Communion: Emergence as Creation 8-18-13

God, we acknowledge you as Creator of the universe with a casualness that keeps us from having to admit that we simply cannot conceive of your beauty, or wonder, or awesomeness in power.  We try, with little success, to bring you down to our size.  Challenge us to give ourselves to you exactly as we are—joyful, broken, confused and sad.  Let us trust you to meet us here.  Amen

                As I began this sermon, I was looking out the window and, no surprise here, it was storming.  Made me think of the unbelievable light or lightning shows we have had in the past few weeks.  One night last week I was standing outside with the dog, once again, waiting for the dog to do, well, what dogs do, and the lighting flashing from cloud to cloud was absolutely spectacular.  Of course, it dawned on me that this was a rather dangerous show I was watching and that Jonathan was now ready to go in, so we made it to the front door just as the rain started.  I kept thinking about the “show”, if you will, and how that related to this week’s sermon topic.  I want to spend this and the next three weeks speaking about various aspects of the meaning and nature of communion, Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper in our lives.  Today, I want to talk about the emergence of communion with God in Creation, Creativity, and the act of creating.

                So, back to the lightning.  If you saw it that same night, you know that the clouds were lighting up from side to side as the lightning bounced back and forth from cloud to cloud.  It was beautiful and, of course, since the cloud formations, even at night, continue to change, no two bursts of lighting were the same.  Every once in a while, as if to say, “don’t get too comfortable!” a bolt would strike vertically and land somewhere on the earth not too far from where I was standing.  Creation is like that, unpredictable sometimes, coming from seemingly nowhere, and not altogether understandable.  As if to say, “don’t get too comfortable!” God suddenly appears in our lives in a new form or person, thought or idea and we are suddenly flailing around trying to understand what just happened.  Even in the midst of our very human flailing, I believe that God says to us, “Peace, be still”.  When we open our hearts to the wonder of creativity, that very creativity that just turned our lives upside down, we will find peace.  And with peace comes communion with God. 

                So it is with the sacrament of communion.  When we open ourselves to what God is saying to us in the sharing of the bread and wine, divine creation occurs over and over again in us.  God is calling us to an openness and vulnerability to God’s creative acts in our lives. 

                If we, and I do, believe that we either meet or have the opportunity to meet the Creative Christ every time we come to this table we call “God’s table” than we must explore how we are to approach this potentially powerful creative moment of communion with the God of the Cosmos.  We must begin, of course, with our relationship with the Cosmos itself.  Rachel Carson, author of the pivotal book, Silent Spring, ruminates about children and the gift of wonder:  “If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength…  Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.  There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring.” 

                To Carson’s wish, I would add the wish for the ability to hold in a sacred balance our ability to take in the absolutely overcoming power of the presence of the Creator in Creation abundance at the same time we wrestle with forces larger than ourselves.  And, I am left with this question:  Because the vastness of the universe is lost on us, is unperceivable to our limited, time- and space-specific minds, do we absorb what we can and trust the Source of all Being to take care of the rest or do we consider what we can take in as all there is?  This openness to the vulnerability that comes in joyful acceptance of the gift of all creation and all creativity without the need for complete understanding lays the groundwork for authentic interaction with the Creator as we drink from the common cup and taste the common bread. 

                When we involve ourselves in discussions such as these, it keeps us from falling into the trap of thinking that communion is just about us.  Paul says, in his letter to the Romans, “From the beginning till now the entire creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth; and not only creation, but all of us who possess the first-fruits of the Spirit,…”  This, without a doubt is a strong and compelling invitation for us to join in this creative process.  But how are we to find direction, instruction concerning the creation and recreation of the earth and cosmos?  Where else but in the great mystery of all time, sometimes called the Paschal Mystery, when we celebrate the living, dying, and living again of Jesus Christ himself.  When we allow ourselves to play an active role in the re-telling and re-living of this mystery, we allow ourselves to be taken deeper and deeper into the living and dying of the earth, the creation of God.  Theologian Gerald Manley Hopkins tells us how this is accomplished:  “Eucharist is Christ as journey-food, as inn-keeper, as torrent, as birdsong, wolf howls, salmon leap, cock-crow.  Christ is our living text and context, the embrace within which we live abundantly and know our being …”  These concepts are not easy, but we must wrestle with them if we are to grow in further understanding of all we are and all that is. 

                Let’s look at the actual act of communion and ferret out the creativity that lies hidden in word and tradition.  There is a trend among MCC churches and other progressive churches to substitute other food and drink items for the usual bread and wine or grape juice.  I react, not particularly positively, to that practice because I do not think that we have to change the elements in order to change the way we both approach communion and discover the creating God in the midst of it all.  It is not communion that must change it is we who must change.  Never is an old saying more true than at communion—you know the one—‘if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always get.”  But the changing in the doing rests in us.  We leave communion to the last of the service for very good liturgical reasons.  But what do you think would happen if we celebrated communion at the beginning of the service?  Do you think that if we dined with the author of all creativity at the beginning of worship that our worship would change?  I hope so.  If we truly believe that we meet God—the very same God that created the universe—each and every time that we come to communion; and, if we believe that interaction has the ability to change who we really are, then why not do it first, so that our praise comes from a sacred and centered place—a place where the Creator of the Cosmos dwells in very real spiritual and physical bodies in the breaking of the bread and the blessing of the cup? 

                As the ecumenical mutt that I am in denominational experience, I have the privilege of looking at certain aspects of the worship service from many perspectives.  One thing I miss most in the giving up of the Episcopalian Mass is a sense that the entire service is the Communion Service—the Eucharist.  The Mass, whether Episcopalian, Catholic, or Greek Orthodox—places the Christ of the Cosmos/Jesus of the Cross at the center of the service.  The Passing of the Peace is more than just a brief time of socializing before the real thing happens in the Fellowship Hour—it is the calling together of the community.  And the exchange of Christ’s Peace is central to preparing one’s heart to receive the living Christ.  Let me make this clear—this sermon is not about what you believe about communion—we could argue that for a while, I fear.  It is about one divinely created person entering first into the context of creation itself and then into the presence of the creative source—God—in which we live and move and have our being.  Will you take a chance today?  Will you risk your vulnerability to the Creative Source of the Universe by opening your heart and mind to the creative, energetic  working of the Spirit in your life?  Will you come eagerly to the Table and return to your seats so awed by your encounter with God that you can only rest and pray?  Will you begin, even now, to allow the Spirit of God to begin a good work in your heart and life?  And, we say together—come, Lord Jesus, come.  Amen and amen.

Healing the World-Part 2

Healing the Earth – Part 2    8-10-13

God, Creator of the Universe and of this planet earth we call “home”, teach us to treasure all that you have placed in our presence to enjoy, preserve, and protect.   Teach us to care and to care deeply.  Speak to us through your messengers—the trees and sky and people.  Amen

          Just the other day I was talking to a tree—our  tree, the big one in the center of the driveway, the one around which Kathy has so lovingly tended a garden and made the space even more beautiful.  Anyway, it was a lovely time of day, I was alone on the campus, it had already rained and cooled a little, and I was sitting outside on Annie’s bench.  The chimes were singing softly and the breeze was gently blowing the leaves so that the big tree looked like a moving, undulating, mass of green.  I was troubled that day—troubled because of all that I felt I had left undone and concerned about how to get enough hours in the day.  I suspect every one of you have felt the same way.  So rather than working myself up into a dither, I went outside to find some center and solid ground on which to stand.  I checked in with myself and with God and said, “This sermon on healing the earth—it feels hopeless, overwhelming; and, certainly there must be someone more studied in the whole ecology thing than I am”.  I tell you, I’m fairly certain I heard that tree say, “Oh, there are many people more learned than you are but you are the one here and now”.   The tree (and by now I was getting pretty comfortable listening to a talking tree) said, “Let me sing you a song.  It will tell you all that you need to know”.  And, so, the tree began to sing, first in a high treble as the upper leaves danced in the wind and then in a lower baritone as the roots began to shake the earth ever so slightly.  Then the whole tree began to sing together in a verdant mass of voices and instruments more beautiful than any music I had ever heard before. 

          I cannot tell you the words or if, indeed, there even were any words; but, I left her presence and returned to my desk to begin to do my research for this sermon full of the knowledge of what God wanted me to say today.   Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh (Tik * N'yat * Hawn) speaks of where we must start when he says, “Be aware of the contact between your feet and the Earth. Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet. We have caused a lot of damage to the Earth. Now it is time for us to take good care of her. We bring our peace and calm to the surface of the Earth and share the lesson of love. We walk in that spirit.” 
          We have talked these past few weeks of healing –healing ourselves, healing each other, and healing Mother Earth.  Those species among us who are sentient, living and breathing in this faithful environment have a separate and special responsibility to work for the survival of our Mother. And in that quest, I am reminded of apple seeds my own mother, or perhaps grandmother, let me plant in Dixie cups.  It was a grand experiment for as long as my interest could be maintained.  Once the seed had sprouted and shot through the dirt into the air, the day to day watering and care grew tedious and was easily forgotten.  We are often much the same in our commitment to our Mother Earth—we hear something, it affects us—but once the excitement is over, we return to our mostly irresponsible using up of irreplaceable natural resources. 

          Webs of people on the internet are dedicated to the healing of the planet, our planet, this place we live and breathe and have our being.  Their desire is to heal the world from the inside out.  But these actions merely touch the surface, though they are valid and valiant efforts.  All of these efforts, as well as all of ours, require that a seismic shift occurs in the Hearts and Minds of Humanity.  We are the only ones who can change and heal the earth.  Period. 

          Transcendentalist poet and author, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said this about Nature, “Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us.”  One cannot help then but to ask—“and what of us?”  Are we not made to emancipate Nature?”  Should there not be a sacred reciprocity between Humanity and the rest of the Creator’s Creation?  Popular spiritual author, Eckhart Tolle, speaks of this relationship in a way that speaks differently about that relationship.  He says, “You add a very important dimension to nature when you perceive it through the depth of your Being. Because, ultimately you are not separate from it, and as you perceive it, nature knows itself through you, its own beauty, its sacredness.”
          The congruence of Emerson’s and Tolle’s two brief statements is immediately apparent when we are able to see ourselves as one with the rest of God’s creation.  However, this requires some hefty paradigm shifting on our parts.  If creation and her natural processes were not created solely to sustain those parts of creation which claim great privilege, and, if we are truly one with God and God’s creation, then to abuse our Mother Earth is to abuse ourselves and every other expression of Humanity throughout the earth.  At that point, religion truly does not matter.  It does not matter to God why or how we come to a place of understanding this hallowed unity between Humankind and the rest of God’s works.  And, I am absolutely positive that the beautifully singing tree in the center or our campus does not care why you love her, only that you do.  The outcome of that love cannot help but be tender, loving, generous care towards her and all of the cosmos.

          It is spiritually awkward if not ethically unacceptable to come to a place of celebrating diversity among humankind while, simultaneously, destroying the diversity of the rest of creation.  We all know that there is an always-expanding demand for natural resources of all kinds.  Living spaces and perceived needs of humans in the over-developed world continue to take priority while toxins and poisons continue to accelerate the devastation of our water and soil.  Biodiversity—the diversity of plants, animals, and other species—is being destroyed worldwide even as we sit here this morning.  Can you fathom this frightening fact?  Half of the world’s forests and a quarter of the coral reefs are simply gone—lost to our children and grandchildren. Threats increase to the oceans exponentially each year.  And while we are no longer damaging the ozone layer as quickly as we once were, but there is still a large hole remaining.  “Global warming”—a concept as controversial as it is terrifying—suggests that the changes in the world’s climate are due to the proliferation of human-made, so-called “greenhouse gases”—gases that we could avoid producing if we undertook to make our methods of production of energy and other products managed by the level of damage to the planet instead of speed and convenience.   

          The world is easily perceived as a breathing, living being—constantly engaged in the production of all we believe we need to survive.  But it is not so easy for her to continue to provide for these needs as it was in the past.  We, in the developed world, believe that there will always be enough, or at least, enough for us.  We somehow manage to ignore the fact, or work to blame it on someone else, that there are those already doing without.  We have forgotten our inter-connectedness—between each of us and each other and to the world.  Although clearly designed to be caretakers of the world, we have, collectively, become simply takers from the world.  And, while we perceive that we have a choice, in reality we don’t.  Either we contribute to the healing of the world, or we contribute to her and, subsequently, our own destruction. 

          Our singing tree calls to us—come visit her. We know that we are here on this earth for a very short time—every day is a gift.  Our impermanence need not lead to waste and carelessness with our children’s futures.  When we choose to connect to the deep positive energy that exists wherever humankind remembers their sacred care-taking task and takes it seriously, we will join the ranks of those ready to make a change.  When we are present to this moment, we can feel joy and can listen to the silent revelation of hope generated from the center of our being and the center of the Earth.  As we rest we take guidance from the Divine Breath of Creation.  We breathe in God’s call to our hearts; we hold it there for just the time between our inhale and exhale.  And, that is enough—truly enough to change our hearts and minds.  When we exhale, we have been changed by God’s visitation of Sacred Grace in our hearts.  We breathe in God’s call to our hearts—and in the time it takes for our lungs to switch from inhaling to exhaling, we have been changed. 

There is an ancient Gaelic religious group known as the Druids.  Very little is known of their spiritual practices.  However, one thing seems certain—the Druids were spiritually in tune with the Creator and the Creation.  There is a lovely prayer associated with them.  Can you hear the background music from the trees when they prayed?  “Deep within the still center of my being, may I find peace.  Silently within the quiet of the Grove, may I share peace.  Gently and powerfully, within the greater circle of humankind, may I radiate peace.”  Amen and amen.

Healing the World-Part 1 8-4-13

Healing the World-Part 1  8-4-13

God, Creator of the world, Sustainer of all that it in it, and Lover of all that find their breath of life through you, gather us together this day.  Encourage us to listen with soft and open hearts.  May all that we say, and all that we ponder together, contribute to healing energy for the sake of the world.  Amen.

                If I began to sing, “we are the world; we are the children”, most of you would start swaying with the music and singing along.  It was 1985 and Harry Belfonte had an idea.  Following the release of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” by a UK supergroup of singers, Belefonte tasked Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie to write a song for a US-based supergroup.  If you haven’t looked at the video lately, look it up, it’s amazing how many of the singers I could not identify.  Let me remind you of the rest of the words to the chorus:  We are the world, we are the children; we are the ones who make a brighter day
so lets start giving.  There's a choice we're making; we're saving our own lives.  It’s true we'll make a better day—just you and me.”  If you were like me, you listened to that song A LOT!  For a while there, it played at least once an hour on virtually every radio station in the country.  The song went to Quadruple Platinum and sales from the song itself and marketed “We Are the World” merchandise raised over $63 million dollars for humanitarian aid to Africa and the US.  Now this song was not without its critics—primarily around the notion that the song did not raise questions about the nature and cause of poverty and that the lyrics sounded strangely familiar to language that we had used for decades—language  which had never resulted in any fundamental change.  And, this is where we pick up today.   By the way, I loved the song then and love it now; sometimes the very thought that people cared enough to come together is enough for a start.   As we grow spiritually, we also grow morally and ethically; and, we ask incrementally harder questions.

                Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor and community organizer, gives our thoughts structure by way of describing our stories that we bring to the energy, the diversynergy, if you will, of our common ground of faithfulness.  First, according to Ganz, “We all have a story of self…What’s utterly unique to us is our own journey of learning to be a full human being, a faithful person.  And those journeys are never easy.  They have their challenges, their obstacles,  their crises.  We learn to overcome them, and because of that we have lessons to teach.  In a sense, all of us walk around with a text from which to teach, the text of our own lives.”  So far, in our communal walk through the nature and process of healing we have mostly talked about the “text of our own lives.”  And only when this text includes our own experiences  of healing are we able to actively invite others into the same spiritual place that we are.  Perhaps, even more important—we have concluded that one must have experienced this healing before one is ready to stand against injustice, bigotry, and evil.  And, we have told that story many times in the power of the diversity and exchange of energy that we experience as a community of faith.  So, this is our story.

                Ganz writes, “The second story is the story of us.  That’s an answer to the question, Why are we called?  What experiences and values do we share as a community that call us to what we are called to? What is it about our experience of faith, public life, the pain of the world, and the hopefulness of the world?  It’s putting what we share into words. ..Faith traditions are grand stories of us.  They teach how to be an us.”  We, here at Open Circle, have talked often about where we have been and where we believe we are headed.  Your presence and enthusiasm in last week’s Holy Conversation were proof of your commitment to this community.  You, each one of you, from those who have attended for years to those of you who are here today for the first time are part of this great “US”.  But, as you would suppose, there is more.  There is, according to Ganz, the story of now.

                Ganz strikes a common chord for us when he says:  “Finally, there’s the story of now—the fierce urgency of now.  The story of now is realizing, after the sharing of values and aspirations, that the world out there is not as it ought to be.  Instead, it is as it is.  And that is a challenge to us.  We need to appreciate the challenge and the conflict between the values by which we wish the world lived and the values by which it actually does.  The difference between those two creates tension.  It forces upon us consideration of a choice.  What do we do about that? We are called to answer that question in a spirit of hope.”  Ganz says “we”—and we must resist the temptation to say “we who?”  Nevertheless, moving into this spirit of hope, facing this challenge is sometimes quite difficult.  We can begin to understand why it is difficult when we remember our passage from the New Testament this morning:   Jesus had been up on a mountain, a place he often went to re-power or revive his own connection to the sacred.  Having spent time in meditation or prayer, Jesus comes down and sees a large (the scripture says “huge”) crowd.  These were his disciples, followers, and other people who wanted to see and hear him.  The New Testament says:  “They came to hear him and to be healed from their diseases—even those suffering from what we today would call mental illness came and were healed.  And listen carefully to this:  "The whole crowd wanted to touch him, because power was going out from him and he was healing everyone.”  Notice that our scripture says “Power was going out from him”.  For Jesus, and, subsequently for us, this healing ministry required work—it required power—power that was restored in his own spiritual practices and meditation so that he could continue in the world.  Not content to only touch them physically, Jesus also wanted to touch or teach them spiritually.  Hear again the words of comfort from Jesus.  “Jesus raised his eyes to his disciples and said:  “Happy are you who are poor, because God’s kingdom is yours.  Happy are you who hunger now, because you will be satisfied.  Happy are you who weep now, because you will laugh”.  For Jesus, words and actions were tied very closely together.  Notice that he healed them of their physical and mental illnesses before he tried to teach them about the nature of the world, or suggest that a new order was on the horizon for those who now are poor, hungry, weeping.  This then is true for us as well.  First, we show the world our love and then we talk.  It is almost as if our actions, just like the actions of Jesus, earn us the right to tell others what propels us to care for them.  Without those actions of love, our words of love and comfort ring hollow. 

                Philosopher and theologian Teilhard de Chardin speaks of a “day when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of Love.  And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, human beings will have discovered fire.”   Stop for a moment, and let that thought sink in.  When fire, the fire that captured heat and the ability to cook and stay warm revolutionized the way people lived.  Nothing was the same after fire was discovered and shared with the world.  You have to assume that word about the wonderful thing called fire spread far and wide, quick and fast.  Everyone wanted to know about this fire—this fire that would change their very lives every single day, for the rest of their lives. 

                I believe the same is true of the fire of which Teilhard de Chardin speaks. On that day when we harness the energies of Love in the name of God, news of this new “fire” will spread as fast as the first fire.  Diairmuid O Murchό, captures the significance of this new fire.  He says, “The time is right for a type of religious quantum leap—not into some vast unknown, but into the deep story, the well-spring of spiritual awakening which existed before, and will continue to flourish long after, every religion know to humankind will have faded into history.”  Are you ready to stretch who this community is, indeed, who you are in order to experience this quantum leap into the deep story?  Are you ready to feel your heart warm with the new fire—and to take the news of the new fire to others?  Are you ready to say “this is the day I will put aside all negative and unhealthy thoughts” and devote yourself to learning and loving your way through this quantum leap—a leap not unlike the leap that Jesus made when he turned the laws upside down and challenged the bedrock of society when he said we are all the same—all the children of God.  God calls us to leap; and, so we will, and, so, we do. In this community—this community of quantum leapers—we find discernment—in this community we find challenge—and in this community we find love.  Amen and amen.