“One in Christ”

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

Galatians 3:23-29

June 19, 2022

Most Sundays we begin our worship service by remembering together that our congregation joins with others throughout the United Church of Christ in proclaiming that “no matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey….we are all welcome here.” 

I think we sometimes forget what a bold statement it is. 

This summer, I am celebrating 15 years of ministry in the United Church of Christ and in this decade-and-a-half of ministry, I cannot tell you how many times I have sat with people who are new to the UCC and astounded at this statement of radical hospitality.. 

I’ve heard people say things like, “Everyone’s welcome. Ooookay, but I’m divorced….but I’m bisexual….but I’m Catholic….but I’m atheist….but I have a lot of questions….but I am homeless….but I am mentally ill…..but….but...but…” And it has been one of my life’s greatest honors to be able to look all of these people in the eye and say, “God loves you and you are welcome here.”

I may not say this enough from the pulpit, but I want to say it now: I love the United Church of Christ. 

I am so thankful I found my way into this small corner of Christianity. 

The UCC opened itself to me through the good people of First United Church of Bloomington, Indiana - where I was a member before I later served as their pastor. David and I began worshiping with them back in 2005. We had recently moved to Indiana and were struggling to find a church. We were both committed United Methodists but none of the UMC congregations in Bloomington were fully welcoming and affirming of LGBTQ people. And that was a deal-breaker for us. 

And so we decided we’d venture out and try something new. This was hard for us. David was a fourth--generation Methodist and I had just graduated from a United Methodist seminary. At the time, I was feeling a bit adrift as a Christian. I had so many questions about my faith. To be completely honest, I left seminary wondering if I could even call myself a Christian anymore. I didn’t know if the Church was wide enough for me. 

So I sat at home and googled the United Church of Christ because I remembered Sue Zschoche, who had been my professor in college, telling me how much she loved her church, First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS. 

That Holy Spirit is a funny ol’ gal isn’t she?

And so David and I walked into the United Church of Christ on a fall day back in 2005 and we felt the Spirit move there and the rest is history. 

I fell in love with the openness, the commitment to asking hard questions, the relentless focus on hospitality and social justice. I loved that people there came from so many religious backgrounds. I loved that I was accepted - heresies and all - and that even a person who wasn’t quite sure if she was Christian anymore could struggle out loud and still be welcomed. I loved how people’s unique identities and backgrounds were honored - and that we could all be a part of something together even though we weren’t all the same. 

As I began to discern a call to ordained ministry, I learned a lot more about my new denominational home. I traveled to the 50th anniversary General Synod where I heard Marian Wright Edelman and not-yet-president Barack Obama speak. I came to understand more about the diversity of the United Church of Christ as I met people from much more conservative churches than the one I served. I witnessed some wider church arguments and began to understand the tensions of living together in covenant under such a big tent. 

I learned that the official motto of the UCC is “that they may all be one” and that that statement comes to us on the lips of Jesus in a prayer. In John’s gospel, as Jesus is preparing for his execution, he prays….not for himself, but for his followers. And for us - those who would come thousands of years later. He prayed that we could all be one. 

Christian unity is really complicated stuff. After all, how could we possibly all be ONE when we have such different ideas about what it means to follow Jesus? And why would we even want to be ONE with those who preach hate in Jesus’s name? 

I have no way of knowing what Jesus really meant. Maybe he actually envisioned a worldwide Church - one big happy family.  But Jesus was a pretty smart guy and probably knew that wasn’t possible. So I tend to think he meant that we should remember we ARE ONE. And that doesn’t mean that we are all in agreement or that we like the same kinds of music or that we pray the same way or that we understand scripture the same. We aren’t the same but we are ONE. We are tied together in covenant with one another - whether we like it or not - because we are all a part of Christ. 

I think this is the vision Paul is casting in Galatians. When we find ourselves in Christ, he says, we can’t continue to hold on to all the things that the world says divides us. We can’t be in Christ and, for example, continue to think that slavery or other forms of violence against our neighbors is okay. When we are in Christ, we must see one another as unique, diverse, beautiful reflections of the Divine. We are all one in Christ Jesus, says Paul. 

On Juneteenth, we give thanks for Paul’s bold witness to the inherent dignity and worth of all people while also lifting up that we still have so far to go. Over the centuries since Paul wrote this letter, Christians have used his words to create a theological foundation for movements like the abolition of slavery and gender equity and religious freedom. But at the same time, we know that so many Christians have been at the forefront of hateful movements that glorify violence. Christians continue to prop up systems that harm. Christians have failed to live into Paul’s vision - Jesus’s vision - of a world where all people are given the honor that they deserve. 

At times, when looking at the behavior of some Christians, it can feel downright impossible to want to call ourselves Christian, can’t it? It’s okay, incidentally, if you don’t call yourself a Christian. You’re welcome here. I mean, hey, Jesus wasn’t a Christian either, so you’re in excellent company!

Whether you call yourself a Christian or not - Whether you’ve been a lifelong UCCer or are new to this whole religion thing, you’re welcome here. This congregation - and the wider United Church of Christ - is a place where we come together to support one another on the journey of figuring out what it means to walk in the ways of Jesus. 

And there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer for what that looks like, of course. Your path in following Jesus may look very different than the person sitting next to you. You know, when people are new to our congregation, they sometimes ask me, “What does the church believe about fill-in-the-blank - who wrote the Bible? The Trinity? Heaven and hell?” And I usually say, “Well, we don’t all believe one thing so I encourage you to get to know people around here and ask them.”

We call God by a tapestry of different names. We find beauty and solace in different types of worship music. We share different translations of the Bible when we gather around tables to study. We bring the uniqueness of ourselves and our experience of the Divine and, in doing so, our faith as a community is not diminished but enhanced. The UCC is a place where we can “all be one” without all being the same. Thanks be to God. 

One of the things I love about the UCC is that we take covenant very seriously - this idea that we are called to be in relationship with God and with one another….and a very real understanding that this is not always easy. 

We follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who did not promise an easy faith. Instead, Christ cheers us on as we strive for deep and abiding respect for others’ understandings of what it means to be Christian. When we are able to pray together even though we might disagree with the style of prayer - there is humility in coming together as one even as we respect each other’s differences. Your prayer doesn't have to be my prayer in order for me to be present with you while it is being prayed. And, in fact, praying in this new way might move me further along my own journey of discovering God and living more fully into the Ways of Jesus. 

We seek a faith that is about connection, communion, covenant - remembering that we are all in this together. The way of Jesus is about remaining open as we listen for the voice of our Stillspeaking God not only in ancient scriptures but in the words of the person sitting next to us in the pew, in the Zoom Bible study, or on the park bench. 

Part of being in Christ - part of showing the world what it looks like to try and follow in the Way of Jesus - is a spirit of openness, humility, and unity. Not that we are all the same or that we agree on everything….but that we recognize we are all connected. 

Every living being on this planet is connected on some level and it is a life’s work to remember and honor those connections. 

That we may all be one in Christ. May it be so. 

“The Trinity Doesn’t Make Sense”

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

June 12, 2022

This is a sermon about what we don’t know. 

A sermon about how our confusion is not a bad thing. 

A sermon about the Trinity. 

Because it’s Trinity Sunday. 

In the church calendar, we have three Sundays in a row: Ascension Sunday, when we remember that weird and wonderful story about the resurrected Christ floating away into the clouds.

Followed by Pentecost Sunday (that was last week), when we hear the story of how the gift of the Holy Spirit was bestowed upon our spiritual ancestors in Jerusalem. 

Followed by Trinity Sunday, when we finally settle once-and-for-all all of the centuries-long debates about the true nature of our Triune God.

Wait. No. That’s not what we’re doing today. 

Trinity Sunday comes after Pentecost because it’s sort of a Pentecost Part Two. Having received the gift of the Holy Spirit, we’re meant to pause and linger a bit on this third person in the Trinity, I suppose.

Which is why it’s kind of funny that the text for today seems to be about someone else entirely: Lady Wisdom - Sophia. 

Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible is personified as a woman and Christians over the years have called her Sophia, Greek for wisdom. 

Sophia stands at the city gate, in the crossroads. She’s down at Dara’s buying a lottery ticket and sitting in front of Manhattan Brewing Company having a drink. She’s directing pedestrian traffic on College Avenue right before a K-State Football Game and you might catch a glimpse of her this summer at City Park Pool. My guess is she can even be found in the ether - at those digital crossroads of Facebook and Twitter - crying out, making her voice known, shouting for our attention. 

She’s everywhere all at once. There’s nowhere we can go to get away from her. What’s so important that she has to yell for our attention?

She says:

To you, O people, I call,  and my cry is to all that live.

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.

Ages ago I was set up, at the first,before the beginning of the earth.

When there were no depths I was brought forth…

When God established the heavens, I was there…

when God assigned to the sea its limit…

then I was beside her, like a master worker;

and I was daily God’s delight, rejoicing before them always,

rejoicing in their inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

Wait. What? She was there at the first? Before the earth? She was there when God made the heavens and the earth? How can Sophia be this important and most of us have hardly heard anything about her?

But there it is, in black and white. Sophia sounds an awful lot like the Word in the beginning of the Gospel of John, doesn’t she? “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God….”

I remember when I first learned about Sophia in seminary and my thought was, “Wait. Is there a fourth person in the Trinity? Why has no one ever told me about this before???”

Theologians haven’t been quite sure what to do with Sophia. Many folks have equated her with the second person of the Trinity: Christ. Since the description of her is so much like the description of the Word made Flesh in John 1, the idea is that Sophia and the Word are the same. They are the experience of God that came to earth in human form as Jesus. That Christ Force that moved into the neighborhood as an infant human, grew in wisdom and stature, spoke in parables, died at the hands of the Roman government, and somehow continued on in ways we can scarcely comprehend. 

Christ, Sophia, the Word made incarnate in Jesus. And for those paying attention to gender, yes, this means that our tradition holds that Christ is both masculine (the Logos, the Word) and feminine (Sophia, Wisdom). 

Other people have equated Sophia with the Holy Spirit. This is probably why we’re hearing about her today on this Pentecost Part Two. The Spirit has long been understood as feminine and not just in fringe parts of Christianity. In fact, one of the earliest writings about the Trinity doesn’t mention “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Instead, Theophilus of Antioch, writing in the first century, refers to the Trinity as God, the Logos (Christ), and Sophia (Wisdom). [1]

So is Sophia the Holy Spirit? Or is she the feminine aspect of Christ? Or a fourth part of the Trinity? Or something else entirely?

We don’t know. 

Now you might be thinking, “Okay, preacher. This might help me when I’m watching Jeopardy but what does it have to do with my faith life?”

Well - everything, really. 

Because this confusion, this confounding, this not knowing is at the core of what it means to be followers of Jesus. And on this Trinity Sunday, I want to suggest that the good news of the Trinity is that this weird and mind-blowing concept invites us into communion with a God that defies explanation. A God that refuses to be contained in a neat-and-tidy-box. A God who is beyond our wildest imaginings. 

I went through a very long period where the Trinity made me angry. I even wondered if I could still be a Christian because I didn’t believe in the Trinity. Newsflash: you CAN still be a Christian without believing in the Trinity. Many folks around here are, in fact, non-Trinitarian Christians. 

I didn’t like the Trinity because it felt too constricted. It felt like someone was trying to tell me, “Here. THIS is the way God is. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. That’s it.”

And when I listened to people try to explain all the ins-and-outs of how one person can somehow be three but also still just one, my head was spinning and I thought, “This just doesn’t make sense. At all. This can’t be it. God’s got to be bigger than this.”

But in the past few years, the Trinity has come to mean something else to me. It’s felt more like an invitation than a doctrine. Sophia standing there in the street, beckoning, inviting us to step into a more expansive vision of the Divine that defies our definitions. 

Perhaps the puzzle of the Trinity isn’t meant to be solved at all. Perhaps it stands there, like Sophia at the crossroads, as a testament to the vast, inexplicable nature of the Holy. Perhaps Sophia reminds us that it is wise, indeed, to remember that we don’t know anything, that we can hold onto knowledge with a lighter touch, and that our Stillspeaking God created us with open hearts and minds, ready to learn and grow.

“But how can we have a relationship with something we don’t understand?” you might be wondering. 

Well, we all have relationships with people and things we don’t understand every single day, don’t we? I don’t understand how my voice is amplified so that you all can hear it, or how my image is floating through the ether to those of you on Zoom. 

And none of us can truly understand the people we love. Even when we know them well, we can’t ever truly know them fully. Understanding someone is not necessarily a prerequisite for being in relationship with them or even loving them. Those of us who are cisgender, for example, can love and appreciate our nonbinary and transgender friends wtihout needing to fully understand their experience. We don’t have to understand someone in order to fully love and respect them. 

The same must be true for the Holy. Though the experience of God might feel a bit like trying to catch a cloud in a jar, we can still be in relationship with the One who calls the worlds into being, stands at the crossroads proclaiming the goodness of creation, comes to us in human form, and is present with each and every holy breath we take. 

This is what Sophia testifies to. Wisdom says that she was with God before the beginning and that they delighted in one another, rejoicing always, and rejoicing in the earth as it was being formed, and delighting in the human race.

Sometimes, prayer - sometimes, our relationship with God - sometimes, our faith - is not at all about having the answers. Sometimes it is simply about being aware of God’s gentle, loving gaze. Sophia is there delighting in us. Like a mother whose eyes sparkle every time her child walks into the room. Like a dog who leaps for joy when her humans come home from a trip. Like a tree that offers shade on a hot day and the sun that kisses our cheeks.

The God who we call Father, Mother, Holy Parent; Wisdom, Sophia; the Word, Christ, Logos; Holy Spirit, Paraclete, Advocate, Comforter delights in us. 

Even when we don’t understand. Thanks be to God. 

NOTES

[1] https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/theophilus-antioch 

“Mother Tongue”

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

Acts 2:1-12

Pentecost, June 5, 2022

Earlier this week I was scrolling through Facebook and a post from NPR caught my eye. It was an article from an NPR affiliate in Texas and the headline and entire post were in Spanish. My first thought was, “Well, that’s really neat to see.” And my second thought was, “Don’t read the comments.” 

Language is powerful. In the United States, many folks get pretty uptight about language. Despite the fact that Spanish was spoken here before English and despite the fact that numerous indigenous languages were here long before any European language, some people unfortunately still seem to think English is the only language that belongs here. 

And that’s why my heart warms when I hear a language that isn’t English used in public spaces. 

Because I want to live in a nation where we are all invited to expand beyond our horizons and pushed outside our comfort zones a bit. This was one of the things that was powerful about the recent remake of West Side Story. They made the conscious decision to NOT use subtitles to translate the Spanish dialogue. Even if you don’t know Spanish, it was still pretty easy to follow along using context cues, but they wanted non-Spanish speakers to feel what it’s like to be on the outside a bit….and they wanted Spanish speakers to have the joy of hearing their own language.

There is something sweet about hearing our own mother tongue. Those who have traveled extensively or lived in places where their primary language isn’t spoken know the sweet, sweet feeling of familiarity when the language suddenly comes with ease. Even beyond actual languages, things like accents and regional dialects make us feel at home. When we lived in Indiana I met a person and it took me a while to figure out why I always felt comfortable around him. After knowing him for several months, I finally figured out it was his accent and I asked him where he was from. Turns out he was born and raised about 15 miles away from where my father is from in northwest Oklahoma. 

He was speaking my language. 

On Pentecost Sunday, we join with Christians around the globe in remembering what some have called the Birthday of the Church. Soon after Jesus’s ascension his followers were gathered together in Jerusalem for the annual Jewish Festival of Shavuot. Fifty days after Passover faithful Jews celebrated harvest and the gift of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. 

On this particular year, after Jesus’s death, his friends must have felt terribly lost as they gathered together for the festiva.. What were they supposed to do now? Jesus had told them that their job was to be his witnesses in Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the Earth, but he didn’t exactly leave detailed instructions on how to make this happen. 

As they were gathered together, a rush of wind came and filled the house where they were gathered. Whatever happened next must have been inexplicable because it’s hard to get a visual for: “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them.” They were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues….sort of. 

If you’ve ever been in a worship service where people were speaking in tongues, you’ve probably heard Glossolalia - at least that’s been my experience. So that’s when people start speaking “in tongues” and it’s incomprehensible. It’s not a language that anyone knows. Some say that it’s the language of angels. But that’s not what happened in this story. 

In Acts, the followers of Jesus started speaking in other KNOWN languages. And as they did so, immigrants from other parts of the Roman Empire came to see how these Galileans were speaking their languages. These were “devout Jews” who were living in Jerusalem but were originally from other parts of the region - north, south, east, and west of the capital. 

And just like that - in an instant - those who were following Jesus had a new identity. The followers of The Way started to form an identity as multicultural, multilingual, diverse, global. When the Holy Spirit came, they began to understand what it meant to be witnesses in Jerusalem (the capital), but also Judea (the south), and Samaria (the north), and to the very ends of the known world. 

Sadly, of course, as Christianity solidified and spread, it transformed from a group of rag-tag underdogs to a global powerhouse. 

Over the years, the Church lost its way. We forgot our birth story - the story of the beauty of diversity of culture and language. The ability to speak in other people’s languages, so that they can really hear. The sound of the Spirit rushing past, opening our ears so we can really listen. We forgot that it is our call to be uncomfortable, vulnerable. 

Instead, the Church has helped create the mess we’re in today - a nation where hate crimes are committed daily. A place where far too many Christians sell this violent lie that “good people” should all look or sound the same. 

But the truth is right here in front of us: followers of Jesus speak every language. And the gift of the Spirit enables us to listen to one another across human-imposed boundaries. 

Biblical scholar the Rev. Dr. Margaret Aymer notes that when the followers of Jesus began to speak of God’s marvelous deeds, it’s important to note that they “tell of the glories of God, not in the language of the empire but in the languages of the people subject to empire.” [1] When the Spirit arrived, she didn’t speak the dominant language of the day.

Those who lived in the Roman Empire had a common language (“We speak Greek in the Roman Empire! Go back to your own country, you Parthian, you Mede!”). Greek was the language of commerce, the language of government. It was a language imposed by an occupying force. 

But even as this language knit people together across a vast global empire, they maintained their own identities. At home, in private, where it was safe - they spoke their own native tongues. Babies were sung to sleep in the languages of “Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia”. Words between lovers were whispered, not in Greek, but in the languages of “Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene.”

And when the Spirit arrived - when she blew in as a gust of holy wind and flame - it seems to me she had a choice. Would the holy stories of God’s power and might roll off the tongue in Greek or some other language? 

The Spirit did not choose to speak in the language of the Empire. She chose, instead, to come to the people gathered and speak to them in their own mother tongues. She chose to boldly, loudly, proudly proclaim God’s deeds of power in languages that the Empire had attempted to silence, tone down, erase. 

Holy One, may our ears be attuned to your voice as it arrives in tongues unknown to us. May we, who live in the shadow of Empire, open our hearts, our ears, our very selves to your arrival in the languages of those who have been marginalized. May those who have been tossed aside, told to “blend in, told to shrink, quiet down, calm down” boldly find their Pentecost voices - not just today, but every day. 

And may the Church remember our call to listen, sing, shout, dance, preach, laugh, share in every conceivable language. May we remember that your mother tongue - our mother tongue - is Love, Justice, Peace, New Life, an Ever-Widening-Circle of Creation. 

Amen. 

NOTES:

[1] Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 3, p. 17.