Are You Ready for Trust?

Rev Alan Claassen
Psalm 37:1-9 Matthew 25:14-30
November 16, 2008

Last week-end we were blessed with a special guest. Ron Buford was here on Sunday morning to deliver a sermon that would inspire us, motivate us, and consecrate us, Ron Buford was here to help us to see that we have been entrusted with a unique ministry and mission as members and friends of First Congregational Church, Murphys, United Church
of Christ.
Where would you go if this church wasn’t here?
That was a question Ron asked us.
Where would go if this church wasn’t here?
And you know that this church, this community that welcomes you whoever and wherever you are on life’s journey, is here. Ron asked us to think about the people who do not know we are here.
Ron told us about his church in Cleveland that grew from 50 to 500 in ten years living and preaching the all-inclusive United Church of Christ’ message of unconditional love for everyone. He said that people who were new to the church all said the same thing. It was the same thing that people coming into UCC churches all over the country are saying.
I didn’t know a church like this existed.
Do people in Calaveras County, Tuolumne County know that we are here? How are they going to know? Because you invite them.
Each of you has been given a coin of the realm of the kin-dom of God. Are you going to keep it to yourself so it goes no further than you? Will you tell people who are already here how much you receive from this church? Or will you share give your coin of the realm of God’s inclusive away?
Ron asks good questions. Ron was here in worship on Sunday morning and he asked us, “Are You Ready for Success?” He also met with members of the Church Council on Saturday evening, and he asked us another question, “Are you ready to grow?” Are you really?
Churches are realizing that they cannot do what they did in the 1950s to provide a meaningful experience to the youth born at the turn of the 21st century. And churches are realizing that the longtime faithful members have wisdom to share and pains that need mending.
Are you ready to grow? Can you imagine what that would like? Can you turn a vague lament for something that is not here, into a clear vision of what you believe could be here?
Are you ready for trust? Are you ready to accept that you have been entrusted, whoever and wherever you are, with the ongoing creation of a community of faith that is based on an open, affirming, inquisitive, supportive, nurturing, Biblically and Scientifically literate understanding of God’s presence all creation?
When God calls to you can you echo back? Amen! Alleluia! Alright! Yes!
When Jesus our Christ calls you can you echo back? Master, where are you going?
And when Jesus says, “Come and see,” “come and see” me through the very events of your life, will you follow?
When the Holy Spirit says, may the goodness that is within you, in this moment, just as you are, whoever and wherever you are, may the goodness that is within you become real, growth in strength, heal the wound, create the next artwork that your life is, will you release yourself into the uplifting power of life?
In and through the very events of your life, as wonderful, confusing, or painful as they are, we are entrusted with one thing, the choice to grow in our relationship with God and neighbor.
Sometimes we grow by adding something new. Sometimes we grow by letting go of something familiar.
Pray enables to trust in God, as much as God already trusts in us.
All we need to do is ask for God’s guidance in the moment at hand and then listen.
God is still speaking.
Listen. And then do something!

Last Thursday at the Men’s Fellowship we watched a new DVD produced in honor or the 50th Anniversary of the United Church of Christ. It was a documentary of an extraordinary week-end when 12 active young adults in the United Church of Christ came together to discuss the future of the church.
There were some very interesting comments, as one would expect from a group of
20-somethings raised to love God and question authority.
One of the young men said, “I am NOT the hope of the UCC. Jesus Christ is the hope for the United Church of Christ.”
Someone else said that she didn’t need “clap-clap, praise music” in order to be engaged in worship. She challenged all people who attend church to ask themselves, “Where are you bored in church? Let’s ALL talk about that.”
One of the core themes of the conversations that occurred over that week-end of young adults was that the church needs to balance social action with spirituality. They saw so many church leaders who looked tired. They saw the need for everyone to be engaged in times of prayer, reflection, study so that we would have the spiritual energy and foundation to do the work we are called to do.
All work and no pray just didn’t cut it for these young adult leaders in the UCC.

I want to share with you two writings by that great novelist, Alice Walker. Both of them have to do with this question of being entrusted with a vision, living our lives in such a way that we show we are worthy of our calling as followers of the teachings of Jesus our Christ. Both of these quotes from Alice Walker, one short, one longer, help us tap into a power greater than ourselves to do the work that will bring ourselves to greatness.
She writes, “What I have noticed in my small world is that if I praise the wild flowers growing on the hill in front of my house, the following year they double in profusion and brilliance. The universe responds. What you ask of it, it gives. I remember I used to dismiss the bumper sticker, “Pray for Peace.” I realize now that I did not understand it, since I did not understand prayer; which I know now to be the active affirmation of our inseparableness from the divine.”
The second one is a letter that was forwarded to me by wife, Betsy, from a friend of hers. There are lots of letters and photographs flying around the Internet these days, not even two weeks after the historic election.
This is an
Open Letter to Barack Obama from Alice Walker
Nov. 5, 2008

Dear Brother Obama,

You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance.

A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white- haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate.

One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.


I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn, actually, not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries, who are ourselves in disguise.

It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.
A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies.
And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world. We are the ones we have been waiting for.
In Peace and Joy, Alice Walker
As the young adults said to us, we need to find the balance between prayer and action.
Let me close with these words from Ron Buford’s sermon. “We are not just another social club. This is a place of transformation where the Holy and ineffable God and things that are best and worst in each of us intersect. And we are transformed from weakness to strength, from darkness to light, from fear to hope, from hate to love, from limits to boundlessness. It is here, in places like this one, that God takes the boxes of our lives, opens them, and turns them into dance floors.”
This is a time for embracing, trusting that God will show us the steps to turn our mourning into dancing. May God’s love echo through us to all creation! Amen.