America's Independence Day

America officially celebrates the anniversary of the Declaration Independence from Britain each year on July 4.  

Celebrations are varied; but, usually consist of community parades, outdoor picnics and gatherings, with food and music - and community displays of fireworks.

 Churches have an opportunity to tell a story not usually heard in schools - or churches for that matter.

It’s not a story easily found on television or film.  

It’s a great opportunity to remind folks of the place of the church in the lives of most of the colonists in those early times.  

Some of these resources here could inspire the preacher and/or worship leader to engage the congregation in a real uplifting experience.

Important to consider in the planning for a new celebration of Independence Day should be the realization that not all inhabitants of the New World would celebrate Independence.  

The population of Africans brought to this world as slaves did not see and could not celebrate independence.

Nor could most of the Native American population.  To the credit of the British (and discredit of  the Colonists) each Native group was seen and treated by the British as separate “nations” with certain respect and dignity and rights granted therein.  

Most colonists viewed the Natives as a problem to be eradicated.  There would be no celebrating of independence  amongst them.  

May you find inspiration here for a New Celebration of Independence Day.

Check it out:   http://www.newcelebrations.com/independencedayusa.html

The Single Most Powerful Voice to Inspire the Colonists Was the Pulpit

Clergymen surveyed the events swirling around them, and by 1775 liberals and evangelicals, Congregationalists and Presbyterians,
men and women – 
all saw in British actions grounds for armed resistance.
 
In fact, not only was it right for colonists to resist British "tyranny,"
to hear the preachers, it would actually be sinful not to pick up guns.
 
They latched on to Parliament's 1766 Declaratory Act, which stated that Parliament had sovereignty over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever."

You see, for the ministers, this phrase took on the air of blasphemy.
These were fighting words –  not only because they violated principles of representative government but even more because they violated the logic of their fundamental Presbyterian belief of sola Scriptura  ("Scripture alone"),
and God's exclusive claim  to sovereignty "in all cases whatsoever."

You see, from the first colonial settlements, Americans –  especially New England Americans –  were accustomed to constraining all power and granting absolute authority to no mere human being.
 
For Presbyterian and Reformed colonists, these ideas were tied up with their historic, covenant theology.
At stake was the preservation of their identity as a covenant people.
Not only did Parliament's claims of control “in all things whatsoever”  represent tyranny, they also represented idolatry.
For colonists to honor those claims would be tantamount to forsaking God and abdicating their national covenant pledge to "have no other gods" before them.

So, to the question as to who determines whether government is "moral and religious",
In the Revolutionary era, the answer was simple: the individual.

The political and religious connotations were so closely intertwined that it was virtually impossible for colonists to separate them.
 
Throughout all the colonies, the preachers goaded, consoled, and impelled colonists forward in the cause of independence.

The pulpit served as the single most powerful voice to inspire the colonists.
 
For most American ministers and many in their congregations, the religious  dimension of the war was precisely the point of revolution.

Would our faith be so strong
that if we were confronted with a proclamation of someone declaring sovereignty over us in all cases whatsoever, would we be moved to do anything about it? 

Well, we are here today, so we can thank God that there were some who were moved to proclaim that God has exclusive claim to sovereignty in all cases whatsoever.  

And, there can be no mere human beings who have absolute authority over us.

And, so let us rememeber that there was a time when religious beliefs greatly affected political and social issues. 

Check it out:   http://www.newcelebrations.com/independencedayusa.html

Lest We Forget: The Role of the Preacher in the American Revolution

Folks in colonial America heard sermons more than any other form of communication.

The colonial preacher was prophet,
newspaper,
video,
Internet,
community college,
and social therapist all wrapped in one. 
Their  influence on all aspects of life in those days was so great, that even contemporary television and personal computers pale in comparison.

Day after day,
week after week,
ministers drew the people into a rhetorical world that was more compelling and more immediate than the physical settlements surrounding them.
Sermons taught not only the way to personal salvation in Christ, 
but also the way to temporal and national prosperity for God's chosen people.

Events were perceived not from the mundane, human vantage point
but from God's perspective.

The vast majority of colonists were  Presbyterian
to whom things were not as they might appear at ground level:
all events, no matter how mundane or seemingly random, were parts of a larger pattern of meaning, part of God's providential design.
The outlines of this pattern were contained in Scripture and interpreted by discerning pastors.
Colonial congregations saw themselves as the "New Israel,"
endowed with a sacred mission that destined them as lead actors in the last triumphant chapter in redemption history. 

Check it out:  http://www.newcelebrations.com/independencedayusa.html

A HYMN- PRAYER FOR THE NATION

For Freedom, Christ Has Set Us Free

ELLACOMBE 8.6.8.6 D

("I Sing the Mighty Power of God")

"For freedom, Christ has set us free!"

What joy is ours to claim!

No more enslaved, humanity

Finds life in Jesus' name.

We try, Lord, to be justified

Through all the works we do.

Yet you adopt us, saying, "Child,

It's Christ who makes you new."

We're clothed in Christ and we belong;

Now no one waits outside.

In him we find our common song;

Old ways no more divide.

"It is no longer I who live,

But Christ who lives in me."

He died for us, new life to give —

And new identity.

Now, Spirit-filled, may we be led

From ways that would destroy.

May we your people turn instead

To lives of love and joy.

May we find peace that makes us whole

And patience everywhere.

God, give us kindness, self-control,

And hearts and hands that share.

Biblical Reference: Galatians 5:1, 19, 22-23

Tune: Gesangbuch der Herzoglich Wirtembergischen Katholischen Hofkapelle, 1784 ("I Sing the Mighty Power of God"; "Hail To the Lord's Anointed")

Text: Copyright © 2000 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved.

Copied from Songs of Grace: New Hymns for God and Neighbor by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette (Upper Room Books).

Email: bcgillette@comcast.net Hymns: www.carolynshymns.com

The American Revolution Was a Religious Event

Next week we in the United States of America  will celebrate our 240th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
It is significant for us to remember, many historians agree that when understood in its own times,
the American Revolution was first and foremost a religious event.
At the forefront of the revolution were the preachers.
Think about the influence of the preachers:

Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours.
The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening.

No matter what denomination,
folks in colonial America heard sermons more than any other form of communication.

Check it out:
 http://www.newcelebrations.com/independencedayusa.html

Reclaim Mothers' Day

If there ever was a holiday that needs reclamation it is Mothers’ Day!

Churches all over the United States report attendance on Mothers’ Day as one of the top three of the year - surpassing Christmas and/or Easter in some cases.

But, what is celebrated and valued is no longer a common-cultural experience for most people.

Significant numbers of our congregation have not had a positive mothering experience - for one reason or another. 
And, of course, a number of our congregation are male and could never experience motherhood.
Other increasing numbers of folks have experienced a loss that precluded them from ever experiencing motherhood.
Others, through choice, or through no fault of their own, have never and will never experience motherhood.
And, still others experience mothering through persons not typical to a culture of 100 years ago. 

It turns out that mothering is a very sensitive issue to very large numbers of people - and it takes a skillful preacher to be sensitive to their issues and craft a sermon that speaks to the needs of all in this day and age.

It is interesting to note that the one person responsible for creating and encourage the widespread adoption of a nationally recognized mother’s day, Anna Jarvis, lived long enough to see what was happening and spent her latter years trying to change the emphasis. 

As we think of a way of celebrating Mother’s Day in a new way, there is much to give fodder to our thought.

Consider the first call for a mother’s day came from Julia Ward Howe, who dreamed of an international gathering of mothers pledging to protect their sons and daughters by ending all war.

And, most recently, a group of folks in the US call for Mothers for Action to work for peace on Mothers’ Day.

For years, after giving nod to the fact that all of us have mothers, I have proceeded to give homage to the roll of women in our church and in our faith.  The preacher doesn’t have to look far for sermon points to lift up the role of women.

Taking a clue from the original call for a mothers’ day, we would do well to consider mustering interest in supporting a “cause” near and dear to mothers’ hearts:

Promote awareness of working mother’s issues.
Support a local women’s center.
Get involved in a Big Brothers / Big Sisters project.
Go to a nearby Senior Citizens Center
Support or start a day care center for working women

We received a special offering on Mothers’ Day to support Baby Manna in Philadelphia which supplies baby formula for poor mothers in Southeast Pennsylvania.


 

Funny Sunday: The Risus Paschalis - The Easter Laugh

Laughter has been called God's holy medicine – 
the ancients thought it to be exercise for the soul.

There is no doubt in my mind that these disciples were happy people when they encountered the Risen Christ.
They must have been laughing and carrying on.
They knew the joke was on them, because they hadn't believed what they had been told.

Today we celebrate the risus paschalis – God’s easter laugh.     
The joke is on the devil.
The joke is on all who still think that life is defined by birth and death.
Jesus taught the early church how to laugh:
how to laugh at death.
How to laugh at appearances,
how to laugh in the face of all manner of difficulty.
Today, we remember God’s great surprise –
 
Ecclesiastes 3:1-4
Luke 24:36-43
 
After warming up with a series of knock knock jokes - 40-60 in rapid delivery:


State of the church that day:
those first Christians were pretty bleak that first Easter Sunday.
They had witnessed a disturbing set of events.
Their leader, the one to whom they had sworn their allegiance,
the one they thought was going to lead them and the world into a new tomorrow, was tortured, ridiculed, crucified, dead, (for sure,) and buried.
And then, on this third day,
they found the tomb in which he was placed, open,  and his body missing -
taken by whom?,
removed to where?,
and why? 

They suspected sadism, I'm sure.
The authorities - or some enemies - just wanted to make sure this troublemaker would never be heard from again.
They were afraid.
What did all of this mean for them?
For sure, the authorities would be coming after them now.
What to do?
They gathered behind locked doors - fearing the worst.

And then, all of a sudden, there he is.
Right there in the middle of them.
In the middle of their wailing and gnashing of teeth,
there’s Jesus.
 
Knock knock.

Reactions to Jesus: !!!!!?????!!!!!
"Hee-haw!    Jesus Christ!"
They must have had the biggest smiles
Can't you just see and feel what happened?
"Oh man, you really did it this time!
You really put one over on us!
You got us good! And what about the others?
Just wait until they get a load of this!"

The Risen Christ was the punch line of God's Great Surprise.
The resurrection of Jesus is the greatest surprise in the history of humanity.
 
Until then, once people died and were buried, they stayed put.
 
There is no doubt in my mind that these disciples were happy people when they encountered the Risen Christ.
They must have been laughing and carrying on.
They knew the joke was on them, because they hadn't believed what they had been told.
And now, the joke is on all those who refuse to believe.
This is the Easter surprise, the Easter laugh, the Easter joy.

And, far from being so solemn and placid like he is portrayed in so many pictures,
Jesus must have been grinning from ear to ear! – grabbing his friends by the neck, hugging and rustling hair – and what did he say:
“Hey, got anything to eat around here?”
And what did they do:
they flipped him a fish.

Zig Zigler writes that “the most destitute person in the world is the one without a smile.”
This is when the disciples broke out of their situation – no longer were they feeling destitute and downcast.

C.K. Chesterton wrote that “surprise is the secret of joy.”  

For centuries there has been a tradition passed on through some of our Christian Orthodox churches for the people to gather on the Monday after Easter to be joyful – to celebrate surprises – to tell jokes and stories – sharing laughter. 
And in it all, remembering the punch line of God’s Greatest Surprise. 

A church historian has pointed out that in days of yore, every Easter sermon began with a joke.  
Somehow, we have misguidedly equated somberism with Christianity. 
Clearly, this was not the case in the very beginning. 
Those early Christians were so surprised by their Risen Friend that they must have been ecstatic! – totally joyous – completely joy-filled. 
 
Today in many parts of the world, many Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox countries celebrate Easter Monday as a day of “joy and laughter” with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus’s resurrection. 
It is called White Monday,
Bright Monday,
Dyngus Day,
and Emmaus Day in various countries. 
It is a time for the faithful to play practical jokes on one another,
a time to sing silly songs,
a time to dance crazy steps. 
It is a time for clergy and lay people to tell jokes and to have fun.

The custom of Easter Monday and Holy Hilarity Sunday celebrations are rooted in the musings of early church theologians like Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa and John Crysostom that God played a joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. 

You see, Easter is seen as “God’s supreme joke played on that old imposter, death.”
The early theologians called it “risus paschalis” – the Easter laugh. 
This theme has been passed down through the ages. 

Francis of Assisi advised: “Leave sadness to the devil.  The devil has reason to be sad.” 

Meister Eckhart, a 13th century theologian, wrote: “God laughed and begat the Son. 
Together they laughed and begat the Holy Spirit.  And from the laughter of the Three, the universe was born.”

Martin Luther wrote: “God is not a God of sadness, but the devil is.
Christ is a God of joy. 
It is pleasing to the dear God whenever one rejoices or laughs from the bottom of your heart.”

Easter is the morning when the Lord laughs out loud,
laughs at all the things that snuff out joy,
laughs at all the things that pretend to be all-powerful, like cruelty and madness and despair and evil,
and most especially, laughs at the great pretender, death. 
Jesus sweeps them away with his wonderful resurrection laughter.  

Norman Vincent Peale wrote:
“laughter sweeps away the cobwebs from the mind.”

Paul talks about a resurrection appearance of Jesus before an audience of over 500 people. 
One writer ruminates:
“[Now how would you think] 500-plus people react to an appearance by Jesus, the one who had been crucified and buried? 
Would they applaud politely?
(With a proper Presbyterian clap.)  
My guess is that 500-plus folks rose to their feed with a standing ovation. 
This was the most incredible comeback story of all time. 
They would have jumped for joy and hugged their neighbors and probably even danced all around. 
These 500-plus folks, because of Jesus, had the best belly laugh of their lives. 
Easter had taught the 500-plus how to celebrate.”
We ought to pay attention, don’t you think?

Church historians indicate that there is considerable evidence that during the early centuries of Christianity, Easter celebrations went on for days – even weeks. 
This picture on our bulletin is very appropriate for today. 
It is an artist’s depiction of the Risen Christ with his friends in the evening on that first Easter Day.
– the story we read this morning. 

Today, many churches all over the country are trying to lift up the hilaritas of the Easter season -- celebrating the risus paschalis:  the Easter Laugh.  
   
Michelangelo wrote rather indignantly in 1564 to his fellow artists:
“Why do you keep filing gallery after gallery with endless pictures of the one ever-reiterated theme of Christ in weakness,
of Christ upon the cross,
of Christ dying,
of Christ hanging dead? 
Why do you stop there as if the curtain is closed upon that horror? 
Keep the curtain open, and with the cross in the foreground, let us see beyond it to the Easter dawn with its beams streaming upon the risen Christ, Christ alive, Christ ruling, Christ triumphant.

“For we should be ringing out over the world that Christ has won,
that evil is toppling,
that the end is sure,
and that death is followed by victory. 
That is the tonic we need to keep us healthy,
the trumpet blast to fire our blood and send us crowding in behind our Master,
swinging happily on our way,
laughing and singing and recklessly unafraid, because the feel of victory is in the air and our hearts thrill to it.” 

Laughter has been called God's holy medicine – 
the ancients thought it to be exercise for the soul.
What a great idea, don’t you think?
Laughter is exercise for the soul! 

In fact, there is a tremendous body of evidence being
accumulated today in schools from Johns Hopkins to
Stanford University Medical Schools and in countries
all over the world –  evidence that supports this ancient idea:
that laughter is exercise for the soul and
actually affects our physical and mental health.
 
Not long ago the AARP newsletter published an article about how doctors and nurses and hospitals are being taught what we already know: the title of the article is "It's No Joke: Humor Heals"! 

You may have seen that movie, Patches.
It's a real story about a real doctor, Patch Adams, and his work to introduce laughter therapy into medical institutions. 

A whole field of study has arisen called psychoneuroimmunology – 
studying the affects of love and laughter,
the affects of attitude on a person's state of health. 

Actually, this is one of the secrets of this church.
Recent studies show that church-goers tend to live
longer and be healthier than others in the population.

This doesn't mean that going to church is like an
insurance policy whereby you automatically will be
rewarded with good health and a long life.
All of us get ill, and we do die.
But, here in church we learn how to live now,
we learn how to love,
we learn how to survive,
we learn how to have the courage to face each day.
In fact, we might should say that is the goal of our
church: to teach us how to live these days of our lives
joyously and lovingly.
 
Today we celebrate the risus paschalis – God’s easter laugh.     
The joke is on the devil.
The joke is on all who still think that life is defined by birth and death.
Jesus taught the early church how to laugh:
how to laugh at death.
How to laugh at appearances,
how to laugh in the face of all manner of difficulty.
Today, we remember God’s great surprise –
and the word for each of us:

Turn to John 15:11    [page            ]

Like those early disciples, when you experience the risen Christ – joy is yours. 
Paul can say:
“rejoice in all things. Again, I say, rejoice!”

Easter is a time of deep surprise, the surprise of suddenly realizing that God makes all things right in ways we can never imagine.  
On this second Sunday of Easter, I hope you can continue to feel the joy of encountering the Risen Christ for a long time to come.  Amen.

The congregation of Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, heard this sermon on Holy Humor Sunday, March 7, 2013.