Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

Suddenly... Joy, Shepherds

Rev. Dean Snyder

Luke 2:8-20

For the most part, the early Christians were not a highly educated group, not particularly successful, not esteemed.

I like the way The Message translation of the Bible translates the words of the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians when Paul is describing the early followers of Jesus. It says:

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? (I Cor. 1:26-28)

The first generations of Christians were mostly the nobodies of the world at the time. Christianity grew among slaves and servants and widows and orphans and people who worked with their hands to eek out a living.

During the thirty or forty years between the life of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels, when the early Christians were composing and inventing the wonderful Christmas stories of Jesus’ birth, they wanted someone like themselves in the story.

In Luke, they chose the shepherds. The early Christians who composed the stories that made their way into the Gospels saw themselves in the shepherds.

Being a shepherd had once been an honorable occupation. But in the region of Galilee around Bethlehem, by the time of Jesus, the shepherd farmers had mostly been replaced by agribusinesses. The owners of the sheep farms were no longer those who tended the sheep. The sheep were tended by migrant workers and day laborers.

It was to migrant workers and day laborers that the angels came to bring good news of great joy in Luke’s wonderful Christmas story.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. (Luke 2:8-11)

It was slaves, servants, widows and orphans, and people who worked with their hands to eke out a living who wrote that story.

Because to them Jesus was the greatest joy in their life. The rest of their lives were hard, humiliating, without glory, without success, without reward, without prestige, but in Jesus’ presence they were rulers and priests. In the community of Jesus followers they were special, each and every one.

The writer of First Peter says to these early Christians:

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. [Once you were nobody] But [now] you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people. (See I Pet 2:9-10)

On the surface, not many of us gathered here tonight in this church would seem to have much in common with the early Christians or the shepherds. We are educated. We do have impressive careers and resumes. We are successful. We are influential. We have bank accounts and pensions.

But if you look beneath the surface, I wonder if there isn’t a shepherd somewhere in there. I wonder if there isn’t a migrant worker or day laborer or slave or orphan or someone who ekes out their living day to day inside us.

I wonder if there isn’t someone who looks to all the world like a success but who is feeling like a failure inside.

If we could look beneath the surface of things, I wonder if there aren’t within us souls who dread having to go back to work a few days from now because our work has become miserable for us but we feel trapped in it; souls scared to death about diseases in our bodies; souls worried about running out of money in our old age; souls with credit card debt out of control; souls who are despairing about ever finding a partner who will love us; souls still ashamed and angry about our sexual orientation; souls still in a closet; souls being abused by partners or spouses; souls with marriages that feel loveless; souls worried and ashamed about loved ones in prison; souls hurting because of children who will not answer our calls; souls ashamed because we’ve cheated, because we’ve stolen, because we’ve lied, because we’ve pretended to be something we are not, because we’ve been racist, we’ve been sexist, we’ve abused our power, we’ve been violent; souls addicted to alcohol, pornography, gambling, food, and work.

On the surface of things, we look successful, but beneath the surface we may be shepherds and slaves and orphans and widows and prisoners and poor.

I want to say tonight that it is to the part of us beneath the surface that the angels bring good news of great joy. I know it is hard to believe. I am not sure I fully believe it myself. But it is the Christmas story. Jesus is born to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay.

If we invite Jesus into whatever part of our life where we feel most defeated tonight, most hopeless and helpless, dirty and ashamed, Jesus will come in and bring joy.

Would you bow your heads with me please and be in prayer with me? If any of this prayer fits your life, pray it in your heart with me.

O God, I have something in my life that is blocking my joy. No one else can see it. I hide it from the world. I am ashamed of it. People around me think I am successful and happy but I am not because I have something in my life that is out of control and is blocking my joy.

I ask you to heal me. Show me what I need to do to get joy back into my life. Give me someone in my life I can talk to. Take away my shame.

Let me see the miracle of new life coming into my life this Christmas. I surrender to you what I cannot control. In the name of Christ. Amen.

May you have a blessed Christmas.

Suddenly... Joy, Mary

Rev. Dean Snyder Luke 1:26-38

I’d like to think toady about birth. I’d like us to think about Mary.

What can Mary teach us about joy?

I began Advent this year with – frankly – a selfish motive.

The Christmas stories are so full of joy. Zechariah and Elizabeth experience joy. John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy. The magi who are following the star, when the star stops over Bethlehem, are overwhelmed by joy. The angels bring the shepherds in the field “good news of great joy. “

My personal goal this Advent has been to try to figure out how to have more joy in my life. Less worry. Less anxiety. Less boredom. More laughter. More happiness. More joy.

So this morning we are looking at the story of Mary receiving the news that she will give birth to Jesus and her response, “Here am I. Let it be with me according to your word,” to see if there is something in this story that can help us understand how to have more joy in our lives.

I have three things that Mary’s story seems to teach us.

First, pregnancy and birth is a central metaphor of the Christian faith. God is being born into the world. God is going to be born into the world either through us or in spite of us. Usually it is some of both.

The joy comes when we are part of God being born into the world through us. When we say “yes.” When we say: “Here am I. Let it be with me according to your word.”

Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-sent-me-high-ee”) began his happiness studies by studying composers. In his study, he discovered that it was as though the music was determined to be born into the world and the composers ecstasy was when they let the music take over.

One composer told Professor Csikszentmihalyi: “You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And [the music] just flows out of itself.”

The composer says to the music: “Here am I. Let it be with me according to your word.”

I am convinced movements for justice, equality and freedom are ways that God is born into the world.

There are no books on my office shelves that I go back to reread portions of them again more than Taylor Branch’s three-volume history of the civil rights movement, and no volume that I reread more than the first volume: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63.

I have become convinced that the civil rights movement was determined to be born into the world and people made choices whether to let it be born through them or in spite of them. It was really only a minority of the church –white and black—that chose to let the civil rights movement be born through them. They paid the price but they also knew the joy.

Something of God wants to be born into the world through your life and mine. You are Mary. I am Mary. We are Mary. The question is whether God will be born through us or in spite of us and that is a spiritual decision. Will we fight the movement of God in the world or will we allow the movement of God to be born through us?

I don’t know how God is wanting to be born into the world through your life. It may be a new truth trying to come into your awareness. It may be creativity trying to come out of you. It may be a movement wanting you to be part of it. It may be peace wanting to be born in you.

I am convinced God wants to be born into the world through us. We can fight it or we can say, “Let it be.”

To receive her joy Mary had to give up control and let it happen. She had to cooperate rather than control. You can’t control a movement. You can’t control a birth. You can only fight it or go with it. The birth is going to happen one way or another.

Dr. King discovered early on that he could not control the movement. “Don’t bother me with tactics,” he said more than once. “I want to know if I can apply nonviolence in my heart.”

We cannot control the movement of God’s spirit. We can have open hearts. And that is where the joy is.

Second, to receive her joy, Mary had to choose God over Joseph. This is not really part of our lesson this morning but it is part of the larger story and I want to say a word about it since we did not have the chance to talk about Joseph last week.

For God to be born into the world through her Mary had to care more about what God thought than what Joseph would think. Mary had to care more about what God would think than what her family would think, and what her neighbors would think.

The greatest joy killer in our lives is needing the approval of others more than the favor of God. Needing to be popular more with human beings than with God.

When God is trying to be born into the world through you, it will almost always bring you into the experience of the disfavor and disapproval of others.

I am not saying we should not listen to others or accept the advice or guidance of others. I am saying that if we need the approval of others, it will be hard to experience the joy of God being born into the world through us.

Third and last, joy is always mixed with pain. There is no birth without labor. Pain and joy are not opposites. There will always be struggle in our path to joy. There will always be work.

I was thinking about Adele Hutchen’s death this week and it took me to the eighth chapter of the book of Romans, the chapter I often read when I am thinking about death. I have favorite verses there

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will [God] not with him also give us everything else? (Rom 8:31-2)

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? (Rom 8:35)

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom *:37-39)

This week I started reading earlier in the chapter and I discovered an odd statement there. In Romans 8: 18, 19 and 22, Paul says:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God … We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now…

Paul says that creation itself is in labor. Creation itself is pregnant. Creation itself is giving birth.

All the pain we experience, all of the groaning, all of the suffering, Paul says it part of something new being born and at the end of it will be joy. At the end of it, joy will find us.

Now what?

Rev. Dawn Hand John 17:22-23

Hidden Treasures

Rev. Dean Snyder Matthew 6:21

There is a life principle taught by Jesus that I have been trying to really understand for about the past 12 years. It is found in the collection of teachings in the Gospel of Matthew called the Sermon on the Mount.

Here is the principle: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Mat 6:21)

Part of the reason this verse caught my attention is because I was watching the 2000 presidential debate, the second one. And one of the candidates quoted this verse. When he did, I got out my Bible and discovered he had accidentally misquoted it.

He said: “Where you heart is, there your treasure will be also.” Jesus said the exact opposite. Jesus said that where your treasure is your heart will be also.

Al Gore said your treasure will be where your heart is. Jesus said your heart will be where your treasure is.

Al Gore’s version actually made more sense to me. It seemed more reasonable. We will invest our time, energy, and money in the things we care about. That makes sense. Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also. We give our time and money to the things we care about the most.

But Jesus taught something else. He taught that we will come to care the most about the things we invest our time and energy and money in.

Over the long haul, in the span of our lives, we will not invest ourselves in what we really care about. We will come to really care about what we invest ourselves in.

Over the long haul, we will not go to the gym because we care about our fitness. We will care about our fitness because we decide again and again to go to the gym. If we stop going to the gym or doing whatever form of exercise we do, we will find ourselves caring less and less about our health. I can personally vouch for this being true.

We don’t go to excellent restaurants because we care about superbly prepared food. We come to care about superbly prepared food because we go to excellent restaurants. I have friends who are foodies. I’m not. I am happy at Trio’s. But occasionally when staff goes out to lunch, one of our staff members say to the rest of us: You’ve got to try such and such a place. And when we go the food to the place he suggests, the food is always amazing. Because he spends time in excellent restaurants. I suspect that if I made a decision to frequent excellent restaurants, I would become a foodie. You don’t go to the restaurants because you are a foodie. It is going to the restaurants that makes you a foodie.

Over the long haul, you don’t read because you love books. You love books because you read.

Over the long haul, you don't kiss your spouse or partner because you love him or her. You love him or her because you kiss.

What you invest yourself in is what you will eventually come to care the most about. This is what Jesus taught. Your affection, your attention, your passions, your caring will follow where you invest your time, energy, and money. We decide who we will become when we decide what to do with our time and money. That’s the principle Jesus taught.

I think this is one of the reasons the Nationals work so hard to sell season tickets. There may be other financial reasons to push season tickets but one of them is that if they can get you to commit to physically showing up 20 times in a season, they will have made you a fan.

Theaters know that if they can get you to buy a subscription and commit to showing up throughout the theatre season, you will be much more likely to care about theatre.

The decisions we make about how to spend our time and energy and money shapes our hearts. And actually the word that Jesus used that we translate here heart can just as easily be translated soul.

Where your treasure is, there your soul will be also. Where you invest yourself will shape your soul, your deepest identity. That’s what Jesus taught.

This is why vocational decisions are such a big deal. Because most of us will spend 40 or 50 or even more hours a week on our vocations. Our vocations will be very influential in shaping our souls unless we manage to figure out how to do our jobs without being invested in them.

I began my life curious about the Bible. I made a vocational decision that caused me to invest a significant part of 48 weeks of every year of my life studying the Bible. I have come to love the Bible.

The next Bible class I teach will be a class for those of you who want to learn how to teach the Bible. If you want to love the Bible become a teacher of the Bible.

Household budgets are important because what we spend our money on shapes us as households.

National budgets are important because what we spend our national budget on will shape what we as a people care about. It is not that we care about young people being able to reach their full potential so we invest in education. It is that we invest in education as a society and then we come to care about every child being able to reach their full potential. If we don’t invest in education, we will not care about our nation’s children.

I’ve decided that church membership vows are more important than I’ve been treating them. Al and Dawn have been trying to convince me of this for a couple of years and I think I’m beginning to get it.

One of the questions we ask when people join Foundry is: As a member of this congregation, will you faithfully participate in its ministries, by your prayers, your presence, your witness, your gifts, and your service?

I am not big on oughts or guilt-tripping people. A number of years ago I started checking my sermons and trying to take out all oughts and shoulds. I don’t like to be scolded and I don’t like to scold people. So I replaced oughts with couldn’t and shoulds with mays and cans.

But I am starting to think that the purpose of reminding people about our membership vows is not to scold us if we don’t keep them well enough, but to remind us of the fundamental truth that if we do not invest our prayers, presence, witness, gifts and service in our community of faith we are eventually going to stop caring about the communal life of faith, discipleship, service and mission.

Just like the gym, every time we decide about church we are deciding whether we are going to care about our spiritual life in community with others, and our mission, and our growth.

Dawn has been talking to me lately about the need for more small groups and more Bible study classes and more opportunities for sharing, and praying together. We come to care about spiritual things when we invest in spiritual study, sharing and conversation and prayer. So Dawn has been telling me we need to do more of that as a congregation and she is right. Expect more Bible study and small groups and Sunday school classes.

We are inviting you today to invest in Foundry’s mission and ministry. We are asking you to commit some of your treasure to Foundry’s Mission Possible building renovation campaign.

So we are asking you to look at the treasure in your life and invest some of it to help our building become more effective and functional. And we actually believe this will be a good thing spiritually for you and me. What we invest ourselves in, is what shapes our heart and souls. We want our hearts and souls to be shaped by our church.

I’ve asked Al Hammer, our Associate Pastor for Operations, to help us think about where we can find treasure in our lives that we might consider investing in Foundry’s mission and ministry.

Al:

We have many treasures in our lives including family, friends, time, health, and talents, but the one that Jesus spent more time on than any others as exemplified in the scriptures of the New Testament is money. This will be the 6th Capital Campaign that I have had the privilege of helping to organize and implement over the last 15 years in ministry. I continue to marvel at the creativity and spiritual growth that I find in folks as they are called to sacrificial giving of their treasures. Generosity ALWAYS finds its way to the heart, to the very soul,…

I have discovered through people just like you, that there are at least four avenues to treasures that most of us have and some passionate unique ways of how to make them available to the calling of the spirit of God.

1. Cash flow - is the money that comes in every month and goes out every month, it is our budget.

Last fall I taught a class here at Foundry. It was Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University”. Through that 13 week course Carol and I found ways to better budget, get out of debt and save money that we could have ever dreamed of. For example, we stopped buying cable TV, saving us on the cost AND giving us more time, which in our busy lives is quite a treasure, we now watch much less TV while saving close to $100 a month. We did other things like investing in Foundry’s green energy electricity COOP that has saved us over 15 % on our electric bills every month. Because of this and other changes in our lifestyle we are better positioned to give financially to this Mission Possible Capital Campaign.

2. Time and Talent - the ability to use our time and talent to create additional streams of income from hobbies or avocations.

This is the area where I have found folks the most creative. One family I know of wanted to give to the Capital Campaign but the dad had just lost his job and although he was optimistic for finding another one they were barely making ends meet with their current income and savings. As he was spending a lot of time searching for a job using tools on the Internet the idea of selling some of the abundance of “STUFF” the family had accumulated struck him as a good way to use his windfall of extra time. Over the next 8 months while searching for a job he managed to find books, electronics, furniture and other hidden treasure to sell via EBay and Amazon and managed to have his very own version of a “Garage Sale” online raising close to $6,000 which the family chose to give to the campaign. I actually got a thank you from the wife for helping her husband to finally get the attic and garage cleaned out. Another lady in the church I was serving used her passion for yoga and started teaching classes dedicating the class fees she charged to the Capital Campaign enabling her to donate over $3,000 during the three year campaign.

3. Appreciated Assets - typically these are stocks, bonds or real estate. To increase one's gift, these can be given to the church for their disposal in order to avoid capital gain tax.

One lady came to me back in the late 90’s saying that before she retired she had been the administrative assistant for an executive in a local Tech start up company. She had been there from the start and in fact the company hadn’t paid much in the first years but had given her generous portions of stock as incentive to stick with it while they grew the company. Well, the company did grow; SIGNIFICANTLY over the years and now the stock she own was quite valuable. She was able to give the church close to $100,000 in full value of the stock saving close to $35,000 she would have had to pay in taxes if she had cashed in the stock herself and given the church the $65,000 balance. These types of gifts should be explored with the help of a trusted financial advisor, as they are often a win-win treasure for both the donor and the church.

4. Non-cash (gifts of kind) - items that an individual owns whose value has not increased and the owner can dispose of it themselves. This can be collections, jewelry, etc.

I know of one young man that had invested himself in the Youth group at church and wanted badly to help with the building of our new church through the capital campaign. As he was preparing to go off to college he rediscovered his collection of baseball cards he and his dad had collected over the years. After much research and negotiations he managed to sell the collection for over a $1,000, which he enthusiastically donated to the church. Another example our Campaign Consultant shared with some of us was of a young man that donated the proceeds from his collection of Lunch Boxes that was worth close to $30,000. Who knew??

My wife, Carol, and I will be using a combination of several of these types of Treasures to enable us to give generously to Mission Possible; including continuing to adjust our lifestyle and monthly budget, setting aside some of our appreciated assets we were planning to use for retirement, and oh yes!!! If anyone wants to buy some used, but in very good condition, backpacking and camping equipment, I want to talk with you!

Dean:

So this is our opportunity to invest in the mission and ministry of Foundry Church. We invite you to make a commitment to the Mission Possible campaign. Where our treasure is, our hearts will be also.

We will do this as a part of our regular offering time, by presenting our pledge for the Mission Possible Capital Campaign along with our regular Tithes and Offerings

You should have received a letter from me along with a pledge card in the mail this past week for the Mission Possible Capital Campaign. I hope that you have taken the time to prayerfully consider what your commitment will be to this opportunity to strengthen our ministry and witness for God through the improvements of our facilities.

If you brought your pledge card with you, please find it now. If you did not, our ushers will provide one at this time.

I also invite you to prepare your gifts of tithes and offerings at this time.

Special Word to our guest and visitors:

If you are a guest or visitor worshipping with us this morning we are grateful for your presence among us. Although we do not expect you to pledge to this Capital Funds Campaign, we would ask that you take this time while we are making our commitments to pray for Foundry Church, for each person that will be making a commitment and for the architects and contractors who will help us to fulfill our calling by God as we move into this time of giving and building. If you have gifts of tithes or offerings you may want to take this time to prepare for our offering.

A Point of Clarification

To the Foundry Congregation we want to make sure that everyone here understands that TODAY we are making our commitments to the Mission Possible Capital Campaign. You are perhaps used to this being the time of the year that we do our annual Foundry Stewardship Campaign for the General Fund that helps to keep the lights and heat on, to compensate our staff, and to carry out the ministries God has called us to do. We are doing Mission Possible instead and have delayed our annual campaign until February. We do ask that you continue on your regular and pledged giving to the General Operating Fund through the beginning of next year when you will be given the opportunity to increase your pledge or to pledge for the first time to support the regular on going ministries of Foundry Church. Today’s pledges are commitments and second mile offerings above and beyond our normal giving to the General Fund.

The Mission Possible Project

Plan: Our Building Team and Architects have spent the last year and a half assessing Foundry’s needs and designing a facility that will best meet those needs for the future.

Pray: Over the past 6 months, thanks to a most effective Communications Team, you have heard about the Mission Possible renovation/revitalization project and how it will bring our facilities more in line with the Church’s ministry goals. You have had the opportunity to see presentations about the complete project, attend Informational Gatherings, take a tour of the current facilities in light of the renovation, review mailings about the project, hear inspirational sermons about God’s call on our community and have had access to an abundance of information on the FoundryUMC.org website. Over the last 3 months you have had the opportunity to be in prayer for the Mission Possible project and your own participation through sacrificial giving. The project will cost approximately $10.5 million dollars of which we hope to raise as much of that as possible and then seek a loan to finance the balance to enable Foundry to complete this Phase I of the project successfully.

Give: Today we come together to commit ourselves through our gifts above and beyond our normal giving to the General Operating Fund by giving to the Mission Possible Capital Campaign Fund. Over the last 3 months I have been in conversation with some of our key leaders who were willing to make their commitment in advance of today. I am pleased to announce that we already have pledges of over $1.8 million towards our goal of $4.5 million.

Build: As soon as we gather the results from your pledges and develop our final financial plan, we will begin the renovation project hopefully in late 2013 or early 2014 completing it as we move into celebrating our 200th Anniversary as a Church.

Commitment:

As you complete your pledge card this morning I invite you to take a few moments to pray for Foundry and your own commitment that will enable us to move forward with this vital improvement to our capacity for ministry. Then in a few minutes I will invite you to stand and bring your pledge card forward in order to place it in one of the baskets up front. If you are in the balcony you are welcome to come to the altar or the ushers will assist you by passing the baskets.

Invitation:

Where our treasure is, our hearts will be also. We decide what we will cherish, we shape our souls, by what we invest out time, energy and money in.

Please stand and join in singing the hymn “Marching to Zion” UMH #733 as you bring your pledges for Mission Possible forward along with your regular tithes and offerings. Please place them in one of these baskets up front and kneel at the altar for a moment of prayer or return to your seat.

Jesus, the Builder

Rev. Dean Snyder Matthew 16:13-19

Jesus was a carpenter. He was a builder.

In Mark 6 when Jesus got up to teach in the synagogue of his hometown, people said, “Isn’t this the carpenter?”

They did not say it kindly. It was more like, Who does this guy think he is, getting up to teach at the synagogue? Isn’t he just a carpenter?

Joseph was a carpenter and, in the culture into which Jesus was born, it would be normal for a father to teach his son his trade. In fact, it would have been highly abnormal for a son not to learn the father’s trade.

Jesus was a carpenter. He was a builder.

We don’t know what kind of carpenter Jesus was.

John Dominic Crossan speculates that he built furniture – tables and chairs – because this was the kind of work the majority of carpenters did.

But that is not the only work carpenters did. Some carpenters build houses. Most houses were made of stone or earth but carpenters were needed to build beams and doors and windows. Some carpenters build the entire house.

Jesus seemed to know something about building houses. He ended the sermon on the Mount in Matthew by contrasting a house built on sand and another built on rock.

Then there are those who speculate that Jesus could have been involved in larger.

Jesus was a builder.

This may help us understand the scripture we want to look at today. In our lesson Jesus, after he had become a rabbi, asks his disciples what people are saying about him. “Who do people say that I am?” he asks.

The disciples dutifully report what they are hearing. The present is usually understood in terms of the past. So the disciples told him: some people are saying that you are another John the Baptist, or another Elijah or another Jeremiah or another prophet like the prophets of old.

Then Jesus asks his disciples, But who do you think I am? Who do you say that I am?

Suddenly the room gets quiet. Now the question becomes personal and harder. Who do you say I am?

Only Simon Peter, who has no sense, answers the question. I think you are different from anyone else who has ever lived before. I don’t think you are another anybody. I think you are the messiah, the Christ, the son of the living God.

Jesus responds to Peter’s answer by making a joke. I can’t prove it but I think Jesus laughed as he said the next part. The name Peter means “stone” or “rock.” Jesus says: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, …”

It is a joke because it is a good pun and because the idea of Peter being a rock is funny and because Jesus being a builder is a cute reference to the way he spent his life before becoming a rabbi.

It is cute because he is still a builder … only now he is talking about a different kind of building. He is talking about building a new consciousness, an evolutionary leap in human spirituality, building a new creation.

Then he adds a few more very important words. "You are Peter,” he says, “and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

The gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Who knows the word “Hades?”

We use the word Hades as a synonym for hell. When my parents would not let me use the word hell when I was a boy, I’d tell my sister to go to Hades. I was theologically precocious.

But Hades isn’t really the same thing as hell, not the way we imagine hell. The image that most of us carry around inside of our brains of hell is an image of fire and brimstone which is really based on a place in ancient Israel called Gehenna. Gehenna was a dump where the fire never went out. In Gehenna there is everlasting fire.

Hades is different. Hades is the land of Death. Hades is the city of Death, the realm of Death, the place of no life and nothingness. Death.

Some of the ideas I talk about in this sermon were inspired by a sermon preached by John Buchanan, the pastor for many years, now retired, of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago.

Buchanan says the word Hades ought to actually be translated into the English word death. You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Death, the power of Death, will not prevail against it.”

I think he is right.

This is almost surely a post-resurrection story. That Jesus was the Christ and that he was building a church stronger than death are post-resurrection ideas. Matthew tells us this story as a way of teaching what the post-resurrection church came to believe: that Jesus begins a new reality, a new creation, a new consciousness against which Death battles and loses. This is a post-resurrection revelation.

Years ago I was the pastor of a downtown church in another city and we did a survey of the religious beliefs of our downtown community. Methodist was very low on the list. Very high on the list, just after Catholic and Jewish was New Age. Anybody remember the New Age movement?

So I read a lot of books trying to understand the New Age movement.

Very popular in the New Age movement at the time was an ancient philosophy called Gnosticism that early Christianity had declared a heresy. The leading academic scholar on Gnosticism was a woman named Elaine Pagels who had literally written the book about Gnosticism.

Pagels was not considered a friend of the institutional church. She poked into areas of the church’s history that the church would prefer be forgotten. She reminded us that Christianity had begun as a movement without any orthodoxy at all. It included a lot of ideas we consider unacceptable today.

Elaine Pagels did not consider herself a church person. A lot of church people did not consider her a friend of the church.

Which is why what she wrote in the introduction to her 2004 book on the Gospel of Thomas, Beyond Belief is so remarkable and powerful, John Buchanan quotes it.

On a bright, cold Sunday morning in New York, Elaine Pagels interrupted her daily run by stopping in the vestibule of an Episcopal church to get warm. Two days earlier, her two-and-a-half-year-old son had been diagnosed with an invariably fatal lung disease. The diagnosis was, of course, absolutely devastating. Elaine Pagels writes this:

Since I had not been in church for a long time, I was startled by my response to the worship in progress—the soaring harmonies of the choir singing with the congregation; and the priest, a woman in bright gold and white vestments, proclaiming the prayers in a clear resonant voice. As I stood watching, a thought came to me: Here is a family that knows how to face death. . . .

The day after we heard Mark’s diagnosis—and that he had a few months to live, maybe a few years—a team of doctors urged us to authorize a lung biopsy, a painful and invasive procedure. How could this help? It couldn’t, they explained; but the procedure would let them see how far the disease had progressed. Mark was already exhausted by the previous day’s ordeal. Holding him, I felt that if more masked strangers poked needles into him in an operating room, he might lose heart—literally—and die. We refused the biopsy, gathered Mark’s blanket, clothes, and Peter Rabbit, and carried him home.

Standing in the back of that church, I recognized, uncomfortably, that I needed to be there. Here was a place to weep without imposing tears upon a child; and here was a heterogeneous community that had gathered to sing, to celebrate, to acknowledge common needs, and to deal with what we cannot control or imagine. (pp. 3–4)

What Elaine Pagels stepped into that cold New York morning is the church that Jesus built.

It is the church that insists that, no matter what the world seems to be like, it refuses to live in a world where Death prevails.

The church is far from perfect, of course. You remember that when Peter said Jesus was the Christ, the child of the living God, Jesus did not respond by complimenting him. He did not say, Hey, Peter, you are really smart.

He said, Bless you Peter, (He said bless you the way Southerners say Bless your heart) that revelation must have come from God because you certainly aren’t smart enough to have figured that out on our own.

It is sort of the same with the church. The church is far from perfect. The point is that God keeps using the church to make sure the power of death does not prevail.

The church that Jesus is building is, of course, not a building. It has come to have and use buildings. There are some churches that are experimenting with not owning buildings. They rent space in other buildings for worship and live on their laptops the rest of the week. I am interested to see how the experiments will turn out. Most congregations come to own buildings eventually because if you are going to do more than worship on a Sunday morning, it is hard not to have access to space to house your mission and ministry.

And as soon as you have a church building, the building wants to communicate something. I believe it wants to communicate eternity. Because it is a church that houses the church of Jesus Christ, I believe it wants to communicate resurrection. It wants to communicate a God stronger than death. It wants to communicate a love stronger than death.

When we baptize babies here, we baptize them into a life that Death will not prevail against. When we confirm people here we confirm them into a life of Christian discipleship that Death will not prevail against. When we do funerals and memorial services here, we celebrate a life that death may have taken but that Death has not prevailed against.

The church knows the reality of death as well as anyone and probably better. The church just insists in the name of Jesus Christ that the power of Death will not prevail against us. We will not be defeated by Death. We will not be defined by Death. We will not be limited by Death.

Death will not prevail over Christ’s purpose. Death will not take away the meaning of my life or yours.

I think all the mission we do here at Foundry is an expression of the conviction that the power of Death will not prevail against the church that Jesus the builder is building. The AA and NA groups that meet here, the people who are members of those groups make a decision every day to not let death prevail against them. God bless them.

The homeless people who come here looking for options decide every night not to let Death prevail against them.

Those of us in the depression group and in the grief group decide again and again not to let Death prevail. Those of us who cook meals here for people living with cancer and AIDs, those who sing in the Concert of Life, those who teach English as a Second Language, those who work for Peace and Justice, those who work against dehumanizing LGBTQ people, and on everyone is a statement that Death will not prevail.

Jesus the builder says I am building a church and the power of Death will not prevail against it.

So I think Jesus is still building. He is still building through us. I think he is still building here at 16^th and P Streets.

Someone told me recently about something she saw on a trip to Manhattan. It was a church building that had been closed down as a church and turned into a high end clothing store.

A place in Manhattan where homeless people used to be able to come in out of the weather. A place that used to distribute food and clothing. A place that used to host AA groups. A place that people like Elaine Pagels used to be able to accidentally wander into and end up finding God.

That place had closed down and been reopened for only those who could pay hundreds of dollars for an outfit.

So we going to build again here at Foundry. Jesus is going to build here at Foundry.

The more generously and sacrificially each of us gives to the Mission Possible campaign, the more we will be able to build.

I have not often been sure in my heart and mind that some thing is right as I am sure it is time for us to build again. If you have not been on a tour of the building to see our plans to build, there will be a tour after this service.

We will build. Jesus will build. Jesus is still building his church and the power of Death will not prevail against it.