Sermons
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 Old Testament Reading: Jeremiah 32:1-3a 6-15
The Epistle Reading: 1 Timothy 6:6-19 Native Americans have an interdependent tradition reflected in the metaphor of a “Common Pot”. It has a long history and was documented by outsiders during colonial times. In her book The Common Pot, Abenaki Tribe Member and Assistant Professor of History and Literature at Harvard University, Lisa Brooks describes it this way, “The Common Pot is that which feeds and nourishes. It is the wigwam that feeds the family, the village that feeds the community, the networks that sustain the village. Women are the creators of these vessels; all people come from them, and with their hands and minds, they transform the bodies of their animal and plant relations into nourishment for their families. The pot is made from the flesh of birch trees or the clay of the earth. It can carry or hold; it can be created or reconstructed; it can withstand fire and water, and, in fact, uses these elements to transform that which it contains.” The Common Pot was not just a metaphor but an act of sharing community resources for Indigenous peoples. If a visitor came to the village, whatever food they had was shared. Brooks says this was not just altruism but a necessity to human survival to work together to share common resources. Doing so would ensure social stability and physical health. Working together, all people were better off. Mutual dependence meant mutual benefit. This was a part of Native American culture that the indigenous people here extended to the early colonists as they shared what they had with them. Sadly, as we heard in the Living Psalm today and in history, that mutual sharing was not always appreciated and what some native tribes had was taken from them, they were exiled and in the 20th Century native children were taken from their parents in the U.S. and Canada and sent to boarding schools to be re-educated to “take the Indian out of them.” We Christians played a part in this at times, and that is what the General Synod was acknowledging in 2020 when they repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery and what it did to Native Peoples. It is only in acknowledging our wrongs and seeking forgiveness that we can move forward. We cannot say “well, I wasn’t alive then so it was not my fault.” We need to understand that even now we may have benefited through inheritance in land taken from others and only in owning the role the church and possibly our ancestors played in this, can we learn from it, undo some of the damage, and work to make sure it does not happen again. We can learn a lot from the Native Americans about sharing the Common Pot. Missionary John Sergeant was at a Mohican gathering in the 18th Century and he observed that before a deer was shared with all gathered, including the colonial visitors, the Native American elder prayed ‘O great God pity us, grant us Food to eat, afford us good and comfortable sleep, preserve us from being devoured by the Fowls that fly in the air. This deer is given that we acknowledge thee the Giver of all Things.” Some early settlers labeled the Native Americans as heathen when they were anything but. As the missionary found out, their spiritual and community beliefs were strong - just different from the colonists’. After the meal was cooked, it was shared with all present but the host did not partake as a symbol that it was a gift and therefore free and that he did not desire any of it back. Our Jeremiah scripture today is about sharing as well - helping a family member in financial trouble by buying his land but keeping it in the family - the common pot. But the scripture is also about the hope that after land was lost, there could be hope again, “For thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” (Jeremiah 32:15). There is always hope when we remember that humanity shares a Common Pot. The earth is the creator’s and everything in it and God gave us enough on this planet for everyone: the key is we have to work together, sharing the work and the soup in the common pot which the Timothy scripture reminds us of as well. We are told that as people of God we should shun the love of money and instead “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.” By doing this we are fighting the good fight of faith to which we have been called by God. Part of fighting the good fight is confessing our mistakes like the history of enslavement of people in this country and the genocide of Native Americans. And instead of just saying that is over, we work to repair relations with all God’s people in all their shapes, sizes, colors, abilities, ethnicities, nationalities, sexual orientations, genders and gender identities. We all share this common earth, we should all share in the Common Pot. And if we have more, the Timothy scripture reminds us not to be haughty but to “do good, be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.” Fighting the good fight of faith is an act of sharing and caring, of leading with love. It is putting more in the common pot when you have it and being grateful for the gift when you don’t. It is about acknowledging the creator in all of creation - human, animal and plant. On this American Indian Ministry Sunday, I finish with a version of the Native American Thanksgiving Address that is often used to open Tribal Confederacy Meetings: Thanks to the earth where men dwell, to the streams of water, the pools, the springs and the lakes, to the maize and the fruits, to the medicinal herbs and the trees, to the forest trees for their usefulness, to the animals that serve as food and give their pelts as clothing, to the great winds and the lesser winds, to the Thunderers, to the Sun, the mighty warrior, to the moon, to the messengers of the Creator who reveal his wishes and to the Great Creator who dwells in the Heavens above, who gives all the things useful to men, and who is the source and the ruler of health and life. (Common Pot, 4) I wonder how different our world might be if our leaders began their meeting with a prayer of gratitude such as this. Might they be better about contributing to the Common Pot? Even if they are not ready for this, we can be, let’s be an example of contributing to the common pot as we fight the good fight of faith. Amen. Pastor Michelle Fountain
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9/14/2025 0 Comments Sept. 14, 2025: Creating Hope A Poem as a Psalm:
“Hope is the Thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson “Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm - I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me. Old Testament Reading: Jeremiah 4: 19-28 The Gospel: Luke 15: 1-7 Watching the nightly news can be hazardous to your health. I know because I am a news junkie. This week watching the reports of the assasination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk much like the previous murders of Minnesota Democratic legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband and yet another school shooting, this one in Evergreen, Colorado where our friend and fellow member Lisa Hamm-Greenawalt and her family are from was both sad and unnerving. And then seeing an uprising in Nepal, more bombings in the Middle East and in Ukraine and the continued starvation of the people in Gaza, among other tragedies, I find myself wanting to curl into a ball and cover my ears asking God - why? And, can’t you please make this all stop? It would be really easy to lose hope when the world seems upside down, when disagreement leads to violence instead of an attempt to reach understanding, when the love of power seems to rule rather than the power of love. And yet, it is hope, love, and caring that save every time and this is not the first nor shall it be the last time that the world has been in conflict, torn apart by gun and other violence, when people are struggling, hungry, injured, lost and hurting. We have a God who does not give up on us despite what we as humans do to creation as the Jeremiah scripture reminded us. We have a God who, as Jesus reminds us, will go after a single lost sheep and rejoice when it is safely back in the pen. Yes, God is disappointed by the bitterness, strife, violence, pain, and suffering in the world, but God is neither causing it nor giving up on us and we cannot give up either. Just as the shepherd searched for the lost sheep in the parable Jesus told, so must we search for hope, creating it where we can, leading with a love that can overcome hate and division: a love that finds connection rather than ideologies that separate. A love that shows caring for all people and creation. It would be easy to feel justified in leading with hate and a desire for vengeance when we are wronged or the innocent are hurt or killed, but we are called to follow the example of Jesus to heal rather than hurt, to love rather than hate, to forgive rather than seek revenge. Last month we had the 80th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought the end of World War II but at a huge cost to the civilian populations of those cities. At this year’s memorial, as always, the remaining survivors called for peace. That call for peace began in 1947, when the people of Hiroshima started an annual Peace Day Memorial Ceremony in which they remember the victims of the Atomic Bombs and pray for peace in the world. The ceremony includes adults and children and involves messages of hope, music, the ringing of bells in memory of those lost and the release of 100s of doves as a sign of peace. Sadako Sasaki loved those peace day ceremonies. She was born in 1943 in Hiroshima. She was a vibrant young girl who loved to run and was very good at it as a member of her school’s winning relay team. When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a mile from her home when she was just two years old, the force of it blew her out the window but her mother found her unharmed, although they were both caught in the black rain while fleeing. Her grandmother was not as lucky, she ran back into the house and died that day. Unfortunately, at the age of 12, the radiation caught up with Sadako. She was struck with what was referred to as ‘the atomic bomb sickness”: leukemia. Sadako ended up in the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital where her friend told her the legend of the crane. She told her that a crane is supposed to live a long time and that if she made 1000 paper cranes it would be a healing blessing. Her friend folded a beautiful gold paper crane for her and left her paper to make more cranes. Each day that Sadako felt well enough, she made cranes. She got paper from gifts other people in the hospital received, medicine wrappings, anything she could find or people would bring her. Her brother strung them together and hung them from the ceiling of her hospital room. When she would wake up and look at the colorful display of birds, it would give her hope. It gave her something beyond her suffering to focus on. One version of the story is that she made 644 cranes before she died and her classmates made the remaining 356 and another says that she did complete the 1000 cranes and was buried with some. Some of her cranes have been given by her family to peace exhibits around the world. Today in the Peace Park in Hiroshima there is a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane that her classmates had made in her honor. Sadly, a similar statue in a peace park in Seattle, Washington was stolen last year. I was reminded of this story in 2011 when a large tsunami hit Japan. I was scheduled to travel to Japan on a teacher exchange that summer. At the time, I was the Student Council Advisor at Woodstock Union High School and I told the students the story of the 1000 cranes and asked if they wanted to make 1000 paper cranes as a message of hope and healing for Japan. They accepted the challenge and I brought some of those cranes with me as a gift to the Japanese teachers whom I met that summer. I also have had 100s of them flying in my classroom in three different schools ever since. These are a few of them. I like to think of them as physical reminders to always have hope. Some would say that hope alone does not work. Sadako still died despite the 1000 paper cranes but while she was in the hospital, folding cranes gave her hope to face each new day where she still wrote letters to and received them from her friends and classmates. It gave her help to accept something that she could not change and look what she inspired? Children in Japan and around the world still share her story and still make cranes of hope. All 6th grade Japanese students study World War II and what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They make presentations about different aspects of the war and the damage atomic bombs can cause and visit the Peace Park in Hiroshima. I was there along with about 40 other American teachers for the students’ presentation in Kobe in 2011. As Americans, whose country dropped the bombs, it was hard to sit through the presentations. And while some of us admitted the guilt we felt for that, the Japanese students and teachers reinforced the idea that we have to learn from our past and we all need to work together towards peace. I see hope in the work of a Rutland Wooden Toymaker and Vietnam Veteran. At age 82, Michael is raising money for a non-profit he is calling Mission Halo: a sustainable farm community where wounded veterans can learn the craft of making wooden toys: where they can find hope in the form of a community that supports them and a craft that can sustain them. Michael figures he has enough energy left in him to get it set up and to train the first set of apprentices, then they can take it over. We cannot stop all of the hate, all of the bullets and bombs; we cannot heal all the sickness, hunger, prejudice, pain and suffering in the world, but we can follow Jesus’ model of leading with love and caring. The power of love can fight the love of destructive, vengeful power. Hate is like a fire that will eventually consume itself leaving nothing. Love is like a seed that when planted and nurtured will grow and spread more seeds that have the potential to spread peace, support a group of wounded veterans and heal and feed the world. We are each called to be some of those seeds of love and cranes of hope. We can’t solve all the problems of the world but love in the face of hate, despair and violence is a radical act of peaceful resistance. Where others bring hate and judgment, we can bring hope and love following the model of Jesus Christ. And remember, love is louder. Hope is the thing with feathers that sings through the storm; we need to keep singing. Amen. Pastor Michelle Fountain |
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