House of Prayer, House of Bread

Lent 3-B
March 12, 2009
Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

I’m going to start this week’s sermon where I left off last week:

Most people in the world have the deck stacked against them. This is not news to us here in Brockton. Many people in the world don’t get enough to eat, don’t have a decent place to live, don’t have good medical care, don’t have the opportunity to earn a living. What does that have to do with us?

What does it mean, then, to be a follower of Jesus?

Let’s look again at these Millennium Development Goals:

End Poverty and Hunger
Universal Education
Gender Equality
Child Health
Maternal Health
Combat HIV/AIDS
Environmental Sustainability
Global Partnership

This is what I said about them last week:

These were set by the United Nations, and have become a benchmark for relief and development workers the world over. My problem with them is that they have been used by all sorts of people – especially church people – to focus our attention and efforts on the suffering of our neighbors far away, at the expense, I believe, of our attempts to create a just society here, to change the structures of our neighborhood, to improve the lives of our neighbors.

Yet look again at this list: what would it mean to work toward the millennium development goals here, in Brockton, in this neighborhood we so hopefully call “PleasantGreen?” Read this list again, think of Brockton. Take up your cross, Jesus said, and follow me.

It does not always happen that my sermons are on the cutting edge of “what’s happening now” in the Episcopal Church, but this week I was very surprised to read these words from the Presiding Bishop:

The Episcopal Church focus on the Millennium Development Goals has raised consciousness in our own faith communities and the broader culture about the need to address abject poverty in developing nations. This work has increased mission fervor and deepened spirituality. We need to bring the same passion, organization, and accountability to our work on domestic poverty – in the poorest regions of the United States. Social statistics and the conditions of life are quite similar in the poorest areas, both in the U.S. and abroad, but the MDGs are addressed solely to poverty in the developing world. We need to use both lenses (international and domestic; distance and near vision) to see the least among us and around us.

On Friday, the Presiding Bishop released a report on how the Episcopal Church can take seriously – and seriously support – the kind of work we are doing right here in Brockton.

The group that met to develop this report came up with another list, the Eleven Essentials of Justice:

Affordable food
Employment
Affordable quality childcare
Education
Healthcare
A just immigration policy
Cultural affirmation
Equal protection under the law
Economic opportunity
A healthy environment
Housing

It also seems like the Episcopal Church is getting ready to re-organize its institutional life to make some changes in who we are as the people of God, living and working in communities like this – who we are as the people of God, as agents of social transformation – who we are as the people of God who can make a difference in communities like this and in the lives of the people – us -- who live here.

… the Episcopal Church commits to participating in combating domestic poverty by revitalizing our often under-utilized buildings in rural, suburban and urban areas so that we may minister with the marginalized and become transformational communities working to eradicate domestic poverty.

… In addition to the demographic tools used currently for church growth and outreach, we will commit to partnering with local groups working to alleviate poverty.

We ask a reassessment of our budgets to be aligned with the gospel mandate of addressing domestic poverty.

Domestic poverty is multifaceted … We are called as Christians to stand with the poor and fight for the dignity of all people. Our presence in many poor communities is predicted by the existence of Episcopal Church buildings, many in a state of disrepair or indebtedness. We believe that these buildings are a blessing to be used for the people of the community.

Which brings us to our gospel for today: Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple because they were not living up to the way God said people should live. They were selling short. They were squandering the resources of God’s creation, resources that were intended to be open and free for everyone. The money changers were trying to fulfill the law by getting around a difficult situation: no one wanted to use dirty Roman money to buy the animals they would sacrifice in the Temple – sacrifices they piously wanted to make to repent for their sins and ask God’s forgiveness. So the money changers took dirty Roman money and gave them Temple money, so the people could buy their sacrificial offerings.

What angered Jesus was how people could take the great, powerful, comprehensive understanding of the law as the way to live out love of God and love of neighbor – to take the law based on those 10 commandments Moses received – and reduce it to an exchange rate. Jesus is going to Wall Street, and pulling the power cords on the trading floor, exposing sub-prime mortgage rates as crimes not only against the poor people who were stuck with them but as crimes against God.

What we are doing here is what Jesus would have us do. This house of prayer is also a house of bread. A house of hope. A house of community and friendship. How timely that the rest of the Episcopal Church is catching up with what God has been calling us to do and to be.

What do the Millennium Development Goals have to do with Brockton?

Lent 2-B March 8, 2009
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16;Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38

When do we get to the good parts? To the easy stuff? To the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? It seems like we spend all our time struggling, working through difficult times, keeping our chins up. When do we get a break? When does our ship come in?

Getting to Easter is not, as one preacher I know said, the next stop after our spring tune-up at the spa or wardrobe refresher at the shopping mall.[i] We are invited instead into this close examination of our relationship with God, and here, in the midst of all that examination, well, we come upon some difficult texts.

It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if the Bible were fully of easy stories. How useful would those be during these days, of economic hardship, of people losing their jobs, of services being cut, of homes lost to bad bank loans.

Let’s cut dear old St. Peter some slack: we don’t like hearing the tough news any more than he does. Peter does not want to hear what Jesus tells him, that suffering and death will come, are inevitable. Jesus’ words are not welcome ones; let’s not kid ourselves.

The Bible is not full of easy stories, but it is full of God – of God wanting to be in relationship with us, with us human beings. If God is the center of the universe, the all-important creator, then the Bible is the story of how much this God want us close. The Bible is the story of how God keeps trying, even though we fail, drift away, deny, wander, pay attention to other things.

The story of Abraham and Sarah is the story of God’s third big try in getting us humans into a loving relationship with God. The first – creation. Adam and Eve pulled away from God, and God got angry and threw them out of the garden. The second – the flood and the rainbow. We read this last week. God was angry, so angry, with us human beings that he killed all of us except one family, who floated in a boat, on a destroyed earth, for 40 days. I think that experience terrified God – God repented of that anger-filled destruction, and said no more.

Today, what do we have in the story of Abraham and Sarah? God tries again. Here, God says. We are bound together – me to you, you to me, together. As a sign of this love I hold for you, I promise you this: you will have a future. You will have a child, and that child will give you as many descendents as there are stars in the sky. You who are wandering in the wilderness: you will have a home. You who do not know what to believe in: you will have a God.

We are followers of God – all of us. That is why we are here. At some point in our lives someone assured us that God loves us. Someone told us some version of this Abraham and Sarah story, and for us, it took. We believed it. Now it is up to us: how can we make other people believe this Good News of God on our side, people who may not have heard it before? People who may not think it applies to them? People who are caught up in some very non-God-like things?

Most people in the world have the deck stacked against them. This is not news to us here in Brockton. Many people in the world don’t get enough to eat, don’t have a decent place to live, don’t have good medical care, don’t have the opportunity to earn a living. What does that have to do with us?

What does it mean, then, to be a follower of Jesus?

God likes to talk about a covenant: I will love you, God says, and because I love you, I want you to do some things for me, and for each other. Love me, love your neighbor as yourself. I will keep my side of the covenant; it is up to you to keep yours. Being a follower of Jesus means keeping our side of the covenant. It means loving our neighbors as our selves.

We have close-in neighbors: our literal next-door neighbors, wherever we live. The neighbors of this church. The people who come to lunch, who are finding more community and recreation in our modest afternoon programs. Being a follower of Jesus means doing what we can to make our neighborhood a better place to live.

We also have far away neighbors, and yes, there is a connection between needs of the far-off and the right-next-door.

Look at this list of the Millennium Development Goals.

End Poverty and Hunger

Universal Education

Gender Equality

Child Health

Maternal Health

Combat HIV/AIDS

Environmental Sustainability

Global Partnership

These were set by the United Nations, and have become a benchmark for relief and development workers the world over. My problem with them is that they have been used by all sorts of people – especially church people – to focus our attention and efforts on the suffering of our neighbors far away, at the expense, I believe, of our attempts to create a just society here, to change the structures of our neighborhood, to improve the lives of our neighbors.

Yet look again at this list: what would it mean to work toward the millennium development goals here, in Brockton, in this neighborhood we so hopefully call “PleasantGreen?” Read this list again, think of Brockton. Take up your cross, Jesus said, and follow me.

---

[i] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Late Bloomer”

Has God had it?

Lent 1-B March 1, 2009
Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15

God is going to have to have a word with Barack Obama, because God has had enough of the war in Iraq. The President’s “revised” timetable is, I am afraid, not fast enough for God.
For God has had enough: not only of the war in Iraq but of what’s going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan, too. God has had enough of Al Qaeda’s sneaky bomb tricks and the Taliban’s violence. God has had enough of Robert Mugabe’s running Zimbabwe into the ground. God has had enough of those drug and gun gangsters in Mexico, of the kidnappers in Columbia, of the Crips and Bloods and of their buddies, the Green Street Gang right here in Brockton. God has had enough.
God had had enough of everybody, except Noah. God was sick of the whole violent lot, so God flooded the earth and got rid of everybody, except Noah and his family – and of course, the animals. All those animals on that ark. That was a long 40 days.
God had had enough of those evil-doers, and saved the good, yes, but I think our reading today shows us that God’s mind had changed. Today’s reading shows that God repented of that terrible, awful wrath, of that flood of death and destruction. God had a taste of that violence and retribution that humans love so much, and God repented. God realized that violence and retribution were not the way to go. No more, God said. I won’t do this any more. I won’t be the one who causes the violence. Let’s stop it now. I will be the first one to offer a sign of peace.
God has not gone back on God’s promise but I think we humans have not kept up our part of the bargain. Some of that all too human virus of violence and destruction snuck on board and hid on the ark. It spread out into the world just as it was drying up from the flood, and we know all too well what has happened ever since.
Fast forward a few hundred years to Jesus, standing in the rushing waters of the River Jordan. Jesus, thrown by the spirit into the wilderness, like Noah on the flooded seas, for 40 days and 40 nights. Jesus, tempted by Satan and all those all-too-human sins of violence and retribution, of death and destruction, of envy, greed, oppression, cruelty.
But like the rainbow in the clouds, the angels came to Jesus, feeding him, taking care of him, supporting him in the struggle against sin and temptation. There in that desert Jesus faced death and destruction – the dark side of human experience – and came out on the other side. With the angels on his side and the rainbow over head, he realized that despite all its power to strike terror into the human, death was not the final answer. Death would not win. Death would not define what it meant to be human. Sin would not rule the day.
We here at the corner of Not-so-Pleasant and Warren know what it is like to look death in the face. Like Jesus, we also know what it is to be down and out, exhausted on the desert floor, and look up to see a rainbow in the sky. We know what it means to have angels look after us. We know what it is like to have a God who has had enough with the bad stuff, and who is here with us, now, in the middle of everything. We know what it is like to have a God who stands with us, who send angels into our very midst.
I was talking with a parishioner this week, who said, “I really like our little congregation.” She could have said, our little congregation of misfits and oddballs, of people who would not feel comfortable in other churches, of people who are honest about how Satan comes to tempt us with anger or violence or loneliness or drug abuse. She could have said, our little congregation of angels, who help each other out in times of need, who hold rainbows over each other’s heads, who are carriers of the promise that God gave us so many thousands of years ago, that God will be with us, that God is with us, that God is always with us.
Amen.

Listen up, people!

Last Epiphany B Feb. 22, 2009

2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9

“This is my son, the Beloved. Listen to him!”

What does it mean to listen – truly listen? To listen to God? To another person?

To list

en to what is going on in the world around us?

To listen means more than mere hearing, the mere physical sensation of sound waves hitting the ear drum. The old English roots of “to listen” are “to pay attention.” When we truly listen we lean in toward the person who commands our attention.

These past weeks we have been listening to stories of Jesus healing people. If we really paid attention to those stories, we would see that they are not about the mere physical healing, but about restoration – the person is brought back into community, into wholeness, in her family, into his society.

It is easy to be dazzled by God – to see so much glory or majesty or distance or power that we, perhaps, miss the point. In this story where Jesus and his disciples climb the mountain, something astounding happens – so astounding that the disciples do not know what to make of it. Jesus is transfigured – changed – morphed – yet all that dazzling glory gets in the way. The disciples are afraid – who wouldn’t be? Rather than leaning in, paying attention to what is going on on that blazing mountain, they step back. They want to contain the experience, by building shelters, erecting tents, hiding away this thing so glorious that they can barely stand it. They are so missing the point that God has to shout out from the cloud, Hey you! Stop running around! THIS is my Son, the one I love. Listen to him!

Jesus stands there with Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the prophet. Both Moses and Elijah acted for God when things were bad for the people – Moses was the liberator who brought the people out of Egypt, the one who put up with their grumbling in the wilderness, the one who told them how God wanted them to live. Elijah, the man of God, lived when the people were ruled by corrupt kings and were tempted to worship other gods. Both Moses and Elijah are massive figures in Jewish memory and imagination. Jesus is standing on that mountaintop with the A Team, definitely.

But think on this: neither Moses nor Elijah got to the finish line. Moses died, having seen the Promised Land to which he was leading the people, but not able to cross over. Our story today, about Elijah leaving earth in the chariot of fire, is a story also of not being finished. There is more work to do, and Elisha, Elijah’s successor, feels unready to take up the task. What does is say that Jesus stands there with these two mighty ones?

This story is smack dab in the middle of the Gospel of Mark. From this point onward, Jesus is heading toward Jerusalem. Soon after these verses, Jesus tells the disciples the hard news of what they will face: the confrontations with the powers, the heavy burden of the cross, the inevitable suffering and death.

The disciples no more want to listen to this hard news than they can comprehend the dazzling glory of the mountain. Listening to Jesus now involves much more than they counted on when they became his disciples.

We are about to enter Lent; the church has always put this lesson of Jesus on the mountaintop, of God shouting out, “Listen to him,” on this Sunday before the beginning of Lent.

Lent is the time, then, when we are to be listening to God. When we are supposed to be paying attention to what God is doing in the world. In that sense, then, Lent is the season of solidarity. It is the season when we pay attention to what is going on – when we notice who is sick and in need of healing. When we notice what is out of whack in the world, what needs to be restored. When we listen to the cries and whispers, the hopes and dreams, of God’s people, the people God has put in our care.

Lent is the time we listen to Jesus. We try out that heavy cross a little bit. We pay attention to that dazzling glory. And we wait, in the days of lengthening daylight, for the great time of trial that lies ahead. Listen.

Epiphany 6-B
February 15, 2009
2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; I Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45

Leprosy, which today we call Hansen’s Disease, is treatable. So treatable that it can be considered curable. People with leprosy can live normal lives, if the disease is caught and treated on time.

But when the Bible says someone has leprosy, think of if as something really, really bad. It is nearly a death sentence. The person with leprosy moves to the margins of society, not only shunned but feared; not merely sick, but unclean, untouchable, unfit for human companionship.

Naaman was a really powerful man. He was the general of a conquering army. The Bible says that even God thought well enough of Naaman and his skill as a general that God gave victory to this enemy of Israel. It would be like Syria marching in and taking over Israel – as earth-shattering today as it was thousands of years ago. Naaman was the conqueror. The Spanish conquistadores to the Aztecs. The U.S. Cavalry to the Plains Indians. The Roman legions dividing Gaul into three parts.

Astounding, but Naaman has a flaw, which could be fatal. He has leprosy. This apparently not a secret; even the conquered slaves knew this, and one of them, this unnamed girl, dares to speak up and offer a solution. Naaman could be cured, she says, by a prophet in conquered Israel.

So look what Naaman does: the powerful King of Aram sends a negotiator to the King of Israel, to plead for his friend. This approach of power-broker to power-broker does not work. The king of Israel does not trust this request to help his enemy.

Like the unnamed captive girl, who offers her solution through the back door, Elisha, the man of God – not the man of “the king” – similarly breaks through the official denials. “Let him in,” he says. “Let him learn that there is a prophet in Israel.”

So with his display of power and privilege and wealth and pride, Naaman marches over to Elisha. What happens then? So what do we learn from this story about how God works? Who has power? Who heals? And how? Who makes a difference – who changes the world? Who are we in this story?

Think of who we are, in this church, in this community, at St. Paul’s Table, on Pleasant and Green streets? Where are we in this story of Naaman the Syrian? What needs healing?

The Gospel gives us another story about Jesus healing someone – this time, a leper, like Naaman the Syrian. Jesus says that curious thing: don’t talk about this, he tells the former leper. It’s very curious, isn’t it: why would Jesus want to keep all this good news, these healings and restorations and wonderful things, secret? I think Jesus realizes that there is something about the power of healing that upsets the apple cart – it upsets the balance of power. Jesus knows the power of healing. Some people like things the way they are: some people on top, some people sick, some people on the inside track, some people marginal outsiders. For some people this is OK.

Listen to these verses from the 4th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Jesus had just taught a lesson from the Torah in his hometown synagogue. All were astounded at his wisdom – “at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Acknowledging their praise, Jesus then said, "‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. …There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’ When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way."

Like it or not, God worms God’s way into our midst. Captive girls speak words of wisdom. Oddball prophets say, sure, let in your enemy; give him a chance. When we ask God to heal us, we have no idea what to expect. We might think things will be the way they used to be, and all of a sudden we are in completely new territory. Someone is healed, someone else is threatened, and all of a sudden the whole world changes before our very eyes.

What will it take to be healed? What will it take for this community to be restored and whole? I think these lessons tell us that that healing will never happen if we wait for the people in power. Look at how God works: from beneath, below, around the corner, from the outside, from the place that surprises us. We may be like that girl who whispers in Naaman’s wife’s ear, or like Elisha who says, sure, let the enemy leader in. We too might be like that former leper, befriended by Jesus along the road, who, despite the risks that somebody powerful might be unhappy, finds it impossible to keep all this good news to ourselves.

Restored to wholeness

Epiphany 5-B

February 8, 2008

Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Mark 1:29-39

When I was in seminary, I had a professor who had no arms. He had been born with a birth defect, and over the course of his life had learned to do with his feet many of the things that the rest of us do with our hands. After a while you didn’t notice much different about him, even when he’d sit at the lunch table and pick up his fork with his toes.

I went to seminary in New York City. There was a woman who used to stand on the sidewalk in front of Bloomingdale’s, a rather fancy department story, and shout, “Help me. I’ve got cerebral palsy. Help me. I’ve got cerebral palsy,” over and over again. I think she was asking for money, but since I never stopped to ask her what kind of help she wanted, I don’t really know.

Also, when I was in seminary, I went to a service commemorating “disability awareness week” or something like that. It was at the Chapel of the Church Center for All Nations – an expansive place, which welcomes all kinds of worshippers. The celebrant was an Episcopal priest who served the deaf community. One young man stands out in my memory – he was the preacher, I think, a disability rights advocate. He was an amputee, I think. I know he refused to wear prosthesis – artificial limbs – because he had no interest in making those of us who were “fully abled” feel more comfortable with his disability. He also refused to use those metal crutches with arm holders that many people use – again on the grounds that they served to make “able-bodied” people feel more comfortable because they could categorize him as “disabled.” He preferred using wooden crutches, like anyone would use.

All these stories, along with today’s Gospel story of the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law, raise these questions: what is sickness? What is health? What does it mean to be healed?

Last week, we read of how Jesus cast the demons out of a man possessed by what we today might call mental illness. In the words of the old hymn, Jesus “reclothed him in his rightful mind.” He restored him to wholeness. He cast out those outside forces which had invaded the man, and gave him back himself. No longer was he possessed by those alien forces; he could return to the rest of society, to his community and his family, as himself, restored, healed.

Whatever fever Simon’s mother-in-law has, it must be serious. The normal remedies must not be working. They way she is isolated and alone, even in the house, makes us think that perhaps they had given her up for dead. When Jesus touches her, healing happens, but not healing like we would think of a doctor making a house call. Jesus doesn’t administer an antibiotic, or apply leeches, or mix a poultice, or shake a magic rattle. Jesus touches her, and yes, she is relieved of the fever, but look what happens then: she is restored to her family. She joins the party. She gets up and helps serve. She regains her place of honor and dignity. She is no longer a patient; she is a person. She is restored, healed.

In those three stories of my seminary days, I think I learned that “healing” is not just about an individual who “gets better.” I don’t think there is a “cure” for cerebral palsy, nor can someone without limbs grow them back. Healing, for those people, challenges our definitions – OUR definitions – of wholeness. Wholeness is not perfection. Wholeness is not some idealized state of no flaws. Wholeness is about being human, fully human, being a full member of the human race. The sick person is isolated; the healed person, no matter what his or her state of disability may be, is restored from that isolation to wholeness, to community, to family and friends. The healed person is a productive and needed and loved member of society. This is what Jesus means by healing: those who were outcast, who were suffering and alone, are brought back inside the fold. Healing is not just “fixing an illness;” it is restoring a person to being, once again, a whole human being who has meaning and value and a place in the community.

Many of us wonder, and I know I have felt this way, when we are sick or in trouble, why me, why I am sick? What have I done to deserve this? Why can’t Jesus help me? Where is the healing in my life?

It is hard to climb out of those pits; no doubt about it, and there certainly are some things about our lives – all of our lives – that we don’t like, and like it or not, that will never change. We can stay there, carrying all those grudges, nursing all those hurts. We can perpetuate our isolation, thinking we are all alone in our troubles, and no, Jesus isn’t going to walk through that door and make everything better – or at least “better” in the way we think “better” ought to be defined.

But listen to this: we have what Jesus had. We have the promise from God that things will be better, that they are better. “Have you not known,” Isaiah writes. “Has it not been told you from the beginning?” We have the same promise from God that Jesus knew, that God gives power to the faint, and strength to the powerless – that God calls all – all of us – by name, and not one is missing: not the woman with cerebral palsy, shouting outside of Bloomingdale’s, not my professor who ate with his feet, not the disability activist who refused to hide his amputated limbs. Simon’s mother-in-law is there, and the man possessed by demons, and you, and, you and you, and you, and me. Everybody who is home sick today; everybody who is just too tired to get out of bed. We’re all there, called by God, called by hope, pulled out of our isolation and aloneness. This is what God promises us: with wings like eagles, we shall run and not be weary; we shall walk, every one of us, we shall walk and never grow faint.

The Pleasant and Green Neighborhood

Epiphany 4b February 1, 2009

Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1: 21-28

I know you won’t believe this, but church sometimes brings out the crazy in people.

Do religious institutions attract crazy people, or does just something happen to us once we get in here? Is it because places like these hold all our hopes and dreams? Because they speak of promises of a better life for the world God has created? Do we get angry because these are promises denied, or delayed?

Do these places make us crazy because our hopes are so high for them, and then so frequently dashed to the ground? Or are these places of safety, of refuge, where the troubled and angry and possessed know that they can come and be allowed to vent and rage and fume and act out. Quiet havens, broken dreams, unfulfilled promises: why do you come to this sacred space?

The Gospel of Mark tells us nothing about the neighborhood around the synagogue in today’s story. It’s in Capernaum, which was a city in Galilee – not a fancy town, but a town of fishermen, of traders, of people from all across the Roman Empire. A hardscrabble town.

It would not be a stretch to imagine the neighborhood around that synagogue to be something like the neighborhood around here. And it is not any kind of a stretch to imagine someone walking in here, as angry and as loud and as possessed by any number of demons as the man in today’s story.

A couple of hundred years ago another crazy man walked into a church. The demons that haunted this man were, it can be said, coming at him from the outside. He lived in England during the early industrial revolution. He saw all the dark sides of those days – the ruined country-sides, the overcrowded cities, the soot-filled air, the overworked children, the lavish homes and lives of the rich. This is not what God intended for England, ranted William Blake:

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

New England as well as Old England knows what happened to those false promises of the industrial revolution. This church now owns a parsonage in what used to be a shoe factory. This city is now no closer to the centers of power – to Beacon Hill, say – than rough andtumble Capernaum, in hardscrabble Galilee, was from Jerusalem. Promises were made when this church was built, promises to be here, in this place, in this community, for a long, long time.

This community has changed – changed enough to make some people really, really crazy – and this church is still here, still opening our doors for whoever comes in, happy, sad, troubled, young, old, clothed and in their right minds, or ripping their shirts off and possessed by demons. This church is still here.

What makes us crazy, here between Pleasant and Green Streets? What gives us hope, here between Pleasant and Green, or should we call them, “not-so-pleasant” and “anything-but-green”?

Long ago, in that far-away synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus stopped the demon in his tracks. When we read in the Gospel of Mark about “demonic possession,” it is a metaphor for alien ownership. The person who is possessed by the unclean spirit is owned by someone other than God, just as Galilee and Judea were owned by the Roman Empire and not by the people who actually lived there, just as the very earth under the disciples feet and the sea in which they fished were owned by interests which put their profit ahead of people’s lives.

So much of Brockton is owned by somebody else. It’s enough to make you crazy. We are third in the state in the number of foreclosed homes. If you’ve lost your home, or can’t afford a home, or don’t live in MainSpring, then you rent: your home is owned by somebody else, and if it’s not heated, or maintained, or safe – well, it’s enough to make you crazy.

This church is still here. Can we live up to the promises we made over 100 years ago? Can we be the church God is calling us to be?

William Blake’s response to what he saw as the broken promises of England was to shake his fist in anger:

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

And so what about Brockton’s green and pleasant streets? Some remarkable things have happened this year – we have made great strides toward that mission to which God calls us, to be the church – the place of safety, refuge, hospitality, hope, transformation – in this place and at this time.