Comfort, O Comfort My People

Meditation on Luke 3:1-6

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Pastor Karen Crawford

Second Sunday of Advent

Dec. 8, 2024

Art by Stushie

I took my cat, Liam, to the vet this week. It was time for his yearly exam and rabies’ shot.

I worried how I would get him into his cat carrier, which has so many memories for him and for me. He stayed in the carrier when the movers loaded up our furniture in Ohio. He traveled by car in that carrier for several days and nights stayed in hotels, while we waited for the manse to be ready for our arrival.

Since the move in 2022, he has gone only one place in that carrier. You guessed it—to the vet.

So on Monday, on the day of his doctor’s appointment, I left the carrier on a dining room chair and went to the family room to pick him up and cuddle him, before bringing him to the carrier and zipping him inside.

He didn’t want to go. He put out a paw and tried to stop me.

I moved quickly, apologizing all the while, knowing how scared he was and why.

He only made one sound the entire trip. He let out a mew! when we walked outside into the cold. It was a sad mew! He has always been an indoor cat, so the outside is something he has only experienced from a window. It’s out of his comfort zone.

I held his carrier in my lap while Jim drove. Liam stayed in my lap the whole time in the waiting room. After a short wait, we were invited to the examining room. I placed the carrier on the metal table, unzipped it, and tried to lift him out. Tried and failed! He was holding on to the furry bottom of the carrier for dear life.

When I finally was able to lift him, he grabbed the top of the carrier with his claws—and he wouldn’t let go.

I had to pull his claws out of the material, one by one, to free him.

And then, he was completely exposed and vulnerable on the cold metal table.

Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go: held tightly by the hands of the vet, her assistant, and me. The vet was speaking in soothing tones, I was petting him gently, but he was making himself one with the table, making his body as flat as possible, frozen in fear.

The vet was examining every imperfection in his body. She looked in his ears and his mouth. His gums were a little red, she said. Did I want to brush his teeth? She shone a light in his eyes. There was an old scar on his cornea, but it looked like it had healed okay. I pointed out a cut on his back—maybe something he had done to himself when he was zooming through the house. But it, too, was healing OK, she said.

Then, he was jabbed with a needle in his back. He didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound. He accepted the medicine that would keep him well, without knowing that it would keep him well. He didn’t protest when I picked him up. He clung to me, then, for a moment, accepting my comfort and the security of my arms before practically leaping back into the carrier when I opened it below him.

The way he was so scared in the carrier, and so vulnerable on the table, and yet clung to me and trusted me made me think of how John beckoned people to approach the Lord in his baptism of repentance. He wanted people to give up control—or the control we think we have of our lives—and allow our merciful and gracious God to do what is good with and for us.

The story of John’s baptism has always been a little intimidating to me—the idea of repentance from sin being the way we prepare our hearts for the Lord, who can see us as we really are—all our faults, all our imperfections. As Psalm 139 says in the last two verses, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Still, John the Baptizer is one of my favorite people in the Bible. He is certainly one of a kind. He is the one that the Eastern Orthodox Tradition sees as the last prophet of the Old Covenant. What you see is what you get. He doesn’t mince words. He calls a spade, well, a spade. He’s the one who proclaims the coming of the Savior, but not from the temple or synagogue. He’s outside hearing from God in Creation. He has left society behind to make himself completely vulnerable and dependent on God, dressed not in fashionable robes which his father, Zechariah, the priest could probably afford but only in the skin of a camel. He isn’t eating the usual diet of his people, either. He eats locusts!

In the wilderness, with no other distractions, he hears God speaking through the prophet Isaiah. The words come alive to him in a new way. And he realizes that he is the one of whom the prophet spoke 800 years before. His message stirs excitement in all who are mysteriously drawn from the cities and countryside to John. He is saying what the prophet declared is finally coming true.

Any history lovers here? Luke provides 7 historical markers—of time, place and political reality—for John’s proclamation. “Why? To anchor the story of salvation history in the concrete, tangible history of the world.”[1] One theologian wonders, “What do any of these people have to do with the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ?” Luke sees a connection, when none of them would want to be remembered in connection with Jesus, the Savior of the world.

Tiberius Caesar was in his 15th year of his reign. Pontius Pilate was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judea. He would be forever remembered as the one who presided over Christ’s trial and ordered his crucifixion. We mention his name every time we say the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds. Herod Antipas, the son of the Jewish King Herod the Great and his wife, Malthace, was ruler of Galilee. Herod Antipas’s half-brother Philip ruled the region of Ituraea. Lysanias was ruler of Abilene on the eastern slope of the anti-Lebanon Mountain range, near Damascus. Annas and Caiaphas were high priests.

What Luke is saying is the time has come for the prophecies of God to be fulfilled. John the Baptist is ministering just when the Jewish community, living under Roman occupation, is desperate for the glory of the Lord to be revealed and to finally see God’s salvation. [2]

In Advent, when we are longing for the birth of Christ, who brings Light into the world, some of the Scripture that we read are dark and leave us feeling unsettled. “Of all the passages in scripture that seem to foretell the coming of a messiah, this is one of the most joyful, projecting God’s mercy rather than vengeance.” [3] It’s too bad that we don’t have the full chapter in our lectionary reading, but I want you to hear how it begins,

“Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.” (40:1-2)

Also, in verse 11, Isaiah will say, God will “feed his flock like a shepherd” (40:11).

This is not a new message that John proclaims. His call for repentance or radical change aren’t new, either, but connecting repentance with immersion baptism is.

When we consider baptism, especially as we practice it in the Church today, we can’t help but see the grace of God in it. Baptism isn’t something we can do for ourselves. We are baptized. All we do is receive it or present our child to receive it by the water in the font, and always in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

We and our children are claimed by our Savior in baptism. We may make the decision to follow Christ and be baptized, but the Savior is still the one who claims US. We are accepted, loved, and fully known and blessed, once and forever, just as we are. It’s the beginning of the Christian life. There’s no moment in our journey of faith that leaves us more vulnerable and open to God and the Church of Jesus Christ than in baptism. We give up who we used to be. We take on Christ’s identity and become a member of Christ’s Body. No longer alone, we are united as the Church and continually transformed and renewed by the Spirit.

In this Season of waiting for the One who was and is and is to come, we recall with joy the cry of the voice in the wilderness—the one who was sent by God to prepare the way of the Lord and bring us who have strayed back to God with hearts of repentance.

The glory of the Lord has been revealed to us; our salvation has come through the One who has claimed us (not the other way around), and fully knows and accepts us, just as we are.

We are invited into a new humility when we recognize our need for God and our deep spiritual connection to one another, our sisters and brothers in Christ. We can trust the God who sees all our imperfections, much like the gentle vet who examined Liam early this week with a heart to heal.

God looks upon us with compassion in our distress, even when the distress is brought on by our own unwise choices and actions. God loves us too much to leave us alone, in our comfort zones. The Lord knows what is good for us and for the Church. Our God, who feeds his flock like a shepherd, won’t rest until what is broken is made whole.

Do you hear our gracious and merciful Lord speaking to us right now? Saying, “Comfort, O comfort my people?”

Let us pray.

Good Shepherd, thank you for the ministry of John the Baptizer long ago. Thank you for his message in the wilderness that was embraced by thousands of people and remains the same today—calling us to change, repent and turn back to you and the ways of peace. Thank you for your Son’s claim on us in our baptism. Help us to be faithful to the call. Lord, we ask you now to look upon us with compassion, especially when we forget that we are not sheep without a Shepherd. Please heal what is broken and make us whole. In Christ we pray. Amen.

     [1] Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 1, p. 46.

     [2] Catherine Healy, Christian Century, Dec. 2, 2024.

     [3] Catherine Healing, Dec. 2, 2024.

The Lesson of the Fig Tree

Meditation on Luke 21:25–36

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Pastor Karen Crawford

First Sunday of Advent

Dec. 1, 2024

I like figs. Do you like figs?

In a tryout sermon, years ago on the First Sunday of Advent, I shared a children’s message about the lesson of the fig tree. I brought fig newtons for the children to eat as I told them about the hope of Christ’s return.

I told them that it was my favorite cookie. They stared at me blankly. They hadn’t had them before and of course it was their first time meeting me, as well. Later on, an aunt of one of the children said she felt sorry for me -if fig newtons were my favorite. Hadn’t I ever had chocolate chip cookies before? she asked, rolling her eyes playfully.

I was happy, then, to discover in my research for my doctoral project this summer and fall that at least three of the gardeners are growing fig trees. I am not the only one who likes figs!

But it surely can’t be easy growing a tree native to Mediterranean countries in our Long Island gardens, decks, and patios.

Have you ever noticed fig trees popping up all over the Scriptures?

It is the first fruit mentioned by name in the Bible. It’s in the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. Of course, it’s not the forbidden fruit that Eve eats and gives to Adam. It’s the leaves of the tree the couple uses when their eyes are opened, after they eat it, and realize they are naked. They sew fig leaves together and make loincloths to help them hide from God when they are ashamed.

In Song of Solomon chapter 2 (vv. 11-13), fig trees are named for their beauty and scent, a sign of the arrival of spring, and an expression of God’s love for Israel:

For now the winter is past,
    the rain is over and gone.
12 The flowers appear on the earth;
    the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
    is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree puts forth its figs,
    and the vines are in blossom;
    they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
    and come away.

In today’s reading in Luke 21, Jesus specifically names the fig tree to teach a spiritual lesson to his disciples. If you want to know when the Son of Man will return, “Look at the fig tree and all the trees,” he says, after warning of the signs of his coming. “As soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.”

Figs are an ancient fruit. Dried ones dating back to the Neolithic Age or 5,000 years before Christ were found in an excavation of a city on the western slopes of the Judean mountains. Figs played an important role in daily nutrition in biblical times. Because of their high sugar content, they could be dried, pressed into cakes, stored for long periods of time, like raisins and other delicacies, and offered as gifts. The fig tree or vine is among seven species in Micah 4:4 that symbolize prosperity and peace.

At least 1,000 different species of fig trees exist, mostly in tropical areas; some are wild; others are domesticated. The original fig tree species may have come from the jungles of northwest Turkey, an expert says. But the fig isn’t that easy to grow. It grows very slowly and may take years to bear fruit. And it’s not that pleasant or attractive. In Mediterranean countries, it grows to about 3 to 5 meters tall and has large leaves, rough to the touch. All parts of the plant contain a latex that is a skin irritant and may cause an allergic reaction.

Wild figs have female flowers that produce fruit and seeds and male flowers that don’t; the pollination of the female flowers depends on the work of a particular species of a tiny wasp. It’s a miracle, really, if this is the plant that Jesus is talking about—the wild fig tree that depends on one tiny wasp to bear any fruit at all.

This is the same plant that, in Luke 13 (vv. 6-9), Jesus talks about in another parable. This time, the fruitless fig tree is a metaphor for those who fail to repent and the long patience of God, the gardener.

 A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

 ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”

After church, oh, about a month ago, a couple that I interviewed for my project brought me a branch from their fig tree, wrapped in foil. They told me to put in water and wait for roots to grow before planting it.

I went home, put it in a jar of water and left it on a sunny shelf in the dining room. Then, I forgot about it. A couple of weeks later, I remembered it, and all the leaves had turned brown and fallen off. It was just a dried-up stick. I thought, “Oh well.” Another failure. But I changed the water and put it on the bathroom sink, where it would have not only light, but a more humid environment.

I forgot about it again—the stick in the water jar. I had other things on my mind—pastoral care needs for my flock and my own health challenge.

I went to see a new optometrist this week, someone recommended by someone else who was recommended, and I was so excited after I saw her. We talked about our faith; she sees her work as a ministry. She examined my eyes thoroughly and listened to my struggle after my surgeries last summer. She prescribed glasses with prisms for my double vision. I don’t have them, yet, and I don’t know for sure that they will work for me, but I have hope now that I didn’t have before. Later, I realized that she gave me hope through the present of her presence and the peaceful presence of Christ that lives within her, within all of us who believe.

After I shared my good news with my husband, I caught sight of the fig branch, and I couldn’t believe what I saw! That half-dead looking stick grew roots, and, not only that, it has a green fig! This was after I came up with the title for my message this week, “The Lesson of the Fig Tree.” The lesson of the fig tree was for me!

This is the branch on Dec. 1, 2024 that rooted and produced a fig when I put it in a cup of water.
This is the Fig Tree Branch on Jan 4, 2025! Wow!

I just have to be patient and keep on hoping, praying, and waiting as I prepare my heart for the return of my Savior. That’s our focus, dear friends. We don’t have to fix every problem in our lives. We don’t have to fix every problem in everyone else’s lives. That’s not how we get ready. Christ does the work of healing and reconciliation. But we can hold onto hope in our Savior, who has already come and is coming again! And we can offer our hope through the present of presence to the weary world around us.

I would like to close my message with a list of suggestions for offering hope through the present of presence this Advent. This is from Joyce Rupp’s book, Out of the Ordinary. Ready?

Be with someone who needs you.

Be with a person who gives you hope.

Be with those who live in fear or whose hope is faint.

Be with an older person.

Be with a child.

Be with a teenager.

Be with a family member or friend.

Be with someone who has helped you to grow.

Be with one who is in pain.

Be with one who is grieving.

Be with someone in prison.

           Be with someone who is homeless and food insecure.

           Be with someone struggling with substance abuse.

           Be with someone who is abused or neglected.

           Be with your loved ones.

           Be with yourself.

Let us pray. God of hope and love, you were so generous, sending the presence of your Beloved to dwell among us and to tell us who you are. Encourage us this Advent season to continue in the sharing of this loving presence through our attentiveness, given in prayer and acts of kindness. You who dwell within us, remind us often to let go of our busyness and hurriedness so that we can be with others in a loving way. Convince us that being is as important as doing. Thank you for being with us. Amen.

A House Not Made with Human Hands

Meditation on John 14 and Second Corinthians 5:1-9

In Memory of John H. Davidsen

November 27, 1927 to November 22, 2024

Pastor Karen Crawford

December 1, 2024

John Davidsen was a builder by trade and calling, a master carpenter. He learned his skills by working alongside his Norwegian immigrant father, his Uncle Dan, and his brother, Alfred. They built houses and churches across Long Island. He eventually became employed with Nastasi White in New York City and took great pride in having helped remodel Carnegie Hall, The Museum of Natural History, and the Cornell University Alumni Center.

He didn’t expect to follow in his father’s footsteps. He had other hopes and dreams.

He was born on November 27, 1927, in Brooklyn—two years before the Wall Street crash. The Great Depression would shape his formative years and his character, personality, and life experiences. Difficult times made him realize what was important in life—family, friendships, faith. He was a calm man, courageous and confident. An explorer and adventurer. He always had a smile. Maybe the most amazing thing that I heard about John was that he rode a bicycle, when he was 13 or 14, from Brooklyn to Baltimore with his best friend, Ralph. Although they did see a movie in Baltimore, the journey itself, including the friend he was with, was likely the reason for traveling and not just the destination.

The third of four children born to Harriet and John Davidsen was a hard worker from his youth. He was willing to work where he could find it and people trusted him to do a good job—setting up pins in a bowling alley, working for a dry cleaner, selling flowers, and assisting at a printing press. The printing press job led to his pursuit of education, training, and graduation in June 1945 from the New York School of Printing in Manhattan, now the High School of Graphic Communication Arts.

But John wanted to serve his country, help with the war effort, and see the world. When he turned 18 later in 1945, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Aboard the Destroyer USS Mayrant, DD-402, he traveled to Bikini Atoll, a coral reef in the Marshall Islands, arriving at the end of May 1946. The Mayrant was designated as a test ship for Operation Crossroads, the 1946 atomic bomb tests. John would witness the first underwater nuclear bomb detonation. Afterward, John boarded the destroyer USS Chevalier, DD-805, toured the Western Pacific, and spent time moored off China. He saw parts of the country before the culmination of the Communist Revolution and “The People’s Republic” in 1949. He was stationed in Hawaii before it became our 50th state, when it was still wild and beautiful, before it was all built up.

The good natured, optimistic man met the love of his life, Eleanor Benes, on a blind date. They were married on Nov. 7, 1953. John drove Eleanor to California for their honeymoon to see his pal, Ralph, who couldn’t make it to the wedding. I imagine the journey there and back was a great adventure, perhaps as much fun as the destination.

John and Eleanor rented an apartment in Manhattan in their first years of marriage. But they saved up and bought the property in Massapequa in 1956. John worked every Saturday for 18 months, with the help of family and friends, building their dream home in which they would live out their lives together. They would make many memories and raise three children there—John, Nancy, and Robert.

The children were baptized and confirmed at St. David’s Lutheran Church in Massapequa. Sundays remained “family days” for many years, while Saturdays would be days that John did side jobs for extra money, with the help of his buddy Ryan. Growing up, the three children remember how their father never raised his voice, never lost his temper, never argued with his wife, and always carved out time for family vacations. This was despite the fact that when he took off from work, he didn’t get paid. He and Eleanor wanted the kids to see and learn about the world around them. They piled in the car, and he drove them to Maine and Montreal and down south to visit museums and battlefields.

When their children were grown, John was happy to spend Saturdays fixing and making improvements on his children’s homes. He inspected and knew his wood, could spot the “keepers” and the ones from Lowes or Home Depot that were “no good.” What he built, he built to last. He worked long hours for his family, sometimes 12 hours at a time, and took pride in his work. Nothing was done halfway. Nothing was just good enough.

The apostle Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, uses the analogy of building when he talks about life and death, and everlasting life in the glory that is to come. We live in earthly tents now—not just wood and bricks and mortar homes, but flesh and blood bodies that God created for us to live in the loving ways that God has ordained. These earthly tents are, as Paul says, wasting away, as we age. Paul often complained about his physical problems, partially due to the persecution and imprisonment he experienced as a church planter and ambassador for Christ.

Some people assume that our mortal bodies didn’t matter that much to Paul, but that isn’t true. He is just trying to give us hope in our trials, lift us out of the stress and darkness of our world and see the bright hope of what is to come. But he also wants to strengthen us by giving us a vision of what is possible right now, when we walk by faith and don’t just live by sight. You see, each of us are already fully clothed with the Holy Spirit.

Paul describes our existence in this earthly tent as a kind of groaning, while we long for suffering, pain, and hardship to end and yearn for the promise of God to be fulfilled—our resurrection with Christ. One day, we will have new bodies and will be “further clothed with our heavenly dwelling,” so that “what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”

Please understand that Paul isn’t saying anything bad about people who build houses on earth—houses made with human hands. In fact, Paul was a tentmaker by trade, and people often lived in and traveled long distances by staying in tents along the way.

Jesus, too, was a carpenter who learned his trade from his earthly father. Jesus uses the language of building houses and preparing rooms when he seeks to encourage his disciples when his life on earth was near the end and the cross was in the road ahead. In John 14, Jesus tells his followers and all of us that he is going to prepare a place for them, for us, in his Father’s House of many rooms. And he will come again and take us there, so that where he is, we will always be with him.

On this day, when we celebrate John Davidsen’s wonderful life, let us remember that the earthly tents that we live in—our miraculous bodies—are also beautiful gifts from a loving God, who is with us always in Spirit. This is a God who has made his home with mortals. We are not alone here. And what we see is not all there is.

John, who witnessed amazing things in his nearly 97 years, with all his journeys across the country and around the world, always knew what was important. And it wasn’t the destinations. It was the journey itself and the people who shared it with him.

He lost the love of his life on April 24, 1998, after a long battle with cancer.

Every Sunday continued to be Family Day after that, when she exchanged her earthly tent for her forever dwelling place. A building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Every Sunday, he drove to the cemetery to visit with Eleanor. Then, he would spend time with his children and grandchildren, eating Chinese takeout at the home he dreamed of and built long ago in Massapequa, on Saturdays, with the help from family and friends.

He slipped away to eternity, holding on to his youngest son’s hand, on November 22, leaving us to remember his stories, his love, his goodness and generosity, his ever present smile and ready tool box and miter saws. And his way of never doing anything halfway. Nothing just good enough. How he always said how he never had any regrets. And his advice to his daughter, Nancy, when her husband, Kevin, left this world too soon, “You’ll never stop missing him. But the pain won’t be as sharp.”

I leave you now with the encouraging words of our Savior, who has prepared a place for each of us to live with him, in His Father’s house of many rooms.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Amen.

What Does It Mean to Live Faithfully?

Meditation on 1 Samuel 1:4–20

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Pastor Karen Crawford

November 17, 2024

Art by Stushie, used with permission

This is my first year serving on the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry. When the Nominating Committee called to invite me to serve, my first instinct was to say no. To say that I was reluctant is an understatement. I’m busy with my own ministry in Smithtown. I’m busy with my family. I am busy with school, especially now that I am in my last year of the doctorate program.

The work continues to be challenging, humbling, exhausting, and time consuming. We have long monthly meetings on Zoom to work with churches and pastors in transition and otherwise needy and preparation before the meetings. Plus, we serve as liaisons to congregations and mentors to new pastors. We approve contracts and write policies. We work with PNC’s, help with mission studies and give advice on and approve what they now call MDP’s for the CLC. We interview candidates—pastors and CRE’s—for full and part time, temporary or installed ministry and pulpit supply. We moderate Sessions and Congregational meetings for churches without pastors. There’s more. I had no idea everything the Committee on Ministry does. I’m still learning.

And, to make our work more difficult, we have open positions on the committee. Volunteers are doing more than their fair share; they are getting tired. I’m sure you understand.

 I thought of this passage in Scripture this week, when I thought of small, struggling churches without pastors and the overwhelmed leaders of our presbytery. In Matthew 9:35-38, we read, ‘Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”’

Like us, our presbytery, our neighboring churches and pastors want to live faithfully in these challenging times. They are trying to figure out what that means, in this day and age.

The harvest is still plentiful. That hasn’t changed. People all around us still need the Lord. But we need to trust in God’s faithfulness and not merely in our own strength and numbers. The most powerful thing we can do is pray. Pray for our church. Our presbytery. Our volunteers. Our pastor. Our staff. Our community.

Hannah knows this. The power of heartfelt prayer. She trusts in the Lord, through years of misery and despair and waiting for God’s answer. She never stops hoping and praying.

Her story in First Samuel is like other great women, the few but mighty whose names and narratives are included in the Bible. She has good company with others who were not able to bear children, for a long time, and yet that doesn’t stop their longing to be mothers and to be respected and active participants in their societies. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, is one example. And Rachel, the favorite wife of Jacob, is another.  Rachel’s older sister, Leah, was able to give Jacob children when she, for a long time, was not.

Every year, the family—Elkhanah, Hannah, Penninah, and the children—make the pilgrimage from their town to worship and make the sacrifice to the Lord of Hosts at Shiloh. It is a time of celebration, drinking, and feasting. They would eat the meat that was sacrificed. But Hannah would not eat. She could not eat. Peninnah would taunt and provoke her. Hebrew Midrash or commentary fills in the gaps of their story. Elkhanah was married to Hannah first for 10 years. When she didn’t have children, he took another, younger wife, Peninnah, who gave him sons and daughters.

“According to another midrashic tradition, Peninnah would rise early in the morning and ask Hannah: “Aren’t you getting up to wash your children’s faces before they go to school?” And six hours later she would ask: “Aren’t you going to greet your children when they come home from school?” (Pesikta Rabbati loc. cit.). According to this midrashic account, Peninnah would grieve Hannah by means of ordinary everyday activities, taking pains to remind her, at all hours of the day, of the difference between them.” [1]

I am impressed by Elkhanah’s attempts to console his despairing wife, assuring her that she is his favorite, though she is barren. He believes, like others in his community, that the Lord has closed her womb. It isn’t her fault, unless one believes that God is punishing her for some secret sin. Some do believe that. Her loving husband says every year when they go to worship and make the sacrifice, “Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?”

While she is praying in the temple, Hannah makes a promise to the Lord. If God gives her a son, she will raise him to be holy, set apart as God’s own. He will be what is called a Nazirite. He will never drink or cut his hair. He will be raised by the priest in the temple to serve God and the people all the days of his life. She will keep her promise. And Samuel will anoint Israel’s first kings—Saul and then David.

Eli the priest, who misunderstands and misjudges Hannah, accusing her of drunkenness, will become Samuel’s mentor and teacher. He utters formulaic words that he probably says to everyone, words he doesn’t really mean, when he says to Hannah as she turns to leave, “Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.” 

Hannah chooses to believe.

Dear friends, today our congregation will elect new servant leaders—elders, trustees, and deacons. We still have some open positions. We have room for you, if God is calling you to serve in an official role. But we also have room and need for you to serve in our community in an unofficial, behind-the-scenes kind of way. Because some of our volunteers are doing more than they should, because they love the Lord and the church. But they’re getting tired. They need encouragement and a helping hand.

I hope, after today’s meeting, you will say thank you to those who said yes to serving and those who continue to serve, year after year. I hope you will say to them, “How can I help you?” I hope you will mean what you say.

You see, the harvest is plentiful, and the laborers are few. That hasn’t changed. May the Lord of the Harvest send out more laborers into the Harvest. May you who haven’t heard Christ’s voice before this moment hear his loving invitation to labor today.

We are all trying to figure out what it means to live faithfully, in this day and age, my friends. Our merciful and patient God always gives us another chance to get it right. We have new mercies every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!

If we follow Hannah’s example, and I hope that we will, then we know that even in times of despair, of years of what seems like unanswered prayer and misery, the most important thing we can do as a people of God is to trust in the Lord and offer our heart-felt prayers. God is listening.

And when the Lord who is faithful grants us the desires of our heart, like the Lord did for Hannah after many years of waiting and praying, may we be faithful to keep our promises to serve with all that we have, all that we are, and all that we will become.

May God bless you for your kindness!

Will you pray with me? Let us pray.

Holy One, Lord of the Harvest, thank you for your love, compassion, and grace. Teach us what it means to live faithfully. Forgive us when we are reluctant to serve because it’s hard work, time consuming, and not always immediately satisfying or gratifying. Give us your vision of the Harvest of souls and the growth of your Kingdom here on earth, right here in our community. Stir us to long for which you long. Give us the desires of your heart. Help us to trust you as we serve, trusting that people need you, they need your Son’s salvation and a new way of living in this day and age. Stir us to gratitude and joy as we labor with one another, together, answering Christ’s call, praying without ceasing. We give ourselves to you now. All that we have. All that we are. And all that we will become, with your Spirit’s help. Amen.

     [1] Tamar Kadari, Penninah:Midrash and Aggadah at https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/peninnah-midrash-and-aggadah

The God Who Weeps and Wipes Away Our Tears

Mediation on John 11:32–44 and Revelation 21:1-6a

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Pastor Karen Crawford

All Saints’ Sunday

November 3, 2024

Art by Stushie, used with permission

On Halloween, we gave out candy to Trick-or-Treaters. Maybe we had about a dozen children come in costumes. Did anyone have more Trick-or-Treaters come to your door?

I always enjoy it when the children come. Since I have been in ministry, we have lived in places where no one knocks or rings our bell on October 31st—or maybe there’s one or two children and that’s it, so a dozen is definitely an improvement.

Halloween reminds me of my dad. He often helped me with homemade costumes. We used cardboard, magic markers, and tinfoil for my tooth fairy costume one year. No one could guess what I was. Another year, he had leaf raking on his mind, and he made me into a superhero, with a green lawn trash bag and cardboard initials on my shirt, dry leaves pasted on my body. Nobody guessed what I was that year, either. Mom always stayed home and gave out candy while my dad escorted my older brother and sister and me Trick-or-Treating. The quiet man who never dressed up for Halloween waited with a flashlight at the dark, narrow road while we tramped up the front walks of our neighbors’ houses. As we walked along the edge of Route 124 in our bulky costumes, cars sped by us. But I always felt safe with my dad and his flashlight. We always made it home.

Today, we remember all our loved ones—all the saints—from every time and place—who have made it safely home to be with God. We remember them, cherish our memories, talk about them, say their names, light candles of remembrance, and, for our church family, we ring bells and have a moment of silence. In the silence, we sit with our shared grief, and give thanks for the blessing of their lives and how knowing them has helped us to become who we are today.

These passages in Revelation 21 and John 11 always touch my heart because we have the

image of the God who weeps with us when we are grieving and will wipe every tear from our eyes, when, “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

The village scene with Mary and Martha in John 11 with the death of Lazarus, reveals the work of the community of faith in Bethany, caring for their neighbors. We are never alone in our grief! The community shows up for Mary and Martha, and they, too, are weeping for Lazarus and sharing the burden of loss.

Martha has already told Jesus at the edge of town, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Now Mary says it, kneeling at his feet, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” This is the same Mary who was kneeling at his feet when Jesus and his disciples came to dinner at Mary and Martha’s house. When Martha criticizes Mary for not helping her, Jesus praises her for choosing the better part when she chooses to stay with Jesus, hanging on his every word. But now Mary is brokenhearted. Jesus wasn’t there when she needed him. He doesn’t say anything to defend his delay in responding to their cry for help. He sees her weeping and the community weeping, and he is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.”  In verse 34, he asks, “Where have you laid him?” This foreshadows the scene in John 20, when Mary Magdalene is weeping and looking for him, arriving at the tomb before the morning light has broken. She mistakes the risen Christ for the gardener, saying, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Now, in John 11, the Jewish community invites Jesus to where Lazarus has been laid. “Lord, come and see.” Then, in verse 3, “And Jesus begins to weep.”

This next part is so believable about the faith community. I can imagine—can you?—how some of them are stirred by his tears, seeing them as proof that Jesus truly loved Lazarus! Others are angry, disappointed that he didn’t come when Mary and Martha summoned him. Maybe they have begun to doubt his healing power and that he was sent from God. “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” they grumble.

Jesus doesn’t immediately heal Lazarus. He pauses to pray out loud—not because God doesn’t hear his or our silent prayers, for that matter, but for the benefit of the grieving community and to all of us reading or hearing John’s gospel, the many generations whom John urges to believe.

It always intrigues me that Christ compels the faith community to do the final work of healing and restoration after Lazarus is raised from death to life. He could have done all the work by himself. But he wants us to be his Body for the world. “Unbind him,” Jesus says, “and let him go.”

On Friday night, I missed my dad and mourned my good friend, Erma, whose Celebration of Life was held at Ebenezer Presbyterian Church in Renville, MN, on Halloween. I watched a recording of the livestream of the service on Facebook yesterday.

My 104-year-old friend would have been pleased with the music—good old-fashioned hymns: Softly and Tenderly, Amazing Grace, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, How Great Thou Art, and It Is Well with My Soul. The pastor chose Scriptures from those Erma had written down or highlighted in her well-worn Bible. She read from Isaiah 41:10, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And from an earlier part of John 11, beginning at verse 25, when Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”   

As the organ plays, I am drawn to the photo of Erma resting on a wooden table draped with one of the blankets she crocheted from balls and bits of yarn family and friends would give her. Since 2007, Erma crocheted 550 prayer shawls and blankets to give away. More of them were on display in the Narthex on the day of the service.

Her daughter, Jan, shared her mother’s story with the gathered flock, beginning with how she was born in a snowstorm on Jan. 25, 1920, in an Iowa farmhouse. The doctor coming by horsedrawn carriage couldn’t make it there in time, so Erma’s father delivered her. She attended country school and graduated from high school in 1937. She went on to Iowa State Teacher’s College and completed the summer training program. She taught at a one room schoolhouse for 3 years before she married the Rev. Chester “Chet” Ahrens on June 5, 1941, at First Presbyterian Church in LeRoy, MN.

She served her family and partnered in ministry with her husband in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota. She also served as a Sunday school and summer Bible school teacher; was an active member of the Ladies Aid; and attended Women’s Circles and Bible studies for many years. Chet died in 1972, and Erma, a widow of 52, moved to Osage, Iowa, and found work as a nursing assistant at a hospital for 13 years. Her son, Ronald, died of a heart problem as a young adult.

She returned to Renville in 2001 to be closer to her family. I met her and we quickly became friends in 2011, when I arrived to serve the church there. We stayed in touch all these years. We called each other and sent cards, and Facebook helped keep us connected more regularly. She had received an IPAD for her 95th birthday and learned how to use it. She read my posts, clicked like on my sermons, and sent me newsy emails. One time, she surprised and called me on Facetime. She later confessed that it surprised her, too.

At the end of her Celebration of Life, the camera turned, and I recognized some of the faithful in the pews, now left behind to grieve with the family. Many of my former members at Ebenezer have gone home to be with God since I left. But the church continues to be strong because of the Spirit that dwells with them and their love for one another.

Remembering the Spirit with us and our love for one another after Erma’s service ended, I called the husband of Sue Nunziata, a beloved member whose life we celebrated in January. I had been thinking of him for a while and had sent him a few cards, but I wanted to hear his voice and know he is OK. I told him that we hadn’t forgotten Sue. And that we would be remembering her life today during our worship for All Saints by saying her name, lighting a candle, and ringing a bell. I apologized for letting so much time pass before calling. I assured him that we wouldn’t forget him, either. That I will be visiting soon. And that he is loved.

Dear friends, we are called to share the burden of grief for our church family, much like the village of Bethany did for Mary and Martha. Christ wants us to be His Body for the world, as when the community welcomes the risen Lazarus back into the fold, after Jesus says, “Unbind him and let him go!” When we grieve together and comfort one another, we show the love of our God who weeps with us, the God who, one day, will wipe all our tears away.

Let us pray.

Loving and merciful God, thank you for our families, friends, and our church family, who help to carry our burdens when we are grieving and aren’t sure how we can carry on. Thank you for the love that is shared here and beyond our church walls as our flock seeks to be your Son’s heart, hands, and feet. Thank you for all the saints in every time and place, who have made it safely home to be with you and continue to cheer us on, the Great Cloud of Witnesses, so that we keep on running the race of faith. Thank you, most of all, for being the God who weeps with us when we are grieving, the God who will one day, when we are face to face, wipe all our tears away. Amen.

Redemption in Christ Jesus!

Meditation on Romans 3:19–28

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Pastor Karen Crawford

Reformation Sunday

Oct. 27, 2024

Art by Stushie, used with permission

A couple of days ago, I checked my Facebook feed, and I saw a memorable 26-second video.

A UPS driver is making a left turn at a busy intersection. Three wild turkeys step into the white lines of the crosswalk, walking toward his vehicle, which is blocking their way. The turkeys reach the truck in the middle of the crosswalk, they look up at the driver, andhe looks down at them.

 “How did you end up here, guys?” he asks.

Cars are passing by as if three turkeys crossing the road is an everyday occurrence.

Then, I see the UPS driver’s hand. He is motioning for the turkeys to stop and wait with him for a space to open.  I unmute the volume at this point and, sure enough, the turkeys are making gobbling sounds, looking up at the UPS driver, as if they are waiting for instructions. A space finally opens. The UPS driver begins to accelerate and make his wide turn.

“Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go,” he says, motioning to the three birds as he picks up speed.

And they follow him! They run beside his truck. They trust him and follow him, amidst the chaos and confusion of the traffic. They make it safely to the other side!

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/SH4pwzpbFRZQBE8N/

This image of the man guiding and guarding the wild birds who got caught in a dangerous intersection, keeping them safe as he leads them to cross with him on the other side, speaks to me today, as we welcome nine confirmands as full, active members of our church.

No, I am not qualified to drive a big box truck. And the students who joined by profession of faith are wonderful young men and women—with no resemblance to wild turkeys.

But I am breathing a great sigh of relief that these nine students have chosen Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. They made a decision to try to follow him in their lives. They have stepped from the middle of the road of uncertainty and confusion, where many of them began this challenging program more than a year ago.

They were urged to ask questions and listen as others from the community, church, and wider denomination shared stories of faith, witness, and service. We invited speakers, such as an icon artist from the Monastery in St. James and a rabbi and his wife from the Stony Brook temple before we attended Shabbat worship with them last fall.

We studied Scripture, considered the stories of God’s people and what that might mean for today. We learned about God’s love, mercy, and grace. They told me about sin. What an interesting conversation that was the day they shared about sin at school. We prayed and learned about prayer.  We learned about the Presbyterian Constitution—the Book of Order and the Confessions. We learned about the sacraments and celebrated Communion and talked about how Jesus welcomes all to come to His Table. Everyone decided that our church has the best Communion bread!

We learned about mission and the many ways our congregation serves our neighbors and one another. We engaged in hands-on mission, filling bags of candy for children at the homeless shelter, serving at the Smithtown Food Pantry, and making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for needy children in Brentwood. We hosted a live animal program from Sweetbriar Nature Center for Creation Care Sunday, and sold succulents the students had planted in church anniversary mugs to raise money for the center.

We hosted two animal blessing services that reached out to our community. Several students helped plant the daffodil memorial garden. The students also served as ushers and helpers in Sunday School.

An important part of the program happened outside the class. Each student had a mentor, who received a handbook with activities for enrichment, relationship building, and discussion. Students also had journal assignments to complete at home.

The program culminated with statements of faith. We held a writing workshop and students received help from their mentors, a writing coach, and me. It was the most difficult part of the program. The students were being asked, for the first time in their lives, to consider their personal beliefs, write them down, and share them with the Session, their families and mentors, and me.

The question of faith was a big question for the reformers of the 15th and 16th centuries. Before that, the people were forced to rely on the Church to tell them what to believe and what to do to be saved. The Church was powerful, political, wealthy, and corrupt. They required people living in poverty to buy indulgences so that they and their loved ones would go to heaven. Ordinary people were unable to read the Bible for themselves and find out God’s will for their lives as it was against the law to translate Scripture from the church Latin.

Reformers made the Word of God accessible to people in their own language. And when people began to hear the Bible in their native tongue and read the Bible for themselves, they realized how the Church had been misleading and abusing them. It changed what many had been led to believe.

One of the Scriptures that spoke to the Reformers of the 15th and 16th centuries was this passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans, when he tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God! This is assurance that no one can make themselves right with God by anything we do. Our good works won’t save us. We have redemption in Christ alone! We are justified—made righteous—by grace, which is a gift from God.

Two verses key to understanding this passage are verses 21 and 22. Up until recently, scholars translated the Greek, “But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the Law and the Prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe.” In other words, we are saved by OUR faith.  Our faith in Jesus is what makes us righteous. That’s what we have been taught.

But we are the Reformed Church, continually reforming and seeking to be transformed. Recent scholarship has discovered that this is an error in translation, which totally changes the meaning. And it’s only one little word that makes the difference. In Greek, the word for word translation is “faith Jesus Christ”—no prepositions at all. With a new understanding of the biblical Greek grammar, most scholars no longer believe that Paul is saying by faith IN Jesus Christ, we are saved. Instead, they believe it is through the faith OF Jesus Christ that we are saved. We have shifted from being saved by our own faith, which can be seen as a good work, to being saved by the faith of Jesus Christ.

Our redemption, dear friends, comes through trusting in the work of Jesus, the only righteous one, who was perfectly obedient to God when he gave himself for the sins of the world.

As the students were sharing their faith statements with Session and the families on Tuesday night, I couldn’t help but think what a hard thing they were doing. It would have been a hard thing for any adult to do what the students are required to do, to consider, write down and say what we believe.

And it should be a challenge to all of us, if we are seeking to know and grow and walk with Christ, more and more. We should be asking ourselves, every now and then, “What do I believe?”

And the question that naturally follows should be, “If this is what I say I believe, how, then, shall I live to be more faithful?”

I am so grateful to our mentors and to Dulcie McLeod, our writing coach, for all the time they spent with the students. Thank you, mentors, for your gentleness, patience, kindness, and sensitivity. But your work isn’t done. Please continue to reach out to your students. Be a soul friend.

I will miss our students, gathering for classes, activities, and events. I want you to know, dear ones, that I am still here for you, and I will be for years to come. I am your pastor and your soul friend. And though you are finished the program, there is one more assignment. In your journals, on page 122 and 123, you are asked to reflect on confirmation and becoming an active member of your church.

The first part of the assignment is, “Decide three things to commit to doing.” So what are those three things you will commit to doing in the church? Where will your ministry begin here? What will you do with all that you learned?

And the second half of the assignment is to plan three times to meet with your mentor—in one month, 6 months, and a year. Therefore, it isn’t just the responsibility of the mentors to reach out to you and show that they care. It is also your responsibility to reach out to them and show that you care.

Today, we are not celebrating the end of a program, but a new beginning for the students’ journey of faith, now that they are welcomed and accepted as full, active members, with all the benefits and responsibilities of membership as adult members.

The last part of this message is for everyone. Listen.

Remember the UPS driver who helped the turkeys cross the road? You know, “Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go.” What amazes me is not just that the turkeys follow the UPS truck, but that they change the direction they are going to follow him, running with him as he makes the turn. Why do they trust him? Why do they listen to him, when there’s so much other noise and traffic all around them? But they keep going—and they make it safely to the other side.

We live in a hectic, high pressure, dangerous world. We have so many choices, so many paths that we CAN take. God lets us choose. But there is one right path—and that’s through believing in the faith OF Jesus Christ, who offers help and strength for every day. He is the one who took your sins away. No one else has the power to do that.

I ask you now, “Is he your Lord and Savior? If so, how, then, should you live?”

Let us pray.

Holy One, thank you for our redemption in Christ alone, who, by his faith and work on the cross, has taken away our sins. Thank you for your Word and Spirit, which guide and strengthen us each day, and for the courage of the reformers of the Church, long ago. Strengthen us to be reformers today, to be open to the Spirit’s transformation and seeking to live out what we believe more faithfully. Thank you for the nine students who have professed belief in Jesus Christ, their Lord and Savior. Help us to show our love to them, nurture their faith, and encourage their involvement in their church in the months and years to come. In Christ we pray. Amen.

The God Who Knows Us

Meditation on Psalm 139

In Memory of Ethel Kraft

December 11, 1931 – October 16, 2024

Ethelmay Swindlehurst Kraft grew up in Jermyn, PA. The former coal mining town of a few thousand people is located on the Lackawanna River, 12 miles northeast of Scranton.

She was the only child of Ken, a coal miner, and Alice, a gifted seamstress, who worked at a factory.  Alice wanted more children, but her health prevented it. Ethelmay was close to her mom and helped care for her as she recovered from her many surgeries and times of illness. This may have stirred Ethel’s unfulfilled desire to be a nurse. Her hardworking parents couldn’t afford a home of their own when they were first married, so they lived with Alice’s parents. Eventually, they were able to move into a rented home.

Ethelmay despised her name and shortened it to just plain “Ethel” for people outside her immediate family. She tried to leave it behind her, with the small town she left as a young woman. I never knew that was her real first name—Ethelmay, all one word—until this week when I saw her engagement announcement from the Scranton Tribune from November 1952. But just plain “Ethel” had nothing plain about her, despite her humble beginnings. She wore red lipstick, and looked great in it, and always felt better when she was wearing it. Her hair was curled and perfectly styled. She chose her clothing with care. Her outfits always matched, including the jewelry, and her shoes coordinated with her pocketbooks. She was model thin as a young bride, just a wisp of a thing, a tiny waist for her wedding dress, with a waterfall skirt. It was handmade by her mother, along with all the other bridal attendant’s dresses described in detail in the newspaper story. Her favorite colors were pink and purple. She loved flowers.

Ethel Swindlehurst married Karl Kraft at her church, First Methodist of Jermyn, on June 20, 1953. She was 21, and he was 23 but looked much younger.

Her eyes twinkled when she told me how she met Karl. Her girlfriend, Betty Taylor, attended a Lutheran church in neighboring Archbald, PA, and sang in the choir there with Karl. One day, she showed him a picture of Ethel. He wanted to meet her. She was 16. He was 18.

They went on a double date with Betty and her beau, meeting at Jimmy Mullaly’s ice cream shop for sundaes—chocolate ice cream with hot fudge sauce.

Ethel’s mother had a long talk with her daughter after the double date, warning her against dating older men. “Ethelmay,” her mother said, “you are only in high school. You should go out with other young men. You should go to your dances.”

To make matters more complicated, when Ethel and Karl met, he was preparing to leave town to serve in the U.S. Air Force.  “I just met him,” Ethel said, “and now he was going.”

She followed her mother’s advice. She went to all her dances, enjoyed dressing up and spending time with her friends. But Karl wrote Ethel letters, and she wrote back. He visited her twice a year, when he was home on furlough.

When she graduated from high school, she found a job working as a buyer for children’s wear at Mr. Edelstein’s Globe Fashion Shop in Carbondale. And she waited for Karl. He served his country for four years, learning then teaching radar, and rising to the rank of Technical Sergeant. On his way home after being discharged from the Air Force, he interviewed with GE and IBM and bought Ethel a diamond ring.

They honeymooned in Atlantic City and moved to Rochester, New York. The next 6 years, the small-town girl and guy would have to pick up and move 7 times as Karl’s career took off with IBM.

Ethel fell comfortably into her role as housewife and mother, having two children—Kenny and Debbie—when they were living in Pennsylvania. She made friends with the women who stayed home during the day with their children. She made sure dinner was on the table every night at 6:30. When they moved to Commack, they quickly made friends with their neighbors and enjoyed getting together with other couples in each other’s homes.

When I asked Debbie if she ever played Bridge, like so many women of her generation, Debbie said no. She never played cards or Bingo, perhaps a holdover from her childhood upbringing in a Methodist family. But Karl and Ethel did dance at weddings and then on cruises in their later years.

The young couple joined the First Presbyterian Church in Smithtown not long after they moved here, on June 4, 1959. Their faith and church family would forever be important in their lives. Karl served on the building committee for the new Christian Education wing, dedicated in 1963, and would become a Trustee. Ethel joined a Women’s Association group and would later host a circle in her home. She crocheted with friends and for our prayer shawl ministry. Ethel and Karl’s children would be raised in Sunday School and church, just as they were active in church as children and youth.

Ethel never gave up her longing to be a nurse, but then found fulfillment in volunteering at what is now St. Catherine of Sienna Hospital. She became the Director of the Candy Stripers. She was requested to serve in the Emergency Room because she was “so calm.” She was shocked when they wanted her there, knowing that she wasn’t naturally a calm person, but her special gifts for compassionate ministry strengthened her to be the peaceful presence of Christ in times of crises, when others were in need. She had the gift of encouragement, enjoyed talking with people, in person and on the phone. She often sent thinking of you, get well, and sympathy cards.

I treasured my visits with Ethel and Karl, celebrating Communion and sharing stories. I brought news from the church, as she was hungry to hear what was happening. She told me about the small town in Pennsylvania where she was from and about meeting and marrying Karl and his passion for gardening, before his health declined. She was lonely, she said, especially during the height of the pandemic, when they seldom left their home, and no one came to visit. She always had a box of chocolates ready to share with guests. She talked with me about her concerns for her grown children—that never ends, no matter how old our children become. I told her that I worried about my children, as well. It bothered her that she was growing increasingly unsteady, even with a walker. She was grateful for the wonderful aides who were like family and were there every day to care for them, so Karl and Ethel could stay together in their own home for as long as possible.

I always asked if I could pray for her near the end of my visit or call. She always said yes. Those were intimate moments, sharing with the Lord what she had shared with me and asking for God’s help, comfort, healing, guidance, and rest—and that Ethel would feel the Lord’s loving arms around her and not feel lonely or afraid anymore. We experienced peace in those moments, a peace that goes beyond understanding. I assured her of the God who knows her completely, as we read about in Psalm 139—a God who, “formed my inward parts; knit me together in my mother’s womb.” This is a God who knows everywhere we are ever going to be, and will be present with us, wherever we might go. This is a God who knows when we are sitting or lying down or rising up; a God who discerns our thoughts, before they become prayers; and knows what we will say before the words are on our tongues.

As the months passed, Ethel began to show more signs of confusion and unsteadiness. She often had bad dreams that she thought were real. I visited her several times in a memory care setting in Lake Grove. She recognized me, though her vision was going; she greeted me with a smile and was anxious for a prayer and our usual chitchat, though she was miserable with the living situation at the time. She asked me what was going on with me, and I don’t know why I chose to share this bit of news, but I told her that I was back in school working on my doctorate. And the woman who didn’t always know where she was or recognize her family, encouraged me that this was the right thing to do for my career. “A doctorate!” she exclaimed. “That’s job security for you.”

And there were other moments, Holy Spirit moments, when unusual clarity, peace, and restored vision would come over her—such as the time when Jason Kraft came to visit with his children. She recognized them and had a conversation with them, looking directly into their faces, commenting on how much they had grown. Watching this miracle unfold, Debbie was overwhelmed by emotion.

The God who knows us, a God from whom we cannot keep secrets, has a good plan for our lives. The Lord may seem far away, at times, and slow to respond to our prayers and desires. But then, we see these glimpses of the world to come, small miracles that are true miracles, nonetheless, signs of God’s grace and power, right here with us. Brothers and sisters, what we see in this world is not all there is!

Psalm 139 particularly speaks to me as I consider my friend Ethel and her struggles. No, the Lord didn’t take them all away. But her family and her kind aides served her lovingly and patiently; they did so much to try to help her in her times of weakness, pain, confusion, fear, and anxiety. Debbie lost sleep worrying about her mom and agonized over weighty decisions that had to be made about her living situations and healthcare. I believe the Holy Spirit was working through these helping hands and caring hearts and minds here in this world, as Ethel grew closer to passing into the loving embrace of her Savior.

The day Ethel went home to be with the Lord, I was preparing to visit her and bring flowers from the church. I was getting my pastoral care bag ready so that I could anoint her with oil and say a prayer for healing and wholeness. Then Debbie texted me. Her mother had passed. Her passing was peaceful, she would tell me later. Debbie was holding her mother’s hand.

Dear friends, God’s Word assures us that we can share all the dark feelings and thoughts with our loving Lord—our sadness, grief, greatest disappointments and dashed hopes. Our God of mercy never runs out of mercy and never grows weary of forgiving and comforting us in our distress. Our God can turn our darkness, the darkness we all feel at times, into light, our restlessness to shalom, our mourning to joy. The psalmist says: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and night wraps itself around me,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

He ends the psalm with these words of vulnerability and trust, words that I hope you will feel confident in praying, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Our God who is present with us, who has searched us and knows us, will lead us to our forever home.

Amen.

Ruth: A Love Story

Meditation on Ruth 1:22-2:13

Pastor Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Oct. 20, 2024

We planted a daffodil memorial garden in the churchyard yesterday in front of a low stone wall. Betty Deerfield and Nancy Swanson measured precisely and made the holes. Brianna and Nicole Swanson placed 100 bulbs into two freshly dug flower beds. We worked together to cover the bulbs with bone meal, soil, peat, compost, and mulch. Brianna and Nicole took care of watering with a watering can before enjoying Betty’s homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

Digging and preparing the flower beds on Thursday was the most difficult part of the project, perhaps. The ground was hard, unforgiving, and the wind was chilly, but the sun was shining, and Betty and Tom Sartain had the right tools–spades, wheelbarrow, tarps, and a rototiller. Betty brought zucchini bread and hot chocolate for fortification. Tom entertained us with stories. I arrived late, just in time to survey their work, make jokes about how the beds looked like cemetery plots, thank the gardeners, and enjoy refreshments.

Throughout the planning, digging, planting, fertilizing, and mulching, we laughed and talked and I got to know two of my Confirmation students and their gracious mom just a little bit better. Throughout our labor and conversation, we held onto the vision of what the garden might look like, not how it is at this moment in autumn—with only plain brown bulbs covered with soil and mulch—but how we imagine the garden will look like in March, April, and May next year, with bright yellow flowers opening on green stems and leaves.

Nancy said, “I can’t wait for spring!”

We pray that the garden will bring us closer as a church family, as we have shared the names of our loved ones with our dedications. And we pray that the garden will, every spring, stir us to enjoy the beauty of the long-lasting, early blooming flowers and remember the precious gift of our loved ones’ lives. May we also remember to tell their stories and love one another today.

The story of Ruth is, indeed, a love story. Some themes of this book include life and death; the resilience of families in grief and loss; persevering through famine and hunger; migration to foreign lands and going home; marrying outside the faith; and childlessness. In the four beautiful chapters is the story of real hardships by those living in a subsistence culture and their reliance on their faith in YHWH’s generosity, loyalty, and lovingkindness or hesed in Hebrew.

Hesed is the essential quality of covenant relationship. Everyone who enters into covenant with YHWH is then expected to demonstrate that same quality of hesed, lovingkindness, in all their relationships. “The prophet Micah (in 6:8) offers the memorable instruction, ‘And what does YHWH require of you—but to do justice, love hesed, and walk humbly with your God?’” [1] 

The interesting twist in Ruth is that she is an outsider, a foreigner. She hasn’t been born into covenant with God, and yet she is welcomed into the fold and is held up as the example of loyalty and faithfulness. At the beginning of the book, an Israelite man named Elimelekh and his wife, Naomi, and two sons leave Bethlehem because of famine. They move to Moab. Elimelekh dies and the sons take Moabite brides, Ruth and Orpah. Then the sons die, leaving three childless widows; Naomi decides that it is time to return to her homeland. She has heard that YHWH has visited God’s people and given them bread in Bethlehem, a word that means “House of Bread.” Long years of famine have ended. And she wants to die with her own people.

 Intermarriage with foreigners was expressly forbidden in the Torah (Exodus 34:16 and Deut. 7:3). Moses specifically forbids Moabites and Ammonites from coming into the congregation of YHWH, “even to the 10th generation… because they did not meet you with food and water on your way out of Egypt….”

But only love and acceptance may be detected in Naomi’s relationships with her daughters-in-law. She tells them, when they try to come with her to Bethlehem, “Go, turn back, each woman to the house of her mother.” She blesses them. “May YHWH do good faith (hesed) with you, just as you have done with the dead and with me. May YHWH grant it to you: Find rest, each woman in the house of her husband.” She kisses them. They lift up their voices and weep.

Orpah obeys Naomi and goes home to her mother, her people, and the faith of her birth, tearfully kissing her mother-in-law goodbye. Ruth is determined to stay with Naomi and embraces her new faith, saying, “Don’t press me to leave you, to turn back from following after you. For where you go, I will go. And where you stay the night, I will stay. Your people (is) my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. So may YHWH do to me, and may he add more to that—it is only death that will come between me and you.”

Ruth and Naomi return to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

We see hesed—God’s lovingkindness reflected in the lovingkindness of human beings—numerous times in this passage. Ruth and Naomi are hungry, so Ruth goes to work in the field of one of Naomi’s husband’s relatives. His name is Boaz. He is a man of faith and considerable means.

Ruth is given permission by the field supervisor to glean behind the hired harvesters and keep what she has gleaned, though she is an outsider. She is protected by an Israelite practice, a law, actually, that required Israelites to deliberately leave some grain in the field. “The unharvested grain was to be gleaned by the most vulnerable members of society: widows, orphans, and sojourners….” [2] People like Naomi and Ruth.

The greeting Boaz exchanges with his workers is a sign of hesed, God’s lovingkindness, and their faith. Boaz says to the harvesters, “YHWH—the Lord—be with you!” And they say, “May YHWH—the Lord—bless you!” These may be conventional greetings of the time, but they are included in the story to emphasize the good relationships Boaz has with his workers and that his relationships are governed by an “awareness of God as the Source of blessing and the One to whom we must answer for our treatment of others.” [3]

Boaz notices Ruth and asks, “To whom does this young woman belong?” That’s when we hear Ruth’s story told through the perspective of the supervisor of the harvesters. He doesn’t say anything bad about this foreigner. She is a Moabite, he says, who came with Naomi. She asked for permission to gather behind the harvesters. She is a hard worker—takes few breaks, he says.

Boaz reveals hesed when he warns Ruth, for her protection, not to “go gleaning in another field” but to stick close to the women working in his field. He has ordered the men not to touch her. He tells her that when she is thirsty, to go and drink from the jars of water the workmen draw.

Ruth notices his kindness, is moved by his graciousness, and falls on her face, bowing to the ground in gratitude and humility. She asks why he is being so kind, when she is nothing but a foreigner.

He knows her story, he says. He has heard what she has done for her mother-in-law after the death of her husband, and how she left her family and homeland behind to come and live with Naomi’s people, whom she didn’t know.

“May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!” Boaz says.

We see God’s hesed when he invites her to eat with them and serves her bread, sour wine, and roasted grain. She eats until she is satisfied and has some left over and goes back to gleaning. Boaz tells the workmen to leave even more grain behind for her to take home.

She gleans until evening, then threshes, and takes home 30 to 50 pounds of barley, a staggering amount for a worker to take in her time, when male workers usually received one or two pounds a day! [4]

This sets the stage for the courtship between Ruth and Boaz in the next chapter, a romantic scene on the threshing floor; the next day, Boaz negotiates for Ruth’s hand with a closer relative of Elimelekh’s kin at the city’s gate; and finally the marriage of Ruth and Boaz, and Ruth giving birth to a son. Ruth will be the great grandmother of David, the second ruler of the united kingdom of Israel and Judah. She is included in the genealogy of Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

After I finished planting the daffodil memorial garden with Betty, Nancy, Brianna, and Nicole, I stepped into our parish hall, where all kinds of hesed—divine and human lovingkindness—was going on. The Organization of Open Mic Performing Artists (OOMPA) was hosting a coat drive there. Numerous musicians played instruments and sang for the gathering of church and community folks, a pile of donated coats heaped in front of the stage. At the end of the four-hour event, Joanna Huang and Karen Dow played violin and viola–“Be Now Our Vision” and “How Great Thou Art” with Pablo Lavandera on piano; the choir sang three hymns; Pablo played three songs from his native Argentina; and the entire room was invited to sing a parting, “Stand By Me” on the stage.

It was a hesed kind of day, with our church connecting in loving ways with the earth by planting a garden; and sharing food, music, and friendship with a gathering of church and community folks, all with the same mind to help our needy neighbors keep warm in winter.

Next spring, around the end of March or early April, we will all be looking for 100 yellow daffodils blooming in our memorial garden, planted in front of the low stone wall. May the garden continue to bring us closer as a church family. And may the yellow flowers in springtime stir us to remember the precious gift of our loved ones’ lives, tell their stories, and love one another today.

Let us pray.

Holy One, thank you for your hesed, your loyalty, generosity, and lovingkindness. Thank you for the faithful example of Ruth, the outsider in your Son’s family tree. Thank you for the hesed of the faith community, for those who gave coats to warm our neighbors, those who shared musical gifts, and for the gardeners who planted flowers to bring us closer and help us remember our loved ones and tell their stories. Give us a vision of hesed for our community and country and give us wisdom and courage to make it happen. Amen.

     [1] Ellen F. Davis and Margaret Adams Parker, Who Are You, My Daughter? Reading Ruth Through Image and Text, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press), 17.

    [2] Ellen Davis, 43.

    [3] Ellen Davis, 43.

   [4] Ellen Davis, 59.

All Things Are Possible for God

Meditation on Mark 10:17-31

Pastor Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Oct. 13, 2024

Art by Stushie, used with permission

I lost a dear friend this week. Erma Ahrens was 104.

Early Wednesday morning, her son and daughter-in-law, Dave and Lou Ann, called to tell me the story. The loss of Erma, and hearing the voices of sweet Lou Ann and Dave, who are also special friends, brought me to tears. It meant that all my hopes of finally getting to Minnesota and visiting her would never come to pass. Erma, originally from Iowa, was the wife one of the former pastors of the rural congregation that I served in my first call, a few miles north of Renville, MN. Her husband died suddenly while he was serving another small Minnesota church. Erma had only a few months to grieve and figure out where she was going to live before she had to move out of the manse. She didn’t have a job or a home. She was probably in her late 50s or early 60s. She hadn’t worked outside the home or church for many years. She moved back to Iowa, got a job in a dress shop. Got an apartment.

She relied on her faith and the knowledge that she was a child of God, and that the God who loved her would provide for her. And that for God, all things are possible. Amen?

Our gospel reading in Mark today presents challenges for those seeking to follow Jesus with their lives today. The question relates to having a right attitude, the right mindset to live humbly, in Christ’s example, but also it raises the sticky question of our relationship with wealth. Can we have possessions and be faithful to Christ’s call?

While I am tempted to skip over this tricky passage, we would bump into this same story in Matthew 19 and Luke 18. This passage follows Jesus blessing the little children and saying to his disciples, who had been pushing them away, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And then this man, “setting out on a journey,” kneels before him and asks Jesus, “Good Teacher, what I must I do to inherit eternal life?”  I like to believe that this man is wrestling with how to live faithfully, but perhaps doesn’t yet realize that being faithful requires a change of heart, which leads to changes in our lives.

First of all, there is NOTHING we can do to INHERIT eternal life. It’s not something that is inherited, though certainly faith may be passed down from generation to generation. Secondly, there’s NOTHING we can DO, period, to earn or achieve eternal life.

The commandments Jesus mentions are only the second table of the Ten Commandments, the ones having to do with our relationships with other people rather than with God. They focus on external behaviors, maybe because of the man’s question, “What must I do?”

The man assures Jesus, “I have kept all these since my youth,” to which Calvin scoffs, “But, intoxicated with foolish confidence, he fearlessly boasts that he has discharged his duty properly since childhood.”  [1]  Luther, too, dismisses the man’s claim in his commentaries, “Where is he who keeps the Decalogue (or Ten Commandments)?” he asks. “Or who can fulfill the commandments?… After the Fall of Adam no one… has fulfilled the law.” [2]

Key to our understanding of this encounter is in verse 21. Jesus looks at the man and loves him! What’s spoken next is an invitation to join him in ministry, an invitation he extends to EVERYONE. He says, “You lack one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

The truth is that the man had “good reason to be shocked. Traditional Jewish piety would usually have said that wealth was a blessing from God, a sign of divine favor. If you obey all the commandments, Moses tells the people of Israel in his final address to them, ‘the Lord will make you abound in prosperity.’ (Deut. 28:11).”  [3] Proverbs 10:22 says, “The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.”  “The rich were expected to be generous and pious, but if they were, it would not have occurred to anyone to criticize their wealth.” [4]

As Reb Tevye dreams in Fiddler on the Roof,

Oh, Lord, you made many, many poor people
I realize, of course, it’s no shame to be poor
But it’s no great honor either
So, what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune?

If I were a rich man
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
All day long, I’d biddy biddy bum
If I were a wealthy man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum

If I were a biddy biddy rich yidle-diddle-didle-didle man.

Mark, Matthew, and Luke don’t tell us the end of the story of the man with many possessions; we don’t actually know if the man sold them, gave to the poor, and answered Christ’s call.

This is what Jesus says: “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” –and that’s it harder than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, which, in “Frederick Buechner’s …  20th century paraphrase, harder “than for Nelson Rockefeller to get through the night deposit slot of the First National City Bank.” [5] And this is what Jesus says to his disciples who ask him, “Then who can be saved?” “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

I am just going to say it plainly.  The problem isn’t the man’s wealth. The problem is his attitude toward it and his relationship with it. Jesus emphasizes his need to let go of his possessions and, instead, share and care for others; and this is something I have learned from serving with all my sisters and brothers in the faith, including my dear friend, Erma, who, in the end, had few possessions but was rich in friendships and had the love of all her extended family, as well.

When I met her in 2011, she had just moved back to Renville to a senior living community close to Dave and Lou Ann’s home. She had had some health scares and had ever so reluctantly given up driving and given away her car. Despite her health challenges, she walked every day, prayed, read the Bible, and meditated on a daily devotional. She looked after her friends at the senior living community and stayed active with her church. She didn’t miss worship unless the roads were impassable with snow.

She was a partner in ministry for me. We started an ecumenical Bible study at the senior living community. Most of all, she was a good friend. I used to visit her, have tea and watch her crochet, as she did every day. That was one way she felt she could serve the church and the Lord. She crocheted prayer shawls and baby blankets. She had a tiny spiral book where she kept record of the hundreds of shawls and blankets she had made for hospitals, family, friends, and her church. One day, I asked Erma, “Will you teach me to crochet?” So, she did.

She gave me a ball of yarn and a size J hook, and we sat side by side on her sofa, giggling like little girls. She taught me the chain stitch and single, double and triple crochet. Then, when I finished my first blanket, how to make a fringe. Those were peaceful, happy times for me, growing in friendship with Erma and learning to serve the Lord in a new way.

Up until a month ago, when she suffered some TIA’s that greatly weakened her, she was still crocheting prayer shawls and baby blankets. She never stopped thinking about, praying for, and caring for other people. She wrote me about a year ago to tell me that she had to give up her apartment in the senior living community and move to a town 15 miles away to a different assisted living facility, where she would only have one room and no kitchen. She said that she would miss cooking, but it was OK. She was making friends and getting used to the food. She never stopped believing that for God, all things are possible.

What about us? Do we believe this?

The truth is, sometimes, when I am meeting with the boards of our church, and we are trying to figure out how to do necessary repairs to our aging house of worship or just trying to pay the large bills of ministry today, we worry about the future. But this is the nature of ministry, dear friends. We have had these same worries since we were a meeting house by the river in 1675. How will we continue for the next 200 years or more? We have the opportunity now, today, to faithfully give of ourselves—our time, talents, and treasures—to the church from our abundance and even our scarcity, so that we may continue in ministry in this community, growing in love for one another, seeking to be obedient to Jesus Christ. We do this trusting that we can’t do this alone. With God, all things are possible.

It makes me smile to think of faithful Reb Tevye of Fiddler on the Roof, who loved his family and had an intimate relationship with God, so that he could to say to the One whom he knew was the source of all his blessings, the One who knew him better than he knew himself, the One who had a plan for his life, but maybe it wasn’t what Reb Tevye wanted …

If I were a rich man
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
All day long, I’d biddy biddy bum
If I were a wealthy man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum

Lord, who made the lion and the lamb
You decreed I should be what I am
Would it spoil some vast eternal plan
If I were a wealthy man?

Let us pray.

Holy One, thank you for your love and grace for us and for the blessing of this church family and our beautiful house of worship. Thank you for the promise of eternal life through belief in the work of your Son on a cross. Lord, change our hearts and minds so that we have a right attitude and relationship with wealth and possessions. Free us from the temptation to love our stuff too much and grow in love for You and one another, instead. Provide for our congregation as we seek to continue in ministry, in your Son’s name, in this place. Teach us what it means to live out our faith that for You, all things are possible. Amen.

     [1] John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Translated by William Pringle. Calvin’s Commentaries 16-17 (Grand Rapids:Baker, 1989)2:393.

     [2] Martin Luther, “The Disputation Concerning Justification, 1536,” argument 27, trans. Lewis W. Spitz, Career of the Reformer IV, LW 34 (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1960), 187.

     [3] William C. Placher, Mark from “Belief, a Theological Commentary on the Bible” (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010) 144-145

     [4] William C. Placher, 144-145.

     [5] Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), 63.

Who Are We That God Should Care For Us?

Meditation on Psalm 8

World Communion Sunday

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Pastor Karen Crawford

Oct. 6, 2024

“When Apollo 11’s Eagle lunar module landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had to do something hard: Wait. They were scheduled to open the door of the lunar lander and step onto the unknown surface of a completely different world.” I am reading from a story by Erin Blakemore (July 17, 2024) at history.com. “But for now, their mission ordered them to take a pause before the big event. And so Aldrin spent his time doing something unexpected, something no man had ever attempted before. Alone and overwhelmed by anticipation, he took part in the first Christian sacrament ever” [1] celebrated on the moon—Communion.

Buzz was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church in Webster, TX, and “before he headed into space in 1969,” he was given special permission from NASA and his pastor, the Rev. Dean Woodruff, to bring Communion bread and a small vial of wine from his home church so that he might celebrate what would be the longest distance for extended home Communion, ever!

Only a few people were permitted to know about the plan to celebrate Communion in space. Not even Buzz’s wife knew about it.

The astronaut was mindful of the atheists’ lawsuit against NASA after the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. This was the first time American astronauts orbited the moon, and commander Frank Borman, along with astronauts Jim Lovell and William Anders, were so moved by their view of Earth from space on Christmas Eve that they took turns reading the story of Creation from Genesis, something we will be doing this afternoon during our Blessing of the Animals at the manse.

“The case was rejected by the courts,” says Paul Schratz in Astronauts Had ‘Space’ for God at https://the tablet.org/astronauts-space-for-god/. “But it had its impact. NASA told the astronauts to tone it down when it came to wearing their faith on their spacesuit, and they discouraged Aldrin from reading from Scripture while he was on the moon’s surface.”

Buzz’s faith wasn’t unusual for his occupation at the time. Twenty-nine astronauts who visited the moon during the Apollo program were religious. According to NASA, 23 identified as Protestant and six were Catholic. Most of them served as leaders in their congregations. [2]

Too excited to sleep during what NASA had scheduled as a 4-hour rest period before beginning their exploration of the lunar surface, Buzz pulled out from his personal kit two small packages prepared at his request. “One contained a small amount of wine, and the other a small wafer. With them and a small chalice from the kit, I took Communion on the moon,” Buzz says in his memoir, Return to Earth. He read John 15:5, handwritten on a notecard. The passage was traditionally shared in the Communion service back home. “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me, and I in them, will bear much fruit; for apart from me, you can do nothing.”

He had planned to read the passage back to earth, but at the last minute, NASA told him not to. Instead, he said, “I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own individual way.”

Then, during the radio blackout, “he reached for the wine and bread he’d brought into space—the first foods ever poured or eaten on the moon.” He poured the wine into the chalice his church had given him, and “in the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup.” [3]

Today, on World Communion Sunday, we remember and give thanks for our oneness in Christ with churches around the globe, followers in every place, many of whom are also celebrating Communion and marking this special day. Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr, pastor of Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, came up with the idea of World Wide Communion Sunday in 1930 while serving as moderator of the General Assembly. He wanted to promote unity and cooperation, not just in the Presbyterian Church, but among all Christian denominations. The tradition of celebrating World Wide Communion on the first Sunday in October started in 1933 with a joint Communion service at Shadyside, with neighboring congregations. It became denominational practice in 1936. It was promoted by the National Council of Churches in 1940, a year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States officially entering the Second World War.

“Dr. Kerr was concerned about totalitarianism,” said Tim Engleman, a church historian at Shadyside, “and the need for the church worldwide to take a stand against that.” [4]

Since the first celebration of World Wide Communion Sunday, we are reminded that when we partake of the bread of life and the cup of salvation, we make a radical statement of our loyalty to the Reign of Christ on earth, above any human powers or governments.

 On this day, especially, when we underscore the inclusive nature of the Lord’s Table, where ALL are welcome, we remember that Communion may be celebrated anywhere and everywhere we go, not only in this world and in the world to come, but on the very surface of the moon.

As Psalm 139 assures us, God is inescapable. Wherever we go, God is already there.

“Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.”

And today, as we close our observation of the Season of Creation begun on Sept. 1, let us remember with joy the passage astronaut Buzz Aldrin read for the American people on a TV broadcast just before returning to earth after the historic first moon landing. His journey had served to strengthen his faith and make the word of God more real to him. The second man to set foot on the moon quoted from memory a passage from Psalm 8 in the King James, in defiance of those who warned him against wearing his religion on his, well, spacesuit.

Buzz says at the end of a 1969 video of the broadcast, “Personally, reflecting on the events of the past several days, a verse from the Psalms comes to mind. ‘When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hath ordained: What is man that thou art mindful of him?” [5]

The verse that stands out to me in this Psalm, in which we can imagine the writer singing out God’s praise from the starting phrase, “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” is the second part of the verse that Buzz left out. He recited in verse 4, “what are human beings that you are mindful of them,” but not “mortals that you care for them?”

When we look out at the beauty and majesty of the universe—the sun, moon, and stars, we are stirred to ponder the nature of our Creator God, who formed us in love, for love, but also we consider the nature of human beings, created in God’s image. The psalmist asks, “What are we that God watches over us, is mindful of us?” And what are we—what makes us so special in all this magnificent universe—that God cares for little, seemingly insignificant us?”

The answer, I suspect, is that this is in God’s character to do so. For God IS love. But still, the depth of God’s love and all the rest of our unanswered questions will remain a mystery until one day, when we see ourselves and each other differently, through the eyes of eternity, when we are with our Savior at the great banquet in heaven. When all the people come from east and west and north and south to sit at table in the Kingdom of God, and we see him, finally, face to face.

Since 1969, Communion has continued to be celebrated quietly in space. “Astronauts Sid Gutierrez, Thomas Jones, and Kevin Chilton… celebrated a Communion service on the space shuttle in 1994, 125 miles above the Pacific Ocean. In 2013, International Space Station astronaut Mike Hopkins, a Catholic, arranged with his priest and diocese to carry… six consecrated hosts broken into four pieces, enough for him to receive weekly Communion for the 24 weeks that he was in space.”

And what about Buzz’s lunar Communion? How long did it remain a secret? It was never a secret from his home congregation in Webster, TX, which was also the home church for astronaut and Presbyterian elder John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth in 1962.

One Sunday in July each year, including this past July 21, the church celebrates “Lunar Communion Sunday.” The livestream begins with a picture of a broken loaf of bread and the cup Buzz took with him on Apollo 11, superimposed over a beautiful view of the earth from the moon that the elder in their congregation saw with his own eyes in 1969.

The worship service begins with the pastor reading John 15:5, “Jesus proclaimed, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me, and I in them, will bear much fruit; for apart from me, you can do nothing.’”

Let us pray.

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Thank you for creating the sun, moon, and stars, and the wondrous planet that we call home. Thank you for creating us and for being mindful of us, caring for us deeply in ways we cannot fully grasp. We thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ, and his inclusive Table where ALL are welcome to commune with him and one another, and where we are offered a glimpse, a foretaste, of the world to come in the bread of life and cup of salvation. Strengthen us to be more faithful when we leave your welcome table in sharing your life-giving word, because apart from you, we can do nothing. Amen.

      [1] Erin Blakemore, “Buzz Aldrin Took Holy Communion on the Moon. NASA Kept It Quiet,” July 17, 2024, at https://www.history.com/news/buzz-aldrin-communion-apollo-11-nasa.

     [2] Paul Schratz, “Astronauts Had ‘Space’ for God, The Tablet, July 24, 2019 at https://thetablet.org/astronauts-space-for-god/.

     [3] Erin Blakemore, July 17, 2024.

     [4] https://www.syntrinity.org/featured/world-communion-sunday-origins-begin-at-shadyside-church-in-pittsburgh/#:~:text=did%20the%20Rev.-,Dr.,held%20where%20it%20was%20born.

     [5] Video of Buzz Aldrin’s 3-minute broadcast on the way home to earth, in which he read from Psalm 8: https://youtu.be/NYZgJ8RaLKs?si=DQ1Q-6InL4uYaDng

Practical Resources for Churches

Everyone has a calling. Ours is helping you.

Consider the Birds

Pastor Karen shares thoughts on faith, scripture, and God's love and grace revealed through backyard wildlife.

palmsupco.wordpress.com/

F.O.R. Jesus

Fill up. Overflow. Run over.

Becoming HIS Tapestry

Christian Lifestyle Blogger

Whatever Happens,Rejoice.

The Joy of the Lord is our Strength

Stushie Art

Church bulletin covers and other art by artist Stushie. Unique crayon and digital worship art

The Daily Post

The Art and Craft of Blogging

WordPress.com News

The latest news on WordPress.com and the WordPress community.