"A Place to Belong" by Scott Sprunger

For queer people looking to join Christian communities, it can feel like a game of Minesweeper. You try your best to feel your way around the board. But if you make a mistake and say the wrong thing to the wrong person, it’s game over.

That’s why I was so lucky to find the Queer Christian Fellowship, a constituent group of the Christian Association.

For the first half of my college career, I wanted nothing to do with the Christianity that I had been raised in. But after a while, I found I had spiritual needs that weren’t being met. I wanted to look for a Christian community on campus but I didn’t know where I would be welcomed.

Finally, during a student activities fair, I discovered QCF. Through QCF, I’ve found a community where I know I’m not alone. And more importantly, a community where I know I’m loved for who I am.

I’ve been a member of QCF for over a year now. We do a lot of activities together. We hold Bible studies and group prayers. We eat at restaurants together and attend worship services with each other. But the most important thing I’ve found in QCF and the larger CA community is unconditional support. Whether I’m stressed about something as small as tonight’s homework or as big as my plans after graduation, I know that I can bring my worries to the CA and find people who support me.

QCF has inspired me because I’ve seen how each of its members choose to live out their faith. It’s a blessing to be around people who haven’t given up on God, even when they were mistreated by their religious communities. QCF has taught me that God’s love is bigger than hate of those religious bullies who would shut us out. Everyone is invited to God’s party.

"Baptized and Claimed" by Megan LeCluyse

Sermon given January 13, 2016
Scripture: Matthew 3:13-17

Back in December, someone I know wrote a post on Facebook cautioning people against using the term “adopt-a-family” for the holiday season. As the mother of adopted children, she explained that adoption isn’t something you do for a brief time, such as buying gifts for a family who may have less than you, and that hearing these terms can be confusing for kids who are adopted.  Adoption, she stated, is something that is for life. Adoption is a relationship, one in which you bind yourself to another being. In adoption you are claimed. Although she is not a human, this would describe how I feel about my own puppy, Penny. In adopting her, Annie and I have claimed her as our dog, and I think by now she knows that, and while she may test our patience, also wants to be close to us. When we first got her, she hadn’t been wearing a collar, and didn’t like having one on. But now, she does not like not having her collar on, which she may or may not be aware has the tags that identify her as ours. Her collar is like the permanent marker that writes “Andy” on the feet of the toys in Toy Story, and the toys know to whom they belong because they have been claimed. If they forget, they only need to look at their foot.

This year, we have been looking at a fast-paced arc of the Bible, and some of it’s major themes, as we fill in the blank. One of the major themes we find throughout the Bible is culminated in tonight’s Scripture, and in each of our own baptisms. God claims us, just as God has always claimed God’s children. That’s what we see so much of in the Old Testament. We see that God has claimed God’s people, and loves them no matter what they do. And trust me, they test God’s patience more than a little bit, screwing up big time again and again, straying for the goodness that God offers, chasing shiny idols and running after their own foolish ideas. But God is faithful, and when the people remember to look at the foot, metaphorically speaking, or when the remember to look to God in prayer, or whatever it is that reminds them of their creator, they remember they have been claimed, and repent, and turn back to God. Did you know that’s literally what repent means, to turn 180 degrees. They turned from wherever they had strayed off to, and God is there waiting.

The beginning of Jesus’ public ministry is God announcing that Jesus is claimed by God in a pretty undeniable fashion. Jesus goes to his cousin, John the Baptist, in order to be baptized. And for those of you who are from traditions like my own that practice infant baptism, we aren’t talking about putting a handful of water on his head, we are talking about dunking Jesus down into the Jordan River. As he comes out of the water, a dove descends, and a voice says, “this is my son, the beloved.”

We too are claimed by God, and this is one of the reasons we are baptized, as a sign and seal of this identity as God’s child. Paul talks about us being adopted as children of God, and that is something that lasts forever. One of the major themes of the Bible, one we see from Abraham though the early Christian disciples, is God saying, Remember Who and Whose You Are. Although it may not literally be written on our skin, we bear the image of God within ourselves. You are God’s sons and daughters, beloved Children of the most high God. Amen.

I invite you to write God's name somewhen on yourself, as a reminder that God has claimed you as God's own. 

"Home" by Catalina Mullis

As the year comes to an end, I, like many others, begin to reflect on the past year of my life, the things I experienced, and the things that I would like to experience in the upcoming year. 

My year, like most of my life really, has been filled with extensive travel. I spent January-June studying abroad in Salvador, Brazil. In June, I returned to my home in Los Angeles. In August I left to go back to Philadelphia for school. And now, I find myself once again in Los Angeles. Like a nomad, I've never really stayed in one place; I just keep moving and moving and moving. 

That's why, in the past, when people asked me where "home" is, I didn't really know how to respond because in many ways, I never felt like I had a "home," and just when I started feeling fully comfortable in one place, I'd have to leave again. 

It was discouraging, to say the least, and at times, it left me with an incredible sense of loneliness. 

So, when I arrived at the Christian Association as a freshman in 2013 and read that it was "a home away from home," I wondered if that could be true for me; Could this place really offer me something I never felt that I had?

While at Penn, I have left the Christian Association many times; for winter and summer breaks, for study abroad, and soon (sniffle), for life as I prepare to graduate. 

But I can honestly say that the CA has indeed offered me a "home," not really in a physical sense (don't get me wrong, the CA is one of the coziest places to be and I LOVE it), but more so in a spiritual sense; the CA has shown me that my "home" is always with me, that my "home" is my God, my Savior Jesus, the Lord I didn't know before Penn but whom I came to love throughout my time at Penn. 

So, when I find myself traveling the world without a physical place to call home, the CA has helped me see that all I have to do is be still, and know that Jesus isalways with me. 

He is my "home" forever and ever and ever. 

Hallelujah!!!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and may you be filled with joy, because the Lord has come! 

Amen.  

Swords to Plowshares by Peter Hawisher-Faul

Sermon delivered December 2, 2015
Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5

In many of his sermons, Martin Luther King Jr. imagined a future for our world he liked to call “the beloved community.” The beloved community is a future where we have used non-violent principles to abolish racism and poverty. Reverend Doctor King believed that all peoples could get past the differences which segregate, divide, and stratify our societies. He knew it would never be easy, but he thought that we needed that kind of optimism to strive for real justice in our communities.

The prophecy in Isaiah we read points Israel to a similar hope. Isaiah gives all kinds of warnings later in the book; warnings that God will condemn Israel to be conquered by other nations; warnings that much of Israel will live in exile; warnings that God’s people must learn to live justly and follow God. In spite of all the hardship, Isaiah tells the people that one day, God will come and build a house on a mountain, and all the peoples of all the nations will come to it and seek God’s instruction. When this happens, God will mediate conflicts so that war will no longer be necessary. Weapons will be recycled into farming equipment.

In their history, the people of Israel did find glimpses of peace. Many of the people were eventually able to return from exile and Solomon’s temple, which had been destroyed, was eventually rebuilt. But history moved on, wars returned, and the prophecy of Isaiah still urges us to wait for the day that God will abolish war.

As Christians, we see the fulfillment of the establishment of God’s house in the incarnation of God in Christ and the sending of the Spirit. Jesus may not have built a house on a mountain, but Jesus proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God, healed the sick, lived in non-violence, and taught us to forgive and love one another. Jesus commissioned his followers to spread his gospel and the early Christians began to understand themselves as the body of Christ, continuing the work of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But history moves on, wars return, and the prophecy of Isaiah still urges me to wait for the day that God will finally abolish war. This waiting is sometimes called the “already but not yet” of Christian hope. God has already brought salvation in Christ, but that salvation is not yet done being worked out in the world. We live between the times. This waiting is part of the meaning of advent. We decorate with evergreens in winter because we look for signs of renewal in the world around us. We wait in advent for the celebration of birth of Christ, but we are also are waiting for the end of a world sustained by violence.

But where does this leave us? It is tempting to think that it leaves us as the keepers of God’s teachings. Sometimes Christians like to think of the church as God’s city on a hill, where we wait expectantly for all nations and people to stream into our sanctuaries in search of God’s truth. This is the temptation to believe that if all the unbelievers would just become Christians, then violence would cease in the world. If we look at Isaiah, however, I don’t think we get off the hook that easy.

Right after the image of all the nations streaming to Zion, the scripture pleads to its audience “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” This is our task: to walk in the light of God’s teachings, the teachings that will make war unnecessary and transform the tools of destruction into tools for growth and life. We are not a city on a hill that is above reproach and immune to failure. We resort to violence and perpetuate injustice just as easily as the people of Israel did. Rather than hoping for non-violent solutions to conflict, we have often looked for the next war to be the solution. There was a war that was supposed to end all religious wars. There was a war that was called “the war to end all war.” There was a “Cold” War with proxy wars to end the arms race. And now we seem to have wars to end the threat of terror. I don’t know that these wars could have been prevented, but these wars show even Christians are far from beating their guns into trowels. Rather than being in the position of Zion as teachers of God’s instruction, Christians are right alongside all the nations and peoples who seek God’s instruction at the house of God.

We may have some knowledge through Christ that helps us to live in non-violent love with each other, but that knowledge is not a privilege---it’s a responsibility. If we have heard God’s instruction, we are responsible to obey. We who claim to follow Christ should know better, making it all the more convicting when we fail. We do not wait sitting down in idleness, but walking in the light of the Lord and seeking to follow God’s instructions.

Because we walk in the light of the Lord, we do not wait passively but actively, working and praying for a more peaceful world. In the light of the Lord, we may find hope in the potential for peace. One day, the United Nations and the international community may reach a point where all of its conflicts are resolved nonviolently. One day, the work that began in nuclear disarmament might be completed as total disarmament. As Martin Luther King Jr. looked for paths of peace and reconciliation, we look for ways to follow God rather than assume that violence is a necessity. Rev. Dr. King might have been optimistic, but he was not unrealistic. He knew there would always be conflict both locally and internationally, but he believed that it could be resolved non-violently. Isaiah affirms that with God’s help this is possible.

We may not live in a world without war, but we are still called to imagine such a world and to work for it. We walk in the light of the Lord, following God’s instruction as we have been taught by Jesus. This advent you are likely to sing or hear “O Come O Come Emmanuel” again, whether it be in the supermarket or in your home church. When you hear or sing it, I challenge you to pray not only with expectation of Christ being born in Bethlehem, but to pray in hope for this world and its leaders. Pray that all the nations would hear and heed the instructions of the Lord. Pray with Mr. Luther King Jr. that one day, maybe even in our lifetime, God would lead all peoples to resolve conflicts without violence.

Sometimes it is difficult to even imagine a world without violence. Creative and life-giving imagination takes work. It might be difficult to imagine a world without violence altogether, but should it be so hard to imagine a world without public shootings or murders in the street? To help us imagine a more peaceful world, there is a group of Mennonite welders in Colorado who formed an organization called “rawtools.” In the spirit of our passage in Isaiah, these welders take guns and weld them into farm tools. They hope that confiscated illegal guns can be recycled into tools of cultivation, creating a powerful and embodied symbol. As our responsive activity, I would like each of you to describe or draw a way that you can imagine the world without violence.

“God’s Call in Music” by Peter Hawisher-Faul

Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases,  and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. He said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there. Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.

Luke 9:1-6

Last week at the CA we had the pleasure of hosting Adam and Andrea, a young married couple who travel around performing in a folk duo as “Adam and I.” Andrea and Adam shared with us their music as well as some of their story. Their story helped me to see how God’s call can reorient our goals.

They started writing music in Nashville, a city filled with inspired artists trying to find a way to turn their art into success. Adam and Andrea told us about a time when they had to decide for themselves not to chase after what brought success to others, but they instead decided to pave their own path to success on their own terms. For them, this means that they are willing to play music only in exchange for food and lodging if that’s what it takes to share their music with others.

Their identity as artists is shaped by their faith. They chose not to prioritize worldly success because their success in the eyes of God is more important to them. They choose to center their lyrics on hope and love because of their experience of Jesus’s love. While they may not be living as pastors preaching on the Bible, I think their lives serve as an example of ministry.

Most Christians may only go to church one day a week, but their faith can impact their whole lives. This might just mean sharing a love of neighbors through kindness towards coworkers. It could mean using personal gifts and resources to provide for those who are needy or to encourage a more just society. Sometimes we talk about this as “answering God’s call.” The intersection of faith and personal work can be what separates a career from vocation. For Andrea and Adam, they understand their vocation to be traveling and sharing their music while starting a family together.

As society changes, Christians must always stop and think about how their faith changes the way they go about their personal work. It could be, as it was with Adam and Andrea, that understanding our work as vocation can create a dramatically different vision than what is usually understood as “success.” For students at the CA and for all who experience God’s call on our lives, we have to think about how following Christ changes how we go about our lives.

Halloween and Resurrection by Megan LeCluyse

Given on October 28, 2015

Sermon on Ezekiel 37:1-14

“Bones, bones, bones.” That was pretty much how I translated verse 7 as I rushed to finish my final exam in Introduction to Biblical Hebrew during my first year of seminary. While not exactly the right translation, we certainly do have a lot of bones in this passage, but we also have so much more than that. In what several commentators referred to as a passage that captures the imagination, we read a vivid depiction of dry bones literally coming back to life. It’s the perfect Halloween passage; complete with skeletons and something that kind of resembles some type of zombie creature! What is going on here?

Well, first, let me place where we are at in our Biblical arc. After spending some time looking at the early history of the people of Israel and the Psalms, we have moved into looking at the prophets. The prophets play many different roles for the people of Israel, serving as both a voice of challenge and speaking hard truths, as well as a voice of comfort, pointing toward a future that is different from the present. Ezekiel did both of these things – first prophesying about the destruction of Jerusalem, and then as an exile, prophesying words of comfort, words of life, like we find here in this passage. We find here one of the major themes of the Bible – as one commentator puts it:  “At the core of the Biblical narrative is the story of displacement – of having wandered a long way from home, and longing to return. This is the underlying plot of being cast out of Eden, of being foreigners in Egypt, of the journey to the promised land, of the longing of the exiles in Babylon to return to the land of their [ancestors].”

It is in Babylon that Ezekiel shares the vision that he has that we read tonight. The Israelites are in exile and wondering what their future will be. The Temple lays in ruins in Jerusalem. Spiritually the people were dry – if you want to get a sense of how in despair they were read Psalm 137 sometime. We too can find ourselves with dry bones, maybe from exhaustion, maybe from overuse, maybe from not taking care of our souls. For both the Israelites and us, “Can these bones live again?” can feel like a very real question. The same can be said when we look around our world today – in part I think due to some of the dark side of our technology and connectedness. Statistics show that we are living in a safer time than any recent time, and yet we believe it’s the opposite. Children are not allowed to play outside on their own, and we fear a random mass shooting. Climate change seems unstoppable. The world’s challenges can quickly make us feel like we are in a valley of bones.

What happens next is not zombie-ism. It is resurrection. What we have here is one of my absolute favorite Hebrew words – if you’ve heard me talk about it before, it’s still an awesome word and concept, if you haven’t, listen up. The word is “ruah”, and why I love it is that it means spirit, wind, and breath. And it doesn’t mean just one of these at a time, it can be all three intertwined. So when God says “I will cause breath to enter them,” what is really being said is, “I will cause spirit/breath/wind to enter them.” All three are one and the same, a life force, restoring not just breath, but flesh and being to these dry bones. This is also why I love the Hebrew Scriptures – I mean, talk about an image of hope and resurrection. In a valley of grim despair and death, God breathes a life-force that restores the dead to life. This is powerful stuff. For ourselves and for the world.

Do you ever have times where it seems like all your classes randomly come together, where some topic seems to just keep showing up in everything you read? The prophets talk about justice, and how we can bring hope to the world. One of the great places to find a prophetic voice in our time is Sojourners, a non-partisan organization that challenges us to think first about what it means to be Christian. In last week’s weekly e-mail, Jim Wallis talked about extreme poverty is being reduced, in powerful ways. The efforts of individuals and organizations are working. In 2000, the UN put out its Millennium Development Goals, which had a goal date of 2015, and they have made significant achievements. The number of children who die before age 5 has been cut in half. In the 1980s only half of girls in developing countries completed elementary school; that is now up to 80%. There is still work to be done, but change is really happening.

And you do make a difference. I read a daily Richard Rohr devotional, and right now he is talking about those individuals who have shown him what active non-violent resistance and change looks like. But he took the first day of this week to not talk about an individual, but to acknowledge that behind every great individual, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Dorothy Day being those he has looked at so far this week, our countless individuals also contributing to the work, who make it all actually work. We are those individuals. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition movement in what was Burma, and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, said, “Every thought, every word, and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a contribution to peace. Each and every one of us is capable of making such a contribution. Let us join hands to try to create a peaceful world where we can sleep in security and wake in happiness.” 

When you are in the valley of dry bones, may you let God’s ruah restore life to you. And may you let yourself be God’s instrument to breath ruah into others and into this world. These bones will live again. Amen.

God's Presence in Job's and our Incomplete Wisdom by Peter Hawisher-Faul

Delivered September 30, 2015
Text: Job 38

Before we get into the scripture for today, I think we need to lay out Job’s perspective at this point in the book. Job was a man who did everything right. He feared God and he turned away from evil. He even offered sacrifices on behalf of his family just in case one of them sinned. He was pious and hard working. He was an accomplished businessman for his time, owning thousands of livestock. If he was a student, he would have worked his hardest to become valedictorian and get involved in an impressive array of extracurricular activities. If this story was set today Job might have cured a disease, been a master of invention, or maybe a political reformer. Whatever your picture of success is, Job had it. Job was a man who got everything you might hope for out of life.

At least, until it was all taken away from him. All in one day, thieves stole his livestock and killed his servants, fire came from the sky and killed servants and livestock the thieves didn’t take, and his house collapsed on his children, killing them all. Job still worshipped God even after that. Then Job’s body started to suffer. He got boils and blisters all over his body. From all appearances, Job went from being God’s favorite to being God’s enemy. Job began to question why this had happened to him.

Throughout the book of Job, three of his friends try to find any reason why Job might have angered God. Maybe Job did something wrong. Maybe, he was about to do something wrong. Maybe Job’s family had angered God. Maybe Job unintentionally or accidentally committed a grievous sin he wasn’t even aware of. Job’s friends use their best understanding of God to try to help their friend. From everything they knew about God, Job looked like sinner that had to be guilty of something.

Think of how you might react to a friend who starts to struggle with addiction of some kind. You might empathize with their pain, but you might still want them to recognize that they have a role in their own recovery. That’s what Job’s friends thought of him. They thought, surely there must be some reason Job has been punished. If Job could just find the reason and work harder, they were certain his life would improve.

Job however, defiantly assured them that he had done nothing wrong, and he surely hadn’t done anything that would deserve such a harsh punishment. What could he possibly have done that would justify killing his family, taking his possessions, and striking him with disease? As the book goes on, Job begins to demand a trial, between him and God. If Job is at fault, he wants to know what he has done. If God is at fault, Job wants to know why. Job is no longer certain of anything and he demands answers.

Eventually God shows up, which is where the scripture we read begins. God gives the personal audience Job demanded, but it’s not quite the trial Job imagined. God questions Job with questions he can’t possible answer. He asks (in my paraphrase), Where were you when I built the earth? Who laid the boundaries of the oceans? Have you been to their deepest depths? Do you even grasp how big the world is? I bet you couldn’t even imagine the universe. Do you know how water came to this planet? Do you know who birthed the ecosystem? Did you cultivate the planet with rivers as irrigation? Do you have the power to move the stars through space? Could you harness nature as a weapon? Do you have the power to sustain life on this planet?

(silence)

What would you answer? What could you answer?

It might be tempting to list some of the impressive accomplishments of modern science, but every scientist knows we still have much to learn. We might be able to find some really good theories on the formation of the planet and the evolution of life, but we weren’t there. It’s not observable and repeatable. We can’t claim to have the knowledge and power of the creator of the universe.

God asks the questions rhetorically because the answers are clear. We are dependent on the tools, resources, and knowledge we have available. We are dependent on what we have been given. It’s part of the human experience. Part of faith is recognizing that we are dependent on God. We can only know so much, and that which we know is by the grace and creative work of God.

Using the image of a trial, God cross-examined Job and undercut his credibility as a witness against God, but God did not declare a verdict. God doesn’t judge Job for his anger, only his lack of understanding. Job may be innocent of wrongdoing, but that doesn’t put him on equal footing with God. Because Job does not understand everything that God does, he is not able to cast judgment on God.

But did God recount the awesome power of creation just to put Job in his place? I don’t think Job is the only audience of God’s speech. When God finally declares a verdict, it is cast upon Job’s friends. God declares, “My wrath is kindled against you, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” Job was angry with God and demanded answers from God, but that’s an appropriate response to the suffering he experienced.  Job’s friends on the other hand used their theology to try to speak for GOD and find a way to blame Job, the suffering victim.

Job receives the audience from God and it is Job whom God addresses, but Job’s friends must also ask themselves, “Were you there at the creation of the world? Do you claim mastery over life and death?” Job’s friends claimed to know with certainty that fault must lie with Job, but that claim was beyond their understanding. Job was right to seek another answer.

It’s easy to criticize Job’s friends, but we come up with all kinds of ways to explain success or failure while claiming knowledge of divine or natural law. Sometimes we use God to blame someone for their own suffering through theology, but sometimes we use some understanding of the natural order. We might explain that some suffer because of the survival of the fittest, and we might say that others suffer because they did not work hard enough to deserve a better future, it’s still the same kind of thing Job’s friends were doing. When we do this we might need someone to ask us, “Where were you at the creation of the world?” Just as Job had insufficient understanding to judge God, we have insufficient understanding to judge others. Human wisdom has its limits.

Life isn’t always fair. So where is God in unjust suffering? According to the book of Job, God hears our cries for justice and can even find our anger to be righteous. God doesn’t need defending. Rather than claiming understanding of God’s plans or the natural order we ought to acknowledge our ignorance and the frailty of human wisdom. When faced with the power of our creator, our understanding will always be incomplete, but God hears us and shows up nonetheless. Thanks be to God.

For our response, I would like you to choose one or both: With Job’s friends in mind, Name one of the ways humans claim to have a complete understanding of God or the world. With Job in mind, Name a tough question you want God to answer for.