Author: Hilton Kean Jones

LAKEWOOD/TRINITY UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST
2601 54th Avenue South  St. Petersburg, FL  33712
On land originally inhabited by the Tocabaga
727-867-7961
lakewooducc.org
lakewooducc@gmail.com

Date: September 15, 2024    Charter Sunday
Scripture Lesson: James 2:1-10, 14-17
Sermon: Leaving a Legacy
Pastor: Rev. Kim P. Wells

Mary Byrd was the moderator of Lakewood United Church of Christ from 1982-1985.   She was the second woman to be moderator of the church.  The first was Evelyn Kaspar, Ed Kaspar’s mom, from 1977 to 1979.  And Mary was African American.  The church put its faith in the leadership of a Black woman decades ago.  And it wasn’t popular or common then either. 

And for those who did not know her, Mary was a person of supreme competence and compassion.  She was a teacher and a curriculum specialist in Manatee County, working with the most challenging students.  I remember her telling me that she would not have any device in her home that she could not personally operate.  She did the crossword puzzles in the paper every day.  She watched Jeopardy every day.  She and her husband, James, played Scrabble every day.  She read the Bible front to back, a different version, each year.  This woman was supremely smart, capable, and caring. 

And she very honestly conveys the challenges of church life.  Mary had this to say in her annual report to the congregation at the end of her first year as moderator:

“I accepted the responsibilities of Moderator after many prayers and consultations.  I’ve never felt more inadequate.  The first three months went by so smoothly, until I told myself there had to be more to the position.  Then I began to receive phone calls prefaced with, ‘Since you are Moderator, I thought you should know……’  I knew the honeymoon was over.” 

Mary goes on to tell of attending many activities including state and local UCC events.  She mentions projects undertaken at the church:   A new church sign.  Drainage issues. 

Then she concludes:  “There were problems.  (I expected some, but of a different kind.)

“For me, this had been a learning year.  Thanks for your faith and continued support.”

Well, that to me is a frank description of life in the church.  At its best.  Authentic.  Sincere.  A later Lakewood Church moderator, Kristin Andes, notes:  “In places where we really commit our hearts and overtime, where we are known beyond the superficialities, our differences become evident.  We are all different, and working through difference is what conflict is.” 

As we heard this morning, the book of James encourages people of faith basically to put their money where their mouth is.  The writer is addressing people who are living in the diaspora, scattered, and being persecuted for their faith.  They are living in hostile surroundings.  In such circumstances, it would be easy to limit your faith to the verbal expression of beliefs.  To theoretical theology.  But the writer of James says, no.  Faith, if it is real, if it is to have power, must be expressed in action.  In deeds.  So we have the story of a rich person and a poor person coming to church.  They are to be treated the same.  The same consideration, deference, hospitality, to both.  That is the what makes faith real. 

Our faith should be evident first in our life together as a church.  And then in our witness to the world.  I love Mary’s and Kristin’s comments about being moderator because they are honest.  They address the challenges of trying to live together in community and to serve the world. 

It is a challenge to try to fully live the gospel here at church; in our relationships, in our decisions, and in our behavior toward one another.  It takes a lot of humility, forgiveness, vulnerability, and love to try to get along and get something done for Jesus.   And living the gospel usually puts us at odds with the societal context around us, just as it did for those first readers of the book of James.  Phil Smith, my predecessor as pastor of this church, noted in his final pastor’s report in 1991:  “The church is to be a community, not a corporation: it is to be more like a family than a factory.  The church always has to operate primarily on the basis of faith.  It always has to respond to God’s will, not to human’s customs and ways.”   We are constantly bucking a system that is trying to hold us captive.  Our world is not set up for egalitarian community.  It is not set up to treat everyone as equals.  It is not set up to expect conflict and to learn how to grow through resolving differences.  The world is set up to worship wealth and the wealthy.  To bow and scrape to those with status and fame and money.  We do not live in a world set up to dignify those made poor.  We do not live in times in which those who are of little financial means are elevated and respected.  Oh no.  This is why we see such hatred and hostility in our land.  So many people feel disrespected, left behind, and ignored. 

This is not the way of Jesus.  And we start by living out that alternative reality here in the church.  And then we carry that gospel message out into the community.  We can see that happening in the life of this church through its 57 years of ministry.

This morning, we will hear from three people who have been part of the congregation since its formation.  They will share what has been impactful to them about the ministry of the church.  They will tell us about how the church has practiced what it has professed, as James says. 

            First, we will hear from Christy Martin. 

            And then Ed Kaspar. 

            And then Bill Parsons. 

What a beautiful testimony to the legacy of the church, practicing what it professes.  And I expect that the folks of Trinity Church have similar stories to tell, because in our time together we have come to know that we share the same sincere desire to not just profess our faith but to practice it, in our internal affairs, yes.  But especially as it relates to the equality and dignity of all people whatever their circumstances.  Just an aside:  This faith commitment, this desire to fully profess and practice the gospel, it is not present in all churches, not even all UCC churches. 

We heard how Mary Byrd began her three year term as moderator a bit unsettled at how things began to unfold.  At the end of her term as moderator, having lived through some of the inevitable ups and downs of church life, Mary Byrd had this to say:

“This is my third annual report.  . . . I am happy to have been a participant in the activities of this church in a leadership position; to have gotten to know you and to be a member of this friendly church.

“Thanks to all of you for your friendship and support during the past three years as Moderator.  It made the job a lot easier.  I know you will continue to give the same support to our new Moderator, William Parsons.

May God be with you always,

Mary Byrd”

May we continue to always and ever be a true church of Jesus Christ in word and deed.  Amen. 

A reasonable effort has been made to appropriately cite materials referenced in this sermon. For additional information, please contact Lakewood United Church of Christ.

LAKEWOOD/TRINITY UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST
2601 54th Avenue South  St. Petersburg, FL  33712
On land originally inhabited by the Tocabaga
727-867-7961
lakewooducc.org
lakewooducc@gmail.com

Date: September 8, 2024
Scripture Lesson:  Song of Solomon 2:8-14
Sermon: Migration
Pastor: Rev. Kim P. Wells

“Flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the Turtle[dove] is heard in our land.”  [Song of Solomon 2:12]

Isabella Tree begins her book about the re-wilding of her family’s estate in England with this verse from Song of Solomon.  Wilding: The return of nature to a British farm, is a detailed account of restoring the land of the estate to a thriving state of nature filled with a profusion of life. 

The book Song of Songs or Song of Solomon is a celebration of the profusion of life as well.  It is love poetry, voiced by a woman and a man, and it is infused with imagery from nature that celebrates the passion of life and love.  The images hearken back to the garden of Eden. 

While Song of Solomon is just a few short pages, the imagery from nature includes references to:   pomegranates, grapes, vines, orchards, honey, flowers, fruit, grape blossoms, saffron, cinnamon, myrrh, aloes, henna, nard, calamus, nectar of lilies, the gazelle, raisins, nuts, blossoms, grass, wine, spices, fields, vineyards, hills, mountains, mandrakes, apples, palm trees, birds, bees, milk, turtle doves, does, stags, rocks, water flowing like a fountain and the season of springtime.  It reads like nature encyclopedia.  These references pour forth the exuberant life celebrated in this unusual book.  Unusual because it is included in the Bible even though there is no mention of God.  It has this in common with the book of Esther.  It is also a love poem, erotic and intimate, voiced by a man and a woman.  Thirty-six of the verses are in the voice of the man and 56 verses are in the voice of the woman.  Again, extremely unusual for an ancient writing.  So we have this passionate poetry about dizzying love between a dark-skinned woman and a shepherd. 

And lest we minimize or allegorize or ‘metaphoricalize’ the nature of the love extolled in Song of Solomon, it is hard to ignore that there is mention of many body parts in the poetry.  This book is about embodied love.  We are told of: lips a ribbon of scarlet, breath, arms, ear lobes, thighs, legs, belly, neck, head, feet, tongue, hair, eyes, navel, cheeks, breasts, left hand, right hand, face, voice, skin, teeth, and smell.  This is passionate love between two human beings.  Longingly in love. 

The original writer or writers do not seem to be interested in addressing the nature of God or religious doctrine in this book.

We are presented with an outpouring of passion, a vision of a world bursting with life and love.  We are shown the glories of nature erupting in beauty and abundance.  We are told of the passion and confusion and intimacy of desire between people in love.   We see a beautiful expression of the wonderful world of abundance and beauty and joy that has been provided for us.  We have been given this amazing life and this garden as our home. 

While there is no direct mention of God, there is likely the insinuation that this is the intention for Creation, for life, for human love, for nature.  There is a giver.  There is a passionate force of life and love behind it all. 

To return for a moment to the turtledove.  This is a bird that spends part of the year in the environs of Africa and then migrates to a more northern clime.  In the book Wilding, Isabella Tree describes the migrations:  “. . .their tiny flight muscles pumping 3,000 miles from deep in West Africa, from Mali, Niger and Senegal, across the epic landscapes of the Sahara Desert, the Atlas Mountains and the Gulf of Cadiz; over the Mediterranean, up the Iberian Peninsula, through France and across the English Channel.  They mostly fly under the cover of darkness, covering between 300 and 450 miles every night at a maximum speed of 40 miles an hour, usually making landfall in England around May or early June.   . .  they have come to breed, to raise their young far from the predators and competitors of Africa and to take advantage of the long daylight feeding hours of the European summer.”  [pp. 1-2]

This migration sounds astounding.  The effort, the risk, the danger, the exertion.  Amazing.  All for the cause of life!  To thrive and flourish and reproduce. 

We see this passion for life, conveyed in the references to nature and to erotic love in the verses of Song of Solomon.  This reveals to us the power and passion of the creator, of God, of Love, of the life force that is at the heart of reality.  These images hearken to a force, the force of love, making whatever effort is needed, whatever it takes to see that life, that we, thrive and flourish. 

From these references to nature, we can imagine Divine Love, a creative force, God, seeking to migrate to us to show us how loved we are.  A love that will go to any length to provide us with abundance, joy, and happiness as well as everything that we need not just to survive but to flourish and thrive with passion.

And in our Christian tradition, in which we celebrate that the word became flesh [John 1:14] we can think of Divine Love migrating into our very form, in Jesus the Christ, to express passionate love for us.  To convey the intimacy, the beauty, and the power, of the love that courses through us and claims us.  We see a God, however we may envision God, sparing no effort to convey to us that we are  beloved.  And our life journey can be seen as a migration toward accepting that love.

When I think of yet another horrific shooting in Georgia this week, I feel devastation and heartbreak for the families and the school and the community and our. nation.   But I find myself wondering about those who are responsible for these kinds of heinous acts.   What happened to them?  What circumstances led to their actions?  How have they been damaged?  I feel that they cannot know of this love that we see in the Bible, in Song of Solomon, in Jesus.  Maybe they have not experienced the unconditional acceptance and love we are talking about.  They must not know that they are loved beyond measure.  That there is a force in the world seeking to make sure that they are cared for and that they thrive and embrace life with passion and joy.   It seems they do not know that they are beautiful and beloved. 

Song of Solomon, with its portrayal of intimate, ecstatic love between two people gives us a glimpse of so much more.  The profligacy of nature.  The passion and beauty that surrounds us and infuses us.  The reality that is giving to us more than we could ever imagine or desire.  And in our faith tradition, we celebrate this all made manifest in the life, teachings, and ministry of Jesus.  For us, he is the embodiment of all of this love and he shows us how to live that love for ourselves, for others in our relationships, and for this precious world.

Our faith teaches that God, Divine Love, is always seeking us out, migrating to us, so that we may have all that we need to embrace life with joy and desire. 

In Song of Solomon, one of the lovers declares:  “Your beauty is perfect.”  [4:7]   With all the messages of hate and degrading, demeaning criticism that swirl around us.  With the ugliness and violence that begets only more pain and suffering.  With the racist and biased words and actions that desecrate our world, here, at church, we are reminded of true reality.  Of the intentions of Divine Love.  Thriving passionate life for not only humans but for all of Creation.  “Your beauty is perfect.”  This is God’s message to every single person, created in the Divine Image. 

We end with a blessing from 12th century mystic, Hildegard of Bingen:

Good people,

Most royal greening verdancy,

rooted in the sun,

you shine with radiant light.

In this circle of earthly existence

you shine

so finely,

it surpasses understanding.

God hugs you.

You are encircled

by the arms

of the mystery of God.

Amen.

A reasonable effort has been made to appropriately cite materials referenced in this sermon. For additional information, please contact Lakewood United Church of Christ.