107 Concord Road, Wayland Massachusetts 01778

The Lord God has given me

     the tongue of a teacher,

that I may know how to sustain

     the weary with a word.   Isaiah 50:4

The first reading from Isaiah tells of a certain calling to listen, learn and help others. That is not a bad way to sum up the Christian life. We listen to God’s word, learn a strange and counter-cultural way of life, and apply the lessons we have learned in service to others.

Think of all the things you can choose to learn today. You can learn something that will help you in your job. If you are in school you have assigned readings and material to learn. You can learn about your hobby. You can learn a cooking technique or how to repair an engine.

In the church we learn about a spiritual kingdom that belongs to us. We are citizens of it through our baptism. There are characters, events, dramas, ideas, principles, promises, proclamations; it’s a whole big world. When we step into it, and take time to absorb it, our lives are enriched, we are more like human beings are meant to be.

Secular society denies that there is a spiritual dimension of human existence!  It’s important, not just to you, but to the world you live in, that you find time to sit and listen to the ancient witness of Isaiah who calls you into a marvelous kingdom of God.

Sunday morning Rowena Jimenez will tell us about the work she has done for many years to promote literacy in the Philippines. A book-packing event follows the service.

We’re getting ready for a new year of faith formation for our children!  Sunday school teachers meet with Kim Canning Sunday at 11 am.

The council meets Monday, September 14 at 7:30 pm. Council members, if you cannot attend, please let me know. We will continue our memorial gift policy discussion.

Choir breakfast at 8:15 am

First choir rehearsal  at 8:45 am

Installation of the council during the service

Pot luck lunch  Bring a dish to share. We’ll grill hamburgers  Grill masters needed!

Rally Day activities and intergenerational activity. Each individual/household/family will decorate a representative fabric square. The squares will be sewn together into a banner, as our individual lives are joined in a congregation.

Rejoicing Spirits at 4 pm

 Peter Claver was born in Spain at the beginning of the African slave trade to the Spanish colonies. When he became an adult, traders were bringing large numbers of people across the Atlantic from Western Africa to work in those territories. Claver, a Jesuit priest, would meet the ships at the port. He would board the slave ships and go directly to the hold where the people were kept in squalor during the journey. (One-third of those who boarded the ships in Africa died on the way.) Claver would do what he could to relieve their suffering. In the market, where the people were kept in pens before being sold into slavery, Claver would regularly sit with them and try to offer comfort as they waited for the decisions of the buyers. As he ministered directly to African people in Spanish colonies, Peter Claver worked to end the slave trade, always against the orders of the legal establishment and often against the wishes of  his religious superiors. Peter Claver died in 1654.

As we pause to think of women and men like Peter Claver we get clues as to our proper positions in the world as Christian women and men, and as a congregation. Last week I read some lines by Bonhoeffer about seeing the world through the eyes of those who suffer. From that perspective, and in those places, we will find Christ our Lord.  He leads us there.

The council meets Monday, September 14. Council members please let me know if you cannot attend.

The prayer group meets Wednesday, September 16 at 7:30 pm. Note the change. Normally the prayer meeting is Sunday mornings. If you have never attended, this might be an opportunity for you.  Speak to Carol Green, the coordinator and leader of this ministry.

Rally Day is Sunday, September 20!

The choir meets for the first time Sunday, September 20.

Jonathan Moretz and Bruce Gody will bring their guitar and flute music back to Peace on Sunday, September 27. Any day is a good day to invite friends, but the music that Jonathan and Bruce make is special and your friends and family will enjoy hearing it.

The carpet in the fellowship hall will be cleaned Thursday, September 10.

The day of confirmation is set for Sunday, November 1. Leah Jonczyk, Gabrielle Ho and Carter Vogt will affirm their baptismal faith and become adult members of the church.

This afternoon (Tuesday) I will attend the field education fair at Harvard Divinity School. I hope to find a student willing to work with us this year on some of our ongoing projects. Pray I run into an interested student who owns a car!

Mary Ann facilitated a fine forum discussion on issues of racism. It was well attended and the exercises allowed us to share stories of our lives with one another. I noted a high level of interest and passion around this topic so we’ll follow up. Following our Sunday of reflection on racism, and the forum in which we listened to one another’s stories, Heather sent a link to a talk by Chimamanda Adichie on the danger of a single story. http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story

Emilie continues to care for the gardens. She has been aerating the soil and carefully tending to the plants.

A number of you have visited Ruth Forinash. By your efforts you keep her within our congregation, and as you sit with her you receive words of wisdom and faith from a remarkable person.

Nate Johnson broke a bone in his foot so say a prayer of healing for him, please.

…give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe…  Deuteronomy 4:1

Rules, commandments, ordinances, laws, the keeping of these and the violation of the same is a theme that runs through the readings for Sunday.

Who sets the rules in your life?  In your house?  Maybe you imagine that you are above rules. Protestant Christianity has helped bring us to this thought with respect to religion. Faith frees us from laws and rules, or so we imagine. I think that’s a serious misunderstanding. That way of thinking has made Protestants apathetic on one hand, selfish and mean on the other hand.

Rules still govern our lives in many ways, and that’s a good thing.

Having to obey rules might mean that someone else is in control of our lives, and that might make us resentful. Having rules to keep might also mean that we are in the game (a good thing) or that we are members of a community (another good thing).  Rules govern games and community life. Rules allow us to live together.

I have been thinking about our young people going back to college or off to college for the first time, and about our younger kids starting school in a few days. Sunday I’ll read a poem to you about rules and school. We’ll say a prayer of blessing for our kids.

The first day of Sunday school is right around the corner. Remember to return your registration forms and begin to plan to make your children’s faith formation a regular part of your weekend routine during the school year.

Plan to take some tomatoes home with you!

Canned goods for the Wayland Food Pantry. Let’s fill up the basket this Sunday.

Susie Kuzma’s voice students are giving a recital here Sunday night,  Songs for a Starry Night. You are welcome to attend. The singers rehearse here Saturday. The recital begins at 7:00 pm Sunday.

Moses the Black was one of the Christian spiritualists who lived in the desert of Egypt in the 3rd and 4th centuries. The Lutheran Church commemorates him today. As a young man he was a bandit, feared for his imposing presence and physical strength. Somehow he came under the influence of a monastic community (probably due to monastic charity and to the strength that overcomes the tragic weakness of the human heart, which issues in violence among other things). He became a brother and eventually a priest.

Moses the Black was killed c. 400 when he refused to resist the attack of a band of desert raiders. He is the patron saint of Africa and of nonviolent people in the world.

Moses the Black and others who shared his kind of life, and shared his moment in time, are known as the Desert Fathers. Post-biblical Christian wisdom rests heavily on these figures, and on their spiritual activities and records. They renounced the world in order to enter into wilderness communities dedicated to to prayer. Monasticism grew as a tree from these  desert sources into branches of Orthodox and Catholic monastic communities all around the world. There are even Protestant monastic communities. The Society of Saint John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts is a local and distinguished example of an Episcopal order of monastic brothers.

Last Sunday Matt and I worshiped at the Trappist monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts. I keep thinking of the many lessons we can learn from monastics. What these principled women and men do together in community–worship and pray in dedicated, accountable ways, build trust and cooperation, serve the poor, work together–corresponds to what members of a congregation like ours promise to do together.

In other words, the serious and profound vows made by those Trappist brothers, for example, correspond roughly to the vows each of you made when you were made a member of the church in baptism (to live among God’s people, hear the word and receive the sacraments, etc….)

 

Wisdom has built her house.  Proverbs 9:1

The first reading Sunday is from Proverbs. In it Wisdom is personified as a woman who invites a young person into her house and into her world. The competing invitation that follows is from Folly. My sermon will be an excursion and meditation on the passage from  Proverbs and more generally on a Christian view of wisdom.

Last week we talked about ethics, the business of asking questions about right conduct and decisions. Wisdom, first, is knowledge of what is good and right and life-giving and, second, the will-power to choose what is good, right and life-giving.

Wisdom ( sophia in Greek) in our Christian world is inseparable from the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. The wisdom of God comes with and through the Spirit of God. So, for example, the great church of Eastern Christianity in Istanbul is Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), and some congregations refer to the Sunday readings as the morning’s “wisdom”, meaning that the words read in public proclamation on Sunday morning are not only ancient life traditions but also inspired by God’s spirit.

Nancy Meshon is our summer soloist this week. Accompanied by Kathryn, Nancy will sing a song made popular by Bette Midler.

The flowers on the altar will be given by Dan and Barbara Olsen in celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary. At the end of the service we’ll take a moment to pray for Dan and Barbara in their life together, and thank them for some of the contributions they have made to our faith community over the years. Barbara will bring a cake for us to share at the coffee hour.

Rejoicing Spirits at 4:00 pm. Everyone is invited.

Wayland Food Pantry:  canned fruit or any other nonperishable item.

Kirsten, Matt, Nate and I have arranged to spend a few days together at the beginning of next week. We’ll leave right after church for a short trip to Calumet, returning Tuesday evening. Here’s a link to the latest Calumet newsletter:

My soul magnifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaid.
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name;
His mercy is from generation to generation
on those who fear him.
He has shown might with his arm,
he has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
he has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and has exalted the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has given help to Israel, his servant, mindful of his mercy
even as he spoke to our fathers,

   to Abraham and to his posterity forever.  Luke 1:46-55

 

In 1520 Prince John Frederick, Duke of Saxony, wrote a letter to Martin Luther asking him to suggest a prayer that might serve him in his role as a ruler. Luther replied with a long exposition of Mary’s song from Luke. Luther maintained a special regard for Mary throughout his life. Subsequent generations of Protestants lost track of her all together, even to this day. We need to get her back. Here are a few lines from the introduction to the comments Luther sent to the inquiring duke.