Sermon Seeds: Living Stories
Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A
Lectionary citations:
Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5,15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14
Worship resources for the Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A are at Worship Ways
Special resources for ministry during the Coronavirus Pandemic:
Worship Resources:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E_RKfy_VOzelb5jbXV7UW5ytjmiI-_Md-W0H8UaRlaM/edit
Digital Pastoral Care & Grief:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sdalu3udRXIadlo9A_E0J2URF0EqzXHAFlQUhXl_esY/edit
Living psalms are here, scroll down:
https://www.ucc.org/worship_worship-ways
Sermon Seeds
Focus Scripture:
Acts 7:55-60
Additional reflection on John 14:1-14
Focus Theme:
Living Stories
Reflection on Acts 7:55-60 and 1 Peter 2:2-10:
by Kathryn Matthews
We all share the desire to find our way home, whether it’s at the end of a long day or at the end of a long journey, a long time of wandering, of alienation, of homesickness and pain. That may be why so many people speak of finding a church “home” when they find a congregation that welcomes them and feels like a place in which they can grow their faith.
Of course, if a church only puts us at ease with our lives as they are, our presuppositions and our comforting compromises in faith, then perhaps we’re speaking of accommodation rather than challenge and the spiritual growth it produces.
Nevertheless, for many people, finding a church home means finding a safe haven, a refuge, a fortress, and a rock. The church may be the one place, the one way, in their life that they experience God’s protective love in a hostile and dangerous world.
Spiritual milk that transforms
It’s in that safe haven that we receive, like little babies, the spiritual milk that we need to grow our faith. We ourselves become part of the very “structure,” the home, the spiritual house that First Peter speaks of.
If we remember that his audience was a group of dispossessed people, people who had no unifying dignity and identity apart from being a church, the power of these words expands in our hearing.
From “no people” to “God’s people”
What a transformation, from “no people” to “God’s people”! Perhaps you have known, at one time or another, what it feels like to be a “nobody,” and then a “somebody.” Perhaps you’ve had the experience of feeling outside and alone, and then becoming part of something greater than yourself.
What would it sound like to your ears, if you thought you were “nobody,” and then became part of a “chosen race,” and words like “holy” and “royal” were used to describe you? What would it feel like to come out of darkness into the “marvelous light” of God?
From the tables to the pulpit
Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles recounts the violent reaction of a mob (who undoubtedly saw themselves as good, religiously faithful folks – this is important to remember) to a sermon by “the first ordinary Christian to follow his shepherd to the slaughter,” Stephen, the early-church deacon with a “shooting-star ministry,” as Barbara Brown Taylor aptly describes it.
Stephen was supposed to be serving tables (working at coffee hour?) but he got it into his heart and mind and spirit that he needed to climb into the pulpit and preach; as Taylor says, “Once he had hands laid on his head, all the grace and power that poured into him spilled over as signs and wonders” (“Blood of Martyrs” in Home by Another Way).
Enter Saul, stage right
When Stephen re-told the story of his people and reminded them of their long history of ignoring the prophets, including both Moses and Jesus, that mob turned on him and killed him, while Saul, the future martyr and apostle, watched their cloaks.
This short story is important in several ways, scholars observe, most memorably, perhaps, for bringing onto the stage Saul, the persecutor-Pharisee who will share something in common with Stephen, according to Paul Walaskay. It’s ironic, Walaskay observes, that Saul (Paul) and Stephen, both Greek-speaking Jews, both see the problems of legalism in religion, although Saul the Pharisee at this moment in time, we are told, “approved” of Stephen’s stoning (Acts of the Apostles, Westminster Bible Companion).
From Jerusalem to Rome
The martyrdom of Stephen is also an important moment in the overall story, Nancy Claire Pittmann notes, as it “ignites a general persecution in Jerusalem (8:1), impelling the witness to the saving acts of Jesus to move beyond the boundaries of its birthplace toward Rome” (New Proclamation Year A 2011).
The dramatic details in this short story about Stephen’s death remind us (certainly not accidentally) of several moments in the life of Jesus, with echoes from the Transfiguration (he must have looked radiant when he saw the heavens open), the Baptism of Jesus (again, the skies opening), and the surrender of his spirit on the cross and the forgiveness for those who did not know what they were doing.
Setting our hearts on forgiveness
Timothy Hare’s commentary on this text suggests that preachers help their congregations with the difficult – and core – issue of forgiveness, by encouraging them to “look upon their enemies through the loving eyes of God,” to be “more aligned with God’s heart” as they set their own hearts on forgiveness, which is really “an act of God,” not something we are able to do by sheer willpower.
Hare offers several helpful approaches to the text, including a reflection on “the relentless nature of God’s love,” and our call to “follow God’s priorities and to embody God’s love” (Feasting on the Word Year A).
A question of timing, or audience?
For some reason, Stephen’s sermon does not go over as well as Peter’s had, on Pentecost, a vivid illustration of the reality that our witness is better received in some times and places than in others, and falls on more (or less) hospitable ears. We may have no way of knowing the results of what we do and say, and some days are better than others in the life of the church.
Barbara Brown Taylor’s sermon on this text, “Blood of Martyrs,” explores the unpredictable and unpursuable qualities of martyrdom: “I do not think you can seek it anymore than you can avoid it. I think it just happens sometimes, when people get so wrapped up in living God’s life that they forget to protect themselves.”
She provides examples of other “ordinary” Christians: Bonhoeffer, Romero, and Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who worked on voter registration during the Civil Rights era: they did not seek martyrdom but simply lived out the gospel in their particular circumstances, even if it cost them their lives (Home by Another Way).
Different stories, different stones
Stephen’s sermon speaks of the foundations of faith that had been laid down long ago, strong foundations, deep roots, powerful witnesses and lives to remember. The people’s shared experience, their walk with God, including the times they failed to listen to and follow God’s will, provided stones sunk deep into their collective religious memory.
The reading from First Peter, though, calls the people themselves “living stones” and refers to a precious cornerstone, addressing those who must have felt that they had been “nobodies” in a hostile world and needed a safe and welcoming place, a home.
Bringing our stories with us to a new place
In the Gospel of John, Jesus uses the language of place, too, when he promises to prepare a dwelling place for his followers, who were bound to encounter the opposition and loneliness experienced by the dispossessed in First Peter and the martyrs in the Book of Acts.
Today, people of all kinds find their way – hungry, seeking – to our churches, and when they arrive, they hear us tell a story, whether or not we’re aware that we’re telling one. Emerson Powery calls Stephen’s narrative style of preaching “one of the primary ways that one shapes and revises the identity of a community. Tell the story!” (Feasting on the Word Year A).
The stories that shape us
The story of Stephen’s stoning is one of the most vivid memories from my childhood religion classes (one might say it helped to shape my identity), and the picture of his death (with Saul standing there, holding the cloaks of those casting the stones) has long outlived my ability to recall the answers to all those catechism questions that I so conscientiously memorized.
The underlying message was clear: being a faithful Christian can get you killed, but you must be brave and persist to the end. But what about those of us who are not called to sudden martyrdom? Perhaps, instead, we need to die “day by day” to selfishness, pride, and the thirst for control and revenge (which are very much the same thing, in a way).
And these are everyday spiritual disciplines that shape us, along with the stories that we hear and the stories that we tell, for these “lettings-go” are how we make room for forgiveness, and generosity, and love.
Using our religious imagination
The United Church of Christ, for many years, has challenged us to “imagine another world is possible” and to “imagine what’s possible.” I notice that same theme here and there in news commentary about the Covid-19 pandemic and the future that lies before us, a future and a world that we’re finding awfully hard to face.
Doctors and public health experts try to imagine, perhaps for the sake of our morale, a solution that brings relief and safety sooner rather than later. We think we can’t bear to go much longer without a word of hope, a light in this tunnel.
We want a solution
A vaccine? An effective treatment? “Herd immunity”? It’s understandable that regular laypeople (that is, most of us) who don’t understand the mysterious workings of this virus, this invisible enemy, turn with desperate hope to the experts to fix this immediate problem with its incomprehensibly massive effect on our lives.
We want something sooner rather than later, and preferably something that won’t require too much change in our lives, again. Let us “get back to normal,” please.
Transformed by suffering
However, we might use the time that many of us have (granted, not those who are caregivers professionally or at home, or teaching their children while carrying on their jobs) to exercise our religious imaginations in this hour of challenge and fear.
How do people of faith hear, for example, about the effects (already) on nature of our suddenly and radically different lifestyles – the cleaner air and water, for example – and not imagine the effects of longer-term, perhaps less radical but still meaningful changes in our use of God’s creation?
How is God calling us, in the midst of this abrupt tear in the fabric of our lives, turning our attention to what has been there all along, but has not received our careful listening and observation, our faithful response? Would we rather respond like that “faithful” mob, feeling defensive and threatened by the truth before us?
Going beyond the usual
Gary Neal Hansen’s commentary reminds us of this need for powerful religious imaginations when he challenges us to go beyond our usual categories of thought about what it means to be faithful, to be open to seeing and feeling God at work in the world around us – to listening for God’s voice – and then to be open to the transformation of our lives and of the world (that “other, possible” world) that God can bring.
That’s the good news we share, the story we tell, the story we live, not simply doctrinal statements that we’ve learned in school, but the good news of a God at work in the world God loves (Feasting on the Word Year A).
Shaped by the potter-God
Many people (not all, but more in every age) may want to say to us Christians, “Show me, don’t tell me.” Can we take a long hard look at our lives and see the effects of being shaped by God at work in our lives, and our openness to being formed by that loving potter-God?
Perhaps catechism questions and doctrinal purity are not nearly so important as the stories we tell. When I came to the United Church of Christ, I was deeply moved and inspired by the stories of courage and justice that I heard about this church’s heroic and quietly faithful forebears.
The next step, though, is just as important: to listen for God’s call in this day, and this place, to hear the gospel and then to live it out.
Called to be a place of refuge and challenge
Your congregation is called to be a safe haven, a refuge, a place of dignity and identity for those who seek a church home, with beliefs, stories, sufferings, and joys sunk deep into the foundations of its shared experience. In what ways is God calling your community of faith to become more energetic in embodying hospitality, no matter the cost?
We have it backwards if our desire to welcome people is in order to increase our membership: welcoming is who we are and have always been: “Because of its peculiar faith and its identity formed in hurt, the church is a unified community capable of a risking hospitality.” But Beverly Gaventa reminds us that it’s not our church, or our home, that we open to others: “The householder, God, has sole authority over admission at the doorway” (Texts for Preaching, Year A).
One of the struggles of the church is to root out the conviction that we somehow “own” the church, that it “belongs” to us in some way. Would it affect our behavior if we truly embraced the belief that God is the householder in this “church home,” not us? What is “the hurt” that formed our identity?
Seeking “success” as a church
Another thing to consider is our identity in a world that often blurs into the life of the church – the world of materialism and success and growth and prosperity is awfully easy to emulate in the life of the church.
Barbara Brown Taylor sees in the stories of Jesus and Stephen a common thread of uncomfortable truth about what constitutes “Christian success,” and what doesn’t: it’s “not converting other people to our way of thinking; not having the oldest, prettiest church in town; not even going out of our ways to be kind and generous, but telling the truth so clearly that some people want to kill us for it” (Home by Another Way).
A church shaped by the world?
Do we try to imitate the methods and tactics of the world around us when we take on the challenges of church life, or do we seek other sources of wisdom and strength? What are the boundaries that define us? How does the word “boundary” strike us when we talk about the church?
How do these weeks, these months, of being church in a new and perhaps disconcerting way, apart from one another, unable to congregate, lead to new perspectives about who we are as a community called and “gathered”?
How do you connect with your sisters and brothers in faith, perhaps in ways that remind us of connecting with our ancestors in faith: listening to their stories, their lessons, their examples?
What makes us a distinctive people?
We might consider how a visitor to our church’s online ministry could tell the difference between our church and the surrounding culture. Ironically, of course, this surrounding culture, with its amazing technological advances, has been invaluable to many churches during this time of “distance ministry,” sustaining our connections and enabling us to hold worship, to hear from our pastors, to connect with one another.
On the other hand, there are important ways in which we seek to change the surrounding culture, bringing a prophetic voice of critique to anything that harms God’s children. Alas, as Dr. King noted years ago, the church has too often been “the taillights” instead of “the headlights” in the journey toward justice and righteousness–in other words, the surrounding culture led the way and the church, ironically, had to catch up.
One might think, for example, of the ordination of women, which is still forbidden in many large denominations two thousand years after the Easter witness of Mary Magdalene. How has God, at times, spoken to the church through “outsiders”? (Think of the ancient example of Ruth, the Moabite widow, speaking to Naomi, and imaging the unconditional and persistent love of God for her.)
What call impels you?
When have you and your congregation experienced God as a refuge, a rock, a fortress? What is the call that you hear, like Stephen, that impels you to preach? Is it ironic that, in these readings, “stones” can build but they can also kill?
Who really lived and who really died in the story of Stephen? Where is true life in this story, and where is death?
A universal love
In his commentary, The Cultural World of Jesus Year A, John Pilch turns to John Dominic Crossan’s translation of the familiar “I am the way…” verse from John: “I am the authentic (truth) vision (way) of existence (life).” Pilch says that Jesus embodies and “demonstrates absolute, total, and universal love” for all, and his “life, teaching, and behavior do indeed present people with ‘an authentic vision of human existence,’ that is, a model of the way human life ought to be lived” in order to “encounter God, who is Love.”
This was a consoling message to the early Jewish Christians, who could have experienced great anxiety over losing their spiritual home (the synagogue) because of their belief in Jesus. How is it a consoling message to members of your church, and the wider church, today, and how do you hope to embody that witness to a world that desperately needs good news?
The Reverend Kathryn M. Matthews retired in 2016 after serving as dean of Amistad Chapel at the national offices of the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio.
You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments below the post on our Facebook page.
A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.
For further reflection:
Alice Walker, 20th century
“Wake up and smell the possibility.”
Willa Cather, 20th century
“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something completely great.”
Fred Rogers, 20th century
“You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.”
Ani DiFranco, 21st century
“I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort, where we overlap.”
Dorothy Day, 20th century
“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”
William Shakespeare, 16th century
“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind, 21st century
“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 20th century
“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
Nico J. Genes, Magnetic Reverie, 21st century
“Yes, if the stones that we walked on could talk, they would surely tell our story.”
Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging, 20th century
“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”
Additional reflection on John 14:1-14:
by Kathryn Matthews
Preachers might put this passage in context in two different ways: these words of Jesus, spoken at the Last Supper, are his farewell speech to his followers, but they’re also heard by us on this Fifth Sunday of Easter, one week after we reflected on the familiar words of Psalm 23 that sing of God’s tender, loving care for us.
Holding both of those settings in our hearts and minds, we hear these words in new and more profound ways, not as a litmus test for determining who is saved, and who isn’t. Unfortunately, most of us hear only that one verse (14:6) of a long and exquisitely beautiful good-bye from a teacher who is wrapping things up, in a sense, with reminders and coaxings and reassurances to his much-loved but weak disciples.
We know what it feels like to hope for a review from the teacher before the final exam. Jesus the Teacher will face the test and measure up, but his poor students will fail the very first time around. We’re grateful that they, like us, are given another chance, and the Spirit to help them.
A loving farewell speech
Gail R. O’Day provides background on “the farewell speech” in the ancient Mediterranean world; she reminds us of familiar stories from the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis 49; Joshua 22-24; 1 Chronicles 28-29, and the entire book of Deuteronomy), but we don’t often hear these stories of Jacob, Joshua, David and Moses mentioned in sermons on this text from John.
Jesus, however, is doing much the same thing with his followers before his death: speaking not only to those present but to those who would come long after, including us today (John, The New Interpreter’s Bible).
The theology of John
The farewell speech in John (a very long one, interrupted at least once) brings into sharp focus the theology of the Fourth Gospel (just in case, we sense John is thinking, anyone missed the message all along).
O’Day says that John follows in the path of earlier writers, including the author of Deuteronomy recounting the last words of Moses to the Hebrew people, through which “the traditions of Sinai and Moab are given a fresh hearing, a ‘re-presentation’ in a new setting, because they are presented as being spoken in this moment for this people” (John, The New Interpreter’s Bible).
A voice full of authority and power
Even though Moses’ speech was written hundreds of years after their ancestors had entered the Promised Land, the people of Israel could hear these words afresh, find themselves in the story, and understand that God was speaking to them in their own place and time.
The voice of Moses was powerfully authoritative for the Jewish people, and the voice of Jesus is full of power and authority for the readers and hearers of John’s Gospel in every age. We sense that he is speaking to us, in our moment, as his people, as his beloved flock.
In the heart of Jesus
If we wonder what this last speech is about, we might go back to the beginning of this long evening before his death. John begins chapter 13 with Jesus’ awareness that “his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father.”
And here is the key to what was in the heart of Jesus, in that very same verse: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” This speech, in a sense, is a love letter. It reminds us of the words of Henri Nouwen, who urged us to “love Jesus, and love the way Jesus loved.”
Teaching by speech and example
The evening is later disrupted by the drama of Judas’ betrayal, but first it begins with Jesus’ teaching by example before beginning this long speech: he washes their feet and tells them to be humble servants.
The undercurrents of the evening churn up anxiety in the disciples, and we hear Simon Peter and Thomas trying to make sense of it all. Throughout the entire speech, Jesus reassures them with words of love and care and promise.
However, we usually don’t hear about the love, care, and promise as much as the claim of verse 6, O’Day says, that is “proof positive that Christians have the corner on God and that people of any and all other faiths are condemned.” On the other end, of course, are those who turn away from the entire gospel (not only John’s Gospel) because they think it sounds “exclusionary and narrow-minded” (John, The New Interpreter’s Bible).
A small group and a great price to be paid
O’Day continues: “When Jesus says ‘no one,’ he means ‘none of you’….This is not, as is the case in the twentieth century, the sweeping claim of a major world religion, but it is the conviction of a religious minority in the ancient Mediterranean world. It is the conviction of a religious group who had discovered that its understanding of the truth of God carries with it a great price.”
Their faith, she says, had gotten them expelled from their “church home,” so they would have to “carve out a new religious home for themselves,” as a distinct people, and John’s Gospel expresses “the distinctiveness” of Christians who find their way to God through Jesus (John, The New Interpreter’s Bible).
Still, this is a difficult passage to read and to preach. Next week provides another opportunity, a “part two,” if you will, of this glimpse of Jesus’ farewell speech. What is the spirit of the entire speech? What is Jesus trying to tell his followers, including you and me today, the church today, the world God loves? What’s the heart of his message?
A few last words of love and wisdom
Most of us think that if we knew we had only one day to live, we’d want to find those we love most and tell them important things, even though we may have said them many times before. We parents would also want to remind our children of more things we think they need to know.
We do this out of love, but the love of God, the love of Jesus, far surpasses even the love of earthly parents.
Tender love and care
Speaking of tender love and care: there is a moving sermon on this text by the great Gardner Taylor in the second volume of The Words of Gardner Taylor. Taylor sets the scene and explores the insides of those hearing the last speech of Jesus, including the anxious question of Thomas, who seemed to like certainty and reassurance (don’t we all?).
When Thomas asks how they would find the way, Jesus says that he is the Way. (We might ponder the difference in emphasizing “is” over “the.”)
Words that embrace us all
Taylor then expands the words of Jesus to embrace us all: “Jesus is the way out. We are all captives and slaves. There is something wrong with our humanity. We feel a disquiet, a deep and true dis-ease. We are not satisfied with what we are; we sense that we are born for some spacious destiny from which we feel somehow barred. We feel trapped…longing to be free.”
Greed and materialism, our “new religion,” don’t provide a way out, Taylor says: “Jesus is the way out of our foiled sense of destiny and purpose. He declares us to have august connections, a relatedness to the eternal God, intimate and binding.” Those words, “intimate and binding,” provide something for a sermon to chew on.
But what about the pain and hardship of life? Is it only about waiting until we reach that place that Jesus is preparing? Has he gone on ahead and left us alone, to our own devices? No, Gardner Taylor says, “He is the way through life’s hardness and harshness, its pain and its penalties, its fears and its failings. Jesus is the way through” (The Words of Gardner Taylor).
The way home, to bright glory
What is beyond the horizon, what we long for and are oriented toward (one is reminded of the theology of Karl Rahner and, of course, Augustine), is the grace of a loving God who puts all things and all experiences in perspective. “If Jesus told us anything at all, he told us that this world is not all; we have dual citizenship….He did say that he is the way! The way home! The way to bright glory! The way to sunlit shores of an everlasting country” (The Words of Gardner Taylor, Vol. 2).
So Jesus was going on ahead to prepare a place for us, and we still forget and lose our way as we attempt to follow in his path. Taylor says not to worry; remember last week’s psalm? The shepherd, tender and good, will come back for us, seeking us on the paths and hillsides where we wander.
God’s love, made known to us in Jesus, will seek us out. Hope is alive, and new life abounds. In this Easter season, that is the foundation and fount of our joy.
For further reflection:
Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard. 19th century
“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, “Annie,” 20th century
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
Ivy Baker Priest, 20th century
“The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.”
Gilda Radner, 20th century
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, 20th century
“Your time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.”
George Eliot, 19th century
“Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.”
Lectionary texts
Acts 7:55-60
But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died.
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
In you, O God,
I seek refuge;
do not let me ever be
put to shame;
in your righteousness
deliver me.
Incline your ear to me;
rescue me speedily.
Be a rock of refuge for me,
a strong fortress to save me.
You are indeed my rock
and my fortress;
for your name’s sake
lead me and guide me,
take me out of the net
that is hidden for me,
for you are my refuge.
Into your hand I commit
my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O God,
O faithful God.
My times are in your hand;
deliver me from the hand
of my enemies and persecutors.
Let your face shine
upon your servant;
save me in your steadfast love.
1 Peter 2:2-10
Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation — if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture:
“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious;
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the very head of the corner,”
and
“A stone that makes them stumble,
and a rock that makes them fall.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.
John 14:1-14
[Jesus said:] “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”
Notes on the Lectionary and Liturgical Colors
by the Rev. Susan Blain, Curator for Worship and Liturgical Arts (mailto:blains@ucc.org)
Faith Formation Ministry, Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ
(Essay based on an article by Laurence Hull Stookey: “Putting Liturgical Colors in their Place” in Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church ©1996 Abingdon Press.)
The use of colors to differentiate liturgical seasons is a custom in use among some Western churches for hundreds of years. Although the custom of using colors is an ancient one, there has not always been agreement on what the colors should be. The Council of Trent in 1570, a Roman Catholic response to the Reformation, codified the colors for the Roman Catholic Church. When we talk about “traditional” colors today, we usually are referring to that codification. There were four basic colors in that codification: purple (penitence), red (Spirit or Martyrs memorials), green (long season after Pentecost) and white (festivals). Other colors, or no color at all, were acceptable variants in some regions.
The Reformation of course was a watershed for Christian ritual practice. Anglican and Lutheran churches often used some form of liturgical colors; however, the Reformed tradition of churches, where the UCC falls, for the most part did away with the custom of using colors, opting for much more simplicity. During the ecumenical liturgical movement of the mid-20th Century, Protestant churches began to look back at some of the ritual and colorful practices of the past with an eye toward reclaiming them to help give expression to feeling, tone, and imagery underlying the lectionary stories.
Before the Reformation’s iconoclasm, and Trent’s code, practices varied from place to place, often depending on what was available. Indeed, in some places the custom was to organize vestments into practical categories of “best,” “second best,” and “everyday” — not depending on the color at all. For Christmas and Easter the “best” vestments were used, no matter the color! Other, less prominent feasts or Sundays got “second best” or “everyday.”