The Shepherd Psalm

The first Sunday of each month at Sheepscott Community Church we observe the sacrament of Holy Communion. This past Sunday among the lectionary readings for the day was Psalm 23, the Shepherd Psalm. Since the days of the early primitive church it has been a custom in many congregatins to say the 23rd Pslam during the communion service. At the conclusion of my message yesterday I told the following story I read a few years ago. During the height of World War II worshippers had gathered in one of the great cathedrals outside of London, England. As was their custom, before receiving Communion, the congregation said the 23rd Psalm together. As they repeated the words of the Psalm bombs hit the church. The congregation didn't miss a beat, but said the Psalm through to its conclusion. Turning around after saying the words, "I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever," they saw that the back part of their sanctuary had been destroyed. Their House of the Lord was in ruins. But, the altar had not been touched and not one person had been injured and they continued on to share the Lord's Supper. They felt God's love in the midst of violence and they committed themselves to live by that love in their war torn world. May we find God's love in the midst of our own difficulties. See you in church Pastor Hal Tucker

The Shepherd Psalm

Tucker Talk

I am half way through my second week as pastor of the Sheepscott Community Church. It has been a very busy time simply "getting my ducks in a row." This past Wednesday evening I attended for the first time the Community Meal at Second Congregational Church in Newcastle. Our church does the meal the second Wednesday of every month. What an enjoyable evening it was. Twelve members of our congregation prepared and served the meal and many others brought food. From the moment my prayer was completed there was happy chatter, laughter and evening singing by those who had come to break bread together. I remarked to someone that I wished the church could always be such a happy place. The guests helped clean up and put away the tables and chairs.



The New Testament often refers to the Kindom of God as a great banquet to which everyone is invited and welcomed. I sensed for a brief moment in time that I had become a part of God's Kingdom. It was Holy Communion in the best sense of that term. Jesus said: "Come...inherit the kingdom from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food..." (Matt.25:34). I hope that many of the people of our church will choose to particpate in the ministry of this monthly meal. I look forward to the second Wednesday of April.



See you in church,

Pastor Hal

Rev. Judith Robbins' Last Service at SCC

On February 27, Judith Robbins conducted her final service at Sheepscott.

The church's furnace had a malfunction, and the cold church was not very welcoming to those who had come for the special service. Attendees were directed downstairs to the vestry, where we huddled close for warmth and went gamely forward, the congregation seated on benches that had been used for worship in the very early days of the church. Bev Sperry was overheard saying something to Carol Shorey about "just like the old days."

Fran Hewins had to deal with a little-used, recalcitrant electric organ, but there was nevertheless music aplenty when she joined her voice to those of the other choir members, who led all in song and quickly warmed up the room. The choir presented Judith with an original painting by Jan Kilburn a partial view of the village, including the Valley Church, from the vantage point of the Sheepscot four corners.

Cyndi Brinkler, Chrissy Wajer, and Joan Yeaton organized a brunch fit for the gods, and for retiring and new ministers and church-goers as well. New pastor Hal Tucker and his wife Bettina joined the party. By the time of their arrival, the furnace had been repaired and folks had warmed up, not only from the heating vents, but from the convivial conversations and excellent food and drink.

The Hands of Christ: Part II

Sheepscott Community Church February 27, 2011

Isaiah 49: 8-16a

1 Cor. 12: 12-20; 27

Matthew 20: 29-34

The Hands of Christ: Part II

I heard Rev. Peter Beck, rector of Christchurch Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, on the radio on Wednesday. He said, “This earthquake is not an act of God. It’s the natural result of living on a still evolving planet, and we had the bad fortune to be on the fault line. The act of God is how we reach out to each other and help each other.” It’s no less true for us here in Sheepscot, where an ice storm or an additional foot of heavy wet snow that knocks out power isn’t an act of God, but rather a weather-related phenomenon. The act of God is how we reach out to help each other, and during Jon’s and my time in Sheepscot, I’ve seen that outreach again and again. And I don’t doubt that after we leave, life in Sheepscot will continue as it always has––people helping one another through hard times, celebrating the good times, and coming together to worship and thank God through it all.

At least twice during my time here, I have alluded to the TV show “Joan of Arcadia,” which had a two-year run on CBS some years ago. The teenaged Joan had an unusual gift of seeing and talking with God under a number of guises. My favorite episode was one where God appeared as an old woman sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. As in all other episodes, God charged Joan to work out a problem that God presented to her. At the end of that particular episode, Joan again encountered God as the old woman on the same bench and poured out her troubled heart about all the things that had gone wrong while she was trying to solve the problem. Her best friend was not speaking to her, her family couldn’t understand her actions, and she felt alone and completely misunderstood. After a long pause, God said to her, “So, what are you going to do next?”

And that is the question I think God is asking you as a congregation: What are you going to do next?

When I was asking God for some sign that I was really understanding correctly that it was time to leave Sheepscott Community Church––it seemed counterintuitive and didn’t line up with my commitment––the reading 1 Corinthians 3: 10 came into my mind. When I looked it up and read it, I had the complete assurance I had sought that I was hearing right. The verse was, “By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it.” That spoke to me and was what I needed to go forward and speak to Cindy and the Board about my decision. Otherwise, I don’t think I could have done it.

Why I’m telling you this is that I want you to know it was a difficult decision, and that I am as sure as I can be in these matters that this is of God for this church. And what about this listening. What does that mean? I have spoken before about the intimate relationship God wants to have with each of us by, in, and through his Spirit. God is a living God who wants us to listen to him deeply and often, so that we come to recognize what we can call God’s voice. An audible voice? Probably not, but an impression of words, a thought or a feeling in response to our concerns of the hour, whether expressed or unexpressed.

What a surprise: My plan was not the whole plan of the living God for this church. It’s time for something else, someone else. You remember Jesus saying in John 16: 7: ”I tell you the sober truth: it is much better for you that I go. If I fail to go, the Paraclete”––the Holy Spirit––”will never come to you, whereas if I go, I will send him to you.” Am I suggesting that Hal Tucker is the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, and I myself the sending second person of the Trinity? Well no, but I am telling you that it is better that I go because I believe that is God’s direction for God’s purposes at this time.

By the way, I hadn’t known that First Corinthians 3:10, which I alluded to earlier and which came to me iun answer to prayer, was part of the lectionary reading for last Sunday, when Hal and I were doing our joint service, but God knew. I as part of this church have worked to lay a foundation as others have done before me, and now Hal and the church will build on it. You see? We’re not in charge of this evolving drama; we only have parts to play, and that’s what I’d like to talk about next. As God asked Joan of Arcadia, seemingly paying little or no attention to her crying out about all her problems, “So, what are you going to do next?”

I have a strong suggestion for you in response to that question. And this is where the title of today’s sermon comes from. It’s part two in reference to a story Hal Tucker told last Sunday about the statue of the Christ without hands. After the aerial bombardment of a town in Germany, the town’s treasured statue of Christ had its hands blown off. The people of the town weren’t sure whether to replace the hands and finally decided not to, saying that they themselves would be the living hands of Christ in the world. What else does God have except us? Our hands, our feet, and so on, as we heard Barbara read from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.

But before we can be the most effective hands and feet, eyes and ears in service in, to, and as part of the Body of Christ, we need to get our act together. That’s where this morning’s readings come in. God was listening to his people in exile in Babylon 2500 years ago, as we heard in this morning’s first reading from Isaiah. He wanted them to tell him what they wanted so he might have the joy of giving it to them in fulfillment of his own promises. No less than God was listening to them, was God in Christ listening to the two blind men who shouted to Jesus in order to be heard over the noise of the crowd, “Son of David, have mercy on us!” “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus called back. They told him they wanted to see, and he restored their sight. God is no less listening to us, the people of Sheepscott Community Church in this time of transition, and saying, What do you want me to do for you?

God can and will deliver the goods, but those who pray for the goods have to mean what they say when they pray. You can’t put in your order if you’re not ready to pay for it.

The shout of the blind men in this morning’s gospel is a kind of prayer. Sometimes instead of spoken or shouted words, prayer takes the form of wordless tears. Some of us have physical, emotional, or spiritual pain so deep and wide, that when we let ourselves feel it, all there is is tears. God will also meet us in the silence, knowing what we cannot articulate but understanding us, as God does and did, from the moment we came into being. We are, after all, engraved into the palms of his hands. Or if your faith so leads you, grab hold of Jesus’s garment with your hand, as the woman with the issue of blood in last week’s gospel did, and don’t let go. Be healed yourself and then let the power of God in Jesus pass through you into a world that needs Christ’s healing power and presence.

This is the hour. Call out to the God of the Hebrew Bible, if that is the One whose presence you feel most when you pray; or call out to Jesus, or just hang on to his garment. He will ask you, What do you want me to do for you? Then tell him: Lord, I feel like I don’t have the strength to get through another day and do all that needs to be done. Give me strength. I want to forgive, Lord, but I can’t. Help me to forgive. I’m afraid of everything, Lord, the darkness, the world situation, the economic crisis––help me not to be afraid.

A cautionary note about this sort of praying, when we are asking God for healing or to be set free from some badgering, long-standing thing like fear or pride, unforgiveness toward ourselves or another, or anger or self-centeredness or guilt, when we are praying about these kinds of things, we need to be sure that we really want to be rid of them and that we’re not just mouthing the words. God has little patience with prattlers. In my older age, I’ve noticed that occasionally things we think we want to be rid of, like judgment of others, fear, pride, unforgiveness, are actually serving us in some way, keeping us from having to do or to be different from the way we are, and so they legitimately remain. They confound a complete conversion to God’s purposes, even as they disguise themselves as earnest prayers. Watch what you say. Mean what you say. In the gospel of a few weeks ago, Jesus said, in speaking about oaths, Say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no. Everything else is from the evil one.

I’m going on about this because in order to serve as effectively as we might, we need to be as healthy as we can, and that means, again, body, soul, mind and spirit. And the Spirit of God in Jesus is ready and listening for our call toward healing, whatever form that call takes: words, music, silence, tears, a life grip on Jesus’s seamless garment. God will know the authenticity of the request, of the prayer made in truth and faith and will honor it with a healing, loving answer. It’s in God’s interest to do that because God wants and needs a whole people or a people on their way to being whole to minister to others. Gad wants and needs a committed surrendered people.

And so my question to you this morning: What are you going to do next, as individuals, as a church, and as a community? I recommend shouting out to Jesus for help, if you mean it, whether in words, tears, silence, music, or grasping. “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us.” We have to ask in faith for what we want, believing Jesus the conduit through which that help comes. It is our desire backed by faith and his power activated by that faith that bring about change. The power is in him and it’s meant for us to tap.

While trying to become better persons, we also become more effective members of the Body of Christ, looking outward as well as inward. All times of transition are times of opportunity, and the time of transition at this church is no exception. Opportunity in this context means service to the church, which is to say, each other and thereby, the community. Hal Tucker and the Board will need help. Look around and see where that help is needed, and ask what you can do. Remember the statue of the handless Christ and the challenge that is to all of us. The future of the church is in your hands, which are the hands of Christ. What are you going to do next?

Choose Life Then...

Sheepscott Community Church February 13, 2011

Deut. 30: 15-20

1 Cor. 3: 1-9

Matthew 5: 21-37

Choose Life Then...

I want to call your close attention to today’s message, right from the get-go. Not for my sake, except insofar as I care about you, but for your own sake, please try to not only stay awake but to really take in what I have to say. What I am going to lay out are God’s words of life, nothing less than that, God’s words of life for all of us. We have a free choice––life or death, prosperity on God’s terms, or destruction. These are matters of genuine religion, which is urgent religion. What I will talk about this morning is indeed a matter of life and death.

Two weeks ago we considered the beatitudes, a new manifesto, which Jesus clearly laid down in the religious arena of his time, when he delivered those sayings to the people: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and so forth.. The beatitudes are an amplification, a means of carrying out the directive in chapter 6 of the book of the prophet Micah, which deserves quoting again today. “He [God] has showed you, O man, what is good./ And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

So, from the mouth of God through his prophets, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him; for that means life for you and length of days.” Again, as I said, this is the stuff of genuine religion. The issues are sharply defined and demand a concrete decision. The edges of what God is saying are not smoothed out so as to not scratch the comfortable. Sooner or later, everyone must face such a challenge that demands decision and commitment. It is the challenge that Jesus gave the rich young man, when he told him to sell all he had, give it to the poor and follow him.

It was more than the young man could deal with and he went away sad. Mind you, Jesus did not love him any less for his decision, but the young man had rejected the opportunity to be more completely avalable to God. He had asked the question, What do I need to do to gain eternal life? He had kept the commandments, as Jesus answered him. But what else? What can I do? I can imagine how caught up he was in the power of Christ’s teaching and his personality, and he must have felt like he could and would do anything for God, but when he heard what the “what else” was, that’s when he walked away slowly with his head down. He was very rich and not yet able to give up that idol, and Jesus knew that that was the sticking point for him because he knew men’s hearts like no one else. It would be interesting to know if years later, he did do what Jesus had recommended, because our values do shift as we age. But we don’t know that. These snapshots we have in the gospels are all we have as our guides to ferreting out our own thoughts and responses to God’s call on our lives, which is always deepening, always widening to fill every nook and cranny of our hopefully increasingly surrendered souls.

This morning’s reading from Deuteronomy, the quotation from Micah, and the beatitudes constitute a foundation, a kind of roadmap to the kingdom of God, to life in God and with God, the life laid out in service––whatever you want to call it. The signposts on that roadmap are the spiritual realities in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Those realities are not a Never-Never Land that has nothing to do with our everyday life. The fact is that those spiritual realities underlie everything we do, positive or negative, depending on the state of our souls. They influence every choice we make. Remember, we are not simply a body. We are body, mind, and spirit, and those dimensions of the human being are integrally connected. They are one.

Our spirits influence the choices we make in matters of forgiveness; in matters of compassion and how that compassion is acted out; in matters as seemingly insignificant as eating and drinking for the health of the body, which is at the service of the soul and affects the health of the soul. It is so important to remember not to compartmentalize body, mind, spirit. One unit: a human being, our selves.

Let’s look at today’s gospel for an application of these scriptural declarations I am talking about. Jesus reminds the people who are listening to him that their law says anyone who commits murder will be liable to judgment, but he has a new teaching. Anyone who is angry with another is liable to judgment. The law as it stood dealt with punishment for the act of murder at the end of the judgment process. Jesus, on the other hand, saw the connection between anger with another and how that can eventually lead to murder. He dealt with the inward thought of the individual and the means of changing that thought and preventing murder at the beginning of the process, not dealing with it at the end. Very different. Jesus would prevent crimes of violence by rooting out the elements in a person’s character that could lead him or her to kill. In 1 John 3: 15 we read, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.“ That statement indicates that the writer of First John got the message Jesus put out there.

Notice again the inwardness of the new law as promulgated by Jesus. Anger, if it is not righteous indignation, which in fact leads us to seek justice for ourselves or others, anger which is not righteous indignation and which goes hand in hand with contempt constitutes incipient murder. Killing is not done only with knives and guns and weapons of mass destruction; it is done in the daily round by contemptuous sneers, gossip, indifference. Certainly Jesus himself had dealt with that kind of contempt and gossip. Wherever he turned, there was another pharisee looking to bring him down, so he spoke not simply with the authority that came out of his own deep life with God, but also out of the difficulties of his everyday life. He knew people’s hearts and must have felt profoundly discouraged at times with their apparent deafness to his teaching and the responsibility to apply that teaching.

Even with their contemptible behavior toward him, however, Jesus had compassion on the pharisees, as he had on all people, because they all were finally children of God. Jesus knew the value of the human soul, and because he himself was fully human, he had compassion on the human condition, in a way he could not have had otherwise.

If the new law of Jesus’s teaching was inward, with regard to the consideration of motives––if the new law was inward, it was also Godward. For God sees the inmost motive and must be worshiped in truth, worship being the crowning act of life. A heart that carries a grudge against any other person cannot be a heart fully available to worship, ergo, Jesus’s admonition, “...if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” That’s very practical, very real stuff. Haven’t most of us hidden self-righteously behind a grudge? How that kind of thinking and acting must grieve the heart of God.

I am only selecting one of the issues that Jesus elaborated on in this morning’s gospel: anger as it can lead to murder. I know that seems outrageous and impossibly exaggerated, but is it really? When we truly examine our consciences before God, when we are willing to look at our own motives, we are inevitably humbled by what we are capable of.

Well, maybe I will touch on another of the issues mentioned in this morning’s reading. Adultery. Sex. There, I admonished you at the beginning of this sermon to try to stay awake because I had something important to say. For those of you nodding off, let me say again, Sex. Are we all awake now? Just as the grudge in the heart, unforgiveness can lead to a kind of murder, even if it isn’t an actual physical murder, we sometimes kill a person off in our minds just by refusing to have anything to do with them. That's shudder-worthy, isn’t it? Because it’s recognizable.

Well, in the adultery department, Jesus is saying that we don’t have to actually be physically intimate with another person to commit adultery. A deliberate touch of the hand, a look of the eye, and flirtation is underway. Innocent? No, not really, not if we are our best selves when we bring it before God, although more likely, we just don’t have time for prayer in the days when we are engaging in this sort of flirtation because we have a pretty good idea of what we would hear. Jesus says that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. I think it needs to be said that it works both ways in these post-Victorian times. Anyone who looks at a man lustfully has already committed adultery in the heart. Understand that those who are so looked at are––so to speak––already taken. Not fair game. While sexuality is one of God’s best gifts, we have to honor the gift in the honorable settings that God has laid out, i.e., marriage or committed relationship. TELL THE TRUTH.

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Amen.

Do This in Remembrance of Me

Sheepscott Community Church February 6, 2011

Mark 10: 13-16

Do This in Remembrance of Me

What a special day this is today, especially for Allison and Mary and their parents, but also for us who were invited to the party. Who would not feel renewed by seeing these two precious souls blessed with the water of life, which is the symbol God has provided for cleansing and renewal, for purification and promise.

Recall the wonderful story in Second Kings of Naaman the Syrian, commander of the king’s army, who is afflicted with leprosy. Naaman’s wife’s serving maid, a young captive from Israel, told her mistress that if Naaman would go to Elisha the prophet in Samaria, his leprosy would be cured. So Naaman went with his chariots and horses and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house, and Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

But Naaman went away angry that the prophet did not come out and simply heal him by waving his hand over the afflicted areas. “Are not the rivers of Damascus better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” he asked, then turned, and went off in a rage. One of his attendants took issue with him, pointing out that if the prophet had asked him to do something extraordinary, he would have done it. How much more then should he follow the prophet’s instructions to wash and be cleansed. The attendant prevailed, and Naaman went down to the Jordan, dipped himself in the water seven times, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a newborn boy. A little humility there before God’s prophet, and so, before God.

Isn’t that a great story? And here this morning we have water from that same river, thanks to Daisy Radoulevitch who brought it home after she was there with her husband back in the ‘60s. We have used that water and water from the Sheepscot River to symbolize the baptism into Christ of these two little girls, and their baptism into the community of this church, where we are a spiritual extension of their own families. We as a household of faith have witnessed their baptism and we reach out to them in love in the name of Christ, who is the head of this household.

We will remember him and honor him as he instructed us to do, when we share the Lord’s Supper this morning. The form of that remembrance is bread and wine––for us here, grape juice, the same elements that Jesus used 2000 years ago. There are different ways of remembering others. This morning, as I have already pointed out, Mary Elyse was wearing the christening dress made by her great-great-grandmother, and worn by her great- grandmother Mary, for whom she is named today. In a very special way, that great-great-grandmother and great-grandmother are also here this morning because Jeff and Karen recognize the power of a symbol––the dress––to invoke meaning and memory. And I expect they also recognize the attendant mystery which we cannot finally explain, just how those women are here, but they are, even if only in the genes. We are, after all, an amalgam of what has gone before. The communion of saints cuts a wide swath.

Tony Kilburn showed me his watch last Sunday. He bought it on E-bay and it’s just like the one his father wore back in the ‘40s. The works had to be replaced, but now he has the working replica on his wrist. It’s a relic in a real way, an object that invokes the memory of a person and a time when that person was still here. I expect that every time he looks at that watch, he remembers his father.

If any of us look among our treasures at home, I would guess that we all have at least one piece of memorabilia––a few sketches, as I have, that my mother made when she was a teenager, my father’s signature in my baby book, which meant the world to me at one time, as he left this world early and too soon. All of us have and keep these remembrances. Why? Because they bring back to us those whom we have loved and still love and make them present to us in a unique way. But we have to be willing to bring our creative imaginations to this matter of remembrance, perhaps especially to this remembrance of the Lord’s Supper.

Allison and Mary were baptized with water from the Jordan River, half a world away, and with a history that reaches beyond the history of Jesus himself, and also with water from the Sheepscot River, which flows by our door, even now. We are about to remember the last supper, the meal Jesus shared with his apostles the night before he died. We will use the same elements of bread and wine he used when he broke the bread and passed the cup half a world away and scores of generations ago.

Although that was his last night on earth, Jesus still lives, and if we are willing to exercise our creative imaginations about this sacrament, we can think about all the ways he is present to us in each other, in these two sweet infant souls, in the unspeakably beautiful natural setting of this church by the river, in the waters of the Sheepscott flowing to the sea and the River Jordan as well. His being permeates the created world. That is why all change for good is possible if we, who partake of his life this morning, are willing to accept that we share his Spirit––and we do.

The re-creation of Tony’s father’s watch, Allison’s and Mary Elyse’s great-grandmother’s christening dress, my father’s signature in my baby book, the bread and wine permeated by the Spirit of the Living God revealed in Jesus, the Christ–– these are all manifestations of the unlimited expressions of God who is love. They are all symbols which become realities if we connect our belief with them.

And the reality that they communicate is that love lasts. Once we have loved, it never dies. It and we live forever in God, in Christ, and that is what we celebrate at two levels this morning: First, our two little girls baptized with the water of life into the family of God, especially as revealed in this household of faith; and second, fed the food of life in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to maintain and sustain us. There is much to celebrate, there is much to be grateful for; there is much life left to live here and there, forever. Amen.