Winthrop Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
No matter who you are. No matter where you are on life's journey. You are welcome here.
 Acts 10:1-17, 34-35 (New International Version) Cornelius Calls for Peter At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!” Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked. The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.” When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa. Peter’s Vision About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven. While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was and stopped at the gate. Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. There weren’t really cops in ancient Rome. There were Roman soldiers, tasked with keeping the kind of peace Rome wanted, by any violent means necessary. Well trained in Roman military strategy and usually well equipped with weapons and armor, they were imposing forces in every place that Rome stationed them to control the local population. It is rare that any people being occupied speaks well of their occupier. That is as true of the earliest of Jesus’ disciples as it is of anyone now who resents the presence of soldiers they did not call and who do not necessarily have their well-being at the forefront of their minds.
Centurions were soldiers with command responsibility over one hundred soldiers in a Roman legion. Each legion would be between 5,400 and 6,000 soldiers, as well as additional auxiliary troops recruited from the people Rome was occupying. Centurions within a legion might also be of lesser or higher rank, with the highest-ranking Centurion being a kind of “knight” among Roman nobility. Men who achieved this rank were a part of a small but prestigious group of military leaders. According to the research I read in writing this sermon, the highest-ranking centurions could retire with quite the pension. Their wealth and the power that came from their station as respected agents of Rome would mean that in many towns, they would be considered among the “notable” citizens. Cornelius isn’t the only “good” Centurion that pops up in the Gospels. In Luke 7, a centurion desperate to save the life of a person he enslaved reached out to Jesus for help. That Centurion had Jewish elders who would vouch for him. They said, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people. And, it is he who build our synagogue.” The fact that the elders feel the need to vouch for him tells us something about a typical Centurion/Israelite relationship. Usually, there would not have been much trust there. But, there was here. The Centurion, himself speaks with great humility towards Jesus, sending friends to Jesus in his stead, sharing that he believes himself unworthy of speaking to Jesus in person, but still he hopes that Jesus will heal the person he has enslaved and trusts that Jesus can with just one word. Jesus is amazed by the centurion’s faith, saying, “not even in Israel have I found such faith.” When the friends returned to the centurion’s home, the enslaved person is once again in good health. There is also a centurion at the crucifixion in both Mark and Luke. In Luke, the centurion who had supervised the soldier who had treated Jesus so cruelly and thrown lots for his clothes, still managed to be moved when Jesus breathed his last breath, saying “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” That centurion praised God (and we are to understand that this is the God of the Jewish people, not one of the Roman pantheons), and said “Certainly this man was innocent.” Acts, the book today’s reading came from, is the sequel to Luke. Luke may have been priming us to understand that even the agents of the empire could use their power for good. Even the agents of the empire could craft a faith that brought healing. Everyone in this room is a descendant of Cornelius. Ruthanna B. Hooke points that out in her commentary. Many scholars argue that this story of Peter’s Spirit-inspired change of heart that allows him to be in relationship with Cornelius is the turning point of the entire book of Acts, and probably the turning point of the early church. I’ve talked before about how one of the most contentious arguments within the first generation of the church was whether one had to follow Jewish religious laws in order to follow Jesus. Religious restrictions around food, both what you eat and with whom you share it, were particularly contentious in a religious community that centered itself around a meal shared in memory of Jesus. If you’ve spent your whole life building communal identity through one set of shared ritual obligations, it can feel threatening to be told that you don’t have to follow them the same way anymore. When you’ve cultivated a sense of safety by being leery of agents of an empire who happily help crucify you, it can feel threatening to imagine building relationships with citizens of that empire. It is no small thing that the Spirit led the early leaders of the church to find ways to welcome Gentiles into full fellowship. Nearly everyone here is a part of the church 2000 years later because Peter and Paul were led to do this. Today’s scripture is Peter’s story. We’ve already heard some of Paul’s. The earlier centurions of Luke and the Ethiopian Eunuch, another faithful Gentile back in Acts 8, were perhaps foreshadowing for this story. The Good Samaritan might have been a little bit of one, too, though they were in a little different category than Gentiles when it came to matters of ritual purity. The story of Pentecost in Acts 2 including a word that God would “pour out my Spirit on all flesh.” This story is a natural extension of that promise. Ruthanna Hooke and Israel Kamudzandu both point out in their commentaries that the inclusion of Gentiles into the church was not something the disciples expected or maybe he wanted to happen. This is all God’s work, moving the Spirit to change the hearts of the leaders of the early church. The Spirit must have already been working on Cornelius, because, while he had not officially become Jewish, he like the Ethiopian before him, prayed steadily to the Jewish God and gave money to people who needed it, a core devotional act for those following this God. God sees him and knows him and wants to welcome him into fellowship. God’s messenger makes that clear, and tells Cornelius how to make his inner commitment to God develop into a full relationship with the followers of the Incarnation. This is only possible because Cornelius had already been walking in faith. Now, the Spirit is directing him to other pilgrims who will join him. Like the first centurion in Luke, he sends trusted people ahead of him, this time to find Peter, instead of Jesus. Peter, for his part, will be moved by a wild dream of food he knows he’s not supposed to eat. Remember, this isn’t food he’s allergic to or something. This is food his community has opted not to eat as a demonstrate of their commitment to the covenant with their God. He could not more imagine eating some of these foods than he could imagine turning his back on Christ. And, yet, the Spirit spoke to him and said he was called to do a new thing in faith. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times in the dream. Peter was still trying to figure out what to make of this dream when the group that Cornelius sent shows up at the home where he was staying. In his commentary on the text, Andrew Warner notes that tanners had, and still have, a job that many find unsavory. Tanners work with animal carcasses. They cured hides with human urine, aged until in turned into ammonia. All tanners lived with a certain amount of stigma due to their smelly, messy, bloody work. Warner notes that Jewish tanners also risked religious impurity because of their work. In spending time with the tanner, Peter is already showing us Christians, once again, that early Christians spent much time among the outcast and marginalized in a community. We probably shouldn’t be surprised that the Spirit would also move them into relationship with those who might have more power due to their connections to the Roman occupation, but less trust due to the same thing. Christ will find a way to build relationship among those who seek to love their neighbors. And, Cornelius loved his neighbors. The Spirit tells Peter to go with the men back to Cornelius’ home. The dream was to show him that God would be ok with it. They describe Cornelius as faithful and “well-spoken of by the whole Jewish nation.” That means his generosity and faithfulness appeared sincere to his neighbors. How a person acts matters. And, Cornelius acted out of generosity demanded in Torah. Peter and Cornelius meet. We didn’t hear most of their encounter today, but it is a good one.... good enough to change the whole nature of the church ever more. Peter said “God told me not to call anyone profane or unclean.” And, Cornelius says, “God told me to go find you and listen to what you have to say.” He says that his whole household was ready to hear what good news Peter would bring. Peter starts his good news with these words, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, and in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Then, he goes on to tell him about Jesus. In the verses after today’s reading, the Gentiles of Cornelius’s household received Peter’s words and received the Holy Spirit, as the disciples did at Pentecost. They began speaking in tongues they had not known before, because they had to say something about this good news that was made clear to them and the old words they had simply would not suffice. Peter will know this moment is important and will say, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” No one could. So, they baptized the whole Gentile household. And, then they stay together for several days. May the Spirit move us to share so much that all will know us by our generosity, just like Cornelius. May we be moved like Peter was to see all people as God’s people. May we speak well of God’s whole creation, and live a life where our neighbors speak well of us. Our generosity will be what helps us find our way to Christ. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: The notes on Centurion in in the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, revised Edition, ed. Paul J. Achtemeier (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996). Ruthanna B. Hooke: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/peters-vision-2/commentary-on-acts-101-17-34-35-3 Israel Kamudzandu: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/peters-vision-2/commentary-on-acts-101-17-34-35-2 Andrew Warner's Commentary in our stewardship material
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 Luke 10:25-37 The Parable of the Good Samaritan (New International Version) On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” I read a commentary by a friend and colleague this week, the Rev. Dr. Elena Larssen, who is a conference minister in the Ohio part of the Heartland Conference. She called today’s reading a “greatest hit” of Christian Scripture. Like when a beloved and fun song comes on the radio, it’s probably a good time to stick to this station for a bit. You can sing along if you want.
As Amanda Brobst-Renaud notes in her commentary, this story has a little bit of everything: a dangerous fight, bandits, someone who is hurt and in danger, plot twists, unlikely heroes, and a call to action at the end. We get to hear the story because someone who knows religious law well is trying to test Jesus. The person asks, “What I must do to inherit eternal life?” Does anyone know the answer? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” As is probably not a surprise to anyone in this room, the person familiar with the law said that Jesus was right. Then, the man asked, “who is my neighbor?” That turned out to be a trickier question. Jesus did as he often does... answer with a question. First, some background: lots of the Bible shows us a loving God. Lots of the Bible also reflects the biases and fears of the people who initially shared the stories that became our scripture. This means that sometimes we get to read about ancient fights among people who lived right next to each other. Central to understanding Jesus’ response to the lawyer is understanding one of those ancient fights: the one between the Judeans and Samaritans. I think it would be fair to say that these two groups used to be one people. The land of the Hebrews came to be split into two kingdoms. Samaria (also called Israel) was the region to the north and Judea was the region to the south. They shared religious history and language and also trauma. Both communities understood themselves to be descendants of Hebrew patriarch Jacob. They both followed the law given to Moses. Both communities understood themselves to be worshiping in the traditions of their ancestors. They had faced, and had been conquered by the same oppressive empires, Assyria and later Rome. And yet, they had significant disagreements around how to interpret their shared religious laws, and significant disagreements about where and whether to gather for corporate worship. Would the oldest hills and high places where their ancestors encountered God be central to worship or would it be the Temple in Jerusalem? By the time we get to this encounter between Jesus and the man who knew the law, we have centuries of enmity between Judeans and Samaritans. Just a few chapters before this story, when a Samaritan village would not host Jesus and his followers, Jesus' followers offered to try to make it rain down fire from heaven to destroy the village. Jesus was often poorly received in an area. Rarely were his disciples so ready to do violence to other people who reject Jesus as they were to a group of Samaritans who did. Jesus would have likely been taught that Samaritans were a problem. So, why tell a story where one was a hero? Jesus shared this story while in conversation with another thoughtful and faithful Jewish person, a man deeply familiar with their shared religious law. It seems like an interesting tension in their tradition, right? They are called to love their neighbors. But, even in scripture some of their literal neighbors, like the Samaritans, get called wicked. They are supposed to avoid them! So, how does the faithful person possibly love their neighbor when they're pretty sure that their neighbors are awful? In a time when health care is so unaffordable and often inaccessible and where leaders are fighting right now about if and how to help regular people more easily afford it, it should be noted that one of the good things the Samaritan does is pay for a desperate stranger’s healthcare. The so-called good and respectable people don’t. They aren’t even regular ol’ good people. They are religious leaders who know the called to love neighbor by heart... they literally teach this to other people through their roles as priest and lay associate of the priest. But, like many of us, they ignore their religious obligations because of reason that are not made clear in the text but we can easily imagine. Maybe they were afraid. Maybe they thought someone else would do it. Maybe they were just mean and didn’t care. Their motivation isn’t as important as their action... or lack of action. We don’t know what they are thinking. We do see what they are doing, which is ignoring someone in pain, despite the fact they have devoted themselves to a religion that tells them not to do that. As Brobst-Renaud points out, Jesus isn’t interested in offering an excuse. He does, however, provide a counter example. That is the Samaritan. To folks who haven’t been raised to mistrust Samaritans, this story doesn’t pack that much of a surprise. Helping an injured person seems like the right thing to do, after all! But, Jesus is talking to someone who expects little good from a Samaritan. I think Jesus deploys the surprise of a Samaritan hero to heighten his point that actions, not just the ideas that live in our heads, demonstrate faith. It is possible to act faithfully according to God’s expectations even if the broader community doesn’t assume you will. Mercy is a foundational behavior of a faithful person. In her commentary on this text, Larssen quotes church father Augustine of Hippo, who once said “All humanity are our neighbors.” That certainly reminds us of our responsibility to one another clear, but also makes it seem huge and unwieldy. The Samaritans actions, though, are pretty concrete and specific. Be moved by someone’s suffering. Tend to issues that are most pressing. Share the resources you have with those who need them. Make sure the person who needs help has enough help to really get better. Find trustworthy partners, like the innkeeper. Larssen wonders if the best place to see the church in this story is as the innkeeper, a trusted partner to the ones binding up the broken and a safe place for hurt people to heal. After all, we have a building and we want to make good use of it. We work to discern how to welcome people into this space, how to make sure it’s in good working order, and a resource not just for us but for our town. Last weekend, we hosted a group of preaching students who needed some experience preaching in an actual pulpit. They briefly became ministry partners to us, too, chipping in some food for our food pantry. For a church that began by meeting in a tavern, it seems fitting to see ourselves as innkeepers, making a space for those who need healing and for those looking to serve others. There’s a Mary Chapin Carpenter song where she says, “sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug.” I imagine, sometimes each of us is the Samaritan. And, sometimes the priest. And, sometimes the person in the ditch, needing mercy to survive. May we add to that list the Innkeeper, reading to host those who need mercy, and able to be trusted with the resources shared with us and the jobs we are given. Jesus isn’t the only one being tested on what it means to live a faithful life in challenging times. We are, too. Let us remember the examples of the innkeeper and the Samaritan. If we do, we’ll always be up to the test. Resources consulted while writing this sermon: Elena Larssen’s notes from the UCC stewardship materials Amanda Brobst-Renaud: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-3/commentary-on-luke-1025-37-4 James D. Purvis’ notes on Samaritans and Samaria in the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, revised Edition, ed. Paul J. Achtemeier (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996). Marion Lloyd Soards’ notes on Luke in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) Thanks for preaching while I was away, Bob. -Pastor Chrissy  John 6:1-14 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2 A large crowd kept following him because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3 Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5 When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” 10 Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place, so they[b] sat down, about five thousand in all. 11 Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” The miracle of feeding 12,000 (Delivered Oct. 12, 2025, at Winthrop Congregational)
Okay, so where does this guy (point at self) get the idea that Jesus fed 12,000 people and not 5,000? Let’s just say that the times have caught up a bit with the scripture. The feeding of the 5,000 is one of only two parts of Jesus’s life that appear in all four gospels. (The other is, of course, the resurrection.) Verse 10 of today’s reading tells us, in parentheses, that about 5,000 men had followed Jesus up the mountainside, in awe of his miracles of healing. Well, in the times that the Bible was being written, the only people who were counted were men. Women, if not chattels, were simply seen as attached to “their man.” And forget about noticing children. They were often not seen and probably seldom heard. As if they didn’t count. So, when the Gospel according to John was written, most likely between the years of 70 and 100 AD, women and children were an afterthought. Or not thought of at all. If we were scanning an aerial photograph today of the crowd on that mountainside we might see, say, 4,000 or 5,000 wives and fiancees and girlfriends with the 5,000 men. And, having no child-care centers, the couples probably brought along their kiddos, too. Now, if the couples were rugged enough to follow Jesus up the mountain, they probably were young and had only a child or two. Or none. And if the couples were older, no children still living at home. So, let’s say that along with 4,000 to 5,000 wives, fiancees and girlfriends, the crowd included 2,000 to 3,000 children. That puts us at 11,000 to 13,000 people. So, let’s call it 12,000. All hungry, all needing to be fed. Just a side note. Let’s not be smug about our enlightened inclusion of women and children under the heading “people.” After all, women did not exist legally, as voters, in the United States until 1920, so for 1,900 years after the Gospel of John was written, women and children weren’t counted. Or didn’t count. We heard about the loaves and fishes, and that story frames our theme for today, which is how God – and we – can make something great out of very little. We have a guide we can follow who will walk us through the story of the feeding of the 12,000. She is Dr. Leah D. Schade, an associate professor of Preaching and Worship at the Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky, a seminary of the Disciples of Christ Church, which was called just the Christian Church in Missouri, where I grew up. Dr. Schade is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the largest of the Lutheran church bodies. Let’s get back to the feeding. The story is so amazing that millions of words have been written about it. Literally. But, don’t worry. I haven’t read all of those millions of words, and I’m certainly not going to try to shovel anywhere near that many into your heads today. This story has been with me for, I don’t know, maybe 75 years. The feeding of the five thousand or twelve thousand is one of the Bible stories that made the biggest impression on the boy Bob Neal in Sunday School. I still find it persuasive, even as I have grown to read the Bible more seriously than literally. And, just as I first heard the story as a boy, Dr. Schade notes that a boy plays a big part in feeding the crowd. The five barley loaves and the two smoked fish were in his basket, and Jesus took them to begin the feeding. Even though kids were very much in the background in biblical times, this is far from the only time the Bible looks to a child to serve God and humankind. For example, Isaish 11:6 contains this famous passage, “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them.” And here in John, as Doctor Schade notes, a small gift from a small child inspired a feast, blessed by Jesus and shared in the spirit of generosity and faith in God’s abundance. A miracle. And perhaps also a metaphor for the large miracle of food and nourishment, both bodily and spiritual. This fusion of child, food and abundance wasn’t just in the Holy Land and in biblical times. Locally and today, the students at Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast grow food every year. Their project, called “Get Growing,” blossomed from a small garden that a teacher had begun as a teaching tool in 2006. By 2010, the students were hosting a harvest meal every autumn using the veggies they had grown and turkey and a few other items they couldn’t grow at the school. I was happy to supply the turkeys from my farm. Think about it a moment and you might ask how do you get a gang of pre-teens to come to school every day during the growing season, which overlaps summer vacation, to tend an acre of veggies? How indeed! But the kids at Troy Howard spend part of their summers at school participating in the miracle of food, even if they didn’t fail a class and have to attend summer school. The Reverend Schade asks us to imagine the crowd with Jesus, seeing five small loaves and a couple of fish is a boy’s basket, tittering when Jesus offers a prayer of thanks for the “feast.” “We’re gonna have a feast with that?” you can almost hear them murmuring. Snickering, even. But Jesus knew what he was doing, and as the basket containing the five loaves and two fish was passed through the crowd, more baskets filled with food began to appear. With the boy’s basket multiplying into many baskets of food, I want to plant a seed with you. We’ll come back to the idea of seeds in a while. Doctor Schade takes up a couple of possible worldly explanations for the sudden appearance of all that food. “Perhaps a child in the crowd had heard the prayer and surreptitiously pulled a loaf from his mother’s bag,” she wrote, “and slipped it into the large basket as it passed.” But, to feed 12,000 people, how many children would have to have purloined loaves from their mothers? And if 2,000 children were in the crowd, wouldn’t nearly every one of them had to have sneaked a hidden loaf from Mom? Not a likely explanation. She offers another worldly explanation. “Maybe an older man in the crowd remembered he had a few extra smoked fish from last week’s catch and tossed them in, as well,” she wrote. Well, not to get gross, but as a retired farmer who smoked a lot of turkeys, I can tell you that if enough smoked fish to feed the crowd had been stashed under people’s cloaks or in their packs, everyone would have caught a whiff, would have breathed in the aroma, and surely the Gospel writers would have taken note. Smoked meat smells as wonderful as it tastes, but it is noticeable. Especially en masse. “No one,” Dr. Schade wrote, “saw how the extra food appeared, and no one cared. All they knew was that everyone had been fed.” And remember, after the feast, the disciples retu0rned to Jesus with 12 baskets of leftover food. What Jesus taught that crowd that day was that even the smallest gift offered to God has the potential to inspire abundant generosity so that everyone is fed. Remember, from other scripture, the planted mustard seed that grows to a height of three feet or more. “Jesus placed his faith in God that somehow a feast was about to happen, and God came through,” Doctor Schade says. “On that grassy mountain, they learned that they could do so much more together than they could ever do alone.” Just as the kids at Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast do so much together to grow food for their school cafeteria. And that’s where I want to take us now. From that mountainside by the Sea of Galilee to what we can do. Alone or together. What seeds can we plant and nurture? How can we help feed if not the 12,000 then the 12 or the seven or the three or however many we can manage? For 30 years, I provided turkeys and as many as 46 other turkey products to feed people, one or two at supper, maybe 20 or 25 around a Thanksgiving table. After we had had gotten the farm on its feet, we were able to contribute some of our turkey items to the Good Shepherd Food Bank and to persuade some of our best customers to do so, too. We began each flock with baby turkeys, called poults. You might think of the fluffy little critters as our seeds. We drove to hatcheries in Quebec and West Virginia to pick them up within minutes of their hatching, drove back to New Sharon and nurtured them just as the farmer and gardener nurture the seeds they put into the ground. In addition to 30 years farming, I’ve been gardening for at least 50 years. Making the miracle of food for my family and others. On the turkey range or in the garden, I feel closest to God. I feel that I’m doing God’s work. Maybe it’s better to say that on the range or in the garden is where I feel God is closest to me. Now, for some, God feels closest while they are praying. For others, it’s during family time. For still others it’s while hiking in the mountains or navigating sea currents. But for me, it’s growing things. After all, we came to New Sharon as back-to-the-landers, and almost all the back-to-the-landers were gardeners before they became haulers of firewood or gatherers of eggs. Or threw up their hands in frustration and high-tailed it back to New Jersey or Massachusetts or wherever. I’m not alone in finding God in the garden. I have a friend in Farmington, a professor and former member in discernment at Old South Church, who closely ties her ministry to her organic gardening. That was where she, like me, felt God closest. Other people find God there, too, as in this passage from Genisis 3:8, referring to Eve and Adam. “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” My gardening began in 1971 when my baby sister, now my late sister, Carol, gave us six tomato plants. We set them into holes dug behind our rented house in Kansas City. We watered and weeded them and, come August, we had fresh tomatoes every day until the frost, which in Kansas City comes even later than the killing frost that we had on Thursday night here. Those seedlings from Carol were infected, with the gardening bug, which bit me. Hard. Those six plants were a mustard seed of what was to become my life’s work, making food for my family and for my customers. My late wife, Marilyn, fell in love with the tending of tomato plants. I expect she also felt God closest when she was on her hands and knees, pulling weeds, trimming dead leaves and tying up vines to keep the fruits high and dry. After we left Kansas City, we lived in a row house in Montreal. I grew greens, squash, carrots, beans and the like along the back fence. And tomatoes, of course. In one way, that might have been our best garden ever. We went on a five-week junket by rail in November 1973. I wrapped each of my green tomatoes in newsprint and lined them up on kitchen windowsills to ripen while we rode trains to Florida, New Orleans, Texas, Kansas City, Ohio and back home to Montreal West. To our great surprise, nearly every tomato ripened bright red. None rotted. Fresh tomatoes in December! In Canada! Even in our absence, the garden was making something good out of something small. I’ve never again been so lucky at indoor ripening of tomatoes. Of course, the most obvious reason to garden is to grow food. From June through November, I grow all my vegetables, then eat home-grown from the freezer until the next June. My older son has fallen on tough times and lives with me now, so I’m filling a second freezer, not to mention packing dry beans, tomato sauce and V8 juice. I’m sad that his life has soured but grateful to be able to feed someone else. Not 12,000 someone elses, mind you, but at least two are fed by my garden. Oh, and my girlfriend gets a lot of it, too. In fact, she came up yesterday from Buckfield and together we harvested potatoes, tomatoes, onions, turnips, carrots and cabbage for her. When I was tending turkeys or, these days when I’m in the garden, I sometimes hear the voices of my late wife or of one of my sons or of someone else dear to me. They are speaking the words of daily life and of love and of aspiration more often than words of scripture or words spoken from the mountain top. They speak as I believe God would speak to a troubled or deliberating mind. They speak in wise words that I do well to heed. This spiritual benefit from gardening gives rewards beyond the raising of healthful food and exercising and breathing fresh air. It’s the rewards of faith. Faith in the seed. Faith in the soil. Faith in God’s natural processes that turn the tiny seeds into abundant squash or gorgeous bright-lights chard. The dirt under our fingernails can be our sign of our faith in God. Our faith that our fellow humans, when properly nourished, will thrive. Gardeners make good candidates to be people of faith. Let’s close with several quite short scriptures that tell us or reassure us about the miracle of making food, whether on a farm or in a garden. Verse 5 of the 29th chapter of Jeremiah reads: “Build homes and plan to stay. Plant gardens and eat the food they produce.” Sounds like a directive to back-to-the-landers, doesn’t it? Genesis 26, verse 12, may help explain why we return to the garden year after year: “Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the lord blessed him.” That is the hope, if not the promise, of bounty. And from Genesis 8, verse 22: “As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” The hope, if not the promise, of centuries of life on earth. In the end, we may be doing God’s work out there in the garden. “He answered and said unto them, he that sows the good seed is the son of man.” That’s Matthew 13, verse 37. Hard to be much clearer about the link of seed to garden to food to faith. My late friend Jo Josephson wrote a poem that contained a line that expresses the bridge between winter and spring. The line went something like this: “The seed catalogs arrived this morning at two-below zero.” Faith and a warm woodstove urge us to peruse the catalogs and get ready to plant seeds. Again. And, isn’t that what Jesus was doing when he fed the 12,000? He was planting a seed, nurturing it and showing the multitude what could grow from such a tiny beginning as five barley loaves and two smoked fish. Brought to the mountainside by a child. Amen.  1 Corinthians 11:23-26 For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for[a] you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. This Sunday was World Communion Sunday and the beginning of our Stewardship season. Illustrated Ministry has a great set of lesson plans for World Communion Sunday. I used it to organize our time together, in addition to worship elements from our stewardship materials and some of Carolyn Brown's lesson plan on 1 Corinthians. Here's some of the things we did together in worship: Practiced saying "hello" and "welcome" in languages other than English. Illustrated Ministry offered this suggestion. One of the simplest ways we can make someone else feel welcome is by telling them they are! When we greet and welcome someone, it shows them we appreciate and are grateful for them. I asked people if they knew how to say "hello" and "welcome in languages other than English. People shared words from Mandarin, Spanish, French, Arabic, Dutch, German, and others. Below are a couple examples. Spanish: Hello = Hola Good morning/day = Buenos Dias (bwen ohs dee ahs) Welcome = Bienvenido (bee in veh need oh) French: Hi= Salut (sal-oo) Welcome= Bienvenue (bee-in-ven-ew) German: Hello = Hallo (hah low) Good day = Gutentag (goo ten tahg) Welcome = Willkommen (vill koh men) Peskotomuhkati-Wolastoqey We welcome you= Kulasikulpon (ku-la-zi-kulpin) (thanks to the folks who run this website for the information: https://pmportal.org/dictionary/ulasihkuwal) Mi’gmaq Welcome/come in and sit down= Pjila'si (up-chi-laa-si) (thanks to the folks who run this website for the information: American Sign Language: Below are two videos of how to greet people in ASL
We also talked about how a minister named Hugo Thompson Kerr first came up with the idea of celebrating World Communion Sunday. And, we answered some questions from the Illustrated Ministry lesson about how we experience communion at our church.
I looked up words in two Wabanaki languages. I found that information on these websites: -https://pmportal.org/dictionary/ulasihkuwal - Carolyn Brown talks about the Corinthians text and about how it is used in the liturgical year here: : https://worshipingwithchildren.blogspot.com/2016/01/year-c-maundy-thursday-march-24-2016.html Illustrated Ministry's whole lesson plan, which includes some things I left out: https://store.illustratedministry.com/products/childrens-bundle-world-communion-sunday?_pos=1&_psq=world+commu&_ss=e&_v=1.0 |
AuthorPastor Chrissy is a native of East Tennessee. She and her wife moved to Maine from Illinois. She is a graduate of the Divinity School at Wake Forest University and Chicago Theological Seminary. Archives
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Photos from Anton Vakulenko, dno1967b
