Matthew 5:1-12 "Blessed Are YOU"

         “Blessed are you,” Jesus says in these verses from the Gospel of Matthew that we just read, verses that perhaps ring a bell with many people (though certainly not all) who sit in churches on Sunday mornings.  Blessed are you who are poor, Jesus declares, or who mourn, or are meek.  Blessed are you when you hunger and thirst.  Blessed are you when you are merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker.  Blessed are you when you are
persecuted, reviled, and slandered, when evil overwhelms you.  Blessed are you, he proclaims.  Rejoice and be glad!

         Come on.  Let’s be honest here.  These are not the sorts of blessings we want or would go out of our way to experience.  These are more like circumstances we would hope to avoid.  Poverty?  Mourning?  Hungering and thirsting?  And what about persecution?  Slander?  Being tripped up by evil and falling flat on your face?  If we acknowledged those attributes as things we ought to aspire to, our culture warriors would be accusing us of aiding and abetting the “wussification of America.”  Where is true manliness in all this claptrap?

          Blessed are you?  Rejoice and be glad?  Who wants any of that?  If we do not watch out, we will find ourselves sitting on top of a dung heap comparing our sores and boils with Job himself.  I mean, really, when we want blessings, surely we are angling for something else.   One writer, who identifies himself only as Thomas H, puts it this way. 

         “Who are the ones we as people regard as the lucky ones? The fortunate, the blessed ones? What do we think of? We tend to think of those with money. They can afford to live the way they want. They never have to worry about paying their bills. If they want something, they can have it. We think of those who can afford a nice home, a nice car. When they travel they fly at the front of the plane and not in cattle class. And who can afford whatever their heart’s desire is.

         We don’t just think of the rich though. We think of the beautiful, those who are so attractive. Everyone wants to be with them. If (he is) an attractive guy, (he) can get whatever girl (he wants). And vice versa. The attractive woman gets the guy she wants. We can envy the beautiful people.

         We also think of the powerful. Those who have access to privilege and status. And of course, these things often go together. The rich, beautiful, powerful people. The fortunate ones, the lucky ones, the blessed ones. People like pop stars, movie stars, sports stars. Who wouldn’t want to be Michael Jordan…Taylor Swift, or Justin Bieber?  (Well, maybe not Justin Bieber these days.).

         Who of us hasn’t wondered why we haven’t got the lucky breaks they have? Now even if we don’t go looking at famous names, who of us wouldn’t wish to be more beautiful, richer and more powerful than we are now?”

         But poor, sad, persecuted?  Blessed is that sort of person?  Rejoice and be glad if you are one of those beleaguered men or women?  Jesus seems to be turning good old-fashioned rational logic upside down and inside out.  Whatever did he have in mind when he spouted these little nuggets that we have come to call the Beatitudes?

         Let’s look first at where these so-called blessings occur in the Gospel of Matthew.  They come at the beginning of three chapters worth of sayings, one liners, and short pithy descriptions of the kingdom of heaven that the Gospel writer lumps all together in something we have come to call the Sermon on the Mount. 

          However, it was not a real sermon like the ones you sit through here every Sunday.  That is, Jesus did not preach these three chapters all at once on a single occasion.  After all, that would have taken way longer than the God-proscribed 20 minute time limit on sermon length. 

         No – the Gospel writer came across these sayings and teachings – most likely from a source Biblical scholars simply call “Q” (a source that the Gospel writer of Luke also had access to).  Then the author put them in the order that he thought best, and included them in his narrative about the life of Jesus.  The Beatitudes then begin the first of five major blocks of Jesus’ teaching in this Gospel of Matthew.

         There are eight beatitudes or blessings that the Gospel writer includes:    

Blessed are the poor in spirit, those people who are broken and hopeless.

Blessed are those who mourn, those men and women who have suffered loss and know the empty feeling that always follows.

Blessed are the meek, those folks who stay in the background and who will not use power as a tool to make things happen.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, those sorry souls who will keep slogging along until everyone is slogging along together.

Blessed are the merciful, those bleeding hearts who go out of their way to improve the lot of others.

Blessed are the pure in heart, those crazy sorts who keep doing things like eating with whomever will share a meal with them – even tax collectors or prostitutes – knowing full well that they too will be seen as ritually impure in the eyes of the religious elite.

Blessed are the peacemakers, those persons who put themselves in the middle of conflict, instinctively knowing that life is meant to be lived in harmony.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, those misguided human beings who just will not give up their quest for global dignity and wholeness.

         There are two ways we can interpret these Beatitudes and take them to heart, you know.  The first way is pretty scary if you ask me – and that is to understand the Beatitudes as proverbs, that is, as Quaker minister Timothy Henry noted, a set of “God-ordered truth that is helpful and useful as a general rule.”

         Using this interpretation as our guide, we fall into a terrible trap because we end up figuring that these beatitudes are conditions for being blessed.  As Lutheran pastor David Lose writes, “When I hear the Beatitudes, it's hard for me not to hear Jesus as stating the terms under which I might be blessed. For instance, when I hear "Blessed are the pure in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," I tend to think, "Am I pure enough in spirit?" or "I should try to be more pure in spirit." Or, when I hear "blessed are the peacemakers...," I think, "Yes, I really should be more committed to making peace."

         At least with "blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted," I have the assurance of knowing that on those occasions when I am mourning I will be comforted. But, to be perfectly honest -- and if you'll pardon the pun -- that's relatively small comfort because the truth is I don't want to mourn, and hearing this beatitude doesn't make me any more eager for additional mourning. (Ditto for being persecuted!).”  Understood this way, the Beatitudes are a shopping list for how to get on God’s good side.

         Not very encouraging, I would say, so let’s look at them in another way.  First though, we need to recall where these Beatitudes come in the Gospel narrative.  Remember? They occur at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.  As preaching professor Fred Craddock reminds us, they come “before a single instruction is given, before there has been time for obedience or disobedience. If the blessings were only for the deserving, very likely they would be stated at the end of the sermon, probably prefaced with the conditional clause, "If you have done all these things."  What comes first, always, is God’s grace.

         I think if we interpret these Beatitudes differently and, I would say, in the way they were intended when Jesus spoke them, we will find them far more satisfying rather than scary. And so I pose this question for you to ponder:  What if these Beatitudes really are blessings, just blessings?   

         What if Jesus is just blessing the victims gathered about him (and I would say that includes all of us at one time or another) - the down-and-out, the oddballs, the ones having a tough time?  What if the pronouncement of the blessing actually conveys the blessing?  I men, what if Jesus, in his blessing, is reminding those he spoke to (and again, I would say that includes all of us), reminding them and us that, in the end, we are not alone but rather are cocooned in the promise of God’s love and presence? 

         Can you imagine how his disciples would have reacted to this message of grace?  Here is Jesus, speaking to people who are struggling to keep their heads above water in an oppressive foreign domination system, people who have been told over and over again that their desperate plight is of their own making, a clear sign that God is punishing them. It is to these people that Jesus says, “Blessed are you.”

         His pronouncements must have been so startling that at least a few people probably thought their ears were not working.  Maybe someone shouted, “What? Can you repeat that?”

         “What did he say?”


         “I think it was ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers.’

         “
Aha, what’s so special about the cheesemakers?” 


         “Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.”

         Those are lines from the movie, “Monty Python's Life of Brian”, and I included them for a bit of comic relief from a very serious topic.

         Back to my point:  Instead of issuing a sharp reprimand, which is what his unfortunate lot of listeners expected, instead of saying, “You are getting what you deserve,” Jesus said, “Blessed are you.”

         Blessed are the poor in spirit:  Blessed are you who feel broken and hopeless, you who feel that your life is coming apart at the seams, you whose marriage is iffy, you who feel only stress and deepening darkness.  Blessed are you.  God has not forgotten you.

         Blessed are those who mourn:  Bless are you who still tear up when you think of a loved one who has passed away, maybe years ago, you who mourn for the better days when relationships were simpler and more things were black and white, you who mourn for a life your child will never know again.  Blessed are you.  God walks with you in these desperate and troubled times.

         Blessed are the meek:  Blessed are you who believe that life should be gentle, that more flies really can be caught with honey than with vinegar, who, when life presents you with lemons over and over again, you still try to make lemonade.  Blessed are you.  God is there with you, squeezing the lemons, adding the sugar.

         Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice:  Blessed are you when you do not turn your back on the poor, when you actually try to do something about income inequality even if everyone around you is telling you that either it is a political football – or simply a lost cause.  Blessed are you.  God is there in the trenches with you.

         Blessed are the merciful:  Blessed are you who keep paying it forward time and time again though no one seems to notice, who, even when you have the power to execute and deliver judgment, choose not to – difficult as that is at times.   Blessed are you.  God smiles at you and your endless efforts.

         Blessed are the pure in heart:  Blessed are you who insist upon seeing the world through God’s eyes, who witness God at work in the most amazing and outlandish places, whose starting place is with God-thoughts and ending place is with God-actions, who take seriously the over-used phrase, “what would Jesus do?”  Blessed are you.  God embraces you.

         Blessed are the peacemakers:  Blessed are you who are the family negotiator, who walks into the middle of cruelty and abuse and tries to set things right, who stays to talk rather than running out,

who is the facilitator who intuitively understands that nothing, nothing is worth the pain of not forgiving.  Blessed are you.  God stands with you in the midst of conflict.

         Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice:  Blessed are you who take your call to discipleship seriously, who continue to live by the message of the Good News of Jesus even when people laugh at you, call you unrealistic and irrational, or label you as “one of those.”  Blessed are you.  God has got your back.

         Blessed are all the victims – all the ones who know that either figuratively or literally the world has chewed them up and spat them out.  Blessed are you – all of you – because in some way, shape, or form, we are all victims.  Some of us are poor.  Some are in mourning.  Some of us are meek, and others of us try so hard to be merciful, peaceful, pure.  And surely some of us hunger and thirst for justice or are harassed in our quest for that elusive thing. 

         Blessed are you.  Take a moment and soak up God’s grace and promises inherent in that simple blessing.  Breathe deeply of God’s grace because blessed – nothing more, nothing less – just blessed are you – and you – and you.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.), Raymond, Maine

Matthew 4:12-23 "Gone Fishing"

         If you wander into a store like Cricket’s Corner down the street here in Raymond, you can usually find those painted, rustic wooden signs with thin metal wire for hanging them in a deliberately lopsided manner.  The signs read “Gone Fishing,” and they are made for mounting on or near the front door of your home on the lake. 

         The image these signs convey, of course, is that you have nothing better to do with your time than to sit in a small boat on the water, soaking up the sun’s rays, maybe sipping a beer.  Your fishing line is dropped over the side of your boat, and you are occasionally watching for the red and white plastic bobber attached to the line to bob.  If you are feeling particularly energetic, you might cast a few times, hoping, of course, that you will not get snagged on a hidden branch or log, which would mean actually having to move the boat to get unsnagged.  “Gone fishing” is synonymous with “On Vacation.”

         Not so with Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee in our Gospel story for the morning.  These men were no vacationers.  They were working fishermen. But do not get me wrong and conjure up in your imagination hardy muscled men with tight white t-shirts and excellent tans doing, as the author of the blog “Magdalene’s Musing” wrote,  “good honest labor in the bosom of their families.”  It was not like that in the ancient world. 

         Fishing was big money on the Sea of Galilee – and fishermen like the ones we meet in this narrative were small potatoes, no more than little cogs in a big industrial machine. “These men did not work for themselves. They were employees, either of the royal family or wealthy landlords. They were paid either with cash or with fish after they turned over their catch to their employers. And before they could even drop a net into the sea of Galilee, fishermen paid a tax in order to be permitted to fish—a tax on their catch of as much as 40%.”  (Magdalene’s Musing). 

         People who did not own boats had to rent them at outlandish costs.  Those who did own a boat had to pay an endless series of fees and surcharges before they could even cast a net.  In the end, their back- breaking labor only served to make the wealthiest – like King Herod himself – even wealthier.  The rich got rich as the poor got poorer.

         It was in that milieu that Jesus found himself when he left Nazareth after John the Baptist’s arrest and came to Capernaum.   It was in that milieu that Jesus chose his first followers.  He did not seek out the aristocrats or the philosophers, the wealthy or the ruling class.  He chose the least of these. 

         He initially chose four coarse, probably ill-mannered, certainly illiterate fishermen.  In addition, as social justice advocate Jerry Goebels wrote, “They were Galileans -- disdained by Rome and Israel alike -- they were the first to pick up arms and the last to lay them down; they were thought of as traitors, terrorists, and troublemakers.  On their soil, the greatest victories and defeats of ancient Israel had been fought.”

         Galilean fishermen:  what a way to start a ministry.  It is almost as if Jesus was intentionally putting himself at odds with the Roman system of domination and oppression. 

         Jesus did not do the safe thing.  He did not do the comfortable thing.  He did not stay in familiar territory where he might not rock the boat quite so much – no pun intended.  He went to Galilee, with its history as a breeding ground for significant conflict,

and he chose a bunch of impoverished and oppressed blue collar laborers to usher in and model with him a different way to live, a way that reflected God’s dream of justice and God’s passion for the least of these in the world.

         But Jesus did not just call four fishermen – or 12 disciples for that matter.  His call is a timeless one, and the sound of his voice has echoed through the centuries until it has found our ears.  You see, Jesus calls us too. 

         The Messiah takes the initiative here, which is different from many religions.  As Baptist pastor Thomas McKibbens notes, “ There are a lot of stories from all the great religions about teachers who attract disciples. But have you noticed that in most of those traditions the disciples seek out the teacher, and sometimes they have to beg the teacher to allow them to be a student? In most traditions, the initiative is all with the student. But in this story Christ takes the initiative. He goes to Peter and Andrew, James and John, and he calls them” – just as, centuries later, he calls (or chooses) us.

         Oh, you may think that you were the one who did the choosing.  After all, of any place you could have been on this Sunday morning, you chose to be here in church. However, sometime – maybe recently, maybe way back in the mists of time – a voice whispered in your ear:  “Come.  Follow me.” 

         You may not even have heard the voice.  It might have been more like a nudge.  It might have seemed like you were deciding that your children needed a church experience.  Or it might have felt like you were just looking for something more in your life.  Or it might have been that you got up one day and felt as if you needed to give more, reach out more, into the community.  Or it might even have been a habit – coming to church and all – but one day it meant something more that you cannot even really put your finger on. 

         But however it was for you, trust me, there was that voice - “Come.  Follow me” – and you did – and so here you are – following Jesus.  Whether you knew it or not, as you learned about those uncouth fishermen that he chose as followers and about all the dregs, from tax collectors to prostitutes, that he wined and dined with, you decided that you could hang around with those types of people too. 

       That is, if you took this notion of following the Jesus of the Gospels seriously – and how seriously we take this business of Jesus calling us to discipleship is something each one of us needs to reflect upon often. What I mean is better illustrated in an excerpt from a piece of writing I found this week about this passage in Matthew.  Unfortunately, I do not know the author but strongly suspect that he was from the South. 

       “As a child I loved the hymn, “Follow, follow, I will follow Jesus.” Like Mary’s little lamb, anywhere that Jesus went, I was sure to follow. One day it dawned on me that my Jesus never went anywhere except to church and back home again. He insisted that we go to church at least three times a week, especially on Sunday night no matter how badly we wanted to stay home and watch Bonanza.    

       Our Jesus was white, really angry about Civil Rights, supported the KKK, believed in guns, was opposed to seminary education, but loved dinner on the ground, all day singing, and protracted meetings. He read only the King James Version of the Holy Bible, and insisted every word, comma, and period, including the chapter and verse numbers were literal. He didn’t like Catholics (even though there wasn’t a single Catholic in our entire community). He didn’t care for Germans or Japanese (because of WWII). He was a big believer in hell and was always on the lookout for any one smoking, drinking, or dancing. Unlike the Methodists, who had Coke and cookies at their Vacation Bible School, my stern Baptist Jesus believed in Nabisco saltine crackers and Kool-Aid.

         Only later did I realize that most of us follow some image of Jesus we have concocted in our minds. It’s as if there is a Build-A-Jesus store in the mall and we get to make our own Jesus. I had no idea that I was living out the philosopher Fuerbach’s claim that religion is the projection of mankind’s hopes written large. And I also didn’t realize how superficial it was. A self-made Jesus turns out to be a sorry building project.”

         The question for each one of us then has got to be this:  What Jesus do you follow?  Is it the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels – or a Jesus that you have created to meet your needs?

         Do you come to church so you can be a better servant of Jesus during the week? Or do you come mainly because you like the music or the preaching or the fellowship; or out of a sense of duty or habit or because it makes you feel better? 

         Does the Jesus you follow challenge you to discover a real sense of mission in your life and demand that you become involved in ways that reach out and touch the lives of others? 

Or does the Jesus you follow figure that sitting in the pew on Sunday is all it takes because good enough is good enough?

         I do not know what Jesus you follow in the depths of your hearts, but the fact of the matter, my friends, is that the God we worship does make a claim on our lives – unsettling, disturbing, and disruptive, as it is likely to be.  As people of faith, we have confessed that Jesus is the love of God in human form and that his ministry is to carry God’s love to those in need.  That is the Jesus of the Gospels, and that is the Jesus we need to be following. 

         We are important to Jesus’ ministry.  As Episcopal priest, Roy Almquist noted, “Jesus did not work in isolation … he brought samples … his followers, his disciples … those who were the first Church, the first assembly of believers. And they were samples because they demonstrated what can happen when people are open to the possibility of God’s transforming love taking hold in their lives.”

         Jesus called Peter, Andrew, and the sons of Zebedee to enter into a new kind of relationship with him.  By leaving their homes and families and the security of being a little cog in the Galilean industrial fishing machine, they threw their lot in with this itinerant, rabble-rousing rabbi. In doing so, they also entered into new relationships with each other and with everyone they would encounter in their years together and beyond.  Oh, how their lives changed – not made easier, but certainly transformed and overflowing with new possibilities!

         Similarly, Jesus has called us to be samples of what God’s love is like in a world where “me first” and “more is better” are the norms.  When we truly answer Jesus’ call, we, like the disciples, become agents of change.  We become ambassadors of transformation. We become emissaries of new possibilities.  We become ordinary people right in the middle of our ordinary lives answering a call to do extraordinary things. 

         And it is no easier for us than it was for the disciples either.  As Methodist pastor Mark Ralls speculates, “When Christ calls, he beckons us beyond the point of familiarity, asking us to risk doing something we don’t know how to do, to become someone we’re not yet sure we know how to be. It’s not just that we are taking a risk on Christ. Each and every time he calls, he is taking a risk on us”

         And so, as a congregation, Jesus calls us to be a source of light in a cynical, dark, and downtrodden world.  That is one reason why it is so important that you choose to be here on Sunday morning. You might not like the music in a given week, and you may be struck by how boring the sermon is, but your participation says to everyone you know that you come here that you believe there is more good to God and to this life than there is bad – and that is a really powerful message in this day and age.

         As a congregation, Jesus calls us also to be a beacon of hope and encouragement in what, for many people, is a pretty hopeless and discouraging time.  With so many people being job and food insecure and not having enough to make ends meet, it is so critical that you actively participate in and support the mission and outreach ministries of this church – from Heifer Project to local emergency fuel assistance. 

       As a congregation, Jesus calls us, as Lutheran pastor David Lose suggests,  “to be in genuine and real relationships with the people around us, and to be in those relationships the way Jesus was and is in relationship with his disciples and with us: bearing each other's burdens, caring for each other and especially the vulnerable, holding onto each other through thick and thin, always with the hope and promise of God’s abundant grace.”     

And if it seems too much?  If we feel maxed out, like we will sink beneath the murky waters if we take on one more thing, then remember that this call business is not intended to fill us to the point of sinking.  Rather, it is intended to fill us to overflowing. Christ’s call is not about what we can accomplish, but what God can accomplish in us and through us.

       “Gone fishing.”  It is not an easy task and certainly not a vacation.  However, it is what we (the church) and you (the church) are all about.  

By Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.)

John 1:29-42 "Come and See"

         The author of the Gospel of John makes the encounter seem so casual.  Just the day before apparently, John the Baptist had baptized Jesus – and we know from last week’s sermon that it was no ordinary baptism.  After all, the heavens were torn apart, and the sky cracked to unleash the Holy Spirit in the guise of a dove that alighted on Jesus’ shoulder and the voice of God itself proclaimed Jesus as a Beloved Son.

         In contrast to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, however, where Jesus hightails it to the wilderness for forty days following his holy dunking in the Jordan River, in Gospel of John, Jesus hangs around for a while, content to be just one of the crowd.  In fact, our story today picks up at the point when John the Baptist practically bumps into Jesus on the street corner.  

         “Hey, look, if it isn’t the Lamb of God, the one who takes away the sins of the world.  Folks, he is the one I have been talking about, you know, the one who would come after me and be greater than I could ever be.  Remember?  And I baptized him – me!  And all I can say is, you should have been here for it.  You should have been here yesterday. He is the Lamb of God, all right.”

         Lamb of God?  Now what is that supposed to mean?  It is a question we might ask ourselves, but it is definitely a question that the folks who heard John’s declaration would have asked.  Lamb of God might be a pretty familiar term in our religious vocabulary, but it certainly was not for anyone within earshot of John.  After all, this is the one and only instance in all of the Bible where this particular phrase appears.

         Reformed Church pastor Scott Hoezee has this to say about the encounter: “John calls Jesus ‘a lamb,’ which could have been perceived a couple of different ways. Lambs are often a symbol of gentleness, meekness, and vulnerability. In this sense, calling Jesus a lamb could have been a nice thing to say, but it would hardly be the type of description that would fit the Messiah. Certainly the average politician wouldn't be very successful in getting elected if the main way people thought about him was that he was a real lamb of a guy!

         But, of course, in Jesus' day, because there was that long history in Israel of using lambs as sacrifices, there was another sense in which hearing Jesus called "a lamb" might have struck some people as cruel. Maybe it would be like today calling someone a "turkey" or a "dumb bunny." Calling Jesus a lamb may have sounded like the equivalent of accusing Jesus of being a little dumb, someone easy to gang up on.

         But whether this title meant Jesus was very meek or that he was destined for the chopping block, either way it didn't seem to indicate Jesus would be very effective in the long run. Nice guys finish last and sacrificial lambs are just finished eventually.

         Yet John adds the kicker line that somehow this particular lamb-like Jesus would ‘take away the sin of the world.’ So now we have the image of a lamb and the concept of sin in the same sentence. But since the only traditional connection between lambs and sin had always involved the death of the hapless lamb, John is clearly introducing a very dark theme. This isn't the kind of thing you'd say about someone who was on his way to the top of this world's heap. This isn't how you'd describe a celebrity on a red carpet or a politician on his way to the platform where he had just been nominated for president.

         John could just as easily have said, ‘Behold, the one who is going down the tubes! Behold the loser, the victim, the dead man walking.’ How odd it must have sounded.”

         However, odd sounding or not, John repeated his proclamation the very next day – at four in the afternoon, to be precise.  You have got to love this Gospel writer, for he often includes these impossible, implausible, tiny details – like the hour of the day or the number of fish caught in a net - in his narrative.  Crazy!

         Anyway, Jesus shuffles by, just hanging out, and John announces again, “Hey, would you look at that?  It’s the Lamb of God.”  Hey, would you look at that?  It’s Katniss Everdeen.  Hey, would you look at that?  It’s Luke Skywalker.  Hey, would you look at that?  It’s Harry Potter.

         And this is where the story gets really interesting!  You see, two of John the Baptist’s followers – Andrew and some other guy (we do not know his name) – apparently are intrigued.  Katniss Everdeen?  Luke Skywalker?  Harry Potter?  The Lamb of God?  And so they begin to follow Jesus – literally, down the street.

         Papparazzi – or first disciples?  Jesus clears up that question pretty quickly when he suddenly turns to face them. 

         “What are you looking for?” he asks them.

         “Where do you live?” they respond with a second question, which is perhaps another way of saying, “We are looking for you.  We want to be with you – wherever you live, wherever you go.”

         “Come and see.”  Jesus answers simply. 

         And they do.  And Andrew must have liked what he saw because he proclaimed to his brother, Simon, whom Jesus will rename Peter, Peter the Rock. “We have found the Messiah!” he said.

         In that brief exchange, Jesus asks one straightforward question that begins to change everything.  As Scott Hoezee writes, "What are you looking for? What are you seeking? What do you want," Jesus asks. A simple question, unless the one asking it is…the Lamb of God.”  And then it becomes one of those ultimate questions.

         And so the question is posed for us as well.  What are you looking for - from your church?  What are you seeking - in your life?  What do you want in your life – and is this church – the one we call the small church with the big heart – in any way helping you figure that out?  I as your pastor may ask those questions, but, trust me, I am like John, only a follower.  There is one far greater than I who asks the same questions of you and of his church. 

         What do you want?  And what role does this church play in your seeking?  Those are critical questions to wrestle with – as individuals but also as a church family.  And this is the formal day we set aside each year to do just that.

         You see, if this church is anything more than a purely social gathering place for you, if the spiritual seeking you do in your life intersects at all with the ministries of this church, if this church enhances your spiritual seeking even one iota through experiences you have here or faith-deepening questions that are raised for you here, then, folks, you need to be at the Annual Meeting today. 

         Maybe, in the end, our answer to that question – what do you want – is as simple as the answer voiced by Andrew and the other disciple:  We want you, Jesus.  We want to be where you are and stay where you stay. But what does that really mean?  As a church, that is what we wrestle with.

         Your Council – and your pastor – and your Messiah - need your support, your suggestions, your opinions, and your voice in carving out a vision, a path we can walk down together in our collective wanting of Jesus. 

         This place is not my church – or the Council’s church – or even your church.  It is Christ’s church.  We are the Body of Christ, and we need each part of that body making Christ’s church in Raymond, Maine all that Jesus envisioned it to be.  Even if you were not planning on staying for the Annual Meeting, I invite you to stay.

         Now in the conversation with Andrew and the other unnamed follower, Jesus makes a statement as well.  In answer to their question about where Jesus is staying, Jesus responds, “Come and see.”

         There you have it - the first lesson – and perhaps the only workable lesson – in evangelizing, in witnessing, in sharing the Good News.  Now I know those words make our collective skin crawl, but if we are a church committed to growing (and that is what I keep hearing), then everyone outside these doors needs to know what is going on inside these walls.  They need to know that if they are seeking something spiritually, they might just find it here.  We – each one of us – owe those outsiders an invitation to come and see. 

         You know, virtually every study ever done on church growth finds that the churches that successfully grow do so by embracing the fact that the responsibility for growth does not lie in the pastor’s job description, but rather is a congregational challenge. 

         Lutheran pastor David Lose writes this about evangelism:  “If you really want to understand why the church is declining in North America, you need to recognize how frightened most of our people are by the word “evangelism.” For some, it comes from being on the receiving end of someone else’s evangelism. Whether asked “Have you accepted Jesus?” by a domineering brother-in-law or “Do you know where you’re going when you die?” by a well-meaning but intense co-worker, too many folks have experienced evangelism as coercive, even threatening.

         For others, the explanation isn’t nearly as sinister. It may be a conviction that religion isn’t something polite people talk about; or that one’s faith is private; or simply the desire not to be perceived as one of those people (you know, the kind we just described).

         Whatever the reason, most of our people not only have little experience in evangelism but are downright frightened of it. And that, of course, cripples our ability to reach out with the good news.

         “Come and see.”  Jesus even gives us the words to say. 

         Maybe we start small, really small (a baby step actually) – by simply noticing times where we see God working in our lives and in the world.  That way our secular and religious lives begin to intertwine again – as they should.

         But we cannot get stuck there.  The next step is learning to share.  It is not a big deal.  In fact, let’s try it.  Right now - turn to someone near you and share one reason you like this church, one reason you choose to come.

         But we cannot stop there either.  The final step is inviting – using those words of Jesus – “Come and see.”

         As David Lose continues, “This may at first seem the hardest of all. It can feel so intrusive, and of course it puts demands on us to follow through. And yet … think about it: we invite people to things all the time. To join a book club or play tennis, to go to an after-school event or to come over for dinner, to attend a sporting event or to go shopping.

         We’re actually quite good about inviting folks to come to things … just not to church. And, of course, we invite people to those things we really like, those things we’ve enjoyed and think others would, too. We need to ask ourselves first, what elements of our church life do we most value? That is, we’re not just going because we have to but because we enjoy it…Then, our task is simply to think about who might also enjoy this event or activity and invite them. Framed this way, it’s probably not as hard as it seems.” 

         The invitation does not have to extend to worship either.  How about a youth group movie?  How about the next concert – or the next mission effort?  And if you are uncomfortable with those ideas, how about organizing something that you would feel comfortable inviting a friend or neighbor to?  Come and see.

         Hey, look, it’s the Lamb of God.  Hey, look, we are trying to figure out just what that Lamb of God means for our lives.  Come and see.  Hey, look, it’s the one who embodies God’s dream of a world defined by justice and love. Hey, look, we try to follow him here.  Come and see.  Hey, look at all we do for the community of Raymond. Hey, look, we do not have all the answers, but we can maybe figure some of them out together, here, in this small church with a big heart.  Hey, look, come and see.  Just come and see.

by Rev.Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church UCC, Raymond, Maine