“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

Distractions are a welcome relief from all of the bad news of a raging pandemic.  

Tom Brady was another distraction when he revealed on Tuesday that he was leaving the Patriots. Even with all that is going on, when this news hit, it found its way to the top of my Boston Globe news feed.  I’m not a big football fan, but even for me it was a welcome distraction.

Brady deserves the honour of GOAT – Greatest Of All Time.  He helped transform a lackluster team into a six-time Super Bowl championship team. 

On the other side of the coin, when someone commits a crime and then ends-up going to jail, we can say they deserve it.  What they chose to do was intentional and it had consequences. 

But when we speak about accidents or diseases, the word deserve is completely out of place.  Someone walks away from a car accident and another dies.  This has nothing to do with one deserving to live and another deserving to die.  Accidents don’t work like this. 

Someone gets the Corona Virus and someone else doesn’t.  One doesn’t deserve to be sick and another deserves to be healthy.  Disease doesn’t work like this either. 

But too often that word deserve gets thrown into the conversation when it simply does not apply.  One of my most poignant moments as a pastor was when a grieving mother asked me at her son’s wake, “What did I do to deserve this?” 

She thought that somehow she had so offended God that He would take her son, that she deserved something this horrible.  Her faith, which should have been a comfort, made her feel worse.

Sadly, the way we talk about God can lead people of faith to think like this.  How common it is to pray with the words “almighty God.”  If God is almighty, some may then assume that God is in full control, all the time, of everything. 

If God is in full control, then we may imagine that there are no accidents.  Then, when an accident or disease does strike, we ask what did we do to deserve this? 

This can be so offensive that some people turn away from God.  If God truly were like this, I would not be a pastor. I would not even be a person of faith.  This would be a cruel and cold God, and one not worthy of my attention.  But this is not our God.

I think this is something we need to remember as we’re in the midst of a worldwide pandemic with very local consequences. 

Whatever happens we need to remember as Clint Eastwood’s character says at the end of the movie Unforgiven, “Deserve has nothing to do with it.”

The virus isn’t sent by God because someone deserves to get it.  Not washing your hands may have something to do with getting it, but God doesn’t.

And that’s exactly what Jesus tells us today in the Gospel. 

Jesus and His disciples encounter a man born blind.  The disciples, as people accustomed to talk of almighty God, assume that the man’s blindness is deserved in some way.  But he was born this way?  How could he deserve blindness sitting in his mother’s womb?

So the confused disciples turn to Jesus.  They ask Jesus, the rabbi, the teacher, “‘Who sinned, this man or his parents?’” 

Somehow this guy deserved to be born blind because everything must have a reason, they thought.  Nothing is accidental.  Nothing is by chance.  Deserve is universal.  But Jesus’ plain answer is basically, “Boys, that’s not that way God works.” 

Accidents happen, disease happens, and it doesn’t have anything to do with deserve.  They just happen.

That’s a hard lesson sometimes.  I think we may want God to be in full control so that we can maybe pray our way out of bad things, but bad things still happen to good people.  And that’s a hard lesson. 

But Jesus won’t leave it at that.  To put an exclamation point at the end of His teaching, Jesus goes through the actual, physical work of making mud and placing it on the man’s eyes.  Jesus could have healed him in so many ways, but Jesus goes out of His way to make work out of the miracle.

This is important because it is the Sabbath and according to God’s law no work may be done on the Sabbath.  This sets up a whole confrontation with the religious experts, and this lays out the path for Jesus to say that God is much more concerned about us than He is about rules, even what we call God’s rules.  Compassion trumps everything else when it comes to God.

So even though accidents and disease add random suffering in our lives, even though we can’t always pray our way out of them, Jesus wants to make sure that we know God cares, even when, especially when, bad things happen to good people, Jesus wants us to know that God cares. 

I think during Lent we might want to think about Jesus’ cross not so much as atonement for sins, but as God’s at-one-ment with us.  The cross is not about how bad we are, but about how much God cares for us especially in our darkest moments. 

This is the cross’ at-one-ment.  This is God’s ineffable compassion.

In this time of unusually widespread suffering, we can find comfort in Jesus’ at-one-ment and we can share it with others. 

We can check in on those who may need some extra help. 

We can be extra courteous everywhere.  The people at the grocery store are under a lot of pressure.  The people at the hospitals and doctors’ offices are out straight.

Many people don’t know about jobs or how they will pay bills.  Recession looms.  Parents wonder how they will care for children with schools closed for who knows how long. 

Let us go out of our way to be kind and patient with each other, and care about each other.

And may Jesus bless our world with healing.  May He guide the intelligent men and women who are working to find a vaccine.  May He protect the care-givers.  May He lead our leaders.  And may this pandemic pass so that we may return to the extraordinary blessings of the ordinary.  For these things we pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen. 

  Today's Service was conducted on the live-streaming platform Zoom.  This was necessary due to the social distancing recommendations the government is encouraging.  As the pandemic continues, we will make the week to week call about when we can return to our beautiful church building.  Until then we remain church, but just not in the church-building.
   I only started to work on the Zoom platform yesterday.  I have not yet figured out how to share the recorded virtual Service.  If I do, I will post it here on our website.  In the meanwhile, I will post this morning's sermon.
   Also, I borrow cameras from FCAT and the Service is then uploaded to the FCAT page on YouTube, and from there to this page.  Due to the pandemic, FCAT will not be loaning out cameras until further notice, which means we will not have a taped Service available on this site for some time.
   Please check this page frequently for updates.
​   Be well.

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

I was at one of our Lenten Discussions a number of years ago.  A female pastor from one of our local churches was offering her presentation.  She started talking about Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman by the well.  I thought I knew all of the pertinent details of the story.  Then she surprised me. 

There really is something to the notion that we look at the world through who we are.

My daughter flew to Florida yesterday for a few days of sun and fun.  Her perspective on the Corona Virus is that of a young, healthy person living in Boston surrounded by the virus.  As I close in on 60, my perspective is not at all the same.  We look at the current situation differently.

This experience we all share in right now will change the ways we look at the world.  Maybe the story of the Samaritan woman can help us see. 

I thought I had a good grasp of this story.  I had read it and read about it, and I would have been surprised to be surprised.  Then the woman Minister surprised me.

In Jesus’ world, villages were built where wells were available.  If there was no water, there were no towns.  It wasn’t like you create a Quabbin Reservoir then pipe water all the way out to Boston. 

The well was a nearby gathering place for any village.  All of the women would meet there to collect the water they needed for cooking and cleaning, and in that day, this definitely was women’s work. 

And it was hard work.  Lugging pails of water from well to home was physical labour.  Because water was needed as soon as the family awoke, and because it would be more comfortable to draw the water in the coolness of early morning, the women of the village would all meet at the well at the same time.  In an age when women were severely isolated, this must have been a special time of friendship and conversation.

But then the woman Minister surprised me with her question.  Why was this Samaritan woman going out to the well at noon, just about the hottest part of the day, instead of dawn?  Why were there no others who Jesus could ask for a drink?  Why was this woman at the well at this hour and by herself?

The question is never answered directly in the text, and it never crossed my male mind to ask this question.  I didn’t even see it as a question.  

If you remember, last Sunday we spoke about Nicodemus, a religious teacher, and one who had so much difficulty figuring out Jesus.  We can’t be sure if Nicodemus ever came to believe in Jesus.

Now, in the very next chapter of John’s Gospel, we meet this isolated woman.  She also has difficulty trying to understand what Jesus is talking about, but then their two stories separate and go in opposite directions.

Nicodemus came to Jesus by cover of night because he was afraid to admit that Jesus may be the Messiah.  Jesus’ encounter with this woman is under the high-noon-sun.  She is so excited about her encounter with Jesus that she runs back into the village and tells everyone He is the Messiah. 

In John’s Gospel, no one is a more successful apostle than this woman.  She brings more people to Jesus than anyone else.

The contrast with the respected religious teacher Nicodemus is intentional.  We have to be open to Jesus.  We have to allow ourselves to be surprised by Him.  He’ll break through any barrier, any isolation there is to get to us, but we have to let Him. 

Jesus broke through the enforced isolation of this poor woman.  She had a miserable life.  Her husbands either used and abandoned her, or they died and left her with nothing.  At a time when there were real consequences to living with a man outside of marriage, she had to.  She had nothing and no one, and then Jesus spoke with her.  Jesus saw her differently.

It’s a true blessing to believe in such a Saviour, but Jesus is also an example for us to try and follow.  We’re living in uncertain times right now. 

We’re supposed to be in a church building right now, but we cancelled because of concerns about the Corona Virus.  Colleges are closing down.  Businesses are limiting travel and even in-house meetings.  Stores are empty of needed supplies.  The worldwide economy is in decline.  People are worried. Governments are declaring states of emergency.  Thousands are sick.  Many are dying.  We don’t know what direction this will take. 

But in the meantime, we can care about each other.  We’re all in this together. 

If we hoard, for instance, someone else has nothing. 

We may have to become more physically isolated, but people don’t have to be alone.  We know who needs to be called and checked-on so let’s stay in touch. 

And lastly, let the Samaritan woman teach us empathy.  Maybe we will be better able to see the suffering of others.  There are generations in places all around the globe and even in our country who face uncertainty everyday for themselves and their families whether from poverty, crime, war, whatever. 

The uncertainty and fear we feel now for a time, they feel constantly.  Let us try to be more understanding of what they endure.  Let us be like Jesus and not isolate them further, but let us see them as valued by God, and therefore, they should be valued by us.

We worship a compassionate Saviour.  Let us pray that this pandemic may come to end as soon as possible, that people be healed, that isolation may end, that it may renew our appreciation of community, that the blessing of ordinary times may return quickly, and that in the meantime we may be here for each other.

In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen. 

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

Back in the early 1970’s the comedian Flip Wilson had a variety show on television.  One of the characters he played was Geraldine, and one of her catch phrases was, “The devil made me do it.”  When Geraldine did something that would get her in trouble, she blamed the devil, and everyone laughed.  It wasn’t her fault; it was the devil’s.  That’s a pretty convenient card to keep up your sleeve.  It’s not my fault.  It’s the devil’s.

You can even read about this in the Bible.  King David got in trouble one day.  The original account of the story in 2 Samuel 14:1 says that God incited David to sin.  Later writers didn’t like this idea of blaming God so when they retold this story in 1 Chronicles 21:1 they said instead that Satan incited David to sin.  Exact same Bible.  Exact same sin.  Exact same David.  But the way it was left in the Bible, it was the devil who was to blame.  

I tell you these things to help us look at the story of Jesus’ temptation maybe a bit differently.  Maybe less Medieval devil with horns and hooves and pitchfork, and maybe a bit more as a complex psychological and spiritual drama as Jesus battles within Himself the implications of who He is and what He’s supposed to do.  

I mentioned once before the book Lamb by Christopher Moore.  It’s a fun, fictional and interesting read.  It’s the story of Jesus growing into a fuller realization of who He is as the Son of God.  It’s trying to deal with how complicated it had to be for a carpenter’s son to realize He was God’s Son.  We don’t want to make Jesus’ spiritual and psychological awakening trivial or purely supernatural.  God said “You are my Son.”  Jesus said, “O.K.”  And it’s over. 

We can never forget the real human nature of Jesus.  It is no insult to His divine nature to treat His human nature as just as real.  How did Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s son, the carpenter himself, the one who went searching for answers out with John the Baptist, and the one who struggled in solitude and desert isolation for 40 days, how did this Jesus come out of all this as the one who would lead a religious revolution? 

Or as we mentioned last Sunday, how did Jesus find the conviction and authority to change thousands of years of tradition with nothing more convincing than, “I say to you …”  Where did that assurance come from?  Two months earlier, Jesus was still searching for answers out with the Baptist.  Do we really want to say that this change was forced upon Jesus only by God’s voice from heaven and challenged only by the devil’s voice in the wilderness?  Or, is something profoundly more internal and interesting taking place?  

I think it’s also important to know that Matthew’s, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit …” is an intentionally tamer version of the original in Mark where it is written:  “The Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness.” 

Mark is the oldest Gospel.  And in his telling of this story, there are definite indications of a violent reaction.  This is not clouds parting, sun shining and rainbows.  Jesus is disturbed to the core by the thoughts of who He is and what He is called to do.  We soften this story only to make ourselves feel more comfortable with it, and at the same time to make Jesus less like us, and less human.

These events have commonly been called “the temptation of Jesus” as if it’s all about sin, but maybe these temptations are more complicated than right and wrong.  Maybe they are the authentic struggles of coming to grips with God. 

Read the chapters of the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah to see what I’m talking about.  You can be perfectly faithful and still have a deep-seated religious anguish.  

What if the imagery of the first temptation is the most basic one?  What if hunger satisfied is the temptation to use faith to think of God as nothing more than a magical provider?  I’m hungry and I don’t have to be.

There is nothing wrong with praying for favours.  God help me with this.  God watch over so and so.  But if we only use God to fill our wants, our faith is wanting.  I imagine Jesus quickly dispensed with this distraction.

But what if this is also the temptation to be relevant?  Just imagine how much Jesus would have loved to alleviate all the needs and suffering of His people.  How much did Jesus want to be mostly the humanitarian rather than the revealer of God and of what we’re supposed to do?

The second temptation follows upon the first.  Jesus struggles with how best to serve God.  What if this is a warning about self-deception?  What if Jesus knows He must preach and heal, must argue and lead by example, must be peaceful and forgiving without fail, and then the self-deception slips in that He could better serve God by dramatic displays of power and miracle? 

How much easier that would have been.  But Jesus knows the history of the Bible.  The generation following displays of power either have to see their own displays or they fall away.  It’s more about the show than the faith.  And Jesus moves on.

 
The third and last temptation is about power.  This is the one that can corrupt the worthiest of saviours.  Think about all of the leaders we read about who free their nations from oppression to only turn into oppressors themselves.  They can’t imagine giving up power.  They rationalize and tell people that they’re doing it for the good of others, but it’s really about the power.

This is Jesus’ third temptation.  When He faces down power, Jesus is ready to begin His ministry of service and sacrifice.  

Just like Jesus’ 40 days, our 40 days of Lent give us the chance to look at our faith and how we will live it. 

Do we turn to God only to ask favours?  Do we sense in our conscience the hard work we should do as people of faith, but convince ourselves it’s not necessary?  And do we really accept that as Christians we are called to serve and even to sacrifice?

Lent gives us the chance to challenge our faith to live it more sincerely.  Lent is our chance to give more time to Jesus in our lives.  And hopefully at the end of Lent we will hopefully better understand why we choose to follow Jesus, especially a crucified Jesus, and why Jesus is worth it.

For these things may we pray in His name.  Amen. 

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

We are surrounded by choices.  Every day is filled with them.  Some are more important than others.  This past Tuesday voters agonized over who to vote for in the New Hampshire primary.  It was reported that they were so conflicted that many couldn’t make up their minds until they finally walked into the voting booth.

Other choices are not as consequential.  One would be where we do our grocery shopping.  Last Sunday after church, Sharon and I went into Northampton to return a few unused items that had been purchased for the Youth Group Spaghetti Supper.  I go up to the Courtesy Counter at Big Y to return a couple of jars of Parmesan Cheese. 

This is when the lady behind the Courtesy Counter was very courteous to me.  She had a bit of a smirk on her face, but other than the quite understandable smirk, she was very understanding when she informed me that the Parmesan Cheese that I was trying to return to Big Y, was actually the generic Stop and Shop brand that I had purchased at, logically, Stop and Shop. 

I was embarrassed and apologized, but she took it in stride.  I don’t think the choice of grocery stores was a life-defining choice even for the Big Y employee.

Another choice that lies in-between the level of importance of these two examples is the choice to save … that is to save your work on the computer.  I’m home typing today’s sermon.  Not very far along.  My needy dog gets off the couch and comes over for some attention.  I pet him for a bit and then I turn back to the computer.

Mason, my dog, was not satisfied.  He tried to stand-up and lean on my lap, but my lap was covered by the computer’s keyboard.  I don’t know what the beast hit on the keyboard, but he hit something that closed down Microsoft Word.  When I brought it back up again, maybe the last two or three sentences I had typed were gone.

So, talking about the choice to save, let’s move on to this morning’s readings, which are about a more significant kind of saving.  The selection that Wunderly read for us from the Book of Deuteronomy is a closing statement at the end of the books of Law. 

There are five books of Torah, Jewish Law, that stand at the beginning of the Bible.  There are the first four, and then the fifth is a retelling of the Law.  That’s where the word Deuteronomy comes from.  It’s the second telling of Torah.  And today’s selection is at the end of the Law and the re-telling of the Law.

This is the context for Moses’ statement when he testifies to the whole people of God:  “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Choose life …” 

This is a stark declaration.  God has endowed us with the ability to think for ourselves and to choose for ourselves.  We have the capability to over-ride our instincts and to choose how we will live. 

I accept the science of evolution.  I accept survival of the fittest as the best explanation for the diversity of creation that we witness.  I believe this process continues even today. 

But I also believe that we have the God-given blessing of choice, that we can think beyond our survival instinct and that we can imagine a better alternative, that we can choose morality, that, in Moses’ words, we can “choose life.”

Morality is the counter-intuitive notion that we should act for the good and benefit of the many, possibly even the all, rather than just for myself.  To choose morality over instinct raises us up and helps us walk that path that leads to higher truths, but it also leads to blessings here and now.  Morality lets us choose life.

When I first moved back to Western Massachusetts in 1988, I left the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania.  I remember talking to a woman from Montague at the time.  I don’t remember the context of our conversation, but she told me that she never locked her house.  The door was always left unlocked.  If she went out, when she went to bed for the night, the door was never locked.

You wouldn’t do this in Scranton, and I remember being surprised by her never locking the house.  But in Montague, she felt safe enough to not have to worry about someone entering her home to do anything bad.

When enough people in society choose morality, it changes life.  When enough people would never dare imagine walking into someone else’s home without permission, our lifestyle is so much healthier than when we must enforce morality with more police or more guns or whatever. 

When we choose morality, we choose life – not only eternal life, but the life we lead right now.  Morality is a blessing.  It transforms life.  It repairs our broken world.  It makes us kinder.

Morality can’t be enforced anywhere near as well as it can be embraced.  This is part of what Jesus is getting at in this morning’s passage from the Gospel as we continue to read the Sermon on the Mount.  The Torah, the Law, is explicit in its treatment of acts of violence such as murder or rape.  And I use the word rape intentionally because often times in the ancient world, and sadly too often today, adultery was often just rape with the blame thrown on the woman as well.

But Jesus pushes morality beyond just what we do.  He digs deeper.  Jesus goes to the root of what may eventually lead to violent actions. 

This is why Jesus talks about the sin of anger and the sin of lust, even when they only lurk in our thoughts and have not yet broken out as actions.

Jesus is trying to convert us from the inside out.  He’s trying to help us choose morality, to choose life, not as something imposed, but as a choice embraced.

We have choices to make every day.  Some important.  Others not so much.  But church is a choice that helps us choose life.  Church can help save us from ourselves.  Church preaches morality, and morality moves us beyond instinct, and morality lets us work for a greater and shared good. 

It is such a blessing to choose life.  It frees us from the meanness and selfishness of the world.  It gives us hope that we can repair the world and make it kinder. 

So like Moses said thousands of years ago, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Choose life …”

May we seek more than survival.  May we choose life.  And may our shared faith as this church community help us nurture the awesome privilege of our freedom to choose, and our freedom to choose kindness.  For this we pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

As I have said before, I’m not a football fan.  I don’t usually watch the Super Bowl, and that’s even when the Patriots were in it year after year.  But last Sunday evening, Super Bowl Sunday, I went down to my Masonic Lodge in Amherst because we just purchased an 85” television.  Some of the guys got together to watch the game and I figured I’d go over for a while. 

Well, I talked more than watched, but I also ate.  They had every kind of junk food imaginable:  pizza, hot dogs wrapped in some sort of pastry puff, chips and sandwiches.  One conscientious soul brought a vegetable platter.  It sat in the middle of our circle and I mean it just sat there.  I think most of the vegetables went home at the end of the night.  Most everything we did eat was not on any hospital menu.  As a matter of fact, it’s probably the stuff that sends you to the hospital.

I do remember an unopened bag of Doritos that I asked a friend to bring over to the couch we were sitting on.  I don’t know how many Doritos he ate, but by the time we left, the bag was empty.  I don’t eat like that too often.  Sharon and I are pretty good.  But I think I ate most of a whole bag of Doritos.

When I got home and then throughout the night, I was parched.  I kept drinking water.  Even after I went to bed, I had to drink more water.  My body was not prepared for all the salt I had eaten at the Lodge.  The salt wasn’t saltier.  I just consumed a whole lot more of it than usual.

I share this story with you because of Jesus’ warning in today’s Gospel that unsalty salt is useless and thrown away.  But salt doesn’t lose its saltiness.  Salt is a chemically stable compound.  This is true now and it was just as true 2,000 years ago.  The chemistry hasn’t changed.
 
Salt can, however, become diluted and lose its saltiness that way.

Jesus’ warning to us is about diluting our faith and the way we live our faith.  We are the “salt of the earth,” He says.  Salt was used in Jesus’ day primarily as a preservative.  It kept people healthy because it kept food healthy.  What Jesus is asking us to do when He says we are the salt of the earth is to help keep the world healthy.

What does that mean, that grand statement that we are called upon to keep the world healthy?

Today’s Gospel passage continues with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  He has just finished offering the Beatitudes.  That was the passage we read last Sunday. 

It began with blessed are the poor in spirit, which means blessed are those dependent upon God.  It means we realize we can’t do it all on our own.  It’s a blessing to realize we need God in our lives.

Blessed are those who mourn is a statement about empathy, which is the truth that we also need each other. 

This leads logically to the Beatitude that blessed are the meek.  This is a pronouncement against self-pride, the belief that we don’t need anything from anyone, and even if that’s true or believed to be true, it can then give rise to the callousness that no one should expect anything from us.  (Rugged individuals) 

The opposite of this sort of selfishness is blessed instead are those who are not only righteous, but who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who need it as much as they need food and drink. 

Blessed are the merciful, says Jesus, because then others will hopefully do the same, and the world changes person by person.

Blessed are the pure in heart, or put another way, blessed are the single-minded whose center is God, who don’t push faith to the sidelines, who don’t sacrifice what is right when a difficult choice needs to be made, who are willing to face the consequences rather than ignore their conscience.

Blessed are the peace-makers in a world filled with war mongering.  These brave and often ridiculed souls are called the “children of God” by Jesus.  Remember last week’s story about Jonah?  He was the prophet who relished judgment and destruction and thought these were the marks of God.  And remember also that instead God was compassionate and forgiving.  This is why the peace-makers are named the children of God.

And then the Beatitudes come to their end and Jesus warns, “‘Blessed are you” for you will be persecuted if you live like this.  In a world filled with insult, intimidation and violence, we will be blessed by God if we choose to live differently, to live deliberately as Christians, to live like Jesus’ Beatitudes expect.  This is what it means to be “the salt of the earth” and to help preserve the earth.

(Not like JBap.  Not retreat from society, but make a difference in society.)

Think back to the reading Maureen shared with us.  Paul enters the city of Corinth, a prosperous, commercial hub of all kinds of activity.  It’s a city that lived by trade.  There was a lot of money to be made in ancient Corinth, if you played by the rules, and if you were more than a bit ruthless.

Paul enters the city and preaches Jesus, and Paul doesn’t dilute Jesus or His gospel.  He comes right out and reminds them in today’s Epistle that he didn’t preach with words that would be hailed as wise and learned.  Instead, says Paul, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”  And the faith took root and it grew and it literally changed the world.

That’s what being the “salt of the earth” is all about.  It’s about keeping the world healthy in a sense, and to do that we can’t allow our faith and our faith-lives to become diluted with so many other things that they lose their saltiness, that being a Christian isn’t all that different from the world. 

When it comes to my diet, too much salt is not a good thing, but when it comes to Jesus’ imagery that we are “the salt of the earth,” it is a very good thing. 

Let us choose in turbulent times to be steady in our witness to Jesus.  Let us challenge ourselves to live the Beatitudes and know them as blessings not sacrifices.  Let us encourage each other because what we are called to do and to be is hard, but let us also be optimistic because we don’t ever act alone.  Jesus is always with us. 

​May we truly be the “salt of the earth,” and may we be as salty as the snacks at a Super Bowl party.  For this we pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

Last Sunday afternoon I was out for a bit and someone told me for no particular reason that Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter accident.  When I got home, I turned on the television to find out more. 

I think the first news report I heard had listed five killed in the accident, one of whom was Kobe’s 13-year-old daughter Gianna.  Soon that number increased to nine killed.  There was a father, mother and their 13-year-old daughter Alyssa, who was a teammate of Gianna’s. 

Two additional deaths were that of a mother and her daughter Payton who was another teammate of Gianna’s.  The girl’s basketball coach from Kobe Bryant’s sports academy was another one who died that day, and there was also the pilot.

I completely understand why Kobe Bryant’s death was the one that turned this tragic accident into headline news, but I was still bothered by announcements that grouped the others together anonymously. 

There was nothing the reporters could do.  I understand this.  They had to report about Kobe Bryant’s death even before the rest of the details were known and confirmed, but I was still bothered by the fact that people who were loved by family and friends just like Kobe was by his family and friends, were lumped together anonymously.  “Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others,” is what I kept hearing.  And again, I understand why this happened, but it still bothered me.

Kobe Bryant is a world-wide phenomenon.  I’m not much of a basketball fan, and since I did once love and follow Larry Bird’s Celtics I definitely was not a big fan of the Lakers, but even I knew who Kobe Bryant was when someone blurted it out to me last Sunday. 

And Kobe Bryant was a good man.  He gave back after a spectacular and lucrative NBA career.  He became an investor in start-up companies.  He was trying to help young people, to give them a better chance. 

I heard an interview with him.  The reporter asked if he were more proud of his basketball career or his work with start-ups.  I was surprised by his answer.  He said that you can win a championship or an MVP, but the next year it’s done all over again, and someone else takes your place.  But when you help a young person get started, when you inspire the next generation ... that's when you create something forever. 

Kobe Bryant was a talented man, and a good man, and I understand why his death got so much more attention than the others on that helicopter, but their anonymity still bothered me.

Tomorrow evening we’re going to meet for Bible study, and I don’t know if we’ll make it all the way there, but we’re supposed to talk about the Old Testament Book of the Prophet Jonah.  This is a great story for kids – the prophet being swallowed by a great fish, but there’s also an extremely important message being shared that is sometimes swallowed also by that great fish.

I’m not going to repeat the whole story, but this little four-chapter book ends with God chiding His prophet because Jonah resents God’s mercy.  Jonah wants God to destroy the city of Nineveh, but God responds and the book ends with God asking:  “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a 120,000 persons?”

Jonah personifies a negative “righteousness,” a morality that resents compassion, that dwells on judgment, that forgets that God cares about people, that God doesn’t only care about the people who are like us and who we like, but that God cares for everyone, the stranger, the alien, the widow, even the people of hated Nineveh. 

The way God looks at us, all of us, is not at all like those first reports of Kobe Bryant dying and 8 others with him.  God knows and cares for everybody.  He knows us all by name.  None are anonymous for God.  We all matter.

We need to remember this, and as we do, we need it to keep us from imagining that God loves judgment as much as we do.  God’s compassion actually angers Jonah, and that’s the very adult lesson of a very child-like story.

I’m sitting down having breakfast on Monday, and I’m finally making my way through the rest of the Sunday Boston Globe.  I start reading Yvonne Abraham’s column about Michelle Carter being released from jail.  She’s the young woman and girlfriend who kept sending texts to her boyfriend encouraging him to go through with his suicide plan. (https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2020/01/25/michelle-carter-out-jail-but-not-out-spotlight/Ouazpks0qZGxg4LkFDledL/story.html)

She is far from a sympathetic character, but Yvonne Abraham was being sympathetic.  I resented it, and then as I was sitting down to write today’s sermon, I realized that I was like Jonah.  I resented her compassion.  I had chosen and liked judgment.  It’s so natural I didn’t even realize it.

This is why we need to constantly keep in mind God’s message that compassion is more godly than judgment, that everyone matters to God, and so everyone should matter to us. 

This is why Jesus shared with us a recipe of how to live our lives when He gave us the Beatitudes. 

This is why we should try to remember and repeat what the prophet Micah reveals:  “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” 

Everyone matters to God because ours is a compassionate God and we are to be a compassionate people.  May we do our best to live according to our faith.  And for this we pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen.