Sermon delivered by David Burrow October 30, 2022 - First Congregational Church, Algona, Iowa
Click here for an audio version of this sermon. (30 MB - .mp3)
“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
"This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the one true Church, apostolic and universal, whose holy faith let us now declare:
We believe in the one God, maker and ruler of all things, creator of all humanity, the source of all goodness and beauty, all truth and love.
We believe in Jesus Christ, God manifest in
the flesh, our teacher, example, and redeemer, the Savior of the world.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, God present with us for guidance, for comfort,
and for strength.
We believe in the forgiveness of sins, in the life of love and prayer, and in
grace equal to every need.
We believe in the Word of God as the sufficient rule of both faith and practice.
We believe in the Church as a community for worship and for service of all who
are united in the living God.
We believe in the kingdom of God as the divine rule in human society and in a
family of all humanity under the leadership of God.
We believe in the final triumph of righteousness, and in the life everlasting.
Amen.
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced
the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them [a scholar of the law]
tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Jesus responded to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first
commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
I don’t know about you guys, but I have been
to services at a lot of different churches in my life. Today I’m going to be
doing some reminiscing—going back over some of the lessons I remember from
different churches I’ve been to.
When I was growing up my family made a point of going to church every week. My
dad would also seek out churches when we were on vacation, and I can remember
when I was a kid going to church services in New and Washington state, and even
at a campground in a national park in Colorado.
Most of what I remember in my childhood, though, goes back to First United
Methodist Church in Mt. Pleasant, my hometown down in southeast Iowa. That
church had two services each Sunday, and my parents always drug their kids to
the early service. The building for that church was enormous, with a sanctuary
that could seat around 500 people. There were always just a handful of early
birds on hand for the 8:00 service, making the place look vast and empty. My dad
was hard of hearing, so we always sat clear down front—something that made me
feel very conspicuous as a kid.
Over the course of my childhood the two ministers who served at that church were
men called Dr. Wilson and Dr. Robinson. In those days no one would have dared
call a pastor by his first name, and while I do know that Dr. Wilson’s name was
“Carl”, I’m not sure I ever did learn Dr. Robinson’s name. In the ‘70s it was
also standard etiquette to use titles, so if a minister had earned a doctorate
at seminary, you called him “Doctor” instead of “Reverend”.
Dr. Wilson was a meek, soft-spoken old man who was honestly one of the most
boring people my younger self ever knew. I would entertain myself during church
by counting the acoustic tiles on the ceiling, and my hearing-impaired father
would often doze off, only to feel my mother’s nudge during the sermon.
Dr. Robinson, on the other hand, was a much more dynamic pastor, and even
decades later I do remember a lot of what he said in his sermons. Instead of the
lectionary-based messages we’re used to these days, Dr. Robinson’s sermons were
topical and often given in series. He did a ten-week series on the ten
commandments, for instance, and he did another long series going through the
Sermon on the Mount.
One of Dr. Robinson’s most common themes was contrasting the Old and New
Testaments. He would often mention the 613 laws of Moses that are codified in
the first five books of the Bible and go on to point out that Jesus made all
those laws irrelevant. I think of his sermons whenever ultra-conservative
churches dig out obscure passages from Leviticus to justify their hate of
certain groups of people. There are so many people these days who seem to want
to make others adhere to their version of “Christianity” in the same way that
Islamic countries enforce Sharia law. If we believe in Jesus, we don’t need to
be bound by the laws of the Hebrews. Instead, Jesus told us to love God and to
love our neighbors. The Great Commandment tells us that Christianity should be a
religion of love.
So as a child in the Methodist Church I learned about the New Covenant and how
Jesus’ gospel of love supersedes all the regulations Jewish law. When I got
older, I became familiar with a number of other churches. My best friend in high
school was Mennonite—at least in name, if not really practice—and I also had a
friends who were Episcopalian and Quaker. When I was a student at UNI, both of
my roommates and also my best friend were Catholic, so I went to St. Stephen’s
as much as to the Wesley Foundation in Cedar Falls. I also became friends with
some Presbyterians and Lutherans at college. While all those churches were
different, their message was the same one I remember from childhood: Christ has
given us the new covenant. He frees us from the old laws and directs us to love
God and one another.
As an adult I’ve followed my parents’ tradition of going to church when I
travel. I travel a lot, and I’ve been to a lot of churches. When I travel, I’ve
mostly gone to either Catholic or Episcopal churches, though I’ve also been to
churches that are part of the Methodist, and American Baptist churches and to
the United Church of Christ and the United Church of Canada.
I have some interesting memories of all the churches I’ve visited. Some were
memorable for strange reasons—like a church near St. Louis that I took my quiz
bowl team to where they made an announcement that the church would be closing as
they’d sold the grounds to a shopping center developer. Another odd memory was
of a historic church in Ottawa, Canada that I visited on Christmas Eve—where the
minister entered and audibly sighed when she saw that only about two dozen
people were scattered around the cavernous sanctuary for what should have been
one of the biggest services of the year. She then caught herself and began the
service with the words of Jesus, “Where two or three are gathered in my name,
there I am in the midst of them.”
Most of my memories of the churches I visited are good ones, though. I remember
specifics of a number of sermons I heard, and they all seemed to have a theme of
teaching how we can live out Christ’s New Covenant.
I remember going to a small church in Dillon,
Colorado—just over the pass west of Denver. The church moved out of their
sanctuary and held the service outdoors on a lawn that looked up at the
mountains. The preacher said—quite rightly—that there’s nothing to make us know
the love of God than admiring the beauty of nature.
Another memory I have was of going to Easter Sunday mass at a cathedral in
Anchorage, Alaska. The cathedral was located right across the street from
Alaska’s Covenant House, a shelter for runaway youth. The priest noted that
there was no better way to show our love for God than to serve other people, and
he invited those who were worshipping to help serve Easter dinner to the kids at
the mission.
I have a similar memory from a huge Methodist church located in Chicago’s Loop.
On Christmas morning that church has a hymn sing. For that service—and I think
their others as well—they invite homeless people to come in off the streets and
enjoy an hour of warmth in the sanctuary.
I remember going to St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter of New Orleans not
long after Hurricane Katrina. People were just starting to rebuild at that
point, and much of the city was in ruins. What stood out was that they took a
special collection to help rebuild churches on the Gulf Coast that had been
totally destroyed by the hurricane. They noted that no matter what our
circumstances are, we should always find ways that we can help others.
Some other sermons I remember from my travels include one at a church in New
York that reflected on lessons that were learned from a Habitat for Humanity
project the church participated in, a church in Milwaukee where the pastor asked
everyone to consider how do people see Jesus in us, and a church in Nashville
where the congregation was warned not to let possessions get in the way of
serving God, and a church in Los Angeles that reminded those attending the
service to reach out to others—because even in a big city people can feel alone.
What all messages I heard in all these churches had in common was that they
called on people to live the New Covenant, and they offered suggestions on
specific ways to do that. They called on us to put our faith into action—to find
concrete ways of showing our love for God and for our neighbors.
For almost forty years now I’ve taught at Bishop Garrigan. While I’m not
Catholic, I’ve been to lots of masses as part of the school. In the time I’ve
been there, literally dozens of priests have come and gone at the area Catholic
churches. Some of them were quite memorable; others less so.
There’s one priest, though, who stood out more than any other. That was Father
Peter Duc Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant who for many years served as the priest
at Wesley and St. Benedict. Father Peter celebrated lots of masses at school,
and—no matter what the Lectionary readings were—the message in his homilies was
always the same. He would always remind our students—and anyone else who would
listen—to “be good to each other”.
Is there any better message to remind us what Christianity is all about? It all
comes down to being good—showing our respect for God and being nice to all the
people God gives us as our neighbors. When we treat other people with kindness,
respect, and dignity, we’re living the New Covenant. We’re showing that we know
God, and we’re following his ways. We’re spreading God’s love in the world.
While preparing this I came across one more thing I’d like to share with you.
It’s a passage written by Anne Frank—not from her famous diary, but from an
essay she wrote called “Give” that was published fourteen years after her death.
She writes:
How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment; we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straight away! … First make sure that you are always fair yourself! Give of yourself, give as much as you can! And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness! If everyone were to do this … then there would be much more justice and love in the world. Give and you shall receive, much more than you would have ever thought possible. Give, give again … keep it up and go on giving!
“Always give something, even if it’s only
kindness.”
What wonderful words these are, with a message for all of us to follow. So
remember: Our faith in Christ lets us overcome the picky rules. Instead we are
guided to live by the command Jesus gives us: to love the Lord our God and love
your neighbor as yourself. Keep that in mind, and you’ll live the New Covenant.
Or, to sum it up and make it simple, just remember be good to each other.
(C) 2022 davidmburrow@yahoo.com