Plymouth Congregational Church of Fort Wayne, UCC
January 3, 2016
“On the Cusp”
“The true light, which enlightens everyone,
was coming into the world.”
John 1:9
Prelude
The last week of the year in Plymouth Church
is not suited for the faint of heart.
It is incredibly packed,
jammed tight,
full of activity.
Celebrating Christmas would seem to
be enough to have our cups overflowing.
But the season is magnified, enlarged,
with the Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival.
It is no exaggeration to say that
hundreds and hundreds of people
come to Plymouth for Christmas extravaganza,
to hear and see and sing the nativity story.
Many come repeatedly; but I’m amazed
that after 41 years of the Festival,
many more find their way here
for the first time.
Yet, no sooner than festival intensity is
over, we turn a page and salute the new year:
with hugs and kisses,
popping of champagne corks,
and fireworks, games, and parades.
Dare I say, the week does not provide
quiet nights for thinking great thoughts;
and the days are not suited for
writing long sermons.
*****
*****
*****
The first Sunday in a new year.
Where does one begin with Christmas
still fresh, not yet boxed and relegated
Plymouth Church, Fort Wayne
January 3, 2016
Page 2
to storage?
How does one launch gospel
that centers life?
The gospel of Mark begins with
Isaiah the prophet; Mark speaks of the
Messenger sent to prepare the
way of the Lord, to make straight
paths; to correct what is
crooked,deceitful, misleading.
Matthew begins with a genealogy;
his accounting of the generations
preceding Jesus are quite precise –
14 generations from father Abraham
to the great king David;
14 generations from David to the deportation,
the “captivity” in Babylon; and then
14 generations from Babylon
to the age of the Messiah.
Luke, nodding to his patron
(the most excellent Theophilus),
acknowledges that “many” have
written an account of gospel events;
he begins his own orderly account by
going back to the days of King Herod
(Luke 1:5), Luke also inserts a genealogy
(Luke 3:23-38), reversing Matthew’s order,
and delving deeper into the generational
past. Luke’s ancestry.com account
traces the lineage of Jesus to Adam,
said to be “son of God.”
In John’s gospel, the beginning
is configured in a vastly different way.
All attention is focused upon the “Word,”
a kind of first century equivalent to
what Star Wars aficionados would call
the “Force” – a mystical, magnetic
thread that ties life together.
The Word exists in a dimension not
confined to time. The Word was
Plymouth Church, Fort Wayne
January 3, 2016
Page 3
independent of the beginning;
the Word - described as being with God,
the Word was God, the Word, the Logos,
was agent that generated life;
all things that are come into being
through the Word;
without the Word there is not one
thing capable of being.
The Word is wrapped,
wedded with light … and life;
the Word is light that shines
in the darkness
that the darkness cannot overcome.
John traces the gospel to a genesis
in creation. The world and all within
are intricately tied together
by God’s Word,
the Word, the true light, which enlightens everyone,
that came into the world at Christmas.
*****
*****
*****
How does one launch a new year
aware that this Word became flesh,
that the Word still speaks,
that we might be drawn into the
heart of the God, from whose womb
we have come?
We are on the cusp of the calendar.
And for those of us who find our
lives immersed in church life and
ministry, this new year perch invites
the taking of personal inventory.
I attended a holiday concert at the
Allen County Courthouse
(Heartland Sings!), and one of the
songs on the program was a setting
of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem:
“Ring Out, Wild Bells”
(Alfred, 1809-1892).
Plymouth Church, Fort Wayne
January 3, 2016
Page 4
There is, I learned this week,
a Swedish tradition of reciting
Tennyson’s poem every new year,
dating back to 1897.
Alfred’s poem probes the question:
what do we need “ring out”
and what do we need “ring in”
for our lives to be more
pleasing and acceptable,
more “force” sensitive,
more “word” full.
What do we need to “ring out”
and what do we need to “ring in”
to promote life more aligned to
faith than to the churnings of fear?
Alfred’s ledger had falsehood,
grief, class feuding, foul disease,
civic slander and party strife,
lust of gold, wars of old,
on the rung out list.
Alfred entered
love of truth and right,
a common love of good,
nobler modes of life,
larger hearts, kinder hands,
and peace
on the list of what we might ring in.
“Ring out the darkness of the land,
Right in the Christ that is to be.”
The freshness of a new year
doesn’t last long.
Seize the day.
There is none other like it.
Ponder what you might pray –
to ring in, ring out, for your good and for
the good of the church, and the world.
*****
*****
*****
We have a Brian Wren hymn we sometimes sing,
Plymouth Church, Fort Wayne
January 3, 2016
Page 5
“This is a day of new beginnings,
time to remember and move on,
time to believe what love is bringing,
laying to rest the pain that’s gone”
(NCH, No. 417).
Wren is said to have composed these words
for a New Year’s Day worship service in
Oxford, England, 1978. It, too, is a reminder –
when we conduct an inventory of our lives,
it is with the intent to discard what is a burden,
to move on with what is a blessing.
In my family circle this year, the most quoted
family member turned out to be my father-in-law,
Quentin Parke McCray. Quentin has a phrase
that worked its way into the minds of his children:
“let it go.”
This is sage advice.
And much is at stake in heeding it.
When we can’t let go –
of guilt, anger, indignation, of sin,
and debts, and trespasses –
we sink.
And when we sink,
we get stuck.
And when we get stuck ,
we aren’t very useful;
and we can’t move on into
the richness of life God desires,
a richness that is measured by
goodness and mercy,
peace, love, and joy;
and light.
These things come, when they come,
when we know ourselves, and when
we are true to ourselves, and to the
Word, the Force, the Light
that sustains us.
Plymouth Church, Fort Wayne
January 3, 2016
Page 6
*****
*****
*****
If the new year invites inventory,
and a consideration of what to let go,
it also invites a consideration of what to
forward, what to carry on.
Carry forward the hope, the understanding,
that we can evolve, we can cooperate, we can
adapt to new unfolding conditions.
I clipped an article, a sidebar really, out of TIME
magazine a while ago. It was titled:
“Survival of the fittest is a Sham.”
A winner-take-all approach to life,
having the power to destroy, annihilate,
all enemies, may not be the best strategy
for life in a peace we desire.
It seems biologists, in probing our bodies,
have discovered that microbial cells outnumber
human cells 10 to 1. We are walking around as hosts
to all sorts of organisms that help us
digest good,
maintain our immune systems,
that sort of thing.
Additionally, nearly 10% of the human genome
may be viral DNA. What this suggests is that
we are walking, talking systems that carry cooperating
species. We will survive, not so much by killing each other
off, but through cooperation, and learning to adapt
to our ever-changing challenges.
This is one way to look upon our church life
and Christmas. Christmas gave rise to a people
wanting, praying, yearning to cooperate with the
God whom Jesus cooperated with.
The great legacy of Jesus is community,
a people dedicated to walking in his light,
to tend, defend, protect,
to magnify and advance that light
that is hope for the world.
Plymouth Church, Fort Wayne
January 3, 2016
Page 7
*****
*****
*****
A final thought.
Carry forward those things that keep you
connected and link with life defining memory.
Carry forward the blessings that keep you
tied to life. Let us work with Christmas –
and in the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge, let
us vow to keep it all the year.
“I will honour Christmas in my heart,
and try to keep it all the year.
I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.
The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.
I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol).
What lessons? Let us take a clue from Howard Thurman,
and his poem, “The Work of Christmas.”
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers (sisters),
To make music in the heart.
It sounds like daunting work.
It always is, I suppose, in the beginning.
Which is why we live in hope,
and in community,
doing what we can with what we have.
We don’t have much time really. So be alert
for the light and love that guides the way.
May the Word be with you –
till the work is complete. Amen.
Plymouth Church, Fort Wayne
January 3, 2016
Page 8
(Sermons are typically composed in haste,
for the demands of the day are many;
so be charitable as you read; and remember:
the contents of this sermon have not been edited
and may or may not have been a part of its public presentation)