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Sunday, March 25, 2012
Cleaning Out Our Hearts
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Psalm 51; Mark 12: 28-34The Midrash contains the story of the Gentile who wanted to convert to Judaism but that he demanded to learn the whole of the Torah while standing on one foot. After going to another rabbi, the Gentile came to Rabbi Hillel who told him that the entire Torah could be contained in the following: “Whatsoever is hateful to you, do not do to another.” Perplexed, the Gentile asked what this meant and the story goes on that Hillel responded with the statement in this morning's Gospel: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart soul, and mind, and strength. The second is like unto it that we love our neighbor as ourselves. As Hillel said, all the rest is commentary. The critical question is, of course, who is our neighbor? Luke's version of the answer to this question is the stor...
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AT: 03/25/2012 08:30:36 AM
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Sunday, February 19, 2012
Bodacious Behavior
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Isaiah 43: 18-25; Mark 2: 1-12 There are certain words we associate with certain parts of the country. The word "bodacious" is one of them. A term meaning boldly audacious, it even sounds southern. When I hear that word, it brings to mind that scene in Gone With the Wind, when Scarlett O'Hara tells Rhett Butler that his behavior was bodacious. I can still hear the voice of Vivien Leigh as she flirted with Clark Gable saying, "Why, Mr. Butler, you are so bodacious!" For a Shakespearean trained actress, she did that southern accent pretty well. Well, Capernaum wasn't exactly southern Galilee, but Jesus' behavior was certainly bodacious. There are more than a few thing s interesting about this Gospel passage. First is, what surprised people and what did not surprise them. But to begin prop...
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AT: 02/19/2012 08:30:45 AM
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
Where We Don't Want To Go
Texts: Jonah 1: 1-17; Mark 4: 14-20 Many, if not most, of us have stories about being dragged by our parents to some place we did not want to go. For me, it was the dentist. I would have rather died a thousand deaths rather than go to the dentist. Dr. Stohlman was my father's dentist; I remember he spoke with an accent. At that time I thought it was German and World War II being so close to my childhood, his humorlessness and way of working quite frankly made me think of Nazis. I used to have nightmares the night before a Saturday appointment. Images, however, cloud our minds. Much later, when an adult, I had asked my father about old Dr. Stohlman, my father told me he had been part of the earlier Jewish migration during the early thirties. To say the least, I felt chagrined. That is, of course, what our re...
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AT: 01/22/2012 08:30:58 AM
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Sunday, January 08, 2012
Beyond Epiphany
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Psalm 72; Matthew 2: 1-20 It would, of course, be an understatement to say that Herod was not a nice guy. For kings in the ancient world, however, he was long-lived. Born around 74 or 73 BCE, he survived until he died of natural causes – unlike some of his wives and children – in the year 4 BCE. Five days before his own death, Herod executed his first born Antipater II, the son of his first wife Doris, whom he divorced. We hear nothing of her afterwards. He set up a trump trial with perjured witnesses to have his second wife Marianne I executed on charges of adultery. In fact, to save her own skin, Marianne's mother testified against her. So much for motherly love. When the former mother-in-law conspired with Marianne's two sons fifteen years later, they were all murdered. Wait! It gets better. He...
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AT: 01/08/2012 08:30:37 AM
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Sunday, January 01, 2012
Seasons of Time
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Ecclesiastes 3: 1-13; Revelations 21: 1-6 As many of you know, I love to sing, but, alas, as most of you know, I cannot read music. So, being totally undaunted by that limitation, back in the summer of 1997 I joined a chorus that was to sing with one of my all-time heroes, Pete Seeger, I hadn't told the rest of the group I couldn't read music. Pete – that's what he told us to call him – Pete put together a disparate and mixed group of people to join him in a concert he was scheduled to give in Katonah, New York, as a fundraiser for the "Clearwater," a replica of a nineteenth century sloop that sailed the Hudson. Since then, this festival has become a major event for protection of the Hudson and other great American rivers. In 1959 Pete had put together a version of our reading from Ecclesiast...
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AT: 01/01/2012 08:30:34 AM
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Sunday, November 13, 2011
Taking Risks
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Joshua 2: 1-22 Matthew 25:14-30 The mountains lay beneath our plane as we began the descent into Comolapa Airport. You could see the small mountain roads circling edges of deep drops into the valleys below. What's always been amazing to me is not that an airplane can take off – that I understand. What's always amazing to me is that it lands without killing all on board. Our group had booked the flight on Continental, which we chose over the cheaper national airline of Salvador, known as TACA, an acronym for Transporte Aereros de Continente Americano, or as more familiarly known by English-speaking development workers, Take a Chance Airways. International visits, especially in the years immediately following the peace accords between the government at that time, ARENA, and the rebel force...
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AT: 11/13/2011 08:30:47 AM
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Sunday, October 09, 2011
Wedding Woes
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Isaiah 25: 1-9; Matthew 22: 1-14 Several weeks ago I officiated at the wedding of one of my paralegals and her long time boyfriend at Shadowbrook. Other than the fact that all she had been talking about for the last month was her wedding, which is understandable, of course, I was struck by the – oh, how can I say it – the elaborateness of the facilities, the food, and the rest of it. What a far cry from my own wedding before which I argued with the minister about the language of the vows, or its fairly simple punchbowl and cookies reception, or even the fact that there was no videographer or fourteen people with cameras wandering all over the place to get photos of the event. Weddings have changed in many ways, to be sure. But I remind myself, for every grand show wedding there is also one in a room next to the kitch...
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AT: 10/09/2011 08:30:55 AM
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TAGS: CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO, INCLUSIVE SOCIETY, WEALTH, CONSUMERISM, COURAGE, ECONOMIC POLICY, HOMELESSNESS, LIVING WITHIN LIMITS, MONEY, RIGHTEOUSNESS, OCCUPY WALL STREET, RELATED TOPICS:
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Being Human
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: 1 Kings 19: 9-18; Matthew 14: 22-33In the final scene of Martin Doblmeier's film Bonhoeffer, the Nazi guard accompanying Bonhoeffer to the gallows notices that he seems to be shaking, asks him if he is afraid to die. Stating that he was just shivering from the cold - he had been stripped of his clothing and it was a chilly April morning at the Flossenburg concentration camp - he walked calmly to what was a particularly brutal hanging - strangulation by a wire rather than a drop to break the neck. His writings and his final statement make it clear that he did not fear death at all. I'm not sure that I would have been without fear in the same situation. To be honest, I'm not sure what I fear more: dying or what might lie beyond the grave. Fear is a normal response not just to that which we do not k...
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AT: 08/07/2011 08:30:26 AM
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Sunday, June 19, 2011
Making Disciples
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Genesis 1.1-2.1; Matthew 28: 19-20In John Hershey's book The Call, young David Treadup responds to a the words of a preacher exhorting his audience to bring the Gospel to the “heathen Chinese.” Born in China himself, the son of American missionaries, Hershey writes about David's response to an alien world that looked at him with suspicion and envy at the same time, that feared that the Gospel he preached meant a loss of national independence, and exploded in anger against him as an example of Western imperialism. The preaching of the Gospel has always involved some form of imperialism, whether it is cultural, political, or economic. And it makes sense, if you think about it. From the earliest days of missionary activity, beginning with Peter and Paul, baptizing people in the name of the Father...
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AT: 06/19/2011 08:30:21 AM
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Sunday, June 05, 2011
Harder Than It Sounds
Texts: Psalm 68; John 15: 12-17 Most of us have been raised with the idea that to forgive and reconcile is the Christian thing to do, but as we all know it is far more difficult than it sounds – especially when the person who has “wronged” us is close to us. Take, for instance, the case of Carey Dyess, who, no youthful hothead, at the age of 73, opened fire on his ex-wife, her attorney and four other people, killing them all before turning the gun on himself. This didn't happen in some urban den of iniquity but in Wellton, a small farming community of about 1800 persons that features an annual tractor rodeo, a fourth of July town picnic, and a baseball team. This is not a one kind of event; an ex-husband turned a gun on his ex-wife's lawyer in Oklahoma City back in March of this year, and last year more than a do...
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AT: 06/05/2011 08:30:42 AM
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Sunday, April 24, 2011
Living as if Easter Mattered
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Psalm 116; Matthew 28: 1-10As a young child I both anticipated and dreaded Easter. My anticipation was a child’s anticipation: the basket of candy with a chocolate Easter bunny, but it came at a price: My mother would drag me shopping for a suitable church dress, something frilly and "feminine," as she put it, which was okay, but then the moment of dread was her insistence that I have ringlets a la Shirley Temple. That meant I had to have these old hot irons put against my head to get the desired look. Back in the fifties of the last century -- oh, my goodness, did I really say last century? -- that was how we all lived. When I once asked her why I had to suffer just to satisfy God, though I wondered if it was God I had to satisfy or my mother, on Easter Sunday, she ...
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AT: 04/24/2011 08:30:28 AM
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Sunday, January 16, 2011
Rise and Go
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Amos 5: 14-24; Matthew 2: 13-23Back in the old days, whatever those were, children were supposed to be seen and not heard, but I remember a conversation at my Aunt Ruby’s dinner table when I was about fourteen or so when I put my two cents in and was so advised: Nobody wanted my opinion, least of all my southern relatives. The conversation was about the young people who were leaving the white-owned family farms in the 1950s, a fact that my Aunt Ruby was bemoaning. Uncle Evans, her absolutely terrible husband -- I never understood why she ever married that man -- was telling her that the “nigras” -- the way he referred to African Americans when he was being polite -- just weren’t grateful for all the good stuff that they had: shacks without paved roads, running water or bathroom facilities, ...
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AT: 01/16/2011 08:30:14 AM
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Sunday, August 15, 2010
Standing Within The Fire
by Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Psalm 79; Luke 12: 49-56The Dean of Students looked at all of us and shook his head. Then he called us into his office, one by one. We did not know what to expect. As the others left, they looked stunned. Then came my turn. After he went through what I considered the regular litany of why we should not petition the student council to permit a SNCC (Student Nonviolent/National Coordinating Committee) chapter on campus, he delivered the final blow: If you persist, we will expel you and you will never, never get a college degree. I could never have imagined such a response to what I had considered a simple request. I thought about how my parents would react. I was their dream, the National Honor Society student, the bright one, the one who would go on to get the doctorate. Like all the others, I...
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AT: 08/15/2010 8:30:29 AM
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