we miss the point.  And that seems to be Jesus’ point today.  But he wasn’t the first to make it.

Centuries before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah said: 

‘Why do we fast, but you do not see?   Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?’Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day,   and oppress all your workers.Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight   and to strike with a wicked fist.Such fasting as you do today   will not make your voice heard on high.Is such the fast that I choose,   a day to humble oneself?

Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,   and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?Will you call this a fast,   a day acceptable to the Lord?

Instead, the prophet Isaiah suggests there is a different approach to this holy life we could take.  

Is not this the fast that I choose:   to loose the bonds of injustice,   to undo the thongs of the yoke,to let the oppressed go free,   and to break every yoke?(Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,   and bring the homeless poor into your house;when you see the naked, to cover them,   and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

We are called to spiritual disciplines that not only benefit ourselves, but overturn systems of power and dominance.  We are called to stand up to unloving and unjust practices.  We are called to find everyone who has been excluded by the powerful and bring them to tables that have been flipped so that we can instead eat a meal there together.  

Yulia Nevalnaya spoke out this past week about her husband, Alexei Navalny, who died in inhumane prison conditions at the hands of a Russian government more concerned about its own wealth and power than the health and freedom of its people.  In the face of enormous grief, Yulia shared that her husband Alexei had been a devoted Christian in the Orthodox Church, even when his church had disappointed him.  He followed the fast of his faith community regularly for Lent, even in prison.  We talked about that fast last week, a pretty stark vegan diet.  But that’s not where his fast ended.  Julia Navalnaya said Alexei’s political activism and fight for justice was inspired by his Christian values.  His passion for bringing love to the public square was fueled by the justice-seeking nature of Christ himself.

I cannot imagine what it’s like to see someone you love fight for justice until they have given all they have to give.  And yet, and yet is this not the foundation of our faith in Christ?  Who gave all he had to give, not just so that we might have personal salvation, but also that the world in its entirety might have hope against the injustice of tyranny.  He lived to build a movement of justice-seekers that would not die with him on the cross, but be raised up to meet the challenges of each new generation. Jesus knew what he started would not end with him.  

But, my friends, this is the hard part. Justice, like any spiritual practice, must be intentionally practiced.  It doesn’t happen on its own.  And yet it’s not always clear how to bring our love into the public square.   But the good news, we don’t have to go at this alone. 

I have a few practical steps for you to take. 

First, a guide to prompt you into new and different types of justice-oriented actions this week. Maybe these will spark some deeper action, and maybe they will simply stretch you to think outside of the traditional lines. 

Second, today we are taking a special offering called “Love your Neighbor.”  It can be difficult to know how to help turn the tables in conflicts that rage halfway across the world in places like Ukraine and Palestine/Israel.  Because we are a global denomination, our justice-seeking relief organization has their finger on the pulse of injustice, directing funds and support not just to the high-profile conflicts that fill our news reports, but to the ones that get very little coverage.  The United Methodist Committee on Relief is one of our best outlets for directing our financial gifts to places of injustice around the world.  In the last year they have provided grants for relocation support in Gaza and Israel and psychosocial treatment and trauma counseling to women and children, emergency food for thousands left hungry after the Tana River flooded in Kenya, infrastructure and medical support for rebuilding devastated cities in Ukraine, and so much more.  With your Love Your Neighbor special offering today, you go above and beyond your regular giving to put resources into the hands of those who most need it worldwide. If you would like to donate online, please visit https://www.cobleskillumc.org/giving and in the dropdown menu select “Disaster Relief”

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna

“Endurance for the Journey”

February 4, 2024

Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39

5th Sunday after Epiphany

Mark 1:29-39

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ He answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

I’d like to start my message today by playing you a video I filmed on my last day in Iona. Some of you know that I filmed little videos Monday- Friday on the full days I was in Iona and I shared them with you all in our church Family Facebook Group (in fact, they’re still there if you missed them).  We were leaving the island on Saturday and I hadn’t planned to film anymore, but as I took one last walk around the island I was struck by a reflection and felt like I needed to say it out loud. 

What did my pilgrimage teach me?  That all of life is a journey, each of us individually, and also all of us together as a community trying to follow Jesus.  

I was really struck by the way Christianity as a whole, represented in this particular community on Iona, has been through so much change: inspiring phases like when Christianity existed outside of the empire and it was just a practice of faith without the corruption of power.  But then within a couple hundred years, that beautiful community was raided by Vikings.  When it was rebuilt, there were again threads of Jesus’ vision of a beloved community.  Female and male monastics living side by side, working together for good.  But then it wasn’t long before the institutionalization and power of Christianity came back in with practices like indulgences (asking pilgrims to pay great sums to make a place more beautiful and in exchange the church promises your afterlife will be better).  After the Protestant Reformation when most of the threads of Celtic Christianity were stamped out, again out of the ruins a new community rekindling the eternal light of Jesus was born with George MacLeod.  And if it seems like a whirlwind, it’s because it is!  The journey of being a Christian over these last 2000 years has been complicated and there have been a lot of times of not getting it right.  Times of pain.  Also, times of clarity.  

And in many ways, all of us right here, right now, are in the midst of a journey coming from somewhere, going toward something else.  Maybe we dream of how the church can still do better.  How Jesus calls us to more radical and self-less love.  Maybe we think about our own lives and how we’re traveling a path that takes a bend around a corner we cannot see.  How we’re being called into something unknown or uncertain.

Today we’re wrapping up this series on Seeking—a series about journeys and self-discovery.  It included Wise Men finding a better way home, the waters of baptism waking us up to the moment right in front of us, the summons of Jesus to use our full-selves in service of a better world, and the whole-ness Jesus longs to offer us in body, mind and spirit.  As we wrap up this series, I have one last question:

If life is a journey with lots of twists and turns.  Where do we find the resilience to keep going when the going gets tough?  How do we get and stay reenergized for what comes next, especially when we can’t see exactly what’s next.

When I look around at where we stand right now we are pilgrims, each us on our own journey and united together in this space where our journeys overlap.  I think about how far we as a church have come.  How much love and acceptance we’ve tried to spread.  How we are changing the narrative away from judgement and shame and rekindling the justice and love of Jesus’ original teachings.  

We’ve come a long way.  And yet how far we have still to go.  How many people still do not trust that God is love?  How much violence still happens because of religion?  Even within the year we will see political battles play out that use God as a means to justify horrible, unloving positions.  How do we find endurance to keep going?  

The Gospel of Mark tells us this series of encounters Jesus has.  This is still all on the same day as the story from last week with the healing in the synagogue.  And at first pass the scripture can feel kind of like rapid fire events.  But if we stop to break it down, like I did with the children, we see that within Jesus’ work of healing there are sources of well-timed nourishment that give him endurance for each difficult stage that comes next.   

Worship in the synagogue helped fill him up with God’s love. Then he was able to give it out again to a woman who was hurting.  Eating a meal with his friends filled him up with God’s love.  Then he was able to give it out again to another man who was hurting.  Spending time by himself praying helped fill him up with God’s love.  Then he was able to give it out again as he moved on to new towns full of more hurting people.  This is not the story of a savior who was non-stop.  This is a story of a savior who cultivated resilience for his journey, for his work, by refilling his soul every time it felt empty.  

To keep a fire burning brightly takes care and attention. To sustain our journeys we need to pay attention to refueling our spiritual lives.  

This past week was a holiday most widely celebrated among Celtic Christians known as Imbolc, the feast day of St. Brigid, an important figure in the development of early Christianity across places like Iona, Scotland and Ireland.  The holiday is celebrated on February 1, in part, because this is the mid-way point between the winter solstice and spring equinox.  It’s a holiday celebrated for saying “keep going, you can do it!”  This is really how St. Brigid is remembered.  A cheerleader for going forward.  She’s well known in Scotland and Ireland for the tradition of keeping a fire burning as a sign of hope that God is with us.  In Kildare, Ireland one single fire was kept burning for thousands of years in this tradition.  Tending the fire so that even in the darkest hours there would be embers ready to ignite.  Even though Protestant Reformers put the Kildare fire out, faithful followers of the tradition then kept fires going in their home hearths.  So powerful was this idea that we need hope and encouragement from the light of Christ to keep going day and night, that the tradition made its way into houses of worship.  Here’s a picture of the chapel of St. Oran on Iona, a building even older than the Abbey from the 1100s.  And here’s a picture of the inside where a fixture hangs over the altar.  In the days when monastics worshiped here, this fixture is where a fire would have been stoked around the clock.  A small reminder to not give up hope.  Now, let me ask, does this fixture look familiar?    

We have a small piece of St. Brigid’s tradition above us right now.  We’ve moved on from fires to electricity, but the intent is the same.  It’s meant to never go out.  I’ve never even seen a switch for this light.  It’s always on, even in the darkest part of the middle of the night.  A small reminder that even when we’re facing hard things, there is a fire that’s been kept burning for millennia that reminds us we are not on this journey alone.  

When we sit here in this space, and think about how we are part of a long tradition like this, I don’t know about you, but it nourishes me.  Coming into this space each week fills my soul again.  Especially after a long week when it seems like the bad news outweighs the good.  Here is a light that has been burning for millennia to say God has still not left. 

Each of us need to find practices that sustain our endurance for the hard journeys to come.  

Maybe it’s a practice of spending time each day alone.  Maybe it’s about finding a way to pray that nourishes you, whether it’s meditation, song, art or silence.

Maybe you need to be with other people. Connecting intentionally over a meal.  Hearing their laughter, sharing your own.  Holding a cup of something hot and sitting across from someone and sharing your ups and downs.  

Maybe it's a pilgrimage to a place like Iona that’s calling your name.  

The most important thing to understand today is that it’s okay to need space to recharge.  We’ve been through a lot.  There’s still more to come.  Endurance for the journey doesn’t just magically appear.  We have to create spaces for God’s healing love to find us so we have enough to give others.  In community.  In solitude.  On pilgrimage.  In sanctuary.  By the light.   

Let us pray. 

January 21, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Mark 1:14-20

3rd Sunday after Epiphany

Mark 1:14-20

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

I love snow.  You probably know that about me at this point.  I love the way it coats everything with quiet.  I love the way it makes you feel cozy inside your coat or by your fire.  And I’m not going to lie, as an introvert, I love the way it can cancel things.  On Tuesday, however, my love for snow was put to the test.  A text came from my brother in Philadelphia proclaiming they had a snow day with 2 inches of snow and not only did we not have a snow day, I had to drive to a conference gathering in Corning, NY that was very much not canceled.  The interstates were covered with snow the whole way!  Folks, where I’m from, that would cancel everything for at least a week.  

The ironic thing was the event I risked my life going to was a 3-day retreat focused on … clergy wellness.  Despite the trip being stressful and borderline dangerous, I drove carefully and I did make it.  And all irony aside, it turns out to have been worth the trip.  Our new Bishop, Bishop Hector has made clergy wellness a priority.  I respect that. And while we did talk about a lot of things, the main focus of this clergy wellness retreat was on helping clergy reconnect with each other and rebuild relationships.  

It’s tempting, I think, when you feel called to something to think it’s okay to just go it alone.  This happens to clergy, but is certainly not limited to us.  It’s like the calling somehow gives you superpowers to put your head down and just do it by yourself. 

So last week we had the very dramatic and exciting interpretation of Jesus’ baptism.  Thanks to Natasha and Brian for helping that to feel so …. real.   What we didn’t read last week is that Jesus then goes into the wilderness where he had some time to re-energize for the next stage.  Maybe he was an introvert, too.  It’s good he’s had some rest, though, because immediately after these 40 days in the wilderness, Jesus gets some hard news.  John, his cousin, who just baptized him, has been arrested for preaching about the Kingdom of God.  Two things happen next.  

1. Jesus knows there’s no time to waste.  It’s his time to step out.  

2. He knows he needs support for the journey ahead.  He needs relationships.  He shouldn’t do this alone.

But here’s the thing.  Jesus wasn’t just interested in just generic relationships: people who would blindly follow him and leave themselves behind.  He called specific people who had specific gifts.  He found two fishermen by the sea, but he didn’t say “hey! stop being fishermen and follow me instead.”  He said, “follow me and I’ll help you to fish differently.”  In other words, he didn’t want them to change who they were at their core, he wanted them to be themselves, but to use their core identity as an asset to God’s work.  See the difference?

I’ll be honest and say I’ve always struggled with this passage.  I want to know what Jesus means when he calls us to follow him, but I also feel weird about what “fishing for people” really means outside of an evangelical context of “hooking” people for Christ that implies manipulation or trapping or bullying. 

So I read another perspective this week from a commentator named Debie Thomas, who pulled together some research on 1st century fishing in Palestine.  And not only did she help me see how this passage is about Jesus calling his followers to bring their core identity with them (fishermen), but that “fishing for people” would have been understood much more differently at the time Jesus said it.  

You see, by the time Jesus was recruiting his support network, the fishing economy in Galilee had been completely taken over by the Roman Empire.  Caesar owned every body of water and required people like Simon and Andrew, and James and John, to be part of regulated fishing syndicates.  Groups of people given permission to fish on behalf of the Empire.  Every fish caught was taxed and far too many were exported for profits the locals never saw.  The end result is that the people of Galilee were impoverished and exploited.  

And so when Jesus says to these fishermen who were caught in this unjust system, “drop your nets and fish with me instead and together we’ll fish not in that system, but in a new order where we’ll fish instead for people,” Jesus is “hearkening back to the Hebrew scriptures, in which ‘the hooking of fish’ is a euphemism for judgment upon the rich (Amos 4:2) and the powerful (Ezekiel 29:4).”  Jesus is not talking about altar calls and filling pews.  Jesus is seeking another way entirely.  He wants to overturn the existing social order that favors the rich at the expense of the poor… that lifts up privilege, exploitation and domination as ordinary people are suffering.  Jesus wants to usher in God’s Kingdom which reverses all of this.  And Jesus wants these fishermen to help. 

Context is everything, right?  

Jesus called fishermen first because he knew they possessed gifts in patience and timing, he knew they were victims themselves of the social systems and hungry for something better. 

The temptation of this story is to look at it too generally… That Jesus calls just anyone and whoever he calls we drop everything about who we are and blindly follow for the goal of netting some souls.  But the underlying truth of the text is that Jesus sees a world overcome with injustice and he knows he’s going to need support to walk down the path of fighting it.  So he sees fishermen and he understands that they bring particular gifts that are unique and needed in the work ahead.  He asks them to bring those gifts and travel with him as they seek another way.  A way where life can be abundant again, not just for the powerful and elite, but for all people. 

We don’t follow Jesus in the abstract as if being a Christian is just about being a nice person.  Jesus calls us, too, in particular.  It’s the specific and particular aspects that make us who we are that Jesus asks us to bring to the journey.  Last week when we heard God claim us as God’s beloved, it was not because we are generic and abstract.  It’s because each of us is a unique person, with our own individual intellect, background, education, skills, and core identity.  When Jesus calls to us now, it’s because he sees us bringing all of what we have to bear on the mission.  

Maybe to the fishermen Jesus says, let’s fish together for people.  But, as Debie Thomas poetically imagines, “to the engineer, maybe Jesus says, ‘Follow me and build my people.’  To the visual artist, ‘Follow me and paint the colors of the kingdom.’  To the stay-at-home parent, ‘Follow me and nurture my children.’  To the dancer: ‘Follow me and dance the Spirit.’  To the physician, ‘Follow me and heal broken souls.’ To all of us: ‘Follow me and I will make you…’”  A promise to cultivate us for the work ahead.   Together, in relationship, side-by-side, it will take all of us working together toward a world where all people can live abundantly.  

2000 years have passed but the struggles are different now.  But the Kingdom of God is still a work in progress.  The world is still wrestling with the powers of greed and oppression, privilege and apathy.  Jesus’ call is still echoing through the centuries.  How will you bring your full self into this work?  It’s a call to follow and it’s a call to also not leave yourself behind.  It’s a call to collaborate, and join the movement; Jesus needs our company and our gifts.  Some paths aren’t meant to be walked alone.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna 

“Named and Loved”

January 14, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Mark 1: 4-11

Baptism of the Lord

Mark 1:4-11

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

The Baptism of Jesus

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

Last summer I journeyed to the Isle of Iona and it was a long trip. Let’s take a quick look at how I got there   I had to drive in a car, ride on two planes and that took one entire day.  The next day there was a train ride, a ride in a ferry, a ride on a bus, a very big bus on very small roads, and a ride on another ferry.  This trip was long.  And I showed you what it was like because each stage in the journey was like pulling back a layer from the hard shell I’d made around myself.  Each stage of the journey was another chance to leave behind the to-do lists and responsibility that forms my identity in the regular world.  And it wasn’t until the final stage of the journey, that clear ocean and rocky coastline, where I walked out onto the beach with its cold sand and let that frigid water touch my toes that some sleeping part inside of me finally woke up .  The part of me that I can see when I can clear away the expectations of others.  The part of me that emerges when I am in the present moment.  The part of me that suddenly understands that I am okay as I am without doing anything.  The whole of me that I know to be loved by God.  

As I was standing there on the beach with the cold water making my toes go numb and the wind whipping into my face, I understood the water to be changing me, jarring me out of the busy and overwhelmed self I had left behind and waking me up to the self whose only identity was as God’s beloved.  

And as I looked down, it wasn’t just me that the cold water was changing. What astonished me was that all around my feet on the sand were glowing embers of color.  Blue.  Teal. Brown.  White.  Green.  Shards of broken glass.  But I was not afraid of them.  They were no longer dangerous.  Shards of broken glass that, as I bent to pick one up, were the smoothest and softest version of glass you can imagine.  Sea glass it’s called and it’s certainly not unique to Iona.  Every seaside community has at some point in its long history used the ocean as its trash can, throwing broken glasses and plates and medicine bottles and crocks into the ocean, out of mind, out of sight, like trash going into the trash often is.  But the ocean cannot make this trash disappear.  So what is broken and sharp gets tossed about by the current until one day, centuries later it washes back up on the beach.  Changed.  Its corners are rounded, its bright glossy shine is softened into a warm glow.  

Finding these glowing embers of reclaimed trash made beautiful by the work of God’s mighty ocean became a spiritual practice that filled my downtime between walks and worship on Iona.  As if these shards of glass and pottery made smooth by the water were somehow a metaphor for pilgrimage itself, I was drawn to them; captivated by them.  Ordinary water was somehow infused with the Spirit, bringing awake what had been sleeping, making holdable what had been sharp.  It was an epiphany. 

We are in the Season of Epiphany.  A season in which we look closer at the ways the divine is showing up in our midst.  We spent all of Advent following the story of two families, Zechariah and Elizabeth, and Mary and Joseph, as they journeyed toward the birth of two very special children.  One who leapt for joy in his mother’s womb and went on to spread the news and prepare the way, John.  And the other, Jesus, whose humanity was so closely intertwined with God’s divinity his birth changed the way we understood life itself.  And finally, in today’s story, some 30 years after their births, the two men have a powerful encounter with water.  John has been baptizing in the name of God those who wish to smooth their sharp edges in the Jordan River.  But then something unexpected happens.  Jesus, the one John has been saying will come, does indeed come.  But not in a righteous and condescending way to swoop up converts.  He comes to the River Jordan to touch the water and to be changed.  Humbly, along with the others there, he comes to be baptized.  Jesus, the Emmanuel, God with us, and yet human and ordinary like us, wants to be changed by the water and the Spirit.  He needs something that only God can do through that moment.  And as his cousin John is baptizing him in the river, the curtains are pulled back, there is a dove descending, and a voice comes from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

In her artwork for this scripture passage, artist Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman depicts Jesus submerged

underwater during his baptism; she writes that she is imagining all of creation celebrating and affirming his calling in this moment. She says: “This is what trusting your belovedness feels like—muscles and bones relieved of gravity’s burden, serenity, weightlessness, oneness with creation, and the warmth of God’s love permeating every cell of your body and every corner of your soul.”

We are changed…by the water’s cool touch, by the way it stirs us from our old ways, but also by the way the Spirit moves through its drops to refine us into our true nature.  

When God spoke from heaven that day, God gave Jesus a new name.  You are my beloved.  Thirty years into his life and it wasn’t until this moment that every other story we love about Jesus began.  The way he called his disciples.  The way he loved the sick.  The way he included women and children at the table.  The way he went to the edges of society and found the lost and the least and drew the circle wider.  All of that love began when he was named by God as Beloved.  

Beloved is where he began.  Beloved is where we begin.  Everything else flows from that naming.

 A couple years ago when a small team of us were working on our new church mission statement.  We all knew love was where it needed to start.  And once we had written Be loved, it became clear that this ideal for our community also was a statement of our own identity.  Beloved.  We cannot be loved, unless we trust our own belovedness.   

Martin Luther King, Jr. used the word “Beloved” often to describe the community of people who share a desire to live out God’s love.  He called it The Beloved Community.  This was a love directed toward both friend and enemy.  A love seeking to preserve and create the fabric of a new kind of community.  He would say it is how we know what love is in the first place, experienced perhaps first in our homes, and then in community.  Working against the triple evils of racism, poverty and militarism, King believed that the Beloved community was not just an ideal, but a reality we could accomplish together.  The power of love experienced and lived out together.  

Dr. King’s life was cut short at age 39.  Being 39 myself, I cannot imagine both the tremendous amount of love he ushered into this broken world at such a young age, and simultaneously what a large amount of life he had to look forward to.  Tomorrow we celebrate what would have been his 95th birthday and we seem a long way from the reality of The Beloved Community. 

The world is full of sharp edges.  We continue to allow poverty to disproportionately affect people of color in this country.  In the world, militaries try to rule each other with war, oftentimes divided and incited by race and religious difference.  The Church struggles to practice an authentic love that sees past differences and accepts people for the beloved children of God that they are.

Is the Beloved Community even possible?   

In his book Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen shared an epiphany with us.  Is the Beloved Community possible?  Yes.  And this is how it starts, he writes: “I must tell you that claiming your own blessedness [will always] lead to a deep desire to bless others. . . . It is remarkable how easy it is to bless others, to speak good things to and about them, to call forth their beauty and truth, when you yourself are in touch with your own blessedness. The blessed one always blesses.”

The world can’t change until we are changed.  The world can’t be loved by us until we understand how loved we are by God.  It starts with claiming our own belovedness.  It continues by not forgetting.

When I got home from Iona, I found I needed a reminder of the wholeness and love I felt when my feet were in that water.  And so I took some of the blue and white pottery pieces I’d found on the beach, edges all worn smooth, and formed them into the shape of an Iona cross, with the iconic circle made from smells also found on the beach.  I thought it would be fitting to mount them on a piece of wood that had also been changed by the water.  We were at Skye Farm for Labor Day Weekend and I asked Terry if he’d ever seen a piece of driftwood there that was flat.  We both knew it was a far-fetched idea. Flat driftwood?  He said he’d keep an eye out.  Well, don’t you know, about a week later he reported that he had found a piece of firewood that had been carried by the Hudson River and landed near his cottage.  Its edges were smoothed and it had a big flat spot.   So I put my sea pottery on the wood and every time I look at it I remember that stripped away feeling where only my core identity was what mattered.   I am beloved.  

Have you been baptized?  If so, do you remember it?  I don’t remember my baptism.  I was a one-month-old baby.  Even if you were baptized more recently, it’s still easy to forget the truth of that moment.  When God calls us beloved.  But remembering it can be a gift, and the season of Epiphany is no better time.  God pulls back the curtains when we most need it, and reminds us that we are beloved.  And the absolutely ordinary gift of water is the most perfect method.  The waters of our baptism change us.  We are given a new name by God.  We are beloved.  Every time the shower hits your face in the morning, or the first big splashing jump you take into a cool pond this summer, or the frigid water that comes out of the pipes to wash your hands.  Let the water wake you up to your core identity.  You are not defined by what you do or what others expect of you or what you achieve.  You are God’s beloved.  And as soon as we reclaim this core identity, the sooner we’ll have the capacity to be the love to others.  

The Bravest Thing We Can Do

By Sarah Speed

Trust your belovedness.

Let it be a protest,

an act of resistance,

a song of celebration.

Trust your belovedness in a world

that is rarely satisfied.

Wear it like a badge of honor.

Speak it as confidently as your last name.

Tattoo it to your heart.

When outside forces

chip away at your sense of self,

when life asks you

to hand over the keys,

remember the water.

Remember creation.

Remember how it was good,

so very good.

Let that truth hum through your veins.

Sing it so loud

that it drowns out the weariness of the world,

for the bravest thing we can ever do

is trust that we belong here.

January 7, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church , Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Matthew 2:1-12

Epiphany

The Visit of the Wise Men

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,   are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;for from you shall come a ruler   who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

Don’t you just love how the church has strange and mystical holidays that no one outside of the church seems to even know about, much less celebrate.   Add Epiphany to that class of holiday: holidays that don’t have a special candy aisle in the grocery story.  

But actually, Epiphany for many centuries was considered one of the three biggest feast days of the Christian year, the other two being Christmas and Easter. Epiphany falls on January 6th every year and marks the end of the 12 days of Christmas.  It’s the day we celebrate the arrival of the Magi- or Wise Men, or three kings- as this illustrative group of travelers have been named in various traditions.   As we talked about with the children, they didn’t come on the night of Jesus’ birth in a manger, but instead were drawn to Jesus by an unusual star in the sky.  They couldn’t make sense of it and didn’t know what it could mean, but they traveled anyway.  

The reason this long journey and visit by the Magi has become known as Epiphany is because the meaning of the word epiphany is something like a manifestation.  A revealing.  Something was uncertain and unknown and then it became clearer when you looked closer.  

So it was with the Magi.  They saw something in the sky that intrigued them and so they followed it until it led them to a manifestation.  The mystery was revealed.  God was present among them in the person of a small child.  It was the incarnation.  God made flesh.  The only thing they could do in the face of this epiphany was to kneel and worship God.  

There are many interesting things about this story that are often overlooked.  But one of these things that struck me this week was thinking about how long it took the Magi to follow the star.  Their notification that a king Jesus had been born was a star.  I mean, there are times I get a notification of something pretty important via some method like, I don’t know -the US Mail- and I think, good grief… was there not a faster way to communicate this?  What century is this, anyway?  These days we live in a world of instant gratification and that gives us very little concept of what it must have been like to be notified about something that seemed pretty important by an astrological change in the sky.  It's like, hey, guys, there’s something different about the sky tonight.  Let’s set out on foot with our camels and investigate …right away!  

It just makes me have respect for the investment of time these folks put into a journey they had little to no real details about except that it seemed like the direction God was leading them to go.  These folks were going to see where this star led, even if it meant being in it for the long haul.  

And June and I were just talking about this yesterday at our breakfast table.  It was two years later that the Wise Men arrived.  Two years!  We so often forget that when we see pretty pictures of the three kings by the stable.  Were they traveling that whole time?  Did they ever get tired?  Did they ever get lost? Did they ever doubt why they started in the first place?  

Realistically speaking, the answer to all these questions is probably yes.  And yet they kept going.  This is in the nature of an Epiphany.  The journey itself was a process of looking closer.  And the parts of the journey that made it long or hard or uncertain were the parts of the journey that made the epiphany at the end that much more powerful. 

The wait, the anticipation, the struggle, the distance.  Somehow all of this ordinary hassle was necessary for the epiphany.  Revelations aren’t cheap.

When I was in college, I made a really good friend.  I knew she was going to be a good friend because the first December I knew her she asked me if I wanted to go to the piano in our dorm and sing through the Advent hymns in the hymnal together.  Um, yeah!  Finally, someone to be an Advent nerd with: it was a friendship made in heaven. 

A year or so into our friendship, Mary gave me a prayer book.  It was called Prayers of Iona.  “I think you’ll love it,” she said.  And she was not wrong.   The book has a set of prayers for Monday, morning, noon and night.  And then a set of prayers for Tuesday, morning, noon and night.  And you’d probably think at first pass that that sounds rather plain.  Rather ordinary.  But the beauty was in its ordinariness.  The way each prayer woke me up to the beauty and mystery present uniquely at the beginning of a week in the morning, or at the end of the day on a Sunday.  The prayer book guided me to seeing what had been there all along, but I hadn’t noticed.  

About 20 years later, in March of this year, I got a phone call from another old friend.  She paused on the phone for a moment and then asked, “would you like to go to Iona with me?”   I wasn’t sure what exactly she meant.  Like the Isle of Iona, where the prayer book was written?  The Isle of Iona halfway across the world on the remote western coast of Scotland?  What even was Iona to me, I wondered existentially, and why did I feel like God was now nudging me to say, “Yes, actually, I do really want to go to Iona”?

In retrospect, I knew the long journey I went on to the Isle of Iona as a pilgrimage, although I didn’t know to call it that when I began.  And this is the nature of epiphanies, like the first Epiphany with the Wise Men.  We don’t know what we don’t know until we have arrived at the moment of revelation.  

Revelations change us and they are not easy.  

It was really difficult to figure out how to leave my family and my ministry work here at the church for 10 days.  It was difficult to justify spending the money it took to take such a long journey.  It was difficult on my body to travel that far.  And once there I got completely soaked in rain storms more than 5 different times.  And yet, here is what the journey revealed.  

The beauty of God is staggering and being in Iona pulled back the curtains.  

Celtic Christianity which has its origins on the Isle of Iona describes the concept of Epiphany as a “thin place.”  A place where the boundary between the mundane and the eternal becomes permeable.  It’s as if God pulls back a curtain and we get a glimpse of the extraordinariness of God’s love and majesty and power all while standing in a place that feels ordinary, and yet thin.  For centuries people have cultivated this kind of Christian spirituality on Iona.  Not that the isle itself is somehow different than any other patch of land.  But it’s here where early Christians allowed themselves to feel a connection between the moments of this world, the soil and rocks of this earth, the real material parts of this life, and the sacredness of God.  

Trees, rocks, ocean, laughter, sheep, bread, juice, water, babies- all of these ordinary things in this life can reveal the divine.  An Epiphany is not something that happened once to three wise men from the Far East who suddenly recognized God within a small child named Jesus.  An Epiphany is something that can happen to each us when we too, finally understand that God is with us by witnessing a thin place.  A place where God has pulled back the curtains and allowed us to see the sacred nature of the Divine that springs up all around us.  In the laughter of a child.  In the gift of freshly fallen snow.  In the celebration of life for a beloved woman.  In a struggle we’ve walked through in our lives that we don’t understand.  In the relationship with a friend who keeps us going in hard seasons.  In the mystery of a star word that enters our life as an unknown prayer.  In any invitation to begin something new.  In a meal that we still don’t understand and yet we feel such grace.  In a divine baby reborn year after year after year in a manger.   Epiphanies make ordinary experiences extraordinary moments.  Revelations aren’t cheap.  Neither are they easily forgotten.  

God is with us.  Yesterday.  Today.  Tomorrow.  Always.  In the quiet moment and in the grand ritual.  And no matter how this revelation needs to make itself known to you, remember that there is no wrong time to start, or to restart seeking…even if you don’t know yet where you’re going.  

There is no magic to Epiphany.  We don’t casually observe Epiphany.  We practice Epiphany. The challenge is always before us.  Look again.  Look harder.  See freshly.  Stand in the place that might possibly be thin, and regardless of how jaded you feel, cling to the possibility of God doing the extraordinary through the ordinary.

Grace and Peace, 

Pastor Anna

“We Make Room”

December 24, 2023 Cobleskill United Methodist Church - Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Luke 2:1-20

Christmas Eve

Luke 2:1-20

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,   and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 

When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

A few weeks ago in church I showed a hilarious video captured recently in the United Kingdom of a little boy with the most amazement ever sharing with his mom what role he got in the Christmas pageant.  When he finally reveals what it is, it turns out he is Door Holder #3.  And he So. Excited. And part of what’s funny is that he then imagines that maybe instead of holding the door, he could act out part of the story where they aren’t offered a room in the inn and he could slam the door in their faces.  It’s only funny in the video because the boy is 6 and just absolutely delighted with the possibilities of what feels like a really important role in the pageant.  

By contrast, here’s another story that I heard this week.   A different little boy in a different pageant wanted to be Joseph.  But he didn’t get the part. Instead, he was given the role of inn-keeper.  He was so sad.  So on the night of the performance, he decided to make a change in the story. As it was supposed to go like we always hear it: Joseph and Mary would come to him and ask him for a place to stay.  And then he would say: “There’s no room in the inn.”  Door slamming in their face as an optional dramatic element.  But without telling anyone, this boy changed his line.  Instead of saying, “there’s no room here,” he said this: “Sure, I’ve got a room.  It’s the best room in the inn. It’s mine.  You may have my room.” Needless to say, the whole pageant got turned upside down and there was nothing to do but admire the way the story had been changed.  When his parents got him home that night, they asked him why he changed the story. He told them what he learned in Sunday School.  Jesus came here to help us love one another.  If we don’t make room for Jesus to come at every chance we get, then what are we even doing?

The highlight of the Christmas story is not that there was no room.  It’s that room was made. 

The traditional interpretation of the famous Christmas story we just heard has us picturing a scene a lot like this (look at the nativity on the altar).  No room in the inn so tiny little Jesus is born into a back building where only the animals stay, laid in a manger.  

Interestingly, though, we’re learning more and more about what Palestinian culture was like around the time of Jesus’ birth.  Jesus and his family were born in Palestine, the small village of Bethlehem, to be exact.  And archaeological digs are telling us more and more new things about the shape and character of the average person’s home from the time of Jesus’ birth.  Researchers have begun to reconstruct that these houses looked like this.  The house includes a courtyard, a loft where people slept, and a small first floor where animals were brought during the night hours to keep them safe.  The loft above the animals is where the people slept.  Now some of these family homes had a separate guest room attached and the Gospel of Luke tells us that is where Mary and Joseph asked to stay.  But those rooms were all full, because of the census.  For centuries in our Western culture we’ve just assumed that because the baby was then laid in a manger, Mary and Joseph were put out in the stable.  But as we learn more about these houses, we understand better how hospitable people in Bethlehem could have actually invited Mary and Joseph right into their own home to have the baby, a manger among the animals, right in the great room of their family home.  

It's a beautiful thing to think about this teenage mom about to give birth, and the cloud of scandal that followed her about who the father was, and then Joseph loyally by her side.  They knock at the door of a home, ask about the guest accommodations, told they’re full and perhaps first getting a skeptical look from the homeowner, and then there is a change of heart.  A flash of empathy from the person inside the home.  Instead of being sent away, they are invited into.  It’s not a fancy home, but it’s warm, dry and safe.  

The nativity story is about God making room in unlikely places and in unlikely circumstances.  The nativity story is about the act of hospitality shown to strangers who had an unknown and strange past.  

The well-loved Christmas song, O Holy Night, which we will hear later at our 10pm service includes the famous line, “the thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices.”  This Advent we’ve been asking ourselves, but how? How does a weary world rejoice?  How do we find joy when the world is at war, when the very Holy Land where Jesus was born is piled in rubble.  How do we find joy when we are weary ourselves from a pandemic that refuses to stop interrupting our lives.  From political tension and polarization as we enter another election year.  From grief experienced in the loss of ones we love.  How can a weary world rejoice?  

Tonight we find the answer in Bethlehem.  The days when Jesus was born were fraught, just as they are now.  Foreign occupation by the powerful Roman empire cast shadows of fear through the land.  Mary and Joseph, trying to do what they think is best, travel to be counted in the census.  Pregnant, unwed, surrounded by scandal, vulnerable, undesirable.  

Would you open your door if they knocked at your house?  Is it possible that joy could be found in this weary world from the act of hospitality?  

I look at this beautiful room tonight: the warmth from this space, the accessibility of this space we’ve made recently especially here at the front of the sanctuary, the welcoming nature of this congregation, our proud identity as a Reconciling Congregation.  It all signals to me how God works among us to make room for all, in spite of and even because of our differences. No matter who we are, where we’ve been or what we’ve done. God makes room for us here and loves us just as we are.  

Being loved like that, how do we then make room for the weary world around us when we leave this space?  How does the birth of Christ change us?  Do we see the belovedness in someone who is hurting and find compassion toward them in their hour of need?  

I have been moved by the art of a modern-day iconographer named Kelly Latimore. She has helped me to think about what it means to see and make space for those who are vulnerable and on the margins, like the Holy Family once was when Jesus was born.  This week she drew a new, profoundly meaningful icon. An image of the Holy Family in a small space beneath the rubble of war.  It’s a moving image.  One that asks us, how do we make room for this family, too?  Do we hear this kind of knocking at our door?  How do we then open the door to seeing God in the faces of people who are suffering?  

Friends, our world is weary.  And yet we are not without a path forward.  We are blessed with the gift of connection and solidarity.  We are blessed with the gift of rituals like this tonight that help us focus on God’s meaning for our lives.  We are blessed with the gift of hospitality and welcome.  When we begin looking for the people who are on the margins and in the most need, ours is a God who opens our eyes.  

This Christmas I ask you, who’s knocking at your door?  Whose story do you need to open your heart to hearing?  Who might need a seat at your table?  Which news stories should you reframe from the perspective of someone who is hurting?  How can we make room for a weary world just as God has made room for us?  

It is possible that joy lies in the act of making room, opening our hearts to the knock at our door.  Just as that boy in the pageant playing the inn-keeper who was supposed to say no, we, too, can change the story.  We can make room; we can open the door; we can see the humanity in the people before us and we can make space for their story.  Just as God has made space for ours.  

Grace and Peace, 

Pastor Anna

“We Sing Stories of Hope”

December 17, 2023 Cobleskill United Methodist Church - Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Luke 1:46-55, 1:67-80

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Luke 1:46-55

46 And Mary[a] said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,47     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,48 for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.    Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,    and holy is his name;50 indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him    from generation to generation.51 He has shown strength with his arm;    he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones    and lifted up the lowly;53 he has filled the hungry with good things    and sent the rich away empty.54 He has come to the aid of his child Israel,    in remembrance of his mercy,55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Luke 1:67-80

Zechariah’s Song

67 His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:

68 “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,    because he has come to his people and redeemed them.69 He has raised up a horn[a] of salvation for us    in the house of his servant David70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),71 salvation from our enemies    and from the hand of all who hate us—72 to show mercy to our ancestors    and to remember his holy covenant,73     the oath he swore to our father Abraham:74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,    and to enable us to serve him without fear75     in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;    for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation    through the forgiveness of their sins,78 because of the tender mercy of our God,    by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven79 to shine on those living in darkness    and in the shadow of death,to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

It’s hard to believe. But Christmas Eve is one week from today.  The night of Jesus’ birth is growing closer.  For four weeks of Advent we have been asking ourselves “How does a weary world rejoice?,” a theme that acknowledges that we live in a world today with many challenges and much injustice.  And yet through the season of Advent we are trying to find paths toward joy in the midst of the weariness.  The question, “How does a weary world rejoice” is inspired by the line from the famous Christmas song, O Holy Night.  

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,It is the night of our dear Savior's birth.Long lay the world in sin and error pining,

Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

We have a tradition here at Cobleskill United Methodist Church of hearing this song sung on Christmas Eve in a beautiful piano and voice duet.  Because it’s usually sung at the 10pm late service, it’s possible some of you have not experienced it.  

It would be hard to imagine Christmas without these lines of melody.  But the history of the song is rather interesting and there was a time when the song’s future was in doubt.  The song was originally commissioned by a French priest in 1847 of a local poet, Placide Cappeau.  What’s interesting about this is that Placide Cappeau was known more for his poetry than for his regular attendance at church, and by some accounts he considered himself an atheist.  And yet when he was asked to write a poem for Christmas, he was inspired on a particularly difficult journey on the road to Paris. He imagined how challenging the first Christmas night must have been and wrote verses down that captured what a redeemer coming to earth must have meant then and now.  The song also included a clear recognition that Christ’s arrival must break down barriers that humans have put up, specifically around the enslavement of fellow humans.  The third verse goes like this:

“Truly he taught us to love one another;His law is love and his gospel is peace.Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother, And in his name all oppression shall cease.”

Placide Cappeau recruited a popular composer Adolphe Adam to put a melody to this poem and the haunting lines of the song we know today emerged.  Adolphe Adam was Jewish.

The “Song of Christmas,” as it became known in France, was sung on Christmas night in 1847 and immediately the parish loved it.  They loved it so much that they sung it again the next year, and the next year…for 10 years straight.  And yet when the song was about 10 years old, news of the song’s author not being a Christian and its composer a Jew reached the leaders of the French Catholic Church and the song was officially banned from Catholic services in that country.  And yet, this is what is amazing, the community loved the song so much, they continued singing it in their homes, in the pubs and in the streets.  Its popularity grew and the song was passed all around the country.

It was about this time that an American by the name of John S. Dwight, heard the song sung in French.  Dwight was a Unitarian minister and an abolitionist.  He was taken with the way the song combined the Christmas message of Jesus’ arrival with a clear and poignant call for an end to the oppression of slavery.  The year was 1857.  He translated the song into the English lyrics we know so well and the song quickly became popular in this country.  But not everyone always included its third verse that referenced an end to slavery.  Even though some areas of the country thought the third verse was inconvenient and they left it out, the tide of change in this country was already moving.  Singing this song became an anthem of hope for those who believed things could be and would be different.

This is not the end of the story, though.

According to legend, during a break in fighting on Christmas Eve, 1870 during violence of the Franco-Prussian War, French soldiers who had learned this song from their communities, began walking onto the battlefield singing the Song of Christmas.  Amazingly, after they finished, the German soldiers began singing a Christmas song of their own in German.  This first Christmas truce lasted a full 24 hours, inspiring the officials in the French Catholic Church to reclaim this song as one not only of Christmas but of hope and the promise of peace in the face of all odds.  

Several decades later in America on Christmas Eve of 1906, when he had finally figured out how to combine two frequencies so that speech and music could be transmitted over airwaves, Reginald Fessenden began the first-ever AM broadcast.  He played some music by Handel over the airwaves and then he picked up his violin and played “O Holy Night,” becoming the first song to ever be performed live for the whole world to hear on radio.  Wireless operators on ships in the Atlantic were stunned by what they heard.  

Songs inspire us.  Songs empower us.  Songs allow us to say things that have been stirred up by God so that the world might change.  Even if they proclaim that God’s truth is opposite to the reality of the weary world.  Christmas gives us hope that better things are coming.  

We sing songs of hope today because this is our tradition.  Not only beginning with songs like “O Holy Night,” but with songs that are much older.  When Mary found out she was carrying God’s son, she broke out into song with her cousin Elizabeth.  Her Magnificat, which Natasha read for us today, is her song of hope in the face of great odds.  It’s a song full of hopeful opposites.  God has blessed her and with this gift will lift up the lowly and bring down the proud.  God will cause the world to turn, to change, to have hope once more.  This is the promise of God-with-us, Emmanuel.  When Mary sang out, she knew.  She knew.  And she sang.  

Zechariah, too.  Luke’s first chapter is full of singing.  He has only just regained his voice and he sings out.  He praises God and he sings a sweet and compelling lullaby to his new son, John, who Zechariah knows will set out a path of peace, guiding them out of the shadows toward the light.  

Will you join the song?  I’m not talking about any particular song, I’m talking about The Song.  God’s Song of Hope.  The tradition of proclaiming that God’s presence here with us brings hope and the injustices of the world must be reversed.   Even when it’s controversial.  Even when the melody doesn’t fit into traditional boxes.  Even when the words have to be sung in secret.  Even when singing the song requires taking an unpopular stance.  Can you find your voice to help proclaim a stubborn and persistent hope, the hope of Christmas, the hope of a God who dwells with us, so that we can stand up to injustice and inhumanity and silence in this weary world.  Is this a song you can join? 

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna