shepherd's hook

The Lifted Life - Sermon Feb. 5

2012-02-05T05:11:00.000-08:00

Scripture: Mark 1:29-39
                  Isaiah 40: 21-31
Need a lift? I don’t mean a ride to the post office, but a lift for your spirits? A little wind beneath your wings? During these mostly grey, often damp and cold days of winter, I’ll admit that sometimes my spirits lag just a bit. So the words that shone out at me from the scripture lessons for this week were those beautiful words of promise - Those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall rise up with wings like eagles. They shall walk and not be weary, they shall run and not faint.
And then the Gospel story of Jesus coming right into the humble house of Peter’s mother in law, who had been laid low by a fever. Immediately. Mark’s favorite transition - IMMEDiately - they told Jesus about her and he went to her, took her hand and lifted her up.
What a great story for us to hold in our hearts as we walk through these mid-winter days.

Jesus took her by the hand and LIFTED HER UP! It’s better than that - this is the same word that is used by this Gospel writer about Jesus himself on Easter morning. He has been raised - lifted up. So Jesus is raising up this weary and fever worn person and lifting her into New Life!

How do we get lifted up? How does Jesus take our hands and raise our spirits - raise our lives to that next level? Well, the Spirit that lifts us and makes us soar is renewed in three different ways:

The first way of renewal is service to others -

Service
    This isn’t “passed around the sandwiches and beers”. This is the same word Jesus uses to describe His own life’s purpose - “I have come not to be served, but to serve”. This is the measure of greatness Jesus holds out for his followers of every age - “The greatest of you must become the servant of all.” This is the challenge and the hope Martin Luther King captured when he said, “Any body can be great. Because any body can serve.”
    How do you serve? It can be huge - giving up her job and possessions to help homeless people find homes. Or it can seem small - giving a few hours to cut homeless men’s hair. But it cannot BE small - because it is doing what we have been raised up by God to do.   And at every stage of the Christian life, it is vital that we recognize and embrace the service we do. Hazel Mumm died this week. She was 104 years old and about as big as my right arm. She used to live across the street, but for the last 10 years or so she’s lived in the nursing home. By the time she got to 100, she was beginning to wonder about how long this show was going to go on. But she’d say, “As long as God gives me, I’m going to do what I can to help out.” She brought her bedridden hall mates water. She prayed - out loud- for the sick. She told the dying that there was nothing to fear, that God would take them home. And she just kept breathing. The last time I saw her was at the Philo Tavern. Her children were taking her out for lunch and she was drinking a beer. And she told me I should have one, too. That woman knew how to serve.
    To be Lifted Up by Jesus is to be lifted up to a lifetime of service - whether that lifetime is 104 years or considerably less than that. One of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of our lives can be recognizing and fulfilling our call to service.

Two _ Lifted up for prayer.
    Jesus was serving - healing diseases, casting out demons - and he slipped away. To pray. He raised himself up out of bed and headed out to some where where he could be alone with God. A life that soars like an eagle has to be balanced. It can’t be constant activity. There has to be time spent in quiet with God. Watch the soaring birds - they aren’t flapping flapping flapping all the time.   The “eagles” of Isaiah’s poetry were big birds that perched on the edge of the rocky cliffs overlooking valleys, spread their wings and waited for the warm air to lift them and carry them aloft. Think of prayer as spreading your wings and waiting on the Lord.
    And prayer is one of those things, those habits of the heart, that need renewal at times. Lent is an opportunity that the community of faith gives to each other to attend to this important element of our spiritual lives.
    This Lent you are invited to undertake 40 days of renewal in prayer. I ordered a few copies of a book I think we’ll find encouraging - called “Praying with my Pen”. If you would like one, please let me know.
    For Jesus, communion with God in prayer refocussed and renewed his spirit. It does the same for us. This week a friend shared a meditation by Mary Oliver that captures the experience of prayer in a somewhat unexpected way:

    The Summer Day
Mary Oliver
Who made the world? 
Who made the swan, and the black bear? 
Who made the grasshopper? 
This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, 
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, 
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- 
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. 
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. 
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. 
I don't know exactly what a prayer is. 
I do know how to pay attention,
how to fall down 
into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass, 
how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields, 
which is what I have been doing all day. 
Tell me, what else should I have done? 
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? 
Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?

The third way of renewal and lifting up that the Gospel writer points us toward is to seek out new places and new people and new ways to share the message of Christ.
The disciples come to find Jesus, and they want to take him back to the scene of his recent triumph, and, incidentally, their home and the place they are most comfortable. One way that God renews his people is by taking us beyond our comfort zone and out into the wider world. That is certainly true for churches. We tend to think of this group and this place as our church home. And it is wonderful to share Christ here. But we are also called to go OUT and share God’s message of grace and love more widely. Jesus doesn’t suggest it. Jesus commands it.
    Yesterday the Outreach Committee of this congregation met to outline plans for reaching out for the year ahead. They planned three events to reach new people with Christ’s love. And one continuing emphasis - for each one of us to invite one new person to participate in our life in the coming year. I’m going to be asking you this year - who have YOU told about what God is doing here? Who have you included in the Kingdom Life of this congregation?
    Renewal and lifting up of the church happens when we have the courage to step out of our routine and into the outward and upward call of Christ.

The Good News of Jesus Christ is moving and active in this world.
The Spirit is still lifting up those who are weary and burdened by living. God is still strengthening us, individually and as a church body to walk and not be weary, to run and not faint.
Jesus is still taking us by the hand and lifting us up - in service, in prayer and in outreach.
As we come to the Table this morning, as we lift our hearts to God, the question we might ask ourselves is, this week -
How will we live the lifted life?

Epiphany Sermon/Story

2012-01-07T20:33:00.000-08:00

Dream of a Different Way
by Cindy Shepherd
Matthew and I love dreams. I, too, believe that God sometimes uses our dreams to comfort and to guide us. This story is my attempt to imagine what the wise men dreamed which changed their plans after they saw and worshipped the Christ Child.

“Having had a dream . . . they returned by a different way.”

    As he settled into bed after seeing the little king, Casper’s mind reviewed their journey. He was glad he had suggested they come. All three of the wise men had seen the star. All three had consulted their ancient book of heavenly wisdom. They had all agreed on the importance of the new king. But it was Casper who initiated the trip. It was Casper who had said, “Let’s go!”
    His enthusiasm for the journey sprang from several motives: He wanted to take an active part in history-in-the-making. He craved adventure and enjoyed the fellowship of his friends, Balthazar and Melchoir. But, perhaps most important of all, Casper was anxious to get away from home.
    To tell the truth, he had just had another disappointment from his parents. You see, Casper was at the stage in life when he felt ready to take a wife. He was about forty. Perhaps he had been ready for a few years. The trouble was that in the entire province, not one suitable woman could be found.
    As he looked back, he realized that his parents had been finding faults and making excuses for years. His mother’s voice rang in his ears:
    “This one has no social standing.”
    “That girl’s dowry isn’t large enough.”
    “She’s too mousy.”
    “She’s too loud.”
    Now, whenever Casper so much as noticed a woman, he heard the voice: “Casper, She won’t do! . . . “ It had happened again today, as the innkeeper’s lovely daughter held the door of the stable open for him. She was of marriageable age - strong, with beautiful eyes - and (his mother’s voice)   “Casper! A foreigner?!   You’ve got to be kidding, honey!”
    Casper shook the voice out of his head and closed his eyes to sleep. And to dream.
    In his dream, Capser found himself once again in the stable. Again, there was the beautiful baby, lying in a manger of hay. In his dream, the innkeeper’s daughter stood beside the quiet baby and she beckoned to Casper. He wnet to her, put his arm around her and, together, they gazed down at - Yes! It was THEIR sleeping infant. Casper’s heart was warm and filled with love.
    And then he heard a voice - but NOT his mother’s voice - say, “Casper, don’t go back to Herod tomorrow. Stay here in Bethlehem and see what will be.”
    And when Caper awoke the next morning, he remembered the dream.

Melchior, like Casper, had been glad to make the long trip to Bethlehem. He enjoyed the privilege of worshipping the newborn king. It was especially gratifying to be able to offer the gift of a treasure box of gold. The parents clearly needed the help. It made him feel good to do things like that - to use the wealth his high-status job earned him to do good.
    When he knew he was doing good while he was doing well, Melchior’s conscience didn’t hurt him quite so badly.   But he noticed that, lately, the moments when his staus gave him pleasure were getting few and farther between. He simply could not settle in and enjoy his position. Because he knew he didn’t deserve the prestige, the money . . . the job.
    Melchior had a shameful secret, one he couldn’t bring himself to share, even with the other wisemen: His family had two sons and only enough money to send ONE to astrologer school. So the boys agreed that whoever scored highest on the S.A.T. - the Stargazer’s Aptitude Test - would get the truition. Melchior’s secret was that, when they took the test, he had cheated. He cheated his brother out of the chance to go to astrologer academy. Not Melchior was a hot shot wiseman, and his brother was a pots and pans dealer back in Syria. Melchior felt awful. He was a lout. He was a fraud. He was a dirty rotten cheater.
    He had to quit thinking like that! Or he’d never get to sleep, and he and his friends had a long trip ahead of them. He told himself, “I’ve got to think of something positive. I’ll think of giving the gold to the baby.”
    He closed his eyes to sleep. And to dream.
    The stable door opened and Melchior staggered inside. There, across the straw strewn floor, was the rustic holy family. Mary. Joseph. The Child. Melchior advanced toward them, carrying his huge box of treasure. It was SO HEAVY!
    The box seemed to have grown from the size of a shoe box to that of a coffin. Melchior could hardly carry it! What was going on? As he approached the child, it dawned on him. This box had no gold in it. It was filled with test papers, and cast iron pots and pans, and his poor brother. It was an entire box filled with Melchior’s shame and guilt. What an awful thing to give a baby! He needed to put it down. But he couldn’t.
    Closer and closer his unwilling feet carried him to the manger, until the baby reached out a tiny, pudgy hand and took the hideous box from Melchior’s exhausted arms. It seemed no more than a rattle to him. The baby shook it, laughed and threw it to the corner of the stable. All the burden was gone.!
    Then Melchior heard a voice, “Don’t go back to Herod. Go to your brother and make this thing right between you.”
    And when he awoke, Melchior remembered his dream.

Balthazar had no trouble falling asleep. Especially when he’d completed an objective. Today, they found the little king of Israel. The star led them all the way. Watching stars came easily to Balthazar. He never had to work too hard, or study very much. And he made a lot of money. Even when you spent as much as he had recently on camels and myrrh, it was still a good living. Which was why, years ago, Balthazar decided to become an astrologer in the first place. It had surprised a few people. Everyone seemed to think he would become a musician. His aunt told him, “A voice like yours is a gift! You should sing! sing! sing!” But rather than study music, Balthazar had opted for the security of a professional career. Had he made the right choice? It seemed to have woked out, but Balthazar didn’t know.
    He yawned and drifted off to sleep. And to dream.
    The stable door opened and Balthazar slipped inside. What was that awful sound? WAAAAAAHHHH ! It was the baby. Crying. WaaaaAAAAAH!
    Balthazar looked around. There was no one else there. No mother. No father. No servant. Nobody. So Balthazar scooped the red-faced infant into his arms and began to walk and to sing:
    “Hush little baaby, don’t say a work. . . “ the crying slowed.
    “Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird . . . “ The baby relaxed.
    “If that mockingbird don’t sing. . . “ The newborn king’s eyelids drooped and closed.
    He was sleeping in Balthazar’s arms, when Balthazar heard, “Don’t go back to Herod. You belong in a place I will show you.”
    When he woke up, Balthazar remembered the dream.

As the three wise men packed their camels the next morning, they were strangely quiet.
Each one seemed to be in a spell cast by his cream. As the innkeeper’s daughter passed them in the stable yard, Casper was the first to break the silence. “Friends,” he announced, “I hope you won’t mind going on without me. The two of you can go back to Herod, can’t you? I believe I have some business here in Bethlehem.”
    Balthazar readily agreed that Casper should stay.
Then Melchior, looking anxious, chimed in, “This is awkward because, you see, I too was hoping to be relieved from our responsibility to Herod on the trip back. I need to return directly to my home and straighten out some business with my brother. It is rather urgent, and I need to leave immediately.”
    Balthazar was unfazed. “There is still no problem! I don’t mind traveling alone!”
    The three bid one another ”God speed” and went their separate ways. Balthazar alone traveled the road back to Herod’s Jerusalem palace. But, before he got there, Balthazar saw an arrow shaped signpost by the side of the road:
    “Red Sea School of Music - 10 M >”
    Balthazar pulled on the reins and stopped his camel. A snippet of the dream came to his lips. “If that mockingbird don’t sing . . .” He sighed “Herod will simply have to understand.”
    And he turned his camel and headed down a different road.
“And having a dream - they returned by a different way.”

Having met and worshiped the Christ, what do you dream?
This New Year, will your dreams lead you in a different way?

Heaven Can't Wait for Hope

2011-11-27T05:24:00.001-08:00

Advent #1 - Hope Can’t Wait
Isaiah 64, Mark 1, 13

Advent is a time of waiting. And if there is anything that is harder to do than wait, it is to wait in the dark. Nights are so long. the sun goes down at 4: 32 and doesn’t show it’s bright little face until 6:50 in the morning.   Add to that the fact that the short days we do have this time of year are often overcast with thick clouds.

The darkness isn’t just meterological, is it? Did you read the paper yesterday? On Black Friday (see - dark) there was incident after incident of bad behavior on the part of bargain hunters. People trampled, robbed, pepper sprayed by PS3 video game seekers. Yeah, take that! Christmas Spirit!

And, the stories that weren’t about bad behavior were about people who had sacrificed Thanksgiving dinner with their families in order to stand on line to get into a temple of consumerism - like Walmart or Best Buy or the mall.

It’s pretty gloom and doom out there in the big cold world. Economic uncertainty. Political unrest. Social polarization. Environmental disasters. It’s a dark time on planet Earth.

If we pay any attention at all, it is easy for our hearts to resonate with the words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, who cried out this prayer:   “O Lord! Would that you would tear open the heavens and COME DOWN!”

It’s easy to think of God sitting up, beyond the clouds, in majesty and glory upon His throne. And what we need is for Him to rip a hole in the clouds, and descend with power and might to remake the world one more time. If God would do that he would set things right! He’d teach those nasty shoppers a lesson. He’d shine a light on the rats and roaches that are ruining our country and our world. He’d rescue the little guys, upside down in their mortgages, and put to work the restless, purposeless young people who see no future for themselves. O! Would that you would tear open the heavens and come down!

That isn’t our Advent hope, though. Not because it couldn’t happen. But because it has already happened - God has already torn open the heavens and come down. The very first section of the very first account of Jesus’ life - the Gospel of Mark - uses that very image to describe the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry: He says that the heaven were torn open - literally ripped - like a cloth, and God’s Spirit descended on the Christ.

The Gospel of Luke traces the rip in the heavens all the way back to the night of Jesus’ birth, when the skies over the shepherds opened and the good news of great joy was announced by a heavenly choir.

God ripped open the heavens and came down in the person of Jesus Christ. Since that happened, hope has changed. What he did, how he lived, who he touched, what he said - all of that means that what we hope and wait for is qualitatively different now.

Our hope is deeper and more profound because it is based on the knowledge that God was not content to sit in the heavens and tsk tsk over human suffering and sin. God ripped open the world and entered our darkness whole heartedly, taking on all our limitations and pains and problems. God couldn’t wait for conditions to be right, or the world to be a promising place. He couldn’t wait until everyone and everything was ready. He jumped right in, in a surprising place, and at a surprising time.

I think that is one of the reasons Jesus, when he is talking about the future of the world, says that God’s coming is when the sun is dark and the moon has lost it’s light and the stars have fallen from the sky. Because God comes when things are dark. When we have lost our ability to see the future, God comes to bring us a bigger and better future than anything we could have imagined.

This is hard to see in the macro world of economics and politics. I’m not at all comfortable naming this development or that one as a sure sign of God’s future working itself out among us.   It is too soon to say if our country will become a better one because of these difficult days. I’m not sure what is going to come out of the European debt crisis or the popular uprisings in the Middle East. Something better? I hope so.   But I don’t know about that.

But I do know that it is sometimes, often, the darkest areas of a person’s life are precisely the place where God’s tears into our lives to re ignite hope and open a future.
It’s not just that we hope that God comes down from heaven or that at the end of this messy life we get to go up to heaven. It is that somehow the best part of heaven - God - is making us new even here and now, as we wait in the world’s darkness and our own.

This has happened to me. This has happened to many of you. But I want to tell you a story that comes from another community about how God works to bring people in darkness the light. (Shane Claibourne - Irresistable Revolution, p. 183)

This story is about a couple who couldn’t have children. (Kinda like some couples in the Bible.) And about a teenage girl who was having a baby for which she wasn’t prepared. (Kinda like Jesus’ mother.) The couple invited the homeless girl to come and live with them, and after the baby was born, she stayed. The couple helped her raise the baby, while she pursued her dream of going back to school to become a nurse. They have been living together for over a decade now. They are a family.   And the baby is a teenager. And there is a heart-wrenching twist to this story, because the older woman in this family is very ill now. But she has a nurse in her home to help take care of her, just as she once took care of the nurse. Out of darkness - there is a profound and beautiful hope.

So - how do we hope given our faith that God has torn open the heavens and come down? Jesus says we hope and wait expectantly. And the best image I’ve come across for that kind of expectation is that it is like being a kid, waiting for a parent to come and pick you up. (Lifted from commentary by a PCUSA prof. at Luther Seminary. textweek.com) After school, a music lesson, soccer practice. You remember that feeling? And sometimes mom or dad was late. Now I guess kids can text to find out where mom is. But back in the day, that wasn’t a possibility. The best we kids could do was to do whatever we could think of to shorten the time and the distance between us. We’d walk to the corner we knew mom would drive around. We’d stand there, leaning out into the street to look for the familiar car. We’d listen for the sound, watch the place it would appear. We’d wait expectantly, not passively, but moving in the direction of the one we hoped to see.

Advent Hope is like that. It is the kind of hope that looks alert for opportunities to move in the direction of Jesus Christ. God couldn’t wait to bring us hope, and we can’t wait to do whatever we can to share that hope with others. We know God is with us when we do. One of the things we do as a congregation is provide opportunities to reflect the light of Christ. This week you’ve already heard about two: The Outreach team’s “Creches and Carols” event is a way for you to invite a friend or neighbor to get to know our community, and sense the love of God. And the Deacons have provided a way for you to feed a hungry family at Christmas time by shopping for food baskets.   In our lives, I pray that we will be alert for chances we have to move in God’s direction as we hope this Advent season.

The days may be short. The darkness may be all around us. But as people of God we never lose hope. For, as we’ve been saying for centuries:

Christ has come, Christ is coming, Christ will come again.

Right here, right now - heaven can’t wait for hope.

Sermon notes - 11/20/11

2011-11-20T13:43:00.001-08:00

Nov. 20, 2011
Matthew 25: 31-46
The Final

I had a teacher in high school who would give us the answers to the final exam before the final exam. Not just the questions, but the answers. It was very helpful. She said, “I don’t want anybody to flunk. I want everyone to learn the material and be able to do well on the test. It just makes sense to give you the answers, so there is no reason in the world why any one should fail.” And . . . that was nice.

Our Gospel lesson this morning seems to indicate that Jesus, like my teacher, also does everything in his power to insure that when people face their final examination, they do as well as they possibly can.

Does all this final exam talk make us a little nervous? Well, it does me. I think when we hear this our natural first thought is that this is about who gets into heaven and who goes to the other place. And Jesus, who we all know is a forgiving kind of a guy, doesn’t seem to cut the goats in the story much slack. This seems like a not very funny version of a St. Peter at the pearly gates joke (and, having searched my internet sources for an appropriate example to share with you, I must say, there are some funny ones, but not many a preacher can tell from the pulpit. Want one anyway? A nice little old married lady died and met St. Peter at the pearly gates. St. Peter says, Everybody has to answer a spelling question to get into heaven. You’ve been married for 47 years, always good to your husband . . . can you spell the word “LOVE?” Of course she can and she comes right in and makes herself at home. A few years later, St. Peter asks her to watch the gate for him while he runs an errand. As she’s sitting there, who should come up but her husband. She’s so glad to see him! “How’ve you been?” she asks. “Couldn’t be better, he says. The last three years have been the happiest of my life. I married Vicky, the nurse who took care of you during your last illness. She’s a real ball of fire. We’ve traveled all over the world. Had the best time. Why, today we were water skiing and my ski slipped off, hit me in the head, and here I am. So how do I get in?” “You have to spell a word.” “What word?” Czechoslavakia.

Getting into heaven jokes are . . . iffy. But the evidence is that Jesus’ story, is not so much about individuals getting into heaven when they die, as how the church that he was leaving behind on earth could fully and faithfully participate in the Kingdom that Jesus the Christ had brought into being on earth.

If it is true, that the Kingdom of God is at hand in Jesus’ life, and that Jesus has invited us to be a part of His Kingdom - then how do we exercise our citizenship in this divine new order of things? How do we show that we belong and we long to remain where Jesus’ love is the ultimate rule?

Maybe this is more like a citizenship test. Where does our love, loyalty and future lie?
In some countries, passing a citizenship test is really hard. You have to be born there, or be of the right ethnic group, or prove that you can speak the language. But the test that Jesus tells us the answer to here (4 times in 10 verses! ) is really remarkably lenient.

It isn’t asking us to do or know anything really hard. We don’t have to explain the doctrine of the Trinity, or repeat the words of institution for the Lord’s supper. We don’t have to quote a Bible verse, or show our sunday school attendance record.

All we have to do is these things:
Feed the hungry.
Give water to the thirsty,
Clothe those who need clothing.
Welcome the stranger.
Visit the sick and those in prison
It’s not asking for something that takes incredible skill, or courage, or massive amounts of time. Or cooperation. Or politic power.

He doesn’t say, “End world poverty” “Design a water distribution system that meets the criteria of equity and fairness.” “Heal the sick.” “Free the prisoner.” Just feed those who are hungry. Give water to the thirsty. Give clothes to those who need them. Be nice to the new person in the neighborhood. Simple, doable things that fit into anyone’s life.

And the world is full of hungry, thirsty, needy, strange, sick people. You don’t have to look very far to find someone who needs your compassion, who needs your help. Maybe the new mom down the street, maybe the child who doesn’t seem to have a coat. maybe the mumblin, confused person on . . . The question isn’t “what should I do, but where should I start?”

It’s like we’re in the group of soldiers who set up camp in a forest at night. They weren’t sure exactly where the enemy was, so they sent out a scout to find the location for their morning escape. He was gone a long time, and when he came back, they gathered around. “Great news!” he said, “We’re surrounded! We can attack anywhere.”

There are opportunities everywhere to be loving, helpful, kind and generous people. To serve Christ the King by serving the his brothers and sisters and ours. Praise the Ruler of All - the Good Shepherd - our Soul’s Teacher! We know the questions, we know the answers! We need not fear the final exam. PS It’s already started.

Ready? Set? Burn!

2011-11-05T15:51:00.001-07:00

This is what I THINK I'm preaching tomorrow. Spirit willin' and the creek don't rise.

The Parable of the Ten Maidens and Their Lamps -

I count among my few friends a wedding planner. What a high-pressure, responsible job! One of the biggest moments - one of the great events in any person’s life - When I read this parable this week, I couldn’t help but think right away of how the wedding Jesus talks about in this story could have used the services of my friend Gwen. I mean REALLY! The groom is late. The guests fall asleep. Half the wedding party fails to perform their assigned duty. Then the groom locks out 5 of the bride’s best friends. . . What a disaster! And you know I am planning a wedding myself. In my current nuptial state of mind, I’ve had wedding nightmares this whole week.

But finally, I had to say to myself what I’m saying to you this morning: Jesus isn’t talking about weddings. The wedding stuff is just an analogy. It’s just a narrative device. So I’m not going to spend alot - heck, I’m not going to spend ANY time talking about first century wedding customs or explaining the whys and wherefores of wedding customs through the ages.

Jesus is talking about Big Events - Once in a Lifetime Moments - Experiences that Change LIves Forever.   This parable is about Once in a Lifetime chances and whether we are able to rise the occasion. So let’s cut to the chase, shall we?

And the first truth about moments like that - God moments in our lives - is that moments like that don’t happen according to OUR schedule. We can’t write the really big events on our calendars with the time and the place in pen.
In Jesus’ story - the groom does not arrive when he is expected. He is delayed, and doesn’t show up when everyone is waiting and ready.   He shows up way late, in the middle of the night, when everyone has fallen asleep.

This is the way God moments happen in our lives.   Week before last, Tim was gone all week. From Monday through Friday he was in Phoenix, and Friday evening, when I expected him home, I was really looking forward to seeing him. He pulled in the drive and I walked out to meet him, but as I did I saw a neighbor, someone I have known casually since moving to Philo, walking down the street. I waved, and this person walked straight toward us. “Cindy, do you have a minute? I need to talk to you.” Something had happened to that person that day that caused them to need to talk about God and life and death and the big stuff. I’d wanted to talk to this person about their faith, and share my faith in Jesus for ten years.   And this was the moment. This was the time when the door was finally open and we finally got to share and pray together. Was it on my calendar? My schedule? No. It was not. It happened when it happened. And by the grace of God, ready or not, I was there. That’s how God- moments occur.

How can we loosen our grip on our schedules, our control, our goals and objectives just enough to be able to be there, ready and expectant, when a Big, life-changing moment comes too early, or too late to fit into our plans?

Some of the people in Jesus’ story managed to do that.   Some didn’t. But some did.    Here’s the mark of the successful bridesmaids - They were packin’. Not guns. But flasks of oil. They had the resources to deal with the unexpected at the ready. Now, those other bridesmaids might have had plenty of oil in great big barrels at home. Olive oil is hardly a scarce resource in Palestine, then or now. But they didn’t have it with them. They couldn’t pull it out and use it when the need arose.

What about our faith? Are we packin? When we face a “Big Event” - whether it is the chance to share our faith, or do an important service for one of the least of these my brothers and sisters - Do we have what we need close at hand? Do we have a relationship with Jesus that is close enough, solid enough that we can describe it to someone who needs to know him? Do we know how to pray well enough to do it if someone asks? Have we thought deeply enough about the big questions to at least know how to phrase them should the occasion arise?   When it comes to faith, are we packin? Having a Sunday go to meetin faith is good. It’s like having a big barrel of oil at home. But when someone is hurting - and they need a light for their darkness - it often isn’t enough to say, “My church has services on Sundays at 10. That’s where God can be found.” When it comes to faith - each of us needs to carry it with us. We gotta be packin’.

Which takes preparation. Cause here’s the thing - each one of us needs to be prepared to meet God and to walk into the Once in a LIfetime moments God puts in our lives one by one. There’s no such thing as faith by association. That’s why the bridesmaids who have oil can’t share it with the ones who do not. Your mother’s faith may be great. But it isn’t your faith. Your grandfather’s generosity may have been legendary.   But that doesn’t make you generous. Your brother, or your sister or your best friend may be the most compassionate person ever. But their compassion doesn’t make you a loving person.   To be the person God is calling you to be means that YOU have to respond to the call. Nobody can trust God or serve God or meet God for you.   Each one of us has to decide what kind of person we are going to be and practice being that person for ourselves.

Preparation is about habits and practice. Part of Tim’s success is that he’s one of the best lighters around. Putting the best light on a situation - literally - takes time and a certain amount of trouble. Sometimes people say to him, “Oh, we don’t really need to take the time to do it right for THIS shot. It’s not important enough.   Not enough people are going to see it. Nobody will notice the difference. Nobody really cares.” And he say, “That’s true. This shot doesn’t really require great lighting. But if I don’t do good lighting on this shot, then when the really important shot comes, I won’t know how.”

The habits of faith - prayer, worship, giving, Bible study, building up the church, speaking the truth in love, forgiving one another, trusting God - are like that. Most times whether we do them or not doesn’t seem to make much difference. But if we don’t do them on a regular basis, they don’t become part of who we are, and when we DO need to do them, we find that we don’t know how. The Big Event comes, a loved one dies, a child is in trouble, a opportunity to make a difference or to make a big mistake comes and we are clueless as to how to respond.

The Big LIfe changing events happen and if we are ready, willing and able to answer the summons, we become part of the celebration of God and all those other invited guests. We stand on one side of the door and enjoy the party. But the door has another side. And there are eternal consequences for not preparing, not being ready, not being able to respond.

I don’t think Jesus was trying to scare people. But I think he was trying to motivate people to be ready for the Big Opportunities for faithful living that God puts in each believer’s life.

Let’s get ready for the moments that come whether we are ready or not.
Let’s get set by practicing our faith every week, every night, every day.
Let’s let our lights shine for Jesus. Ready? Set? Burn!

Jesus' Version of "Getting Things Done"

2011-10-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

I’m going to do something stupid up here. I’m going to start a sermon with a confession. Which is stupid because who really cares about somebody else’s problems? Be that as it may - here is my confession: I struggle with organization. Especially in my office. I have lots of important stuff, which I half remember is there, but I can’t put my hands on it. Like a couple of Sundays ago. When the scripture was about the king inviting everybody to the banquet and people give all kinds of lame excuses about why they can’t come. Carol Erb had given me a copy of a really funny old song about that. I remember the chorus: I can not come to the banquet, don’t bother me now, I have taken a wife I have bought me a cow, I have fields and possessions that cost a pretty sum, so don’t bother me cause I can’t come. I thought that would be really fun for us to sing. But I couldn’t find it.
I looked everywhere for it. But I didn’t find it. What I did find was a journal that had directions for an art project that I really really really wanted to do during Lent last spring.
I pulled that thing out of the piano bench, looked at it and just about cried.
I struggle with organization. So I signed up with a life coach to take a course on organization. And I bought a books - "Getting Things Done". And I’m working on it. I’m seeing some progress, but if you walked in my office right now, you’d be hard pressed to tell. But there’s one difference now: I have a filing cabinet. That is the first and most important thing to do for office organization: have a filing system that you can put things into and take things out of when the occasion arises. Or you are sunk. You are always looking at piles of paper and you have all this information and it is useless to you. You have to have some organizing principle or all the paper is just . . . trash waiting to fulfill its destiny, which is to be thrown away.
OK. Most of you don’t have disorganized offices. Or linen closets. Or pantries. Or clothes closets. OK. Good for you.
But what about our understanding of God and especially the handle we have on scripture - which we affirm is one of the most important ways God communicates his will for our lives. How do you organize all the things between the covers of this book and make sense of it for your life?
Pharisees in Jesus’ day, and Pharisees in our own day (and I’m not using that term derogatorily - well, maybe I am) look at this book and pull out all the laws. There are 10 Commandments. Those are the law God gave through Moses. 10 is just quite a few. OK. Well the people in Jesus’ day had not 10, not 100 - but closer to 1000- 613 to be precise - laws that they had drawn out of God’s Word and tried to follow to the letter everyday of their lives.
So, they come to Jesus, with a question about those 613 laws that they feel will be a stumper. (It’s just actual fact that they were not asking out of intellectual curiosity - but malice toward our man, Jesus.)   “Which is the most important commandment?” It’s like asking a mother, which is your favorite child. Or an art collector, “Which is the best painting?” or a banker, which is your favorite hundred dollar bill? The right answer is, ‘All of them!”
But Jesus doesn’t take the easy answer. Why are we not surprised by that? Jesus doesn’t mouth the pious platitude. Instead he offers an honest answer. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Boom. A one-two punch. He said, Those aren’t just two of my favorites. Those are THE two , on which hang all 611 of the others.
In other words - he wasn’t just answering a question. He was offering an organizing principle. He was revealing the filing system for understanding and accessing God’s intent for our lives. God’s intent for us is LOVE. Love of God. Love of humanity.
He was saying that living a Good - God blessed - life means organizing it around these two things: Love of God. Love of neighbor.
Those are the two drawers in the filing cabinet of your life. Everything that comes into your life, and every action you take while you live each and every day should go into and come out of those two categories. Purpose #1 - To Love God. Purpose #2 - to Love Neighbor as Self. And if something doesn’t belong in one of those two drawers, then it belongs in the circular file. The trash. Both the drawers are labeled love.
Here I”m gonna quote a Biblical scholar, Michael Hare, (Matthew, Interpretation Commentaries) who writes:
In an age when the word 'love' is greatly abused, it is important to remember that the primary component of biblical love is not affection but commitment. Warm feelings of gratitude may fill our consciousness as we consider all that God has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that Deut. 6:5 demands of us but rather stubborn, unwavering commitment. Similarly, to love our neighbor, including our enemies, does not mean that we must feel affection for them. To love the neighbor is to imitate God by taking their needs seriously. [p. 260]

Let’s take that first drawer. Loving God with all our heart, and soul and mind: How do we do that? Prayer. Worship. Stewardship of time and talents. Taking care of God’s gifts to us and returning a proportion of those gifts to God’s work in the world. This is how we show our commitment to God. By putting God first. Not money. Not family, not heritage. not country. God.
David Foster Wallace: Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. Worship power -- and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.
That’s the first file drawer of life.
And the second organizing principle, the second file drawer is love of neighbor - taking the needs of other people (not just friends, or relations or fellow Christians, or Americans, but neighbors as Jesus defines it - everyone who has need and who doesn’t?) as seriously as you take your own needs.
In this file drawer goes how we talk to others with whom we disagree. How we understand our place in the community. How we respond to power. How we exercise the power and influence that we have. How we treat customers in our stores, people who wait on us in restaurants, students in our classes, people on committees, migrant workers who pick our food, people who cut us off in traffic, everybody. We pay attention to their needs and treat them as equal to our own.
This is the second drawer of life.
Now, my two drawer analogy breaks down a little, because the Love God drawer and the Love Others and Self drawer aren’t really two separate drawers.
Martin Luther, I think, once said that God is perfectly sufficient unto God’s Self. God doesn’t need anything that we have to give. God is God. The Creator of the Universe isn’t waiting for our prayer to act, or our worship to feel good about Himself, or our gifts to make Himself complete. So the only way we can offer something to God is to offer it to our neighbor. Love of God is not something apart from loving neighbor. It is the reason for loving our neighbor. That is what God desires from us and for us. So the drawers get cross filled.   What belongs in one belongs in the other, too. And what comes out of one can be found in the other.
But rather than that making things more complicated and confused, it really makes things more simple. Love is the only thing that matters. All the rest of details. Which the God of LOVE we know in Jesus Christ invites us to work out with fear and trembling in our own lives.
I would like to invite you to briefly experiment with letting LOVE organize your thoughts.   Listen for how God is inviting us today to choose love.
Open your heart. Be attentive for any particular word or phrase that stands out to you:
Jesus said, You shall love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.
Amen.

Show Your I.D. - Deacon's Mission Sunday

2011-10-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

Show your I.D. - A long long time ago, I used to be asked for to show my I.D. when I bought a six pack of beer. But that hasn't happened for a while now. Now, the only time I get asked to show I.D. is when I cash a check. Or when I use a credit card I haven't signed. In some countries, and even in some states in this country, folks are asked to show I.D. more frequently, to prove you are who you say you are.
So what identifies You? What are our identifying characteristics as a church? How do people know that we are who we say we are?

If someone were to “check our I.D” to make sure we are put together by God, to make sure we are the Church we say we are, what would they be looking for? or that each of us is the Christian we say we are, what would they be looking for?

Scripture has a pretty good “check list” of ways to identify things put together by God: It’s “Faith, Hope and Love” . This is Paul’s first use of this trio of Christian virtue, but you may already be thinking of how he puts it much later - in the great I Corinthians 13 passage we hear often at weddings: “So faith, hope and love abide, these three and the greatest of these is love.” Here he talks about the work of faith, the labor of love, and the patience of hope that leap to mind when a vital church is mentioned. This week, anticipating the Deacon’s Mission Dinner, I’ve been thinking about how the work of faith, the labor of love and the patience of hope show up on our “I.D.”.

The first is the Work of Faith -
    At it’s most basic - the work of faith may be found in feeding people. Deacons feed people.   In fact, that’s how Deacons got their start. The earliest Christian church, which is described in the Book of Acts in the New Testament - faced a problem. Some of the church members were hungry and feeling neglected. So the church appointed a few of its members to give special attention to these folks and make sure that they got fed.
    Our deacons are still feeding people. When someone is sick, or in special need, it is the Deacons who organize meals to be taken to them. Have you ever gotten a meal from a deacon? I have. It is a way for us to show the church’s love and care for its members.
    The Deacons are feeding all of us this morning after worship. They’ve all made their favorite casserole, salad and dessert and brought them here to share with all of us. When we sit down and share, we are taking part in a tradition of the church that goes back to the very beginning. And I’m not talking about Jello salad, though I specially requested one, out of respect for historical accuracy.
    This summer, our Deacons expanded their feeding role by whole heartedly participating in a food distribution partnership with the Eastern Illinois Food Bank.   This was a project that a couple of elders suggested, and I took it to the Deacons, I’ll have to tell you, with a certain apprehension. It would require what might be a substantial committment of resources and time. Would the Deacons want to use their funds? But my hesitation was groundless.   All five of them immediately leapt at the idea, and saw it as an opportunity to be part of Christ’s work. So early one Saturday morning, they were there to help unload a truck of pantry boxes and produce and other contributions that the congregation had made - and to meet the people who had needs in Southern Champaign County. We were truly blessed to be able to share Christ’s love with young moms who were wanting healthy food for their children,with older folks whose Social Security was being stretched to the limit, with folks unable to find work in the bad economy.
    You’re going to hear a little more about this project at the Dinner this morning, and many of you were there to see this work of faith. So I won’t say too much more. But I will say that the hard work and the sweet spirit of the event reminds us of what Scripture says: It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loves you very much but also has put his hand on you for something special.
    The Work of Faith is part of our church’s I.D.

Labor of Love - Kemmerer Village
    I can’t help it. When I hear “labor of love” I think of childbirth. Labor is the hard work of delivering a child into the world. But the labor of loving just keeps going. There is the physical labor of carrying them around and dressing and feeding them. There is the emotional labor of putting their needs before your own. There is the spiritual labor of praying for them and with them and teaching them that God loves them and that following Jesus Christ is the very best way to live life. Love is laborious.
    Several of the ministries that the Deacons support have to do with loving children: Crisis Nursery, Women in Transition, Juvenile Diabetes Association, Camp Scholarships. Let me lift up just one: the Presbytery’s Children’s Home at Kemmerer Village.
    I’m reading from one of their newsletters: Many of the children who come to our residential program have complicated personal histories. The children’s experiences often include severe family conflict, educational probles, childhood mental illness (such as depression, axiety, suicidal behaviors, aggressive outbursts, mood swings) and parental mental illness or substance abuse. In order to work effectively with these young peole, we require around the clock supervision with staff well trained to provide significant external structure along with nurturing guidnace. On an average day 45 children are cared for on the Kemmerer Village Campus ranging from ages 12-19, while 72 children from infancy to age 21 reside in 36 foster homes that Kemmerer Village licenses and oversees.
    That’s a lot of numbers. But what the Deacons try to remember is that each of those numbers is a child. A child like the one I heard speak at Kemmerer Village at a Presbytery Meeting. He was 18 and had just graduated from High School. He was beginning community college that next year. And he said, “I want to thank you for Kemmerer Village and the 5 years I have spent here. When I came to live here, I was full of anger. I didn’t feel that I belonged anywhere. I acted out often, because making others feel bad was the only way I knew to get out how bad I felt inside. But my cottage parents, and Chaplain Mulch and all the staff here showed me that they really cared for me, and that even God loved me. I had some rough times, but that love changed me. I began to learn at school, and think about the future. Now I have graduated from high school and I know that I can live a good life. I will never forget the folks who helped me. They are my family now. And it is good to have a family who loves you.”
    Raising children is a labor of love. The labor of love is part of our church’s I.D.

Patience of Hope - addressing intractable problems with the wideness of God’s mercy.
The Malawi Well Project. In the face of intractable poverty and disease in Africa, it is an act of outrageous hope to build one well. And so, every year, we do. We do one little thing. And that one little thing means that 200 or so people have clean water to drink, and their babies don’t die of dysentery. And their women can have healthy babies. And their children aren’t so weakened with parasites that they fall victim to every little infection that comes along. We do one little hopeful thing, year after year after year. And we join with churches and individuals from Illinois and all over the world and do one little thing. And to date 13, 561 wells have been dug and over 2 million people have clean, safe water to drink. Are we finished? Is the problem of poverty in Malawi, Tanzania or Zambia licked? No. But for 2,000,000 people it is. And our hope grows and grows.

The patience of hope is part of our church’s I.D.

So the words of our scripture are true - they apply to us today, just as Paul wrote 2000 years ago:

The word has gotten around. Your lives are echoing the Master's Word. The news of your faith in God is out. We don't even have to say anything anymore—you're the message!
    Because your lives display the work of faith, the labor of love and the patience of hope, it clear your I.D. confirms that you are who you say you are - the church of Jesus Christ.

So this is our benediction:
From God the Father and Christ our Master To you who are assembled here: Amazing Grace! Robust Peace!

Thanks to the Deacons of our church - those who have served, and those who serve now: Marlene Evans, Jan Siders, Betty Lauchner, Terry Pratt and Karen Talbott. It is clear that God not only loves you, but has put his hand on you for something special.

Showing Up

2011-10-08T21:14:00.000-07:00

This is a short sermon (for me! :-)) We are taking the Congregational Life Survey at the end of the service, and I wanted to leave at least 20 minutes out of the hour.

The text is Matthew 22:1-10 - The Parable of the King's Banquet. I'm not reading the part about the man without the wedding garment. THAT's another story, my dears!

Woody Allen said “80% of success is just showing up.”

This is certainly borne out by the parable Jesus tells in our scripture today: The big mistake is made by those who choose not showing up to participate in the King’s celebration. And the big success is achieved by those from the highways and byways, not by strenuous effort or massive preparation or surpassing worth - but just by showing up to be there when the celebration began.

Just showing up doesn’t sound like much of a challenge to set before God’s people. Just show up. Just be present. Just attend.

But how often we miss the celebration by failing to be present in the moment that God has so carefully prepared. How often we walk right past the feast the God has spread before us, too preoccupied with other concerns to even notice the brimming cup, the lavish table, too busy, way too busy to pause for the anointing that soothes and heals.

Life unfolds in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized, and squandering the precious seconds of our lives as we worry about the future and ruminate about what's past. (Quote from a site on the internet)

God is eternal. We sing it every Sunday - as it was in the beginning, is not and ever shall be - but the words and glorious music fly past us, out of our mouths without ever entering our hearts, so anxious are we to get on with the service - get to our favorite part - the benediction haha - and go on with the rest of our busy busy day.

God is eternal. Past Present and Future all belong to Him. But the only time that we can experience his presence, and partake of God’s goodness is in the present time. Now is all we have. It is our opening into eternity. The present is a gift that we too often take for granted and refuse to open, or to open ourselves to experience.

One of the things I love most about Jesus is that he is incredibly present to those he encounters in his life. He pays attention to the fishermen beside the Sea of Galilee. He notices the beauty of the lilies of the field. He isn’t in a hurry to get the children to go sit down so that he can get on with the task of preaching to the grown ups. He takes them in his arms and blesses them. He rises early in the morning to go off to pray - to give to God his undivided attention.

How would our lives look if we, too, practiced being present to people in our lives and in the present with the God we say we love? You can’t do that all the time - you may say. Well, of course. But what if we spent this hour every week with our eyes and ears wide open to God’s love? What would we see in this present moment?
A couple of Sundays ago, when the service was over, one of you said, Did you see, there was a nice little moment, when one of the Sunday School teachers invited a child who was here alone to sit with her. Did you see it? It was just a moment, but it was full of grace.

Do you notice the glow on the face of new parents, or the beauty of an older couple holding hands? Do you see the kindness in the manner the elders pass communion, or feel the power of our voices raised together in song? Does the familiar sound of a friend’s voice calm your heart?

These things happen and we could experience them every time we gather, for when we are gathered in His Name, our Lord and Savior is present with us.

And it is not just on Sunday that God invites us to show up at the banquet of life. Far from it! Our moments and our days are full of the gracious love of God, who invites and invites and invites us to be part of the celebration He has prepared.

This week, my prayer is that we will show up for the banquet. That we will actually be alive to the moments that nourish and sustain us.

Maybe a bedtime story for a child. Maybe a quiet dinner with a loved one. Maybe an honest conversation with a friend, or a stranger. Maybe a few minutes of gratitude before the day begins.
There will be a knock on the door of your heart and you will sense the invitation to come to God’s banquet. You will know that all is prepared and it is time for you to come. You will feel the urge to make excuses for yourself and be too busy to attend the party. But what a shame it would be to miss it!

Because the largest part of success is JUST SHOWING UP.

Changing Your Mind - Sermon on Matthew 21:23-32

2011-09-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

What we think has a powerful effect on what we do. Here is a mind-blowing example:    How you see isn't just about how good your eyes are - it's also about your mindset, according to a study published in Psychological Science. For example, in one experiment, if someone was told that exercise would improve their vision, they saw better after doing an athletic activity - jumping jacks - than an unathletic activity with the same effect on heart rate.

What we think influences our behavior. In our scripture this morning, Jesus tells a story and then gives a lesson from it. Both point to the necessity of changing one’s mind and therefore behaving differently in order to realize the blessing of God.

So, being the practical preacher that I am. This month. I thought - OK. What’s the practical application here? What do people need to know? How to change our minds was the obvious answer. Of course, in order for that to be a helpful topic, we’d have to have some change that we wished to make, or thought we OUGHT to make in order to live better lives. We’d have to want to change. Which reminds me of the lightbulb joke: How many psychaitrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one. But the lightbulb has to really want to change. Or of a hat a certain pastor acquaintance had that read, “Let’s CHANGE - - - You go first”

In general, most of the time, change is not something people want to do. I get that. And nothing I can say can make you want to change. But I can remind you of something you already know: If you want the world to change - if you want something in your world to change - if you want a situation to change - the only thing you CAN change is yourself. So maybe if you don’t want to change yourself - your behavior, your ideas, your life in any way, you will just hear me out and file these ideas in the back of your mind in case you ever DO find that you want to change something. Because here’s something Jesus says is possible - even blessed - you can do: You can change your mind.

One way to change is to think yourself into a new way of acting. This works like the experiment with the eyes that I talked about before. You convince yourself that a new course of action is possible, and you gradually live into that possibility. Let’s take something mundane. Like controlling your tongue. Or being organized. Or exercising regularly. If those things are aren’t problems for you, then think of something that you do struggle with, that limits your life in some way - being isolated. not saving money. Failing in school. Hating your job.
Let’s work with controlling our tongues, since that is a Biblical mandate. The book of James says, “Watch your mouth, for the tongue is a raging fire.” So that’s a behavior that we need to repent.
The first step in changing your life by changing your mind is to become aware of all the times and all the ways you think negative things about that.
I say things without thinking.
I am not tactful.
I say things that hurt people. Maybe I say things TO hurt people. I gossip about folks.
I don’t think before I speak.
You write those things down on a piece of paper. With your hand. Not the computer. (I’ don’t know why that matters, but apparently it does.) Then you fold the paper in half and on the other side, you write positive statements that correspond:
I think before I speak.
I am becoming more tactful (you don’t say “I’m trying” to be more tactful, cause trying focuses on the effort, not the success. In the immortal words of Yoda, “There is no try! There is only do or not do.”)
My words foster better relationships.
I consider the impact of my words befre I say them.
And you put those affirmative statements where you will be reminded of them often. Every time you see them, you say them.
Every time you notice thinking the negative thing, stop it and think the positive one instead. You don’t have to believe it in any deep way. You just say it to yourself.

And then, you will start to notice that instances in which the positive things are acted out. You notice when you think before you speak. You notice when instead of cussing you remain polite. You notice when you say the right thing - the thing that makes a situation better instead of worse.

And it will happen more and more. If you do this, it will change your mind and change your actions. Your words will become like a healing balm - that turn away wrath and sooth the soul - both yours and others. This is true.

You have thought your way into a new way of acting. A way that is more full of the grace and mercy of Jesus.

The other way of changing your mind is to act your way into a new way of thinking. Let’s say you have fallen out of love with your spouse. Or your church. Or Jesus. You just aren’t feeling it. Let’s say it is your best friend.
To change the relationship, you change some actions on your part.

You compliment your friend on some aspect of their character that you appreciate.
You choose to spend time with them.
You call them up just to ask about their day.
You tell them a joke they’ll like, or send them a song or an article they’ll enjoy.

Two weeks of this behavior and voila! Your relationship takes on a different, more joyful tone. A month - you look forward to hearing from them and you no longer have to pretend that they enrich your life. It will be true.

You have acted yourself into a new way of thinking and felling about them.

These techniques work in mundane matters, and in spiritual matters as well. When they are spiritual, we call them “repentance”. Changing one’s mind is one way of understanding repentence - which does not mean felling sorry. It means to change one’s direction. And to change the direction of thinking also changes our ability to do the right thing - to answer God’s call, to live the life that God has invited us to share in Christ.

Jesus told this great story about the two sons - both asked to go and work for their Father (God) and both of whom changed their minds between the answer and the action. They repented.

In one case the change was for the good. In the other, not so much.

What’s interesting when you look at the Greek is that the change here is not quite the same as just changing one’s mind - which is what is translated as “repentance” elsewhere in the New Testament. Here Jesus uses a slightly different word that means changing how we feel, or changing our Heart, not just our mind.

What scientists are beginning to discover is the physiological truth behind Jesus’ choice of words. For there is now research on-going which has discovered what Jesus already knew - that the heart has a mind of its own. There are actually a rather large group of nuerological cells in the heart, which both react to messages from the brain and the rest of the body AND send messages to the brain and the rest of the body through electrical and chemical pathways. So it is quite literally true that the heart sometimes knows and communicates truths that the mind doesn’t.

How to change your mind is only half of the story. What we really need is a change of heart. And the good news is that we can change our hearts - train our hearts - in a way that makes it possible for us to be more Christ-like. One heart training technique is called Freeze framing. But that’s because scientists named it. If theologians named it, they would call it something different. Like prayer. Here’s how it goes - when confronted by anger or frustration, which the heart recognizes even if the mind doesn’t, for instance if someone asks you to do something that you don’t want to do and you feel that tight feeling in your chest, quickly put your hand on your heart (literally at first - when you get good at it you can do it without the hand) and pray, “Christ have mercy. Open my heart to feel compassion for this person who has asked for my help.” Feel your heart opening to the other person and let God’s love govern your response. This doesn’t mean that you will have to always say “yes” to the request. But you will be able to respond in a way that is in concert with the divine Yes we have heard in Jesus Christ.   You will act with the wisdom of an open and loving heart.

You can change by acting your way to a new way of thinking
You can change by thinking your way to a new way of acting.
But this scripture also points out that the changing that God desires from us and for us is not just about changing our heads but changing our hearts.

No matter how we have answered in the past - whether we have said yes or no - to God’s will for our lives,

God has gifted us with the possibility that we can change our minds, and if we allow him to, he can change our hearts.

Amen.

The Right Time to Forgive

2011-09-11T05:46:00.000-07:00

When to Forgive
Matthew 18:21-35
Sept 11, 2011
Rally Day

    This week we start “Feasting on the Word” and the word for the day is “forgiveness” It may not appear to be the best appetizer - because when we have been injured, insulted, messed with / messed up, lied to or laid into - maybe the first thing we think of is not “Oh. I bet a little bit of forgiveness would be good right now.”
We we’ve been hurt or pained by the deed of another, what’s the dish we want to feast upon? Revenge! The dish best served cold. . . .
    So my hope this morning is that I can give you just a little taste of how sweet forgiveness can be. That when you leave here this morning, you will be inclined to order it up off your life’s menu and make it part of the feast we share in God’s Word.

    So when is the right time to try forgiveness?

    When is a bad time to forgive? When all you want is the way things used to be. Evil changes things. As our nation observes the 10th anniversary of the devestating attack of 9/11, we acknowlege that our world has changed. Americans don’t feel invulnerable, like we did before. We know our lives, our peace, our economy our place in the world is fragile. There isn’t always a happy ending to heroic stories. The first responders who headed up the stairs and into the fire on that life changing day gave their lives for others taught us a hard lesson that takes time for us to digest. Things have changed. America has had a rough ten years growing into a new understanding of our new place in the world. It doesn’t happen overnight. But I am hopeful that we are strong and resiliant and that we care about each other enough to make the adjustments we need to once again lead the world toward a brighter future.

The trespasses and debts we owe each other also change our relationships and change us. Forgiveness doesn’t mean going back and believing in the fairy tale even stronger. It means letting ourselves and our lives be transformed by God so that we can see and deal with what is - not what we wish was.

    When is a bad time to forgive? When you misunderstand the nature of forgiveness and think it means you have to continue being abused. God doesn’t want you to be crushed, for your spirit to be broken, for your body to be injured. And if you think that forgiveness means you have to continue in a relationship that hurts you or someone else, then don’t forgive until you figure out that forgiveness means doing things differently. . . . Forgiving someone doesn’t mean letting them hurt you. It means loving them and loving yourself enough to hold them accountable and quit being part of abuse.

    When it a bad time for forgiveness?
        when you haven’t ever accepted forgiveness
            if you are carrying around a load of guilt and shame and the mistakes that you have made seem to close off your future. When you can’t imagine that anyone, especially God, could love and cherish you because of all your shortcomings, faults and failures.
    If you have never accepted the grace of God, and allowed God to open up new possibilities, new hope and promise in your life, If you have never woken up in the morning and prayed, “Thank you God. Another chance to live a better life.” Then maybe it isn’t the right time for you to forgive. Maybe it is the right time for you to go to God and accept the grace and love and second/third/forth seventy seventh chance holds out to you though Jesus Christ his Son. If it is the time to be forgiven - to say “Yes” to the cross which redeems the failures of the past and makes possible a beautiful future - then do that first. Get the guilt gone. Believe in your own forgiveness.
THEN you will be able to forgive others.

So when IS a good time to forgive?

    When you are ready to let go of the pain of the past, while holding on to what it can teach you.   Forgiveness means giving up any thought that someday the person who owes you is going to pay you back. Forgiveness mean the books are never going to be balanced. Forgiveness means never getting even.   Because better than getting even is getting free.

    When you are ready to get healthy in your body and soul. It's been documented in many a medical journal as to the ill effects that arise when forgiveness is withheld, how when people decide to stew and wallow in bitterness and anger their blood pressure is negatively affected as is the lining of their stomach and their entire cardiovascular system.   (sermon by Richard Zajac at SermonSuite.com)

    To be forgiven by God is to become a new creation. Jesus is pretty clear, and the whole of scripture is pretty clear, that you can’t get transformed with out letting go of what ever ties and bonds keep you hooked into old behavior, old patterns, old life. Be new!

Latest Newsweek magazine, as part of its coverage of Sept 11 Anniversary, featured an article by a 17 year old named Nicholas Lanza, who, as a seven year old, watched the TV in horror as the Twin Towers, where his mother worked, collapsed.   In the days after the tragedy, he was the subject of a documentary film called “Telling Nicholas” about how the family finally broke the news to the boy that his mother was dead. Nicholas’ world fell apart that day. He became withdrawn, angry, depressed. For years he struggled with the horrible pain of his loss and the aftermath.
    " . . . .The summer before high school, I went to a church camp. It turns out that it was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. You see, I was still carrying thing that was wearing me down and leaving me broken.
During one service, one of my good preacher friends and a few other ministers gathered around me, and they began to pray for me. My preacher friend told me that it was time to let everything go. Throw it all away. For a moment, I didn’t know what was going on; all I could see was this blinding white light. A voice began to say, “You belong to me, my child. You shall no longer be burdened with these chains that you wear about you. You are free.”
    It was then that I realized I was in my own prison, bound with the thick iron chains of depression, wrath, unforgiveness, and—the thickest and strongest of all chains—my own mother. I can recall being deathly quiet for several moments. Then words came into my head. They weren’t really spoken, but it was as though they were there all this time: I love you. Now go and tell 5others the same.
After I was redeemed at the church camp, I had a new desire. I wanted to be able to tell bin Laden that I forgave him for the hideous crime he committed against me. When I heard that he had been killed in the spring of 2011, I was crushed, because that dream would never come true. Forgiveness is essential to really moving on from any tragic happening. I came to learn this through studying the word of God, prayer, and real-life experience.
Looking back, I see just how hate-driven and how mentally distorted I was. Is this what everyone else affected by 9/11 feels? I couldn’t tell you. Do they need to be that way? Absolutely not."
When is the right time to forgive?
When you have accepted God’s forgiveness and are ready to live anew.
When you need to let go of the pain that holding a grudge causes you.
When you are ready to get healthy in body and soul.
This is the time to taste forgiveness. My prayer is that as a nation, as a church, and as individual members of the body of Christ we may come to Feast on the Word of forgiveness.

Sermon Notes for "When Love Gets Tough"

2011-09-04T13:43:00.000-07:00

These are the preaching notes for the sermon on Matthew 18: 15-20 & Romans 13:8-14.

So the fresh faced young thing is visiting her granny and says, “Granny, have you ever heard of Tough Love?” And Granny says, “Baby, there isn’t any other kind.”

Relationships are tough. They are what make life worth living - our relationships with friends, parents, members of the opposite sex, folks at work, on our teams, our children, even our brothers and sisters in Christ. These relationships make us who we are, connect us with God’s purpose for our life, give us satisfaction and pleasure. And sometimes drive us crazy. How do we handle relationships when they get tough?

There’s something very comforting in just knowing that our Lord and Savior - who was all about love - recognized and acknowledged that relationships get tough. In Matthew, Jesus gives the disciples and us a way to resolve conflicts between people who love each other and are bound together in Christ.

Lots of churches, including the Presbyterian ones, use this framework in their foundational documents as the right way to handle conflict: Step One - Go to the person you are having trouble with and try to resolve it. Step Two - take some people with you to help witness the process. Step Three - get the church involved. These are good, healthy steps. But I love that even Jesus acknowleges that they don’t always provide a satisfactory conclusion. If those steps don’t work, he says, then there is a fourth one - Treat the person like a tax collector or a Gentile. I think lots of organizations misuse this step, badly. Sometimes it is justification for shunning the person and ending the relationship with them.

But think for a minute about how Jesus treated tax collectors and Gentiles! Over and over in his life and ministry he forgave them, invited them to new life, healed them, included them, and generally continued to love them to pieces! We are reading this passage in a Gospel written by a tax collector - Matthew - who was called out of his tax booth and became one of Jesus’ closest friends. Jesus opponents shun tax collectors and Gentiles. But Jesus and his followers are called to a higher standard in relationships. Even relationships that get tough tough tough. That standard is love.

How does love act when the relationship gets tough? How do we say what we have to say to people we love in a way that heals and grows the relationship, instead of breaking it to pieces? How do we avoid doing more harm than good when we disagree amongst ourselves.

I have found the work of marriage and relationship specialist John Gottman to be very helpful in thinking about this.* He’s studied hundred and thousands of couples trying to resolve difficulties and he has come up with what he calls “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” which applies not just to couples, but to any time love of any kind gets tough.

He says that there are four things that can happen when people disagree - these are the four horsemen - and that if they characterize the disagreement, then the end is near. It toally connects with Paul’s linking the end times with the law of love. It totally connects with Jesus’ putting this conflict resolution talk in the context of eternal salvation. Love and how we handle its tough parts has important consequences in this world and the next.

OK. When two people who love each other fight, they want to avoid riding any of these horses:

1 ) Criticism:
Attacking your partner’s personality or character.
Generalizations: “you always...” “you never...”

2 )Contempt:
- Hostile humor, sarcasm or mockery - Body language & tone of voice: sneering, rolling your eyes, curling your upper lip

3 ) Defensiveness:
Seeing self as the victim,
- Making excuses (e.g., external circumstances beyond your control forced you to act in a certain way) “It’s not my fault...”, “I didn’t...”
- Cross-complaining: “That’s not true, you’re the one who ...” “I did this because you did that...”
Yes-butting: start off agreeing but end up disagreeing - Whining “It’s not fair.”

4 ) Stonewalling:
Withdrawing from the relationship as a way to avoid conflict. People need time to cool off, but this is more than a cooling off period. It is consistent cooling off. stonewalling conveys disapproval, icy distance, - Stony silence - Changing the subject - Removing yourself physically - Silent Treatment

These strategies for being in conflict within relationships will get you and the relationship into more and more trouble. They are the horsemen of the apocalypse! Don’t ride them!

Love finds another way:
Instead of criticism - love finds the way of “gentle complaint” - of making specific and personal observations. “When X happened, I felt Y” Instead of “You are a lazy no good jerk” say, “I want some help with picking up the living room each night.”

Instead of contempt - love makes the effort to express appreciation for the partner. It lets the other person know that we value them and value the relationship. Love respects a partner and never dismisses them.

Instead of defensiveness - Love claims responsibility. It asks, “What can I learn from this?” and “What can I do about it?” It listens to the complaint to try to understand what is underneath the words instead of instantly refuting them.

Instead of stonewalling, Love makes the effort to remain engaged, even if the terms of engagement shift - Jesus said, “Treat them like a tax collector or a Gentile.” Don’t be expecting brotherly or sisterly treatment from them. But you remember that they are related to you in love.

None of these strategies are easy. None of them can happen when our hearts are in turmoil and full of fear. Relationships are so important that when love gets tough, and we are hurting, we sometimes panic. It is fear that motivates us, instead of love. We feel so threatened that in our hurry to protect ourselves, we get on the apocalyptic horses and ride, ride, ride!

But love casts out fear. Jesus gives us a huge gift when he reminds us, in the context of talking about conflict, disagreement and relationships in trouble: “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am in the midst of them.” Jesus’ very real presence can help to calm and soothe us when love gets tough.

In just a few minutes we are going to come to the table of our Lord and receive the gift of his real presence that abides with us always. There is a place in scripture that says, “if you are on your way to the alter and you remember that your relationship with your brother or sister isn’t right, then go and fix the relationship and then come to the alter.”

But in actual fact, the times when love is tough may be the most important time for us to first come and receive the assurance offered here that Jesus himself is with us. His love and presence is the calming and soothing gift we need in order to then go and deal with the relationships that need fixing. I invite you to examine your life for those relationships where love is tough, and then come to the table praying that Christ’s presence will strengthen and nourish you to address them. When love gets tough, it is imperative that we remember Jesus’ promise: Whereever two or three are gathered together in my name, I am in the midst of them.

* Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, by John Gottman. 1994

Say them over again to me - Wonderful Words of Life!

2011-09-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

Peacebang said this in a conversation about ceremony and ritual on her blog: www.peacebang.com.
I find it incredibly brilliant. Read the whole thing. But this is, IMHO, the best part:
Church is not a product that one chooses and then purchases, and worship is not an event that one attends as a spectator and then reviews as one would a movie or play. We need to preach covenantal theology, a theology that proclaims that we have been called by the Spirit out of the self-absorbed shallows of the consumer culture to become a people, God’s people, if you will. The covenant tradition teaches us that it is not we who choose to attend worship services based on the program, but we who are chosen by God to embody and incarnate the shalom, wholeness, peace, and mutual love. In Humanist terms, we might say that it is life’s longing for itself that draws us out out of our separate dwellings to take strength, solace and inspiration from gathering around the common hearth fire. In this covenantal framework, people do not merely tolerate the readings, hymns, dances, and rituals that constitute one week’s worship and wait impatiently for their favorite flavor or worship to appear back on the menu, they consider each Sunday a sacred hour of spiritual expression to which they obligated to bring their most generous heart and mind.

My Mary Magdelenes

2011-07-22T04:04:00.000-07:00

Sally at www.revgalblogpals.blogspot.com challenges: List five people who inspire you to dare to step out into becoming more.
1. Maya Angelou
2. Anne LaMotte
3. Oprah Winfrey
4. My Mother
5. My Daughter

Sermon on The Sower Parable

2011-07-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

Matthew 13:1-9

In Amsterdam, the first thing I did when I got there was head to the Van Gogh museum. Vincent Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists, and probably one of yours, as well. He was Dutch, lived in the 1800s and continues to fascinate us, both because of the beauty of his work and the tragedy of his life.
At the museum, which was several floors filled with his work, and that of artists who influenced him, we started at the top floor, which contained his earliest work, and worked our way down, to see how his vision and art evolved through the many tortuous episodes that marked his short path.
He was a Preacher’s Kid - a PK - who early and often experienced the pain of not quite fitting in with his parents or the strict Dutch Reformed Church of his day. His earliest ambition was to become a clergyman, like his father. But that didn’t work out. He flunked out of one seminary, and failed the entrance exam of another school. He took a position as a Methodist missionaries assistant. After 6 months, he was sent home.   He entered another school for missionaries, and was assigned to a coal mining town. There, he slept on straw in the spare room of a parishoner, and lived as the people lived. They didn’t like it. His superiors scolded him for tarnishing the dignity of his office, and when he didn’t turn it around, they dismissed him.

He fell in love, several times, with the wrong woman. Multiple marriage proposals were rejected. No. Never. Not ever.

He learned to draw while a youth, and worked in an art gallery briefly, but he didn’t start to paint until he was in his mid to late twenties. He died at 37, and one of the amazing things about walking through the museum was to see 5 floors full of incredible paintings that were all produced during a brief, ten year career.

Van Gogh aspired to become an artist while in God's service, stating: "...to try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another in a picture."

One of the images that I saw over and over, one that clearly fascinated Van Gogh, was the image of the sower. It was not originally drawn from life, but from another work of art - a painting by Millet which is also called, “The Sower”. In that work, the figure of the Sower takes up almost the entire canvas. At the time, the art world was scandalized by the heroic depiction of an ordinary peasant, and thought the artist was somehow adding fuel to the fire of social unrest among the peasant class, which was threatening the land-owners and elite of that society.   But what later art historians have remarked upon is how very Biblical the painting is. The artist was extremely devout, and the painting is actually a study of God, as God is portrayed in the parable we read this morning.

Van Gogh took that image, with its religious theme and the parable source and worked and reworked in numerous times over the years. In some of his paintings of the sower, the central figure dominates the picture. Some are light and happy paintings. Others picture the same figure as the sun is setting. Night light, and what it did to color, was one of Van Gogh’s passions. Think of his “Starry Night” pictures. In other sower pictures, the figure is seen farther away and other elements of the picture come to the fore.

As I wandered through the museum, I wondered what it was about the figure of the sower that so fascinated Van Gogh and compelled him to return to it again and again. So this week with the scripture that inspired him has been an opportunity to think about that. And I think I know. Because what Jesus was dealing with in this scripture is also one of the central experiences of the artist’s life. And part of all our lives, if we take time to notice.

Hold “Van Gogh” in the back of your minds as we turn to more wordy interpretation of the passage we read.

We can’t understand this parable without looking at the situation in which Jesus preaches it. It comes about mid way in Jesus life and ministry. It comes at a point where his early popularity and success is now resulting in opposition and emnity. The first verse of chapter 13 is tied to what came immediately before. And chapter 12 is full off troubles and rejection.

In verses 1-8, thePharisees now debate Jesus directly.
In verse 14, They plot his death (12:14),
In verse 24, they accuse him of being in league with Beelzebul (12:24).
Jesus responds with a few choice words of his own.
They are not bearing the good fruit because they are bad trees --
a "brood of vipers" (12:34a).
They are "an evil and adulterous generation" who ask for a sign (12:38-39).
For Christians, from Matthew’s first readers through those of us sitting in these pews this morning, one of the most puzzling and disturbing set of questions is:
Why do people not believe? What is going on here? How can God's Son meet such a fate? Is there any explanation for the fate we have arrived at by the end of Matthew 12?
What’s the answer. Well, Jesus offers one. The answer is: Yes. The explanation begins with simple words: "A sower went out to sow." [p. 114]

In this parable, Jesus likens God to a sower.

Now, I think it is worth remembering that New Testament theologians tell us about parables:
Parables don’t have a point. They have a punch. They are told to knock us off balance and make us reevaluate our assumptions about God and the world. What was Jesus telling us we need to reevaluate. What assumptions might we need to re think?
And one possibility is our assumptions about control and efficiancy vs. waste in how God works. and how we are called to live as we follow him.
The focus on God as the sower shows God to be generous, indescriminate, bountiful.   He plants the seeds of love and grace all over the place, not making any attempt to give special attention to the most productive, nicest dirt and not neglecting the least promising parts of the field. This is not how people farm today. It probably isn’t even how people farmed in Jesus’ day, though they came closer.
What is shocking is the amount of waste. Does this point us toward some deeper understanding of God? It fits with much of what we know about God from the Old Testament. Including the whole concept of the Sabbath, which is CENTRAL to what our Jewish forebearers insisted was faithful living. The sabbath is a long time to do no work.
Sacrifice was a ritual and the whole animal was to be burned. Brian Stoeffregen, one of my favorite fellow preachers, points out that you didn’t pull out the best steaks when they were medium rare. What a waste!

Jesus’ picture of this gracious, generous, incredibly abundant God squares up with Jesus’ own ministry and his own outreach to any and everyone whose path he crossed. He ate with religious folks, and outcasts. He greeted rich men and poor men. He healed well connected men and isolated women-folk. He spread out God’s love over the whole human race. Thanks be to God for the salvation that is so freely given that we can be assured it is offered to each and every one of us.

Wasteful - this parable is followed by the feeding of the 5000, the last line of which records how many baskets of left-overs were collected after everyone was fed. 12 baskets of unnecessary food, in case you are wondering. What a waste!

So what does that mean for us as we live out our calling to be “in the image of God” or accept the invitation to follow in Jesus’ steps? As individual Christians and as a church, doesn’t it mean that we should also be "recklessly throwing out the seeds of love, grace and mercy” in our lives?

Every once in a while Google makes a terrible mistake and sends me an article about business.
"Be sure to generate a sufficient number of excellent mistakes." Another book, (Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers, by Robert Kriegel & David Brandt) offers these quotes:

"Says former IBM chairman Tom Watson, 'If you want to succeed, double your failure rate'" [p. 97].

And "Said one executive, 'If you aren't making mistakes you aren't doing anything worth a damn'" [p. 99].

Why is it that so many people in the church, which is to be centered on forgiveness, find it so difficult to risk making a mistake -- for the sake of the gospel?

Examples of “efficient” uses of time and resources-
mission trips,
Presbyterian disaster relief,
partnership with the food bank.

The effect of Jesus’ parable is to get us to quit asking, “How can we know this is going to work, or be an efficient use of time and resources?” or at least ADD the question, “Am I, are we, acting out of the abundance and grace of a generous God, being faithful to the best of what we know about Him.”

In my favorite of Van Gogh’s “Sowers” the figure is in the mid range of the picture, not central. The rising sun is central and it’s bright yellow, in fact the entire sky is yellow, rays of that powerful sun. The sky is the top 1/3 of the canvas, and the bottom third is this vast field, stubble covered and daunting, and you get a sense of the huge task that the little sower faces that day. But I think what makes it my favorite is that at the bottom of the canvas, where the viewer stands, is a little path that leads into the field. When you look at the painting, you feel that you are being invited into the field, into the vision, into the task of the hard working sower.
Those who have eyes, let them see. Those who have ears, let them hear.

Sunday's Sermon - Saturday's Draft

2011-05-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

I am so glad I read a book this week!

I Peter 2:19-25
Living Example
May 15, 2011

I have a young friend who recently reported a rather remarkable result on her math test.    Just a little background here - my friend does not spend a whole lot of her precious time on schoolwork. I am convinced that she is learning and experimenting and drawing conclusions about the world and the ways of people in it constantly. I’m not saying she’s not curious or that she’s slow to pick up on things. But I don’t think she’d argue with the statement that school is not her thing. Especially English. Or science. Or Math! Especially math. So it was with great glee and not little bit of amazement that she reported that she had gotten an A! on her last math test. Wow! An “A”!
How did that happen?
Did you study for the test? No.
Was it a chapter on something you understood? Not really.
Did you cheat somehow? No, I didn’t.
How did this incredible event occur?
Well - at the beginning of each section of the test, I just went up to the teacher’s desk, and said, “These kind of problems . . . I don’t quite remember . . . Can you maybe . . . ” and the teacher would do an example of one of those kind of problems. And then I’d go back to my seat and do just what he did, only with the different numbers from the problems. When I got to a different kind of problem, I did it again. And he showed me another example. I did that the whole test. And I got an A!

Now, please, let’s not get all caught up wondering why the teacher didn’t seem to get it through his thick head what she was up to.   And let’s not worry our pretty little heads about whether or not she really learned any math, OK? I almost think it doesn’t matter. Because what she learned is what Peter wants the church to get through their pretty little heads and/or thick skulls: The power and the value and the undeniable utility of having an example to follow when problems and tests come your way.

The passage we read is all about following Jesus’ example.

Look - Peter writes these early Christians - Jesus left you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. Peter is talking specifically about how Christians are to behave when confronted by people or situations which put them to the test - which test their comprehension of life and of God. (that’s not quite right. - But you know how all these standardized tests are supposed to gauge mastery of concepts and the ability to use what has been learned to think about, maybe even come up with an answer in a new situation? Well - Peter is writing to folks who were facing a whole new predicament as Christians in a pagan world. How to face the persecutions? The injustice? The uncertainty? Well - how do we face the situations in our lives? Do we, who call ourselves Christians, bring any special tools or techniques or concepts to the tasks of living? If we don’t . . . then we haven’t let our faith penetrate very far into our hearts and lives. We say with our mouths, “Lord, Lord” but we don’t give Jesus Lordship over anything important in our lives. And that shows up when? Every time we face a test. Which is pretty much everyday, in my opinion.)

And Jesus’ example is one of bearing the sins of the other - bearing them all the way to the cross. It is the love that bears an other’s evil that, somehow, someway transforms the Christians from death to life - commutes our sentences from a death sentence to a life sentence. It is what Jesus did in facing death out of love for living that changes us from sheep that have gone astray to members of God’s own flock, safely under the watchful eye and loving care of the Good Shepherd.

And being a Christian is less about believing that that is true (with our head or our heart or our guts) than with following the example that Jesus has set.

Followers of Jesus’ example - who take his radical beautiful impossible life as their pattern for living - do radical, beautiful, impossible things in this world, which we claim as the best part of our inheritance. The only part of our inheritance, I would argue, that it makes any sense to hold on to as we head into the test that is our future.

Let me give you a story from the very very beginnings of our story as Christians in America - a story about John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: (I got this from a very fun and interesting book I picked off my son, the Americanist’s bookshelf when I was out there in California, where he’s working on his dissertation. The book is called The Wordy Shipmates and it’s about that colony of proto-Presbyterians that we call “Puritans”.)   OK. John Winthrop - the governor of this group, who coined the term Ronald Reagan was so fond of “The City on the Hill”, as an expression of what they aimed to create over here in this continent when first they came - John Winthrop tells his fellow colonists “We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus said, “love your enemies and do good to them that hate you.” He also cites Romans 12:20: “If thine enemy hunger, feed him.” Our aim in this new land? Two words: Justice and mercy.

The author (Sarah Vowell) elaborates, “The colonists of Massachusetts Bay are not going to be any better at living up to this than any other government in Christendom. In fact, nobody can live up to this, but it is the mark of a Christlike Christian to know that he’s supposed to.

At least some of Winthrop’s ongoing difficulties as governor of the colony is that his charges find him far too lenient. For instance, some of his fellow magistrates in the new colony accuse Winthrop of dillydallying on punishment by letting some men who had been banished continue to hang around Boston. Winthrop points out that the men had been banished, not sentenced to be executed. And since they had been banished in the dead of winter, Winthrop let them stay until a thaw so that their eviction form Massachusetts wouldn’t cause them to freeze to death on their way out of town. “A community of perils,” writes Winthrop, “calls for extraordinary liberality.” Love your enemies.

Here’s another Winthrop story, from Cotton Mather’s history of the colony: One extremely bad winter, Boston was low on fuel and one of its citizens filed a complaint that a “needy person” was stealing from his woodpile. Winthrop expressed outrage at this violation of the 6th Commandment and declared that it must be remedied. He requested that the thief be sent to see him immediately, presumably for well-deserved punishment. Think stocks, cutting off ears, Puritan punishment was not easy stuff. Well, confronted with the thief, Winthrop tells the man, “Friend, it is a severe winter, and I doubt you are but meanly provided for wood: wherefore I would have you supply yourself at my woodpile till this cold season be over.” The Winthrop merrily asked his friends whether he had not effectually cured this man of stealing his wood.

Here is what Winthrop told those first Americans, clinging to survival with the thinnest of margins for error: “If your brother be in want you and you can help him . . .if you love God, you must help him. There is a time also when Christians must give beyond their ability.”

This is our inheritance - this is the example - of someone who was doing his utmost to follow the example of Jesus Christ.

Followers of Christ’s example have left us with a rich legacy. Let me give you one more expression of where that comes from and where it leads: Martin Luther King, Jr. concluded one of his most important sermons (November 17. 1957 - Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, AL) like this:

“So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the yes of all my brothers and sister - all over Alabama and all over America and all over the world - I say to you, ‘I love you. I would rather die than hate you.’”

I’m gonna say that again. “I love you. I would rather die than hate you.”

That’s following (very closely) Jesus’ example. He choose to die rather than to hate. That’s the example our teacher has shown us.

The author of Peter urged his persecuted congregations to use that example as a template for working out the problems during their time of testing.

John Winthrop used that example, plugged in the perils and the possibilities of living on the American continent, and came out with a somewhat different, but equally correct answer.

Martin Luther King, Jr., used Jesus’ example, to work out and work through the question of obtaining civil rights and equal justice for all people in these United States. I hope you would agree that his use of the example also deserves high marks.

You and I face different problems. Our test - our achievement exam - is unique to our time and place and life situation. But we have what it takes to do well. With each set of problems, we need only to go to the Teacher’s Desk and say, “I need a little help. Can you maybe . . .”   And sure enough, our loving teacher will remind us that we already have a fully worked out, complete and clear example of love and life in the living example of Jesus Christ.

And what makes it even better - and worse - but mostly better - is that we are taking our test as a group. We can work together. So, hey guys, Let’s Ace this one!

Couldn't help noticing

2011-05-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

When the sounds of celebration at Bin Laden's death came over the radio, it brought back the horrible memory of the sounds of mobs celebrating the falling of the twin towers almost 10 years ago. C'mon, people. We're better than that, aren't we?

Easter Sunday Butterfly Release

2011-04-25T19:14:00.000-07:00

Photos of Butterfly Release

2011-04-24T19:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/fbx/?set=a.1497470415781.58966.1804745691
Fly away, dearies!

Resurrection is for the Living

2011-04-23T22:16:00.000-07:00

Matthew 28:1-10
Easter 2011

We are gathered here this morning because
Love is stronger than hate,
because the Power of Life trumps the power of death,
because all the evil in the world
cannot stop God’s grace from Raining Down,
because God’s Forgiveness never Fails.

This week a woman told me that when her husband died, a friend came by to sit with her and weep. And the friend then said the most profound and beautiful thing, “You know,” he said, “Resurrection isn’t just for the dead. It is also for the living.”

That’s an earthshaking message! On the first Easter morning, that shining angel descended, rolled back the stone to prove the tomb is empty, and told the women, “Jesus is alive! He’s going to meet you where you live.”

The women were from Galilee, you see. As were most of the disciples. That’s where they had linked up with Jesus. It was home. And when Jesus rose from the dead,
when he defeated all the evil and pain
and sorrow and sin
that the powers of this world could throw at him,
he left the message that those women and their “brethren” could meet up with him where they lived
and worked
and raised their families
and confronted their own challenges to faith and life.

Christ is alive! We may encounter him where we live!

On Easter my job is so easy, because I don’t have to explain the resurrection, or make sense of all the details of each of the four Biblical accounts. You don’t need to be reminded of the disciples’ psychological processes, or their stages of grief, or whatever. Or told what you have to believe about the how and wherefore of resurrection.
I like what theologian Rowan Williams said about the church’s job -

“For the Church does not exist just to transmit a message across the centuries about what people must believe; it exists so that people in this and every century may encounter Jesus of Nazareth as a living contemporary. Everything the church does – celebrating Holy Communion, reading the Bible, baptizing believers, (even raising butterflies, I might add) – is meant to be in the service of this contemporary encounter. Our every action ought to be transparent to Jesus, not holding back or veiling his presence.” – Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Easter Sermon excerpt, (2008?)

All that we have to do together this morning is to point out and to celebrate the amazing presence of the living Christ in our lives. Resurrection is for living, and we are living it - some in dramatic ways, some in more subtle transformations, some in individual lives, some in reconciled relationships and resurrected families.

Some of the resurrection is visible when we look around the church, especially when we baptize and welcome new members into the life of faith.

You want to see new life in the church? We can point to Brenna, and Clay and Lexy and Henry and Madeline. They asked to be baptized and confirmed. They wanted to take this step and publicly join the family of God. New life for them. New life for us. Hallelujah!

The resurrection is being lived in our choir. You don’t know how long that choir loft stood empty. And now, songs of praise rise from willing voices!

I look at this congregation and see people who have met the risen Christ in the pages of scripture. “Human words with divine energy behind them.” (Rowan Williams, again.)

I see people in Recovery. New Life emerging. People who have taken hold of a second chance at health, a second chance at love, a second chance at a life of meaning and purpose.

And I see those who wait in faith and trust as Jesus wipes the tears of grief and sorrow from their eyes. The Risen Christ is living each day with those who face the uncertain future with the certainty that Christ will somehow be there.

How is the Risen Christ alive in us and among us? Let me count the ways!

But it’s better if YOU count them, and count yourself among those who live life with the friendship and support of the One who rose from the grave to share His life with you.

If you are longing for his presence in your life, Easter morning is the perfect time to let the angel’s message shake your world and open whatever stone is blocking the entrance to your heart. Easter morning is the perfect time to put aside your fears and encounter Jesus, the Savior. There’s no better time than Easter morning to spiritually fall at His feet and worship one who wants, more than anything, to live with you and through you, now and forever.

The poet Rumi wrote,

The Risen Christ runs down the street
Knocking on every door
Come out! Come out! he calls,
I want to resurrect somebody!

Saturday before Easter

2011-04-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

Even the tardy butterflies have come out of their cocoons and are flitting around their enclosure. I can't wait for tomorrow.

Ted emerged!

2011-04-19T19:29:00.000-07:00

Our first butterfly has emerged from the chrysalis. I'm very excited. They all went "pupal" within 2-3 days, so I'm hoping that they all will be hatching in that time, too. YEAH!

Tree of Life #6 - The Hanging Tree

2011-04-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

Palm/Passion Sunday
April 17, 2011
I Peter 2:21-24, Matthew 27:45-50

There is an Arab proverb that says, "It is good to know the truth, but it is more pleasant to speak of palm trees."

Palm Tress - beautiful, tall, fruitful and evergreen - are indeed lovely subjects for conversation. Those of us who are lucky enough to have vacationed or traveled where palm trees are native associate them with some of the most enjoyable times of our lives. After a hard winter like the one that doesn’t seem to want to let go of us, who hasn’t longed for a life lived under a palm tree.

Ahh - palm trees! There is nothing like the sound of their huge fronds, rustling in a tropical breeze.
Their flowers scent the desert air.
They bear delicious dates and coconuts.
Their fronds are used in the thatched roofs of homes.
Their fibers can be woven into tropical garments, and the mats that line tent floors.
They provide oil - palm oil - for eating and for lamps.
The shade of the palm tree is welcome and pleasing.

Life is good under the palm.

And it is tempting, especially on palm sunday, to speak of palm trees. After all - the Bible tells us that palm trees played an important role in welcoming Jesus to Jerusalem when he, accompanied by a jubilant crowd, made his triumphant entry. So we could speak of Palm Trees - only palm trees - this morning. It is better to speak of palm trees, the proverb says. Yes, but what is that first part again? It is good to know the truth.

And, the truth is that the palm tree plays only a bit part in what Jesus did in Jerusalem during Holy Week. The tree that stars in our spiritual lives this week is the Tree of Life that, for all the world, looks like a Hanging Tree - the cross. It is on the cross Christians say, that Jesus won our salvation - our healing, our wholeness our full and complete humanity.

I’ll confess that, as your resident theologian, I have no idea how Jesus’ hanging accomplishes salvation. Theologians have debated it as though there was one answer. Biblical witness includes at least seven or eight (depending on how you read some passages) theories of how Jesus’ death on the tree accomplishes our salvation. I’ve read them until my head hurts. But the death itself makes my heart hurt. It takes all my faith and all my trust to stand in the shadow of the hanging tree and hang on to the idea that this, too, is how God works in the world - by hanging in with human suffering and pain.

Here is what we know - experiential. From our own lives: Life is good under the palm. But standing under the hanging tree teaches us lessons we need.

Because we know that the tree of life includes suffering. Some of it is just part of living - broken hearts, aches and pains, aging and the losses that come with it. Some suffering comes from things gone terribly wrong - our bodies or brains malfunction. A pathogen overwhelms the immune system. An accident happens. Random and wrong.

But some suffering, to me the most horrible kind of suffering, comes at the hands of cruel or thoughtless but powerful people: Bullies and demagogues - at school, or in high office - who choose to hurt those who are not as strong as they are. This is the suffering that causes me to despair. Shooting protesters. Demolishing homes. Torturing prisoners.

The Hanging Tree is both an example of and an answer to all these kinds of suffering. It is the peculiarly Christian resource in responding to suffering of all kinds. It is our daily reminder that Jesus chose to share our lot - our pain, our vulnerability, even our despair.

It provides the Christian perspective on the kind of cruelty and human caused suffering that pervades our world. The Hanging Tree shows us where Christ is found. We see that He chose to put himself at the non-existant mercy of those forces in the world which protect their power at all costs, who don’t give a rip for collateral damage, who willingly shed the blood of innocents in what they tell themselves and the world is a greater good.

He carried all of that to the tree and hung it up there in full view of the world. it is clear from the Biblical witness that Jesus’ heart hurt, too. “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?” he cries. We don’t have to make any logical leaps, or wonder for a moment if Jesus knew the kind of pain that darkens our hearts sometimes. The man of Calvary knows Utter despair and heartache.
He displayed it - Naked. Horrifying. Repulsive.

Some preachers say - sometimes I may have said - that the disciples and women who stood there by the cross were failures because the stood by and watched this horrible thing happen. But it is equally plausible that standing there and watching, being witnesses and not closing their eyes, or turning away, or running to shield themselves from the pain and sorrow was an act of faith. To see what evil does to good. To see the cost of human sin. To stand in the shadow of the hanging tree is an act of faith.

This tree is what it takes to transform human horror into human hope.
Faith that stands under the hanging tree transforms us from unwitting participants in the cruelty of the crowd to fully conscious beings who recognize the divine in life’s victims. That is the beginning of salvation. It starts under the cross, under the hanging tree, gazing up at innocence of Christ.

So this week - my invitation and my prayer is that we will, as a congregation, hang in there with Jesus on the tree, because this is where it starts.

But, Praise God!, this is not where it ends! Salvation does not end with Christ on the cross. God’s plan for us passes through this dark chapter and on to the relief and the joy and the triumph of life over death, life beyond death, life more powerful than death in every way. And it is just a week away.

But we can’t fully know and appreciate and celebrate that Life - we can’t enter into the Joy that Easter brings - until we have stood in the shadow and fully known the truth that can only be apprehended under the Hanging Tree.

Advice from a Tree

2011-04-17T04:21:00.001-07:00

"Stand Tall and Proud
Sink your roots deeply into the Earth
Reflect the light of a greater source
Think long term
Go out on a limb
Remember your place among all living beings
Embrace with joy the changing seasons
For each yields its own abundance
The Energy and Birth of Spring
The Growth and Contentment of Summer
The Wisdom to let go of leaves in the Fall
The Rest and Quiet Renewal of Winter"
- Ilan Shamir, Advice From a Tree

Palm Sunday

2011-04-17T03:47:00.000-07:00

The Donkey

By G. K. Chesterton 1874–1936

When fishes flew and forests walked

And figs grew upon thorn,

Some moment when the moon was blood

Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry

And ears like errant wings,

The devil’s walking parody

On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,

Of ancient crooked will;

Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,

I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;

One far fierce hour and sweet:

There was a shout about my ears,

And palms before my feet.

Source: The collected poems of G. K. Chesterton (New York : Dodd, Mead, c1980., 1927)

Tree of Life #5 - Grafted by God (Fifth Sunday in Lent)

2011-04-10T14:31:00.000-07:00

We had some fun (and welcomed some new members) today. Here's the sermon. During it, I played Cindy and Paul's parts. Members of the congregation were the "callers." And they did a great job!

Scripture: Rom. 11:16b-20 and Isaiah 56:3-7

Welcome to Illinois Gardener. This is the place where, every week, between pledge breaks, we answer your questions about gardening. Soil, plant selection, pest control, and fertilizer . . . we run the gardening gamut.

Today’s topic: Grafting. Our special guest is the Apostle Paul, who got his horticulture degree from the University of Damascus, and has a thriving church planting career throughout the ancient near East.

Perhaps you’d like to start us off, Paul with a bit of background about grafting.

Thank you, Cindy.

Grafting is a propagation method where the tissue of two plants are fused together. The bottom part of the plant that contributes roots and support is called the rootstock. The upper part contributing leaves, flowers, fruits and stems, is called the scion.

Grafting has a long history. There are written records as well as pictures from ancient Egypt and Greece which suggest that gardeners have been employing grafting in orchards and gardens for over 3000 years.   It is an ancient practice, and one that many gardeners in all parts of the world still find essential to their practice.

Cindy - Some crop scientists believe that increased use of grafting could provide one of the keys to more sustainable food production in many areas of the world that do not have the luxury of soil and climate that we enjoy in Central Illinois.
Did you know that in Japan almost 95 % of the watermelons, oriental melons, greenhouse cucumbers, tomato and eggplant crops are grafted before being transplanted to the field or greenhouse?
Well, it makes sense, because in many areas of Japan, there is a sustained wet and rainy part of the growing season. Tomatoes don’t like having wet feet, and are susceptible to root rot and stem collapse. But if the tomato top is grafted onto an eggplant rootstock - the problem is solved, because eggplant roots can withstand even several days of being submerged in water.

Interesting, eh?

Paul: Interesting. Yes. I myself am not an expert on vegetable grafting. I am more of a tree man, myself. Grafting of trees is what I know a little about. Olive trees.
I believe we have a caller on line #1. Go ahead, caller.

#1: This show is called Illinois Gardener. So my question is, “Is grafting ever used in Illinois gardens?”

Cindy: Why yes! If you have any roses in your garden, and many Illinois gardeners do, it is very likely that you have a grafted plant in your garden. Most roses are grafted. The ornamental, flowering part of the plant is most likely grafted onto a root stock that has been proven hardy for our climate extremes.

And many orchards, especially apple orchards, employ grafting. In commercial applications especially, the branches of a desired variety of apple is grafted onto rootstock of dwarf or semi dwarf trees. This allows trees to be planted more closely, increasing the amount of fruit per acre of land. It also means that the fruit is lower to the ground, easier to harvest, and substantially reduces the risk of injuries to workers during harvest.

Paul: Yes, grafting has advantages in every climate and many types of agriculture. And, I might add, understanding the process of grafting can have important spiritual implications, especially for non-Jewish members of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Cindy: Really? Why, most Illinois Gardeners ARE non-Jewish Christians.

Paul:   Yes. In my day we called you “Gentiles”. Peoples.    As opposed to “The Chosen People”. Nations, as opposed to THE Nation of Israel. The same root - Gen - is found in English words like “gen-eology” (The study of one’s ancestry, which is good) and “gen-ocide” (the killing of a people, which is, of course, very bad).

And how does this relate to grafting, again, please, Paul?

Paul: Well, Christians who are not Jews become connected to God through a grafting process. I see we have another caller.

Caller #2:   Getting back to gardening, Could you describe the steps involved in grafting?

Cindy: Well, the first thing it’s important to know is that grafting takes a very sharp and clean knife. Cutting is the first step in grafting and growing a stronger, more productive plant.

Paul: I always emphasized that Christian conversion is analogous to cutting. The new life in Christ is exactly that - a new life. The person who converts is given a fresh start in Christ. The old life, with all its entanglements and limitations, is gone. A new life has begun. It is a radical new beginning.

Cindy: Caller on line #3.

Caller #3: Does that mean that the scion, the branch, is entirely new species?

Cindy: I think I can answer that, Paul. The answer is no. The branch that is cut still retains its own characteristics. A Jonathan branch joined to an Red Delicious tree will not begin producing Red Delicious apples. Grafting doesn’t destroy the basic attributes of the branch.

Paul: That’s right. You are who you are. Before and after Christ. Grafting isn’t a personality transplant. I, for instance, tended to be quick tempered, quick witted and adventurous before my sudden conversion. And I was a quick tempered, quick witted and adventurous Christian after conversion, too. But, in a good graft, the branch does become part of something entirely new. It grows differently after the graft. It’s shape and direction and fruitfulness are determined by its new root.
I see we have another caller. Line #4?

Caller #4: How is the grafted branch joined to the new rootstock?

Cindy: There are several different techniques. What is important is that the join be done in such a way that the growing parts of both the scion and the stock plant come in contact with one another, so that the tissues can fuse with one another and the nutrients can flow from one to the other.

Paul: In the orchard, the gardener uses great care in grafting on new branches. He or she (Please note that I've become a little more inclusive in the past few years) lines up the parts carefully and then reinforces the graft with grafting wax which keeps out rain and pathogens until the graft has a chance to establish itself.
Theologically, God is the gardener. This is God’s work. But I like to think that the church can go a long way in helping the gardener out by paying attention to the graft points, reinforcing them, especially at first, until they have a chance to get established. Providing the right conditions for the graft to “take”.

Cindy: And how do you suggest that churches do that?

Paul: Well, one way is by paying attention to the little shoots that are growing up in the church.   Christian education for young people, grounding them in the stories of the faith is vital.    And you have to pay attention to new members, too. Greet them. Learn their names, and more than their names. Pray for them.
You know, in commercial horticulture operations, new grafts are often put in screen houses where humidity is high and conditions are perfect. A whole bunch of plants at the same stage of growth is something to see. Big churches can sometimes do something like that with their Sunday Schools, or New Member Incubators.   It’s efficient for big operations.
A small scale gardener can’t do the same as a big commercial grower.   But he or she can get the same great results in grafting by carefully misting the individual plants just right. Small churches have to do that, too. Mind each little sprout and each new member and provide individual care. I like to think of prayer and care as the “mist” of smaller churches.

I think we have time for one more caller.   Line #5

Caller #5: If you had to say what was the most important thing to know about grafting, what would it be?

Paul: I’ll take this one. The most important part of grafting is the root. As I’ve said in other places, “If the root is holy, so are the branches. Remember that it is not the branch that supports the roots, but the root that supports the branches. So do not be proud, but stand in awe.” that God has grafted you into God’s own life through the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Christ is the source of our fruitfulness, our beauty, our very life. Jesus said, “I am the vine. You are the branches.”   And our new life, abiding in Him, being part of His life now and eternally, is accomplished by the sacrifice that He made in dying for love of us. The wounds of the cross provide the places for us to be joined with him and rooted in God’s love forever.   And when we are joined with him, grafted into him through faith, we share in that life and that love forevermore. So do not be proud, but stand in awe. We are grafted into the Tree of Life.

Cindy: And that’s all the time we have on this segment of Illinois Gardener.

Friday has come again

2011-04-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

Spent all day yesterday at a COM meeting in Effingham, so I'm scrambling to get everything done for this weekend. And get my tax stuff to the accountant. Bulletin - check. Accompanist note - check. Wedding stuff - check. Sermon - half check. OK. Things are getting done. Breathe. You know who I envy? Those caterpillars. They are just eating and growing. That's all they have to do for now. Breathe.

Tuesday

2011-04-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

It looks so nice and spring-y out. But it is still pretty cold.
Going over notes from last night's session meeting, and checking in with dear ones I haven't seen in awhile. Tonight I get to go to choir practice and then moderate a special session meeting to receive two new members. That's always exciting!
Oh. And I voted. Always a privilege. Sometimes a joy.

Weird Weather Alert

2011-04-04T02:55:00.000-07:00

Something is unquiet out there. The wind blew all day and now there is rain. Sleep just fled about 3. So I've been up, reading the lectionary texts and some Tillich (arg!) And now I'm going to go back to bed so that when the alarm goes off in an hour I can experience distress and agony to the max. SMH. (that's my new text abbreviation. it means "shaking my head". do you think it will catch on?)

Meet Ted

2011-04-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

During the children's sermon today I introduced one of the caterpillars. The kids thought it should have a name, and two of them suggested "Ted". So Ted it is. Next week we'll see how big Ted has gotten.

They are growing

2011-04-02T10:26:00.001-07:00

I think. Hard to tell.

The Caterpillars Came

2011-04-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

The box with the itty bitty caterpillars arrived in the mail yesterday. I'm so tickled. Caleb and I got them transferred to their individual "capsules" with their food supply. And so far, so good. Now we have to wait for them to eat and grow and molt and eat and grow and molt some more. They are about a quarter to a half inch long now. And they look hungry!

Sign for the times

2011-03-26T18:04:00.000-07:00

This afternoon we had a snack in the food court of the Crystal Mall in Vancouver - a shopping area that is 100% Asian. (Steamed mini buns and green onion pancakes - delicious - thanks for asking.)
Here is the sign that was posted on a column there in the food court:
Be soft spoken and forgiving, even when reason is on your side.
Isn't that a good reminder? Do you think we'll see anything like that at Market Place Mall anytime soon?

Bonus Post!

2011-03-20T15:54:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'll be traveling, and may be I won't be able to post. I lifted a little quote from another blog (BeautyTipsforMinisters.com) as a little Monday substitute:
‎”The moment you come to trust chaos, you see God clearly. Chaos is divine order, versus human order. Change is divine order, versus human order. When the chaos becomes safety to you, then you know you’re seeing God clearly.” – Caroline Myss, “Spiritual Madness: The Necessity of Meeting God in Darkness”
I have no idea who Caroline Myss is. But I like the quote. My relationship with chaos is troubled but fairly stable. Like a friendship with someone you don't totally like, but can't imagine living without. As for seeing God clearly . . . I think I prefer Paul - "Now we see through a mirror, dimly. Then we shall see face to face."

Sunday - Second Sunday in Lent

2011-03-20T04:59:00.000-07:00

The big news at Philo Pres is that we are receiving a new member, and adult, by profession of faith. First profession of faith. Ever. This is the gold standard for the vitality of a congregation, and we're one of very few Presby. churches who will do this this year. The vast majority of congregations can not even remember when they last got a new believer.   (I remember the last one, too, but it has been a few years.) Thank God for prevenient grace and for a welcoming community when the time is right. So excited.

The "message" is the second one in our "Tree of Life" series. I'm preaching on a little-read passage from Daniel, in which Nebuchadnezzer (I learned how to spell his name - that should count for something) dreams of a tree that represents his empire and his life. I'm not saying this in the sermon, but I think that I felt prompted to use this pericope by a comment from some economic analyst on the radio. He said, 100 years ago, Britain looked west, across an ocean, and saw a new power rising at exactly the time that the British empire was beginning to wane. And now the U.S. is in the same position. I just think there ought to be some theological reflection on the historical moment in which we live. And this passage is, in a way, a hopeful one for people of faith.

Daniel 4
The Dream Tree of King Nebuchadnezzer
Tree of Humility

The Cross is the Tree of Life and we are journeying toward it this Lent. But what trees do we pass on the road? Last week we thought together about the Tempting Tree in the Garden of Eden.

This week let’s examine a more obscure tree - the dream tree of King Nebuchadnezzar found in the mysterious book of Daniel: Our question is “what does this tree tell us about ourselves as human beings and about the God we long to know?”

Listen children, let me tell you a story from the Epic Tales of Nebuchadnezzar.

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia ruled over all the world - or at least all the world that mattered back then. Babylonia was a beautiful place, near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers - where Iran is today. It was an agricultural showplace, where irrigation and cultivation produced huge crops of grains, vegetables, and fruit. Fertile farmlands made large and beautiful cities possible, and King Nebuchadnezzer lived in the largest and most cultured city, where every day he was able to enjoy every luxury, including the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Nebuchadnezzar’s empire was enormous! The King lived in a large and ornate palace where he was waited on hand and foot by servants of every color and race, who had been brought from every corner of his far-flung empire as prisoners of war. When the King’s army went out to battle, they so dominated their enemies that they often they evacuated whole cities, bringing back with them every leader, every learned person, every beautiful woman and every bright young child to serve the King.
    This is how Daniel - a young man from Jerusalem, of Judea, had come to be part of the King’s court. Daniel was a Jew, one of the people who had been transported to Babylon after their kingdom, weakened by internal strife and lax living, had fallen to this powerful enemy. It was the Jews in Babylon who wrote and sang the lament, “By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, and there we wept, when we remembered Zion. For our captors required of us a song. But how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
    Daniel struggled to remain true to his Lord in this strange land. And his struggle was complicated by the fact that he lived and worked in the center of power and luxury, the palace of the King.   Daniel was very valuable to the King, for the young man was possessed of remarkable insight and intelligence, gifts from God.
    Well, one day, Nebuchadnezzar called for Daniel to appear before him.
    Daniel, the King said, I wonder if you can help me interpret a powerful dream that I had last night.   In my dream I saw a magnificent and beautiful tree, the trunk of which grew straight and strong and so tall that it’s top could not be discerned from the ground. It seemed to grow right up and touch the sky. The branches of this tree grew lush and full, and in them all the birds of the air made nests, and raised their young. The sound of their songs and the flashes of colors from their wings enlivened the scene. The tree flowered and blossomed and bore fruit, all at the same time. The fragrance was intoxicating, and drew creatures of the forest and the plains, who feasted on the fruit and rested in the shade. There did not seem to be any limit to the tree’s bounty or beauty, and I marveled as I beheld it.
    Then, I heard a voice from heaven say to someone I could not see, “Go cut down the tree. Fell it, and let the birds of the air and the creatures of the field scatter.   It will be no more. And when there is nothing but the stump remaining, cap it with a great cap of iron, level with the grass around, so that no one will even be able to tell that it was there. When you are done, let it be like a pasture, where oxen will graze, and not trace of grandeur remains.”
    My wise men tell me they cannot tell me what the dream means. But it was so vivid, so real, I know it must have a message for me. What do you think it means, Daniel?

    And Daniel, who had advised the King for almost all of his young life, said, “Dear King, I hope that the dream is not meant for you.   But the meaning of the dream is not hard to see: The tree is your empire. It is large and beautiful and spreads over the whole world. But, like all empires, it too will fall. And you, great n, will fall as well. Only when you are completely humbled, having lost all your power, your prestige, your position - everything you believe makes your life worth living, will you remember what I have said. But when you do, and acknowledge God as the one worthy of worship, your life will be returned to you. Like a shoot that rises from the stump of a great tree, you will live again. Put not your faith in empire, but only in the God of the whole earth, who sees empires rise and fall.”

    As you might expect, Nebuchadnezzer did not heed Daniel’s advice. He could not imagine the world without his empire. It is a failure of imagination that has repeated itself in empires from Babylon, to Assyria, to Greece, to Rome, to the Ottomans, the Byzantines, the French, the British . . . well, you get they idea.   Yet Daniel’s words were true. And his counsel was sound then, and sound even today: Put not your trust in empire, for like majestic trees they rise and flourish and fall. But happy are those who put their trust in the Lord, who lives and reigns forever. Like saplings, vigorous and full of life, those who trust first and foremost in Him rise from the ruins of the empires which have fallen and bear witness to the Lord of Life.

Quote for our day

2011-03-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

A day late and a dollar short

2011-03-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

I didn't post yesterday. Orthodontist again. Parent teacher conferences. Ah. Now I remember why I was so tired. I spent the morning getting the bulletins set for the next two Sundays. And talking to the people I needed to talk to to do that. And I went to the store. And had another conference call. And met with a couple who are getting married in May. And saw another member/friend. And did a reference check. And arranged a meeting with another young person who is thinking about getting baptized. "I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. Better than: Man plans. God laughs.

2011-03-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

Here's the road I'm a little bit farther down. I don't know why it wouldn't load yesterday.

Today was great. I made reservations for a Board of Pension conference I have to attend in May, had a conference call with the Presbytery muckety mucks, got ready for the kids' after school program, met the kids, helped five kids prepare for baptism, had soup supper and discussion of What's the Least I Can Believe and Still be a Christian, looked over a list that needs to be translated into a data base, had a Christian Ed meeting, and made a couple of phone calls to set up appointments for tomorrow and Friday. That's enough. No smoking. Set brakes. Stop engines. Call it a day.

two minute drill

2011-03-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

Today was AWESOME for so many reasons: New members coming on, a wedding for a dear member/friend, some glass that came out of the kiln just right . . . I made precious little progress on my list from yesterday. But I feel like I'm a whole lot farther down the road.

Monday Funday

2011-03-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

Waiting for the "oomph" to kick in so that I can at least begin all the things that are nagging at me: reading the stuff for sermon prep. the photo directory list. transferring pictures. calling Maaco about C's car. Sunday's bulletin. finding "actors" for a dramatic reading on the 27th. filing papers. paying bills. this blogging is doing nothing but bogging me down. Time to quit and get some real work done.

First Sunday of Lent

2011-03-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

The Gospel lesson for this Sunday is always Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. But I went with the first account of Temptation - from Genesis. As you may recall, it didn't turn out so well. Adam and Eve were a big fail.
I wanted to tell that story as my first "Tree of Life" for Lent. I'll post the sermon. But I also want to remember that I got a picture of Chuck and his girls, and met with another potential confirmation person (who had so many good questions and observations - quite exciting for the pastor!) and then ate the Malawi dinner with the senior high folks. So it was a good day. Thank you, Jesus. Here's my "listen to Jesus" verse for the day: "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." It really was light today.

Forbidden fruit.

This is a tree in the garden in Artes, West Bank, Palestine.

It was behind a fence that said "Do Not Enter" and Khalid, my driver, just

pushed it open and took me inside.

Then he picked nuts, which were like delicious soft shelled walnuts

off the tree and gave them to me.

(Mabel the Maple should have looked this good!)

The Tree of Life: Temptation
Gen. 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Mar 13, 2011

I saw the whole thing! Call me Mable. Mable the Maple, and if you want to “tap” a first hand source - then just gather around and I’ll tell it to you straight. I was in the Garden when it all went down. Of course, I was just a sapling then - skinny, just getting my branches - but I was tall enough to see what was going on right there in the center of the garden that day when the Beings - the Ones Made out of Dust - did what they did. And God did what God did. And the whole thing was so amazing I just about dropped my leaves in astonishment.   I’ve lived a long time, but I’ve never seen anything like it.

The day it all happened started like any other: The Dust - Beings woke up when the sun warmed their faces, and the wind rustled through my leaves and kissed their cheeks. They stretched and limbered up, chatting all the while with One another. Some mornings the Creator strolled by and they all made a circuit of the garden together, but sometimes the Dust Creatures did that themselves. They checked the strawberry patch, and the lettuce, and picked a pear or a peach as they walked through the orchard. Of course, being somewhat limited in my mobility, I didn’t see everything they were doing.   Nor did I care. I was more excited that morning about the possibility that a pair of cardinals might make a little nest in my newly lush leaves.    They would be my first nesters.   That would be cool. The tree of Life - right south of me, had lots of birds nesting in her. And the Tree of the Knowledge - directly to my west was a nice full tree, too. Birds add a little something to a tree, don’t you agree?    Now my neighbors - Life Tree and Knowledge Tree - were more well established than I. And I have to tell you, those were a couple of gorgeous trees. Tall - Full - gorgeous green shiny leaves and fruit! The fruit looked fabulous. If you like that sort of thing. I myself don’t have fruit. But I do have those whirling wing-like confetti that is so pretty on a windy day.

There were enough fruit trees in the Garden. Orange trees, fig trees, grapefruit trees, lemon trees, pear trees, peach trees, mango trees, nut trees, pineapple trees . . . Pineapples don’t grow on trees. I was just making sure you were paying attention.

OK. I’ll get on with it. The Creator had made these Dust Beings and this Garden and they were perfect for each other. The garden was beautiful, and pleasant - warm. There were animals, too, but no predators. Every kind of things just got along splendidly. The Dust Beings could move around on their feet, they could eat the fruit from the trees, and the plants that grew out of the earth - their leaves and their seeds.

There was one thing they couldn’t eat, though - my neighbor tree, the Tree of Knowledge was off limits, according to the Creator. Now I’ve heard people wonder why that was. And I don’t know. But I’ve got alot of rings around my trunk, I’ve seen alot of living since that day, and here’s what I think:

I’ve noticed that anytime life gets really good - there is some sort of limit involved. A tree like me can only grow so big. If I grew bigger, my limbs would be too tall for the sap to rise all the way to the top. There is a limit. Raising children - what’s one of the most important things you do for a child? Set appropriate limits. Love between a man and a woman - when it gets really good, they get married. Which draws a boundary around that relationship. Somethings become “out of bounds”.

And Dust Creatures seem to have a difficult time with boundaries. They don’t seem to like anything to be off limits. Think about Girl Scout cookies. You think I don’t know about Girl Scout cookies? You open up that package, you think you’ll have one or two Thin Mints. That’s your limit. And pretty soon the first sleeve is empty. And you are too full to make a nice healthy dinner. Limits are hard.

But this limit was huge. The Creator had said, “This one is off limits. You eat of this one and definately, immediately, you are going to die dead.” And, after all, this was the Creator talking. He should surely know. The Dust Beings knew that they could trust Him.

But on this day, the Dust Beings walked right past me and over to that particular tree. Something had caught their eye. It was a snake. He was just hanging there on one of the low branches, singing, and the Dust Beings went over to have a little chat. I listened. I wasn’t eavesdropping. I just happened to over hear what they said.

The snake said, “So. What a nice place this is.” The Dust Beings agreed. “Lotsssss of good fruit trees.” said the snake. The Dust Beings agreed. “It’s too bad you aren’t allowed to eat any of the fruit.” he offered. The Dust Beings looked at each other and kind of smirked. I could tell they were thinking, “Silly snake!” The woman spoke up, “Oh, we can eat of the trees. All the trees. Except that tree you are in right now. God told us “If you eat of that tree - or even if you touch it - you will die.” I think it was a little prank. I think she expected the snake to get scared and jump out of the tree.   Cause that was a lie. God never said that.

But the snake didn’t jump. He just said, “Really? He sssssaid that? I wonder if that’s true. It looks to me like a perfectly good tree to me. I’ll tell you what I think: I think this is the bessssst tree in the whole garden. I bet God didn’t tell you that to protect you. I bet God told you that because he knows that if you eat of this tree, you’ll be like God - you’ll know everything God knowsssssss.”

And a funny look came over the Dust Beings faces. Wasn’t God good? What if God was just arbitrary and interested, not in them, but in keeping his own power? What if He didn’t have their best interest at heart? What if they ought to look out for themselves? To guard their own best interest? A God like that - power hungry and arbitrary - who wanted to obey that kind of a God?

They looked around - at all the other delicious trees. But I could tell that suddenly the NO tree did look to them like the best tree in the garden. Better than all the YES trees.   They didn’t trust the Creator’s love behind the boundary. They wanted to have it all.

They had to push the limit God had set.

So the female Dust Being reached out and picked a couple of pieces of fruit. I watched in horror as they looked at it, polished it, sniffed it, licked it. And then took a big juicy bite. They did it. They broke the boundary. They ate it.

I held my breath. Surely this was the end of this cute little couple!

And, in a way, I was right. It was the end. At once the couple’s well ordered, harmonious world begins to disintegrate. There is no more talk of tending the garden. There is no more walking with God in the garden. There is only mistrust, blame, guilt, and alienation. (Dennis Bratcher - )

The first sign is the way they looked at one another. Before the fruit, they had been naked and unashamed. Now, they are embarrassed.

And they did something so lame and futile. They plucked off some of my leaves and tried to cover themselves up. They knew something was wrong - but the way they tried to fix it - ouch. Painful for me and ineffective for them. But I thought, “At least they know they’ve messed up. They know they what God said. But I thought, I guess like they thought, Maybe there is still a way to fix this.”

But no. It just got worse.   They heard the Creator coming. And they couldn’t face Him. He called to them, and you should have heard the pathetic answer: "I was afraid because I was naked."   Deathly over there. I braced myself, because I knew what was coming.

They were going to die. But before they did, their partnership unraveled. . .   the man blames the woman for his disobedience. Then, unbelievably, he even tried to shift the blame to the Creator: saying, This woman “you put here with me” as if it was somehow God’s fault. You know how blaming goes - The woman blamed the snake. For the first time in their talk, there is not love, not trust, no sharing, no mutual accountability. There is only guilt, blaming, trying to avoid responsibility, damaged relationships. (Bratcher again)

It was like watching a wreck in slow motion. The destruction just kept coming. And I knew the biggest one - the one God was going to have to impose, was yet to come. Because the Creator had said, If you eat of it that day, you are most certainly going to die.   All of in the Garden were expecting to see the couple fall dead. Justice demanded it. Creation fell silent as we waited to see how God was going to make them die.
I tried to cover my eyes. A minute passed. Two. I peeked.

And when I did, I saw an astonishing sight. God was not carrying out the death penalty. He let the couple live. But God the Creator became God the Forgiver that day. God responds to disobedience, not with the full weight of justice, but with mercy and grace!
It cost him, too. It cost him the peacefulness of the garden. He had to sacrifice animals to make the garments to cover the Dust Beings pitiful bodies. Things would never be the same between animals and people and trees again. How could it be? After people mistrusted and lied and hid . . . it can’t be that things just go back to being perfect. What they did was too disruptive to allow for that.

But even though he had to sacrifice the perfection he had created, for a second time, he gave them the gift of life. But this time, they had to live it on the other side of the boundary. They had crossed over when they ignored the limit and nothing could bring them back.

But I wanted to tell you this story, straight from the tree to you, because it’s really important that you know who this Creator is: This One does not give you what you Dust Beings deserve because he loves you and won’t give up on a relationship with you.

Take it from me. Take it from the tree. I was there. I know.

Saturday passed in a blur

2011-03-13T16:51:00.000-07:00

Yoga. Sermon prep. Bulletin finally finished. Picking up and dropping off the boy. Dinner? I can't remember if we had any. Oh, yes we did. Saturday passed in a blur.

Friday Funeral

2011-03-11T12:19:00.000-08:00

This morning at 10 o'clock people gathered for Bob's funeral. His brothers and their children and their children's children and lots of folks from the town. I think it was how he would have wanted it. I hope so. Bob lived a completely different life than most everyone I know. He remained single. He made a lot of money, but didn't seem to enjoy spending it, and lived very frugally. He lived in numbers and details that are not at all interesting to me. But it is interesting to me that he was able to live in this community, make a substantial contribution to civic life (as a banker, village clerk and trustee of the cemetery) and be regarded with some (admittedly bemused) respect by just about everybody. He was different. Really different. And yet a community I think of as very much interested in conformity accepted him and considered him one of their own. Interesting. Rest easy, sir.

Day after Ash Wednesday

2011-03-10T07:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was so busy. I made soup, got the baptism class materials organized, printed out and distributed, ran off the bulletin for Good Friday, prepared for the soup supper study, talked to Bob's family about his service, picked up 10 kids for afterschool, did the soup supper, had Ash Wednesday and . . . that was about it. After I picked Caleb up from St. Joe I fell into bed and had weird dreams all night.
Today I met with Janice, and now I'm doing table clothes, sketching a Good Friday service for CUPS, going to CUPS meeting and ordering more books for the study.
Plus I have to get ready for Sunday.
Prayer for the day Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the peacemeakers, for they shall be called children of God. By name, the baptism candidates, Jeff's family, and me. To be blessed and to be a blessing. Listen to Him.

Ash Wednesday Poem

2011-03-09T04:31:00.000-08:00

Ashes -
by Anne Weems

Two nights ago I knelt and 
took the ashes from the fireplace. 
It was some time before I saw evidence 
of the smudge of ash upon my face.
I washed it quickly away.

Last night I knelt and took the bread 
and dipped it in the cup,
and then I felt the cool smooth 
finger of ash upon my forehead, 
ashes from last year's palms 
saved for this holy time. 
I wondered if there might still be 
some remnant of Hosanna! 
lingering in the ashes.

All evening long I wore the ash, 
that holy ash, 
and when others saw the smudge, 
I wondered if they were inclined
to wipe it clean 
or to lean closer
in the hope of hearing 
some soft Hosanna! 
burning still 
in ash 
or heart . . .

Shrove Tuesday

2011-03-08T05:51:00.000-08:00

Forgive me.
I'm so sorry.
I confess that I did the wrong thing,
said the wrong thing,
thought something I had no business thinking.
I meant to do the right thing, but I didn't.
Or, more often, I didn't even intend to do any differently than I did.
This is my fault.
This is partly my fault.
I'm so sorry.
Forgive me.

In the Orthodox church there is a liturgy where the people come up to the front, and say to the priest. "I am a sinner. I need forgiveness." And the priest says, "God forgives. Forgive me." And then people say it to one another.
"Forgive me."
"God forgives. Forgive me."
How cleansing and renewing would that be? I am breathing easier just playing it in my mind. Maybe that is the prayer for the day, "God forgives. Forgive me."

Getting set for Lent

2011-03-07T19:55:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday. I'm making pancakes for choir, and attending Caleb's band concert. But I've been thinking about Lent for a week or so and I'm going to blog here everyday during Lent.
I'll put my "listening to Jesus" quote up, and then just thoughts for the day. It's possible that I might link to it. But probably not.
Tonight we had a Session meeting which was pretty energy filled. I feel hopeful about the year ahead.

The Worry Bird

2011-02-26T19:42:00.000-08:00

Matthew 6:25-33

Once upon a time there was a bird. A worry-bird, who lived in a magical kingdom called Illinois. The worry bird was dressed all in black, with patches of scarlet on her shoulders that shone in the July sunshine. The worry bird lived in a nest she had built all by herself, out of last years grass and the mud from a thunderstorm that had come in the spring, right in the middle of a field of grass and wildflowers and weeds. The worry bird had everything she needed in life, except for one thing: she did not have enough.
Every morning, the worry-bird woke before dawn and rose from her nest to pick clover seeds and Johnson grass kernels and the tiny black middles of spent thistle flowers. Every morning she worried that today; there might not be enough to eat. If only her field were bigger, then she would be sure to have enough. Sometimes she stopped for a moment to preen her shiny black feathers or she squatted beside a puddle and stretched her neck to let little sips or rainwater run down her throat. Each time, she worried that tomorrow the puddle might be dried up and the rains might not come and there wouldn’t be enough water to slake her thirst. Her worried rest stop could not last long because soon she must be on her way. For she was a bird upon whom depended not only her own life, but also the lives of three little fuzzy chicks. Their mouths were always open and they greeted her hungrily each time she returned to the nest. She worried about what would happen to them if anything happened to her. Or even if nothing happened to her, still she had worries.
The worry bird worked very hard. And her work was a burden; because she always worried that she was not doing enough. The worry bird had a little hidden stash of grain, piled away in a place only she knew about, so that she wouldn’t run out unexpectedly. And the stash was a worry; because it wasn’t big enough, or well hidden enough to really make her feel secure. The worry bird had her little family. And her family was a burden to her, because she worried about them. The worry bird had neighbors in her field – some other blackbirds, a meadowlark, a family of mice and a skunk. And her neighbors were a burden to her because of course she worried that they would get to the seeds and the water, and her babies before she could. The sun shone and the rains of summer came and went. And every perfect day was a burden to our heroine, because she worried, knowing that each one brought her one-day closer to winter and the cold and the long trip she must make south. What worries she had!
And if the food and the water and the family and the neighbors and the weather weren’t enough to worry about – she had the TV, which she had bought to help her forget her worries.
But, alas! The TV only seemed to make her worries worse. She saw on TV that there was a mop that you could buy that would clean up all your messes, wet or dry, and she worried that her nest was not clean enough.
She saw on TV that some birds lived in fine birdhouses, with copper roofs to shield them from the rain, and sunflowers painted around the doorway and a perch made out of a shiny metal key. And she worried that her nest was too plain and too open to the sky. Some birds ate at bird feeders, and bathed in birdbaths. “What I wouldn’t give to splash around in one of those!” she thought.
She saw on TV birds that wore jewel colored feathers, and she worried that her black feathers were not pretty enough. “I’d be satisfied,” she told herself, “if only I had some blue feathers, or some yellow plumage, and a longer tail and yellow eyes and a red crown upon my head. Just a little flash of purple. That would be enough.”
She learned on TV that proper nutrition was essential to good health, and that if someone didn’t get enough vitamins, terrible things could happen. She worried since she didn’t take a scientifically compounded multi-vitamin formula her feathers wouldn’t be numerous enough, her eyes wouldn’t be sharp enough and her beak wouldn’t be strong enough. And how could she be sure that she got the right combination of high and low density lipids for maximum performance of skin and nerve tissue?
She worried because there were so many things out there in the world, and she didn’t have enough of them. She didn’t have that nifty Ronco seed processor that made meal preparation a snap. She didn’t have the “gazelle” exerciser to tame middle age bulges. She didn’t even have a single tube of feather gloss, to make her wings shiny and sexy. She had so little. Really. It wasn’t enough.

Numbers flashed across the TV screen. If only she had a telephone. And fingers. She would dial up and get those things that would satisfy her and assure her that her life was plenty full. But she didn’t have a phone. Not even a land line, much less one of those wonderful picture taking cell phones that every teenager on TV carried around in their pocket because their parents knew they needed it. What about what she needed? Huh? Who was looking out for that? Who would make sure she had enough?
Every night, when the worry bird tucked her little black head beneath her little black wing, her eyes were wide open with anxiety and fear and she worried the night away.
How can I make sure I have enough for tomorrow? For next season? For next year?
How can I make sure my children are smart enough, brave enough, big enough, athletic enough, polite enough, and moral enough?
How can I get healthy enough?
How can I live well enough, long enough to be happy enough that I am alive?
The worry bird tossed and turned every night, till she tossed and turned her babies right out of the nest. And then she worried even more.
One afternoon, as she flitted around the field, worrying, she noticed that the sky was growing quite dark. A line of clouds, pewter-colored and heavy with rain, marched across the afternoon from the west. The slice of blue sky in the east grew smaller and smaller and lightening, at first far away, but getting nearer and nearer, pierced the gloom and struck the earth with explosive concussive thunders. The worry bird flew back to her nest, closed all the windows and turned on the TV to see the “W” in the corner of the screen. Huge drops of rain began to plop into the dust of the field and gusts of wind bent the tall grass around the worry bird’s nest. The clouds to the south of her took on a greenish hue and the worry bird watched in horror as a finger of cloud reached down and traced a serpentine path across the prairie right to her nest.
It picked her up in a whirl of water and roaring dust and spun her higher and higher. At first she closed her eyes, but as she ascended toward the clouds, she opened first one and then the other and looked around at the awesome sights opening before her.
She saw around her clouds full of rain – enough rain to fill a million puddles.
She looked below her and saw fields of grass and grain that extended seemingly forever – enough seeds to feed her forever.
She watched as one, just one, of her glossy black feathers drifted down through the center of the cloud – beautiful enough to be mistaken for a shard of polished ebony.
The worry bird knew that the storm would surely kill her. Yet, strangely, she noticed that she was not particularly worried about that. The moment of life that she had seemed enough. She didn’t fret - her little brain was entirely occupied with wonder.
The world was so much bigger than she had imagined. The sky was so much more beautiful than she had dreamed. Her life was so much more precious than she ever knew. And even the storm had at its heart something that felt like love.
And then, her heart pounding but peaceful, she felt the whirlwind release her. Her nest fell away, and she spread her wings on a suddenly gentle breeze and drifted back down to the meadow.
And she began to sing.

Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air; your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

Sunday's Coming - and I'm not ready!

2011-02-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

This is going to be "Creation Sunday" at church. The kids are going to show off what they have been learning about that story from Genesis. And our "rehearsal" yesterday was - in my humble opinion - a complete debacle. I am so frustrated with myself for not being able to corral and keep them all "on task". And I wondered how in the world worship was going to happen with them "in charge".
But I woke up in the middle of the night with this idea:
I'll keep going with the Sermon on the Mount texts. This week's lectionary is the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. And I'll say something about how the beauty of God's creation and God's love for his creatures is echoed in Jesus' sermon. And I'll find (it HAS to be on that old hard drive) my "Worrybird" story and tell that instead of sermonizing.
Ha. Problem solved. Maybe. I need to get a bulletin put together and see.
Arg. I love these kids. I wish they had a great teacher for Wednesday afternoons. But they have me. And Michael. Who also just loves them, and whom they love. It'll be OK.
All will be well. And all will be well. And all manner of things will be well.

An Eye for the Beloved Community

2011-02-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

These are notes for my sermon on
Matthew 5:38-48
I hope I preached it better than I wrote these notes.

Long Epiphany
An extra long look at Jesus and an extra long sermon on the mount. This text is practically never preached. But it is at the heart of some of the most effective Christian lives in the world. And the most effective Christian communities in the world.

Jesus continues his revision and expansion of the law with “You have heard it said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you . . . do not practice violence when confronted with evil.”

The rule “lex talonis” was an advance in ethical understanding that limited escalation of violence. Where it is not practiced - wars ensue and suffering increases exponentially. The Hatfields and the McCoys. Mafia wars. Sophisticated lasar targeted bombs exploding on mud huts. How does it end?
Escalation happens in more personal venues, too. Dear Abby letter from the guy who left his laptop out on his desk in his open dorm room. Someone hid it from him, supposedly to teach him a lesson, but actually they might have just been being mean. So he filed a police report, pressed charges, got the hider kicked out of school, fined and put on probation. And now the hider is mad at him and turning his classmates against him. Yeah.   Great revenge!

Getting revenge - Doing to others worse than they’ve done to you is deeply engrained in human beings. Some say it’s a byproduct of evolution. In her book The Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, Karen Armstrong begins by writing about our "reptilian brain," the one that is still present underneath the more developed brain. The "reptilian brain" is responsible for the fight/flight response in animals.

Some argue that it is a necessary part of life when danger is near and a quick response is necessary.

I’d argue, to the contrary, in increasingly complex and interrelated communities, and that the dangers we face now -   loss of political cohesion, economic dysfunction, environmental damage, or just plain mean people messing up our emotional health - these are dangers where fight or flight is the wrong response. Wrong as in ineffective and the kind that will get you killed.

If we practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, what do we end up with but a village of blind, toothless people.

So it isn’t true that, Jesus is inviting us to consider embracing a life that is riskier and more foolish. It is just that it is counter to our very basest instincts for survival. He is outpacing our reptilian brain with a call to the highest and best within us, to raise our sights and join him in creating a more compassionate world.

I think this has personal as well as global implications. But let’s talk about the global. before we talk about taking Jesus seriously in our own community - let’s talk a little about how non-violence figures into larger changes in the world. Mahatma Ghandi used non-violent confrontation to acheive human rights and political independence for India. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement he led practiced non-violent protest even in the face of violent resistance. And the United States was delivered from a future of apartheid.   Egypt is undergoing huge changes as the result of non-violent resistance to a violent regime. Huge.
    Last week a Palestinian doctor put a human face on the cost and the possibility of peaceful resistance. His story is sort of heart breaking but hopeful. Kind of like Jesus’ own story is heartbreaking but hopeful. The doctor spoke several places in Champaign Urbana, about his effort to respond non-violently to the Israeli occupation of his land. His story is all the more compelling because the targeted shell from an israeli tank tore through his apartment in Gaza and killed three of his children - daughters. His response has been to write, speak and form a foundation dedicated to the rights and education of women and girls.   I heard him tell Steve Shoemaker, “Of course when we are attacked, we become angry. We should be angry. But what that anger motivates us to do - about that we have a choice. And violence is always the wrong choice. I choose to address the injustice in a way that takes us forward to a better place.” I encourage you to read his book, “I Shall Not Hate” as a way of understanding that part of the world better.

As Christians, we need to be praying for and standing with and using our considerable power to shape public opinion in favor of people like that.   I think it matters what we bother to understand and tell people is important to us.

But I don’t pretend that our Jesus’ vision applies directly to our political situation. We have power.

I think that our challenge, to love our enemies and resist hatred and violence comes much closer to home - that is in our response to mean people and ugly behavior that we encounter day to day, at our jobs and in schools and in our extended families.

Our challenge is to not become hateful when people are hateful to us.   To figure out and live out Jesus’ better way with our neighbors and co-workers and church brothers and sisters.    This is often messy and difficult. But it reveals the kind of person we are. And I want to tell you a little story:

When my family moved to Oklahoma City, my father worked for a man I found morally repulsive. He owned this huge insurance company, which he ran like a tyrant. He was bad to people. Little things, like sexually harrassing the many women who worked as low level clerks. Discriminating against people of color. And being hugely, obscenely rich.   He and his family lived in a huge Oklahoma huge mansion, with servants and expensive everythings, which he shared only with other, equally obscenely rich folks. And he made my father’s working life miserable. I hated him. Because he was wrong in every way I could see. And here’s what my mother did: she baked bread and took it to his family. Not all the time. But often enough that it completely ticked me off. I used to rail at her, “Why are you being nice to those people? Why are you treating them like human beings? They don’t treat us like human beings? We are nothing to them. Don’t do something “friendly” for them. They don’t deserve it. They don’t appreciate it. They have everything! Don’t give them our bread!” But she disagreed. She said, “Oh, I don’t think they have anything as good as my homemade bread.”

Now - if I was making this up, the end of the story would be that the horrible evil man called daddy into his office one day and said, “You can have the resources you need to do your project. And I’ve decided that women deserve a fair shake around here. And you can hire that African-American assistant and pay her a decent wage. Why don’t you and Lou come over and help me decide which charity to give a million dollars to.”

That didn’t happen. Here’s what happened: This guy flew his family out to Aspen, on their private plane, to ski one winter. And he got in a hurry to get back and make more money, so he bullied the pilot into taking off in some very bad weather.   And the plane disappeared in the mountains. After several days, his spoiled rotten children had to hike out of the mountains. His wife was paralyzed and spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair. And the big boss guy was killed. Froze to death in his private plane.

And my mother, who had practiced Jesus’ way, was in a position to minister to them as a friend. And they needed a real friend. Just like they didn’t have homemade bread. The didn’t have many real friends.
I, on the other hand, was left with a dark and ugly and hateful heart, in need of some deep repentance and grace and healing.   The vehicle of the healing came with Jesus’ words, “If you love those who love you, what do you want, a medal? Everybody can do that. If you greet those who greet you, how does that make you special? I have something better in mind for those who follow me.”

The last line of this scripture sometimes trips people up - it gives them an easy out. The NRSV translation is “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Well, of course we say, that’s impossible. Nobody’s perfect, least of all me. But that’s not the best way to translate what Jesus said. His words mean something more like, “Become (in the future tense) make your journey be in the direction of - completeness. (Perfect here means completed.) Just as your heavenly Father’s love encompasses everyone - the good and the bad, the just and the injust - so you are called to practice loving both friends and enemies.” It’s not about them. It’s about the image of God that is in you. Be like God is.

And that’s not impossible. It’s hard. But it’s not impossible. Jesus showed us that. There is a way. He is the Way. Let us walk the Way of love and mercy that he sets before us.

Amputating Hands or Changing Hearts?

2011-02-13T14:27:00.000-08:00

This is the sermon for Matthew 5:21-37.

Do you know who Aron Ralston is? About seven years ago, Aron Ralston was a 27 year old out door enthusiast who loved rock climbing in the desert southwest. One Saturday morning, he got up early and began a hike that would change his life. He was in the Blue John Canyon of Utah, having a great day of solo hiking, he fell down a slot canyon and a boulder fell on top of him, trapping his right arm. He was unable to move the boulder to escape and finally, after over five days, he freed himself by amputating his own arm. This little adventure is the story line of a movie that is showing right now called 127 Hours. Yes, I went to see it. And no, I did not see very much of that part of the film.
You can guess why I would want to see the movie though: Because in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says a pretty shocking thing: If your hand causes you to sin - cut it off. Better to enter heaven without a limb than to have your whole self consigned to hell. I’ve always been horrified by this saying, and I hoped that the movie might give me a new angle, a new perspective on this outrageous action.
Both the movie and the passage of scripture are less about amputation and more about transformation. They are less about the hand than they are about the heart.
I’ll get back to the movie in a minute, but let’s look at this challenging scripture together first:
In this passage Jesus is attempting to describe the kind of right- life that God desires for us and from us. He’s contrasting his vision with that of people who are focused on obedience to a set of laws or religious guidelines. But he doesn’t do it by sweeping the law aside or minimizing its importance. What Jesus does instead is to expand the range of God’s authority in human life - to blow up its importance, and to make larger and more voluminous the area of life that matters to God.
He does it 6 times altogether: The first four re-casting of the Law are in our passage for today. The last two - which are sort of the climax of this section of scripture - are next week’s lesson.   He uses a standard format - like some pronouncements have a formalized wording - e.g. “Whereas . . . this, whereas that, therefore be it resolved . . .” Jesus uses the rabbinic formula: You have heard it said . . . . . but I say to you . . . .
You have heard it said, “Thou shalt not kill.”
You have heard it said, “You shall not sleep with someone else’s spouse.”
You have heard it said, “If you want to end your marriage, you have to give your wife a certificate of divorce.”
You have heard it said, “Don’t swear to something that isn’t true.”
Then Jesus, in each case, spells out a much more rigorous, much more demanding, much more difficult - maybe - even - impossible! standard. Don’t kill is reinterpreted to say, “Don’t hold a grudge. Don’t insult or cast aspersions on another.” Don’t commit adultery is broadened to prohibit leering glances or lustful looks. Divorce law is rewritten to have only the very narrowest window of permissibility. And telling the truth under oath becomes a demand for integrity so stalwart that one’s word could NEVER be brought into question.
Wow. Do these enhanced commands, this righteousness on steroids, . . . have any impact on our life? Well we don’t take them literally. If you think about this a minute, it is pretty obvious: When you see an eye-patch - your first thought is probably, “Pirate” not “must be a Christian.”
But even though we don’t take them literally - we cannot and should not dismiss them. They deserve our attention. If Jesus says something this weird, it must mean he wants us to notice it. He must be trying to motivate us somehow. Jesus isn’t widely known for blowing off steam . . .
Of course! We’re not going to be motivated to amputate. No legal system worth its salt puts insults on par with murder. We don’t slap people in jail for calling their brother a fool. We don’t gouge out the eyes of those who ogle the freshmen and women on Green Street. We don’t cut off our hands if they give somebody the finger.
Jesus was up to something different -letting us know that God is concerned with our very selves. He desires an attitude that can’t be faked with a few surface gestures of civility. He wants to shape and change our hearts and our relationships.
All these examples Jesus gives are about right relationships. And Jesus’ command is that they be RIGHT. Not just POLITE.
Relationships with brothers and sisters, close friends, relationships with the opposite sex, marital relationships, even marital relationships that are on the verge of ending. Relationships with people with whom we do business, with whom we enter into contracts and to whom we make promises. In all these relationships, Jesus insists, God’s intention is that we should go beyond the bare minimum legal requirements for doing the right thing. We should do the right thing for the right reason, out of the right heart. We should act with perfect integrity and love. Right. Not just polite.
The gift of opened hearts and right relationships that please God is a gift that Jesus wants us to understand is offered to us. He uses vivid, even horrifying language, to tell us the value and beauty that God desires to see in our lives. But I hope that we can get past the grisly-ness of it to see and accept the larger and better life that is proffered in heart changing commands.

When Aron Ralston fell into that crevice in the rock in Utah, he was an OK guy.   But sort of a jerk. You know the kind? You get the picture of someone who doesn’t really care about anyone but himself. He doesn’t do anything bad, but he doesn’t pick up the phone when his mother calls. He doesn’t tell anyone where he is going, even though that would make them feel better. He’s the kind of boyfriend who just can’t give the relationship much time or energy. He lets a woman who loves him drift away. And she tells him as she leaves, “Aron Ralston, you are going to be so lonely.” He’s not a criminal or a drug addict or a liar or a thief. But he’s profoundly stingy of heart.
So then he is trapped. All alone, knowing that he is probably going to die, he has the chance to think deeply about his life. And he thinks of his mother and his father. Of the co-worker he didn’t even care enough about to tell where he was going. Of the woman who loved him, whom he had used and discarded, like an old backpack. But, even more, he begins to think about his future - he begins to have visions of a son - a young boy who doesn’t even exist yet. These visions of the son he feels he is supposed to create, being together in the future - these experience transformed Ralston in a profound way. One reviewer said, “This story is a tale of massive transformation on a small, personal scale - of and individual’s life changing forever, over the course of five days.”   Here’s what Ralston says, “My physical self was stripped away, but what was left were the connections with people in my life. When we are connected through love to other people is when we’re most alive and have our greatest sense of resolve and courage.”
And opening to those connections - allowing God to train and shape our hearts so that right relationships can arise - this kind of new life and transformation is worth an arm (and a leg). When he finally cuts his arm off - he’s glad. And, as a viewer, you share his sense that this is the absolutely right and joyful thing to do. You know that his life, and your life, is beloved by God.   There’s something that touches your heart to see his heart grow so much. And the bigger heart is one that is filled with gratitude and love.
“When my mom first saw this film, she was holding my hand,” Ralston recalls. “The amputation scene is over and we all made it through, but as I hike out and the music builds, my mom’s squeezing my hand so hard I think I’m losing my other arm. We’re involuntarily rocking in our seats and she’s going,”Thank you, God! Thank you, God!” That’s what a beautiful gift this is.”
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day - hearts everywhere. God wants to give us a Valentine’s present - but we have to let him know that we want it. Will we accept that gift? Will today be the day that we recognize the need to let God transform our hearts, to move us from polite to right in our relationships with others. Will today be the day that we resolve to give up a grudge that cuts us off from relationship. Will today be the day we open our hearts to the friend who has wronged us, the person we desire but do not love, the spouse who is driving us crazy, the obligation we’ve been meeting, but just barely. Will today be the day we hear Jesus’ call to live - really live - the quality of life that God desires for us. A life that is Right. Not just polite, but Right.
Maybe today is the day we, like Aron Ralston, begin to see the beauty of human connection and the loving future God has planned.
And I hope that we catch the vision that rocks us to the core, and tears from our hearts the cry, “Thank you, God! O thank you, God!”

Just noticing

2011-02-09T15:08:00.001-08:00

That today, after Wednesday Sunday School, the sky is still light. I am sitting on the back porch at 5:07 and it isn't dark yet. So maybe spring is coming after all. (It is, however, 13 degrees. Maybe it's not coming soon.)

half a sermon is better than none?

2011-02-06T15:18:00.000-08:00

Matthew 5:12-20
This is the last half of this Sunday's sermon. The notes from the first half aren't complete enough to post. You know - you are the light of the world.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets forth a vision of the Kingdom of God, and invites people to participate in what God is doing to make that Kingdom a reality.

And I can’t sit down and shut up before touching on the often neglected portion of the passage we heard this morning: Jesus says to his followers, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will fall short of the kingdom.” I want to give a little shout out to my friends the scribes and Pharisees. They were doing their best to live out what they knew of God through the Law - the Torah - that they had been given as a map of the Kingdom. They were trying to live out God’s intention by minding, very carefully, the letter of the law. Jesus doesn’t fault them for that. And neither can we.

But Jesus is saying to his disciples, “You can do better than that. You have my life, my teachings, my example, my fulfillment of God’s vision to follow. You have me - the way, the truth and the life - to follow. You don’t rely on what are just words on a page. You have me to light your path. And you can do better than even the most rigorously faithful follower of the Law. I expect more of you. I expect something greater from you.”

Too often I fear, we afflict our spiritual lives with low expectations. We lower our sights for our own spiritual life, and we expect too little of the church to which we belong. There’s a new book out, called “What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still be a Christian?” The title is firmly tongue in cheek - it’s not about a small faith, but an argument that mainline moderate Protestant churches can actually offer a vibrant, grace-filled, life-giving faith that many people in our world are longing to find and embrace. I’m thinking about ordering a few copies of that book. Would anyone be interested in reading it and talking about it with me?

High expectations produce high quality results. Since it is Super Bowl Sunday, let me just quote from one of our secular saints, the person for whom the trophy for tonight’s game is named. Vince Lombardi said:
“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”

Lombardi was not an dewy-eyed romantic. Neither was Jesus. But they both knew that human beings, be they football players or followers of Christ, are capable of great things, if they are challenged with a worthy goal. “Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”

Maybe that is Gospel - that is good news - for us: We are told that we are the light of the world, so that we may be mindful of how our light shines. We are called to perfection, so that we may acheive excellence.

We don’t have a scoreboard to tell us how we are doing. But we have a table. To remind us of the goal and to keep our heads in the game.

In a few minutes we will come to receive a taste of the Kingdom that Christ has set before us. To raise our sights to the goal of the prize of the Kingdom of God.

Here we see, and touch and taste the Kingdom -
The bonds of sin broken.
Bread shared with hungry ones.
Life poured out in forgiveness and grace.

This is the goal and purpose of the Christian life:

For here the prophet’s words are fulfilled: God says, “You shall call, and I will answer.   You shall cry and I will say, “Here I am.”

Skydiving

2011-02-05T05:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (at Ed Bower's funeral) I met someone who rigs parachutes for a living. We had a chit chat conversation for a few minutes, and then I asked about what she was doing these days and then she told me what her job was and suddenly, she came alive. How did she come to have such an unusual job? She said that a client from her old job, as an event co-ordinator, had given her a jump as a present. And that one jump completely changed her life. She went back for another, and another, and pretty soon she discovered this community of folks defined by this "hobby". And she was hooked.
When she talked about sky-diving her face lit up. She said when she dives it is the most intense and alive thing she's ever experienced. I was just floored by the difference in her. Amazing. I was so struck by how passion - for something anything? - transforms life. Every person has the most ineffable beauty inside them, manifested when their body and soul meet the experience that unleashes their passion. (Too long a sentence.) Passion makes people beautiful.
Somehow, the fact that there is a community of people who share this experience, understand one another's passion, this is important, too. She mentioned "community" several times. That in itself is sort of unusual for a young (30ish) person. To have and acknowledge a community as being an important aspect of their identity.
So I've been thinking about sky diving. Here's what I wonder: Is that sense of being able to put oneself in a situation of being totally out of control how we put ourselves in touch with our truest and best selves? And others? It seems to be a metaphor for faith, in one sense. You prepare. You prepare as if your life depended upon it. You aren't sloppy or careless in rigging the chute. And you rely on others. She rigs parachutes for other people. They completely depend on her to get it right. She doesn't fly the plane. She depends on someone else to do that. But the pay off is that you go up into the sky and throw yourself out of a plane and then you fall/fly, totally in the hands of gravity and the air - things you couldn't control, no matter how hard you try. And letting yourself GO is such an incredible high that it matters more than the fear (she said sometimes she cries on the way up!) or the discomfort (it's cold up there) or the possible loss of even your life. It changes how you see your life. That's what she said. It changes everything.
I'd like to live like that. I'd like to experience my life as totally in God's hands and out of my own. And I'd like to live it in a community that shares my passion.

January 2 Sermon (Matthew 2:13-23)

2011-01-02T19:53:00.000-08:00

Erin and I took a ‘free day” in Bethlehem, and headed up from Nativity Square, via a long shop lined street, up to the Milk Grotto. This is the place that commemorates events around the story that we read today - of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, Herod’s violence aimed at destroying the babe.

This is the Milk Grotto - or this is the church built on top of the limestone cave that is the Milk Grotto. The extra Biblical story of this place is that when Joseph was warned in a dream to take Mary and Jesus and get the heck out of Dodge, they were on the road when Jesus woke up hungry. And so they stopped so that Mary could nurse him in a little limestone cave. The story is that a drop of Mary’s milk dropped onto the cave, and that instantly, the interior of the cave turned pure white, by contact with Mary’s holy milk.
Well - that’s not a Protestant story. Or a modern story. Or a believable story. But it is an interesting story - especially for Erin, whose job includes encouraging new moms to nurse their babies. And for me, who just loves religious stories featuring women. So Erin and I went there and had a good time, looking at the art and seeing the limestone grotto. And marveling at the line of folks who were waiting at the gift shop to buy little packets of limestone dust - to be ingested as a cure for “women’s problems”.

We had a grand old time, exploring this quirky, exotic corner of Bethlehem. And I often think of that fun adventure.   So when we finished, we walked back down the street toward the center of town. Young men holding strips of postcards tried to sell to us as we walked by. A couple of store owners addressed us as we went by, asking us to stop and look at their shops. We politely declined. La. Shukran.   I used the Palestinian sign language for polite “No” - shaking two fingers low.

And then something happened that still haunts me. A child, a little boy, appeared and walked in front of us, begging.   Just as I had only two or three Arabic words, he seemed to be able to say only, “Dollars. Please. Please.” It wasn’t what he said that I remember, though. It was his thin little arms and child’s hands, making the gesture for money. (rubbing fingers with thumb) And the face - two black eyes and bruises - black and yellow and purple - something horrible had happened to that little boy. Maybe he ahd fallen down. Maybe he had been in a car wreck. Maybe . . . but the most likely explanation was that he had been beaten. Oh my God. Erin and I didn’t know what to do.
The encounter only lasted a minute. Maybe less. And when he went on to someone else, we said very little to each other. What do you think happened to him? Erin is trained to recognize child abuse. He looked beat up. Who would do that? What do you suppose . . . Could we have helped? It was so disturbing. And, no matter what you do in a situation like that, you wonder if it was right. And I feel bad. Because what I really wanted to do is scoop him up and hug him, which would have been another assault.

It was kind of as sick as I felt on that trip. And we didn’t tell anyone about it. And we haven’t talked about it since we have been back. The day went on. We had other adventures. We ate felafel and went for a very enlightening taxi ride. We saw the place where Jesus was born, and explored the Arab market. We haggled, unsuccessfully, for a good price for a taxi ride home, and when we didn’t get it we started walking back to Beit Jala, only to accidentally stumble on the Arab bus stand, where we were able to catch a ride that took us right to our guest house for only fifty cents. It was a good day. With one little disquieting moment.

I don’t like to think about that incident. But this story brought it back.

Because here, too, there is a quaint and intriguing story and sandwiched in there is something so horrifying that I have a hard time reading the words out loud to you. Child murder. Mass murder. Baby boys ripped from their mother’s arms and killed in front of their eyes. Honestly, as a mother, this story shakes me to the core.

What is it doing here? Why is it part of Holy Scripture? What do we make of it?

One way to approach it is to work your way around it, eyes carefully averted. After all, The Slaughter of the Innocents is sandwiched between two stories of how God helped Joseph and Mary protect baby Jesus against a threat that would have derailed salvation history. In the first few verses, Joseph is warned in a dream to take Mary and the baby and flee Bethlehem. And in the last verses, a little bit of divine relocation program places the Holy Family in a new home. There is surely a sermon in that. A sermon about how God meets us in our moments of triumph and urges us to move on, plants us in new places.

I kind of like that message - that lots of times in life, we’d want to linger in the afterglow of a wonderful moment, but God is always beckoning, warning, urging us on. Our lives are lived best when we follow our dreams and let God be at work.

That’s the good news of the “frame” of this story. Pay attention to your dreams. Trust God’s plan. That would make a nice New Year’s message.

If not for that interlude, in which Herod kills the babies.

So what do we do with that? What do we do with that, as we begin a New Year?

It would be nice if we could think - oh, that only happened in Herod’s day. But that dog won’t hunt. If only in the back of our minds, we know that children are still dying because of evil rulers, power hungry potentates, Herods.
The World Health Organization has estimated, through the use of limited country-level data, that almost 53,000 children died worldwide in 2002 as a result of homicide.8 Not all of them at the hands of warlords and despots, but some.   Alot, actually.
Save the Children a reputable source for figures on children in need around the world reports that Sadly, one child dies every three seconds largely from preventable and treatable causes due to the lack of basic health care.   Not because we don’t HAVE the resources to provide it, but because the governments of this world allocate resources so badly.
40 million kids are deprived of an education because of war.
Another 30 million or so are perpetually hunger and malnourished - while we throw away enough food - and eat too much food - to more than feed them.

This is not “just the way things are”. The evil of the world is not part of God’s plan. The evil of the world is, on some level, the fearful, furious response of worldly power to Jesus’ inbreaking. There is opposition - fierce and brutal opposition- to the message of Christ and the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.

And innocent people - children - mothers - parents - families - communities get hurt.

And how awful is that?

Well. It’s awful. So what’s the good news? Well. I think there is some. That Jesus actually is the New Born King.   We don’t have to answer to Herod. Jesus has come - Emmanuel - God with us. And God loves children. We have a loving and creative God among us, and with His help, we can make a difference and protect and nurture the world’s children. The Christ child grew up and lived a life of simplicity and compassion that shows us there is a better way.

Last Sunday’s paper had two stories that leapt out at me:
One was about an agency that helps the victims of child abuse heal and deal with what has happened to them. Here’s the headline: Help for the innocent. Turn the page and there is a story about an ordinary mom who has invented a water filter: Mother’s work saves thousands in Haiti. Let me read you something here: Fifteen years go, Lisa Ballantine was a stay-at-home mom who had never traveled outside the U.S. In 2000, her entire family sent a life-changing year as missionaries in the Dominican Republic. “I’m a Christian, and I believe my life is to serve other people,” she said.   She came home, read the story, God’s fingerprints are all over this one.

But you don’t have to read the newspaper to hear about people trying to protect and cherish the world’s children. Listen to Jeri and Kirk talk about what they did in Malawi. Ask the Lauchners about the young African man they have sponsored for years. Talk to my Mom about how Presbyterian Women has focussed on projects that save mothers and children. Talk to Erin about her work with teen moms. Ask about Abraham’s Tent - the afterschool program for children in refugee camps in the West Bank - which began with start up money from this church - this Presbytery - the people who sit with you in these pews. Visit with Michael Trout or Terry Pratt, and find out why they spend a lot of Wednesday afternoons hanging out, listening and talking with Philo kids. That’s far from an exhaustive list of child protective actions. It’s just a reminder that there are lots of ways to do God’s will, to respond to children’s needs.

The urge to save children’s lives, and to mitigate the hurt they suffer innocently, is a Christian reaction. The Christian reaction. Not despair. Not revenge. Not getting even. Not killing some body else’s babies. And not ignoring. Saving. Helping. Comforting.

The story of the slaughter of the innocents can turn into good news if it moves us to do what lies within our power - and our power is considerable, my friends! - to respond as Christians to children in peril.

We can’t do that if we are caught unawares. If our surprise overwhelms our ability to respond. That’s what happened to Erin and me. We weren’t ready. We didn’t expect to encounter brutality and pain on our little tourist-y adventure. Well. The story of the Slaughter of the Innocents is a way to prepare Christians for evil in the world. We can’t be all “happy clappy” all the time, expecting that God will take care of everything and everyone without any action on our part. Maybe this story is a way for us to begin to think about what we can and will do to safeguard and cherish the innocents God so loves.

It’s good news if we recognize that the year we have ahead of us will be richer, more faithful and more important if we improve, not just our own lives, not just our own situations, but make a difference for the innocents who we see suffering.

What does God have in store for YOU? is inextricably tied to the question
What kind of a year will you help to make it for the innocents?

Star of Guidance

2010-12-13T04:59:00.000-08:00

This is the third in an Advent series “The Stars Tell the Story”.
Scripture is Matthew 2:1-12, the story of the Wise Men’s Star.

What if the wisemen had GPS? There’s a Christmas card that depicts the three wisemen, on their three camels, ignoring the star over the stable and studying the little devices they hold in their hands. “We’re close!” they say as they pull up to the wrong stable. “Mine just said, “You have arrived at your destination.”
    Lucky for us, the wise men were not guided by GPS - but by an alignment of the stars. We have no idea what they saw in the sky. I mean, there are theories, comet - planets - supernova - but we have no way to know. What we know about their guidance system is contained in this marvelous story. So let’s take a look at what the story tells us about what guided them on their journey to Jesus so long ago.
    First of all, the story tells us they were guided by wisdom, not foolishness.
    They were wise men. They were astrologers. We tend to think of astrology as a superstition - it seems silly to believe that what’s going on with the stars and planets has any effect on us as we go around making decisions, facing challenges, getting from yesterday to tomorrow. But astrology has been very important part of various cultures through history. Chinese, Hindu, Arab, Persian, Greeks, Mayans . . . they all had their versions of star studying and portent seeking. I was also interested to learn this week how some of the words and expressions we use carry some of their “flavor” from astrology. I’d never thought about the origin of the word “disaster” for instance:   comes from the negative prefix: DIS and the latin word for star: ASTER. Bad star. Ill-starred. Comes from the time when bad events were thought to be brought on by bad “stars”.   Same thing for FLU. “Influenza” was named that because doctors in the middle ages believed that epidemics could be caused by the bad “INFLUENCES” of planet and star alignments.
    One article - OK- I’ll admit it, it was Wikipedia - cited a study that said 31% of Americans still believe in astrology. I find that hard to believe. At least 31% of me does. But I would believe that 31% of americans read their horoscope occassionally. I don’t do that. Because I realized that, without one ounce of belief, I still had stray thoughts that “explained” things through the little ditty I’d read.   Oh, yeah, I’d say when I’d get irritated or annoyed: “Long buried resentments could surface today.” Or when I pigged out at lunch, I’d excuse myself by remembering: “Self-control will be harder today.”
    It’s just silly. But I think it is a hint of how much we long to bring our lives into some sort of alignment with the larger and better purpose - some say “of the universe”. we say, “of God”.   There is a human need to find something significant in our day to day. I think that’s a little star planted in us by God. The astrologers had a principle: “As in heaven, so on earth.”
We say, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”   And I don’t think there is anything silly about letting ourselves be guided by what we think is heaven’s intent. In fact the message of Christmas is that Heaven has come down to earth so that we might SEE what human life is supposed to be about, how it is supposed to be lived, what Heaven intends human life to be.   When we look to Jesus, we see God and God’s purpose for us. We see ‘heaven and earth’ together.
    And being guided by that star - of deep wisdom - is very very wise.

Set our GPS on hope, not fear. The scriptures contrast the other people in the story with Herod. The wise men, Mary, Joseph - - - all of them acted out of hope. Herod acted out of fear. They sought the child. Herod feared the child. The part of the story we never read, but which is always there is that Herod was so afraid that he killed the children of Bethlehem. The difference between hope and fear is the difference between life giving and life affirming actions and violence and death.
    Whe we decide to do something, or not to do something, we can check with ourselves: Am acting out of hope that God is going to act in the world, or the fear that God means us harm?
And to be led by hope.

    The wise men were guided by the promise of joy - not the fear of sorrow. My favorite verse in this whole story is ‘when they reached the place where the child was, they were overwhelmed with joy and worshipped exceedingly’    I hope that each of us can remember a moment or two in life when we were led to exactly the right place, exactly the right person, exactly the right action. And we felt that incredible joy of being able to do exactly the right thing. At the birth of a child. At the decision to share our life with one person, through thick and thin. At the right job, or the moment to retire. The Christmas morning when we are all together with our family in Spirit if not in fact, and God blesses us with the joy of memories of the past and dreams of the future. These moments of joy - and the quest to experience them again - are the stars that can guide us.during this season and indeed, throughout our whole lives. Let the star of joy guide you.

    And the wise men were guided by love. Always. Love. I know the word love isn’t even found in this passage.   But love is there. And here’s how we know: The wise men brought gifts to the Christ child. Gifts are expressions of love. You can give without loving. But you can’t love without giving. This season of the year gifts take up alot of our time and attention. We can torture ourselves and others with the obsessive and never satisfactory quest for the perfect gift. I got caught doing this yesterday. I had to go to a Christmas party and take a white elephant gift for an exchange with a bunch of women. And I wanted my gift to be the one people fought over. I wanted the moment my gift was unwrapped to be the one when everyone there thought, “Well, isn’t that just the nicest! How I wish I’d thought to bring something like that!” Needless to say - it wasn’t like that at all. Basically, every gift was junk. Some of it was expensive junk and some of it was disappointingly crummy junk. But the gifts were not what the party was about. The party was about how much this group of women loves each other. The real gift was seeing pictures of grandchildren, and hearing about children’s weddings and even (this was a tough gift for me to appreciate!) hearing what medicine everybody was on now that we are all getting older and less able to cope without medical interventions. The real gift was that one of us, who had moved to Chicago, drove all the way down here to be with us.
    We can worry about how much we should spend, and whether the person we’re gifting needs or wants what we have decided to give. But the wise men brought gold, frankinscense and myrhh. Hardly the most soughtafter baby presents. I think it was Letty Russell who said, “If it had been three wise women - they would have brought diapers, blankets and a hot dish.” But the gold for a king, the frankinscense for a priest and the myrhh to ease suffering and honor death - these turned out to be right in ways that better, more practical gifts could never match. We can worry about “the right gift” Or we can be like the wisemen and just bring our best and hope that somehow, in ways we can’t foresee, the gifts will be expressions of love. We need to recognize that the relationships we cherish will be strengthened, not by the packages we wrap and unwrap, but by the act of giving a bit of our time, our money, our attention to others.   That is love - giving something of ourselves. And it is a star that we can look to strengthen our relationships with God and the people with which we share our lives.

    Being led by the stars of wisdom, or hope, or joy and of love is not as being directed to our destination by a GPS. I’ve got a minute here, so I am going to share a quote from the pastor of Christ Church in Philadelphia which makes alot of sense to me:
It strikes me that many a spiritual person today—from the doctrinally certain to the skeptically seeking—desire a religious life built upon GPS simplicity rather than “a star rises” complexity. So many of us want to be able to type into a little box, “I want to know God,” and have it tell us to turn right or left, say this prayer or that, read then verse then that one, and we will then arrive, easily, without being lost once. Or, being already in the fold, we want to type in, “Why do I feel alone,” or, “Why does the one I love suffer,” and have the answers spoken to us by a device we can turn off if we think we know better.
    The wise men learned that the star draws but does not direct us. We must struggle to find our way. And, as they knew, there is no final destination, simply stopping points along the way where we rest and pray, and then gather our things and journey further.
    As we journey further in this season, in our faith, in our life - we are invited to look to the stars to guide us.   With the wise men, let’s let ourselves be led on - by the stars of wisdom, hope, joy and love. Let us pray.
Our heavenly Father, you who set the stars in the skies and placed us here on earth,
we ask you to guide us toward Your Holy Presence in Jesus Christ.
Give us Wisdom to seek your will on earth.
Give us the Hope that you are working for human good.
Give us Joy in the journey and always,
give us hearts so filled with your Love that they overflow during this and every season.
In the name of the Child of Bethlehem we pray. Amen.

Stars of Promise

2010-12-09T06:58:00.001-08:00

Sermon Start -
Genesis 15:1-??
Look up - count the stars -

From this week’s news: The universe may glitter with far more stars than even Carl Sagan imagined when he rhapsodized about billions upon billions. A new study suggests there are a mind-blowing 300 sextillion of them, or three times as many as scientists previously calculated. That is a 3 followed by 23 zeros. Or 3 trillion times 100 billion.
The estimate, contained in a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature, is based on findings that there are many more red dwarf stars -- the most common star in the universe -- than once thought.
"We're seeing 10 or 20 times more stars than we expected," van Dokkum said.
When van Dokkum and Conroy crunched the incredibly big numbers, they found that it tripled the estimate of stars in the universe from 100 sextillion to 300 sextillion.
That's a huge number to grasp, even for astronomers who are used to dealing in light years and trillions, Conroy said.
"It's fun because it gets you thinking about these large numbers," Conroy said. Conroy looked up how many cells are in the average human body -- 50 trillion or so -- and multiplied that by the 6 billion people on Earth. And he came up with about 300 sextillion.
So the number of stars in the universe "is equal to all the cells in the humans on Earth -- a kind of funny coincidence," Conroy said.
newspaper article says there are far more stars than astronomers knew about before. It’s not that the stars are countless. But you have to count them a long, long time to get them all.

That’s why God used the canopy of stars in the night sky to communicate to Abraham the almost infinite promise of God’s goodness and love. He made Abraham a promise, that he would have a large family, which would be blessed and that through Abraham’s kin, the world would be blessed. And when Abraham asked how he was supposed to believe that, considering that he didn’t even have a son - heck, he didn’t even have a daughter at this point! - God took him outside his tent, into the desert night, and had him look up and try to count the stars. He said, “You can be sure that I’ll make your family as numerous as the stars in the heavens. And they will shine as bright.”

God swore by the stars - made them a sign of his faithfulness and steadfast love. In Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo is proclaiming his love, he says, “Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear . . .” to which Juliet replies, “Oh, swear not by the moon, the inconstant month, which monthly changes in her circled orb, lest thy love prove likewise variable.”

God doesn’t use the moon to talk to Abraham about the promise. He points to the stars.

Stars were a sign of God’s promise to Abraham - to make Abraham’s family a great nation - to use this particular people to bring about God’s plan for humanity and the earth.

As time went on, (and on and on) it became clear that Abraham’s family, though they had a special relationship with God, were not willing and/or able to redeem the world.
They got sidetracked. They fought amongst themselves. They forgot to trust God’s promise. They messed up. Instead of bringing light to the world, they started living in the shadows themselves.

And the only part of the promise they remembered was the part about their particular tribe being blessed - chosen - special. They forgot the part about being a blessing to the world. But they remembered and they hung onto their own specialness and often fell into the trap of worshipping their own “specialness” instead of the God.

Whenever that happens, God’s faithful promise is in peril. It looked as if the plan is fatally flawed. The stars . . . the shining . . . not going to happen.

And yet, a promise is a promise. And God had promised a night sky’s worth of descendents to Abraham, to make a huge clan that would bless the world by living in it as God’s family. God doesn’t renege on his promises. But when he finds that one way of fulfilling them is not possible, he finds another, better way to make the promise come true. So God sent Jesus to be born, live and die in order to redeem the world and expand the family of folks who are God’s childen.

That’s what Christmas is - a more complete, better way for God to form a community that loves Him and shows his Love to the world. The New Testament is clear that now it is you and I who are God’s people - the ones God has chosen to bless and to be a blessing.

The “blood” relationship of being descended from Abraham became less important than the relationship made through Jesus’ blood on the cross. This is what John the Baptist said to the religious folks who came out to the desert to see what he was up to: “Don’t think you can say, “Oh, we’re children of Abraham. God can make children of Abraham out of these rocks.”

Friends, we are the rocks. We are heirs of God’s promise, not through Abraham, but through the blood of Jesus Christ, we are God’s special people. We are the ones who have inherited the promise that we will be blessed and we will be a blessing. So we’re going to do something together to symbolize that fact. Here. I’m giving you each a potato - because it looks like a rock. Each of you take a rock. Hold it in your hand. Not very shiny or sparkly, is it? Now take the knife and cut it in two. Take half of it and imagine a star on the cut face of the rock. You might want to draw the star, lightly, with a pencil. It could be a four point star, or a five point star, like the ones on your bulletin cover. Or a six point star, like the Star of David. Maybe you can envision a star with the same number of points as you have members of your family. The Star of Bethlehem, that I saw in the Church of the Nativity, over the place where Jesus was born was a fourteen point star. So a star can have any number of points. It doesn’t really matter. But take the knife and carve the edges of the potato away until you reveal the star shape. It will just take a few cuts. Then you can pass the knife to the person next to you. You’ll have little pieces of potato left over. Just put them on your bulletin until your pew is done, then you can put them in the little bag so we don’t leave a big mess here in the sanctuary.

And I know this will take some time. Let this time be a time of prayer, in which we ask God to seal the promise on our hearts. Maybe this will be a time to ask ourselves a crucial question: This Christmas - How is God’s promise to bless and redeem the world coming true in your life and the lives that you touch? We have some time now, and as we sing, and during the offering. Don’t rush. We’re on God’s time now.

And what I want you to do is to bring your star up with you when you take communion. After you have taken communion - shared in Jesus’ body and blood - shown through that ritual that you belong to him and he is part of you forever - then go to the table and and dip your star it in the paint and stamp one of the squares of cloth that I showed the kids during the children’s sermon. Like I told them, we’re going to make an Advent banner of stars.

And the banner will remind us that God’s promise to Abraham - sworn on the stars above - is now God’s promise to us: We will be blessed. And we will be a blessing.

Not like Others

2010-10-23T05:39:00.000-07:00

Oct. 24, 2010
Sermon Start
Luke 18:9-14

Thank God, I’m not like that Pharisee! (I think we’ve all said it, under our breaths.) Thank God I’m not a self-righteous, judgemental, hypocrite like that Pharisee. Thank God I don’t look down on other people like those people do. Thank God MY religious practice is purer than theirs. Thank God I am not like . . .

The problem is, the moment we think it, we ARE like that Pharisee. Jesus has set a trap for us here, telling us a story that, the minute we enter into it, imaginatively - closes - SNAPS SHUT on us and has us wondering ‘what happened here?”

Well, before we begin to gnaw our own collective leg off to get out of this trap - let’s take a minute to admire how carefully and thoughtfully the trap is made.

Jesus . . . the Pharisees are a group that we’d probably admire if we were reading about them. Their goal is to sanctify every moment and every situation for God. To make the everyday sacred and holy. That’s nice.

That’s why they pray!
That’s why they fast - this one twice a week!
That’s why they tithe - which I keep telling you is a wonderful and spiritually rewarding way to put your financial life into God’s hands - to sanctify your checkbook.

These are good things to do and the Pharisee does them. But here’s the trap that the Pharisee falls in head first: he begins to believe that HE is the one making himself holy. His religion becomes self-referential. His holiness becomes something he acheives, rather than something he recieves. He is even “praying with himself” - (a sermon title I was BARELY able to resist using)

And God gets pushed out of the picture. Because God is too big and too mysterious and too holy to fit within the frame work of any individual’s religious practice. So God gets to be a little tiny object within the religious practice.
the pharisee’s god is . . .
Not too holy.
Not too great.
Not too creative.
Not too merciful.
Not too loving.
Not too fierce.
Just . . . domesticated and small enough to enhance the very lovely life that I (I mean the Pharisee) is living.
My judgement is always the right judgment. (No need to put myself in other people’s shoes.)
My prayers are the sincere prayers. (Too bad about yours.)
My standards are always the correct ones. (For me and for you, too.)
My morality is fine for me. (And it would be fine for you, too, if you’d just be like me.)

God’s larger perspective, God’s longer time, God’s wider and deeper love. . .   who needs to worry about that?   I’m doing just fine, thank you. In fact, Thank You, God, that I am not like those others who haven’t figured out how to live such a nice life. There but for the grace of God, go I.

But let’s not go there.

It is so easy, so easy and so pleasing, to forget how radically dependent we are on God’s grace. To think that we’ve earned how nicely things have fallen in place. And that THOSE PEOPLE who are struggling so must be struggling because they aren’t as hard-working, as wise, as good hearted, as we are.

This past week a candidate for office in this district made some outrageous statements about African American men - generalizing about the choices and interests of thousands of the people he’d like to represent, without any nod of understanding of individual differences, collective challenges, or the larger culture’s role in focussing interests and choices. It was just - here’s what THEY do and here’s why THEY do it. There’s US - Thank God - and there’s THEM. Thank God that WE aren’t THEM.

Jesus sets us up, tells us this crazy prayer story just so we’ll notice that we are them - the ones we think are “other”. (The Pharisee opens his prayer, “I thank thee, Lord, that I am not like OTHER men.” And we thank God that we aren’t like the one who is OTHER than the OTHERS.   And Jesus just winks at us and smiles.

Hey Christian! Haven’t you noticed that I don’t draw those lines. I don’t see those lines.   I certainly don’t respect those lines that get drawn between the ins and the outs, the natives and the immigrants, the Cubs and the Cardinals . . . men and women, Jew or Gentile, bond or free? Jesus crossed so many of those lines in his day. Eating with sinners, arguing with scribes, teaching women, forgiving tax collectors. Jesus crossed all the lines and brought close all the ones who, like the tax collector in the story, were “far away” from God. Because just in BEING he had crossed the line between God and humanity.

His life and death and resurrection are about the fact that that line, the one between God and humanity, couldn’t possibly be penetrated by the best efforts of the most well meaning people on earth. God is simply too magnificent for little human minds to grasp, too compassionate for human hearts to comprehend. We can’t get there from here.

I recently, just for fun, asked Google Maps to calculate directions between here and the place I stayed in Nicaragua this year. You know what it said, “Unable to calculate route.” You can’t get there from here.

That’s the message of Jesus to all our human striving to become acceptable to God by means of praying the right words, giving the right amount of money, arranging our life the right way, belonging to the right groups. “You can’t get there from here. Unable to calculate route.” We can’t make it there - and the Pharisees mistake, our mistake, is to think that we’ve arrived on our own steam.

The truth of the matter is, we can only “get there” - get in right relationship with God - by radical dependence on God’s goodness and grace.   Which is freely offered - poured out like the latter rain upon the heads of the believer.

This is a story about what God can do.

God can make a way for human beings - tax collectors, even. even Pharisees - as prone to sin and selfishness and self righteousness and self deception as we are - to come into the presence of the Awesome and Holy God and say a truthful prayer. God can make a righteous way for every single one of us here this morning to enjoy fellowship with Him. God can draw to his warm and loving embrace all of Philo, all of this country, all of this hemisphere, all of this world.

And it’s not because we smell so good and look so fine and talk so well that he scoops us up in his arms and loves us. It’s because God’s heart is so big and his love is so deep. It’s God’s love that saves us and not good works, great gifts, or spiritual gymnastics. And when we understand that, then we don’t look at the Pharisee and say, “Thank God I’m not like him.” We don’t look at anyone and say, “Thank God I’m not like those others . . . “ We say, “Thank God there are no OTHERS. There is just US - those upon whom God has mercy, whom God makes right and saves.”

Wednesday, Sept. 15th

2010-09-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

O.K. The month has flown by. Today the kid's program starts, and Bird's Eye Bible Study is tonight. I have to go to the grocery store before the kid's thing. And . . . I'm starting to drag my feet, hoping that Chris' visit isn't going to be over so soon. But it is. Up and at 'em, Cindy! Let's go.

Communion Meditation - September 5

2010-09-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

This is the third in a series of sermons focused on emotions and faith. Last week was "fear". This week is "desire".

Faithful Feeling: Desire

Using Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-8 and Philippians4:8

We’ve been talking about how our emotions and our faith are related. This series grew out of several of the questions that the congregation submitted at the beginning of the summer. Some were questions about fear, anger, grief. There were no questions about desire. Which sort of reminds me of one the joke (repeatedly told by Philo’s most brilliant writer to date - David Foster Wallace. He used this most than once):

So there’s these three young fish, hanging around the ocean floor, chatting it up about fishy stuff, when an old fish swims by, and greets them - “how’s the water, boys?” And they look at each other, and say, “What’s water?”

We, like the fish, sometimes fail to recognize, and maybe don’t even know the name for what surrounds us, what we breathe in and what we “swim through” all the time. I think that’s true of “desire”. We live in a culture so awash in desire that we may not even recognize that it is all around us all the time. We live in a culture that is driven by consumer spending and depends on making us all driven consumers. Our most powerful desires - the desires for acceptance, the desire for sex, the desire for pleasure, the desire for happiness . . . these are all manipulated by Mad Men and Women. Madison Avenue has become Mainstreet in the USA and much of the world.

So lets just notice the water first, OK? As Christians, what are we to make of this water in which we swim? We can’t hold our breath, or hold our noses. This is where we live. This is where we bring up our children. Media studies reveal that
Today however, half of the clothing that kids wear include an advertisement of one sort or another. Backpack, shoes, and many accessory items also display the most popular brands for a child's peers to see. Today, ads are much more pervasive and less recognizeable as a sales pitch.

(Fast food - child’s toy - movie or TV - clothing, accessory, transportation, cell phone cell phone apps . . . )There are a seemingly limitless number of products that are then presented to the child.

These ads for children, just as those targeted toward adults, create a need where none existed previously. They also hook children, and subsequently their parents, into an endless loop of buying more and more products. (squidoo.com - advertising and children)

A lot of this desire onslaught, especially that aimed at those of us who have outgrown “Happy Meals” uses the “hook” of sexual desire. And while, on the one hand, it seems quite right that sexuality is not a subject that automatically seems shameful and unmentionable - That is good. God made our bodies and our sexuality is part of who we are supposed to be - it is also true that sexuality is hard to talk about without recognizing about how it is constantly influenced, shaped, and most of all USED to sell us things.

As people of faith, what unique insights and resources do we bring to life in this time and place? What do we know from Scripture? What does Jesus Christ’s life have to do with desire?

Well - maybe first off - our spiritual tradition does not demonize desire. In fact, our tradition recognizes desire as part of our souls from the very beginning. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden from the third chapter of Genesis is attempt to describe the souls of human beings:
Desire is a permanent part of human life. And God wanted to set up the world in a way that good desires would be satisfied: He put human beings in a garden with all that they needed to eat. He gave them work to do, to satisfy their desire to be useful and purposeful. He gave them each a partner - a soul mate. Adam calls Eve “Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”. Desires are satisfied. Needs are met - but not just in a utilitarian, joyless way. There is abundance. There is beauty. There is fulfilment.

But God’s plan is that there be something in the center of our lives that cannot be satisfied. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is “fenced”. It’s off limits. And to live faithfully is to recognize and respect that our souls have an off limits section - a desirable part - which belongs only to God.

We feel desire for beauty (it was lovely to look at) and good (to eat).

So our tradition recognizes a deep kind of desire as part of our souls’ very structure. Are we in touch with that desire?

When we see something truly beautiful - or hear something truly beautiful - isn’t there an ache of the unobtainable about it? Beautiful music. It’s so great that we have the Korean Presbyterian Choir here this morning. When we hear beautiful music, it washes over us, but we can’t grab it or keep it. Even the musicians are not in possession of the music. It passes through them, but it doesn’t belong to them. Real beauty is like that: - a beautiful person - a work of art - a stunning landscape - a perfect flower. These touch our souls and awaken in us a longing for more that cannot be satisfied. There is in us a longing for something that cannot be bought or owned. We ought to pay attention to that.

Jesus pointed to that beauty that can’t be bought when he invited his disciples to look at the birds of the air and the Flowers of the field. Look - he said, the lilies are clothed more beautifully than Solomon. Even the richest man we know of couldn’t buy the beauty that is only God’s to give.

Pastor and writer John Jewell puts it this way: If you have ever experienced a deep inner longing, but could not quite put your finger on what exactly the object of your longing was -- you have experienced the spiritual condition of humanity. It is a longing for that original intimacy with God and intimacy with each other that only God can give. It is the soul's "not quite conscious" memory of the way it should be.
It is amazing the lengths to which people will go to fulfill that inner hunger. Physically, emotionally, socially and intellectually we search and ingest and try to fill the void -- this God shaped blank as some have called it. And it's never enough -- never quite it.
Adam and Eve attempted to fill in the hole in the center - and we do that, too. We try to fill in the basic longing of our lives by our own efforts and initiative rather than standing in respect and appreciation of it.

Desires can be reminders of the things that we do not and cannot have. And so point us toward God. Or they can be motivators to forget and misunderstand God and so separate ourselves from Him.

I think that it’s significant that in our foundational story - Desire is symbolized as a beautiful piece of food. It is a fruit that Adam and Eve want. It is something to eat that they believe will dissolve the distance between themselves and God. And God said, “no”.

But In Jesus Christ, God turns the table - God sets the Table and offers to dissolve the distance between us - not by making us like God (which was the snake’s pitch to Eve, remember). No, God dissolves the distance between us and satisfies our deepest desire by becoming like us - and offering Himself to us - in a little bit of food. He satisfies our desire on His terms:

Finally, we come to the Table where God offers the relationship that satisfies, that nourishes and delights. Rather than saying, “You shall not eat . . . “ At the Table, God holds out to us the true bread of life and says, “Take, eat. This is for you.”

Proud Momma

2010-09-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

Just got back from Millimeter Mountain's show at the Canopy Club. It was SO GOOD! Such fun to be the mother of a rock star. Yeah, Rachel!

My first born son is home

2010-08-17T17:53:00.000-07:00

and I'm pretty excited about it. he arrived last night about nine, after two hard days of driving. the beagles are with him and the dogs are all getting used to each other.
pictures soon.

August 15 sermon

2010-08-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

Fire and Rain

Start with the James Taylor song, “Fire and Rain” which is a gentle and mournful song about the end of a relationship.

Fire and Rain are two elements Jesus uses in this passage - which is so hard to hear and interpret. But, unlike Sweet Baby James, Jesus doesn’t sound melancholy and resigned. He sounds cranky and confrontational. This isn’t Jesus, Meek and Mild, that we expect to encounter.

Reminded me of the story about the flight attendent on a Jet Blue flight this week that made the news. Flight attendents are usually so pleasant and cheerful and helpful and encouraging. And they have to be. Even when passengers misbehave, or don’t follow regulations, or are extra demanding, flight attendents have to stay cool. It’s their job. But this guy finally had had it. A passenger pushed him too far, and he lost it - cussed her out and then grabbed a beer and slid down the emergency exit. We don’t want to ride with that guy! and here is Jesus sounded only slightly less exasperated with his followers and the crowd. Is this what flying with Jesus is going to be like? Maybe we should be the ones pulling the escape lever and sliding down out of church, making our escape. (In fact, I really like the image of our nice wide steps out front covered with a big red inflatable slide and the congregation exiting in a hurry.)

But before we do - I think we ought to at least listen to try to hear what this passage is really saying to us: And the first thing to notice is where in the narrative Luke places this exchange. At this point, Jesus has “set his face” towards Jerusalem. He has been preaching forgiveness over vengeance, grace over works, faith and courage rather than fear. And he knows, clearly he knows, that making these choices is going to cost him his life. He knows that the cross awaits him. And yet his disciples lag behind him in understanding in every way. So he tries to bring them to understanding by talking about fire and rain.

First fire. And this is an exchange between Jesus and his disciples. Jesus tells them, I have come to kindle a fire on the earth. Fire is a symbol of God’s presence. When God led Moses and the Hebrew people out of Egypt, he led them with a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud during the day. The burning fire, which lit up the night, was a majestic and awe-ful manifestation of the invisible God. God made Himself known in the fire. In the same way, Jesus is the visible presence of the invisible God. He is burning with a passion for God’s will and God’s way. He is the way human beings know God’s way and to follow him is to follow God’s leading.

Jesus knows that his time on earth is limited. And if people are going to follow God, Jesus is going to have to have disciples who are “on fire” for God to lead them when Jesus himself is gone. What Jesus wanted more than anything else was not to have a 120 half committed disciples but Jesus wanted 12 fully committed disciples. Those 12 fully committed disciples would change the world.

And he seems to be working with some pretty wet kindling. The disciples ask dumb questions. They miss the point of his preaching. They put earthly loyalties ahead of total trust in Him.

Two thousand years later, not much has changed. Jesus’ disciples are still smoking and smouldering, but only rarely catching fire. And I’m not talking just about those in the pews. In fact this week a series of articles in the New York Times concerned a phenomenon they called “clergy burnout”. Ministers are leaving their calling in droves, and many answered a survey saying that they are staying only because they don’t have any other way to make a living. My favorite comment on this was by Bill Easum, who has been in the ministry even longer than . . . well, longer than I have. He said, “How is it that so many ministers can be burned out, when most of them have never been on fire?”

This fear of burning people out is something I hear in relation to church work and church workers among folks around here, too. We don’t want to ask people to do too much, or make too much of a commitment to the work of the church because we don’t want them to get “burned out”. We turn down opportunities to serve, to “pace ourselves” because we don’t want to get “burned out”. Meanwhile, the people who work the hardest and most diligently - teaching Sunday School, serving meals, preparing music for worship, calling on neighbors, giving sacrificially, supporting the youth program, the mission work, etc. - seem to reap the greatest blessings. They have a glow about them, when you see them at work. And they get tired. But they don’t get burned out.

Perhaps we should worry less about getting burned out and more about catching fire and actually living out what we say our commitment is to Christ and his mission.
Garth Brooks Refrain:
Standing outside the fire 
Standing outside the fire 
Life is not tried it is merely survived 
If you're standing outside the fire
Jesus said, “Would that the fire were already kindled.” Add these words - in my life. What would it mean for our community and our world if each of us would surrender to the fire of Jesus’ love in our lives? Become totally committed to living the life that he has invited us to share.
As I’ve been thinking about that kind of commitment, I was reminded of a story of what Julius Caesar’s soldiers did when they came to conquer Britain. Do you know that story? The Romans approached the island nation by sea of course. The Brits saw them coming a long way off. They massed in the highlands above the beach and waited to see what would happen. But when the Romans reached the shore, they did something that no one expected, and which showed their commitment to their mission so unmistakably that the Britons were filled with awe and fear. Do you know what they did? They burned their boats. There was no turning back. They were there to conquer or to die.
That’s the kind of burning commitment that Jesus is trying to kindle in his disciples - the kind that says, “I am following you now, Lord. I will not turn back. When struggles come, when difficulties arise, when other priorities vie for my attention and my loyalty, I am still going to follow you.” That’s the kind of discipleship that Jesus needed 2000 years ago, and that’s the kind of discipleship Jesus needs, still today, to set the world on fire.
The second image Jesus uses is the sign of rain. And this is addressed to the crowd. Not the disciples. The hangers-on. The spectators in his religious road show. To them he says, “You guys talk about the weather. You’re really good at figuring out the obvious: Clouds in the sky? Looks like rain. Wind from the south? Gonna be a scorcher! Instead of standing around talking about the weather, you might want to turn your attention to what God is doing right here and right now.
Part of Culpepper's (Luke, New Interpreters Bible) reflections on these verses:
To what do we pay close attention, and to what do we turn a blind eye?...
Jesus' sayings challenge us to examine the balance of attention and neglect in our own lives, to consider whether these there is a pattern of prioritizing the insignificant while jeopardizing the things of greatest value and importance. Have we given as much attention to the health of the church as we have to our golf score? Have we given as much attention to the maintenance of our spiritual disciplines as to the maintenance schedule for our car? Where in the scale of our attention to detail does our devotion to the teachings of our Lord rank? [p. 269]
Do we put off attending to those things that matter - put living our faith off for some “future” more convenient time? Jesus says there is no time like the present. Today. Now. This is the opportune moment. This emphasis on the present is not an aberration. Jesus starts out his ministry by reading a prophecy and his only commentary is “TODAY this scripture is fulfilled among you.” He says to Zaccheus, “Today salvation has come to your house.” He tells the criminal on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
The Apostle Paul, in his preaching of the Gospel picks this up so beautifully when he says to the church in Corinth, “Now is the acceptable day of the Lord. Today is the day of salvation.”
Don’t put it off. Pay attention. God is moving in the world right now. Will we participate in what God is doing right now?
Fire and Rain. Unlike James Taylor’s use of the images in his soft, sweet song, Jesus’ talk about fire and rain has hard edges. These sayings challenge and accuse us. The fire talk burns us, and it’s a hard rain that washes away our complacency. Maybe we prefer the softer, sweeter song. But we should remember that that sweet song is about the end of a relationship. “Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone. . . . I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain, but I always thought that I’d see you again.”
And Jesus’ more difficult sayings are spoken out of his own burning desire that the relationship he offers us should not end - but deepen, strengthen, become something lasting and beautiful and true. Jesus’ fire and rain are his way of urgently encouraging us to become the disciples he has invited us to be. To not miss the opportunity we have in the present moment to follow him.
I had this sermon all written, when I thought maybe I’d look up the lyrics to the james taylor song I remembered from so many years ago. And much to my surprise, there was a verse that I didn’t remember at all. Not at all. It is a prayer. Let us pray:
Won't you look down upon me, Jesus
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
And I won't make it any other way

Sweet Jesus, our time is at hand. Help us to make our stand with you. Kindle in us the fire of a deeply committed relationship with you - one that begins this day, one that will last throughout eternity.
Amen.

Burned out or Zonked out?

2010-08-05T14:17:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to sleep about 8:30 and slept til 7 this morning. And I have to admit, I do feel better today than I have in weeks. Maybe I'm just tired.

Wednesday

2010-07-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

Today is our day at VBS - to do the Bible Story and bring the food. I haven't felt real connected with the whole process this year, though we do have 7 kids and 3 leaders there, and I've tried to see them each night. Attendance is low this year. Second year in a row, and some of us are talking about maybe doing something different next year.
Of course, when I got to be in charge a few years ago, we tried something different and everyone went STAMPEDING back to the old way. (But, honestly, I think we had a good year. We had over 100 kids there, and some of them still tell me they remember it and thought it was cool.)
I wonder is we could do something more God/Creation/Renewing the Earth centered. I heard Tolono did that it turned out great. Recycling and gardening and learning. Just a thought. Charleston takes the kids camping for a night and they spend the day in a state park. Wouldn't that be more memorable?
The folks who take the lead with this VBS are such incredibly hard workers, and they put alot of themselves into it. Maybe we should just leave it be.

This morning I'm meeting someone who works with Tim for coffee and to talk about my trip to Palestine. She's from Lebanon and I want to know enough to be a good guest there. Some phrases, the right greetings, etc. So I'm tickled about that.

Jeri and Kirk got home from Malawi. The trip was incredible. The total culture change was both eye-opening and exhausting, as I remember from Nicaragua. But Africa is WAY more challenging than Nicaragua! I think it will take them a few days to get rested up before they can even recognize themselves in the mirror. Tough trip. I'm so proud of them for answering the call to go!!!

Other things to do today - send bulletin material for Paris pulpit exchange
plan 1/2 of service for Youth Sunday.
look toward fall sermon series (arg!)
enjoy the beautiful birds and flowers in my yard.
write thankyou notes to the great folks who helped pull last Sunday together.

Presby Park Picnic Potluck w/ Prairie Dog Band

2010-07-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

The Tolono Presbys joined us for a wonderful worship service. Thanks to Rev. Kerry Bean for his help with the service - and to everyone who brought their hearts, their voices, their neighbors and their covered dishes! The Spirit moved. (I hope that's not too presumptuous. I really mean it.)

Trying to think about what happened yesterday

2010-07-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the man who used to run the Philo Country Store shot his brother at his grocery store in Tolono. The brother died. It is so sad and horrible, it is hard to think about anything else.

Brian is just a regular guy - friendly, hard working, a little crude sometimes, but he was generous in helping out the Youth Group with a car wash on more than one occasion. He wasn't religious - in fact the only theological conversations we ever had concerned his good deeds "making points with the Big Guy". I feel pretty sure that that kind of thinking isn't going to be of much help to him as he tries to sort out what has happened now.

I wonder how his family - his parents and his wife and children - are going to cope. The future suddenly is very dark and torturous for all of them.

You know, the Presbyterian/Protestant/probably all Christian way of thinking SAYS that we are all sinners and that without God's help we are capable of terrible things. But I doubt if any of us really come to grips very often with the implications of that. We don't REALLY think of ourselves, day to day, as having evil lurking in our hearts. But then something like this happens and . . . here is a man who is not all that different than most of us, and he killed his brother.

We might try to come up with the ways that we are different from him - hoping to shut out the horror and distance ourselves from it. But I think we might learn more and maybe grow more as human beings if we admit that what happened is an indication of who we all are, at some level at least. And I'd hope that that recognition would redouble our reliance on God's grace and forgiveness in our lives.

I hope that Brian finds someone who can tell him about God better than I did. And I hope his family finds lots of Christian friends who can walk with them through the valley of the shadow of death.

Early Morning Sermon

2010-07-18T05:15:00.000-07:00

This one was really hard to write. Why?

Hymn of the Cosmic Christ
Colossians 1:15-29

O What a beautiful morning, O what a beautiful day!

I think I’ve told you before how much I love the movie and theatre moments in which characters burst into song. Viewed from the grumpy side of life, those moments seem kind of silly and embarrassing. But they also represent a kind of border between the mundane and the spiritual. Between ordinary life and rapture. Between what can be rationally stated, and what must be heart-fully expressed.

Our scripture reading this morning represents on of those moments - when the enormity and beauty of what he wants to express overwhelms mere prose. And he breaks into song.

This first part of our scripture lesson is a hymn - a song - extolling Christ and expressing the wonder of what God has done for us through Christ. This hymn was most probably sung in the early church
(I think it’s worth a moment to think about the fact that as the church was getting started and spreading, one of the first things they did was compse hymns and sing. Writing creeds came much later. Even writing alot of the New Testament came later. Hymns came quickly and took hold - that’s how closely linked our faith is to our songs. That’s why what Betty and our other accompanists do is not just . . . entertain us or show their personal musical gifts. When she plays for us, Betty connects us to one of the most basic forms of Christian expression. And we should never take that for granted. Thank you Betty, for enabling us to sing!)

Theologians and Biblical scholars refer to this portion of scripture as the Hymn of the Cosmic Christ, because it attempts to express who the one we call Jesus is and was, not only in his earthly life, but in terms of cosmic time and the context of all of creation.
Christ is the image of the invisible God, it begins.
In Christ were all things created.
All things were created by Christ and for Christ.
And in Christ all things are held together.
For in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.

The majesty of creation is tied to the wonder of reconciliation in Christ Jesus our Lord.

A few weeks ago, I asked the congregation to fill out cards, with questions and issues that you would like addressed in sermons or bible studies. And I’ve been praying over those index cards, just keeping the faith of those writers and the themes they raised in mind as I planned for this fall.

And this week, as we continue to read in Colossians, I felt like the passage might help address one of the issues that were raised by thoughtful, faithful people. (Actualy, I thought I might address two of the questions, but the sermon got too long so I’m putting question #2 - about discerning God’s will back to be addressed more fully later.) One was about how we think about other religions, and whether or not God grants eteranal life to anyone but those who are Christians. What about good Buddhists? Good Jewish people? Good and devout Muslims? In our increasingly connected world, these questions take on some urgency. We see these people on tv. We read about them in books and on line. Doesn’t God love and care for them? Does God reject them because they do not call on the name of His Son, Jesus Christ?

Haven’t alot of us thought about that? People of faith, theologians and philosophers have spent alot of time thinking about that question. And this passage is one of the ones that they consider in that regard. Because it opens up a vision of Christ and an expression of the scope of His work that gives us a different vantage point or perspective on questions about God and other religions.

On the one hand, the hymn affirms that it is in Christ Jesus that we know God. He is the image - the mirror - the reflection - the representation - of Almighty God. In human form, God was pleased to dwell. We get much the same language in the first chapter of the Gospel of John- the Word became flesh and dwelt among us - the fullness of Grace and Truth. Christ is unique and we cannot know God apart from Him.

But, amazingly, as music sometimes can, the hymn also pulls us what feels like the opposite direction: Christ was present at the dawn of creation and EVERYTHING that was created was created by and for Him. Our Lord is not just a teacher in Palestine who founded a nice religion - one among many others, which are now in some sort of contest to see who can get the most votes in a worldwide “Earth’s Got Religion”. Christ created the earth, and holds together that creation. Which makes us think, well, Christ can and will work in and through all things to accomplish God’s purpose. In all humility, know that God is God, we have to allow for the possibility that Christ is working in and through in other peole, even of other religions, to care for and love and reconcile people to Himself. The Bible doesn’t just say, Everyone must believe in Jesus. It also says, with equal strength and power, “Through Christ God was pleased (past tense, you guys - Christ’s reconciling work is accomplished) to reconcile ALL THINGS to himself.

One of the ways that Reformed theology differs from Baptist and Anabaptist and New Wave popular TV evangelist theology is that our flavor of Christianity has also carried the insistence that God is free and God can and will “save” those whom God chooses, that it is not up to us to win or earn our salvation by works or any other way. Presbyterians have taken seriously that grace is a gift. And we respect God enough to think that God can and will give that gift out to whomever God wants.

And Christ’s own mission and ministry seem to point to God’s great desire to give it away to all. There is not an ethnic group Jesus leaves out, not a gender group he favors, not a religious boundary he encounters that he doesn’t cross, not a moral failure that is beyond his forgiveness. God’s grace is offered to all. Even to those who reject him and crucifed him. As he was dying - hanging on the cross that saves us - Jesus prayed, “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” Those words are our ultimate hope and our ultimate assurance that we ourselves are saved.

Now - taken to the extreme - this thought has given rise to the position we call Universalism. The theological position that God saves everyone, no matter what, because God’s love is so great that no one has the power to overcome or reject it.

Presbyterians are not universalists. One of our greatest theologians, Karl Barth, puts it this way: "The proclamation of the Church must make allowance for this freedom of grace. Apokatastasis Panton? No, for a grace which automatically would ultimately have to embrace each and every one would certainly not be free grace. It surely would not be God's grace. But would it be God's free grace if we could absolutely deny that it could do that? Has Christ been sacrificed only for our sins? Has he not ... been sacrificed for the whole world? ... [Thus] the freedom of grace is preserved on both these sides." [5]

For Barth, then, and for Reformed and Presbyterian Christians, the place we wind up is held in the same creative tension that we find in this hymn: Faith in Christ means that we can neither affirm nor deny the possibility that all will be saved.
So what can we do? Our answer is clear: we can hope (see CD IV/3, pp. 477-78). [6]
We can cling to Christ and the hope that he offers for our lives only as deeply and fervently as we offer and embody that hope in a world that clearly stands in need of his mercy and grace.
When we encounter people of other faiths, we look for Christ’s reconciling work in them, we have faith that Christ is there - because Christ is everywhere! - and we give thanks for that work, no matter who seems to be involved in it. We don’t presume to know what God is doing in their lives, even as we share with them the good news of what Jesus Christ is doing in our lives. We leave the question open. And we hope. We don’t judge. We hope. We don’t dismiss. We hope. We don’t ignore, or fail to make Christ known as WE know him. We hope and we hope to not only make him known to them. We hope to know Him more fully as we come to know these others, who are also His beloved.

We started by talking about the moment that ordinary life gives way to song . The magic of that moment is, it seems to me, matched by the way that a song when a song ends, the feeling, the melody, the rhythm of the song lingers on and flavors the more mundane, prosaic parts of our lives. You know? How, having heard great music, we sometimes find that the “hook” - that’s what they call it - the “hook” of the song - has caught us and stayed with us and changed us somehow?
The scripture hymn ends, but with these encouraging words:

continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

The great songs - like this great hymn of the Cosmic Christ - burst into our consicousness and then, even after the song ends, we live with the words and music running underneath our everyday lives.
Christ is the image of the invisible God. Even when things seem alien to us, in Christ all things hold together. In Christ the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him God has reconciled all things to himself. We, who are reconciled through Christ, in our lives and in our words and in our prayers, go out into the world Christ created and redeemed as bearers of that song.

Friday Five Pet Edition

2010-07-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

RevGalBlogPals Friday Five for June 16th:

My friend Judy told a group of friends last week that her beloved hermit crab Al died. She missed Al--after six years of his company, even though she was not sure how pronounced his personality was or if he had one!

With the chewing exploits of our third dog, puppy Maisie, I am wondering about the pets we presently own and have had in the past.What about you? Tell us about the animals in your lives. If you have no pets, give examples of friends' pets or imaginary ones!

1. Did you grow up with pets?
Magnolia Blossom (Maggie B. for short) was a small breed beagle who lived with our family longer than I did. (I left home at 18. Maggie lived to the ripe old age of 19 years old.)

2. Do you have any pets now?
I have a dog - Chief. Also my stepson's dog - Lucky - lives with us. And soon my son is coming to visit and bringing his dogs - Kalie and Evie. It will be canine paradise around here.

3. What is the funniest or worst thing any of your pets have ever done?
Chief once ate 2 pounds of fudge that I had set in the middle of the dining room table in preparation for an afternoon open house. Then, of course, he was very sick and every rug in the house had to be cleaned and/or put away before guests started arriving. And they didn't get any fudge. That is "worst". Even now, years later, it does not qualify as "funny".

4. Who is/was your favorite pet?
Chief, who is a Heinz 57 type mutt, is my favorite. He is sneaky, shy, and sheds something awful. But he is absolutely devoted to me. And every preacher needs SOMEBODY who is absolutely devoted to them. Better and healthier to have a dog than look for devotion among congregation members.

5. How did you train your different pets?
Chief trained me to take him out and give him treats. He doesn't do much of anything else.

BONUS: Pictures of a pet or one you wish you could have.

Spaghetti and the Christian Life

2010-07-11T04:20:00.000-07:00

Colossians 1:1-17
New Member Sunday

The opening of the letter of Colossians is like a big plate of spaghetti. All week I’ve been trying to pick it apart, pull out the most important strands, push it into some kind of easily understandable shape, arrange it simply and attractively on the plate so that we can all digest it.

And all week, I’ve failed. It isn’t that it isn’t good stuff. Wholesome, nutritious, substantial. It is well balanced and just what we need. But I can’t serve it up in neat spoonfuls. It keeps sliding off the fork. It’s messy.

Yet spaghetti is so good! I couldn’t give up the idea of serving it to you this morning.

And by Friday I realized why - - - because the letter is to a real church, about a real church, from a real christian about the real christian life. And church life, christian life, is often hard to sort out and explain simply. It is all intertwined and connected up over around and through. It’s messy. And fabulous. Spicy and good. And good for you.

Sophia Loren famously said, “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.”

So . . . What I’m offering is a few messy forkfuls.

Church life can be faithful and fruitful. Lots of the letters, Paul’s letter, especially, are sent in response to some problem or crisis in the life of the church. Danger! Problems! People behaving badly! Alot like some or the communication we get about church now adays.

In contrast, Colossians is a welcome reminder that sometimes, by the grace of God, things go right and the church manages to do what it is supposed to do . . . reasonably well. The Colossians are greeted with thanksgiving and congratulated on their Christian life. The writer of this letter points to their faith in Christ, their care for one another and their Christian hope for the future. He says, “People have noticed. I have noticed. God has noticed that you are doing well.”

Now - maybe this is just me picking at a strand - but it’s interesting to me what he doesn’t say here - “Your Christian life is perfect. You are making a huge impact on the world. Slavery, abuse, unjustice, immorality, and heartache are all coming to a swift end because you are living so faithfully. I know that not a one of you ever errs, there are no bad feelings, and everywhere you go people are converted just by the power of your exemplary lives.” That ain’t the message. This is a small church, in a small city, and it’s doing pretty well. Thank God - because that is miracle enough - sign enough of God’s grace and mercy that this little congregation can continue to thrive and grow.

I think sometimes we can get focussed on the ideal way we think church should be - tackling every evil that destroys people’s lives, eliminating hunger, actively evangelizing our neighborhoods and communities, loving each other to pieces, and worshipping with such enthusiasm that we don’t want to stop when 11 oclock arrives - we just want to go on praising the Lord! I’d like to belong to a church like that. I’m sure you would, too.
We can get discouraged, always thinking about what we lack, so that we forget or ignore the incredible blessings with which God has blessed this little faithful group:

By the grace of God, this morning our Session met and prayed over two of our members who have answered God’s call to help out and share their faith in one of the poorest countries in the world. In Malawi, Africa, for Pete’s sake. Something is going right! Very, very right! And the other business on our docket was recieving 4 new members. Who have 5 children, overall. Our church is growing again. In the last month by roughly 5%. 5 people in the last month have said, “Yes, I have decided to grow my Christian life among this group of people.” Something is going right. The prayers of the people are being answered. Our congregation is fruitful. I thank God for that!

We aren’t going to solve all the world’s problems. But that doesn’t mean we are failing to do please God or live a life worthy of our calling. This is where God wants us to be - with each other, encouraging, supporting, etc.

Second forkful:
Two strands of the Christian life are continuously intertwined: knowing and doing. The Christians at Colassus are encouraged to keep up the good work on two fronts: Learning, growing understanding, obtaining wisdom, - - - -the head and heart front.
And bearing fruit, performing God’s will, being persistant in acting out their faith in the world.

One translation puts it this way: we ask God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works. We pray that you'll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work.

One of the most outstanding features of the Presbyterian flavor of Christianity is that heart and head and hands are emphasized in our life of faith. Learning what the Bible says is important to us. Finding out what the Bible means is central to how we grow as Christians. This includes everything from educating our young people about the Ten Commandments and the story of Jesus life to the kind of inductive application that happens around the table of Adult Sunday School, to the devotions that happened on the Senior High Mission Trips to personal study that I know many of you engage in using resources like “These Days” devotional booklets. We do church in a way that lets people know you don’t have to check your brains at the door of the church.

But it’s not all “head” knowledge. It is living out the central truths of the faith as we learn them. The forgiveness that restores relationships when things go wrong. The love that reaches out to those in pain with reassurance and hope and a hearty casserole. The humility that says, “Who am I to judge?” rather than shunning those whose choices seem unfortunate to us. Hands opened to give and to recieve life . . . this, too, is part of the Christian life we share.

Head and heart and hands are intertwined and integral parts of what God wants from us and for us.

And the last forkful is what the writer of Colossians prays will be served up for the future of the church: May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully
12giving thanks to the Father
Strength of faith, Patience to endure setbacks, and Gratitude to God for what is set before us. Here’s a trio of virtues that characterize the Christian life - strength, Patience and gratitude.
Where does God’s power flow through you?
Is it in your work?
Your family?
Your involvement with church?
Your prayers?

What difficulties are you having to endure right now?
What areas of your life call for patience?
When it is hard to wait, how can your faith and how do your church friends help you?

And what about this joyfully giving thanks to the Father business?
Do you spend some portion of every day just being grateful?

Strength. Patience. Gratitude. Can those strands of Spaghetti be woven in and around all the meatballs of your life?

Life in the church is like a huge plate of spaghetti. It is sometimes messy. I remember when I was younger and single, and eating out with a date, I didn’t order spaghetti until the relationship was pretty secure, because, no matter how careful you try to be, or which technique you try for twirling it around the fork, or scooping it with the spoon in your left hand, or even cutting it up into little bitty bits of pasta . . . it’s hard to eat spaghetti without looking a little foolish sometimes. Sophia had some advice about eating spaghetti, too. She said the best way was just to inhale it. It’s not an elegant meal. It’s a challenge.

But when this is what is set before you,
and around the table are people who are also willing and ready to dig in and give it a go,
it is time to tuck the napkins in, thank God for the bounty, and let ourselves spill over in thanksgiving and joy.

Blog as substitute for memory:

2010-07-11T04:13:00.000-07:00

This is from an article about a vote in the church of England to reject a two-tier system of bishops that would women always "second tier". I just was struck by this one sentence, which MAY (I'm not really sure about this at all) describe what's going on in a lot of "mainline" churches:

That is what compromise bargains: schism in slow motion.

Right now I'm posting it just so that I can think about it later. What immediately comes to mind is the thought that slow motion breakups - whether of high school romances or denominations - seems unnecessarily cruel to me. Better (more humble and more kind) to affirm that life goes on for both parties, even when the relationship is over.

Misreading the situation

2010-07-08T03:28:00.000-07:00

"New language offered for ordination standards"

This was the banner headline on the PCUSA website this morning. And my reaction was, "Isn't Greek and Hebrew enough????"

That's not really what they were talking about. Oh well. It's early. I may sharpen up as the day wears on.

Faith and Fireworks Sermon

2010-07-04T17:07:00.000-07:00

July 4, 2010
Luke 10:1-17?
Faith and Fireworks

Sparklers, Black Cats, Smoke Bombs, M-80s, Fountains, Roman Candles, Bottle Rockets, . . .

The aisles of Shelton Fireworks are full of all the things that make Fouth of July so fabulous - especially for those of us who have the hearts of teen age boys. And then there are the big guns - the huge mortars and gigantic bomb like things that pyrotechnic technicians set off in the night sky to help their unite audience members of every age and situation - families with kids smelling of bug spray, corraled on big blankets, teenage couples with their arms draped around each other, elders comfortably seated on folding lawn chairs with drink holders holding plastic cups of lemonade - every one united in the Oohs! and Aahs! that accompany the spectacular display.

Fireworks are fabulous. There is something just so soul satisfying about seeing the night sky lit up with all those beautiful and short lived lights.

Even Jesus would have liked fireworks, and I sight as evidence his statement to the 70 apostles that he sent out to tell the world about the nearness of the Kingdom: He describes their success with the expression - “I saw Satan fall from the heavens, like a bolt of light.” Doesn’t that sound like fireworks? It’s a phrase that expresses joy and triumph and heart stopping wonder.

And when I read it in our lectionary reading, I thought, wow! It’s like Jesus, as an observer of the missionaries he sent out, was seeing what we will see tonight - fireworks!

Only the fireworks he saw were not the result of gunpowder and carefully selected chemical reactions. The fireworks in this passage are found in the faith and faithfulness of the 70 men and women who went out, two by two, to tell the world about this Jesus whose love was lighting up their lives.

What does this passage tell us about faith on this day and night when fireworks fill the air? What do faith and fireworks have in common?

Well - fireworks always come with explicit instructions. So let’s start with the instructions that Jesus gave these earliest missionaries as they started out:

We can tell from Jesus’ words is that both faith and fireworks inherently contain a large element of risk. 13,000 fireworks victims keep hospitals busy every year. More than half of those injured are children. Fireworks not only injure users, but also 40 percent of fireworks mishaps injure bystanders. In 2004, fireworks started an estimated 1,600 structure fires and 600 vehicle fires which were reported to local fire departments. These fires resulted $21 million in direct property damage.
More than half (54%) of 2005 fireworks injuries were burns. Contusions and lacerations were second (29%), and were twice as common as burns when the injury was to any part of the head or face, including the eye. Hands or fingers were the part of the body injured in 30% of the incidents. In 24% of the cases, the eye was involved; other parts of the face or head accounted for 20% of the injuries.
One of the reasons fireworks injuries continue to occur is because people just don't consider how dangerous these devices can be.
Faith is evidently risky, too, Jesus said, “I send you out as lambs among wolves.” The world is not an easy place to live out our faith. Far easier to be faithful here, as we are gathered in this safe place.

What are the risks? The primary risk is that we are going to be sent out. “I want to live a faithful life, but what if God calls me to go somewhere I don’t want to go? Talk to someone I don’t want to talk to? Do something that might embarrass or inconvenience me? The words to the old country tune come into my head: “I want to get right with Jesus - but not right now”

Well - I love the certainty of this part of the Christian life - we can be sure that God WILL be sending us to places and people and situations that mean we have to take some risks. That’s why we can it faith. There are risks to living faithfully. Now, we are very blessed to live in a country in which the practicing our faith does not ordinarily mean that we risk imprisonment or death. There are still countries like that, and we should be praying for the Christians in those places. But here - usually - we don’t risk death. And Jesus didn’t seem to say his followers were risking death, either. The biggest negative outcome Jesus mentions is the same one we risk in living faithfully: The risk of rejection. The risk that people won’t welcome us, listen to us, speak kindly to us. The risk that we’ll get made fun of, or shouted at rudely, or flipped off. (There were rude gestures in Jesus’ day, too.) And Jesus say we can’t retaliate. He says we have to just shake the dust off our feet and go on. Both faith and fireworks entail real risks - that is part of the thrill of using them.

Fireworks depend on the right elements being put in close proximity to one another. Contact between the fuse, and the igniter, and the thruster and the are what make fireworks go. If you have any experience with fireworks, you know that if any of the connections between there segments gets jostled loose or is missing, the firework is a dud.

Likewise, we can tell from Jesus’ instructions to his 70 chosen ones that faithfully fulfilling his mission requires close proximity to the people to whom they are sent. Jesus asks those he sends to go out, not with a credit card in their pockets, a reservation at a moderately priced but very nice hotel, and a picnic basket full of goodies, in case the nearest Subway or McDonald’s is not near enough. Jesus sends the faithful out with the knowledge that they are going to have to get into people’s homes, belly up to their tables, and sleep in their beds or on their floors if they are going to get the job they are sent to do done.

Getting close to other people, figuratively as well as literally, is a stressful experience for many of us. There are sociological studies that show that people in general need a certain amount of “personal space” and people in the Midwest, especially the rural Midwest, need a little more of that personal space than average. We live in the wide open spaces and, in part, that may be because we aren’t particularly comfortable pressed up against, and dependant upon, other people. Jesus seems to know this. Because he puts quite a bit of effort into specifically instructing those he sends in the details that will inevitably result in their close proximity to the folks they are supposed to reach with the faith.
If we are going to live as these faithful ones did - we need to be aware that sometimes this is going to result in uncomfortable closeness to folks we don’t really know and wouldn’t, if it were up to us, choose as hosts, guests, dinner companions and friends. Sometimes these instructions can be read literally: I think of the plates of food and the glasses of drink that were set before me in Nicaragua. Sometimes, I had to think twice about where the food had come from, how it had been prepared, and whether it was going to taste anything like what I’d prefer eating. When the farm hand asked if I’d like coffee, and then poured some from his cup into mine . . . and when he asked if I’d like cream and went over and squirted some straight from the cow into the cup . . . Well, putting that cup to my lips and drinking meant something more than when I share a cup of coffee with you during coffee hour. I know that Jeri and Kirk will be facing some of the same sorts of situations in Malawi. Sharing someone else’s food, in someone else’s home, eating together takes on a kind of intimacy that is both uncomfortable and thrilling at the same time.

But you don’t have to go to Central America or Africa to find that faith’s proximity principle comes into play. You just have to visit someone in the hospital, or their home. Or share a ride with them to a ball game or a personal conversation with them on the street. Proximity is priceless. Not always comfortable, but absolutely necessary to sharing the faith.

What would happen tonight, when you spread out your blanket to watch fireworks, if, instead of situating it as far from others as possible, you actually plunked yourself down close enough to the next group that you could talk? Find out about them? Share snacks? Think about welcoming, rather than avoiding, contact with acquaintances and casual friends and strangers in the week ahead. How many more opportunities would there be to find out what God is up to in their lives? How many steps would that take you toward the place where you could share with them the faith that sustains you? Try it. Faith and fireworks depend on contact, on close proximity, on sharing space.

But you know what I think is the most important thing that fireworks and a faithful life have in common? The way they light things up. They way they fill the darkness with beauty and joy. The way they surprise us - stop our hearts a little - even if we are watching for them, they always burst into bloom with ever new patterns and colors and forms. The faith of members of this congregation never cease to shock and awe me.

The fireworks tonight will last a few minutes. The risk and the reward of faith in Jesus Christ last a lot longer than that. Amen.

Black Lint in the Dryer (again)

2010-07-03T18:31:00.001-07:00

The boys are home from their mission trip to Mt. Vernon. They had a good time and feel good about their work there, which is all I wanted. Caleb built a porch and repaired a wheel-chair ramp. Sean built a couple of ramps and put up fences. The residents whose homes they fixed up were very appreciative, which is also a plus.
They met some friends who they have already "facebook"ed. And they are glad to be home.
Doesn't get much better than that.

2010-07-02T13:56:00.001-07:00

Someone in a truck whistled at me. Just sayin.

From Eunice Attwood - the newly elected vicepresident of the Methodist Church in Great Britain -

2010-07-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

I found this on revgalblogpals today and just loved it. I want to put it somewhere I would see and be encouraged/challenged by it.

Vice- President Eunice gave an inspiring account of the type of church she wants to be a part of:

I want to be part of a church that is prayer-filled -
A church that is resourced and sustained by the Bible,
A church that can offer hope even in a credit crunch,
A church that can live well with difference and diversity.

I want to be part of a church that welcomes the wealthy, those who have power and influence -
A church that knows how to party and celebrate life,
A church that acknowledges death and speaks boldly of resurrection,
A church that doesn’t pretend to have all the answers but encourages all the questions.

I want to be part of a church that throws parties for prostitutes -
A church that welcomes those who seek asylum,
A church that longs and yearns for justice,
A church that listens to those no-one else wants to listen to.

I want to be part of a church that believes in transformation not preservation -
A church where all who are lost can be found,
A church where people can discover friendship,
A church where every person takes responsibility in sharing the good news.

I want to be part of a church whose hope is placed securely and confidently in the transforming love of God -
A church that engages faith in its communities,
A church that makes and nurtures disciples of Jesus.

A church where the story of God’s love is at the centre.
I want to be part of a church that offers outrageous grace, reckless generosity, transforming love and engaging faith.
This is God’s story Transforming Love: Engaging Faith.

My prayer is that by the power of the Spirit of God at work amongst us, it will increasingly be our story.

Last day of the quiet week

2010-07-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

Well, tomorrow we get up early and head to Mt. Vernon to pick up the boys who have been at mission trip all week. I do so hope that it has been a good experience for them. Teenagers seem to have such a difficult time focusing on what is so right in their lives and in the world. It's a tough age. For them, first of all, but also for those of us who love them better than life itself.
I'm trying to begin and finish up a sermon for Sunday. Sitting on the back porch with the computer is the best office set up in the world. Thank Goodness for this fabulous weather!
The quiet this week has given me a chance to get centered again and take care of some planning for the season ahead. It's been very energizing. Can't wait to see a bunch of stuff coming into focus.
Speaking of focus - I've finally "retired" my too old right eye contact lense and have switched to my other eye (and set of contacts) for seeing distance. My brain is a little confused to have to read with the right and see signs with the left, but I think it will work after I get used to it. Brains are plastic, right?
I want to do desk work for a little bit today and then put on my garden gloves and clean up a couple of weedy places that are pushing right up to the edge of "out of control" this afternoon. That will be fun. The flowers continue to be gorgeous! What a blessing a garden is!

Wednesday

2010-06-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

Two birds are splashing around in the bird bath. I'm going to have to refill it. Mother Nature was doing that for me, daily it seemed like. Now that the rain has stopped, it's hard to remember to water plants and refill bird baths. But I must. And I will.
Had lunch with my lovely daughter Rachel today. We ate Korean food at B. Won - which is always good. And I always think, as I leave the place, that I won't have to eat again for twenty-four hours. But it's dinner time and I'm hungry.
Tim is working late. Maybe I can get him to meet me somewhere for dinner.

Work report (I recommend skipping this)
I've got the bulletin done. And the sermon outlined in my head.
I've had some nice visits with folks who can't make it to church. Very interested (in others and in the world) people make very interesting people, in my opinion. I'm proud to know them.
I have a very good idea about a fellowship series organized around canning. I hope I can find folks with the equipment and know how to make that happen, cause everyone I've mentioned it to wants to learn how and do it together. We have the kitchen, heaven knows! And preserving local food so that we can eat it this winter is part of environmental stewardship, if you ask me. (Did you ask me? No. No one asks me.)
Also - I have to get serious about a get together for prospective new members and session. I wish I had a social secretary to make the phone calls and give me a date and a head count. I could take it from there. I really could.

So . . . there you go. My daily digest.

A good beginning

2010-06-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday morning, 10 A.M.(!) and I have finished the sermon for tomorrow's baptism service. I even like it.
I started it early. "Early" for me means I started pulling stuff from books and commentaries on Tuesday and had some "hot quotes" by Wednesday.
I got past the easy pickin's of the passage (I started out linking it to John Cotter's work on leadership and creating a sense of urgency to get transitions made),
got through the period where I just feel like Jesus is fussing at me,
and finally was blessed with a sense of the grace of it all.
On Thursday I had a "Movement" map. Once that happens, it is pretty easy to make some connections with what is going on in the life of the congregation.
So last night and this morning . . . I had the fun of writing. And it's done! In time to practice!! Oh how fun is this going to be!

OK Here's what I did today

2010-06-24T19:45:00.000-07:00

Had coffee with a wonderful member whose father died recently.
Got the septic system pumped out. (Actually, I just watched the very nice septic system service man and called for help from an elder with a back hoe.)
Almost finished the news letter.
Talked to the mother of the bride about a wedding in July.
Took pictures of two families who are joining the church next month.
Went to the Quad and heard a summer band concert that my hubby is taping for a Big Ten show on the new band director. (Met the Band Director and his son. They ARE Presbyterian, of course!)
Day is done. Gone the sun.
What a great day to be the pastor of Philo Presbyterian Church.

Thinking about Sunday's service

2010-06-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

The Gospel (Luke 9) is about how Jesus says "drop everything if you want to follow me. Let the dead bury the dead, don't put your hand to the plow and look back . . . " (at least that's the last half of the pericope. The first is about a village who rejects J and the disciples want to call down fire from heaven. Jesus is against that, by the way.)

And we've got a baptism (baby girl) and a new member (her doting dad) and I want that part of the service to be really cool - cause baptism is the greatest thing (since broken bread).

So I could ditch the lectionary entirely - or could I take a tack about creating a sense of urgency. Babies have a great sense of urgency. They want it and they want it now. Babies create a sense of urgency in their parents. The sense of needing to get one's life in order often comes when the pregnancy test comes back positive. And shouldn't children create a sense of urgency for the church. These children are why we deal with problems and rededicate ourselves to doing God's will (as we know and understand it).

That might work. I'm going to give it some more thought.

Monday Morning

2010-06-21T05:25:00.000-07:00

So last night I was sitting on the back porch, thinking about what a nice Sunday it had been and how glad I was that the service went well. And then, in a moment, the pleasant mental road shifted, almost imperceptibly, to an uphill grade. And I realized that now I've got to start getting ready to do it again next week.
What's on your agenda for the week ahead?

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

2010-06-20T18:37:00.000-07:00

This was my "honoring men of the church" sermon. More or less. I'm sorry it doesn't include the soundtrack of "Truckin'".

June 20
Honoring Men of the Church
I Kings 19:1-15a (elijah)
“What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been!”

If Elijah the prophet had a theme song, I’d like to think it would be the Grateful Dead’s classic, “Truckin’”. Do you remember Jerry Garcia - the lead singer from that long playing band? He kind kinda looked like the prophet . . . I have a couple of pictures, in case you doubt me. I’m going to have you listen to a couple minutes of that song about how it feels to always be on the move, like Elijah. If you don’t get all the words, it doesn’t matter. Just dial your way back machine to tie dye and enjoy . . .

I especially like the chorus: Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me. . . . . Other times I can barely see . . . . Lately it occurs to me . . . . What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

Yeah! Elijah’s truckin! All the way from Israel to Jezreel, to Horeb and now on his way back to Israel to face down Jezabel. Life was a long, strange trip for Elijah and I’m not just talking about the story that we read this morning. What we have to remember, reading the Bible in drib and drabs on a Sunday morning, is that there is often much, much more to a story - especially a story like Elijah’s.

The cycle of Elijah stories in 1 Kings is long. The man Elijah has angry confrontations with powerful people, depends on the kindness of strangers, repays hospitality in a miraculous way, triumphs against tremendous odds, trains his own replacement, and, eventually is swept away by God in a whirlwind, accompanied by chariots of fire. Not a bad exit!

But my point is that this story is just one moment in Elijah’s long life with God. It is just one incident in an unfolding lifetime. It is a moment in time - an important moment, but just a moment in a man’s life.

This incident follows an episode in which he had utterly and completely humiliated the priests of the false God, Baal. He’d bested them in a contest of nerves and will. He’d demontrated God’s power in such a decisive way that he seemed as powerful and invincible as any man on earth. “Sometimes the lights all shinin on me! Other times I can barely see!”

As we meet Elijah in this moment of his life, he is low. Very low. But just a short time ago, Elijah had been on top of the world: Now he seems like a whiny child - dejected, full of self-pity and blaming everybody out there. He tells God that he just wants to lay down and die.

So which is the real Elijah? The powerful warrior/priest, or the pity-party poo-bah? Could it be both? On this day that we honor men, isn’t the man Elijah a reminder that no man can be completely known, or defined by looking at his highest triumph or the lowest that he sinks? Men can be awfully hard on themselves and, to be honest, men haven’t cornered the market on this way of thinking - by a way of thinking that says, in times of difficulty “Oh I’m just a loser who can’t do anything right” or in times when we are riding high, “I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread. I’m different and better than those other mere men.”

Aren’t we smarter than that, really? The news is full of accounts of men - and women - who do wonderful things, and then terrible things. Are they great men, or pitiful losers? Well, if we pay attention to the Bible, we might admit that human beings have it within us to be both. Often in very close succession.

But what the Bible, and Elijah’s story have to add is it is not only a picture of what human beings are and do, it shows us who God is and what God does when the road gets long and the way gets weary. We can see from scripture that God does not abandon us. When we are courageous, God is there. When we are cowardly, God is there, too.
When we are determined - God is with us. When we are despondent, we are still within God’s loving care.
God met Elijah in the wilderness where he had run and gave him bread for the journey. The first time, Elijah went right back to sleep. He said,
I'd like to get some sleep before I travel
Did God say, ‘Well, I gave him a chance?” No. God gives him another chance. “Get up and eat. You have a long journey ahead.”

God fed him in the wilderness. Bread for the journey. I have bread for you men, too. It is bread for the journey of faith that all of us are traveling. You can’t be truckin for Jesus if your fuel tank is on empty. This is “Grateful Bread” (to remind you of the Grateful Dead) but more importantly to remind you that God is always with you, always available to strengthen you when you are down and feeling out. Jesus spent some time in the wilderness, too, and when he was there and hungry, the devil tempted him by daring him to make the stones of the desert into bread. Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God.” The Word of God is an important source of nourishment and strength on the journey of faith, too. When you are feeling low, open God’s word and hear him say, “I am with you. This, too, will pass. Circumstances will change, but my love for you and my belief in you will always be here for you.” God fed Elijah, and this bread is a reminder that God will always feed you.

Elijah eats and sets out.
I guess they can't revoke your soul for trying Get out of the door - light out and look all around
He goes, not back to the fight, but to the Holy Mountain of God. Another rest stop, it seems. And God asks, “Elijah, what are you doing here?”
It is as if God said to his downcast man ‘Lijah, you got to play your hand. Sometime the cards ain’t worth a dime if you don’t lay ‘em down.

Another jag of self pity. He felt set up, like a bowlin’ pin and knocked down, it got to wearin thin. why don’t they just let him be? But God didn’t give up on him. He had a warrant and he was gonna come in.

God fed him in the wilderness. Bread for the journey.

God reminded Elijah he wasn’t alone. Elijah complains that he is the only one left who is faithful to God. We often feel as though we are alone. One of the characteristics of depression and depressive thinking is isolation and a feeling of alienation from everyone else. But God reminds Elijah that there are others in the same position. God says there are 7000 others who are also faithful. 7000 is a big number. Elijah is not alone.

God spoke to him in a still small voice. God runs through his repertoire of great loud triumphant tricks. And Elijah notices that what he really craves - God’s presence - isn’t found in the big showy stuff. Then God speaks to the man in the sound of silence.

Sometimes God’s presence is too profound for words. Our lives are so full of noise. Computers, TVs, iPods, give us a different kind of noise. And for some reason I think men’s lives are even noisier than mine and my sister friends. Maybe that’s because yesterday as I sat on the back porch, trying to get this service in order, the neighbor guys on both sides of me were running crazy noisy power machines. Every once in a while a Harley would cruise by with it’s distintive roar. But, from talking to Harley riders, who have told me that their time on the road is often when they feel closest to God, a time apart, when their lives come into focus, I wonder if those motors and machines aren’t one way that men shut out the noise of the world.

I can’t help but think, girly girl that I am, that getting up and walking in the park or hearing the birds call to each other, would be a nicer way to experience the silence in which God’s voice can be heard. I’d recomment going fishing and sitting on the bank of a river, or camping in the woods, or spending some time with a cup of coffee and the Bible in the morning before anyone else gets up. But however we do it, people, men included, might find themselves richly blessed by listening for, opening toward God’s presence in the sound of silence.

I invite the congregation to experience God’s holy silence now for a moment, to let God’s strengthening and loving presence take away the fears of life and fill us with purpose and peace.

Dear God, embracing humankind, forgive our noisy ways, reclothe us in a quieter mind, in purer lives your service find, in deeper reverence praise. Breathe through the pulses of desire your coolness and your balm. Let sense be numb, let flesh retire, speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire. O, still small voice of calm. Through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Sovereign. Amen.

Nobody will read it here, either LOL

2010-06-19T07:02:00.000-07:00

I just posted this on the Pastor's update on philopres.com. I believe I have the two least read blogs in the internet universe. But (with a smile) I'm just plugging away.

About Evangelism

The latest issue of Presbyterians Today is all about evangelism, something Presbyterians are notoriously bad at. There are lots of interesting and exciting stories in there about how Presbyterians DO manage to share the good news of Jesus Christ and invite people to join their churches, in spite of our supposed genetic handicap in this area of Christian life.

I encourage everyone in the congregation (who recieves Presbyterians Today as a "perk" of membership at Philo Pres) to read every word.

And I also want to share with you something I read this morning on one of my favorite blogs - "Beauty Tips for Ministers" (don't laugh. or do. the slogan of the site is "Because you are in the public eye and God knows you need to look good" which I find hilarious.)

Here's what the Unitarian-Universalist minister/writer of that blog says about evangelism:

“Let your life preach more loudly than your lips,” said our great American Unitarian founder, William Ellery Channing.

With that in mind, I DO so wish that folks would simply share our good news, be friendly, warm and respectful, and say something like, “If you’re interested, there are Unitarian Universalist congregations in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and we have a great web site at uua.org. My life has been so enriched by being part of a congregation, I always wish that kind of positive experience for everyone I meet.”
THAT’s evangelizing.

All we have to do is
1)substitute "Presbyterian" for Unitarian Universalist in that speech,
2)Philo for Minneapolis and St. Paul,
3)philopres.com for the UU website,
4)practice it until you can say it in your sleep, and
5)go out and talk to people in your neighborhoods, at the ball park, on your break at work and in the stores where you shop.
We can do this, people!

Well, this is fabulous news

2010-06-17T15:21:00.001-07:00

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/autistic-student-s-inspirational-graduation-speech-20371829

sorry I can't get it to "live link" but watch this. copy and paste it into your browser. Really.

my garden this morning

2010-06-17T10:50:00.001-07:00

inches from a hummingbird

2010-06-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from the garden where I came within INCHES of a hummingbird. I was trying to keep the Japanese beetles from decimating my bee balm. And the hummingbird was going from blossom to blossom of the plant, being so beautiful I could hardly stand it. I stood very still and she came within INCHES of my face. I got to watch for . . . 15 seconds? 30? time stood still. She was beautiful.
In other news, I have drowned a lot of Japanese beetles. And I'm not sorry.

Tueaday morning

2010-06-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

Another beautiful, cool, overcast day in Paradise.
Even though I'm not preaching this week, the Luke reading from the lectionary keeps running through my head.
The woman who bathed Jesus' feet vs. the Pharisee who invited Jesus but didn't really welcome him . . . I think Brian Stoeffergen is onto something when he notes that oftentimes our churches are invitational, but not actually welcoming. We invite people to join us, but we don't do the things that let them know we are truly glad they are here.
And I wonder if Jesus was actually inspired to act out his love of the disciples through footwashing by remembering how this forgiven woman behaved. He told his disciples to do as he did - to act as servants one to the other. What acts of service and love can we extend?

Sunday morning

2010-06-06T05:56:00.000-07:00

I don't have to preach today. (Have to? Get to?) So I'm up printing bulletins and arranged the "script" for the High Schoolers who will lead us in worship. I'll post pictures.
When I walked into the sanctuary this morning, sun streaming in, windows glowing, everything prepared . . . it was so beautiful it just about made me cry. Thank you, God, for a community to fill this place.

June is full of special events

2010-05-30T13:49:00.000-07:00

June 6 - Youth Group leads worship! Yeah!
Summer Sunday School starts. The art project is going to be a mosaic mural!
(I love summer sunday school!)
June 13 - The big Malawi send off for J and K with Melissa R. at Philo
June 20 - Honoring Men of the Church Day and Deacon's Diaper Day for Crisis Nursery
June 27 - Baptism for Anna K. Yeah! (Maybe new member's day, too? That would be nice!)
Sean and Caleb leave for mission trip to Mt. Vernon.

June is coming!

2010-05-30T13:42:00.000-07:00

May is almost done. Sean has graduated. Caleb just has two finals to take before he is out for the summer. I've posted 3 out of 5 sermons for May. One of the missing ones was the fair trade/mission message I took to Paxton. I can't remember the other. So it is a good bet that no one else can either. I'm trying my best to preach without checking the manuscript, which is going pretty well, I think.
Today I asked for input on topics or issues that people would like to probe more deeply. Every thing they asked will get me in trouble. Great. But it's good to know what folks think is interesting.
Tomorrow I have a busy day: I'm going to meet MR about the commissioning service for Jeri and Kirk. Then I have the memorial day thing at Locust Grove. Then cookout at AJ and J's.
Caleb is going to spend tonight and tomorrow with his dad.
That's about it. Good bye spring, Hello Summer!

Trinity Sunday - The Way of Truth

2010-05-30T13:36:00.000-07:00

Trinity Sunday/Memorial Day
John 16:12-15
One thing I am pretty strict with myself about is when I step in the pulpit on Sunday morning, I preach the Bible. It always starts with scripture, and is an attempt to help us reflect on the meaning of the scripture for our lives. There’s only one exception to that rule and that comes on this Sunday - Trinity Sunday.
“Trinity” is not something we read out of the Bible. it is something we read into the Bible. Jesus didn’t ever use the word Trinity.
The scripture this morning is just one of those places where Jesus comes close: He talks about himself, and God the Father, and someone he calls the “paraclete” - which we call the Holy Spirit. Jesus used the term paraclete interchangable with “Spirit of Truth.” There are five "Paraclete"/"Spirit of truth" sayings in John. All of these are part of Jesus' Farewell Discourse. Ours from chapter 16 is the last.

The role of the "Paraclete" is to guide us into all truth (16:12-15)

The word for "guide" is hodegeo, a compound word from hodos = way, road; and ago = to lead. So literally it means "lead in the way." To say that the Paraclete will guide the disciples into all the truth is to say that in the future the Paraclete will lead the community into the life-giving revelation of God in Jesus. [p. 773]
And, in the early church, the Trinity became part of that way of truth. This is so, even though the work is not in any of the Gospels, or the Epistles of Paul, or the the Pastoral Letters, or even that crazy book of Revelations. You’d think, as much as the author of Revelations like using symbolic numbers, he would have latched on to the Trinity. But he didn’t.
So where did the idea come from? It, like most doctrines, came out of the experience of the early followers of Christ. They were on fire with passion for sharing their faith, and they wanted to express it clearly. They asked, “How can we make clear our experiences of God the Creator and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit?”
Frederick Houk Borsch was dean of the chapel and taught religion at Princeton. - He arrived just as I was leaving, in 1981. He puts it really well:
There are probably a number of people who imagine that the idea of the Trinity was thought up by ivory-tower theologians who, typically, were making things more complicated than they needed to be and were obscuring the simple faith of regular believers. In fact, it seems that the process worked pretty much the other way around. Practicing believers and worshipers were driven by their experiences of God's activity to the awareness that God related in several different ways to the creation. ... Thus what these believers came to insist upon was that God had to be recognized as being in different forms of relationship with the creation, in ways at least like different persons, and that all these ways were divine, that is, were of God. Yet there could not be three gods. God, to be the biblical God and the only God of all, had to be one God. This complex and profound faith was then handed over for the theologians to try and make more intelligible. They have been trying ever since.
They have been trying, but not necessarily succeeding. Every book about the Trinity ends up saying, this is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be explored. Reading and writing long books, thinking about things that have no answers, may seem like a waste of time to some of us.
Henri Nouwen, who WAS at Princeton while I was there, he was the speaker at my class’s commencement ceremony, Henri Nouwen talks about "a docta ignorantia, a learned ignorance" [in Reaching Out]:
We all want to be educated so that we can be in control of the situation and make things work according to our own need. But education to ministry is an education not to master God but to be mastered by God. [p. 74]
At our graduation, he told us a story that makes more sense to me now than it did then:
I remember the educational story of a thirty-year-old Methodist minister from South Africa. When this man felt called to the ministry and was accepted by the church, he was sent as an assistant pastor to work in a parish without any formal theological training. But he was so convinced of his insights and experience, and his enthusiasm and fervor were so great that he had no problem in giving long sermons and strong lectures. But then, after two years, he was called back and sent to the seminary for theological education. Reflecting on his time in the seminary, he said, "During those years I read the works of many theologians, philosophers and novelists. Whereas before everything seemed so clear-cut and self-evident to me, I now lost my certainties, developed many questions and became much less certain of myself and my truth." In a sense, his years of formation were more years of unlearning than of learning and when he returned to the ministry he had less to say but much more to listen to. [p. 74]
Trinity Sunday can be a powerful reminder of the importance of things we do not know, knowing that we do not know them, and the spiritual growth that can result from pondering the mysteries. When we have the courage to ask questions that take us deeper into scripture, into the nature of God, into our own moral and ethical dilemmas, we cooperate with the Spirit of truth which leads us along the road to a fuller, more complete experience of God’s grace through Jesus Christ.

I’d like your help in naming some of those questions, some of those areas you wonder about, some of those topics you’d like to probe more deeply. So I’ve put a piece of paper in the bulletin and I’d like you to take a few minutes to write down topics, questions, faith concerns that are in your mind and on your heart. Maybe it is a theological doctrine you’ve never quite understood, or a Biblical story that seems contrary to your experience. Maybe you have heard about some practice, or read some inspirational book that you’d like to talk to someone about. Is there something that you’d like to hear explored - maybe explained - I do know some things! This is your chance.
It’s helpful if you sign - in case I have questions about your intent. But if you don’t want to, don’t. I’m at the place where I’m thinking about the direction sermons and classes might take beginning next fall, and this is one way for me to listen to where we are as a community.

In spite of the fact that I can not explain the Trinity - I do believe that it is true that relationship lies at the heart of God - that the Creator relates to the Redeemer relates to the Spirit - in a way that is the foundation for our relationships with God and with one another. I believe that the Spirit moves among us as we gather and that in our relationships within our community we are drawn along, guided along the road of Truth by the Spirit. May it be so this day and forever. Amen.