Main Text: Luke 10:38-42

Whenever I hear this story of Martha and Mary hosting Jesus in their home, I always have this gut reaction of wanting to defend Martha.  Having a guest takes work, hosting is not a passive activity, and yet Martha’s attention to these practical details gets trumped by Mary’s sitting and listening to Jesus.  Jesus points out that Mary has chosen the better part, and Martha is left pulling the roast out of the oven wondering where she went wrong.  So I feel like Martha deserves some props that.

Part of my motivation here no doubt comes out of my own experience.  Growing up I always wondered how it was that most of us got to read in the living room while Mom was getting Sunday dinner around.  I liked to read and wasn’t overly enthusiastic about being in the kitchen, but I had a great appreciation for the work Mom was doing, which I openly expressed by eating large quantities of food at every meal.  If it would have been left to me, we all probably would have sat around reading until we were unbearably hungry and then eventually scrounged for some peanut butter and jelly.  I’ve matured a little bit since those days, but whenever we are hosting and I find myself in the position of Mary, the one sitting, listening, reveling in the leisure of relationship, I’m mindful of what Martha – aka Abbie – is up to in getting things around and am grateful, convinced that it would be a pretty lousy party without her.  And in the back of my mind I’m thinking that Martha has the more difficult task.  Martha is the answer to that quote by journalist PJ O’Rourke which says: “Everybody wants to save the earth, but nobody wants to…

Text: Luke 9:51-62

As I get my bearings here, we’re sticking with the lectionary as a faithful guide to keep us in the flow of the wider church.  There is a strong theme of discipleship in today’s gospel reading.

I want to start by reading a poem, one that some of you may very well be familiar with.  It’s a poem by Julia Kasdorf, and it’s called Green Market, New York.  By way of brief introduction, Julia Kasdorf could be called the matriarch of Mennonite poetry, and this poem is the first poem that appeared in her first book of poetry, which was titled Sleeping Preacher, published in 1992.  The fact that the matriarch of Mennonite poetry is still mid-career and published her first book just a little over 20 years ago already tells us something about Mennonites’ wary historic relationship to the arts.  She has said that the poem’s location at the beginning makes it serve as something of a thesis for that book, which might also make it something of a poetic thesis for the contemporary North American Mennonite experience.

Here it is:

Green Market, NY

The first day of false spring, I hit the street,
buoyant, my coat open.  I could keep walking
and leave that job without cleaning my desk.
At Union Square the country people slouch
by crates of last fall’s potatoes.
An Amish lady tends her table of pies.
I ask where her farm is.  “Upstate,” she says,
“but we moved from P.A. where the land is better,
and the growing season’s longer by a month.”
I ask where in P.A.  “Towns you wouldn’t know,
around Mifflinburg, around Belleville.”
And I tell her I was born there.
“Now who would your grandparents be?”
“Thomas and Vesta Peachey.”
“Well, I was a Peachey,” she says,
and she grins like she sees the whole farm
on my face.  “What a place your folks had,
down Locust Grove. …

Text: 1 Kings 19:1-13

Good morning.  Our family has been anticipating this day for quite some time now and it’s very good to be with you.  I have to tell just one story from the April candidating weekend.  I appreciated all the opportunities to meet with different ones of you personally along with Commissions and Council and had a positive feeling about things as the Sunday service was coming to a close.  We knew we wanted to come here, but had to wait to make sure that the feeling was mutual.  Knowing there was going to be a vote that evening, Stella B. wrote on one of the unused name tags, and gave it to me as our family was walking out into the lobby after the service.  It said, “Me for pastor,” and she instructed me to stick it to my shirt.  With Stella as our campaign manager, I was pretty sure at that point things were going to work out well.

The prophethood of all believers.

You are most likely familiar with the idea of the priesthood of all believers, that marvelous humanizing notion that came out of the 16th century Protestant Reformation.  The priesthood of all believers is this great equalizer which teaches that each and every one of us – old, young; female, male; installed, not installed; members of any of the many vocational paths one might take – we all have access to the Divine, and the Divine is uniquely represented in each one of us as ministering persons.  It’s as simple as that.  The priesthood of all believers was first taught by Martin Luther and has been embraced by Anabaptists.  From what I have come to know of CMC so far, this is a value you whole-heartedly embrace.

The Old Testament lectionary reading for today comes from…

I’ve been thinking a while about what I want to say today, and I asked Abbie if she thought it was OK if I didn’t base the talk on a passage of Scripture or mention God much.  Her reply was that she thought I had done my fair share of that here and that I should feel free to do what I was hoping to do, which was tell stories.  I have come to find her advice sound, so I’m taking it.  I want to say a grateful farewell to you by telling a few of the many stories that could be told about what it has been like to be your pastor.  By way of connection to Scripture and God, perhaps we can think of these stories the same way we think of the story of Esther in the Bible, in which the name of God is never mentioned, even as the presence of God permeates every scene.

When Abbie and I came to Cincinnati in the summer of 2006, I was fresh out of seminary, Abbie had just completed her work as a music therapist with developmentally disabled adults, and Eve was about as old as Ila is right now.  Lily and Belle and Ila were not yet.

One of my first distinct memories of meeting the congregation was the day we moved into the small brick house two doors down from the church on Brownway Ave.  There was a full group of CMFers there to lend a hand that day.  We worked in two crews.  Downstairs Abbie was with the more typical moving crew, getting boxes and furniture out of the UHaul, and bringing them into the house to stack in whatever space seemed most appropriate.

Upstairs I was with the other crew.  This group was armed with hammers,…

 http://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/51213-prayer.mp3

For the last number of years, I’ve had the amazing privilege of speaking with you most every week in this place.  This is not farewell Sunday and this is not a farewell speech, but, with Pentecost Sunday next week and our tradition of hearing from anyone who wants to share about what it has meant for them to be connected with this congregation in the past year, this is something like a farewell eve by way of sermon giving.  So, while the 26th will involve more storytelling and reflection on our time here as a whole, I thought that this could be something more along the lines of some final words of spiritual and biblical reflection.

Although we don’t follow it every Sunday, I have come to love the lectionary and being guided by these larger themes that so many Christian groups around the world have agreed to focus on together throughout the cycle of the year.  It was serendipitous that one of last Sunday’s readings was the story of Lydia’s baptism, which fit well with our own celebration of baptism.  So I’m grateful, and take it as guiding sign, that in this week’s gospel reading we catch Jesus praying.  It’s a good theme.

Plus, this focus beats out the alternative that the lectionary offers, which is a separate set of readings to observe Ascension Sunday, when Jesus ascends into the clouds as he leaves the disciples after their final encounter, which traditionally occurs the Sunday before Pentecost.  This is a potentially fruitful theme as well, but with our leaving soon I have no desire to give any implications that these are somehow equivalent!  Although, after sending out the resignation letter by email in March, I received a text from John Bromels which read, “This is an outrage!  You can’t just…