Last fall a member of our congregation brought to my attention a report from GfK Custom Research, a noted market research organization. They released results from a 2005 study of various values that Americans hold dear. The report was intended to inform product and service providers about purchasing motivation, advertising strategies and marketing messages. However, the list of values intrigued me as tangible expressions of what Christian living can create and cultivate. So, in worship during the season of Epiphany we’ll look closer at these values in ascending order of rank from 7th to 1st: Stable Relationships, Justice, Friendship, Health and Fitness, Freedom, Family and Honesty. If these are the top seven values Americans are seeking these days, how can our faith and our church provide the mentoring and the means we need to develop these values in our daily lives? We start to answer this question with this morning’s focus on stable relationships. It’s certainly been a blessing sharing the holidays just passed with a newborn granddaughter. Left to my own devices, my personality tends to be a bit too task driven. Even when I’m relaxing I often try to accomplish other things at the same time. But when you’re feeding a month old baby, you don’t do anything else but hold a bottle and burp her and stare into her face for at least half an hour. It’s almost like a moment of prayer. Developmental psychologist and Harvard professor Erik Erikson theorized that something far deeper occurs during those times in the infant’s life as well. Erikson identified eight stages of psychosocial development, the first of which is Oral-Sensory and is normally addressed from birth to age one. Erikson called this first task of the ego, Trust vs. Mistrust, and maintained that it’s intimately tied to the activity of feeding and being held. The formative question “Is my world predictable and supportive?” is answered by the stability of the relationships that surround that child. Erikson writes, “The concept of trust vs. mistrust is present throughout an individual’s entire life. Therefore if the concept is not addressed, taught and handled properly during infancy (when it is first introduced), an individual may be negatively affected and never fully immerse themselves in the world. For example, a person may hide themselves from the outside world and be unable to form healthy and long lasting relationships with others or even themselves. If an individual does not learn to trust themselves, others and the world they may lose the virtue of hope, which is directly linked to this concept. If a person loses their belief in hope they will struggle with overcoming hard times and failures in their lives, and may never fully recover from them – preventing them from learning and maturing into the person they were meant to be if the concept of trust vs. mistrust was properly learned, understood and used in all aspects of their life.” Isaiah wasn’t a modern developmental psychologist, but he also understood the core value of stable relationships. At the time of his prophetic work, the people of Israel were in a period of perilously unstable relationships. Israel had been invaded by occupying forces of the Assyrian Empire who destabilized any resistance by breaking up communities and exiling anyone with political, military or economic power. The Israelites were relocated to other regions throughout much of current day Iraq, making them desperate strangers in strange lands. To these people in chaos the message of Isaiah offered the promise of renewed stability and restored relationships with God and God’s people through intimacy, presence, forgiveness, consistency and faith. Verse 1: Intimacy “I have called you by name, you are mine.” Taking initiative to call others by name, to communicate intimately, honestly and vulnerably, is vital for stable relationships. The day after Christmas I received a call at home from our Annual Conference Lay Leader letting me know that a clergy friend of mine had a serious heart attack. He was being airlifted from Cambridge to Abbott-Northwestern Hospital in critical condition and his wife and step-daughter were on their way in a car. I went to Abbott and met the family shortly after they arrived. As I walked into the waiting room his wife gave me a blank stare, not immediately recognizing me out of context, but as soon as I called her by name, “Annie”, she recognized me and clung as if she wouldn’t let go. She needed the comfort of intimacy in a strange and frightening time and place. If we invest ourselves in our church this too can become one of those intimate places in our lives where we know and are known by name. Verse 2: Presence “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.” Stable relationships don’t require great wisdom or skills or speech, often just the commitment to listen and be predictably present with someone through sunshine or storms. John Pfouts’ has been a long time member of this congregation who battled pancreatic cancer courageously and victoriously over a decade ago. Through the years he assembled what he affectionately calls his MOAF team; survivors that covenant to support one another through the Mother Of All Fights. It’s a curious collection of folk, some of whom are hardly even acquaintances except for their single connection with this MOAF team. They gather annually to share their stories of survival with cancer, heart problems, lung disease, kidney failure and other maladies. I was personally moved as I met with this group of twelve for lunch this past week, even though John Pfouts could not be with us in person. He had a recent bicycle accident that shattered a replaced hip and after hospitalization and rehab he’s still bound to his home in Florida. Yet during that lunch, the cell phone was passed from one survivor to the next to talk to John long distance and both give and receive powerful reminders of presence through storms past, present and future. Small groups for covenant and accountability are a necessary component of spiritual formation and growth. Verse 3: Forgiveness “I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you.” Forgiveness keeps relationships stable by offering second chances in the face of periodic and inevitable mistakes. The death and state funeral this past week of former U.S. President Gerald Ford brought this whole notion of forgiveness back into the national spotlight. Highlights of Ford’s life and leadership often include mention that one of his first major acts as president was to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon, who was under a cloud of scandal related to the Watergate cover-up. That decision was met with a firestorm of criticism, severely damaged Ford’s early popularity as the nation’s chief executive and probably cost him the subsequent presidential election. In retrospect however, most observers now agree that the pardon spared the nation a major distraction and helped the country move on after Watergate. Speaking this past week in the Capitol Rotunda where Ford’s body rested, his old chief of staff, Vice President Dick Cheney, said, “It was this man, Gerald R. Ford, who led our republic safely though a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe. Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon.” In a desert of judgment and criticism the church ought to be one oasis of acceptance and grace, forgiveness and pardon. Verse 4: Consistency “You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.” Attitudes and actions that consistently demonstrate preciousness, honor and love toward another are vital for stable relationships. When I asked for people to send me their responses to the question, “What do you think of when you hear the term “stable relationships”, your fellow members offered these thoughts: • “Stable relationships are relationships without damaging peaks and valleys within family, personal, business and governmental entities.” • “When I hear the word stable relationships, I think of it literally - of Mary and Joseph in the stable and the depth of love that they must have had for each other and for God. Also that they were ready and willing to face adversity in their enduring relationship with God and each other. • “Stable relationships require an interactive environment that eliminates or at least minimizes surprises.” • “Make every effort to understand, but not necessarily agree with the positions, goals, motivations and concerns of the other.” • “Avoid personalizing issues especially in business relationships.” • “Never go to bed mad!” Our worship, programs, outreach and means of welcoming need to be consistent and predictable if people are to count on us and return for involvement among us. I look forward to your comments about next week’s theme of justice… Verses 5-7: Faith “I will gather you together as family in my name.” Relationships gain stability as they are built on the foundation of faith commonalties rather than contrasts. The death this past week of Saddam Hussein, who devoted his life and career to dividing people of faith, shadowed the death of Teddy Kollek, the six term mayor of Jerusalem who devoted his life and career to uniting people of faith. For nearly three decades, from1965-1993 he labored to promote Jewish, Christian and Arab coexistence. He built bridges over religious and cultural chasms once declaring, “We proved that Jerusalem is a better city united than divided.” After a week of criticism about Keith Ellison simply being sworn into congress with his hand on a Qur’an, we’re well aware of the need for broadening our definition of the family of faith in our own country as well. Good Samaritan is in a unique position to foster this dimension of faith. Our very vision is to “Open hearts and minds in a divided world.” Jim and Joyce Holbrook from our church had a wonderful paragraph in their Christmas letter this year that offers an apt conclusion to stable relationships that are nurtured by intimacy, presence, forgiveness, consistency and faith. They wrote, “We recently heard the poet Robert Bly speak at the ‘U’. In Things that Happen, he writes in part, ‘You and I are the vowels That meet somewhere in the second stanza, And that changes the rest of the poem.’ Well, some of you we met in ‘the second stanza,’ some before. But you have all altered and enriched our lives.” Such is the blessing of stable relationships! "Spectrum of Love: Agape" 12/24/06 Posted Saturday, December 23, 2006 by Dan "Spectrum of Love: Agape" Luke 1:46b-55 A Sermon Preached by Becky Sechrist on 12/24/06 We’ve done it! We’ve finally reached the fourth Sunday of Advent. The celebration of this fourth week will be pretty short, so we’re going to make the most of it this morning. During the Sundays of Advent, we’ve been looking at the spectrum of God’s love. We’ve chosen four Greek words that express love, and have explored eros (romantic love), storge (family love), philia (friendship love), and today we are finally to the fourth one – agape. Agape may be the Greek word you are most familiar with, and it is certainly the kind of love most glorified in Christianity. There are organizations, retreat centers, small groups, Christian communities and even a Christian hip hop artist all called Agape. It’s because the Christian church has long defined agape as God’s unconditional love. It’s that love that God has for every human being. The kind of love that doesn’t go away because of your actions, and the kind of love that has room for you to turn to God at any point in your life. It’s the ultimate kind of love. You may have noticed a subtle kind of theme in our previous sermons on love. Both Dan and I gave you lists of ways to foster the different kinds of love. Ways to behave, things to do, that would help you express eros, storge, and philia in a lasting kind of way. We gave you those lists because we know, and you know, that we experience and practice those kinds of love imperfectly. People do fall in love with each other, and while some are able to practice that love in a way that makes their relationships last a lifetime, we also know that people break up, divorce, and break their vows in other ways. As much as we talk about the unconditional love that families hold for one another, especially parents for their children, we are either part of families or know families where children have disowned parents, parents have disowned children, and family members have broken trust with each other in ways that are unrepairable. And although we have wonderful, caring, compassionate friendships that hold us up and encourage us towards wholeness, we also know friendships that have been less than healthy, and have broken under the stress of neglect or have formed almost uncrossable rifts. But with agape, there are no lists! No ways to behave so that God will love us. God already loves us. The story of Mary is a wonderful example of this agape love of God’s. In the gospels, we first meet Mary at the moment of angel’s announcement. There is no pre-history of Mary telling us how she earned this place in God’s favor. She was chosen just because. Not because she did some phenomenal thing or behaved in some exceptionally holy way. Mary is who she is, an angel appears to her, she accepts, and she bears Jesus. Her response to this new task is recorded in the passage you just heard from Luke. She comes to visit Elizabeth, and she sings a song of how God has turned the expectations of her society upside down. God has looked with favor upon her, and she speaks of God’s mercy and God’s remembrance of a promise of mercy. The lowly are lifted up, and the hungry are filled with good things. So spend a moment or two basking in this unconditional love of God. Okay, you can continue basking, but you’re going to have to take that basking with you. The thing about agape is that we don’t just bask in it, it inspires us and enables us to practice that kind of love ourselves. It inspires us to a more perfect eros, a more perfect storge, a more perfect philia. And it even inspires us beyond this. Eros, storge, and philia all have a relationship at their core. Agape love inspires us to a love that acts as a blanket compassion for others, even if you do not have a relationship with them. As Madeleine L’Engle puts it, “Agape love is . . . profound concern for the well-being of another, without any desire to control that other, to be thanked by that other, or to enjoy the process.” Which is my point. The experience of agape prompts a response in us, a response that is also unconditional. There are no lists, but . . . . . Part of being a Christian is how we embody God’s Spirit and how we live in the world. We spend the time of Advent in preparation. It’s preparation for the birth of Jesus, but more importantly, it’s preparation for God’s incarnation. Incarnation, God made flesh. And the thing about incarnation is that it didn’t just happen once. At the culmination of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection, we all become part of the incarnation of God. That doesn’t make us all the Messiah, but the Messiah makes us all the embodiment of God’s spirit. We are loved by God. Greatly, deeply, and unconditionally. We experience that love through eros, storge, philia, and agape, as well as many other forms of God’s love. In turn, we practice that love of God as we live out God’s Spirit in the world. May we continue to experience and practice these forms of love throughout the Christmas Season and beyond. Amen.