Sacred Screaming

Day Sixty-two

2011-02-18T16:42:00.002-05:00

there is energy in the struggle
I could feel it
moving
sretching
marking us with possibility
claiming us as your own

Day Sixty One

2011-02-16T08:19:00.002-05:00

watching for icebergs
one snow flake at a time

Day Sixty

2011-02-15T08:55:00.002-05:00

perfect
be perfect
I am far from that
trying to be close to you

Day Fifty Nine

2011-02-14T07:37:00.003-05:00

A while ago I committed to 100 days of prayer through my blog. I made it to day 58 before a bit of a hiatus... well a year and a half hiatus. In God's time that is small peanuts, right? I've decided not to beat myself up about not doing it for a while, but to give myself the space to come back and pray.

knock knock
it's me
i know you are there
why do I keep knocking on an open door?

National Council of Churches on Cordova House and Mosque in NYC

2010-08-17T15:39:00.002-04:00

It has been some time since my last post. This is a very insighful reflection I wanted to share.

http://http://www.ncccusa.org/news/MK.cordovamosque.html

Calling All Losers: God Wins!

2010-04-07T15:43:00.002-04:00

Easter Sunday 2010
John 20:1-18

With the warmer temperatures, sunshine and budding flowers, we just had to be there.

The park.

From the moment the seatbelts were unbuckled; my girl’s feet hit the ground running. They raced to the top of the twisty slide, up the monkey bars and across rope ladders. From one part of the playground to another, I could hear Lily scream out to her little sister “I’ll race you.”

Fits of giggles and excitement erupt as they dashed around. The funny thing is, it doesn’t matter who wins. They both get there. They both play. They both win. Sure it is always Lily who gets there first, but normally Norah is the braver one and will go down the slide first.

Watching them I can’t help but get caught up in their enthusiasm, so it is not surprising that when working on my Easter sermon for this morning, I was first struck by how this same kind of child-like excitement is displayed by the two disciples. They seem more like children than grown men as they set out in a race, when they hear the body of the Lord has been taken from the tomb.

Though they both respond by dashing off, the motivation that compels their excited movement is quite different.

The “other disciple” also referred to in John’s Gospel as the “beloved disciple” was with Jesus through the events leading up to his crucifixion and is the same disciple Jesus entrusted with his mother’s care.

This beloved disciple serves as the faithful witness in what he has seen and how he promises to live his life, loving Jesus mother as his own.

So now given this word that the tomb is empty, he must go see it for himself. And he takes off. His arms pumping, legs racing out from underneath him, on his way to see the empty tomb.

The “beloved disciple” is energetic and optimistic, but a little tentative once he arrives. He doesn’t seem quite ready to commit what it might mean. He’s trying to understand what he is seeing. The scriptures tell us that he doesn’t wait to figure it all out. His hopeful nature overwhelms him. He sees the linen clothes lying there, and he believes.

Peter, on the other hand, is not that kind of person.

Peter may not have been the fastest runner, but didn’t hesitate at the tomb. That shouldn’t surprise us since Peter is the guy who throughout the gospels has been ambitious, excitable and says or does whatever come to mind without thinking. This, after all, is the man who jumped out of the boat to walk on water.

But it was also Peter who spent the last week running away from Jesus. Three times he runs away with the words “I am not” when asked if he was a disciple.

We can only guess what is motivating Peter to run. Whether it is his uncontrollable excitement or his guilt about his own actions from the past week, he sets out on the race of his life time to see for himself the empty tomb.

There is however, one more person at the tomb on the first Easter morning. She does not go unnoticed in the story, even though her status as a woman would have relegated her as extremely insignificant. All four of the Gospel narratives place her as the essential witness to the resurrection.

Before the two disciples even start out on their race toward the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene arrives early in the morning, while it was still dark.

She comes not with energy, optimism or guilt, but in grief.

The weight of pain and death hangs on her shoulders.

She can’t shake the image of Jesus suffering upon the cross and breathing his last.

The burden of her sadness delivers her to the tomb. She is not interested in running any race.

She does not have any pretense that things are going to be okay, no hope as she approaches the tomb. She simply comes to touch the body, to be near it, to say her goodbyes.

She exists in this cloud of suffering and grief, overcome by sadness. She can’t even recognize the risen Jesus when he is standing right in front of her. The only words she shares until this point are “they have taken away my Lord” and “where have you laid him?”

So here we have the juxtaposition of these three characters, in one gospel.

The Gospel of John places these three very different approaches to the tomb that Easter morning—knowing we all come here this day from our different places, for different reasons and motivations, and with our own unique faith journey.

Most of us did not race to get here. There may have been some fighting or wrangling of kids, or ties or hosiery. There may have been a race against time, trying to walk in the door before the bells rang at 10:00am. But I didn’t see anyone sprint through the doors. Even if anyone had, there wouldn’t have been a clear winner, just as there was no clear winner among the three at the tomb.

There is no winner named, because in the Resurrection story, God wins.

When it appears that pain, suffering, sin and death have the last word, God is the one who is raised from the dead so that we have the gift of new life. God wins.

God wins when you are the person comes to the tomb with cautious yet relentless optimism in your heart.

God wins when you are the person who comes to the tomb with a myriad of emotions ranging from excitement to guilt but you don’t let those stop you from seeing the possibilities of what the resurrection might mean.

God wins when you are the person who comes with Good Friday in your heart and though Easter doesn’t make that all magically disappear; the possibility of hope finds its way in.

God wins when we leave the empty tomb transformed. Believing that death has not overcome.

Suffering did not have the last word. Hatred, injustice, and sin did not win. Love did. God wins.

God’s love for us is so great and so strong that it over came death even, even in the most horrid of circumstance. We don’t have to know how it works, understand the facts and details, or even be able to explain it to other people in a way that makes sense. The disciples couldn’t, it simply says “they believed.” Believing that resurrection and new life are brought forth, hope reigns, and we live lives transformed by God’s love. God wins.

And of course, in turn, we all win. For when God wins, we too are brought to new life. Jesus was not the only one resurrected that day, we too are renewed. Mary was not the only one given hope; we too find hope in the future. The disciples lives aren’t the only one’s transformed and called to be the body of Christ in the world, we are.

Because God wins, this morning we too can come to the tomb with our mixed emotions and shortcomings, like Peter, and God loves us still.

We can come to the tomb like the beloved disciple with our overwhelming optimism that still hesitates, and God will still be waiting for us when we are ready to engage this miracle of miracles.

We can come to the tomb with our grief and burdens and God will meet us where we are with the promise that God’s love always wins.

Friends, whether or not we race to get there, the race itself has been won for us all—God wins it for each and every one of us.

God’s love wins and so we all win and turn from the empty tomb to face the world renewed, living into the hope and love we experienced here.

Transformed by the love of God, we go out to share it with everyone, proclaiming with our lives the miracle: “We have seen the Lord.” Helping others to know that they too have won in life, no matter what junction of life they stand on, no matter their personality or where they are on the road of faith.

God has won new life for each of us.

May it be so for you and for me.

40 Spiritual Practices for Lent

2010-02-14T07:53:00.002-05:00

On Ash Wednesday we began the forty- day season (excluding the Sundays) Lent. Most of us associate Lent with not eating meat on Fridays and the practice of “giving something up” like unhealthy foods or a bad habit. While these might be steps that connect us closer to God, they often become ends to themselves and are “shoulds” in our life instead of ways we can grow in our faith.

Lent is a time that redirects our sights, not to ourselves and the guilt we feel about our shortcomings, but instead to God, the one who creates us and calls us to bring our broken selves for healing and wholeness. Easter is when we celebrate our wholeness in Jesus Christ through baptism. The 40 day journey to the cross, fount and empty tomb is one we use to intentionally create the space for that healing process to begin.

Instead of giving up ice cream (which for most of is more of a desperate attempt to lose the holiday weight, than a spiritual practice) I invite you to read over these 40 Lenten Spiritual Practices that are designed to encourage us to draw closer in our relationship with God, both as individuals and as communities wherever and whenever we might gather.

I pray these suggestions do not become a “laundry list” of to-do items. The goal is not to “check” them off as the days in Lent pass by hoping we might then become more religious. They are an invitation to broaden, deepen and open our awareness to God’s presence in our everyday lives.
Perhaps you will choose one practice to engage in each day over the season of Lent. Or you might find it helpful to change the practice each day. Regardless of what appeals to you most, join God in this time of growth and renewal of who God creates us to be.

Day One: Ask for help. Lent begins when we recognize that we can’t do everything ourselves and we depend on God’s grace for our lives. Experience God’s grace by asking for and receiving help for something we can’t do on our own.

Day Two: Follow “Journey to the Cross” www.d365.org an online special devotional for Lent/Easter. Journey to the Cross features specially composed music, daily scripture readings and brief reflections.

Day Three: “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) Turn off the TV, computer, phone and rest in the stillness. Even if it is just for 5 minutes.

Day Four: Prayer walk in your neighborhood (where you live or work). Simply walk around and pray for what you see, hear, touch, and smell.

Day Five: Prepare and cook a “simple meal” of rice and beans for lunch or dinner. Give the money you save in preparing this meal to an organization that feeds the hungry. Pray before the meal and be reflective about those for whom this is their only meal.

Day Six: Start seedlings. Plant seeds in small jars and place them in the light. May they be physical reminders that we partner with God in creation.

Day Seven: Open your awareness to those things that are destructive in the world—sources of injustice and oppression that result in destructive behaviors that hurt individuals, communities, and creation.

Day Eight: Practice the Daily Examen. One of the long-established spiritual practices in Christianity, championed by Ignatius of Loyola (a Spanish reformer and contemporary of John Calvin, who sought to reform the Roman church from within), is a discipline of self-examination and repentance Ignatius called examen. For more information: http://norprov.org/spirituality/ignatianprayer.htm

Day Nine: Make a joyful noise to the Lord. Make music by singing a song you have memorized or put on a CD and sing along. Let your voice praise God.

Day Ten: Journey with Jesus. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke or John from beginning to end during Lent and journey with him from the manger to the empty grave.

Day Eleven: Circle of gratitude. Before meals invite everyone around the table to share one thing they are grateful for that day
.
Day Twelve: Call or visit someone who is lonely. This might include an elderly shut in, stay at home parent, someone who has recently lost their job or a grieving widow.

Day Thirteen: At the end of the day ask yourself “Where did I see God today?” Make a list.

Day Fourteen: Caring for others as ourselves take acts of truth-telling and confrontation. Abstain from laughing at jokes or comments that are hurtful to others. Share with that person your commitment to caring for God’s children.

Day Fifteen: Keep a prayer journal (can be on the computer or in a paper notebook). Include prayers of joy, concern, and questions. Write down the prayers offered to God for yourself and for others.

Day Sixteen: Remember your baptism. Place a bowl of water in a visible place in your house. Touch the water and remember that we are linked to Christ and the Christian community through the waters of

Day Seventeen: Write a letter to God

Day Eighteen: When attending worship or other gatherings of your faith community pay attention to how the music, liturgy, conversation, and fellowship time affect you. Be open to how God speaks to you through community.

Day Nineteen: Prayer on the move. When in the car be intentional about turning the radio off and not talking on the cell phone. When you are alone in the car, use that quiet time to be in prayer.

Day Twenty: Jesus didn’t “convert” Christians, he formed disciples and sent them out to continue the formation process. Reflect on ways you have been shaped by the teachings of Jesus and shared them with others.

Day Twenty-one: Find a psalm or a hymn text that is meaningful to you. Write the words out and study them. Choose a different portion of the text for each week of Lent and memorize it.

Day Twenty-two: If you consider yourself a spiritual “dropout” reach out to someone you trust and talk about your feelings.

Day Twenty-three: Practice random acts of anonymous kindness.

Day Twenty-four: Pray the scriptures by using the ancient art of Lectio Divina. For more information: http://www.valyermo.com/ld-art.html

Day Twenty-six: Think of persons who haven’t heard from you in a while. Give them a call, or send them a card. If there is something that needs mending in your relationship, take the first step.

Day Twenty-seven: Find ways to live more simply, sharing God's good gifts with others by protecting the environment and supporting local farmers. Read stickers and labels to see where your food is grown. Make efforts to buy food grown within our community or state.

Day Twenty-eight: Learn the names of individuals contributing to the leadership of the local community. Offer prayers for them. Express your appreciation for their service.

Day Twenty-nine: Make a prayer wall at home. Put up a large piece of paper and encourage family members to write or draw pictures of the prayers of joy and concern they have for that day. Pray together for each person and for the prayer they have expressed.

Day Thirty: Slow down and observe the Sabbath. Whether Sabbath time is one hour in a day or a 24 hour period, take time to intentionally stop “working” and spend time in worship, prayer, and family time.

Day Thirty-one: Follow your breath as it leads to God. Simply observe your breath. Inhale and exhale slowly, recognizing that breathing is a life sustaining and God-infused action.

Day Thirty-two: Fast. The purpose of fasting is to support our prayers and heighten our awareness of a most basic human need. Paying attention to our hunger can help us connect to our thirst for God and the emptiness we feel. Fast one day or one meal to join our physical needs to spiritual ones.

Day Thirty-three: Spring cleaning can be more than a way to get rid of “stuff.” Along with asking yourself “what don’t I want” also practice asking “what don’t I need?” Invite God into these questions and explore together a journey of letting go of the excess in your life.

Day Thirty-four: Light a candle. Pray as it is lit “Lord thank you for the gift of your Light in the midst of all darkness. Let this candle be a symbol of our faith in your presence among us.”

Day Thirty-five: We follow Jesus and journey with others whose heritage has left a path before us. Reflect on your faith journey and remember the names of those in whose footsteps you are following and who is on the road with you now. Find a way to share with them your gratitude for journeying with you.

Day Thirty-six: Find ways to recognize people as children of God. Make eye contact with the grocery store clerk. Smile at strangers.

Day Thirty-seven: Try fasting from a different kind of hunger, consumerism. Choose one day in Lent, or one day each week to prayerfully explore consumer spending habits and how we often buy more than we need. Refrain from making purchases on that day.

Day Thirty-eight: Death is inevitably part of the Lenten journey as we tell the story of Jesus death on the cross and find assurance of our new life we have because of the resurrection. Take this time to remember those who have new life with God and be strengthened by the witness of their lives. Take our photos of family members and friends who have died. Talk about these people with your children or share their stories with a friend.

Day Thirty-nine: Learn and practice the traditional practice of praying the Stations of the Cross. Ask a friend who attend a Catholic church if you might attend a Lenten program with them that prays the stations, or visit: http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/stationsofthecross.htm

Day Forty: Practice resurrection. We are the people of resurrection and hope, called to live passionately and compassionately with others, to defy death, to forgive, and to bring others back into the community, to do something that is life-giving, that fights death and needless suffering.

Sodom and Gomorrah

2010-02-07T13:43:00.002-05:00

Genesis 19:1-29 http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=132568365

As Mark Twain was known to say, “It’s not those passages in scripture I don’t understand that bother me, it’s those passages I do understand.”

I would suggest to Mark Twain that possibly it isn’t even the ones that we understand that bother us, but the one’s that we think we understand.

For some reason many of us think we understand what this story is all about without reading the entire story (so if you haven't read the story this is a good time to clink on the link at the top of the page and actually read the whole story), reflecting on the other references of this story throughout the Bible, and considering its historical context.

Sodom and Gomorrah.

I’m going to put it out there. Name the so called “elephant in the room.” We think this story is about homosexuality.

The word itself “Sodom.” Picked up in the Middle Ages by the Latin language ‘sodomita.’ It is the closest word to ‘homosexual’ in Latin or any vernacular.

Because of our associations with this word, this place, we just assume… that’s what this text is all about. Right?

Before the Latin and our current associations with the word, it was a place. It was a geographic location somewhere in the Middle East, near the Dead Sea but we aren’t exactly sure.

According to the book of Genesis it was the place where two angels came in the evening and Lot welcomed them. Through generous acts of hospitality, well initially, he welcomed them. Washing their feet, making a feast, baking the bread. In the town of Sodom Lot welcomed the two angels of God.

Hospitality is an incredibly important part of the culture, even 4000 years after the time of Lot and Abraham it remains a core value of who the people in the Middle East. I recently finished the book Three Cups of Tea in which a mountain climber named Greg Mortenson, having failed to climb one of the world’s tallest mountains Pakistan, wanders into a remote village. It has been days since he has bathed, shaved, eaten properly, or slept well.

Imagine for a minute what he probably looks like and what you would do if he wandered up to your front door. What would you do? Call the police? Hand him five bucks hoping he might go away? Call a social service agency see if they can find somewhere for him to stay?

When Greg walked into this high-altitude village he was sick, weak and injured from a series of misadventures up the mountain. When he enters village the children surround him and take him to the chief elder. The chief elder then pulls Greg into his own tiny hut, sat him down at the stove, covered him with a blanket, and prepared him some tea and porridge. They cared from this stranger with their meager resources as if he was one of the family.

In thanks for the hospitality and friendship offered to him by the Balti people, Mortinson resolved to build a school for the village children. This single commitment changed the course of Mortinson’s life, eventually resulting in the establishment of the Central Asia Institute, an organization that has been responsible for the building of dozens of bridges, roads, water projects, vocational centers, but especially schools that serve the poorest of the poor in one of the most volatile corners of the earth.

The title of Mortinson’s book comes from traditional Balti custom. When you enter a Balti home as an outsider, you are offered a first cup of tea as a stranger—because the Koran, like the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, commands kindness and hospitality to strangers. At the second cup of tea, you become a guest, the beginnings of personal relationship. A third cup of tea offered makes you family, with both the privileges and responsibilities that entails.

The acts of hospitality extended by this remote village in Pakistan mirror these same moral and religious commands to care for the stranger that Lot welcomes the angels into his home.

In fact these preliminary acts of hospitality are reinforced by the previous chapter in Genesis when three angels appear to Lot’s uncle Abraham. Abraham goes to extreme measure to welcome these strangers, and it is in the midst of Abraham’s eagerness to serve these strangers that God announces the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their “grave sin.”

“Grave sin.”

I’m left scratching my chin wondering what this “grave sin” is.

We already think we know what it is, but let’s flip back a few chapters and see if this place and their sin are mentioned anywhere else.

Turns out that Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned a few times before chapter 18 and 19 in Genesis.

Each time the “sin” of this place is mentioned I find it strange that the text doesn’t say what the “sin” actually is. Just that the there is “sin” and the people are “wicked.”

I’m going to guess that Abraham is a little unnerved by this divine pronouncement because he starts asking questions of God. Abraham is a pretty persistent guy and he is really getting on God’s case about any of the “righteous” people who might be living there. There is some haggling over the number of “righteous” people God would need to find in order for the town not to be destroyed and the chapter ends with Abraham and the readers left wondering what God will find in this place.

The angels of God find Lot. They find what started out to be generous acts of hospitality. Lot provided the same protection for these strangers he would like to receive if he were the visitor in a strange land – even if it meant going to extraordinary lengths to do so.

And Lot’s “extraordinary” lengths are extremely questionable as “all the men of the city” surround the house and demand that Lot bring out the guests so they “may know them.” Now that can be a pretty loaded term in the Bible and you can read into it as you would like, but its meaning becomes pretty clear when Lot offers up his daughters “who have not yet known a man” as some sort of substitution.

Granted, that in Lot’s time female children had a very low social status in the culture, the very notion that Lot would offer his daughters as sexual objects (which will play out in its own twisted way if you read to the end of chapter 19) is atrocious.

Reading the story of Sodom and Gomorrah it paints a very graphic picture of sexual violence, focusing on the communal nature of this sin. And while our culture and religious traditions have focused on the one aspect of “homosexuality” being the sin, it is important to note no other biblical references to this story lift that up as being the “sin” that characterizes this story and the focal point of God’s judgment.

When we go through the Bible and carefully look for the references to the sin committed by the people of Sodom what we will find most often is the sin of inhospitality.

The prophet Isaiah, for example, compares the people of Judah to Sodom because they practice inhospitality and they are proud of it.

Ezekiel defines it as “pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy” (NRSV 16:49).

Even Jesus talks about the sin of Sodom. He says:

“If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” (NRSV Matthew 10:14-15)

Those two verses are from the larger narrative in Matthew when Jesus is sending out the disciples to proclaim the good news of the gospel. Jesus says that a town would wish is was Sodom and Gomorrah, if it isn’t offering hospitality. Yikes.

A later reference in the New Testament the book of Jude is the only reference cited to support the theories that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is about sexuality at all. And this reference is made in the context of the Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian culture that was increasingly concerned with sexual purity. This is a shift that takes place thousands of years removed from the time of Lot and Abraham. And while this is the only verse in the Bible that makes any connection to the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah to sexuality, it still does not refer to homosexuality.

Everyone in this room has their own thoughts and beliefs about homosexuality. Regardless of what those beliefs are, it doesn’t make this particular story in the Bible about something, just because it makes the story easier to understand or we can explain the story away as not having anything to do with "us."

The acts of hospitality extended to the angels by Abraham and initially by Lot become a vivid contrast to the townsfolk who are the very antithesis of hospitality. Rather than welcome the stranger into their community, (as they would like to be welcomed?) they threatened the one thing they would least like to have done to themselves.

Their insistence that the strangers be turned over was in itself a rejection of everything that is holy and honorable, just and good. Their intention was to denigrate and humiliate and defame these “men” in a way that would deny their humanity and dignity. They threatened to abuse these men with violent and abusive sex as a sign of their own power over the visitors. This was not about homosexuality; it was about power and domination, hatred of the stranger and violent abuse.

This story is about the polarization in communities and the extremes groups of people can go to exclude others who are not like themselves. Communities, that not only denies hospitality but go to great lengths to have power over and dominate the “other.”

In this story the two communities are the Sodomites and the strangers. In our context… there are many examples.

Latino vs. African American gangs in Detroit, native- born American farm workers vs. Mexican immigrants, gays and lesbians vs. evangelical Christians, Americans and the Islamic world.

The “us” and “them” and the great lengths one group will go to dominate the “other.” Taking scripture stories as proof that God wants us to exclude when God is inviting us in. God is inviting us to include ourselves in this story and ask what is our responsibility when strangers are treated not just inhospitably but often despicably?”

Are we like Lot? Do we just throw out our daughters, that which is most convenient, to appease growing violence of inhospitality and to protect ourselves?

Do we believe we are standing alongside Abraham and Lot that early morning, watching as the sulfur and fire rain down assuming God’s justice has been rightly served against “them?”

Are we able to separate ourselves from what we think we understand about this story and ask the questions that challenge who we believe God is calling to be as a community of faith?

End Note: This question... I left it hanging out there at the conclusion of the sermon. Following worship we gathered together as a congregation to talk about this text, the sermon and our questions about it. We never really "answered" the question I ended the sermon with, but it was a faithful exploration of one community willing to engage the question. Thanks be to God.

Imagine a Place: The Story of Babel

2010-01-31T13:23:00.002-05:00

Roughly two and a half thousand years ago the Babylonians invaded the lands at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. This is the land where the people of Israel lived.

The Babylonians captured the capital, Jerusalem, and destroyed. God’s temple, homes, market places… all of it was knocked over, smashed and burned.

The Babylonians bragged that their God Marduk had beaten the God of Israel. Keep in mind the first 10 Chapters in Genesis that lead up to the story we are about to hear reveal a God that created the world in love, covenanted care for all of creation, and now we can hear the Babylonian soldiers mocking these stories and beliefs. “Your God isn’t doing a very good job looking after you now?!”

They violently coerced the Israelite people to walk hundreds of miles into exile in Babylon.

Perhaps the person who composed our story this morning was one of those people?

Our anonymous storyteller would have certainly been an Israelite telling this story close to 1000 years after the placement of the story in the Biblical narrative. It would have been someone who encountered Babylon. Seen all the power and wealth, splendor and beauty, its proud and arrogant people. Our storyteller from Israel would not have been proud of Babylon at all. To this person, Babylon was a symbol of oppression and the brutality of war.

So this person or more likely a community of people tells their own story about it. In a lot of ways it is another creation story. Notice the themes in the first creation story, the flood, there is the pattern of human failure and God’s thoughts and actions in response to those failures. Most biblical scholar refer to this as “God’s judgment” and I think we interchange the word judgment with punishment too much and get a bit off the mark with where the story is going. Before I go any further, let’s encounter the text together.

Genesis 11:1-9 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." 5 The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6 And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech." 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

The text puts everyone together as a crowd of some sorts that are moving around and end up together in the land of Shinar that will later be named Babel, which ironically means “confusion.”

But they don’t start out that way. One of the confusing things about trying to read the Bible from start to finish is the details don’t always match up. If you flip back in your Bible’s just one chapter we find a huge list of names, of nations and descendents talking about a colorful, diverse multitude of families and relatives. “Spread abroad on the earth after the flood.” (Genesis 10:32) We go from that to the whole earth having one language, the same words. They are moving together in a nameless, homogeneous group.

The contrast for us is really important. Because having one language, the same words means no more and no less than everyone is going to be the same, no variety, no diversity, no difference, no misunderstandings… just everyone the same.

It’s amazing how this really is universal a story that is told over and over again throughout the centuries. Sometimes ignorantly, and other times with great intentionality, people have tried to come together and be the same.

One example that comes to mind is when we talk about immigration in America. There is always someone who blurts out “If people are going to come to this country, why can’t they just learn to speak English?”

In communities where most people have a lighter skin tone and someone whose skin color is darker there is the question “What are they doing around here?”

The reality that when we encounter a person who does not have a home or we have defined by the lack of income, or struggle with a serious mental illness, or are dying from AID’s we intentionally turn away, ignore them. Pretend they don’t exist.

There are the more overt examples like of oppression like genocide in Africa or the Holocaust in Europe that violently attempt to eradicate and oppress people of another faith, race, or religion.

Overtly, ignorantly or subtly, our attempts to find one expression for everyone, one meaning, one story, one truth, one mass-produced life in which everything the same is not God’s intention for creation.

Most of us have heard sermons or read this Biblical story with that word “judgment” in mind. As I mentioned earlier, that we confuse “judgment” with “punishment” and stray away from God’s involvement in what is happening.

God isn’t “punishing” the people for their desire to all be the same. I think that it part of our human nature to want to be around people like ourselves. But that doesn’t mean it is God’s intention for creation.

Just because we want it that way, doesn’t mean that God wants it that way.

Conforming and all being alike isn’t what God intends for creation. After the flood there is great intentionality on the part of the writers of Genesis to emphasize the families, the nations, and the diversity of God’s creation. And now the people come together and perpetuate their assumed uniformity for three purposes: to build a city, a tower and a name for themselves (v4). They do this than for no other reason to perpetuate the power they feel in being all the same.

Gone would be the dreamers, artists, visionaries, prophets, reformers and storytellers. Gone would be any voice or effort to imagine that something would be different that what is accepted as normative. In their place? A city, a tower, and power to rule over anyone who did not think and act like they did.

All three express the arrogance of an empire that strives for universal domination, as the Ghanaian theology professor Solomon Avotri writes in his essay on this passage (Return to Babel: Global Perspectives on the Bible. By Priscilla Pope-Levison and John R. Levison.) All three elements, he suggests, are signs of empires that want to rule over the whole earth.

Remember the people of Israel in Babylon?

The one’s who were captured and forced into exile? They are suffering from having one language, one way of living, one way of believing forced on them. They are told “You are in our country now. You will use our language and worship our gods. Because we are superior.”

In the midst of their oppression and suffering, the words of this story would have gone far beyond some way of coming to a logical conclusion as to why there are different languages in the world. God’s actions to scatter the people, confuse the language and undue the false unity and misuse of power the people have built up for themselves.

For the Israelite people, the community claiming this story it is a story of liberation. God has come to free the people so they return to their own nations, places and language.

A story of how God meant creation to be and this world to be.

A place where differences exist.

A place where diversity is encouraged and celebrated.

A place where communities of trust are built by listening to the stories of people who are different from ourselves. A place where those stories are honored and by hearing them we learn to walk in each other’s shoes.

A place Jesus talked about over and over again in his ministry as “the kingdom”.

A place that didn’t have a physical structure or was concerned with establishing a name for itself.

A place where we walk with each other, argue with and learn from each other.

A place where the poor, meek, merciful and peacemakers are blessed.

A place where we are humble like children.

A place where we care for each other, then we can discover more gifts and talents than we’d ever think we could.

This is the good news of the kingdom today. And yeah, it is going to sound like a confused language in the midst of our human tendencies toward conformity and wanting to physically, geographically, linguistically, culturally establish one “right” way at the exclusion of all else.

May God’s intention for creation move us to a place of grace and diversity in the midst of our confusion so that that the kingdom can be lived here and now.

Genesis 6-9: The Flood

2010-01-24T14:38:00.001-05:00

Other than the Christmas and Easter stories, there is no other that rivals in popularity than good ‘ole Noah and his ark. God tells Noah to build an ark for himself and his family, and to bring into it, every kind of animal. God then causes the heavens to rain for 40 days and nights. In our culture, this has become a children's adventure tale. Happy, smiling animals with depictions of doves and bright rainbows are displayed on nursery walls and Sunday school classrooms.

That’s also preach-able. Bible studies, sermon, theological reflections tend to be pretty rainbow heavy in mainline Protestant congregations. Talk about the building of the ark, the gathering of the animals, and the rains that came pouring down as a fascinating plot line, but let’s move on to the rainbow. The covenant. The promise that God makes with Noah and the generations of people to follow never to do that again.

And I’m thinking, “that’s great God, but why did you send the flood in the first place?”

What our imaginations and Sunday school books leave out are the multitudes of people gasping for breath as the relentless rising waters force them desperately to seek rooftops or high ground, and then ultimately die. They also don’t show the pain and suffering Noah and his family must have gone through watching as their friends die. Not to mention what it would’ve been like on that ark for 40 days. There are a lot of animals on that boat, and I bet they didn’t stop… well… being animals.

That's not a very pretty picture for a children's story, and we collectively avert our mind's eye from those particular images.

We skip over our struggles and questions we have with this text so our eyes can focus on the hope and promises that God has made to creation. We are ready to embrace the promise that God will never abandon or destroy us, holding in tension the mystery around what was in God’s heart as all of this is happening.

I find all of this particularly relevant today as we are horrified by the images coming out of Haiti following the devastating earthquake.

Our hearts heart and we ask “How could God let this happen?”A few minority Christian voices will even go so far to say this is punishment from God because the Haitian people made a pact with the devil.

Sounds eerily familiar and equally bizarre as when it was said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on America for involvement in foreign governments, allowing abortions to be legal, and promoting the “homosexual agenda” by allowing Ellen DeGeneres to host the Emmy Awards.

Most of us wouldn’t make these kinds of theological jumps (that’s saying it nicely) but there remains quite a bit of acceptance in religious communities that natural disasters are caused by a vengeful God or some other divine being as punishment for human evil.

We aren’t the only ones. Judeo- Christian tradition and our telling of Noah’s Ark isn’t unique in trying to explaining the connection between God and some major flooding event that happened centuries ago.

Some of the stories almost mirror exactly our Judeo-Christian understanding of how and why the flood happened. Take the Roman god Jupiter. He sent a flood because he too, was angry at the people for their evil ways.

One of many creation stories from China tells how he Supreme Sovereign ordered the water god Gong Gong to create a flood as punishment and warning for human misbehavior. Gong Gong extended the flood for 22 years. The supernatural hero Gun stole Growing Soil from heaven to dam the waters, but he was executed for his theft before he finished. However, his body didn't decay, and when it was cut apart three years later, his son Yu emerged in the form of a horned dragon. Yu drove away Gong Gong and finished damming the floodwaters.

And long before Christianity came to this country the Navajo people believe that for their sins, the gods expelled the Insect People from the first world by sending a wall of water from all directions. The Insect People flew up into the second world. Later, in the fourth world, descendants of these people were likewise punished. They escaped the floodwaters by climbing into a fast-growing reed. Cicada dug an entrance into the fifth world, where people live today.

And from South America the Quechua people believed the world wanted to come to an end. A llama, knowing this, was depressed. When its human owner complained that it wouldn't eat, the llama told him of the imminent flood and suggested they go to Villca Coto mountain. They arrived there to find the peak already filled with all kinds of animals. The flood came as soon as they arrived and lasted five days. Afterwards, the man began to multiply once more.

These and other stories related to flood myths can be found at:

http://www.talkorigins.org/pdf/flood-myths.pdf

The details and facts surrounding any number of these stories, including the one our faith tradition identified with in Genesis, are fairly impossible to prove. Regardless of proof, why do we flip so quickly from the vengeful God of the covenant without attention to what is happening in God’s heart as all of this is happening?

Genesis Chapter 6 verses 5 through 7 says (TNIV):
“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

God takes the hurt of the world into God’s heart.

God weeps with creation.

God grieved at what God saw.

We learned last week as we explored the stories of creation that God delights in the goodness present from the beginning of creation, and mourns at the ways we have turned away.

Hear the pain, the anguish, the longing from a God who wants nothing more than to be in relationship with that which is made in the very image of the Divine Creator.

Hold that with the actions of judgment and covenant of grace God makes with the people, and the flood narrative reveals a testament to the tension and struggle concerning the character of God and many of the questions in our everyday lives.

Are my pain and the pain of the world God’s judgment?

Is God suffering with me?

Can I partner with God in bringing about hope in the world?

These questions are real and I’m not going to dismiss them or explain them away. I’ll admit that I wanted to explain away the judgment part of this text as some contextual detail. Like the Israelite people didn’t have any other way of explaining the flood, so like other cultures they took the easy way out and just blame God. That would be my “easy way out.” And I would be ignoring that God takes a stand against evil in the world, and without that action God would appear to remain complicit to it.

So I can’t explain it away, no matter how horrendous it feels in my heart to my understanding of God. That would be the easy way. Disregarding part of this text and not living with the tension.

We enter into this story and all the stories of the Bible with the tensions of not having all the answers about God and how God acts in the world then and now.
That God will not be complicit in the evil in this world.

That it hurts God’s heart to see how we turn away from the image in which God created us to be.

And whether I want to deal with it or not, God has the power to do something about it and God does come to terms with what that means for God and creation.

As God comes to terms with God’s actions, God did not say that God would continue judgment on God’s people by causing natural disasters. God’s promise is to redeem and restore creation. To be committed to a new creation which we see enacted through later covenants with Abraham, Israel and brought to fullness in God’s work in Jesus Christ.

There is a lot of tension in this story that makes us uncomfortable, no matter what perspective we come at it from. When we don’t take the easy way out it forces us to ask questions and go deeper in our relationship with God. The process of transformation of being a new creation isn’t as easy as the cute Noah’s Ark pictures make it out to be. It is a very messy picture as we are called to partner with God to not remain complicit in the face of injustice, hurt with those who are hurting and act with grace and love. May our ears, eyes, and hearts be open to God and one another.

Imaginitive Chaos: Growing in Creation's Story

2010-01-18T07:39:00.003-05:00

This Sunday we begin a sermon series that invites us to look at some of the Old Testament stories that are the most familiar to us. The stories of creation, Noah and the Ark, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and David and Goliath. They are the stories we learned as children in Sunday school and a few of them have unraveled in our lives at the center of heated controversy, and the challenge for most of us is we never learned any more about these stories than we did when we were children in Sunday.

Left with hazy details and a few images from coloring books many of us have not moved beyond our child like understanding of these stories, and we feel confused about what these important Biblical stories mean for our lives today.

Let’s start with what we remember.

Before I read the stories of creation in Genesis, what do we remember about the creation stories?

Would you say that most of what we remember from the stories told in Sunday school doesn’t necessarily help us with some of the bigger questions and controversies we face later in life? And by later I mean, old enough to notice that there isn’t just one story of creation but two.
That the details don’t always match up?

Both stories say God created 2 people, so where did everyone else come from?

Did God really create the world in 6, 24 hour days?

How long ago did God create the world? 6000 years? 4.5 billion years?

These detail oriented questions of “how” creation happened have led to scores of debates and controversies swirling around what we are taught in Sunday school and what we consequently find out about the scientific theories concerning creation. Many of us have been confronted with the notion that science and religion were at odds with one another, in 2005 Time Magazine called it the “Evolution Wars.”

So we are forced to choose.

Science or faith?

Genesis or evolution?

We turn to our Bibles and the verses I am about to read with clinging hope that they offer some answers to all our questions about “how” creation happened. Hoping there is some science or history that coincides with the revolutionary scientific discoveries of our time.

And many Christian walk away disappointed. Confused. And give up on being able to pull together their understanding of science and faith, convinced they have to give up one or the other.

Other Christians will run head into the stories of creation, with very bad science, trying to pull apart each verse of the story to prove it as fact.

It is my belief, and I realize I represent just one belief, and yours may be different from mine, but I believe that our frustrations, confusion, disappointment come from how we read these poems of creation.

Notice I said, poems.

It doesn’t look like it written out in English. Printed in tiny font and crammed into these few pages.

Printed in many ways like a history book, we lose sight of how these words were first told.
They were beautiful Hebrew poems and thousands of years ago when they were told were not meant to answer questions about how the world was created.

To help us this morning move from our basic Sunday school understanding of the beginning of creation to a place where they come alive with meaning in our life today, I invite us all to allow our minds and hearts to be opened to the wondrous mystery of the Creator God who speaks all things into existence, who brings order to chaos.

As I read it, hear its rhythm, its resonance, its beat. See its imagery, hear its sounds; enter deep into this text and allow the Spirit to sweep into us, much as the Spirit swept over the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:1 - 2:25

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 6 And God said, "Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." 7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 8 God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. 9 And God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it." And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. 14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth." And it was so. 16 God made the two great lights-- the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night-- and the stars. 17 God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. 20 And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky." 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. 24 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." 29 God said, "See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. 31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. NRS Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. 2 And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. 4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5 when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up-- for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6 but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground-- 7 then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8 And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. 11 The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." 18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." 19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken." 24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

Poetry.

Poetry that expresses joy, wonder, awe in a creation which God spoke into being.

Poetry that affirms God is creator of the world
.
For the ancient Hebrew writers of this poem that is the controversy this poem clears up.

Not the “how” of creation, but the “who.”

“Who” is the creator?

The God of the Israelite people wasn’t the only proclaimed creator of the world during that time.
In fact, the oldest written creation story in the world is the Babylonian creation epic in which gods were first born from a watery mass. The short version (of a 7 tablet tale) is Marduk, the greatest king of the gods, created the heavens and earth out of the carcass of the slain goddess Tiamat.

Creation was brought about by death and destruction; the Israelite people in the telling of the Genesis story reveal through powerful poetic illustration that the God they believe in is a God of life. The Israelite people were experiencing enough chaos and death--- their nation destroyed, the people living in exile under foreign rule.

In the Genesis account of creation the exiled people of Israel make a remarkable confession of faith, proclaiming to all the world for all time, their faith in God is a God of life, of hope, of beauty and awe.

By choosing to engage in the “Evolution Wars” and fighting in destructive ways over the “how” of creation with the poems in Genesis, we are missing the opportunity to experience the hope and life it brings.

The hope in faith that God is the creator.

That God delights in creation and believes it to be good.

Science is part of that creation, not the opposite of it.

Despite the ways we have been culturally conditioned to believe the two are exclusive, science is God’s gift to human kind.

When used properly, science can do the healing Jesus began when he told the paralytic to take up his bed and walk.

When used properly, science can do the calming of nature’s fury that Jesus began when he stopped the storm at sea.

When used properly, science can feed the hungry as Jesus did when use used those loafs and fishes to feed the 5,000.

By God’s mercy and grace, science can and does give us hope. And hope for a better world can produce good science.

But when science fails, as often it does. When science is abused, which often it is. When science is manipulated and fails to conform into a religious box…

When any of this happens we do not lose hope.

We do not lose hope because God is still at work in the ongoing process of creation.

We do not lose hope because God invites us to be co-creators in this ongoing story of this word.
We do not lose hope God because God works beyond our imagining, so our faith is not dependent upon someone’s tortured, literal interpretation of this ancient, beloved story.

And we don’t have to choose.

Science or faith?

Creation or evolution?

Because we have this story of creation, and the whole story of God’s journey with God’s chosen people . . . . The whole story of God present in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. . . . . The whole story of God’s gift of the Spirit, which gave birth to the Church. . . .

Because we have these stories, we have hope that God works beyond any limited number of our assumptions, theories and arguments.

When we read these creation stories with the lens of hope of what God is doing from the beginning of time to today, doesn’t that help us move more faithfully from what we learned in Sunday school to engage our real questions where life and faith intersect today?

I encourage you to read the first two chapters in Genesis again at home and stay for the conversations after coffee fellowship. As we do so may we invite the hope filled presence of the Holy Spirit to hover in our midst as it sweeps over the dark waters of controversies and disagreements and is reborn a new in the ongoing possibilities of God’s creation.

Get Back In Line!

2010-01-10T13:51:00.002-05:00

Luke 3:15-17; 21-22

15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

We’ve moved from the sweet baby Jesus to the start of his adult ministry pretty fast on the church calendar. Part of it might have something to do with the fact that we’ve got little to go on about the in between times. Conveniently, the Bible leaves out the terrible two’s, frustrating tween years, and any of the hormonal angst the son of God may have endured.

What we do have is the introduction of Jesus ministry, in all of the Gospels, through John the Baptist. John comes to tell us how Jesus will change the world. Sounds a little cliché, but you get the picture. In Luke’s account of his baptism, what we are provided with is very short. The actual story about the baptism is 2 verses. Everything that Luke crams into these verses is important and deeply significant. I could try to fit it all into one sermon, but I’m going to guess you don’t want to be here all day. I will invite you to the conversation time after coffee fellowship where our questions and thoughts the sermon doesn’t touch on can be brought up and talked about.

What we do know is on this day of Jesus baptism, is he is in the River Jordan (that detail I pulled from the other Gospels) and he is with the people.

It’s not just Jesus, John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit and God in some kind of isolated, surreal divine moment shrouded in divine light and harps playing.

In Luke’s description of this important moment in Jesus life, the beginning of his ministry, he was with the people.

I like the translation from the New International Translation of the verse 21 that says “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too.”

Couldn’t Jesus have take his status and power that John the Baptist was proclaiming in the earlier verses, and climbed on the ecclesiastical ladder of success and divinity then jumped to the front of the line?

Better yet couldn’t Jesus have gotten to the river’s edge and said “John get out. Move over. I’ll take this baptizing business from here.”

Jesus get’s in line with the people.

But why? I mean who are these “people?” And why does he feel he it is important to be like them, not separate from them?

I’m going to wager a pretty fair guess that these aren’t gussied up church folk who think they have formed their own line. Somewhere else. Somewhere they can keep the church silver polished and carpets clean from the mud someone might track in.

Because the people in this line are sinners, common folk, everyday hard working servants and outcast who have been deemed unworthy by society.

Sounds a bit harsh, but in ancient Jewish community’s baptism was a purification ritual that was performed by religious authorities to cleanse the person and make them presentable in the eyes of God. It wasn’t just sin that made a person “unclean.” Diseases, dealing with the dead, menstruation, or touching a person who had been judged “unclean,” all were reasons people would have been lined up that day to be baptized.

And Jesus get’s in line "the people."

At his baptism Jesus got in line and identified with the damaged and broken people who needed God.

The thing is, he didn’t need to.

This is Jesus we are talking about. The Son of God.

He doesn’t need to stand in line to be purified.

He doesn’t need to do anything to be made more presentable in the eyes of God.

God loves Jesus, and there is nothing that Jesus can to do gain God’s approval.

God expresses this in the words “spoken from heaven” Luke says. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

God says “I love you because of who you are. You are my Son.”

Jesus didn’t need to get in line and yet there he is. Standing with the people who are broken by the decisions they have made in life, the religious and political oppression they experience and with the hope of a new beginning through a return to God.

Friends that new beginning is real; in the promises of baptism, we have new life in Christ. It doesn’t mean that in baptism, or when we join a particular church, or when we are ordained to an office in the church, or we come to the table, that God loves us anymore. Nothing we do can make God love us more. God loves us because we belong to God. In baptism we are made one with God and with each other.

This last part is where the church has really struggled. Lots of denominations, churches and faith communities over the centuries have lived in such a way that once we become baptized, once we join this particular church, once we become an elder or leader of the church we get to stand in a “special line.” A line “separate” from all the “other” people. All those “sinners.”

Whether we realize it or not, this happens.

Think about how many people stay away from church because they are at a really low time in their life. Some folks think that they aren't worthy to come to church, for whatever reason. Maybe they are going through a divorce, facing an addiction, fired from their job, or experiencing financial or emotional hardship. And maybe they walk through whatever church doors for a Sunday or two and then they don’t come back.

They like the music and the preaching OK, but they felt like the church was only a place for respectable, successful kind of people who seem to have it all together. It was a line that they didn’t feel like they should be standing in.

So they seek help from nonprofits or support groups, and assume that they can only come through the church doors and get in line when they feel like they have it all together.

Jesus did not start a new line.

He stood with the hurting, the broken, the suffering. This is who he was baptized with. This is the family of faith in to which we are adopted and dripping wet God calls us out of the water and commissions us to get back in line.

Not because we need to be baptized again, but because God’s gift of grace is also God’s call to us to respond to that grace.

To get back in line and stand with the broken.

Get back in line and care for the hurting.

Get back in line and be the body of Christ for the world today.

What do I believe...?

2010-01-04T11:33:00.003-05:00

One of the things that I miss about seminary is the constant re-examination of what I believe. It is easy to get caught up in sermon writing and pastoral duties that take me away from an honest examination of what all any of this means to me anyway... As I was cleaning up my computer desktop I stumbled across my "Statement of Faith" I wrote 5 years ago and thought it would be a good time to look it over and make some changes. Here they are. Suggestions, thoughts, comments... all welcome.

Statement of Faith

In the silence of darkness and chaos God’s life giving breath called creation into being and it is the breath of love that permeates our existence. God’s love flows in and through us, cultivating a hope-filled invitation for us to participate with God in caring for a tragically fallen creation. As we turn away from God to pursue our own ways we chose, circuitously and directly to participate in oppression, suffering, violence and fear. As a community of believers, we have ignored the voices of the marginalized and to live without attention to the ways we are intricately interwoven with one another and with God.

The love God has for us is wonderfully enduring, as prophet after prophet was sent that we might hear the Divine voice calling to us. When we closed our ears and opened our hearts wider to temptation, we cried out from the depths of our brokenness. God’s answer was Jesus of Nazareth, the creative Word of life for all. Promised through the whisper and dreams of the Holy Spirit to Mary and Joseph, he entered the world in humility and under the threat of death. Even before his birth, Jesus was assaulted by persecution and abandonment from the evil and sin he came to heal. Yet his life reveals to us the hope of the Kingdom that surrounds us as he loved sinners, touched outcasts, challenged authority, stood in solidarity with the poor and welcomed the stranger. In his death, Jesus carried the pain of the world into God’s weeping heart. God’s grace and love continued to overcome the darkness of the world as, Jesus broken body emerged from the shadows of deaths tomb. The resurrection embodies God’s eternal promise of healing and healing and wholeness for all creation.

The fulfillment of God’s promise is with us now through the active love and redemption of the untamed and erratic movement of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit assures us, strengthens us, sustains us, and reveals truth in ways our imaginations often cannot conceive. As we faithfully discern God’s truth to us in the Scripture, the Spirit challenges, guides, and teaches us God’s ways for the world.

The church is called to be a visible witness of God’s love in the world. It is called to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic in its characters and values. We find unity through baptism. Sharing in the Lord’s Supper, we celebrate and are reminded of the promise that God nourishes us spiritually and that we grow in grace (7.096). Gathering at the table and font we are fed with brokenness that can restore us to wholeness and drenched with cleansing waters that fill our parched souls.

The church is holy in fulfilling its covenant relationship with God by doing what is required of it: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic 6:8). The holiness is neither perfect nor is it pure. Rather, it is the holiness of Jesus Christ who grants the church righteousness because it cannot obtain righteousness on its own.

It is catholic as the church springs up in unlikely places, at unlikely times, and in the universality of Christ’s presences in the world. In this presence, the church bravely embraces the mission and fellowship we enjoy together at the risk of losing its own life to point to a new reality in Christ (G-3.0400).

Finally, the church is apostolic when it is a true witness to the practice the life of the church oriented around its concrete acts working for peace and justice, speaking God’s word, and participating in God’s liberating action.

It is not just one person who responds to the movement of the Holy Spirit to carry out the mission of the church. The whole people of God are called to serve in mission and ministry. We do this by living in fellowship with one another and in obedience to Jesus Christ. Ministry is carried out and undertaken by the love of Christ, as commanded by Christ and lived by every household of faith. Through the community of faith and my understanding of shared ministry, I acknowledge God’s call for my life to ordained ministry affirmed in my baptism. I have a commitment and a responsibility to God and my community of faith to study, teach, worship, preach the Word, celebrate Baptism and the Lord’s Super, engage in prayer, equip others to serve in the church and in the world, care for those who are in need, to seek and do justice in all parts of the world, and in my life demonstrate the imagination, energy, peace, and love of Jesus Christ to all.

Being Open to the Journey: Epiphany Sunday

2010-01-03T13:11:00.002-05:00

Before I read the gospel story for this morning, I would like to invite you to think about what you already know about the story of the three wise men.

Let’s start with the basics.

How many are there?

I started off by calling them wise men, any other terms we use to refer to them?

Got a guess where they are from?

Real test, do you know their names?

This is a story that has captured the church’s imagination for centuries.

Now as we listen to story from the book of Mathew, notice what the author tell us about the journey of the wise men.

Matthew 2:1-12 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6 'And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'" 7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage." 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

Dressed in ornate robes and crowns, with the camels and gifts bent down in the dust and muck of a barn located in the middle of nowhere town to see the child that prophecies told about and stars shined upon it can be almost impossible to separate fact from fiction.

The author doesn’t tell us exactly where they came from, simply “the East.”

Matthew doesn’t tell us they were kings or magi.

Matthew doesn’t tell us they had names the Balthazar, Gaspar, and Melchior.Those were added centuries later.

I’m sorry to break this to you Matthew actually doesn’t tell us there were three wise men either.

Three gifts, not three wise men, we just assume.

If you are hoping that Mark or Luke fill in the details, sorry. It’s OK to open your Bible’s and check if you want.

I’m kind of ruining for you aren’t I? Taking away all the fun, imaginative parts of this story and left you with what?

Some strange guys, following a light in the sky (which may or may not have been there to begin with) to worship a God in flesh, they didn’t even believe in.

Yeah the wise men weren’t Jewish either. They were pagans, astrologers, magicians, philosophers at best.

I’ve ruined it for you, haven’t I?

Seriously, though we can keep the fun details even if they aren’t in the Bible. It makes the story fun. Let’s make sure we aren’t more concerned with arguing about the “right” ways to tell the story, what the “true” and History Channel fact are, and miss the transforming message of the journey to find the Christ child.

The way in which Matthew shares this story connects us with not only the physical journey from the East to the manger, but a spiritual one, a journey to find the fulfillment of God in our lives.

This seems to be a pretty popular time of year for people set out on spiritual journeys. Folks promise to themselves that they will go to church more, pray more, read the Bible more, do or be something that kick start their movement toward having a stronger relationship with God. Like the wise men, we set out on our own journey to find God.

Think about your spiritual journey. What got you started, or restarted on the road to a relationship with God?

I’d bet not two people in this room have traveled the same road…

Your road might be one of being brought up in the church. Sunday school, worship and youth group every week… the first time you had the chance to stop going. You did. For a very. Long. Time. Then something brought you back.

Your road might be littered with doubt and asking yourself if God even exists.

Your road might be filled with your asking questions, wondering, challenging what any of this Jesus stuff has to do with you and your life…

Your road might be covered with self-help books.
Your road might be a click away as you find community through the internet.

Your road might include interpreting your dreams and believing there is truth in your weekly horoscope.

I’m not sure why, but the church doesn’t always do a great job encouraging people to talk about the roads people have been on in their spiritual journey.

We only hear about the ones of people who grew up in the church, attend every week, read their Bible’s daily, and watch a healthy dose of religious TV. Like this is somehow the only acceptable road to having a relationship with God.

If that is the case the church is in big trouble.

When it comes down to it the church would not exist today if it weren’t for the determination or simple faith of people whose journey may have been a tad unconventional but they still stumbled into the hay surrounding Jesus’ birthing trough. Or as Lily refers to it, the “cow bowl.”

The road the wise men followed was prophesy and astrology.

Not astronomy, which would suggest a more scientific approach. But astrology, because they believed something was going to happen as a result of the positions of the stars.

This is their journey and if it doesn’t fit with the typcial “right way” to have a relationship with God why don’t centuries of religious tradition, doctrine and dogma write out these guys? I mean come on; they only appear in one of the Gospel’s!

Could it be that these seekers from the East, trained in star gazing discover a truth that most of us struggle with?

That our journey to discover Jesus in our life, is various, it don’t often fit the preconceived notion of what a “Christian” should look like, and quite often even runs up against judgments from members of the church (or the church itself) of how we got there.

Why is it that churches find the journeys of some people unacceptable but God says that they are welcome at the manger?

One author notes that “…among the various amateur spiritualists who attend may be some who are better able kneel at the manger than those who have worshiped for a lifetime. Not every committed Christian in name has a taste for actually kneeling in the dust and muck of a barn in a backwater town with astonished recognition that this is where God prefers to make an entrance” (Baumna, Stephen. Feasting On the Word. Year C Volume 1. p214)

Rather than being judgmental of others or trying to hide our own journey to the “cow bowl” that holds God who comes to us in flesh, there is an exciting opportunity for us as the church to share the radically different paths we have been on.

To reflect on how those journeys have made us who we are today.

To be a reminder that, even those who consider themselves to be the most faithful Christians are no better than another. We don’t have a complete corner on the truth, and whether we want to admit it or not are capable of journeying in our own destructive ways.

This story of the wise men, no matter how many there are, what their names might be and from where exactly they traveled from is their journey.

And it is our journey.

Our journey. Revealing our hunger and longing to find our way to the promise found in the manger.

Our journey. Prompted by God, takes us in all sorts of direction and may not match the “acceptable” roads of the culture or church of our time.

Our journey. That redeemed by radical grace of the living God has the power to transforms us as a community to be a place of welcome, honoring the journey of others and encouraging the unique gifts that we bring to honor the new born King.

Changing the Heart of God

2009-12-30T07:36:00.002-05:00

It amazes me how quickly my theology can change when I want something to happen. Really, really, really want something happen. God stops being my guide, comforter, and strength and becomes the divine keeper of what I want. I will stop at nothing to plead, beg, and bargain with God.

Is God in control over making something happen? That is this complicated question that doesn't have one answer. But it does when it is something I want to happen. When I want something my thought process and prayer life shift into this place that the reason I am not getting what I want is because God is holding it ransom and my expense. And now God is waiting for me to learn something, find purification through pain (otherwise known as waiting) or realize this isn't something I really want.

There. Now I've said it. Put it out there. My theology becomes this hodge podge of poor insights and shallow reflections on my relationship with God. I'm glad that God is big enough to handle my nonsense and see me through my bargaining. By the way God, don't forget what's on the table today...

Is It "The End?" ...let's hope so

2009-11-15T19:53:00.002-05:00

Mark 13:1-8 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" 2 Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." 3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?" 5 Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and they will lead many astray. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

Jay Leno’s new show is getting some mixed reviews. Most say what’s there to like about his new show at 10pm? It’s not any different than the show he had at 11, it’s just on at 10. Exactly why I like it! Now I get to catch his monologues, which sadly also becomes my source for current events.

But anyway… on this past Tuesday night in Leno’s opening monologue he’s talking about how NASA announces that the movie 2012 (came out on Friday) is fiction. Does NASA really need to make such announcements?

Leno asks the same question. For those who haven’t seen the movie yet, it is all about how the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world is going to happen in 2012 when a mystery planet is going to come careening toward earth and destroy it. NASA wants us all to be confident that he Mayan calendar is wrong. Leno jokes that the only thing that is really going to destroy the planet by 2012 is Countrywide Mortgage, AIG and Wall Street.

While this may be true, Jesus doesn’t mention planets flung off their course or corrupt corporations being part of the end of the world equation.

He talks about the temple. The large stones and large building, while may not sound like much to our modern minds that have seen large stones sculpted into the faces of presidents and large building that reach unfathomable heights… When the temple was constructed by Herod to solidify Herodian rule of Judea it was something to be impressed by. Its construction was a great wonder of ancient architecture. The physical and symbolic presence of the formation was meant look huge, all encompassing, and rooted to both the earth and the people’s understanding of their relationship to God.

That’s not too farfetched thousands of years later. We have tendencies to root our faith and our understanding of our relationship to God in something.

It might be a building, like the temple. A beautifully constructed sanctuary, stained glass windows, and well oiled pews.

It might be a particular worship style. Traditional liturgy, hymns, and none of this waving our arms around in the air stuff some churches do.

It might be a denomination. It’s rich history, traditions and polity. A sense of identity that has long since passed.

We don’t have to think very long about why we have these tendencies. Life being what it is with so much instability and unpredictability it feels pretty good to turn to something that seems to stay the same. Offering us comfort in the midst of chaos.

So what does Jesus think he is doing pulling the rug out from under us? Didn’t he get the message from NASA that this isn’t happening?

We don’t like to hear Jesus words this morning that our churches will be destroyed.

Our comfortable worship styles overturned.

Denominations thrown down.

We don’t like to hear anything about that because it brings an end to the present order.

And we Presbyterians… we’ll you know the saying “We like things decent and in order.” Start shaking up the order and… well that is bad news.

Jesus says that is just the beginning. “The beginning of the birth pangs.”

The end is the beginning of something new.

What if the end of what we find comfortable, is the beginning of a new creation that God has in store?

That still doesn’t necessarily come across as the “good news” of the gospel, does it?

C.S. Lewis says that most Christians are “too easily pleased.” There is this human tendency to instill human institutions and practices with divine permanence, as if God created everything now that it is. That because we are comfortable with it and like how things are, God must too and so there isn’t any need to change it. We say a very polite “no thank you” to God, we don’t need anything new because we like the way it is.

Just because we are comfortable doesn’t mean that God always wants it to be that way.

Just because we are easily pleased, doesn’t mean that God stops working in the world.

Just because we see the end of things as bad news, doesn’t mean that God doesn’t see the end as a new beginning.

And we can choose to offer God our polite “no thank you” and wallow in our fear of the end or step out in faith that God knows what God is doing.

There is a Presbyterian Church on the south side of St. Louis saw itself coming to an end, and could’ve given God the polite “no thank you.”

They were down to about 17 in worship on a Sunday morning and described themselves as being on “life support.” When they stepped outside the doors of their church they no longer recognized their neighborhood. What had been traditionally blue color and white, there was now a large population of refugees.

The church didn’t see itself changing. They didn’t see any “new beginnings” on the horizon.

But God did.

In 2000 the church opened its doors to a Montessori school that needed new space. Of course the session and congregation hoped that the children and their parents would come to church. But they didn’t.

Then one Sunday morning in 2005 everything changed. A woman from Liberia came and worshipped with her two daughters. The children wanted to sing.

When the pastor visited their home near the church, she found them huddling under blankets in a very cold apartment. Because the mother did not have a job she could not turn on her heat. Susan Finley, the pastor at the church said “That was my introduction to life as a refugee in St. Louis.”

Word spread quickly in the Liberian community about the kindness and hospitality of this church. And by July, 15 Liberian families had joined the church. BY forming relationships with these new members of their church family, the congregation became more aware how difficult life was. So the session decided to dedicate $500 a month to a separate ministry fund to help Liberians with any material needs they might have.

$500 is a lot of money for a struggling church who had only 17 people in worship. But what they saw as an end of a church that served a primarily white, blue collar neighborhood was God’s new beginning for a church who partnered with God to grow in servanthood.

Not only with money, but with advocacy services as well for food, shelter, green cards, medicine. Members thought twice about donating an old set of dishes and extra coats to Goodwill or having a rummage sale. Now they went to the new immigrants coming in the church. This wasn’t just about what the church members did for the new members in their church family. As the church grew music became increasingly important and some of the Liberians suggested a keyboard and drums. The sounds of worship were transformed.

The congregation has 68 members now and usually 90 or so people in worship. They still faces an uncertain future as questions arise frequently about whether they will be able to afford full-time pastoral leadership as they meet the challenges of servanthood ministry.

What is perceived as an ending is met by God with a new beginning.

The pastor and congregation envision the possibility that she, and a Liberian man from the congregation who recently graduated from a theological training program for immigrants offered by the denomination, might serve the congregation together as tentmakers, where they each have jobs outside of the church and serve the congregation as well.

It’s such a great story (and you can read the story in its entirety in the October 2009 issue of Presbyterians Today Magazine). The congregation could have continued to root their faith
in their building,
in their history of what the neighborhood and church use to be,
in their traditional practices of worship
in what was comfortable
and completely ignore the new beginning God was offering them.

As individuals, a congregation, denomination and entire Christian faith we are challenged by stories like this. Stories that point to the ways that Jesus teaches us the end is still to come, despite what NASA or anyone else tells you.

As followers of Christ we believe that in the many endings we will face throughout our lives God is always at work. Working to make this world, our church, our lives what God intends them to be. And friends, this is good news indeed.

Givng God the Left Over's

2009-11-09T09:40:00.002-05:00

Mark 12:38-44 38 As he taught, he said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! 40 They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation." 41 He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43 Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

When I was a kid sitting in church this was one of my favorite Bible stories to hear.

When I was a kid I didn’t hear the sermon laced with guilt enticing people to bump up their pledge or pry a few more bucks from the checking account and put it in the offering plate.

Because when I was a kid I heard the children’s sermon.

Most children’s sermons boiled this story down to making the kids feel good about the few coins they put in the offering. And I don’t know about you but those coins weren’t mine to being with, I usually dug them up from the bottom of my mom’s purse. The same place ratty tissues and gum that tasted like perfume came from.

I’ll tell you that the children’s sermons were successful in my life. I always felt good hearing the story and dropping in my (mom’s) quarters on a Sunday morning. I felt like I had something to offer to God and God found value in my giving.

And this is a great place for us to start as children in the church, believing that God celebrates our giving even if we don’t feel like we have a lot to offer… we won’t get into how many churches perpetuate the notion that children don’t have anything to offer the church…

Anyway the challenge is that as we become adults we don’t go beyond this child like understanding of giving which leads to a “good enough” attitude in our giving. That God loves us no matter how much we give, even if what we give is the left over’s from the bottom of our purse or what’s left over from that month of spending.

So whatever I give to the church will be “good enough” for God. Another direction we go with understanding of giving and the church is the guilt. We give because the church, a sermon, however the church is trying to raise money somehow makes us feel guilty about our own abundance and when we do give out of abundance, we are never giving enough.

Am I on to something here? Sounding pretty familiar?

Why is our giving motivated by either guilt or a sense that we don’t really need to think about the leftover’s we give because in God’s eyes it will be “good enough?”

Does this story we read this morning story teach us something more?

It would be an awfully short sermon this morning if it didn’t!

Let’s start with how we understand the notion of what it means to give. There first is the assumption that we have to own before we can give, right? We can’t give away what isn’t ours to begin with. That makes logical sense to our brains… I’m afraid the logic can’t be applied in the same way when it come to God and giving.

From the story of creation to John’s vision in revelation there is a clear understanding that everything is a gift from God. We don’t own ourselves, other people, money, material goods… God does. We are more like managers, or the word that sends shivers down many of church goer’s spines: we are “stewards.” And what we do with the blessings of money, time, talents and other gifts is call “stewardship.” Being a manager or a steward is not the same thing as being an owner. Managers are people who handle the resources on behalf of the owner then act in the interest of the owner.

Money is a tangible way to help us understand all of this. We know how much money there is when we cash our paycheck or social security or for many these days the unemployment check. When we think about how to spend this money we think about how much we are supposed to give to the church. Right? How much do we hand over?

As God’s steward we are way off the mark when we ask that question.

It would be like opening an account with a broker and the person asking, “So how much of this account do you want me to manage? Like whatever I don’t use? That would be OK, right?” No that wouldn’t be OK you trust the broker with you investments and the expectation is that they would manage all of it in with your best interests in mind.

So it is with God.

If we were to imagine ourselves as one of the disciples that Jesus pulled aside in the temple would we even dare to ask him the question: “So Jesus… does this mean you want us to love God all that we are? Our heart, our mind, our soul and not just is what is leftover at the end of the month?”

When we give our “left over’s” to God we do so with the impression we are the owners and we can chose what to give or how much, or not to give at all.

The fact is we aren’t the owners. We are the stewards and it’s not about what we give to God but how do we look at ourselves in relationship to what we give.

How do we look at ourselves? We know how the scribes looked at themselves. They were all about making sure they looked good when they looked at themselves too.

They wanted to look good in their fancy robes.

They want to sound good with their long prayers.

They wanted others to make sure others thought they were good too.

The religious authorities that Jesus is calling to account in this story put themselves at the center of… well everything.

They think that they are God.

They think everything belongs to them.

And if you don’t think it belongs to them, they will make sure to take it away from you. Like the houses of the widow, the poor, the destitute. “Those people” don’t deserve it. They haven’t worked for what they have. They haven’t “pulled themselves up by their boot straps.”

It’s not about what God wants for God’s creation, it’s about how a group of people determine who is worthy and whatever is left over can go to God.

Jesus makes a point to his disciples in this story to show them, and us, that this is about more than just money.

“See those coins.”

They aren’t just coins. Hardly worth the amount they represent, less than a penny really.

Those coins are a faith filled action that recognizes all of who we are and all we hope to become are given to God in its entirety, not just what we have left over.

Jesus shows us how we are the coins.

We give to God all of who we are, all we hope to become because we don’t belong to ourselves to begin with.

We are God’s.

This morning we will hear the words of God’s saving grace that claims us in these waters.

The waters of baptism.

These are the waters where God proclaims a grace given for us.

These are the waters where God claims us as God’s own.

These are the waters where God doesn’t sprinkle on the “left over’s” but gives us God’s whole self in Jesus Christ.

These are also the waters where God calls us forth to respond in faith. Not to just give what we have left over, to give back to God all of what is God’s to begin with.

From these waters we emerge with an intention to live as God’s people.

And we struggle with this each and every day. Because we get so caught up, like the religious authorities of Jesus day with how we look, and act, what other people think of us and that by making showy acts of charity… and we somehow fulfill our Christian commitment.

Jesus is inviting us to see how in this story our giving isn’t so much an act, an amount, a one time or once a week activity. Giving to God the “left over’s” isn’t an option as it denies who we are, whose we are ,and how we are claimed to life as people of faith. God’s people.

In these waters Jesus says to us we aren’t the religious authorities.

We aren’t the widow.

We are the coins.

Our life is a faith filled offering found in all the ways that we live who God created us to be.

Reformation Sunday

2009-10-26T20:03:00.001-04:00

Mark 10:46 - 11:1 46 They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" 48 Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" 49 Jesus stood still and said, "Call him here." And they called the blind man, saying to him, "Take heart; get up, he is calling you." 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man said to him, "My teacher, let me see again." 52 Jesus said to him, "Go; your faith has made you well." Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

I can’t hide my church dorkiness. We all know that. So today on the Sunday we celebrate Reformation Sunday I was pressing people to come up with a good mascot for the Presbyterian Church. We’ve got a logo, and books of rules, all that good stuff. But we lack a good mascot. I started asking people for their ideas, with the promise that I would dress as the mascot this Sunday.

The suggestions were well… what you would expect. Dressing as a Scot was the most popular. That I should put on a kilt. Ironically, I don’t own a kilt, even though I grew up Presbyterian and went to Alma College where of course the mascot is a Scot… maybe someday. There was a funny suggestion by someone who said I should be an ice cube, of course referencing our less than appealing reputation as the “frozen chosen.”

The end result of my search for a Presbyterian mascot is (drum role please)… that the matter has now been referred to a task force who will now appoint a special committee to review such matters and report back at a later time.

Seriously though, the church right now can’t agree on who should be allowed to serve as leaders in the church, what it means to be a disciple in the world today, or what the word evangelism means, let alone a mascot. Actually, one suggestion came from a friend of mine that a referee is our mascot to make sure that everyone is fighting fair!

This isn’t anything new for the church. After all the Great Reformation of the 16th century was all about questions of faith and culture in the hearts and minds of people who loved God and the church and wanted to be faithful followers of Christ. People like Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and Ulrich Zwingli were responding to the ways the medieval church was failing, financial burdens of the church, and the moral laxity of the clergy… starting to sound familiar?

It should. What the church was going through 500 years ago is now being experienced in fairly equivalent ways today. Some minor difference… while we are grasping with technological advances of the electronic age (computers, email, cell phones) then it was the printed word. The printing press had just been invented and information, Bibles, books, pamphlets made information accessible like never before. Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg and today he might have sent it out via email.

What we are seeing today, as we did 500 years ago is the church going through a major shift in is religious traditions and spiritual insights. We are experiencing these shifts in some major ways: the decline of membership in churches, the lack of importance of the church and religious tradition in daily life, and the gap between generations understanding what it means to be church. All of this coupled with questions about politics, education, and communication.
Our frustrations are tangible and many folks would like them to just magically go away. Looking for some I don’t know… good old fashion healing maybe?
Hey Jesus, can’t you heal us like you did Bartimaeus?

Yeah, we know it’s not that easy. And the gospel story this morning is going to challenge us to go deeper in this story than reading another miracle story.

First have to look at what makes this story different.

Bartimaeus is not the first blind man Jesus heals in the gospel of Mark. In chapter 8, Jesus heals a man blind from birth.

There are others that Jesus heals. There is man on the mat, the hemorrhaging woman, the demoniac and those are just a few examples. So what makes this story different?
We know his name.

Bartimaeus.

“Bar” which in Aramaic means “son of.”

This is the son of Timaeus.

Why the name?

It has been suggested by many notable scholars that naming this man and actually this name in particular “Son of Timaeus” points to a larger meaning of what Jesus is doing.

Jesus isn’t just healing people. The physical act that this man once was blind but now can see sort of thing, but that Jesus is going up against some of the greatest wisdom and insight of his time and turning it upside down.

Everyone here has heard of the great Greek philosopher Plato right? He lived a few hundred years before the time of Jesus. Yet everybody who was anybody in Jesus’ lifetime was reading Plato. His ways of understanding were ingrained into everyday life, not just of educated people but to common people as well. Among his works was one very popular dialogue or play called Timaeus.

This play was performed all over the Mediterranean world for centuries, so it would be very likely that Jesus knew of it, or at least Mark in his writing of this gospel thought he should. In fact there was a Roman amphitheatre in Sepphoris, 4 miles from Nazareth where it might very well have been performed.

For those who aren’t completely up on their Plato, I’ll do my best to boil it down. Plato though that there is an ideal, eternal reality, of which we are merely an imperfect and transitory reflection. Some people are closer to perfection than others. Women, for instance, are pretty far from it, they are recycled men who used to be cowards. Birds are recycled men who were airheads. Closest to perfection are — of course — the philosophers. They “see” in ways that ordinary mortals cannot. Their brilliant insights give them true sight.

In Timaeus, Plato also says that all of us are blind, and only the enlightened philosopher can see. The philosopher is the one who can see this world is fallen, and imperfect. And described in this play is the first written reference to the legend of Atlantis, the perfect city which sank beneath the waves. Atlantis was the perfect world, but it is now lost, never to be found again.

It is a challenge for us to really grasp how depressing this world view is. To believe that there is a sharp separation between those who can “see” or have any kind of relationship with God and those who can’t. There are sharp divides based on gender, class, education and so forth that no matter how much the people who can’t see cry out for real healing in a dark and broken world will never get it. Never. God is unknowable, untouchable, and could not possibly have mercy or become involved in the needs and concerns of the people.

Our gospel story this morning about the son of Timaeus turns that struggle and quest for sight completely upside down. Bartimaeus represents the world view of Plato as those who have no value in society, who would never have a chance to “see” or know anything but their own darkness.

And the crowd around Bartimaeus reinforces how much the world embraces this disregard for those who they perceive as not having value. Hushing the cries, pushing them out of the way, back to the edge of the crowd… of the world where they are lost and forgotten about.

Bartimaeus is struggling through the crowd, struggling through a culturally accepted assumption that he has no value that he has no chance of healing and hope from a God that doesn’t care about him. Bartimaeus knows that his sight will not come from trying to get the crowd to like him, to accept him or by trying to conform to the assumptions of the time by staying home and sitting in his darkness.

For Bartimaeus sight comes from more than just healing.
For Bartimaeus sight comes from following Jesus.
For Bartimaeus sight comes from discipleship.

Sight comes from throwing off our cloaks that symbolizes myth that has kept us all in darkness — the myth that life is measured and valued according to our achievements, our intellect, our philosophy, our money, our moral assumptions—and seeing the road of discipleship.

By throwing off his cloak Bartimaeus throws the powerful myth of the educated people of his time right off on to the ground. That we all can see the real hope Jesus has for our lives when we follow him and it exceeds anything humankind has ever known before.

Like Bartimaeus and the great Reformers, we are poised with our cloaks to ask ourselves what false assumptions are surrounding us that keep us in captivity. What darkens our sight so much we aren’t able to see the road of discipleship with Christ?“Cloaks” of captivity that the Reformers dealt with:
- Doing good works earned you God’s favor
- You could give money to the church and buy your way out of hell
- And the word of God was limited to the educated clergy of the church and was rarely made available in the common language of the people

And today… our “cloaks” that we wrestle with the invitation to life in Christ?
- The boxes of “liberal” “conservative” “justice” and “evangelism”
- Religious institutionalism
- Faith that is reserved for one hour of our Sunday morning and forgotten about the rest of the time

What are we willing to throw down to removed the darkness from our eyes that keep us from seeing what it means to follow Jesus?

Of course Bartimaeus is healed, but that is not what is so amazing about this particular story. Otherwise Bartimaeus would have gone home, lived his life as culturally accepted member of society. Had he done that we wouldn’t no anymore about him than we do the others Jesus miraculously healed.
But we do.
We know his name.
Bartimaeus.
We know his name because he was remembered.
Bartimaeus threw off the cloak of darkness to receive the invitation of new life in Christ. Bartimaeus didn’t go home. He followed Jesus as a disciple from Jericho to Jerusalem. To cross, to the grave, to new life.

As we continue on our journey of Reformation in the church and our lives may we continue to throw down our cloaks again and again remembering to see the invitation to life in Christ is not measured by a box or institution but by our willingness to follow Christ along the way.

Sermon from International Day of Peace Sunday

2009-09-28T15:26:00.002-04:00

The congregation where I serve as pastor recently celebrated the International Day of Peace (Sept. 21st) in our Sunday worship the day before. A few asked that I share this sermon and the incredible story of the crosses made from bullet casings.

Isaiah 2:1-5
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2 In days to come the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. 3 Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5 O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!

I would like to invite you on a journey this morning.

We will begin on the mountain of the Lord, trek to the western coast of Africa and find ourselves back home. You won’t need your passport, but imagination is a must.

Imagination is what the prophet Isaiah demands of the people in his prophetic and poetic words of peace we heard this morning. They have to use their imaginations to envision a world where “nation does not lift up sword against nation, nor do they learn war anymore.”

Most of us have trouble reading the Old Testament because of how much violence is contained in the pages of Israel’s history. It would be impossible to remove these details from these ancient stories as war was almost a daily part of ancient Israelite life, primarily because of that nation’s size and location.

Here was a nation no larger than the state of Vermont located in the strategic Syria- Palestinian corridor—and all the surrounding nations coveted it. Egypt in the south and various Mesopotamian empires in the north-northeast saw that territory as a buffer zone to protect themselves from encroaching armies bent on conquest and pillage. The Old Testament scholar Norman Gottwald observes the Israelites’ preoccupation with war “imparts a vigor to the biblical records but also often casts about them an aura of somber realism and a sense of the fragility of human life.”

It is difficult for Americans to fathom what it must have been like for citizens of this tiny country to live with the prospect of large, invading armies camped out on their doorstep on a regular, unrelenting basis. Consider that Bethel, an important city to ancient Israel, was destroyed four times in the two-hundred year period from the time of the Judges to the establishment of the Davidic monarchy. For comparison, consider the city of Philadelphia being destroyed four times since the Declaration of Independence. America’s “dean of biblical archaeology,” W. F. Albright, noted over half a century ago that under these conditions “one can hardly be surprised…[that] Israel became martially minded.”

The impact of the words we heard this morning from the prophet Isaiah would have taken an incredible amount of imagination from the original audience to picture this painting of perfect peace, that place where instruments of death are turned into implements for life, for harvesting the fields, and where nations don’t even have to study war anymore.

And, the vision of Isaiah doesn’t just fill one corner of the globe. Isaiah describes a day when many people will come to the house of God, when many nations will come to live in the ways of justice and peace.

So we leave our journey with the people in Judah and Jerusalem, perched and God’s holy mountain and make our way to another place.

I need everyone to close their eyes for this part of our journey and open your hands. I will be walking around the sanctuary and placing something in each of your hands. Hold on to the item and please keep your eyes closed…

(PLACE CROSS IN HANDS OF EARCH PERSON)

With your eyes still closed. Tell me what you feel in your hands.

Can anyone tell what the shape of the item is?

A cross. The symbol of our faith that means hope and new life in Jesus Christ.

Now open your eyes and look at what these crosses are made from.

Bullet casings.

From swords to plowshares.

From instruments of death to the hope of new life.

Walking down the holy mountain of the Lord we move forward in time and across the world to Liberia, a country on the west coast of Africa that is about the size of Virginia but roughly the population of Connecticut.

Through most of the 1980’s and 1990’s this country suffered the devastating effects of civil war that left more than a quarter million people dead, thousands homeless and the landscape littered with bullet casings and other reminders of the hopelessness violence caused.

Then a small group of 50 people gathered these bullet casings and took simple tools: a hammer, chisel, pliers, hacksaw, and file to make these crosses.

In 2003 the Presbyterian Church (USA) through the Peacemaking Program, partnered with the group of Liberians making these crosses to market them in the United States. The project provides income to help children attend school; homeless families find dwellings, and sick people receive medical attention.

The bullet casing that is in your hand at this moment touched the hand of another whose intention was to kill another human being.

The cross that is in your hand at this moment touched the hand of another whose plan was to transform that death to hope.

Now it is in your hands.

In your hands.

The words from Isaiah this morning call us to open our imaginations, our eyes, our hands, and our hearts to the dream of peace in this world.

Peace in the Middle East. Peace in African countries like Liberia. Peace here in our own communities.

Peace can happen.

It is in our hands to make that happen.

Yet we feel disconnected from the dream of God’s peace portrayed throughout scripture and the news we see everyday day on TV, read about on-line, or perhaps experience for ourselves.

It reminded me a TV commercial that I’ve seen at Christmas time which I am afraid portrays all too accurately how quickly we push away the possibility of peace.

The ad flashed on the screen a dreamy vision of a sparkling new bicycle; and a child's voice off camera is heard, "Oh, I hope I get a bicycle for Christmas. I hope to get a bicycle for Christmas-and peace on earth, of course-but I hope I get a bicycle for Christmas." Captured in the commercial, of course, is every child's legitimate yearning for a bicycle. Surely we all remember. Only remember also, though the voice from the screen is a child's voice, the commercial was created by and for adults..."and peace on earth of course...but I really hope...."

Even here in our safe community, where we don’t worry about bombs falling near us or gunshots spraying in our neighborhood, we cannot imagine what a world would be like if swords were beaten into plowshares, where bullets were crafted into crosses, where our hands could join together with communities all over this globe and participate in God’s dream for peace in the world. Our attention is too quickly grasped by the new bicycle, or car, or electronic gadget of some sort and peace slips through our finger tips as just another lofty dream of political party or social service organization that we won’t have any part of.

Politics and clubs aren’t going to teach us about God’s dream of peace for the world, God is. Through prayer, worship, Bible study and spiritual disciplines we can equip ourselves and our community to share the gospel message of peace to the world.

We can learn how to become peacemakers in our own families and communities to confront all forms of violence not just the kinds you can see, but the violence we perpetuate through our attitudes, words, and assumptions.

Liberia and the Middle East may seem very far away, but we can support peace efforts across the globe by learning more the lives of people, the struggles they face, and how we might be able to respond through partnerships with presbytery, the denomination, other faith groups, or service agencies.

Tomorrow is the day recognized by the United Nations as the International Day of Peace. And you can join millions across the world by pausing at noon for one minute to say a prayer for peace.

From swords to plowshares.

From instruments of death to the hope of new life.

From prayer to new life.
God’s vision for peace is in our hands.

"God Lusts After Us Like a Horny Teenager"

2009-08-30T12:18:00.002-04:00

Song of Solomon 2:8-17 (The Message)

8-10 Look! Listen! There's my lover!
Do you see him coming?
Vaulting the mountains,
leaping the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle, graceful;
like a young stag, virile.
Look at him there, on tiptoe at the gate,
all ears, all eyes—ready!
My lover has arrived
and he's speaking to me!

The Man
10-14 Get up, my dear friend,
fair and beautiful lover—come to me!
Look around you: Winter is over;
the winter rains are over, gone!
Spring flowers are in blossom all over.
The whole world's a choir—and singing!
Spring warblers are filling the forest
with sweet arpeggios.
Lilacs are exuberantly purple and perfumed,
and cherry trees fragrant with blossoms.
Oh, get up, dear friend,
my fair and beautiful lover—come to me!
Come, my shy and modest dove—
leave your seclusion, come out in the open.
Let me see your face,
let me hear your voice.
For your voice is soothing
and your face is ravishing.

The Woman
15 Then you must protect me from the foxes,
foxes on the prowl,
Foxes who would like nothing better
than to get into our flowering garden.

16-17 My lover is mine, and I am his.
Nightly he strolls in our garden,
Delighting in the flowers
until dawn breathes its light and night slips away.
Turn to me, dear lover.
Come like a gazelle.
Leap like a wild stag
on delectable mountains!

Let’s just start with the obvious. What in the world is this doing in the Bible? That is a reasonable question. It is. First of all, nowhere in the Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, is God mentioned. Nowhere. The book of Esther is the only other book in the Bible that shares this oddity.

Yet there it is. Nestled in between Ecclesiastes pronouncements and the prophet Isaiah’s call to repentance, this 8 chapter book can hardly even be called a book. It deviates from the Old Testament world of tribal conflict, violence, political uprisings, royal conspiracy plots, divine judgments (smiting and smoting this and that and what not) and religious rules. What we have in front of us this morning is a brief volume of poetry filled with the language of sensuality, intimacy, human affection, playfulness, and of course love.

Interpreters, theologians and preachers for years have tried to redeem this book by turning it into an allegory of Christ and his love for the church and God and God’s love for the Israelite people.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a 12th century monk, followed this line of interpretation in his 86 sermons on the Song of Songs, and he didn’t even get past chapter two!

Eighty-six sermons is pretty much going to suck the joy out of any subject, but one can't help wonder if the saint protesteth too much trying to explain away each and every bit of these words that capture the essence of love by reveling in romance, sexuality and flirtation.

I remember when I was a teenager and discovered these 6 pages in scripture. So this shows just how much of dorky, church nerd I was even as a teenager… for me it was kind of like that first time a young boy finds his dad’s stash of dirty magazines. Obviously, the pictures were missing…
I didn’t need the pictures. I had the words. And I couldn’t believe they were in the Bible.

Go home this afternoon and brush off your dusty Bible. It will be worth a few sneezes to see what I am talking about. The first words of chapter 1:

“Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth”

Chapter Four gets real racy lips, teeth, neck and yep they go ever further than that…

I got in trouble in youth group because I wrote out a few of these verses and passed the note to a boy a liked. Now you know the full truth of how big of a church nerd I really was…

But I was so excited. Here in the Bible, in the midst of all the boring rules and familiar stories there was something I could relate to. Going through all that teenage, hormonal angst when the most important thing in my life was whatever boy I was in love with at the time, and I found words in the Bible that talked about how I felt.

Reading these verses now, I will admit, is a little awkward from the pulpit. But back then I reveled in imagining the clear skinned, muscular football player type standing on tip toe behind the gate of my house. He was there, looking at me, talking to me, inviting me with his words of love and desire. “Get up, my dear friend, fair and beautiful lover—come to me!”

Oh, to be a teenager again when love was silly and all encompassing. You couldn’t wait to be with that person again. To share with them all that you are with the hope they would share with you all that they are. And so you wait… wait for the next time he or she would call… I guess now it would be the next time they would text or tweet.

If you can’t remember this time in your life, you at least have children or grandchildren you are watching go through this. And possibly rolling your eyes… a lot… so often, there is the fear your eyes might get stuck. Because that is our adult reaction, isn’t it? To think that this kind of love is ridiculous?

Because once we become adults this kind of love is ridiculous. We have responsibility, jobs, chores, and children. Those are serious matters. We don’t have the time or energy to be frivolous in love.

What if St. Bernard of Clairvaux and his 86 sermons was on to something by spending so much time with these verses? Not by trying to explain them but by trying to experience them?

I’m not going to go take up 86 sermons on the subject (you can go ahead and relax) but let’s play with the traditional interpretation idea that these poems are God’s love poems to us. And what if we pushed the envelope a bit further and imagined that these are the poems God wishes we wrote back?

I chose to read from the translation called The Message, because it does a magnificent job of separating the two voices of the poem. What if one voice is God and the other is what God longs for to be our response?

It is God who comes to us like a love struck teenager.

It is God who wants to see our face. To hear our voice.

It is God who beckons us to come near.

We have to admit that it is possible. God goes to some pretty extreme measures to be with us. I mean, sending God’s own self in the person of Jesus… when we get beyond all the theological explanations of how this works, even just a small part of us must admit how ridiculous this is. That God is so in love with us that to be near us God goes through the messiness of being born, growing up, feeling physical and emotional pain, even death to get close to us.

If that doesn’t sound like someone who is crazed by love I don’t know what does!

We can turn our attention and hear our voice in these verses of poetry as well. It isn’t going to sound like we think it is either. There is no eye rolling or sighing or comments about “how that love stuff is for youngin’s.” It is passionate and strong and full of desire. The voice that is heard most often through the Song of Songs is actually dominated by a woman. She takes up 56 of the 92 verses in the book.

56 verses of a woman who is not afraid to speak her desires. A woman who is assertive, uninhibited and unabashed about what and who it is that she wants.

I’m heading into some uncomfortable territory for some folks… for more folks than would like to admit.

Being open to these words, their erotic images, and intimate perspectives means that we have to move away from the traditional rules and expectations that church and religion has typically dictated we follow to have and understand our relationship with God.

It suggests there might actually be a real human experience involved.

God wants us to feel with, not just our minds, but with our entire bodies, what it means to be loved so completely.

And, I believe, God desires for this love to be reciprocated.

Not because God depends on it, simply for the reason that is how we are created and what we are created for. Love.

Even though we mess that up by being selfish, and mean, and rude, and boring, and by taking things so serious all the time, doesn’t mean that God still doesn’t want us to experience love with our entire being in silly, flirtatious and even… dare I say it… sensual ways.

So where do we begin?

How can we start our own love letters to God?

You might get some good ideas by reading the poems in the Song of Solomon and write down the images, metaphors or even just a phrase that speaks to you. That fits where you are in your relationship with God.

I still see God peaking around the gate. Always waiting for me. Calling me to listen and look, to hear God’s voice in my smallest tasks.

Perhaps for you God is in the flowers of the garden or songs and arpeggios of the birds.

Pay attention to how those images speak to you. The feelings they bring about.

Challenge yourself a step further and ask yourself what God wants you to do with those experiences of love. Rest in silence with them? Write them down? Talk about it with a spouse, partner or close friend?

God created us to experience love. Even though most of us struggle to capture even a piece of our teenage- like self where love was fresh and exciting full of flirtation and romance, we can catch a fragmentary, often fleeting glimpse of the love God has for God's beloved.

In the words of the human lover in the Song of Song we can hear, if we are attentive, the deeper echoes of God’s invitation: " Get up, my dear friend, fair and beautiful lover—come to me!”

Day Fifty and Eight

2009-08-28T18:09:00.001-04:00

This time, Oh Holy One
I wasn't listening
simply talking in other places

Day Fifty and Seven

2009-07-27T13:13:00.003-04:00

It has been a while

I was listening God,
really I was...

Waiting for you
still small voice
phone call
blog post

my excuses
my laziness

you still love me
reassurance feeding
void of inactivity

here I am
here I am

Day Fifty and Six

2009-07-12T08:58:00.003-04:00

Worship as a performance
religious side show
of divine errors
Lord have mercy

Day Fifty and Five

2009-07-11T14:16:00.002-04:00

She cried
and cried
and cried
and cried

I offered hugs
and kisses
reassurance
and promises

I asked where it hurt
to point to the pain
to explain the tears

senseless sobbing
and shaking

God, sometimes
life just isn't fair

Day Fifty and Four

2009-07-10T09:02:00.003-04:00

I stumble through my conversations with you like a toddler learning to talk. Consonants and vowels all mixed up. Pointing and grunting out my most basic needs. Like a parent you listen carefully and can hear the desires of my heart. Funny, no one else gets what I am saying. Thanks be to God, they probably don't need to.

Day Fifty and Three

2009-07-09T11:58:00.002-04:00

fearlessy and endlessly
giving what I have
without expectations of outcome

because
you created
me to

Day Fifty and Two

2009-07-08T06:44:00.002-04:00

everyone is looking for an escape
passage through various means

mind altering substance
reality changing experience
location modifying release

God, draw me in
to embody salvation
engagement
reclamation
of the here and now

Day Fifty and One

2009-07-07T08:08:00.002-04:00

The question struck me odd
"Does the structure believe on my behalf?

God, do I need it to?

in the midst of struggle
uncertainty
and doubt

the world changes
faster than my mind
can behold

your
transcending
impending
presence

Do I need the structure
to believe on my behalf...

Giving answers
when I need more questions

shoving assertions
the ecclesiological bully
on the playground

Do I need the structure
to believe on my behalf?

Acting in your name
so I can go back to bed
pulling the covers over my head

another excuse for my passivity
and external resistance to change

on my behalf
pressing down
smothering

in this time
in this place
structure
BACK OFF

Day Fifty

2009-07-06T14:46:00.002-04:00

A confession...
to guitars and drums
to the bass and tambourine
I have harbored feelings of
discrimination against you

Today I repent
I turn around
and face the music
of your possibilities

I heard it
I liked it
I really did

This frozen chosen
shivered awkwardly
thawing from the knees
as my body moved
praising the Divine

My hands moved together
rarely on beat

My hands hurt a little by the end
but God, I liked it.
I really did.

Day Fourty and Nine

2009-07-05T08:45:00.002-04:00

There is a different perspective
when you are close to the ground

pudgy soft out stretched hand
pointing to the wonders of creation

BUG!

squealing in delight
this tiny, moving creature
a name

excitement scurries for cover

BUG!

the smallest of your creation
named
and blessed

Day Fourty and Eight

2009-07-04T08:04:00.002-04:00

I feel like our conversations get a little one sided sometimes. Pouring my heart out through words, in type, spoken aloud, thoughts racing through my head. I sit and wait for your reply. If I listen best to words, why won't you speak? Why can't you bend to my expectations and speak your heart in a way I can understand. Why must the challenge be mine to push forward with. I vaguely sense your response in the broken bread and the empty pews. God, why does it have to be so complicated in my mind and simple in yours?

Day Fourty and Seven

2009-07-03T07:05:00.003-04:00

God why are people so mean?
what goes on in their heart
that causes so much disdain

did they loose a child
a parent
a friend

did they give trust
to find denial and pain

fired from a job
married an alcoholic
suffer from depression

In my mind
I create their calamaties
making actions excusible

cutting in line
swearing at a child
beating a spouse
thinking only of themselves

I offer this prayer
for made up calamities
and the people who live them

Fourty and Six

2009-07-02T07:53:00.003-04:00

I feel little today
running around
bumping into knees

Tired of people
jerking my arm around
telling me where to go

Stooping God
on your knees
holding my hand in yours

In this big world
full of jerks
you toddle along side us

Day Fourty and Five

2009-07-01T06:45:00.003-04:00

I forget to breathe
holding it in
forcing it out
ruach

in unison we gather
you send me out
pneuma

in rhythm
you are my life
sacred spirit

Forty and Four

2009-06-30T06:53:00.005-04:00

Never what they expect
"you don't look like a pastor"

yeah it's the boobs,
a dead give away

I don't look like the middle-age
man in a suit
they have come to assume
is you

Glad you ditched the flowing robes
and wavy white hair
tweed and seersucker isn't much better

I may not look like a pastor,
you may not look like God
the boobs always keep them guessing

Day Forty and Three

2009-06-29T11:39:00.001-04:00

Box stores have become
my own personel hell

The backwards sliding doors
squinting in the florsecent
that bounces off the shiny floors

I become overwhelmed
with a desire tough to control

sale signs and specials
call out my name

you need me
your life is better with me

God, get me out of here.

Day Fourty and Two

2009-06-28T07:15:00.003-04:00

I realize human existence is a complicated thing
you put a lot of work into us
I can't help but wonder...

Why wait on the teeth?
Plenty of mammals born with them
they seem to do just fine.

Then we could skip over
the cranky, feverish
sleeplessness nights

Piercing and throbbing
through tender pink gums

It seems unfair,
I'm just saying.

Day Fourty and One

2009-06-27T07:53:00.003-04:00

don't get crappy with me
everybody else has an attitude
what's up with yours

wait, the attitude is mine?
don't put this on me
why is it always about me?

can't it be about you for once?
why isn't just about you...

Day Forty

2009-06-26T07:48:00.003-04:00

you show up when I am in my jammies
holding a warm cup of coffee

there you are on the beach
warming my skin

your hand rests on my shoulder
as I dole out the discipline

your laughter fills my ears
to see flying food on my face

I crave your presence
in all the moments

Day Thirty and Nine

2009-06-25T07:24:00.002-04:00

why?

never ending question
with empty answer

from an early age
we seek the satisfaction

of holding it all
in our hands

false sense of
knowledge
control
fulfillment

Empower me to
hold on to the question
let go of the answer
resting in your hands

Day Thirty and Eight

2009-06-24T11:26:00.002-04:00

I'm going to put it down
before I get into trouble

Your word is a freaking riot
Jesus says:

"My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of the God and do it" (Luke 8:21)

If I were Jesus mother, the word of God would have come to me real fast. No crowd would hold me back from letting him no that is no way to speak to your mother, son of God or not.

How's that for doing it?

No wonder a storm follows.

Day Thirty and Seven

2009-06-23T08:05:00.002-04:00

Parenting and Pastoring God
Is guilt a feeling we share?

unhappy children
unfulfilled people

restless hearts
growing pains

disappointment
disillusionment

Yearning
to care
to serve
to heal

Never enough
doing
being

Is guilt a feeling we share?

Day Thirty and Six

2009-06-22T07:53:00.003-04:00

This day
feels like any other
repetition of motion
passing seconds to hours

Wake me up
beyond the continuum
that limits being

surprises and smiles
joy and jubilation
fleeting and flying

Living beyond
quantifiable increments
of finitude
into your soveriegnty

Thirty and Five

2009-06-21T08:16:00.002-04:00

Not even today
do I preach or pray
Father God as who you are

The earthly figure
severly lacking

absence
self absorption
conceit

Barely worth mentioning
certainly not celebrating

Hallmark doesn't
print the card
and I'm not
praying the prayer

unless you count this one
from my hurting heart
to yours
Amen.

Day Thirty and Four

2009-06-20T10:32:00.002-04:00

Thanks for the super fans

Trees clapping their hands
Stones crying out
Reed grass swaying
Flowers rising

Running this morning
with perseverance and pain
Thanks for the support

Day Thirty and Three

2009-06-19T11:27:00.002-04:00

The fragility of life
frequently makes me pause

Long enough
to let go

Of the
shallow
frustration
annoyance

Long enough
to hang on

To the
intensity
joy
passion

I see them
a simple moment
overwhelmed
at all you created them to be

I see us
forever
immersed
at who we are in you

Thirty and Two

2009-06-18T18:49:00.002-04:00

The first taste of summer

Freshly washed by the rain
warmed by the sun

The red juice runs down their elbows
smiles spread across their faces

Seeds and earth
crunch in our teeth

For the bounty of your harvest
the first strawberry
we give our thanks

Day Thirty and One

2009-06-17T08:13:00.000-04:00

Scream
holler
voices raised

Why do my children
only listen when I yell?

Beg
plead
whine

before I listen

God you whisper
still small voice

I'm begging
I'm pleading
I'm whining

scream at me
holler at me
raise your voice

I will listen

Day Thirty

2009-06-16T07:23:00.002-04:00

Fill my inner being
with your sacred sounds

silence

even if just for a moment
alleluia

how quickly you change the tune

cries

of others
my own

kyrie eleison

Day Twenty and Nine

2009-06-15T07:24:00.002-04:00

What is it about
making everything
more complicated
than it need be?

It's just a storm.
You brought me here.
Why can't I
ride it out?

Analyze
the weather pattern
direction of the waves
movement of the wind

Calculate
level of freak out
impact on short term
how much longer

vulnerable
faith
longing
faith
fear
faith

Awake or asleep
the message is clear
you are with me
It's only a storm

Day Twenty and Eight

2009-06-14T14:31:00.002-04:00

Writers of the Bible
a little off are you.
From chaos to seven days?
too organized

You demonstrate to me
day to day
day to day
day to day
today

continuous chaos
formless voids
faces in the water

Good?
yes
Organized?
not so much

Creating, chaos filled God
Hold me in the tension
of your sweeping wind
separating hand
and resting presence

Day Twenty and Seven

2009-06-13T08:19:00.002-04:00

How complicated we make it
labels,adjectives, movements
approaches, theories, outcomes

Do justice
Do it.

Why is that so hard?
A broken word
A hurting place

Heal it.

Your hands
my hands
hands embracing together

extend
touch
embrace
lift up

Do justice
For the love of God, do it!

Day Twenty and Six

2009-06-12T15:01:00.002-04:00

God keep me humble.

Time again the question asked
"Who are you?"
Melissa DeRosia
"What do you do?"
I am a pastor.
"Oh."

Like somehow that isn't enough.
The sound tone of voice,
a slight tilting of the head.
My own discomfort with who I am.

Compelled to respond...
I serve higher governing bodies
that make me sound important.
Right?

Does the tone of voice change?
Body language shift?
Do I suddenly become someone?

It is tempting
to make it sound like I am someone.
That my sense of self importance gives me worth.

God you are the giver of life.
All that I am
All that I ever will be
rests in being your child.

Day Twenty and Five

2009-06-11T12:58:00.002-04:00

God when you created me
I think you forgot something

A filter

I need one from time to time

When you get around to
pass one over
I will do my own installation
thanks

Day Twenty and Four

2009-06-10T08:00:00.001-04:00

Praying before the prayer
watch over my travels
keep my babies safe
hold my heart for my longing

Day Twenty and Three

2009-06-09T07:35:00.002-04:00

Whenever I connect with old friends, I find an opportunity to look back on my life. Seeing where I have come from and where I am. An amazing moment to see how my journey has taken so many interesting paths, and how I wouldn't be who I am today without them. Mistakes are inevitable, but I am thankful that none of them have been so life altering that I could not recover. Even through the pain, my mistakes are moments of clarity. How I will learn, live, think, feel, differently along the next path. God, I thank you for the paths you have place before me and for those whom I have journied with along the way. This day I ask that if ever I make a mistake or one of my paths appears to be one that at the time I won't recover, that you would hold me close and surround me with fellow travelers that are strong enough to walk along side.

Day Twenty and Two

2009-06-08T07:28:00.002-04:00

Divine Communicator
It's not that I don't want
to be open in prayer
this day

It's that it is easier
to operate on auto-reply

shut myself off
from the distractions

tune out
the senseless noise

disengage
from the conflict

ignore
attention seekers

turn over
the piles of lists

Grateful your grace
keeps the inbox open.

Day Twenty and One

2009-06-07T14:17:00.002-04:00

I come to worship
bulletin done
sermon polished
coffee made

Bread on table
cup stands empty

I come to worship
my voice rises in song
my heart in word

I come to worship
and I realize
this isn't about me

You bring me,
not the other way around

Your word reaches out
Your song carries on

You break the body
You fill the cup

I need to be emptied
more often than not
to make room for you.

Day Twenty

2009-06-06T07:47:00.003-04:00

locking myself in the bathroom
to escape the chaos

skipping pages
in the good night story

yelling at bad drivers
from the safety my car

"I'm almost done"
when I'm really not

leaving a few minutes early
for a moment to myself

smiling and nodding
not hearing a word

dreading the end
of covetated nap time

survivors guilt
bless the space
in which this rests

Day Nineteen

2009-06-05T12:55:00.003-04:00

Caught an apophatic bug
in my mouth
my head
my heart

It drains
my words
my thoughts
my feelings

If you see my cataphatic
lounging in the sun
please nudge it home

Day Eighteen

2009-06-04T07:32:00.003-04:00

There is this space that we meet
it doesn't have a location
a time or even a date

Mid sentence or thought
I find myself there
with you

Nothing to see
no words to hear
sacred space where we gather

For just a moment in time
until someone or something
brings me back

Yesterday it was standing
staring off into the sky
lost in your presence

I smiled to myself
and thanked you
for zoning me out
and tuning me in
to you.

Day Seventeen

2009-06-03T07:10:00.001-04:00

What if today were a day
that I let it all hang out?

Breathed easy
and let the "temple" out
over my waistband

Forgo the makeup
letting my glow shine

Let the tears run down
in the wake of disappointment

Curled up into your arms
to escape the fear

Confront the niceties
casually passed my way

Laugh out loud
at the unmistakable irony

Bust out the silliness
unbridled from judgement

Embrace in my heart
loves tender grip

Jump up and down
unable to control excitement

I am glad that I can
let it all hang out with you.

Day Sixteen

2009-06-02T07:15:00.002-04:00

This temple you gave me...
it's sagging a bit
looking a little rough on the outside.

I have to look carefully
beyond the lines
beyond the flaps
the divots and the dents.

To see where the
Holy Spirit dwells.

knees knelt in prayer
hands breaking bread
heart open to pain
voice speaking justice
belly birthing possibilities
ears listening to stories
eyes seeing small miracles
tongue tasting truth
arms embracing the lonely
feet dancing to silence
breasts nourishing life

This temple you gave me
is where the Holy Spirit dwells.

Day Fifteen

2009-06-01T07:16:00.003-04:00

In line at the grocery store
a quick errand to find dinner
turns into an epic drama

My children are screaming
grabbing fistfuls of candy

A young couple behind me glares
The elderly lady in front me counts out her change
I sigh with annoyance

A deep breath in and out
The gift of gratitude emerges

For my children who do not want

A lesson in why sex can wait

Small change counts for something

Life breath that fills my lungs.

Day Fourteen

2009-05-31T07:42:00.002-04:00

Sabbath
more than rest
a time to shut off

a time to turn on
to you

you invite us to
you command us to
why is it so hard?

we fight
like children
and parents

a nap on a sunny day
always more to do
than take a moment
and rest in you

the result?
we end up cranky
unhappy and unsatified

had we just taken that moment
a rest
Sabbath
in you

Day Thirteen

2009-05-30T07:00:00.002-04:00

Creator of All (inlcuding those outside of my bubble)

Last night my daughter asked me:
"Mommy who made my jammies?"

I thought long and hard,
and decided to be honest.

"Some little children in China, honey."

"Mommy, what's there names?"

"I don't know."

"Someday I would like to go to China
and thank them for making my jammies."

For the little children all over the world
that make our jammies.

More than a prayer,
help me to be aware of the choices we make.
To be honest
to do better.

Day Twelve

2009-05-29T08:00:00.002-04:00

God you smell...

At church
mildew
coffee brewing
old lady perfume

In the morning
cool breeze
evaporating dew drops
fragrant flowers

On my children
the nape of their neck
freshly bathed
apple juice chins

God you smell, good.

Day Eleven

2009-05-28T07:48:00.002-04:00

I deeply cling to your life
grasping
clutching
nuzzling my face to yours

no matter how old i get
I still long to be a child in your presence

with my whining
you patiently listen

with my tantrums
you hold me close

with my meanderings
you gently guide me

with my fidgeting
you offer peace

with my desperation
you reveal never ending hope

grace doesn't get any better than this
except it does

in my darkness
there is your light

in my silence
there is your still voice

in my death
there is your life

Day Ten

2009-05-27T07:24:00.002-04:00

I'm up
but I don't want to let go.

Is it so bad to end up where I began?

Or am I afraid that it might hurt when I land?

Help me uncurl my fingers
one by one
an unsteady foot in front of the other

Place what is safe and known
into your guiding hands

Day Nine

2009-05-26T08:05:00.002-04:00

I could use a GPS for my life.
I don't always need to know exactley where I am going.
But every now and then I could zoom out to take a look.

Tell me where to go,
with a detour button option.

You are sending me down roads
that aren't on the map.

Fastest time or shortest route?

Take me where you want me to go.

Day Eight

2009-05-25T08:45:00.002-04:00

Spirit of Life,
Bless those who remember and mourn this day.
Send your peace to surround them
for their efforts did not make the wars
but their lives were consumed by them.

Great Comforter,
For those whose experience of war
is beyond what their imaginations can comprehend.
Haunted by images of anguish
sounds of horror
smells of death.
Grant them rest from their struggle.

Give us all the courage and selflessness
to answer the cry of the world's pain.
With our hands outstretched
our hearts overflowing,
with all our intelligence
let us create the peace
you long for in this world.

Day Seven

2009-05-24T07:54:00.002-04:00

Show up.
It's Sunday again.

Show up.
Put on a smile.
It's Sunday again.

Show up.
Put on a smile.
Find my pew.
It's Sunday again.

Show up.
Put on a smile.
Find my pew.
Look at my watch.
It's Sunday again.

Show up.
Put on a smile.
Find my pew.
Look at my watch.
Drink some coffee.
It's Sunday again.

Go home.
Take off fake happiness.
Plop down on the couch.
Glad that's over.
Eat left over Chinese food.
Is Sunday all over again?

Here's to another Sunday.

Day Six

2009-05-23T08:33:00.002-04:00

You are close.
Too close.
You show us it is possible.
Life is possible
Love is possible.

You are close.
Too close.
We show you we are impossible.
Death is possible.
Hate is possible.

We are far.
Too far.
From where you call us to be.

Day Five

2009-05-22T08:09:00.002-04:00

God I don't want to play anymore.
The games people play.
I'm out.

These games aren't fun.
Though they do seem easier.
Ignore when disappointed.
Silence when frustrated.
Turn away when hurt.

Help us take our turn.
Loving each other
Loving you.

Day Four

2009-05-21T07:25:00.003-04:00

When did becoming a follower of Christ become a popularity contest?

I'm sick of it. I feel like the dorky band kid who spends their life immersed in what they love but gets teased for it relentlessly. I can't help but ask is it worth it?

Is it worth it to immerse myself in loving you and following your teachings, rather than buy into the brand of Christianity being sold today?

I remember being in high school and my mom telling me that the popular kids make fun of other kids to make themselves feel better. That they are just as insecure and hurting as the rest of us, if not more so because they lack experiencing authentic relationships. Instead of doing the hard work of healing and serving, they choose to make life a popularity contest.

Help me remember the other piece of advice my mother gave me: Just because it's on sale, doesn't mean you need it.

.

Day Three

2009-05-20T08:15:00.002-04:00

we need a time-out
not a flood
or a plague

a removal from the situation
that harms us
that harms others
that harms you

can you put us somewhere?
safe
quiet
reflective

with patience
with perspective
with persistance
you care for us

Day Two

2009-05-19T19:50:00.001-04:00

It's been a long day. I would just like to curl up in my bed under the covers and talk to you. I've heard people say they feel guilty for falling asleep when they pray... I'm not sure why. What better way to drift off than resting in your care and conversation? I know we will pick back up in the morning.

100 Days of Prayer

2009-05-18T07:22:00.002-04:00

Brian Merritt, blogger, pastor, and all around super cool guy has begun a journey of 100 Days of Prayer http://100daysofprayer.wordpress.com/

He extended the invitation to others to join him on this journey, and I am along for the ride. Although, engaging on a journey of prayer for 100 days is something that I have to be more than just "along for the ride." 100 days of prayer is going to take intentionality, vulnerability and openness to where the Spirit moves. The last one I think I am pretty good at, the first two... not so much.

I have all sorts of reasons for wanting to do this, and all sorts of reasons why I don't want to do this... why, then? Because, I feel like God is calling me to.

Day One

Mommy do you pray?
I do.
What do you pray for?
I pray for you.
Baby, what do you pray for?
I pray for you.
Mother God, do you pray for me?

Honk if You Love Jesus

2009-05-17T13:24:00.002-04:00

John 15:9-17 (The Message)
9-10"I've loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you'll remain intimately at home in my love. That's what I've done—kept my Father's commands and made myself at home in his love.

11-15"I've told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I'm no longer calling you servants because servants don't understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I've named you friends because I've let you in on everything I've heard from the Father.

16"You didn't choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won't spoil. As fruit bearers, whatever you ask the Father in relation to me, he gives you.

17"But remember the root command: Love one another.

This week I was at the Family Christian Book store in Saginaw looking at some Bibles… and saw these t-shirts hanging on the wall.

With slogans like:

Faith Rocks!

I Love JC

Jesus Saves

Of course the ‘ole stand by: WWJD, What would Jesus Do?

They reminded me of a t-shirt a friends of mine has: “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our T-Shirts.”

It was supposed to be a joke, but he admittedly has a TON of Christian t-shirts. And for the longest time he said that they made him feel like he was wearing his faith.

Many people think they are a visual representation to the world what they are indeed a card carrying, T-shirt wearing Christian.

These kinds of faith visual- aids are all around us. We are a culture that loves visual aids.

Billboards along the highway…

What are some of those “God one’s…”

My Way is the Highway.

Let’s Meet at My House, Sunday before the Game.

Life is Short, Eternity Isn’t.

Then there are the bumper stickers on the cars of people wearing Christian T-shirts as we drive pasts the God billboards.

My favorite being of course “Honk if You Love Jesus.” By the way, you really shouldn’t do what the bumper sticker says, at least at a red light. I made that mistake one day of being behind someone with that bumper sticker. I was feeling snarky and responded with a little toot of my horn. The individual in that car rolled down his window and started yelling at me with all sorts of words that… well let’s just say weren’t exactly “Jesus loving.”

I guess that’s where the whole t-shirt, bumper sticker, bill board, yard sign… take your pick of Christian visual aids, are problematic. We get out our visual aids of faith; stick them on ourselves or on our car and think “Well there!” Now everyone will know that I am a Christian.

The problem is Jesus didn’t say that we will know you are a Christian by your bumper sticker. Even though we haven’t sung the hymn yet, you know where I am going with this… “They Will Know We are Christians By our Love.”

Love.

We sing about being Christian, but the funny thing is Jesus doesn’t even talk about being a Christian, with its set of theological ideals and moral expectations.

Jesus doesn’t talk about being a church or denomination with doctrines, polity and ecclesiological expression.

He talks about love.

Love isn’t related at all to our brand of belief, what our t-shirts say, how “right” our theology is compared to another denomination or even religion. I realize this is bordering on heresy, but if we are going to take Jesus commandments seriously loving others is way more important than what the Book of Order says.

For Jesus’ love came from experience, from being in connection with God and God’s kingdom.
It might be helpful to know that Jesus words in the Gospel of John come right before Jesus is crucified. It is a little out of order for us in the church calendar since we are on the sixth Sunday of Easter and the crucifixion and resurrection stories have come and gone. But Jesus is telling his disciples God loves you, I love you. If you want to truly experience that love, you have to love other people. Love has to be an “other- centered” action.

Not a doctrine.

Not a belief.

Not a denomination or religion.

And not a T-shirt.

The disciples weren’t always known for responding to Jesus words in the best of ways, but can you imagine if they had responded to Jesus upcoming crucifixion by putting up a yard sign or wearing a t-shirt that said: Jesus Loves.

And given the situation they were facing, the disciples could have very easily stayed isolated, remained only with themselves and stuck a sign out in the yard.

The Johanine community, the people who the Gospel of John first addressed is just a generation or two following the resurrection and they could have responded to their situation that way too. They were facing all sorts of persecution and ostracism because of their faith. They might have been tempted to turn inward, loving God (of course) and one another in the community they were directly a part of. Concentrating on their own survival, forgetting about the rest of the world. Forgetting about the pagans, the Jews, the Gentiles…

Instead, Jesus lays on them a different ethic, one that will transform the world rather than judge or run away from it.

How different are we today? Centuries later. Sure Christianity isn’t persecuted like the early Christians. I do believe churches across the global landscape face a different kind of persecution. Complacency and isolation. We have turned inward on ourselves, concerned only about our own survival, passing judgment on other religions even other Christians who don’t follow our particular doctrine or moral code. We put up our sign, we wear our t-shirt: The question still remains: Are we living it? Are we loving?

Jesus' commandment to love provides a clear, comprehensive framework for forming values in every age and every situation, no matter how different our cultures, our technologies, our "sophistication." We ask ourselves then about every decision and choice and plan and vision: Is this rooted in love? Does this bear fruit for the kingdom of God? That's the true test.

We live in a country that continues to debate its identity as a Christian nation. And I can't helpf but wonder why so many Christians use the term"Socialism" (with great fear and accusation in their voice) every time our nation moves toward greater sharing with one another, and tries to alleviate the suffering of those on the margins. Do we just not get it?

One of the most haunting experiences I’ve had recently was when I attended the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church last summer.

A friend of mine went to an event that was planned to raise awareness about homelessness. Sitting there listening to the well-educated, well paid, and well dressed speaker as they all ate their dinners, a man who appeared to be hungry and without a place to call home, walked in.

The speaker continued talking.

The people continue their eating.

The homeless man, looking hungry and tired looked around at all these well meaning Presbyterians absorbed in the speaker add left. My friend Susan (who ironically at the time was a Pentecostal) couldn’t believe what just happened. She actually stopped the speaker and called attention to the situation. A gathering of Christians, talking about raising awareness about homelessness, and they all sat there clueless and unobservant. It is like they all had their t-shirts on about loving others and calling that good enough!

What if we, as a community and as individuals did more than just pretend to love each other?

What if this morning as we celebrate the baptism of Callie Conwill we do more than just to pretend teach her how to follow Christ by sprinkling some water on her head?

What if we promise to teach her the radical and transformative of love of Jesus Christ by the way we live our lives in the world?

Not just when the baptismal waters run down her forehead.

Not just when we have our t-shirts on.

Not just when we are here in this building.

We promise to guide and nurture Callie and everyone whom God has chosen, by loving one another as Christ has loved us.

Callie needs these promises fulfilled. We all do. We need to know that people love us. That we takes these promises seriously and actually love one another through our actions.

We need to know we are Christians by our love. Not our billboards, our theological differences, or our Presbyterian Book of Order.

By our love.

A love that God first blessed us with in the person of Jesus Christ.

A love that Jesus lived from being in connection with God and God’s kingdom.

From authentic, intimate relationship with God, with his disciples, with his family, with strangers in the crowd, with the diseased, the dead, the outcast, the poor, religious hypocrites, the atheists…

We all need to know we are followers of Christ, by our love. Amen.

Stop Freakin' Out!

2009-04-26T13:20:00.003-04:00

Luke 24:36-48 Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." 37 They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence. 44 Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you-- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.

Ironic that this is the third Sunday of Easter and the scripture for this morning shares the story of Jesus 3rd appearance, post resurrection in the Gospel of Luke. On Easter Jesus appears to the women and Peter at the tomb and the appearance right before the one we read is to the couple traveling on the road to Emmaus.

At this point one would think that Jesus resurrection wouldn’t come as a surprise to the disciples in Jerusalem, no more than it is to us every Easter that we celebrate it. I guess the disciples didn’t get the memo. Their faces when Jesus stands among them show that they still don’t get it.

And Jesus responds: Peace be with you.

I’m going to take same preacher interpretation liberty here…

I think what Jesus mean to say here is: Don’t freak out.

I know I am supposed to be dead. Don’t freak out.

No I am not a ghost. Please, stop freaking out.

Here take a look. My hands, my feet. Touch them. You don’t need to freak out.

By the way, got any fish to eat?

The disciples obviously didn’t understand what is going on. I doubt Luke’s initial audience really knew how to explain the resurrection. And despite volumes of theological reflection and a few History channel specials no one now really knows how to explain the resurrection.

All we have, all the Luke’s readers had, all the disciples had is their experience of the resurrection.

So what is your experience of the resurrection?

What freaks you out more the resurrection of the idea that I might make you answer the question out loud?

Presbyterians aren’t really good at freaking out in worship, I may have to bring back some Pentecostals to worship…. I will if you aren’t careful…

We are really good at freaking out during other points in our life.

Over the past few months I have noticed how much the church is freaking out. Not just ours but most of them. The world is changing so much and the church isn’t sure how to respond. Declining numbers in the pews and in the bank account.

Maybe you have been a part of these conversations, if not think about the last time you really freaked out about something… personal, job related, family, whatever…

Not a pleasant feeling but I figure that misery loves company and I feel like I have been in a perpetual state of freaking out lately. A couple of factors play into that. Kids of course. The job situation, not so much mine but with a spouse in the automotive industry… there are so many unknowns.

The biggest fuel to my freak out fire is my relationship with God.

This is really personal to be sharing like this, but I trust you all.

Lately I feel like I am reading the Bible and seeing what it means to be a Christian community in a whole new way.

I’ve spent most of my life being a student. High school, college, seminary… I didn’t stop my formal education until I came here to Caro. And when you are in formal educational settings there is this advantage of looking at life instead of living it. I looked at life and faith through the eyes of other people, mainly through their books. Volumes and volumes of books. How other people experienced life and their relationship with God. I wrote volumes and volumes (or so it seemed) regurgitating what other people thought.

Now that I have been in ministry for a few years, that newbie pastor feeling is wearing off. I feel like I’ve got a hang of things, preaching, potlucks (if you can’t tell), moderating meetings, visiting with people, becoming involved in the larger Caro community….

Getting the groove of the pastor rhythm has allowed my mind, my heart, my faith to wander a bit. I’ve been spending more time in spiritual reflection, prayer and studying the Scriptures. I’ve been feeding a part of me that formal education did not make room for. I am learning to experience for myself what it means to be in relationship with God and live that out in Christian community.

I’m reading about Jesus life in the scriptures and seeing them with new eyes, hearing them with new ears and opening to them with a heart that begs a response. I walk around our neighborhood, I see the people who are homeless who suffer from mental illness and I can’t ignore that God intends healing and wholeness for their lives. I hear stories about families barely making ends meet because both the husband and wife lost their jobs and want to do something to ease their burned. I pray for young pregnant woman facing all sorts of complications with the baby and my heart longs to offer God’s hope.

I use to feel an overwhelming about of guilt that I couldn’t do enough to stop the hurting in the world. Lately it is a different kind of feeling…. Like a transformation of some kind. I don’t’ know how to describe it other than to say that I am freaking out.

Jesus is standing in front of me poking at his crucifixion holes telling me not to freak out.
Jesus doesn’t tell the disciples to look, to touch, to freak them out anymore than they already are. It’s not a guilt thing either. Jesus could have so easily gone that route with them. Remember the disciples weren’t exactly supportive during Holy Week. Betrayal, denial… Jesus knows that the disciples did not cause those scars, anymore than I directly cause all the pain in the world. But we can’t run away from it either.

I debated as I wrote this sermon whether or not I would go this personal, share this deeply about my faith struggles right now. Because we don’t even want to look at our own wounds, let alone someone else’s. We want to run away from it all.

Jesus tells us to stop freaking out.

Look. See. Come to terms with the pain and suffering. Get over the guilt. It is all there, but it isn’t then end.

God did and is doing something new in the resurrection of Jesus, and in a sense, God is doing something new each time we experience the risen Jesus.

What does all of this mean in our lives? How could this profoundly change each of our own lives? In the remembering and telling of this story, it seems to me, the church is, like Jesus, interpreting our experience of the risen Jesus--something that happens to us in many different ways--in light of the living Word of God.

I’m freaking out a little but trying to make sense of it all seems to be easier, or at least more fruitful, in a community that shares my experience, my questions, and, in the end, my call.
A call that begins with an empty tomb and leads me back to the life of Jesus. One that reminds me that I am a witness. I can’t ignore Jesus teachings, how he touched people, healed them, prayed for them. That as a witness I am, we all are, called to live a life where God’s grace, love, forgiveness overcomes the hurt, suffering and even the guilt.

It’s not a coincidence that Jesus goes from telling the disciples not to freak out to finding out of they have any food. Jesus brings table fellowship right back into the narrative, because it's still at the core of our story and at the center of who we are. Eating, feeding, serving.

The experience of the early disciples who touched experienced the resurrection with Jesus. They put their hands in his wounds and heard his voice, fed his hunger and received his blessing, is the same experience of Christians today who feed the hungry, break bread together, hunger for God's blessing, and respond to the call to turn our lives toward God once again.

Yeah, so freaking out. It is a lot easier to look at life instead of living it. Living a transformed life where the resurrected Christ stands before us all, wounds out in the open and says that we are the witnesses. Getting past the guilt, the fear, to the core of who we are. We are a community that receives God’s blessing together, breaks bread together and with open eyes and hearts responds to those who are hungry.

May the peace of Christ surround us as we live the Easter life God blesses us with.

Holy Saturday

2009-04-11T14:31:00.002-04:00

This is the day where I believe that Christianity truly lives today. Holy Saturday. Jesus is dead. He told his disciples, over and over and over again that he would return. We are disciples who profess a belief in the resurrected Christ, and yet Jesus is still dead. We have replaced him with our many Gods.... I don't need to name them for anyone because despite what other preacher and religious leaders believe I don't think the death of Christianity is the fault of the "secular world." It is our own fault.

We don't stand outside of the tomb, we go home. It is like any other Saturday where we fill the emptiness inside ourselves with the "business" of everyday life. We don't pause for a moment experience that emptiness at a deeper level. We don't hope for what is promised to us, that God can overcome death. Even our death, that we go to in our day to day numbness is pushed aside with anticipation of our own anticipated outcome.

That the love God has for us can take us from our numbness and make us alive again. There isn't some magic formula that makes this happen either. We can't predict what is going to happen. We hope that what God has in store for us is greater, better, more fantastic than anything we can dream up or some cheesy one-liner can offer.

So why do we go home? Why do we leave the tomb? In death why do we think that whatever plans we have might be better than what God has in store...? Holy Saturday.

Where to Go From Here...

2009-03-30T07:19:00.006-04:00

First a disclaimer. Before I get too deep into blogging about my experience at the General Assembly Council (GAC) meeting that met in Louisville, KY March 25th- 27th it is important folks have a general grasp of the context from which I am writing.

I am of the new class of GAC members, but I am not alone in that. Half of the current GAC came on at the last General Assembly. Take away from that what you will, but it is important to note. Though I am new to GAC I am not new to the PC(USA) national church scene. Having served on the board with Presbyterian Health Education Welfare Association (PHEWA), moderated a network of PHEWA, and also interned at the Presbyterian Center for over a year while in seminary, those experiences give me pretty good perspective.

Then there is the demographic piece of the disclaimer. I am the only woman serving on the GAC under the age of 50. There are other women of course, elders and clergy, of various ethnic and racial backgrounds, whose wisdom and experience in the church compromise a beautiful tapestry of ministry and service. I celebrate the ways they contribute to the make up of the GAC. But there is something to be said about being the only young woman there. I don't always feel all that young as a pastor and mother... these callings often leave me feeling very tired. Nevertheless, I do feel a certain weight rests on my shoulder to be a strong and effective voice for the young women of our church.

Going into the GAC meeting I knew would be frustrating, exhausting, and full of very hard decisions to make. I live in Michigan after all, I know all about how the economy is effecting real people, real lives, and how there is a real sense of fear about jobs, income, and being able to provide for family needs. Determined to be prayerful, I spent time talking to God about my feelings and struggles with what was about to happen. I remained in conversation with God and people whom I respect a great deal about my frustrations going into this meeting. Frustration that I didn't feel a part of the communication process or the had any concrete input on the decisions that would be made.

The term "rubber stamp" came up a lot. In my own conversations and among others in the GAC. I came into the meetings determined to be more than that. I felt called by God to be more than a "rubber stamp" to decisions having already been made. An interesting response to my thoughts about this prior to the meetings came from a pastor friend of mine. Now in his mid- 40's (still young by church standards) and having been someone who struggled with the decision making process of the church he said: "Just don't become that angry young person, Melissa. You will be dismissed quickly both publicly and in the minds of other GAC members and leadership. They will see you as that young person who just needs time to grow out of being a rebellious trouble maker and then you will come to your senses."

Those words stopped me in my tracks. How true. Navigating these waters became tougher and tougher. Not only did I take into consideration the weight resting on my shoulders to be an effective voice as a young woman, but I reflected carefully on the perceptions others would have of me for being a young woman.

Going back over and over again the issues before the GAC, I did my best to see where God's hope and grace had the slightest possibilities to emerge. Where in our work did we have the opportunity to reflect who God is calling the PC(USA) to be and do?

Sitting in the Crystal Ballroom of the Brown Hotel with packets of papers in front of me, it became harder and harder to ask myself those questions. I quickly discovered that the very questions I was asking myself were the questions I was presenting before this body. That while we can say decisions are made for this reason or that, using words to describe the rationale behind them. Ultimately, the entire church will have their own perceptions and assumptions about what these decisions communicate to them in the midst of the ministries God is calling them to. Pretending that the rationale behind these decisions will answer the questions and challenges only masks the very real message the church takes to heart.

No matter how many times I told myself I wasn't the angry young person, that I was passionate, sought justice, and sincerely wanted to advocate for what I felt God's message of the kingdom calls us to do and be...I was still perceived as the angry young person. Questions I raised dismissed, concerns I brought forth ignored, and at one point falsey accused of sharing confidential information compromising trust the body had in the voice I brought to the table. Another GAC member with a great amount of wisdom whispered to me through our meetings: "Don't let it own you, Melissa."

The decisions made by the GAC were hard ones to make. I'm not going to say they weren't necessary or made without prayerful deliberation on the part of the GAC staff or elected leaders. I am going to say that the church is going to walk away from this with their own perceptions about the decisions that were made. About whether certain ministries of the church are truly valued or will continue the historic and prophetic witness we believe God is calling us to do and be. Press releases, news stories, and videos won't change the real message many Presbyterians will take to heart.

I'm not letting it own me. The week was exhausting, discouraging, and frustrating. I am not exactley sure where to go from here with all that happened, but it doesn't own me. For the obvious reason that my life rests in the hands of God and the other reason is I came home. I turned in my name badge, grabbed the box lunch and sat in my car. I drove over the Ohio River into Indiana and on to Michigan as people who I know and love lost their jobs. I came home to my family, my job, my life outside of Louisville that is mostly unaffected by the changes that were made.

My heart and prayers remain with those whose lives were devastated by these changes. May the grace of God offer transformation and hope in the midst of great suffering and pain. And I pray that while I won't let the epxerience I have serving at the national level of the PC(USA) "own me" they do posses the ability to empower me to ask the hard questions and be a effective voice that represents who God is calling the church to be.

Church Darwinism: Is it Survival of the Fittest?

2009-02-20T13:29:00.002-05:00

Engaging in several conversations over the past few days I find myself asking if the church is falling prey to the cultural assumption that only the “fit” will survive the theological, ecclesiastical, institutional and biblical shifts of American Christianity, specifically main line denominations (since that is my context).

What is a “fit” church? In my experience the perception is that a healthy church is one that is financially self-sustaining, is birthing more than it buries, and has the ability to employ educated clergy to lead. Its seems that relationships, spiritual practices, or the many ways the faith community reaches in and out to experience and share God’s presence are not factored in to the equation.

What are we left with if “Church Darwinism” continues to consume congregations no longer considered fit by denominational standards?

It seems like we will be left with the mid-size to larger congregations who have enough of an endowed nest egg to perpetuate their existence of counting dollars, numbers in the pew, and years of theological education. I realize that is a harsh statement when good ministry can and does find its way through faithful people in congregations of all sizes, but it does not diminish the lack of concern for congregation struggling to be faithful in the midst of many challenges.

I am meeting with leaders (for those who need the distinction they are ordained and lay leaders) in a region of Michigan populated by very small communities and even smaller churches. They are having trouble calling seminary trained clergy to their congregation because of the geographic isolation and the lack of funds to financially support such an educated person. This group is trying to be creative, think of ways they can celebrate God’s presence in their midst with or without a seminary trained pastor. The resistance can be overwhelming when higher governing bodies deem their creativity to be out of line with the rules of the denomination. That the hoops they must jump through are part of our denominational and intuitional identity, without them we would be reducing ourselves to nondenominational churches with no connectionalism.

Why aren’t we connecting? Why is there such a large disconnect between these congregation who don’t feel like they are living up the expectations for what it means to be “fit” and those denominational leaders who would rather see them fight for survival than faithfulness.

I have more questions than I do helpful insight how to move forward on this. When well meaning people ask how they can help, I don’t have any answers. I am watching, listening and praying…

Can't Build the Church on a Soapbox

2009-02-06T13:30:00.003-05:00

My sermons reflect a great deal what I am struggling with...

1 Corinthians 8:1 Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that "all of us possess knowledge." Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; 3 but anyone who loves God is known by him. 4 Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that "no idol in the world really exists," and that "there is no God but one." 5 Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth-- as in fact there are many gods and many lords-- 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. 7 It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. 8 "Food will not bring us close to God." We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. 9 But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? 11 So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. 12 But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

When you ask your pastor a straightforward answer, it’s always helpful to get a straightforward answer? Right?

The church in Corinth is asking a pretty cut and dry question: “Hey Paul you’re our pastor so tell us, can we eat the meat used in pagan sacrifice or not? Yes or no.

I’m not sure why the Corinthians are asking the question at all, they already know the answer.
There was a decree by the apostolic council in Jerusalem, think really important group of people who were in charge of making up the rules. They said, absolutely not. They even compare it having sex before you are married, which back then was something you could be killed for!
The whole “eating the meat used in pagan sacrifice” is a pretty controversial thing. I’m going to put a guess out there that it is pretty comparable to our current controversies over homosexuality and abortion.

The church wants an answer. They want Paul to make it clear whether this is something that is OK to do or not. Instead, Paul launches in to this long argument (and I only read part of it to you, it goes on into chapter 9, 10 and 11) some scholars even say Paul contradicts himself!
How do we take the different parts of this argument and put it all together?

The bigger question for us this morning, how do we find God in the questions, controversies, arguments, and possible answers that seem to be floating out there?

Paul makes it complicated and impossible for me to “boil down” into a nice little sermon that ya’ll will walk away from here this morning going “Oh, I get it now.”

In fact, that is what Paul starts off his letter warning about.

He writes…“We know that “all of us posses knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up…”

Knowledge.

When Paul was talking about knowledge, it had a very Greek philosophy perspective. Reason was big. We rely on what makes sense, that everything has an explanation derived from our brain power.

Are you thinking, “Well yeah, how else do you define knowledge?” Even asking that question shows us how much Greek philosophy influences us even today.

One challenge in our 21st century media and technology saturated world is who is the ultimate keeper of the knowledge? Who decides who has the “right” answers?

Does the “right” answer come from a well educated pastor or professor? How about a Bible- thumping Christian who can quote chapter and verse? Or someone with first hand experience about a particular controversial issue because they are… for our purposes of providing a context: they are gay, has gay friends or children?

The church in Corinth went to Paul, because they trusted him as the gatekeeper of the knowledge.

If you have questions about something, you might come to me… but not after you heard the news reporter offer their answer, checked a book written by an author you trust, looked in the bible yourself, or “googled” it on the internet…

There have been monumental changes in how we come to an understanding of “knowledge” and what constitutes the “right” answers to our questions or controversial arguments and debates.
When we do get to that answer, we believe is “right” for us we stand on it pretty firmly. That is what Paul is talking about, how knowledge “puffs up.”

We get up on our soap box and argue relentlessly how we have the “right” answer. We let it divide us as communities. It tears apart relationships, friends, churches, and even families.
“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

This would have been absolutely shocking to the Christians in Corinth. Rather than taking sides in the argument, getting on his soap box, and handing out some “right” answer that would settle it once and for all (or so they thought) Paul seizes the opportunity to present their actions on the basis of very different standards.

Love.

Love builds up.

Love is more important that knowledge. Love is more important than being “right” or having the “right” answer.

When we let our knowledge “puff us up” when we get on our soap box, stand more firm on what is “right” or “wrong” than on the foundation of love, we hurt people. Paul even goes so far to say that that we hurt Christ himself because we cause pain in his body, the church. To hurt those for whom Christ died is to commit sin.

We are called to show reconciling love in the church.

Love builds the church, it builds the body of Christ, it builds our relationships to each other, and it builds our relationship with God.

Paul lays a hefty load on those poor Corinthians when he says that “anyone who loves God is known by God...” He’s supposed to say that “anyone who knows God really loves God.”
The subtle reversal of the subject and object, doesn’t answer the questions raised by the church in Corinth nor does it answer ours, but it does point to where God is in our questions, controversies, arguments and possible answers…

God knows us, comes to us, and is present to us because God loves us.

God loves us because God knows us.

Being “right” doesn’t bring us closer to God.

Standing on our soap box doesn’t bring us closer to God.

Being a “bible thumper” doesn’t bring us closer to God.

Paul says that food doesn’t bring us closer to God (I know, this was a difficult one for me too).
God’s love for us brings us closer to God.

With this point made, Paul comes back around to chew on the meat of the issue. (OK that was a bad metaphor, bad, but funny!)

The whole controversy of the Corinthians eating the meat sacrificed to pagan gods is complicated depending on the context.

Some Corinthian Christians were attending feasts held in pagan temples, and they were eating the meat that was served to everyone present. Those Christians argued that because they believed in the One God, there was no such thing as pagan idols. They are nothing more than statues. So the food itself was meaningless. And there was a sense of obligation felt by these Christians, who happened to be the wealthier, upper class members of the church. Being invited to and eating these meals was a regular part of their public and professional duties. To refuse to eat the meat would have offended the host.

At the same time, in the social circles of Corinthian Christians who were not so wealthy, this kind of meat eating would not have been such a common thing. They would have known the wealthy and powerful were eating meat frequently and doing it with a certain amount of spiritual indifference. Christians of lower economic circumstance, who certainly would have also been less educated, might have considered all this meat eating to be laced with all sorts of supernatural connotations.

Paul’s way to address this divide in context is interesting.

He doesn’t claim to have the “right” answer, or stand on a soap box built out of education, theology, or money. Paul says that if his personal actions are going to keep another person from experiencing God’s love in their life, he just won’t do it.

Paul believes that food (eating it or not) doesn’t bring us closer to God.

Paul believes that God’s love for us brings us closer to God.

At the same time he embraces the reality that we are bound in community to one another and our actions. He doesn’t tell the church in Corinth what to do, what choice to make regarding this very contentious issue.

Simply, he won’t justify his behaviors on the basis of theological arguments and knowledge, even if he does agree with one side or another.

He himself will, if necessary, become a vegetarian for the rest of his life rather than harm those who would be hurt by his eating meat sacrificed to pagan gods.

Paul recognizes that the less educated, those of lower economic situation are weaker and socially vulnerable, and he has a commitment to standing in solidarity with them. This shouldn’t be a foreign concept to followers of Jesus…

Grounded in God’s love for him, God’s love for all people, Paul (being also privileged and from an upper class background) will show his faithfulness to Christ and his body by aligning himself with the marginalized. Paul warns the Corinthians that insisting on their “authority” of what is “right” because they think they are more knowledgeable undercuts the community’s existence.

When the “strong” and self proclaimed “knowledgeable” insist that what they know is the only “right” way to know, it doesn’t make the community stronger, it tears it down.

As we live in relationships, in community, in our church, in this world with all of its complexities, arguments and controversy searching for God in the mist of it all, God doesn’t love us because we are First Presbyterian Church of the “right answers,” or even the same answers…

God knows us because we love God. Our love for God, our love for each other will bring us closer to each other and to God.

Inauguration of Barack Obama

2009-01-20T13:58:00.003-05:00

I wish I could feel the chill of the air and the heat of the millions of Americans bodies who have decended upon our nations captial today.

Instead I feel the draft of a nearby window and heat as it is forced from vent at the Big Boy restuaruant where I sit in Caro, Michigan.

I sit at a table by myself, yet surrounded by Americans. Americans who by my best estimate have been effected in one way or another by the reality of the world in which we live.

I wonder how many have lost their jobs recently. Who are struggling to feed their families and keep their house; but they smile at their young children pretending that everything is going to be alright.

I wonder how many are eating their lunch before returning to work, with the knowledge they are now years away from retirement as a result of the downslide of the stock market.

I wonder how many are on their way to a doctors appointment, even though they don’t have healthcare to cover the cost.

I wonder how many have lost children or grandchildren who were serving overseas with the military.

I wonder these things as people sit eating their french-fries, sipping their coffee and I listen to words of the Inaugural Address spoken by the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama.

I am overwhelmed by the real words he speaks. He knows about the people sitting around me at the Caro Big Boy and he speaks to them. Whether they agree with his politics or not, whether they voted for him or not, he speaks to all Americans with words of hope and unity.

What strikes me most about President Obama’s words is his emphasis that the kind of change that needs to happen to turn things around isn’t the sole responsibility of the government. “For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.”

Our nation relies on the Americans like those who sat at tables around me at Big Boy, who gather around communion tables, and dinner tables. America relies on all of us to go from these tables strengthened to serve something beyond ourselves.

My prayer as I leave the table, is that President Obama lives and leads with integrity, following through with the words he has spoken. I also pray that we face the challenges before us as a nation we live with the veracity to follow the greatest commandment set before us by Jesus:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.’
- Matthew 22: 37-40

Holiday Hagover

2008-12-29T13:26:00.001-05:00

After Christmas I feel like I have a hangover. Not the kind that comes from too much eggnog, but from the racket and clamor of holiday sounds. It is overwhelming the amount of noise that comes with Christmas. Some of it is wonderful, truly magnificent. There is nothing like the awed voices joining together for “Silent Night” or the slightly off key… “Glo---------ria, in excelsis De-o.” The slightly off key person is usually me; my best friend compares my singing of this song the entire cast of “Peanuts Christmas” enthusiastic, but a bit flat. I’m okay with it; God gave me this voice, so I like to make sure God can hear it.

There are other sounds that after a while begin to painfully reverberate in my ears. I can only take hearing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” so many times. By “so many times” I mean that once is more than I was hoping for.
My ears grow weary of the screeching children overdosing on Christmas cookies, battery operated toys that never shut off, cards that sing when you open them. I don’t know why people find these necessary…

I have found a cure for my auditory “holiday hangover.” A tradition we began at First Presbyterian last year for the Sunday after Christmas. Our organist takes the Sunday off, and we worship in a Taize format.

The silence is long, uncomfortable and a welcome transition for the New Year. The songs are simple, inclusive and prayerfully melodic where we all tend to get lost in the prayer rather than being concerned if we are signing on key or not. I love how I find myself singing these songs later in the week and I am instantly drawn back into that meditative space.

Of course we go back home, where the New Year celebrations begin and some well meaning adult gives our children those party horns to blow on, but for just a moment in the between space of racket and clamor silence existed a silent awakening of God’s still small voice in my life.

Baby Steps: A Disclaimer

2008-12-17T11:12:00.003-05:00

Baby steps. Blogging for me is something that is happening with baby steps. I have hesitated, fallen down, and and am going to try again. So here goes.

The disclaimer? I need to change that to the plural form, I've got more than one. I'm going to blog about being a mom. God has blessed me with the joy of two beautiful baby girls. I will torture readers of the blog with pictures, so be prepared. And being a mom isn't always easy. If for some reason my girls take an interest in the life of their mother when they get older and happen to stumble across this blog, hopefully they will forgive me for anything I may say that embarrasses them.

I'm also going to blog about being a pastor. This can be hard too. Hopefully, my congregation will also forgive me if I say anything that embarrasses them... Anything I do share out in this cyberspace world, reflect my thoughts, rants and God bless them my "sacred screaming." It does not represent the views of the PC(USA) or First Presbyterian Church of Caro.