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| General Presbyter The Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Smith pbylackbsmith@aol.com (570) 348-0643 (O) (570) 878-9951 (C) |
Barb's Sermon to Presbytery of Lackawanna
Stated Meeting – September 20, 2011
TEXT: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
The Apostle Paul penned the words I just read for you as part of his first letter to a people he once labored among;
people who were struggling in the midst of the realities of social and economic diversity. Not unlike today where it seems
the rich continue to get richer, while the working poor struggle - paycheck to paycheck - to break out of the cycle of what
seems to be a never ending climb to find a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. But even while the people of Corinth
struggled with issues from outside themselves that were more systemic in nature, Paul was concerned that the people he
couldn’t help but still love were struggling with another issue that should have bound them together. Their unity in the
body of Christ. Paul’s letter was a plea to his brothers and sisters in Christ whose diversity was threatening to fray the
fabric of their existence, rather than acknowledge their diversity as part of the pattern of their life together.
So as we consider this portion of the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, we are drawn right into a visual
that is as easy for us to identify with today as it was for our first century ancestors in the faith. Whether we’re happy with
its particulars – or not – we’ve all got a body made up of parts which are miraculously connected. “You are the body of
Christ and individually members of it.”
And so, as the Presbytery of Lackawanna we are the body of Christ, with some very real current day visual reminders.
If you look around, you will see knitting needles and yarn being worked to create helmet liners. During the early weeks
of 2011, Ryan Kraus informed me and the Bethany Church that his National Guard unit had been called up for active duty
in preparation for an early 2012 deployment in the Middle East. When that information became public, Linda Frangos
approached me with an idea. “I have this great pattern for helmet liners that I’ve made for other branches of the service,
she said. How about we put the idea out to the full Presbytery to knit helmet liners for Ryan’s unit?” At the May
presbytery meeting, May 10 to be exact, Linda shared the idea with you. 500 helmet liners in six months! Before she
even left the Montrose church, Linda had members of the body of Christ asking for the pattern and the yarn.
Enter the owner of Electric City Yarn in Scranton. Due to Ellen’s generosity, we would receive the yarn for this project at
her cost. But could Marge manage the yarn through the Presbytery Office? In this case, Marge became a dealer of a
legal controlled substance! Yarn which came in to the office in huge boxes, left in smaller plastic bags for distribution
throughout the Presbytery. In its finished form, helmet liners created by hands of a diverse people within the body of
Christ, will protect the heads – and ears – of Ryan and those he will serve alongside in a hostile land far from home.
If you look at the finished product, you’ll see that there are a variety of stitches that go into its creation. And when I
decided I wanted to be part of this project, I only knew how to do one of them! But without the patience of Linda Frangos
throughout and Helen Hopkins at the beginning, there would have been no hope for me! The knits needed the purls to
make the ribbing. The four inches of straight knitting needed decreases to bring the hat to its completion. Each and
every stitch was critical since dropping any one of them would cause the whole thing to unravel – if not right away, it would
eventually when it was needed most. And, through it all, groups of diverse folk came together in living rooms and meeting
rooms around a common project for the common good.
Other groups of diverse folk have been coming together in the Presbytery of Lackawanna over the last two weeks.
Many communities have experienced the sheer devastation of water. Water which is life giving in baptism, is life altering
in the case of tropical storm Lee. Never before was that so obvious than when I stood in the sanctuary space of our West
Pittston church and looked down to see their baptismal font covered in dust which only days before had been dark, dank
flood mud.
From Athens and Towanda in the north, to Shickshinny in the south, to Lanesboro in the east to West Pittston, tropical
storm Lee struck our diversity. But the fabric of our existence wasn’t – for one moment – challenged. People from all
over the Presbytery of Lackawanna have made more visual than ever the importance of our unity. Checks are being
written, mops are being collected, prayers are being lifted, sandwiches are being created, and boots are being donned.
Shovels that usually touch the clean white snow of winter are being submerged in the muck of who knows what by diverse
folks, good folks, whose only concern is to stand alongside brothers and sisters who could never get through this disaster
alone.
Enter Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, enter Presbyterians from Nashville to New York, from Pittsburgh to Pittston who
have come to do preliminary assessments, who have come to work, and who have offered to come on a moment’s notice
to rip out and build up because our unity won’t allow us to do any less. Churches in our Presbytery have flung their doors
wide open in anticipation of housing the helpers and the homeless. We are the body of Christ and individually members
of it.
Just as the ear is as much a part of the body as the foot, or the eye, or the hand, so too are the muck schleppers, the
drywall rippers, and the knit casters. Just as “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’”, neither can the
disparate theological groups do without one another. Later in this gathering, you will hear from some folks who attended
the Fellowship Gathering in Minneapolis at the end of August. What our brothers and sisters in faith among us in this
Presbytery are looking for – as I understand it – is a way to live in unity while at the same time acknowledge our diversity
without dropping a stitch thus endangering the integrity of our garment. As one of our sisters in the faith has said, “if this
can work anywhere it can work in Lackawanna because we love each other.”
We do. I’ve seen evidence of “if one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice
together.” May it continue to be so as we walk together into an unknown future with God as our constant companion.
Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to
God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Stated Meeting – September 20, 2011
TEXT: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
The Apostle Paul penned the words I just read for you as part of his first letter to a people he once labored among;
people who were struggling in the midst of the realities of social and economic diversity. Not unlike today where it seems
the rich continue to get richer, while the working poor struggle - paycheck to paycheck - to break out of the cycle of what
seems to be a never ending climb to find a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. But even while the people of Corinth
struggled with issues from outside themselves that were more systemic in nature, Paul was concerned that the people he
couldn’t help but still love were struggling with another issue that should have bound them together. Their unity in the
body of Christ. Paul’s letter was a plea to his brothers and sisters in Christ whose diversity was threatening to fray the
fabric of their existence, rather than acknowledge their diversity as part of the pattern of their life together.
So as we consider this portion of the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, we are drawn right into a visual
that is as easy for us to identify with today as it was for our first century ancestors in the faith. Whether we’re happy with
its particulars – or not – we’ve all got a body made up of parts which are miraculously connected. “You are the body of
Christ and individually members of it.”
And so, as the Presbytery of Lackawanna we are the body of Christ, with some very real current day visual reminders.
If you look around, you will see knitting needles and yarn being worked to create helmet liners. During the early weeks
of 2011, Ryan Kraus informed me and the Bethany Church that his National Guard unit had been called up for active duty
in preparation for an early 2012 deployment in the Middle East. When that information became public, Linda Frangos
approached me with an idea. “I have this great pattern for helmet liners that I’ve made for other branches of the service,
she said. How about we put the idea out to the full Presbytery to knit helmet liners for Ryan’s unit?” At the May
presbytery meeting, May 10 to be exact, Linda shared the idea with you. 500 helmet liners in six months! Before she
even left the Montrose church, Linda had members of the body of Christ asking for the pattern and the yarn.
Enter the owner of Electric City Yarn in Scranton. Due to Ellen’s generosity, we would receive the yarn for this project at
her cost. But could Marge manage the yarn through the Presbytery Office? In this case, Marge became a dealer of a
legal controlled substance! Yarn which came in to the office in huge boxes, left in smaller plastic bags for distribution
throughout the Presbytery. In its finished form, helmet liners created by hands of a diverse people within the body of
Christ, will protect the heads – and ears – of Ryan and those he will serve alongside in a hostile land far from home.
If you look at the finished product, you’ll see that there are a variety of stitches that go into its creation. And when I
decided I wanted to be part of this project, I only knew how to do one of them! But without the patience of Linda Frangos
throughout and Helen Hopkins at the beginning, there would have been no hope for me! The knits needed the purls to
make the ribbing. The four inches of straight knitting needed decreases to bring the hat to its completion. Each and
every stitch was critical since dropping any one of them would cause the whole thing to unravel – if not right away, it would
eventually when it was needed most. And, through it all, groups of diverse folk came together in living rooms and meeting
rooms around a common project for the common good.
Other groups of diverse folk have been coming together in the Presbytery of Lackawanna over the last two weeks.
Many communities have experienced the sheer devastation of water. Water which is life giving in baptism, is life altering
in the case of tropical storm Lee. Never before was that so obvious than when I stood in the sanctuary space of our West
Pittston church and looked down to see their baptismal font covered in dust which only days before had been dark, dank
flood mud.
From Athens and Towanda in the north, to Shickshinny in the south, to Lanesboro in the east to West Pittston, tropical
storm Lee struck our diversity. But the fabric of our existence wasn’t – for one moment – challenged. People from all
over the Presbytery of Lackawanna have made more visual than ever the importance of our unity. Checks are being
written, mops are being collected, prayers are being lifted, sandwiches are being created, and boots are being donned.
Shovels that usually touch the clean white snow of winter are being submerged in the muck of who knows what by diverse
folks, good folks, whose only concern is to stand alongside brothers and sisters who could never get through this disaster
alone.
Enter Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, enter Presbyterians from Nashville to New York, from Pittsburgh to Pittston who
have come to do preliminary assessments, who have come to work, and who have offered to come on a moment’s notice
to rip out and build up because our unity won’t allow us to do any less. Churches in our Presbytery have flung their doors
wide open in anticipation of housing the helpers and the homeless. We are the body of Christ and individually members
of it.
Just as the ear is as much a part of the body as the foot, or the eye, or the hand, so too are the muck schleppers, the
drywall rippers, and the knit casters. Just as “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’”, neither can the
disparate theological groups do without one another. Later in this gathering, you will hear from some folks who attended
the Fellowship Gathering in Minneapolis at the end of August. What our brothers and sisters in faith among us in this
Presbytery are looking for – as I understand it – is a way to live in unity while at the same time acknowledge our diversity
without dropping a stitch thus endangering the integrity of our garment. As one of our sisters in the faith has said, “if this
can work anywhere it can work in Lackawanna because we love each other.”
We do. I’ve seen evidence of “if one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice
together.” May it continue to be so as we walk together into an unknown future with God as our constant companion.
Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to
God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Last weekend I experienced the true breadth of this presbytery on two
consecutive days. And both experiences had everything to do with the
worship of God.
First, the presbytery gathered on a warmer than usual Saturday
morning at the First Presbyterian Church of Wilkes-Barre. Since the
Leadership Vision Team has set worship as a priority at our
gatherings, we convened with a service of worship led by the church’s
pastor, Rev. Bob Zanicky, and our Leadership Vision Team Moderator,
Rev. Michael Lyle. Our preacher was Rabbi Larry Kaplan from Temple
Israel in Wilkes-Barre, neighbor, friend, and colleague of Rev.
Zanicky. We installed Bob Zanicky and Joan Green as Moderator and
Vice-Moderator, respectively, and then celebrated the Sacrament of
the Lord’s Supper. The voices of the choir resonated through the
beautiful gothic sanctuary in their anthem and responses. The church’
s welcome was warm and genuine. How good it is when brothers and
sisters in the faith gather together.
On Sunday morning, I drove out to Susquehanna County to worship
with the Lanesboro Community Church pastored by Rev. Carl Batzel.
As a result of the September flood courtesy of tropical storm Lee, the
Lanesboro folk are gathering for worship in a place other than their
church building. Met at the front door of the manse, I was warmly and
genuinely welcomed by Carl and his wife Carol. As church members
and friends gathered, I was introduced to each. The living room of
Carl and Carol’s residence had been transformed into “church.” The
cross, candles and Bible were front and center; banners were hung.
Planning to have lunch together following worship, an inviting aroma
was coming from the kitchen. How good it is when brothers and
sisters in the faith gather together.
One of the things that I love about my work is gathering for worship
with all of you. So much is different; so much is the same. Thank you
for welcoming me into your midst.