Love Never Ends

 When I am around kids I will sometimes throw out stuff to try to make them laugh or look at me weird, usually they just look at me weird. But randomly I will throw out, "I am from North Dakota and in North Dakota we have a saying, 'You take a bath once a year whether you need it or not!'" Back in the Middle Ages, they took a bath once a year in May, and most weddings were in June, and that is why the bride had a bouquet of flowers, because she probably didn't bathe for a month. It's also where the saying came from, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water" because the father bathed first, and then the mom, (in the  same water) and by the time the youngest was being bathed, it was hard to see anything in the tub. I am so glad for the advent of indoor plumbing and the opportunity to shower once a day. When my fibromyalgia was really bad when I lived in Wahpeton, I had a neighbor who had a dish washer so sometimes I would bring over all my dishes in a laundry basket and they would wash my dishes for me. I wouldn't do it daily, only after a week when I ran out of dishes, then I would load them up. They were very nice to do that for me. Growing up on a farmstead, we probably had an acre of garden and did a little truck farming. My parents had a very difficult time to get us kids go out and weed the garden. One year when I was in fourth or fifth grade, the weeds overtook the garden and they were taller than us. Which was great for making mazes, but not so great for growing vegetables. 

Why do I bring this up, because we know when it comes to bathing, when it comes to washing dishes, and when it comes to weeding a garden, a one and done does not do it. It's like saying, "I did yoga three years ago and I feel great!" We know, we know that it takes a continued effort to maintain a healthy body, a healthy, garden, and a healthy church. This church went through hell about 4-5 years ago, and not going to rehash it, except to say, that you, who were left moved mountains to bring back this community which is strong and healthy. Pastor's are now required to have boundary training every 3 years because we too quickly forget the lessons we learned. So today, let's take a little time clean ourselves up, see if there is any dirty dishes, and pull some weeds, because it is so much easier to maintain being healthy then letting ourselves slowly slide into another conflict.

When I was doing new class orientation, our new members had no idea about what this church went through, but it didn't too much for them to talk about their own church's stories or about a certain pastor or fellow church member that was unhealthy. And you do know that our New Testament would be very slim if all the letters of Paul dealing with conflict were taken out. 1st and 2nd Corinthians were beginning to end dealing with conflict in the early church. And then if we went to the Gospels, if you took all the conflict and disagreements that Jesus had with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Temple Priests and lawyers, they would just be a couple of chapters long combined into one book. Jesus was born, Jesus healed, taught and fed, and Jesus then ascended to heaven. 

In today's gospel story, Jesus is going home to preach his first sermon. He grew up and worked in that community, he went to get baptized by John the Baptist, spent some time, himself, in the wilderness, and as he was making his way back home, he started preaching, teaching, and performing miracles. And word of this spread so quickly it beat him home. We don't know what the town of Nazareth knew or believed about Jesus, but it said there was some expectation, so the residents knew there was something a little different, maybe special about this carpenter's son. In the synagogue, there was his mother, his brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, maybe aunts, and uncle, and cousins and people old enough to remember him as a child, and children and young adults who have known him all their lives. By all that is holy, how did it go from, "All spoke well of him and were amazed at his gracious words" to "they were filled with rage, and drove him out of town to throw him off the brow of the hill" in one paragraph? The cynical would explain it in two words, "Organized religion." It's not that simple. Not sure if I can adequately explain it, except to say the two possible explanations or a combination thereof, is that Jesus did live a pretty normal life up to know and many in the town thought he was getting a little to big for his britches and would only bring trouble and those who were waiting for this and thought that Nazareth was going to be the new Jerusalem and they would be his captains, his managers, and get their share of the glory, the money, and the power and felt betrayed when Jesus said others would receive this before them.

Conflict is a part of human nature, not just religion, or just churches. When I have complained about ditching and starting my own church, my wife would say, "It will be perfect until the first person shows up." The thing I like about the United Church of Christ is that we openly admit that we don't have to agree, the members with each other or with the pastor, one church with another church, or the different levels of our denomination. But, however, nonetheless we do have to find a way to live with different expectations, theologies, values, focuses, needs, and thoughts about worship. And this is where Paul's 13th chapter in 1st Corinthians helps us so, so much. We hear this almost always and only at weddings, but Paul wrote this for the family of God, the body of God, the church, not just newly weds. 

Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or arrogant or boastful or rude. Love does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends... Love never ends... love does what?  

Amen