Reading: John 4:5-30, 39-42 (The Message)
To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. He came into a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob's well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon. A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, "Would you give me a drink of water?" (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.) The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, "How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" (Jews in those days wouldn't be caught dead talking to Samaritans.) Jesus answered, "If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water."
The woman said, "Sir, you don't even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this 'living water'? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?" Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life." The woman said, "Sir, give me this water so I won't ever get thirsty, won't ever have to come back to this well again!" He said, "Go call your husband and then come back." "I have no husband," she said. That's nicely put: 'I have no husband.' You've had five husbands, and the man you're living with now isn't even your husband. You spoke the truth there, sure enough."
"Oh, so you're a prophet! Well, tell me this: Our ancestors worshiped God at this mountain, but you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?" "Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship God neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem. You worship guessing in the dark; we Jews worship in the clear light of day. God's way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.
"It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people God is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship then must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."
The woman said, "I don't know about that. I do know that the Messiah is coming. When that person arrives, we'll get the whole story." "I am he," said Jesus. "You don't have to wait any longer or look any further." Just then his disciples came back. They were shocked. They couldn't believe he was talking with that kind of a woman. No one said what they were all thinking, but their faces showed it. The woman took the hint and left. In her confusion she left her water pot. Back in the village she told the people, "Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out. Do you think this could be the Messiah?" And they went out to see for themselves.
Many of the Samaritans from that village committed themselves to him because of the woman's witness: "He knew all about the things I did. He knows me inside and out!" They asked him to stay on, so Jesus stayed two days. A lot more people entrusted their lives to him when they heard what he had to say. They said to the woman, "We're no longer taking this on your say-so. We've heard it for ourselves and know it for sure. He's the Savior of the world!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Almighty God, You give the water of eternal life through Jesus Christ your Son. May we always thirst for you, the spring of life and source of goodness; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I’ve been thinking about an old gospel song that I used to sing when I was first starting out as a gospel singer. I’m sure a few of you know it. It goes like this: Like the woman at the well I was seeking for things that could not satisfy, and then I heard my Savior speaking: “Draw from my well that never shall run dry.” And I respond: Fill my cup, Lord; I lift it up, Lord. Come and quench this thirsting of my soul. Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more; fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole.”
Fundamentally, emptiness is the experiencing of loss. We see it in our scripture today. The un-named woman comes to the well in the heat of the day. Some scholars say that it was because of her shady past that she came at a time when she was not likely to run into anyone. Believe it or not, the scripture does not bear out any notion that she was sinful or promiscuous, or a prostitute. There were lots of scenarios in the complicated marriage laws of the time that could have rendered her living with someone who was not her husband. And, more importantly, unlike Jesus’ interactions with other people he encounters, Jesus does not call her to repentance, or tell her to “go and sin no more”. So, we have no real reason to believe that she was any of those things we may have previously believed about her. No, it would seem more likely that she was lonely, not welcomed for whatever reason to be with the rest of the women who would most certainly have come early in the morning before it got so hot.
So, to this well, comes a sad and lonely person, not looking for anything but a little water to quench her thirst in the heat of the day. You can almost see her shuffling up to the well, perhaps not even aware that Jesus is there until she is almost upon him. And, almost out of nowhere, comes his voice: “Would you give me a drink of water?” This was a revolutionary act and, despondent or not, it was not lost on her. She was a Samaritan, and Jews and Samaritans did not get along. A Jewish man would never, under any circumstances ask a Samaritan woman for anything. What was up with this guy? Didn’t he know the rules? And then we see, Jesus is engaging her where she is—at the well—seeking water. He tells her: “if you knew who I was, you would be asking me for water instead of getting caught up in social conventions and mores.” Not to be thought a fool, she counters him: Why you don’t even have anything to get water with—and it’s a deep well. Who are you compared to our ancestor, Jacob, who dug this well?” Jesus simply says, “The water I am talking about is eternal, the ever-flowing, ever-gushing water that will rise up in you like a spring and you will never be thirsty again.” She is still floundering around, trying to understand: “Give me this water!” she says. “I’m mighty tired of having to come to this well every day.” And we can identify—it gets tiring having to supply our daily needs every day, going shopping, paying the bills, nothing very exciting or life-giving here. But this is not where Jesus is headed, so he tells her to go get her husband.
She responds “I don’t have a husband.” And then, Jesus tells her something she cannot ignore. “Well, that’s one way to put it—I have no husband—you have had 5 husbands, but the man you are living with now isn’t your husband—you have spoken truthfully.” We can see the surprise because he knew all about her and she thought she was safe in her anonymity. She believed that her loneliness and despair made her invisible. But Jesus has “seen” her, known her what who she is, knows her loneliness, her set-apartness. In the Gospel of John, seeing is often equated with believing. So when she says, “I see you are a prophet”, she is saying that she believes him. And so, knowing that he is a prophet, she immediately asks a question, a question that had divided the Jews and Samaritans for years and a question that shows she understood the second-class nature of her Samaritaness. She says, “our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews have determined that you have the only access to God in Jerusalem, isn’t that right?”—the indignation for the life-long spiritual put-down perhaps just starting to surface. And he takes her by surprise again. “Doesn’t matter where you worship—that’s not the important thing now at all—doesn’t matter what you are called or where you go to worship—it’s all different now!”
He goes on, “It’s who you are in your heart and how you live your life that matters to God. Worshipping is a spiritual thing—your spirit connecting with God’s spirit in adoration, praise and understanding.” He’s getting a little over her head at this point, and I believe that most of us would have found ourselves in a similar place—maybe we still do. So she counters again: “Well, I don’t know about that, but I know that a Messiah is coming and then we’ll know everything!” Jesus says to her and he says to us, “I am the one you are looking for. Stop looking elsewhere, stop waiting, start living now—right here and now!”
And so the disciples come back from their shopping trip and cannot believe what they see. Jesus is doing it again—breaking the rules. Their disbelief showed in their faces even though they had learned not to voice their disapproval out loud. But the woman, used to taking her cues from the looks on men’s faces, quietly slips away, so amazed by what Jesus had told her that she doesn’t even remember her water jug.
This is how she describes Jesus to all who would listen: this is a man who knows the real me—is it possible that he is the Messiah? Many of the Samaritans were so moved by her story and what Jesus said to them himself that they became believers. Many have called this un-named woman the first evangelist in the New Testament—the first one to know what it was to have her heart understood and loved by Jesus AND to tell others—the first one to understand what Jesus had to give—and the first one to take it to others.
How does all this fit with emptiness and living water? This lonely, Samaritan woman comes to the well, looking, it would seem for mere water. She leaves a changed woman, a loved and woman. Why? Jesus has “seen” her and instinctively known of her dependence in a world that was not kind to her. And he has offered her something of ultimate value—because she is valued by him, cared about by him, something no one else has ever done. Speaking of her past with compassion and not judgment, Jesus allows her to understand through the power of that compassion and love, that he is a prophet and, indeed, the Messiah. Jesus starts with us where we are—if we are looking for water, he starts with water and leads us into a deeper understanding of who he is, and who we are.
Mother Teresa has said, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” This is emptiness at its most painful—and many folks have been there at some point along the way. Perhaps you are there today. Helen Keller speaks of the emptiness that pervaded her life before Annie Sullivan came along. “Once I knew only darkness and stillness…my life was without past or future…but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.”
I pray for all of you that you will come to the well—looking for whatever you are looking for and that you will stay awhile and chat with Jesus—that you will allow him to be that little word pervading your emptiness. He knows all that you are and all that you want to be and he longs to share real water—water that shall quench your thirst forever and set your feet running out to tell others. As we say every week, “come, taste and see!”
And now a *blessing for the Journey into Emptiness: May the days that beckon the journey open a space between what is and what will be, a space of emptiness waiting to be filled. May the things that sit at the edge of revelation move silently into that emptiness. May they be noticed with attention and claimed as gifts given from the holy hand of heaven. When the gifts have been offered and received, may your soul be filled with gratitude to God who initiated the journey and provided the blessing. Amen and Amen *From exlplorefaith.org
Welcome!
Monday, March 28, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Lent--Understanding the Journey into Suffering 3-20-11
The Psalm: Psalm 51: 7-17 (portions) The Message
Tune me in to foot-tapping songs,
set these once-broken bones to dancing.
God, make a fresh start in me,
shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
Don't throw me out with the trash,
or fail to breathe holiness in me.
Bring me back from gray exile,
put a fresh wind in my sails!
Give me a job teaching rebels your ways
so the lost can find their way home.
Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God,
and I'll sing anthems to your life-giving ways.
Unbutton my lips, dear God;
I'll let loose with your praise.
Going through the motions doesn't please you,
a flawless performance is nothing to you.
I learned God-worship
when my pride was shattered.
Heart-shattered lives ready for love
don't for a moment escape God's notice.
The Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9 (The Message)
Six days later, three of them saw that glory. Jesus took Peter and the brothers, James and John, and led them up a high mountain. His appearance changed from the inside out, right before their eyes. Sunlight poured from his face. His clothes were filled with light. Then they realized that Moses and Elijah were also there in deep conversation with him. Peter broke in, "Master, this is a great moment! What would you think if I built three memorials here on the mountain—one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah?" While he was going on like this, babbling, a light-radiant cloud enveloped them, and sounding from deep in the cloud a voice: "This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of my delight. Listen to him."
When the disciples heard it, they fell flat on their faces, scared to death. But Jesus came over and touched them. "Don't be afraid." When they opened their eyes and looked around all they saw was Jesus, only Jesus. Coming down the mountain, Jesus swore them to secrecy. "Don't breathe a word of what you've seen. After the Son of Man is raised from the dead, you are free to talk."
*******************************************************************
God, suffering is not a word that we like—it makes us uncomfortable, it makes us uneasy, unsure of what we know. Bring us into your presence and show us your truth. Amen
This sermon is for every one of us who has ever, even for a brief period of time uttered these words: “why is this happening to me?” There’s no need for a show of hands here, I think it very unlikely that any of us have completely escaped the pain behind those words. Sometimes screamed, sometimes whispered, they are, nevertheless, a part of the DNA of humanity, and a sign that we are alive. I don’t like to preach about suffering—there are no easy answers, and for all the books written on the topic of why God lets bad things happen to good people, most of that content comes up short when it is the middle of the night and that is the only thought that fills your mind. Here is what I believe: God not only knows that we ask this question, no matter how quietly we ask it, and, God welcomes the question itself.
I hope that you will not find this sermon useless because it posits no awe-filled, mystical, finally it all makes sense, answer to the why and wherefore of suffering. Let’s be honest, if I had that answer, I would be, by now, a world-famous author—let’s make that a rich, world-famous author, who had ceased to grapple with the nitty-gritty of our everyday, sometimes wildly difficult times here on this earth. I’m not saying that the answer doesn’t exist and we all know that many have tried their hands at just such an explanation, but all seem to fall short , in the awful angst of loneliness, despair and pain. So why not just move on to a slightly more preacher and hearer-friendly topic? Well, as much as I would like to, suffering is a part of our journey on this earth and particularly of our Lenten journey.
Probably the event in contemporary North American Christianity that forced us to look long and hard at suffering was that day now known simply as 9-11. The image of those planes flying headlong into the towers are forever burnt into most of our minds, thanks to the non-stop repetition of that footage in the days just after 9-11. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City was one of thousands of pastors called upon to preach in the days immediately after that horrible day. Keller, in his sermon on the evening of September 11, while the towers were still burning, and people still trying to make their way home in the midst of the complete shutdown of transportation in an out of Manhattan, calls us to the cross. He says: “But it is on the Cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock that God now knows too what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack. And so you see what this means?” He goes on to quote, John Stott, an Anglican clergyperson, “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? Do you see what this means? Yes, we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be. It can’t be that [God] doesn’t love us! It can’t be that [God] doesn’t care. God so loved us and hates suffering that [God] was willing to come down and get involved in it.”
It is interesting to reflect that the early Christians and certainly Jesus had no expectation that following God would eliminate suffering in the world. The existential questions relating to the genesis of good and evil, the nature of suffering and a certain wonder that a ‘truly good and merciful God’ would allow suffering are all relatively new. Why, look at our scriptures.
Feel the joy with our Psalmist when the words fairly dance off the page: “set these once-broken bones to dancing. God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life…Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails!” And then, “Unbutton my lips, dear God; I'll let loose with your praise.
Going through the motions doesn't please you,…I learned God-worship when my pride was shattered. Heart-shattered lives ready for love don't for a moment escape God's notice.” And so God calls us, too—when our hearts are shattered, we are ready for love—what an amazing place to end up! And what an amazingly different way to look at suffering. Even our Gospel reading, the story of the Transfiguration—one of the truly glorious events in the New Testament, one which precedes and predicts the resurrection, contains an element of suffering. The disciples throw themselves down in fear until Jesus reaches out in compassion and calls them to see the glory.
Historians note that the Jewish people and early Christians accepted suffering as part of the journey—simply a place to get a different perspective. It was only with the dawn of the Enlightenment, that time when everything had to make sense, that suffering was begun to be viewed as grounds for skepticism, or, even more seriously, as a reason not to believe at all. Perhaps we have much to learn from our Jewish ancestors and those early Christians who viewed suffering as a part of Christian growth—what we now call Spiritual Formation. Suffering, like glorification and sanctification are part of, but necessary different stages of growth in the Christian life. It has always amazed me—the amount of energy and anger we put into discussions of the whys and ways of suffering when not once do we agonize over why God created the sky so blue, the mountain so high, or the flower so intricately beautiful. What would happen to the way we looked at suffering if we began to view suffering and glory as two sides of the same coin and that coin is Christian maturity? Is it not possible that it is in our change of perspective that suffering loses some, if not most, of the negative power that it seems to hold over our lives and hearts?
Gustavo Gutiérrez, is a Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest regarded as one of the principal founders of liberation theology in Latin America. Hear what he has to say about the many aspects of following Jesus: “there is no aspect of human life that is unrelated to the following of Jesus. The road passes through every dimension of our existence. A spirituality is not restricted to the so-called religious aspects of life: prayer and worship. It is not limited to one sector but is all-embracing, because the whole of human life, personal and communal, is involved in the journey. A spirituality is a manner of life that gives a profound unity to our prayer, thought, and action..”
By living through these whole journeys, journeys which contain joy and sorrow, ease and pain, we learn to reach for places where we can embrace not only all of our lives, but all of the lives of others—those whom we might otherwise think below us—or at least different from us. One of my most precious ministry experiences was at The Church of Gethsemane, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. A Presbyterian church plant at the time, it later became and remains a vital, thriving congregation. What makes Church of Gethsemane different? It was founded for and by formerly incarcerated persons. Rev. Constance Baugh, my once friend and mentor described the church this way: “Gethsemane provides an opportunity for the voiceless to find their voices, the breaking of silence, and solidarity instead of charity. Persons who have been disinherited and disempowered by the world have moved from the margins to the center of religious life where their life experience is valued and their stories are heard. Persons who have been engulfed in a culture of silence are breaking that silence and speaking out. Persons are in community rather than being objects of charity outside the church walls.”
What greater gift is this—to use our own suffering to enable us to provide such opportunities? The conversation regarding suffering and pain, never really over, calls us now to be kind to ourselves and venture forth to joy and peace generated in the constant care of our God who not only cares for us but took on the suffering of the world to show us the extent of that great love. And now, a blessing for the Journey into suffering:
“May the suffering that stretches your soul also render it pliable in the hand of God. May the stretch be soft, so you can endure it with unyielding patience. May your vision be clear so that, no matter the trial, you can see the wonder standing quietly nearby. And in the very thing you long to cast away, may you find a gem worth keeping.”* Amen and amen!
*From Explorefaith.org
Tune me in to foot-tapping songs,
set these once-broken bones to dancing.
God, make a fresh start in me,
shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
Don't throw me out with the trash,
or fail to breathe holiness in me.
Bring me back from gray exile,
put a fresh wind in my sails!
Give me a job teaching rebels your ways
so the lost can find their way home.
Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God,
and I'll sing anthems to your life-giving ways.
Unbutton my lips, dear God;
I'll let loose with your praise.
Going through the motions doesn't please you,
a flawless performance is nothing to you.
I learned God-worship
when my pride was shattered.
Heart-shattered lives ready for love
don't for a moment escape God's notice.
The Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9 (The Message)
Six days later, three of them saw that glory. Jesus took Peter and the brothers, James and John, and led them up a high mountain. His appearance changed from the inside out, right before their eyes. Sunlight poured from his face. His clothes were filled with light. Then they realized that Moses and Elijah were also there in deep conversation with him. Peter broke in, "Master, this is a great moment! What would you think if I built three memorials here on the mountain—one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah?" While he was going on like this, babbling, a light-radiant cloud enveloped them, and sounding from deep in the cloud a voice: "This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of my delight. Listen to him."
When the disciples heard it, they fell flat on their faces, scared to death. But Jesus came over and touched them. "Don't be afraid." When they opened their eyes and looked around all they saw was Jesus, only Jesus. Coming down the mountain, Jesus swore them to secrecy. "Don't breathe a word of what you've seen. After the Son of Man is raised from the dead, you are free to talk."
*******************************************************************
God, suffering is not a word that we like—it makes us uncomfortable, it makes us uneasy, unsure of what we know. Bring us into your presence and show us your truth. Amen
This sermon is for every one of us who has ever, even for a brief period of time uttered these words: “why is this happening to me?” There’s no need for a show of hands here, I think it very unlikely that any of us have completely escaped the pain behind those words. Sometimes screamed, sometimes whispered, they are, nevertheless, a part of the DNA of humanity, and a sign that we are alive. I don’t like to preach about suffering—there are no easy answers, and for all the books written on the topic of why God lets bad things happen to good people, most of that content comes up short when it is the middle of the night and that is the only thought that fills your mind. Here is what I believe: God not only knows that we ask this question, no matter how quietly we ask it, and, God welcomes the question itself.
I hope that you will not find this sermon useless because it posits no awe-filled, mystical, finally it all makes sense, answer to the why and wherefore of suffering. Let’s be honest, if I had that answer, I would be, by now, a world-famous author—let’s make that a rich, world-famous author, who had ceased to grapple with the nitty-gritty of our everyday, sometimes wildly difficult times here on this earth. I’m not saying that the answer doesn’t exist and we all know that many have tried their hands at just such an explanation, but all seem to fall short , in the awful angst of loneliness, despair and pain. So why not just move on to a slightly more preacher and hearer-friendly topic? Well, as much as I would like to, suffering is a part of our journey on this earth and particularly of our Lenten journey.
Probably the event in contemporary North American Christianity that forced us to look long and hard at suffering was that day now known simply as 9-11. The image of those planes flying headlong into the towers are forever burnt into most of our minds, thanks to the non-stop repetition of that footage in the days just after 9-11. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City was one of thousands of pastors called upon to preach in the days immediately after that horrible day. Keller, in his sermon on the evening of September 11, while the towers were still burning, and people still trying to make their way home in the midst of the complete shutdown of transportation in an out of Manhattan, calls us to the cross. He says: “But it is on the Cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock that God now knows too what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack. And so you see what this means?” He goes on to quote, John Stott, an Anglican clergyperson, “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? Do you see what this means? Yes, we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be. It can’t be that [God] doesn’t love us! It can’t be that [God] doesn’t care. God so loved us and hates suffering that [God] was willing to come down and get involved in it.”
It is interesting to reflect that the early Christians and certainly Jesus had no expectation that following God would eliminate suffering in the world. The existential questions relating to the genesis of good and evil, the nature of suffering and a certain wonder that a ‘truly good and merciful God’ would allow suffering are all relatively new. Why, look at our scriptures.
Feel the joy with our Psalmist when the words fairly dance off the page: “set these once-broken bones to dancing. God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life…Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails!” And then, “Unbutton my lips, dear God; I'll let loose with your praise.
Going through the motions doesn't please you,…I learned God-worship when my pride was shattered. Heart-shattered lives ready for love don't for a moment escape God's notice.” And so God calls us, too—when our hearts are shattered, we are ready for love—what an amazing place to end up! And what an amazingly different way to look at suffering. Even our Gospel reading, the story of the Transfiguration—one of the truly glorious events in the New Testament, one which precedes and predicts the resurrection, contains an element of suffering. The disciples throw themselves down in fear until Jesus reaches out in compassion and calls them to see the glory.
Historians note that the Jewish people and early Christians accepted suffering as part of the journey—simply a place to get a different perspective. It was only with the dawn of the Enlightenment, that time when everything had to make sense, that suffering was begun to be viewed as grounds for skepticism, or, even more seriously, as a reason not to believe at all. Perhaps we have much to learn from our Jewish ancestors and those early Christians who viewed suffering as a part of Christian growth—what we now call Spiritual Formation. Suffering, like glorification and sanctification are part of, but necessary different stages of growth in the Christian life. It has always amazed me—the amount of energy and anger we put into discussions of the whys and ways of suffering when not once do we agonize over why God created the sky so blue, the mountain so high, or the flower so intricately beautiful. What would happen to the way we looked at suffering if we began to view suffering and glory as two sides of the same coin and that coin is Christian maturity? Is it not possible that it is in our change of perspective that suffering loses some, if not most, of the negative power that it seems to hold over our lives and hearts?
Gustavo Gutiérrez, is a Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest regarded as one of the principal founders of liberation theology in Latin America. Hear what he has to say about the many aspects of following Jesus: “there is no aspect of human life that is unrelated to the following of Jesus. The road passes through every dimension of our existence. A spirituality is not restricted to the so-called religious aspects of life: prayer and worship. It is not limited to one sector but is all-embracing, because the whole of human life, personal and communal, is involved in the journey. A spirituality is a manner of life that gives a profound unity to our prayer, thought, and action..”
By living through these whole journeys, journeys which contain joy and sorrow, ease and pain, we learn to reach for places where we can embrace not only all of our lives, but all of the lives of others—those whom we might otherwise think below us—or at least different from us. One of my most precious ministry experiences was at The Church of Gethsemane, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. A Presbyterian church plant at the time, it later became and remains a vital, thriving congregation. What makes Church of Gethsemane different? It was founded for and by formerly incarcerated persons. Rev. Constance Baugh, my once friend and mentor described the church this way: “Gethsemane provides an opportunity for the voiceless to find their voices, the breaking of silence, and solidarity instead of charity. Persons who have been disinherited and disempowered by the world have moved from the margins to the center of religious life where their life experience is valued and their stories are heard. Persons who have been engulfed in a culture of silence are breaking that silence and speaking out. Persons are in community rather than being objects of charity outside the church walls.”
What greater gift is this—to use our own suffering to enable us to provide such opportunities? The conversation regarding suffering and pain, never really over, calls us now to be kind to ourselves and venture forth to joy and peace generated in the constant care of our God who not only cares for us but took on the suffering of the world to show us the extent of that great love. And now, a blessing for the Journey into suffering:
“May the suffering that stretches your soul also render it pliable in the hand of God. May the stretch be soft, so you can endure it with unyielding patience. May your vision be clear so that, no matter the trial, you can see the wonder standing quietly nearby. And in the very thing you long to cast away, may you find a gem worth keeping.”* Amen and amen!
*From Explorefaith.org
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Lent--Beginning the Journey with Open Hearts 3-13-2011
Psalm 32: 1-5—A Psalm of David
Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be— you get a fresh start,
your slate's wiped clean.
Count yourself lucky—
GOD holds nothing against you and you're holding nothing back from God.
When I kept it all inside,
my bones turned to powder,
my words became daylong groans.
The pressure never let up;
all the juices of my life dried up.
Then I let it all out;
I said, "I'll make a clean breast of my failures to GOD."
Suddenly the pressure was gone—
my guilt dissolved,
my sin disappeared.
The Gospel—M atthew 4:1-11 (The Message)
Next Jesus was taken into the wild by the forty days and forty nights. That left him, Spirit for the Test. The Devil was ready to give it. Jesus prepared for the Test by fasting of course, in a state of extreme hunger, which the Devil took advantage of in the first test: "Since you are God's Son, speak the word that will turn these stones into loaves of bread." Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: "It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God's mouth."
For the second test the Devil took him to the Holy City. He sat him on top of the Temple and said, "Since you are God's Son, jump." The Devil goaded him by quoting Psalm 91: "He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won't so much as stub your toe on a stone." Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: "Don't you dare test the Lord your God."
For the third test, the Devil took him to the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth's kingdoms, how glorious they all were. Then he said, "They're yours—lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they're yours." Jesus' refusal was curt: "Beat it, Satan!" He backed his rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: "Worship the Lord your God, and only God. Serve God with absolute single-heartedness." The Test was over. The Devil left. And in his place, angels! Angels came and took care of Jesus' needs.
God, it seems as if the days speed by and we are left wondering where the time went. Enable us to slow ourselves down and quietly listen to our hearts—yearning to see more of you as we journey toward Easter. Amen
For many of us, Lent is a scary, deserted place—full of wilderness, temptation, suffering and pain. For those of us who lived a tradition of “giving up” something for Lent—there was the annual chore of deciding which of our luxuries we would give up—and for some of you, that meant in addition to that which your church already demanded. So, all in all, Lent isn’t a favorite time of year for many folks. For some, the best thing about Lent is that it lends credibility to the notion of Mardi Gras—that wild and uproarious party-hardy time just before we enter into the somewhat boring, lean, even mean, days of Lent. And, indeed, for another some of you, Lent was, and maybe is, a foreign time that doesn’t quite make sense.
For all of us, I want to suggest a way of looking at Lent that I hope will revive your interest in these next days, regardless of your past experiences of Lent or whether you have no experience at all. And to do that needs just a little explanation. Lent is a 40+-day period between Ash Wednesday—which is the formal beginning of Lent and Holy Thursday (which some of us call Maundy Thursday), which is the Thursday of the Last Supper before Jesus was crucified. For the early Church, Lent was a period of time of preparation for baptism. All of the modern traditions have moved away from merely looking at Lent as a time of deprivation and fasting and have begun to look at it as a season of repentance and soul searching. Thomas Keating, Trappist Monk, said, Lent is a time for “confrontation with the false self.” He noted that the purpose of fasting and prayer is to allow God to strip away all that would muddy our focus.
Lent invites us to seek God with our whole hearts—to “clean house or heart”, if you will. The Psalmist says, “create in me a clean heart, O God”! Now the problem with the word “clean” is that we tend to think in opposites and the opposite of clean is—Dirty! And so we get bogged down and most of us find ourselves backing up a bit from the notion that we are ‘dirty’. We may have been told that for years, and we are not going there again. I believe that what confines us in our exploration of Lent is just such limiting thinking. I would suggest that the opposite of a clean heart spiritually is a cluttered, chaotic heart—too busy—pulled in too many ways to make room for contemplating the suffering and resurrection that is about to happen.
The heart has long been used as a metaphor for our deepest selves—we say things like, “in my heart, I believe” or “her heart is broken”. We have even said, “he died of a broken heart”. And so, we seek to know how to bring our whole selves to God—our deepest hearts—to live our entire lives in sync with the desires of our hearts, and our encounters with the holy—to both see and hear the truth of the journey and make that journey our own. And so, we look, in the best possible place we could look, to the life of Jesus and he begins the very same journey we are now invited to undertake. As we enter Lent and consider the commitments we make to grow our hearts in the will of God, we first go with Jesus to the desert, to be tempted, to see more clearly that which would keep us from an open heart.
Return with me to the first sentence of our Gospel lesson today: “Jesus was taken into the wild by the Spirit for the Test.” Satan didn’t lure Jesus into the desert, as we so often think, the Spirit of God took Jesus to the desert to give him the knowledge and skills that he needed for the journey. What an amazing thought—that we are tested, not just because God allows Satan, or evil, or the world (whatever makes the most sense to you), we are tested because there are things we need and want to learn. There is a very old musicians’ joke that asks: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer, “practice, practice, practice.” It’s not quite so humorous for most of us when the question is “how do you get to spiritual maturity?” and the answer is the same: “Practice, practice, practice!”
Now assuming that we have some security that we and Jesus are being tested for a purpose and not for sport, let’s look at the so-called temptations, themselves. First, Jesus was hungry, why the man hadn’t eaten for 40 days and if we believe, and I do, that Jesus felt all the things that we do, then we have to know that Jesus was pretty darn hungry. Satan, whatever that looks like for you, takes advantage of Jesus’ hunger and taunts him, telling him to prove that he is God’s son by speaking the abracadraba word that will make the stones into bread. Even in the midst of his incredible hunger, Jesus says, “You don’t get it—a person doesn’t stay alive just by bread, but by feasting continuously on the word of God.” There are many sophisticated analyses of the temptations of Jesus—mine, not so much—it just seems so obvious to me that Jesus is calling himself and us to put first things first—to focus on what really matters—what’s a little physical hunger when compared to the spiritual fullness of living in the “steady stream of words from God’s mouth.” The never-ending, always-present, hunger and thirst filling stream of God’s words and will for our lives.
Second, after Jesus strongly rebukes Satan, they go to the Holy City. Satan takes Jesus to the top of the Temple. And again, he challenges Jesus to meet the world’s expectations of what the Messiah was to be—a magic-working, show-stopping king who could do tricks to prove that he had a special connection to God—that God would send the angels to catch him in this daredevil attempt. Jesus, much wiser, and more “grounded” as we might say, than Satan gave him credit for, simply says, “Don’t even try it!” But far more important is the fact that Jesus shows us that when tempted to go for what is popular in the world, to make a name for ourselves, or to climb higher than everyone else, our goal is to trust in God to care for us.
Finally, Satan takes Jesus to a very high mountain and tells him to look around. “I can give you all of this, all you have to do is worship me. All you have to do is compromise your own values and your spiritual insights and you can have it all!” Jesus was getting pretty ticked off by now and simply says: “Worship God with single-mindedness and single-heartedness.” At that, the test was over, Satan left and God ministered to Jesus by sending angels to meet his needs. Jesus had learned what he needed to learn for the next step of the journey and we by enduring the testing with him learn as well. To put it in words that my still cluttered mind can remember—this is what I take from the test:
First, put first things first. If I look to get fed anywhere other than the will and words of God, my hunger for quick and easy fixes will slow my spiritual journey to a standstill. I’ll admit it, I don’t like to be hungry. Whether hungry for physical or spiritual food, I get cranky and irritable. Jesus leads us to the ever-present, ever-flowing stream of God’s presence that will sustain us until the food, either food for the body or food for the soul comes. Secondly, meeting the world’s expectations takes us away from the divine nature of God that is given to each and every one of us. Third, nothing, not power, not wealth, not popularity, is worth compromising our spiritual knowledge of the rightness of God’s plan for us and for our world. And finally, God does send angels to minister to us—whether they appear in casseroles at your front door, inspirational emails, an unexpected phone call, or simply a friend’s “I Love You”—those angels do come to minister to us.
And so, it is Lent again. And I leave you with a Blessing for the Journey into Self:
May the Wind of God drive away impurity
And bring fresh and vigorous possibility to your soul.
May the freeing Spirit unbind those places within
Held captive by hopelessness, anxious thoughts and internal discord.
And may you find a middle place of awareness,
Between the blowing and the stillness, to feel and watch the movement from old to new. And, together, we say:
Amen and amen.
Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be— you get a fresh start,
your slate's wiped clean.
Count yourself lucky—
GOD holds nothing against you and you're holding nothing back from God.
When I kept it all inside,
my bones turned to powder,
my words became daylong groans.
The pressure never let up;
all the juices of my life dried up.
Then I let it all out;
I said, "I'll make a clean breast of my failures to GOD."
Suddenly the pressure was gone—
my guilt dissolved,
my sin disappeared.
The Gospel—M atthew 4:1-11 (The Message)
Next Jesus was taken into the wild by the forty days and forty nights. That left him, Spirit for the Test. The Devil was ready to give it. Jesus prepared for the Test by fasting of course, in a state of extreme hunger, which the Devil took advantage of in the first test: "Since you are God's Son, speak the word that will turn these stones into loaves of bread." Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: "It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God's mouth."
For the second test the Devil took him to the Holy City. He sat him on top of the Temple and said, "Since you are God's Son, jump." The Devil goaded him by quoting Psalm 91: "He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won't so much as stub your toe on a stone." Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: "Don't you dare test the Lord your God."
For the third test, the Devil took him to the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth's kingdoms, how glorious they all were. Then he said, "They're yours—lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they're yours." Jesus' refusal was curt: "Beat it, Satan!" He backed his rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: "Worship the Lord your God, and only God. Serve God with absolute single-heartedness." The Test was over. The Devil left. And in his place, angels! Angels came and took care of Jesus' needs.
God, it seems as if the days speed by and we are left wondering where the time went. Enable us to slow ourselves down and quietly listen to our hearts—yearning to see more of you as we journey toward Easter. Amen
For many of us, Lent is a scary, deserted place—full of wilderness, temptation, suffering and pain. For those of us who lived a tradition of “giving up” something for Lent—there was the annual chore of deciding which of our luxuries we would give up—and for some of you, that meant in addition to that which your church already demanded. So, all in all, Lent isn’t a favorite time of year for many folks. For some, the best thing about Lent is that it lends credibility to the notion of Mardi Gras—that wild and uproarious party-hardy time just before we enter into the somewhat boring, lean, even mean, days of Lent. And, indeed, for another some of you, Lent was, and maybe is, a foreign time that doesn’t quite make sense.
For all of us, I want to suggest a way of looking at Lent that I hope will revive your interest in these next days, regardless of your past experiences of Lent or whether you have no experience at all. And to do that needs just a little explanation. Lent is a 40+-day period between Ash Wednesday—which is the formal beginning of Lent and Holy Thursday (which some of us call Maundy Thursday), which is the Thursday of the Last Supper before Jesus was crucified. For the early Church, Lent was a period of time of preparation for baptism. All of the modern traditions have moved away from merely looking at Lent as a time of deprivation and fasting and have begun to look at it as a season of repentance and soul searching. Thomas Keating, Trappist Monk, said, Lent is a time for “confrontation with the false self.” He noted that the purpose of fasting and prayer is to allow God to strip away all that would muddy our focus.
Lent invites us to seek God with our whole hearts—to “clean house or heart”, if you will. The Psalmist says, “create in me a clean heart, O God”! Now the problem with the word “clean” is that we tend to think in opposites and the opposite of clean is—Dirty! And so we get bogged down and most of us find ourselves backing up a bit from the notion that we are ‘dirty’. We may have been told that for years, and we are not going there again. I believe that what confines us in our exploration of Lent is just such limiting thinking. I would suggest that the opposite of a clean heart spiritually is a cluttered, chaotic heart—too busy—pulled in too many ways to make room for contemplating the suffering and resurrection that is about to happen.
The heart has long been used as a metaphor for our deepest selves—we say things like, “in my heart, I believe” or “her heart is broken”. We have even said, “he died of a broken heart”. And so, we seek to know how to bring our whole selves to God—our deepest hearts—to live our entire lives in sync with the desires of our hearts, and our encounters with the holy—to both see and hear the truth of the journey and make that journey our own. And so, we look, in the best possible place we could look, to the life of Jesus and he begins the very same journey we are now invited to undertake. As we enter Lent and consider the commitments we make to grow our hearts in the will of God, we first go with Jesus to the desert, to be tempted, to see more clearly that which would keep us from an open heart.
Return with me to the first sentence of our Gospel lesson today: “Jesus was taken into the wild by the Spirit for the Test.” Satan didn’t lure Jesus into the desert, as we so often think, the Spirit of God took Jesus to the desert to give him the knowledge and skills that he needed for the journey. What an amazing thought—that we are tested, not just because God allows Satan, or evil, or the world (whatever makes the most sense to you), we are tested because there are things we need and want to learn. There is a very old musicians’ joke that asks: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer, “practice, practice, practice.” It’s not quite so humorous for most of us when the question is “how do you get to spiritual maturity?” and the answer is the same: “Practice, practice, practice!”
Now assuming that we have some security that we and Jesus are being tested for a purpose and not for sport, let’s look at the so-called temptations, themselves. First, Jesus was hungry, why the man hadn’t eaten for 40 days and if we believe, and I do, that Jesus felt all the things that we do, then we have to know that Jesus was pretty darn hungry. Satan, whatever that looks like for you, takes advantage of Jesus’ hunger and taunts him, telling him to prove that he is God’s son by speaking the abracadraba word that will make the stones into bread. Even in the midst of his incredible hunger, Jesus says, “You don’t get it—a person doesn’t stay alive just by bread, but by feasting continuously on the word of God.” There are many sophisticated analyses of the temptations of Jesus—mine, not so much—it just seems so obvious to me that Jesus is calling himself and us to put first things first—to focus on what really matters—what’s a little physical hunger when compared to the spiritual fullness of living in the “steady stream of words from God’s mouth.” The never-ending, always-present, hunger and thirst filling stream of God’s words and will for our lives.
Second, after Jesus strongly rebukes Satan, they go to the Holy City. Satan takes Jesus to the top of the Temple. And again, he challenges Jesus to meet the world’s expectations of what the Messiah was to be—a magic-working, show-stopping king who could do tricks to prove that he had a special connection to God—that God would send the angels to catch him in this daredevil attempt. Jesus, much wiser, and more “grounded” as we might say, than Satan gave him credit for, simply says, “Don’t even try it!” But far more important is the fact that Jesus shows us that when tempted to go for what is popular in the world, to make a name for ourselves, or to climb higher than everyone else, our goal is to trust in God to care for us.
Finally, Satan takes Jesus to a very high mountain and tells him to look around. “I can give you all of this, all you have to do is worship me. All you have to do is compromise your own values and your spiritual insights and you can have it all!” Jesus was getting pretty ticked off by now and simply says: “Worship God with single-mindedness and single-heartedness.” At that, the test was over, Satan left and God ministered to Jesus by sending angels to meet his needs. Jesus had learned what he needed to learn for the next step of the journey and we by enduring the testing with him learn as well. To put it in words that my still cluttered mind can remember—this is what I take from the test:
First, put first things first. If I look to get fed anywhere other than the will and words of God, my hunger for quick and easy fixes will slow my spiritual journey to a standstill. I’ll admit it, I don’t like to be hungry. Whether hungry for physical or spiritual food, I get cranky and irritable. Jesus leads us to the ever-present, ever-flowing stream of God’s presence that will sustain us until the food, either food for the body or food for the soul comes. Secondly, meeting the world’s expectations takes us away from the divine nature of God that is given to each and every one of us. Third, nothing, not power, not wealth, not popularity, is worth compromising our spiritual knowledge of the rightness of God’s plan for us and for our world. And finally, God does send angels to minister to us—whether they appear in casseroles at your front door, inspirational emails, an unexpected phone call, or simply a friend’s “I Love You”—those angels do come to minister to us.
And so, it is Lent again. And I leave you with a Blessing for the Journey into Self:
May the Wind of God drive away impurity
And bring fresh and vigorous possibility to your soul.
May the freeing Spirit unbind those places within
Held captive by hopelessness, anxious thoughts and internal discord.
And may you find a middle place of awareness,
Between the blowing and the stillness, to feel and watch the movement from old to new. And, together, we say:
Amen and amen.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
We Have Heard and We Have Answered--Trustworthy Stewards--2-27-11
1 Corinthians 4:1-5 (The Message)
Don't imagine us leaders to be something we aren't. We are servants of Christ…We are guides into God's most sublime secrets, not security guards posted to protect them. The requirements for a good guide are reliability and accurate knowledge. It matters very little to me what you think of me, even less where I rank in popular opinion. I don't even rank myself. Comparisons in these matters are pointless. I'm not aware of anything that would disqualify me from being a good guide for you, but that doesn't mean much. The Master makes that judgment. So don't get ahead of the Master and jump to conclusions with your judgments before all the evidence is in. When he comes, he will bring out in the open and place in evidence all kinds of things we never even dreamed of—inner motives and purposes and prayers. Only then will any one of us get to hear the "Well done!" of God.
Matthew 6:24-26; 30-34 (The Message--portions)
"You can't worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you'll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can't worship God and Money both. "If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds. (And take a look at the flowers), "If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don't you think God will attend to you, take pride in you, give the best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you… to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God… fuss over these things, but you know both God and how God works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”
*************************************************************************
Please pray with me: God you have called and we want to answer in ways that bring glory to you. Teach us the deeper truths; teach us to be trustworthy with all that we have been given. Teach us of You. Amen
Our Corinthians passage today begins like this in the King James translation: “Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.” I like the notion of trustworthy stewards and I am awed by the idea that what we are stewards of are God’s mysteries—so, it is with the call to be trustworthy stewards of all that God has given that we end our current sermon series on God’s call and our answer.
Today, we celebrate another milestone of sorts for Open Circle. We have our first of what will be many annual congregational meetings. And because I take very seriously the call of this church to be trustworthy stewards, I want to think together about all that means. Most of the time we look at these passages as calls to individuals, but I believe that they are just as valid as calls to specific communities. People often ask me why I think Open Circle has succeeded when other church plants have not and what do I think makes this community so incredibly wonderful. There are long complex answers—most of which are not worth the paper they are written on—because only one answer tells the story. God wanted this church to happen exactly when, where, and how it happened. And every week when we gather for worship, when S.P.I.R.I.T. gathers to rehearse, when Bible and book studies happen, Jesus is in our midst. Our lived commitment to allow God to work among us and within us makes possible the moving of the Holy Spirit, not just occasionally, but every time we gather. Most of us waited a long time for Open Circle to happen, not just in The Villages, but in our lives. And God honored and continues to honor that deep down inside we trusted that God would make a place for us to call our spiritual home.
But our passages today call us away from mere satisfaction to deeper paths of thinking about the future and how we will learn to rely on God not just in this crazy, happy place of beginning to the places of sustaining what God has already done, moving on in new ways, and listening for more challenging calls of the Spirit. In Corinthians, Paul addresses the leaders of the church, and as we are about to elect our leaders, I bring this challenge to you who have made the commitment to serve and to all of us who will open ourselves up to be the means by which God’s will is to be made known. On this day we do not just “vote”, we allow God to speak through us with each decision for the good of this church. Paul says, and we must listen with open hearts, “Don't imagine us leaders to be something we aren't. We are servants of Christ…We are guides into God's most sublime secrets, not security guards posted to protect them. The requirements for a good guide are reliability and accurate knowledge.” This day we are calling out servants of Christ, guides, if you will. And, my greatest prayer for myself and for all our leaders is that we will continually find the courage and the grace to put aside our own thoughts and wants and enter into a covenant with all of you that we will seek, and only seek, God’s will for this church. I believe that God has honored and will continue to honor this seeking of the divine will for every question we, the church, may ask along the way. And we are called to be faithful, trustworthy stewards of the wonderful knowledge of God’s will for us.
And then, along comes Jesus, still standing on the side of a mountain preaching to all who will listen. And he is calling us to decide, as individuals and as a church. Who and what are we going to follow? The lure of the worldly greatness or the will of a faithful God who cares and has always cared about our well-being—every aspect of our well-being. Think of the last time you stood in a field of wildflowers, or at the ocean, or at the foot of a mountain…"If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don't you think God will attend to you, take pride in you, give the best for you? “ It seems to me that we answer as individual people, but also as the corporate body of Christ—the church. Jesus says that we are to stop worrying about how things are going to work out because it distracts us from noticing what God has given. In the simplest of words, if we focus on what we are trying to get, there is no room in our field of vision for simply resting in the wonder of all that God has given. Look how God has provided for us, even here, even now.
You will remember that I spoke of Parker Palmer last week—this week I believe that his words shed much light on our journey here. He speaks eloquently of five distractions that we as leaders, or in this case, we as a church, can get caught up in and, then, become unable to see all that God intends for us to be. I want to mention each of them very briefly. Although he calls them “shadow-casting monsters”, I will use the less intense word “distraction”. The meaning, I believe is the same.
First, Palmer lists “insecurity about identity and worth” as a distraction; noting that many people are unable to be secure about who they are unless they minimize who their neighbor is. Avoiding this distraction calls us to be so clear about who we are as a people and as a church—to have an identity about which we feel secure and confident—to find our identity in our vision and to know, beyond doubt that this is the identity to which God has called us. So come along as you are invited into our visioning process.
Second, Parker lists the “belief that the universe is a battleground” as a potential shadow or distraction. He notes that our language is full of examples of win-lose vocabulary. Keeping this distraction from coloring our interactions calls us to move away from seeing our struggles as battles where one group will win and one will, unfortunately, lose. Thirdly, Parker notes that many people and institutions operate in a “functional atheism”—that is the belief that if anything is to get done, we, ourselves are responsible for the doing of it. How sad, indeed, that churches and church leaders seem especially prone to this distraction—and we must always remember that the work at hand is ours to do only after God shows the way and opens the door, prepares us for our journeys and upholds us along our way.
The fourth element of distraction from the reality of our dependence upon God, Palmer identifies as “fear, especially the fear of the natural chaos of life”. Our need to organize ourselves away from any anxiety-producing chaos limits our ability to live fully and freely into the abundance of all that God has in store for us. I don’t know about you, but I feel more fully alive in a field of wildflowers, where the wind has blown the seeds everywhichaway, than I do in a neatly planted botanical garden where everything blooms in accurately planted rows with colors that “match” each other planted accordingly. Think about it—the fullness of God’s love and the invitation of all to receive and enjoy may make for some delightful “messiness” along the way.
Finally, Palmer says that the fifth shadow or distraction is “the denial of death itself”—not just the death of people, but the death of programs, ideas, leadership tenures. He notes that this refusal to let things die a natural death keeps us from seeing the new and exciting things that God has for us coming over the horizon. I have seen this many times in groups of all sorts and sizes when “because we’ve always done it this way” takes precedence over a creative spirit just waiting to explode.
And so, my friends, I invite us to rejoice in what God has done in and among us—to stay alert to those things which would distract us from the joy of participating in the unfolding of God’s will for this church and for this people. Take a look at the flowers and find joy and peace. Amen and amen.
Don't imagine us leaders to be something we aren't. We are servants of Christ…We are guides into God's most sublime secrets, not security guards posted to protect them. The requirements for a good guide are reliability and accurate knowledge. It matters very little to me what you think of me, even less where I rank in popular opinion. I don't even rank myself. Comparisons in these matters are pointless. I'm not aware of anything that would disqualify me from being a good guide for you, but that doesn't mean much. The Master makes that judgment. So don't get ahead of the Master and jump to conclusions with your judgments before all the evidence is in. When he comes, he will bring out in the open and place in evidence all kinds of things we never even dreamed of—inner motives and purposes and prayers. Only then will any one of us get to hear the "Well done!" of God.
Matthew 6:24-26; 30-34 (The Message--portions)
"You can't worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you'll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can't worship God and Money both. "If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds. (And take a look at the flowers), "If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don't you think God will attend to you, take pride in you, give the best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you… to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God… fuss over these things, but you know both God and how God works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”
*************************************************************************
Please pray with me: God you have called and we want to answer in ways that bring glory to you. Teach us the deeper truths; teach us to be trustworthy with all that we have been given. Teach us of You. Amen
Our Corinthians passage today begins like this in the King James translation: “Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.” I like the notion of trustworthy stewards and I am awed by the idea that what we are stewards of are God’s mysteries—so, it is with the call to be trustworthy stewards of all that God has given that we end our current sermon series on God’s call and our answer.
Today, we celebrate another milestone of sorts for Open Circle. We have our first of what will be many annual congregational meetings. And because I take very seriously the call of this church to be trustworthy stewards, I want to think together about all that means. Most of the time we look at these passages as calls to individuals, but I believe that they are just as valid as calls to specific communities. People often ask me why I think Open Circle has succeeded when other church plants have not and what do I think makes this community so incredibly wonderful. There are long complex answers—most of which are not worth the paper they are written on—because only one answer tells the story. God wanted this church to happen exactly when, where, and how it happened. And every week when we gather for worship, when S.P.I.R.I.T. gathers to rehearse, when Bible and book studies happen, Jesus is in our midst. Our lived commitment to allow God to work among us and within us makes possible the moving of the Holy Spirit, not just occasionally, but every time we gather. Most of us waited a long time for Open Circle to happen, not just in The Villages, but in our lives. And God honored and continues to honor that deep down inside we trusted that God would make a place for us to call our spiritual home.
But our passages today call us away from mere satisfaction to deeper paths of thinking about the future and how we will learn to rely on God not just in this crazy, happy place of beginning to the places of sustaining what God has already done, moving on in new ways, and listening for more challenging calls of the Spirit. In Corinthians, Paul addresses the leaders of the church, and as we are about to elect our leaders, I bring this challenge to you who have made the commitment to serve and to all of us who will open ourselves up to be the means by which God’s will is to be made known. On this day we do not just “vote”, we allow God to speak through us with each decision for the good of this church. Paul says, and we must listen with open hearts, “Don't imagine us leaders to be something we aren't. We are servants of Christ…We are guides into God's most sublime secrets, not security guards posted to protect them. The requirements for a good guide are reliability and accurate knowledge.” This day we are calling out servants of Christ, guides, if you will. And, my greatest prayer for myself and for all our leaders is that we will continually find the courage and the grace to put aside our own thoughts and wants and enter into a covenant with all of you that we will seek, and only seek, God’s will for this church. I believe that God has honored and will continue to honor this seeking of the divine will for every question we, the church, may ask along the way. And we are called to be faithful, trustworthy stewards of the wonderful knowledge of God’s will for us.
And then, along comes Jesus, still standing on the side of a mountain preaching to all who will listen. And he is calling us to decide, as individuals and as a church. Who and what are we going to follow? The lure of the worldly greatness or the will of a faithful God who cares and has always cared about our well-being—every aspect of our well-being. Think of the last time you stood in a field of wildflowers, or at the ocean, or at the foot of a mountain…"If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don't you think God will attend to you, take pride in you, give the best for you? “ It seems to me that we answer as individual people, but also as the corporate body of Christ—the church. Jesus says that we are to stop worrying about how things are going to work out because it distracts us from noticing what God has given. In the simplest of words, if we focus on what we are trying to get, there is no room in our field of vision for simply resting in the wonder of all that God has given. Look how God has provided for us, even here, even now.
You will remember that I spoke of Parker Palmer last week—this week I believe that his words shed much light on our journey here. He speaks eloquently of five distractions that we as leaders, or in this case, we as a church, can get caught up in and, then, become unable to see all that God intends for us to be. I want to mention each of them very briefly. Although he calls them “shadow-casting monsters”, I will use the less intense word “distraction”. The meaning, I believe is the same.
First, Palmer lists “insecurity about identity and worth” as a distraction; noting that many people are unable to be secure about who they are unless they minimize who their neighbor is. Avoiding this distraction calls us to be so clear about who we are as a people and as a church—to have an identity about which we feel secure and confident—to find our identity in our vision and to know, beyond doubt that this is the identity to which God has called us. So come along as you are invited into our visioning process.
Second, Parker lists the “belief that the universe is a battleground” as a potential shadow or distraction. He notes that our language is full of examples of win-lose vocabulary. Keeping this distraction from coloring our interactions calls us to move away from seeing our struggles as battles where one group will win and one will, unfortunately, lose. Thirdly, Parker notes that many people and institutions operate in a “functional atheism”—that is the belief that if anything is to get done, we, ourselves are responsible for the doing of it. How sad, indeed, that churches and church leaders seem especially prone to this distraction—and we must always remember that the work at hand is ours to do only after God shows the way and opens the door, prepares us for our journeys and upholds us along our way.
The fourth element of distraction from the reality of our dependence upon God, Palmer identifies as “fear, especially the fear of the natural chaos of life”. Our need to organize ourselves away from any anxiety-producing chaos limits our ability to live fully and freely into the abundance of all that God has in store for us. I don’t know about you, but I feel more fully alive in a field of wildflowers, where the wind has blown the seeds everywhichaway, than I do in a neatly planted botanical garden where everything blooms in accurately planted rows with colors that “match” each other planted accordingly. Think about it—the fullness of God’s love and the invitation of all to receive and enjoy may make for some delightful “messiness” along the way.
Finally, Palmer says that the fifth shadow or distraction is “the denial of death itself”—not just the death of people, but the death of programs, ideas, leadership tenures. He notes that this refusal to let things die a natural death keeps us from seeing the new and exciting things that God has for us coming over the horizon. I have seen this many times in groups of all sorts and sizes when “because we’ve always done it this way” takes precedence over a creative spirit just waiting to explode.
And so, my friends, I invite us to rejoice in what God has done in and among us—to stay alert to those things which would distract us from the joy of participating in the unfolding of God’s will for this church and for this people. Take a look at the flowers and find joy and peace. Amen and amen.
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