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The Second Church in Newton, UCC
West Newton Massachusetts
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
January 29, 2012

Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and of life.

―Henri Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881)

Scripture Lessons
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Mark 1:21-28

                                       A Question of Authority

Would it surprise anyone particularly to learn that when I was in high school I used to wear an army surplus parka with a button on it that read “Question Authority?”  It was a predictable adolescent pose of the late seventies for a teen who had not yet discovered Punk Rock and had romanticized the sixties while refusing to embrace disco.  Yes, as a teenager in Dallas, Texas in the late seventies, I was a rebel without a clue.

In our scripture lessons today we see a kind of search for authority.  In Deuteronomy we heard Moses relate God’s promise to provide prophets for the people.  Because the Israelites could not bear to stand in God’s presence, prophets would speak God’s word to them and relate God’s revelations to the people.  But because the role of the prophet was so crucial, the text made clear that God would choose the prophet and the prophet would pay with his life if he spoke erroneously in the name of God.  The same went for prophets who spoke in the names of other gods.    Similarly, the community was warned that if they did not heed the words of the prophet, God would hold them accountable.

Here we see the establishment of prophetic authority in the life of Israel, explicitly modeled after Moses’ prophetic leadership.  Deuteronomy is the perfect book for such an authorization to take place.  The whole book is framed as Moses’ farewell address to the Israelites at the end of his life just before Joshua led them into the Promised Land.  At the end of Deuteronomy, God led Moses to the top of Mount Nebo where he could see the Promised Land before the Israelites would cross the Jordan without him.  Moses then died and was buried in an undisclosed location.  Many believe this was so that cults of veneration would not rise up at the site of his tomb.  The end of Deuteronomy says of Moses, “…there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and the wonders that the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.”  (Deuteronomy 34: 10-12)  

This is a foundational moment in the life of Israel.  A generation had passed since being liberated from slavery in Egypt.  Now they would have to continue without Moses, who had let them through the wilderness. He brought them the commandments.  With Moses they had established the priesthood and a rudimentary judiciary.  Those were largely based on the commandments and what God had told Moses.  How would the Israelites know what God wanted them to do without Moses?  God’s answer was that prophets would rise up to tell them.  From then on prophets would serve a critical role in the religious and political life of Israel.  A prophet anointed the first two kings of Israel.  From then on, it would be prophets who spoke out when the kings did not live up to God’s intentions for the nation of Israel.  The prophets spoke with the authority of the name of God, often prefacing their message “thus says the Lord.”

You’ll notice that Jesus did not say that when he taught in the synagogue in Capernaum.  In today’s Gospel Lesson, people commented on how he spoke.  “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”  (Mark 1:22)  Jesus spoke on his own authority as the Son of God, the Word of God become flesh.  Not only did Jesus astonish the congregation with his teaching, but after he exorcised an unclean spirit, he received supernatural recognition of his authority when the spirit itself addressed Jesus, saying, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are, the Holy One of God."  (Mark 1:24b)  The passage ends with the crowd marveling and asking, "What is this? A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him."  (Mark 1:27b)

For us, as Protestant Christians, that is the core of the Gospel Lesson as well as the center of our faith.  It identifies Jesus’ teaching as our central source of authority.  The authoritative source for Jesus’ teaching is scripture.  Since the Protestant Reformation, we have looked to the Bible as the primary source of theological authority.  But the Bible is a big and complicated book.  How are we to make sense of it all?

When I wrote my ordination paper I described an interpretive principle that I based on the Trinity.  The first part of this model reflects the creator/lawgiver called The Father in the ancient creeds.  I call this a canonical interpretive principle.  By this I wanted to assert that every passage has to be understood in the context of the whole of scripture.  No verse can be understood in isolation.  In the early church, there were those who believed that Christians should only read the New Testament that Hebrew Bible no longer applied.  Cooler heads prevailed, and now four-fifths of what most Christians call the Bible is Hebrew Bible.

Obviously the teaching and ministry of Jesus are central to our faith.  They are definitive.  So the second interpretive principle corresponds to The Son.  Any Christian theology has to be Christocentric.  Our entire moral and theological understanding springs from the ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ.  Therefore, we understand the Bible through Jesus’ teachings of radical hospitality, compassion, love, justice and forgiveness.

Because ours is a living faith, guided by eternal spiritual truths which remain relevant in the real world, we require a dynamic means of interpreting scripture.  To complicate matters further, the newest parts of the Bible are 2000 years old.  Other parts are much older.  Our times are different from the times when scripture was written down.  Though the human realism and sacred teachings are as true as ever, the lives we live every day are different and society (I hope) has progressed a little bit in 2000 years.  Therefore, when scripture talks about regulating slavery, or a few isolated verses condemn homosexuality, we have to make room for engaging scripture with our conscience.  When we have cause to question the enduring relevance of a given passage, we have the canonical and Christocentric criteria to weigh our conscientious engagement against.  We want to guard against simply justifying our biases. 

This conscientious reading of scripture corresponds to the Holy Spirit, and provides a dynamic engagement with scripture within the constant flux of life.  The Holy Spirit has inspired and guided us since the beginning of the church, and inspired the prophets before that.  The conscientious reading of scripture has formed and reformed the church throughout the centuries.  The Protestant Reformation might never have happened without Martin Luther’s conscientious reading of the epistles.  I think every major social reform movement embraced by the church has roots in a conscientious reading of the Bible, from the abolition of slavery, to the civil rights movement, to Open and Affirming.

The point is not that it is so important to have a systematic method to interpret the Bible.  The important thing is that we read the Bible with our minds and hearts open.  And when I say that our minds should be open, we don’t want our minds so open that our brains fall out.  But we must engage the words of God with open hearts, guided by the core principles of love.  Jesus commanded us to love one another.  If we did that we would be known as his disciples.  By a lively engagement with scripture, interpreted with humility in the context of a faith community, we can know and make known the love of God, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton, UCC
West Newton Massachusetts
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
January 22, 2012

Hope is a dimension of the spirit.  It is not outside us, but within us.  When you lose it, you must seek it again within yourself and in people around you – not in objects or even in events.

―Václav Havel

Scripture Lessons
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Mark 1:14-20

                                            How Many Rings?                                          

I used to wonder how many rings you were supposed to wait for someone to answer the phone, back in the days when people only had one phone number, few people had answering machines, and one maybe two telephones at home with actual wires that tied the phone to your house.  When you called someone, how many rings were you supposed to wait before you assumed no one was home.  All that began to change with the advent of answering machines, caller i.d., voice mail and cell phones.  Remember when we used those antiquated mechanical answering machines that used actual tapes to play outgoing messages and a separate one to record missed callers?  That gave rise to the sneaking suspicion that people were monitoring the incoming message when they were really home.

Of course now that many, if not most of us, carry a phone with us every time we leave the house, getting a phone call can happen just about anywhere and there may be no ring at all.  I heard on the radio recently that neurologists have identified a condition called phantom vibration syndrome.  This condition causes people to feel the vibration of a cell phone when no one is actually calling or even when a phone may not even be present.  In this case there is no ring and no call, but merely the sensation of a call. 

When I was in graduate school, it was common for seminarians to talk among themselves about how they experienced the call to ministry.  It varied widely from person to person.  Some would describe a near-mystical experience.  For another it could be as simple as loving the smell of an old hymnal.  There still remained the problem of discernment.  How could one be certain it was God that was calling? 

In our scripture lessons we see contrasting responses to a divine call.  Notice that our passage from Jonah begins, “The Word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.”  (Jonah 3:1)  The Hebrew Bible Lesson for this morning began in the third chapter of Jonah (which only has four chapters).  The first chapter of Jonah starts “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’” Jonah 1:1-2)  What happened between the beginning of Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 is what we remember Jonah best for:  doing everything he could to avoid going to Nineveh.

Rather than going at once to Nineveh, Jonah bought passage on board a ship in the port of Joppa bound for Tarshish.  Almost as soon as they set sail, they were caught in a storm at sea.  As the ship started to break up, the crew began to jettison cargo to lighten their load.  While the crew “cried each to his god,” (Jonah 1:5) Jonah went below to sleep in the hold.  The captain went down to wake him and asked him why he wasn’t praying to his God.  Jonah told the captain that he was the reason God had thrown up a storm in their path.  The crew threw Jonah overboard and the seas calmed.  God sent a large fish to rescue Jonah, and Jonah survived for three days in the belly of that fish before it “…spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.” (Jonah 2:10) 

Here we find Jonah at the beginning of this morning’s passage, when “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.”  (Jonah 3:1)  This time Jonah took up his call and walked the length and breadth of the city of Nineveh.  You can understand why Jonah did not want to go to a hostile foreign city where they did not even share his religion and tell the people there that they were bad and if they did not change their ways his God would destroy them.  But that is exactly what he did and they listened.  They repented, declared a fast and everyone from the king down put on sackcloth as a sign of repentance.  Because of their repentance, God’s mind changed, and Nineveh was not destroyed. 

When Jesus called his first disciples as he walked along the Sea of Galilee, Simon, Andrew, James and John were working.  As we read it, we know Jesus as the Son of God, but how could they?  He was also on the run.  In the aftermath of the arrest of John the Baptist, his disciples (of which Jesus may have been one) scattered.  And yet four fishermen abandoned their nets and followed.  Mark makes the point, “…immediately they left their nets and followed him.”  (Mark 1:18)  What was it about Jesus that led these fishermen to drop everything and follow Jesus?  What was it about these four fishermen that they would hear such a call and follow?  What was going on in their lives that allowed them to drop everything and follow Jesus?  Would any of us do that?

In reality, I doubt if any of us could or would drop everything and follow an itinerant preacher on a vague mission.  We have no way of knowing whether or not Jesus knew the others before he walked up to them on the beach.  Perhaps this is the product of several conversations.  Perhaps not.  I think if anyone we knew dropped everything to become a disciple at the ground floor of some new ministry, we’d worry.  Maybe we would call a deprogrammer.

The question remains, how do we know when God is calling us?  Is there some kind of metaphysical caller i.d.?  Perhaps there is.  I think we best understand what God is calling us to do when we spend part of every day listening.  How often do any of us take a little time every day to listen?  Listening is an important kind of prayer.  It is important that we take time to just be quiet and listen.  Prayer is not simply asking God for what we want and what we need.  It is also about listening for what God asks of us.  If we listen and if we respond to what God is asking of us, we may discover what we really need, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton, UCC
West Newton Massachusetts
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
January 15, 2012

None of the prophets took on their assignments willingly or gladly.  Moses complained that he was not eloquent enough and that people wouldn’t believe him.  Isaiah claimed himself unworthy, “a man of unclean lips.”  Samuel was just a little boy.  Ezekiel was sent out to preach to dead bones.  Jonah refused to go to Nineveh, and yet God took these people and turned them into something for his purpose.

―Peter J. Gomes

The Good Book:  Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

Scripture Lessons
1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20)
John 1:43-51

To Make Everyone’s Ears Tingle

So “…the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli…” (1Samuel 3:1) the high priest in Shiloh.  He was working at the Tent of Meeting where the Ark of the Covenant was kept in a common shrine.  This was the golden box with cherubim with outstretched wings.  It had been in Shiloh since Joshua and the Israelites entered the land.  When David established Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he brought the Ark there.  When the passage states that Samuel was just a boy, it means just that.   His mother had brought him there as soon as he was weaned and dedicated him to serve there. 

Samuel was a miracle baby from the start.  His mother Hannah was married to Elkanah, who had another wife, Peninnah.  Peninnah had children with Elkanah, but Hannah had not (for which Peninnah taunted Hannah mercilessly).  When Elkanah made pilgrimage to Shiloh every year to make their annual sacrifice as a family, the trek was a mixture of family vacation and Thanksgiving rolled into one.  When Elkanah offered sacrifice some of it went to support the priests, but the family that made an offering made a feast of their portion of the meat.  They often brought wine to offer as well which added to the celebration and was given to the priests as well.

During the pilgrimage, after she had eaten, Hannah went into the shrine , wept and poured out her heart in prayer before the Ark.  Eli saw her lips moving silently yet fervently, and reprimanded her, believing she was drunk.  Eli said, “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.”  (1Samuel 1:14)

But Hannah protested, saying. “No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink.  Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.” 

(1 Samuel 1:16)  Eli then blessed her, saying, “Go in peace, the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.”  (1 Samuel 1:17)  After Hannah and Elkanah and the whole household returned to Ramah, along came a bouncing baby Samuel.  Out of gratitude, Hannah pledged Samuel to the service of God.

By the time of the next year’s trip to Shiloh, Hannah stayed behind with Samuel telling Elkanah she would take him the following year once he was weaned, because then he would have to stay in Shiloh, serving God at the shrine.  After that, Samuel only saw his parents once a year when they came to Shiloh to make sacrifice.  Hannah, between visits, would make Samuel the garments he needed to serve at the shrine. 

Hannah and Elkanah had more children, while Samuel grew up in Shiloh.  At the same time, Eli the high priest was growing old.  His eyesight was fading, and he was losing control of his two sons who served at Shiloh with him.  Phinehas and Hophni were disgraceful.  They would often demand the best cuts of meat from the Israelites who came to make sacrifice, taking it from them before the rituals of the sacrifice had even been completed.  They also harassed women who came to serve at the shrine.  Eli tried to reprimand his sons, but they basically ignored him.

One has to wonder what the young boy Samuel made of all this.  Phinehas and Hophni were essentially Samuel’s foster brothers.  Judging by their behavior, I can’t imagine they were very pleasant to grow up around.  Perhaps they teased and bullied the nice little kid their father spent so much time with.  Perhaps Hophni and Phinehas were too intent on what they could get for themselves from the steady stream of pilgrims to pay much attention to little Samuel.  I am sure young Samuel was keenly aware of what went on around him.

The account of Samuel hearing the voice of God for the first time sets up almost like a joke.  The dutiful young Samuel lay down to sleep by the Ark of the Covenant, as the nearly blind Eli slept nearby.  Samuel heard his name called, and he ran to Eli to see what he wanted.  Eli sent him back to bed.  Again, Samuel heard his name called.  Again Samuel went to see what Eli wanted.  Eli told Samuel that he had not called the boy and sent him back to bed.  A third time, Samuel heard his name called in the night, and again he went to Eli.  This time it occurred to Eli that God must be the one calling Samuel.  This time, Eli instructed Samuel to go lie down and if he heard his name called again, to answer, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”  (1 Samuel 3:9)

This time God spoke to Samuel and revealed a judgment against Eli and his sons.  After he had listened, he stayed quietly until morning when he would have to open up the Tent of Meeting.  Samuel was afraid to tell Eli about the vision.  As soon as he could, Eli asked Samuel about what he had heard in the night.  Eli insisted, “Do not hide it from me.  May God so do to you and more also if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.”  (1Samuel 3:18)  So Samuel told Eli everything and did not hold anything back.  It must have been a difficult conversation for the boy, revealing God’s judgment to the old man who had raised and mentored Samuel.  Still the imperfect teacher confirmed to Samuel that he had indeed heard the voice of God, and Eli accepted the judgment.

At this point, the Israelites are in the Promised Land, but do not yet rule it.  It is unclear how much of the land they even control.  They are one among various tribal and religious groups living there.  Shiloh was the recognized religious center for the Israelites.  Though there was corruption within the community leadership, there was a general and earnest effort to serve God and discern God’s intentions for the community, and the community had the means to reform from within through prophets.  An elder religious authority trained the new leaders and helped them discern vocations.  Through this awkward first oracle, Eli helped Samuel understand his vocation as a prophet.  Samuel would become one of the most important early prophets in Israel.  He would anoint Israel’s first two kings, Saul and David.  As we heard at the end of the passage, “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him, and let none of his words fall to the ground.”  (1 Samuel 3:19)

I have always liked the story of the call of Samuel.  Reading it this time something caught my eye in a way it had not before.  The first thing God said to Samuel was “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.”  (1 Samuel 3:11)  That seemed like such a vivid image to me, I figured someone must have commented on it, whether it had colloquial meaning as an expression or whether this signaled something extraordinary.  I looked at some resource materials, consulted a seminary professor and a rabbi, but found no leads about the significance of news causing ears to tingle.  Still it must be significant.  I bet ears were tingling on the mall in Washington D.C. when Dr. King spoke of a dream.  I bet ears were tingling on the last night of his life when Dr. King spoke of his vision from the mountaintop.

It made me wonder what God might do with us that would cause ears to tingle when the people heard it.  If we listen for the word of God and seek to do God’s will, faithfully serving and worshipping God, we can make news that will cause ears to tingle, in a world without end.  Amen. 

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The Second Church in Newton, UCC
West Newton Massachusetts
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
January 8, 2012

Grant that this day and every day,

we may keep our shock of wonder

at each new beauty that comes upon us

as we walk down the paths of life:

and that we may say in our hearts

when horror and ugliness intervene,

Thy will be done.

―Kathy Keay

Scripture Lessons
Genesis 1:1-5
Mark 1:4-11

In the Beginnings

Confirmation can feel a bit like a graduation, but only is in the sense of the standard line someone always says at every commencement ceremony and probably will until the end of time:  “Graduation is not an end, but a beginning.”  So then, Confirmation is not an end, it is a beginning.  For the record, both Scripture Lessons for this morning came from the Lectionary assigned for the first Sunday after Epiphany.  We celebrate the Magi arriving to present their gifts to the Christ child having followed a star to find him.  We read that God’s first act of creation was to make light, just as the days begin to get a little longer and we celebrate light breaking into our darkness.

Today we celebrate our Confirmands’ coming of age within the Christian faith by confirming the baptismal vows made for them when they were babies.  In the Gospel Lesson, we heard the story of Christ’s baptism by John.  That event was a kind of ordination as Jesus prepared for his public ministry.  In our tradition we view baptism as a kind of ordination.  We are all ministers, a priesthood of all believers.

Though this is, for each of the Confirmands, a unique and personal moment of faith commitment; as a faith community we take this opportunity to affirm our covenant with God and one another.  Today we celebrate as eight Christians accepted responsibility for their own faith and ministry.  But what about the rest of us?  What does it mean for us, all of us, to be the Body of Christ in 2012?  What does it mean for us to be Christians in West Newton a dozen years into the twenty-first century?

It is a tricky question to ask in the complicated world we live in.  Clearly it means different things for each of us, just as we each bring our own unique gifts to offer.  We got out of bed on a Sunday morning.  Many of us are here other times during the week to make sure that the various ministries of our church go forward.  It is amazing to me, because we all lead such busy lives, and yet, here we are gathered to reflect on God’s Word, preparing to share Christ’s table as Christians have done for 2000 years.

It has to be more than simply a habit and affection for ancient ritual, even though there is nothing wrong with that - habit and ritual have real power to form us in profound ways.  The fact that we are still here after 230 years is testimony to a reality far stronger and deeper than habit or ritual.  It has to do with vision and mission, the ones we share, and the visions and vocations we bring with us and add to the mix.  But they all come down to a commitment to making God’s love and justice real and known in West Newton and around the world.  This summer members of Second Church’s Senior High Youth Group will make God’s love real on a Lakota reservation in South Dakota and several of us will serve in the jungle of Oaxaca, Mexico.  The choir proclaims God’s love every Thursday night and Sunday morning, the Board for Mission and Advocacy makes God’s love real through shelter cooking twice a month as well as a variety of other ways.  Every Sunday School teacher who taught these eight confirmands through the years made the love of God real in a way that led them to this day to make public testimony of their Christian commitment.

As we gather here in this sanctuary on Confirmation Sunday, it is hard to look at those eight young men and women without feeling a sense of hope.  They are on their way.  Perhaps “on their way” is not quite what I want to say.  It sounds too much like graduation.  Perhaps the right thing to say is that they have arrived.  Jen, Charlie, Sam, Maria, Josh, Sean, Lindsay and Mackey, you have arrived as full members of The Second Church in Newton, with all the rights and obligations that come with it.  Next month when we gather for our Congregational annual meeting you will have a vote.  I hope you will be here and vote.  I hope you will continue to explore your ministries that you have already begun to express through music, through service, through your creativity and lively intelligence.  You are an inspiration for all of us to renew our commitments and join together in making God’s love real, here and now, in a world without end.  Amen.  

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The Second Church in Newton, UCC
West Newton Massachusetts
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
January 1, 2012

If after my removal anyone should think it worth while to write my life, I will give you a criterion by which you may judge of its correctness.  If he gives me credit for being a plodder he will describe me justly.  Anything beyond this will be too much.  I can plod.  That is my only genius.  I can persevere in any pursuit.  To this I owe everything.

―William Carey (1761-1834, Baptist missionary in India), writing to his son. 
In F. Deaville Walker, William Carey:  Missionary Pioneer and Statesman

Scripture Lessons
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Luke 2:21-33

The Song of Simeon

Happy New Year everybody.  You may have heard that according to Nostradamus, the sixteenth century apothecary predicted that this is the year the world is supposed to come to an end, but not until December.  Some believe that prediction is borne out by the ancient pre-Columbian Mayan calendar.  Carved in stone, it schedules the end of the world for December 21, 2012.  Of course, you might recall that The Rapture was scheduled on two separate dates in year 2011.  Both dates came and went, and if either was the correct date, we all got left behind.   But rather than fret about when the world will end, I believe New Year’s Day is better spent reflecting on the lessons of the past and looking to the year ahead as we resolve to do our best.

One familiar emblem of New Year’s Eve is the New Year arriving as a newborn baby and the previous year departing as a weary old man with a long beard, a scythe and an hourglass.  That image occurred to me when I read the Gospel Lesson with the story of the presentation at the Temple.  The infant Jesus was brought to be circumcised eight days after he was born, as all Jewish males are required.  There the old man Simeon saw the child, and recognized him as God’s promised messiah.  Luke tells us that the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he “…would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.”  (Luke 2:26)  At the sight of the baby Jesus, he knew that God’s promise had been fulfilled.  

There are a number of things going on in this passage.  It began with Jesus’ briss, showing that Jesus began his life in an observant Jewish family.  They had Jesus circumcised at the proper time of eight days after his birth.  Once they had been “purified” which probably refers to Mary going to the mikvah, a ritual bath, following child birth.  It may well have meant that both Mary and Joseph needed to go to the mikvah to purify themselves just to go to the Temple.  When I went up to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in 2005, where the Dome of the Rock and al Acsa Mosque now stand, the Orthodox Jews in our group went to the mikvah the day before the field trip. 

Mary and Joseph had come to dedicate Jesus as required by the Torah of a first born son.  This is what Luke referred to as “Law of Moses.”  To do this they made an offering of two pigeons.  All by itself, this offering demonstrates how poor Mary and Joseph were.  The book of Leviticus provides an accommodation for families who could not afford to offer a lamb; they made a more modest offering of two turtledoves or two pigeons. 

Simeon must have been an extraordinary man.  Luke describes him as a “…man righteous and devout looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.”  (Luke 2:25)  You have to imagine that for Simeon, this must have been a fairly ordinary day.  The Temple was the holiest place in the world for Jews in Jesus’ time, as the site still is for Jews today.  Jews from all over Israel and all over the world made pilgrimage there, as they do today.  How many poor young families had Simeon seen coming to dedicate a first-burn son in his many years of serving at the Temple?  How many such families had he seen that day?  And yet, he recognized something in that child that moved him to song.

The Song of Simeon may have sounded familiar to you as Andy read it to us a moment ago.  It is often used in Christian funeral services.   "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples.”  (Luke 2:29-31)  We often say it in unison at memorial services here at Second Church.  The way we use it, it is an act of explicitly letting go of the deceased, of releasing them to God’s eternal care (as if we had a choice).  Of course, Simeon was the one letting go in the Gospel Lesson.  He was prepared for the end or his life.  He was at peace, confident that the world was in God’s hands, having seen the Christ child.

In a sense, we see two holy men passing in the wings at the edge of the stage of history.  One had performed his role, the other was just entering.  I like to think of this as biblical precedent for intergenerational worship.  We look on as a new generation inspired the old one, even as the elder recognized and authorized the infant Jesus and proclaimed his theological, historical and cultural context and significance.  We should notice that Simeon did not simply fade from the scene.   Simeon made a fairly grand exit.  He was in full command of his faculties and at the epicenter of his faith community as he announced the cosmic drama unfolding.

In fact, between the baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Simeon we see models of various stages of religious live, from cradle to grave.  We see a baby and three adults at various stages of life.  In this scene, Simeon is sharp, attentive to the significance of the moment and the movements of the Spirit.  They are joined together, all of them in a participatory act of dedication.  As we look to the year ahead, may we each be so engaged, and so dedicated and so attentive (whatever the season of life we find ourselves) to God and to one other, in a world without end.  Amen. 

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The Second Church in Newton, UCC
West Newton Massachusetts
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
November 20, 2011

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Matthew 25:31-46

Judgment Day Every Day

The idea that human beings are destined to stand before God and answer for the actions of our mortal lives has been part of Christian theology since the earliest days of the church.  The idea of accountability before God is a recurrent theme in the Parables of Jesus as in today’s Gospel Lesson.  God’s judgment is certainly prominent in the Hebrew Bible, and the concept is definitely found in the Qur’an as well.  Some of the greatest poets in history have explored God’s judgment and its consequences:  Blake, Dante and Milton have written brilliantly on the nature of ultimate justice.  There are good reasons to be uncomfortable with the idea of the Last Judgment. 

Eschatology has been popularized in ways that range from unsettling to thoroughly amusing.  The Left Behind series of books offers a vivid portrayal of the pseudo-biblical construct of “the rapture.”  That series has sold millions of books.  Their central theology seems aimed at scaring people into embracing Christianity.  We are to choose between rescue or abandonment by siding with the right team.  That is nothing new.  Last Judgment and the afterlife have been the recurrent subject of paintings and films.  These often portray God’s judgment in the most literal terms with pearly gates, a big book, flaming torment and fluffy clouded heavenly reward.  This imagery is so ingrained into the popular imagination that not a week passes that you would not find the familiar motifs of Heaven and Hell in a comic strip, New Yorker cartoon, or a television commercial.  You may recall that after Steve Jobs died, the cover of The New Yorker showed St. Peter checking the Book of Life in his iPad. 

Some important things get lost when our musings on God’s judgment fixate on what the world to come will be like.  Those imaginings of the afterlife tend to overlook the metaphorical way scripture talks about judgment and eternal life.  In the reading from Ezekiel, the prophet spoke about justice and redemption in this life.  Ezekiel mixed pastoral imagery with the international political realities and military threats of his day.  He referred to God as a shepherd and the people of Israel as a flock.  We are familiar with this metaphor.  We are probably most familiar with the 23^rd Psalm which declares at the outset, “The Lord is my Shepherd…”  The same term was used by other ancient near eastern religions as well.  The Babylonian god Marduk was described as a shepherd of lesser gods, and ancient Egyptian hymns referred to their deities as herdsmen. 

Because the metaphor is not unique to our faith tradition, we need to look deeper to see why Ezekiel described God as a shepherd.  The New Interpreter’s Bible suggests that the idea of a divine shepherd is set in stark contrast to the less than faithful leadership of human kings.  Among the flock, the prophet contrasts the powerful and wealthy with the wounded, scattered and beleaguered.  Through this multi-layered metaphor, we see that the business end of judgment is directed at a privileged and wealthy minority who are indifferent to suffering in the wider community.

The Gospel Lesson begins with a similar pastoral metaphor.  Speaking in parable, Jesus described separating sheep from goats:  "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.  Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.”  (Matthew 25:31-33)  This passage mixes cosmic apocalyptic imagery of the Son of Man enthroned with the familiar pastoral imagery of a shepherd.

Notice that it says, gathered before the Son of Man will be “all the nations.”  That really caught my eye.  This suggests that we are judged collectively as nations.  In our therapeutic culture we tend to think of being judged as individuals if we think of being judged at all.  But individuals’ behavior can be very different in groups.  Are we to be judged for the actions of our nation?  That may or may not be the case.  What is clear is that judgment is undeniably based on how we live out our responsibility to one another.  I think it is safe to say that the nations are gathered in judgment because compassion is expected of us on a global scale.

Does Jesus’ parable even suggest that we will be ultimately judged over what we believe or what we do?  According to this parable, those judged most virtuous are the ones who acted compassionately.  To them Jesus said, “…inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”  (Matthew 25:34-36)  The criterion does not seem doctrinal!

Because we are judged by what we do, what and how we believe does make a difference.  I would guess that most of us would behave somewhat differently if we believed in a god that demanded we throw virgins into a volcano, rather than a in God whose son lived and died, taught and healed among us.  It makes a difference whether we feel our faith is personal and individual or whether we believe faith is about relationships and lived out in community.  Jesus taught that what we do to and for the people with whom we share this life, we do to and for God.  This is consistent with the very first chapter of Genesis: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)  We are created in the image of God, and so is everybody else.  We serve God by serving one another.  This week as we give thanks for God’s abundant generosity, we can give thanks that God has given us to one another.  Thanks be to God.

So getting back to this whole notion of judgment, I believe in my heart that it is real.  Scripture uses varied symbolic and metaphorical language to describe it.  But the fact remains that divine judgment appears consistently throughout the Bible.  It is worth noticing, too, that in the biblical concept of judgment, God alone is the judge.  Only God is allowed to be judgmental.  We are not.  We should also remember that God’s steadfast love and compassion appear throughout the scripture.  For me, the most useful way to think about judgment is that everything I do and say is done and said in the sight of God.  Though I experience my life trapped in a limited and subjective perspective, with all the temptations and selfishness that come with that, I am perceived by the One who created me, every minute of every day.  I do not mean that in the sense that some divine security camera is monitoring me around the clock, but in the sense that I am created by and in the image of the One who perceives me in every moment.  Every day is judgment day.

God perceives us with love, and we perceive the divine presence because we were created with compassion, conscience and love.  When we are moved by compassion to serve others in need and to work for justice, we know God’s presence and we can feel God’s pleasure.  The impulse to compassion is a spark of the divine image in which we are created.  We know divine judgment when we look upon suffering or injustice and choose not to act.  We know right from wrong.  We also know that none of us always wants or does what is right.  That is why what we believe matters.  We must reach beyond our individual selves.  We need the wisdom and the guidance of scripture and we need each other to understand and live it out together.  Thanks be to God who gives us the Word and gives us to each other, in a world without end.  Amen.