First Presbyterian Church Of San Anselmo

Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12: Matthew’s Christmas story is the story of two different human communities: Jerusalem, the big city center of the elite, and Bethlehem, with its rural peasants.   In 2019, you don’t have to be from the country to be marginalized, and you don’t have to be from a big city to be arrogant.  So for us, it’s less about urban verses rural, and more about world view.  It is still a choice between two stories.  A choice between the story that leads to death and darkness, and a story that leads to light and life. Political powers still claim to be our savior, our redeemer, and our lord.  This is truly fake news in the worst sense of the word, and it is precisely how political power tempts us.  It is also what the followers of Jesus reject, for if Jesus is Lord, Caesar and Herod are not   

Luke 1:39-56: The video, "An Unexpected Christmas," [produced in 2012 by St. Paul’s Church in Auckland, New Zealand, a church with a ministry called St. Paul’s Arts and Kids.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM1XusYVqNY.] captures precisely what Luke intended in the first two chapters of his gospel, in the story of Elizabeth and Mary and in the Christmas story.  “Brilliant!  They won’t be expecting that!”  Luke’s version is much edgier.  Luke gives center stage to these two women, ordinary women chosen by God and unhindered by men.  Luke has God sending the rich away empty, and bringing down the powerful from their thrones; you can imagine how well that goes over.  There have been times and places when the Magnificat was been banned from public reading.   Luke’s Christmas story names Augustus Caesar and Quirinius, governor of Syria,  for a reason.  It’s kind of like one of those long pan shots in a movie.  In the Christmas story, the opening shot includes the whole Roman Empire, and the camera zooms

Colossians 2:2-4, Mark 12:38-44: The story of the wdow's mite isn't a "Wow! I should be more like her!" story.  It's a story about connection and the way our lives are interwoven.  Jesus doesn't hold her up as a role model, but as an example of how the brokenness of the institutions and the establishment impact the lives of human beings.  He shows us we need to see people, as he saw the easily ignored widow, and let their lives and situations touch our hearts, so that we change the systems that cause injustice and misery. 

Psalm 146, Mark 12:28-34: The Psalm celebrates the lifelong praise of the God who is trustworthy, who stands up for the oppressed and sides with the most vulnerable.  Praising God, which is what we do in worshiping communities, transforms us into people of hope, resilience and resistance to the forces that would worship power, wealth, status or security, turning, "me and my" into "we and our." 

Mark 10:46-52: Bartimaeus recognizes that his condition as a blind beggar is not normal, and so he cries out.  The crowd attempts to silence him.  The crowd always has a stake in pretending that something that really is abnormal – in this case, blind begging – is normal, because it means no one has to change.  If being a blind beggar is just normal, then the society doesn’t have to ask, “Why are some people forced to beg in order to survive, while others have more than enough?  Why aren’t we taking steps to fix that?"  The Church is constantly challenged to decide whether to sign on with the silencers or the silence breakers.  This story reminds us that breaking the silence has deep roots in the biblical witness.   

Mark 10:2-16: This sermon explains how Jesus' comments about divorce and his welcoming the children are connected. In 1st century Palestine, divorce meant economic and social ruin for the wife. Jesus is saying human beings are not disposable, and a case in point is the children seeking Jesus' blessing. They have no status in the culture, they have no way to "earn" God's love, which is how we are all to receive it: as a gift of grace for all. God's concern is for the hurt, the suffering, the impoverished, the tossed aside. Jesus shows us this by saying, "Let them come,"

The Book of Esther: God is not mentioned in the Book of Esther. Are we intended to understand that God was involved - that God was a character ion this story, even thought never mentioned? How do we detect God's action and comprehend God's intention when, as someone put it, "God is subtle to a fault?" Borrowing from author Frederick Buechner, we trust that God offers the possibility of new life and healing. God the director conveys to us, somehow, from the wings, “if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don’t, how we can play [our] roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it.”

Mark 9:30-37: The disciples are afraid to ask Jesus what he meant when they didn't understand his prediction about betrayal, death and resurrection. They're worried about their image, as is revealed by their subsequent bickering about being the greatest. Jesus shows them a child, vulnerable, with no status, and identifies with the child: those who are great will welcome the vulnerable. Including their questions. The disciples need to already know points to their obsession with greatness. The humility it takes to say, "I don't know" and ask questions is the vulnerability Jesus models, both because it allows us to be open to learn, and because it does not create insiders who believe or know the correct answers.

Mark 7:25-37: Jesus learned from listening to the religious and ethnic "other." So can we.

Jeremiah 29:4-7, 10-11: This sermon concludes the summer sermon series on the ways we are created for community. Jeremiah told the exiles to Babylon to make a life there, and to pray for the city in which they found themselves, for in its welfare was their welfare. The American church is not in exile, but can feel at odds with the culture. Our mission statement is to seek the welfare of the city, town, location where we are, because just as God was the God of the Babylonians as well as the Jews, God is the God of our neighbors, and already at work in and through them to bring about God's plans.

Leviticus 19:15-18, Luke 10:25-37: People often assume that the lesson of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is "Anybody could be my neighbor," which is comfortable and doesn't raise our prejudices. But Jesus chose the Samaritan precisely because "A Samaritan is my neighbor" would have stuck in the throats of his listeners. Jesus chose the despised outcast and heretic as the person through whom God is working, while the properly religious people who believe the "right" things failed the test,

Ephesians 4:25-5:2: In a list of ethical instructions about how to live the new life in Christ, the writer acknowledges that feeling anger is not a problem; what we DO with our anger is the issue. Anger alerts us to unfairness, and is a valuable tool when transformed to courage, love, or justice.

Ephesians 4:1-16: In the face of a threat to unity, which is the goal and measure of Christian maturity, the writer's advice to the churches to "speak the truth in love." This is a calling to pursue the truth, even if it is painful, we don't like the source, or it requires us to change. It is also a calling to speak it, to voice the truth, but "in love," which means genuine compassion and caring for the person or group to whom we speak.

July 29, 2018 sermon on lectionary texts Psalm 14 and Gospel of John 6.1-21

Often churches speak of unity as agreement – a calm and comforting sense that we all get along – that there’s no real difference or dispute – no controversy, no disagreement, no protest. But that works well only if you are in the majority. Whenever there is any power imbalance – which is always – thinking about unity-as-agreement only works for our places of power and privilege – where the status quo is a comfort and a balm. Unity is not a feeling of agreement. It is a location, and that location is Jesus. We find our unity when we come to stand with Jesus who always stands with the poor, the oppressed, and the vulnerable.

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a: Paul uses the metaphor of the human body to explain how God's gift to the Church is that people have a variety of skills, gifts and talents to bring to the ministry in Christ's name. He uses the same metaphor to explain how the church are bound together, suffering when one of us suffers and rejoicing when one of us is honored. The challenge in our culture id not that we lack compassion for community members, but that we are reluctant to be vulnerable with each other. We need each other, and we need to need each other to build community.

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Mark 4:35-43; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13: Mark's story about Jesus' calming the storm shows us how to move from fear to trusting God. Jesus reveals a God who cares passionately for the wellbeing of all God’s people. Jesus invites people to trust in that God, and trust, in the end, is the only thing that overcomes fear. Ultimately, the question isn’t what moves us from fear to trust, but who. The answer Mark offers is Jesus, the one who will not rest until we see and hear and experience and trust and live into God’s passionate love for us and all the world.

Acts 1:1-11; Daniel 1:1-17; “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” the poem by James Weldon Johnson Guest preacher the Rev. Floyd Thompkins, Director of the Center for Innovation in Ministry at San Francisco Theological Seminary, looks at the story describing Daniel's invitation to compromise his beliefs and his integrity in order to be seen as successful and important, as defined by the king and the dominant culture. Daniel refuses to give up his integrity, not because being himself "works," as the culture defines it, but because God called him to be faithful, regardless of what appears to work. God promises not to make him successful but to sustain him. Faith is not about doing what works, but about who we are and what God is calling us to do and be.