The First Word 12-1-13

Holy and wonderful God, we’re surprised to find ourselves here.  Get us ready for the coming of your Word into our lives once again.  We’re waiting and most of us don’t do waiting very well.  Give us holy patience and a renewed sense of your sacred purpose in our lives.  Amen

            I see Advent hiding behind the big Christmas tree in the mall, looking through the branches taunting us, saying “ready or not, here I come!”  I’m still making the decision as whether or not to buy a Halloween costume.  So, like it or not, we find ourselves right at the beginning of Advent.  Perhaps the lighting of the Advent Candle helped ground you firmly in the season.

            Of the four Gospels, Mark is the only one who makes no mention of the birth of Christ.  He simply begins with John the Baptizer and introduces Jesus in the context of John’s ministry.  Matthew is very matter of fact.  After listing Jesus’ family tree back so many generations that the tree would have reached the clouds, he lists the “facts” of the story.  In his so doing, he focuses on Joseph’s experiences and introduces us to the wise men, astrologers, or scholars who visit Jesus.  Although our Christmas pageants of old have everyone arriving at the manger at the same time; in truth, it is likely that these wise men came on the scene when Jesus was about two.  Luke’s story is the one we are most familiar with—he brings us angels singing, shepherds leaving their flocks and rushing to see the baby, and the lovely story of the animals keeping the holy family warm through the night.  That’s the story most often read and depicted in all the nativity sets sold all over the world. 

            But John, ah, John is a poet and a mystic; and, his version of Christ’s birth is pure poetry—poetry so sophisticated and full of layers of connotation that the exact meaning continues to baffle the finest New Testament scholars.  I am not, I will admit, a New Testament scholar, but I think that we can look at a couple of ways these verses can be interpreted over these next four weeks as they relate to other marvelous things we have been discovering about God along the way this past year. 

            Almost all of you, if I said, “In the beginning…”, would complete the sentence in one of two ways:  either “God created the heavens and the earth”, or “was the Word and the Word was God”.  These two prologues to much longer books claim two things in common:  one, that there was a beginning; and, two, that God—that Divine Source f all there is—was the primary (maybe only) character on stage at the beginning of the story.  God, creator, was present in some wonderful way in the beginning of all others things that were to come.  Now, you, of course, know that these creation stories match very closely the creation stories of every major world religion so it comes as no surprise that the Judeo-Christian creation story begins in the same way.  John, more than likely, began his Gospel with the same three words as the Torah began for the purpose of linking the God of the Word, and ultimately, Jesus with the same God as the God of creation.  We must remember that this insistence on one God arose in the context of a multi-god culture.  Even the Jews, at times in their centuries long history, have strayed into places where they found themselves worshipping other gods.  We have a bad habit of taking that insistence and applying it to contemporary religions.  This was not the meaning at all.  It was the many, many lesser gods that were distracting the Hebrews from sticking with the one supreme being.  But, I fear, I digress.

            Immediately after John’s introductory three words, he says to us, “was the Word”.  Now there is a lot of debate about that Greek word logos.  Translating it simply as “word” is actually limiting and belittling of the actual meaning.  Logos actually means more like “discourse” or “treatise”.  Logos is more like a concept rather than one word.  However, lots of words have been derived from the same root word—words like, Lectio, lexicon, lyrics, etc.  This asks us to broaden our concept of what is traditionally presented as the meaning of “In the beginning was the Word.” 

            There is a relatively contemporary version of the Bible called, “The Voice”.  Those translators and authors argue for a translation of the word logos as “voice”.   While those authors acknowledge that no single word can accurately be used to translate, logos, voice has some distinct advantages.  First, ‘voice’ puts humanity into the act of speaking.  It is one of the primary tools of communication; indeed, it is true that both sides of the conversation must use the voice or something that substitutes for it.  John, then, is telling us that God is not only speaking, the nature of God is being revealed to the world.  In the second place, we can distinguish one voice from another.  Before caller ID took over the job for us, many of us could identify our callers by the sound of their voice alone.  The voice of God, and, later, the voice of Jesus is distinct from all others.  Jesus confirms this later in the story when he talks about his sheep recognizing his voice.  They know no other voice and so, they will not follow anyone else.  This is one of the many times Jesus talks about a personal relationship with the Source of all Being, God.

            Finally, ‘voice’ denotes the dynamic quality of this relationship with a robust and powerfully acting God.  And, it forces us to deal with the questions that arise when the ongoing nature of speaking is acknowledged.  Jesus spoke the word of God in ways people had never experienced.  God has used many others in our lives to speak the Divine Truth.  If this Sacred Voice continues to speak, we must accept the dynamism in the relationship and be willing to continue learning more and more about this active and transforming and transformative experience with God.  The translation this version of the Bible uses is beautiful:  “Before time itself was measured, the Voice was speaking.  The Voice was and is God.  This celestial Word remained ever present with the Creator…”

            As we think about the impact of this voice on our very lives, we know that we would need God to speak something that we could understand or at least begin to understand.  Words are powerful, whether written or spoken, words have the ability to changes lives for good or bad.  Let’s start with a rather simple, though for some of us, quite painful, example.  There are words that we say to each other or that have or have not been said to us that can radically impact lives for the better.  I suspect that most of you either saw the movie or read the book, The Help.  And you probably remember what the maid said to the little white girl as often as she could, “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”  Somehow, Abilene knew that these were some of the most important words, this little girl could learn.  We use similar words when we say, “You are special.  God loves you unconditionally.  Come home to yourself.”  What a difference in most of our lives if we had heard these words spoken over and over again as we were growing up and trying to figure out who in the world we were.  And, I don’t just mean those of you who are gay or lesbian or bi.  I mean all of us—because many of us received the message that we were anything but special, that God did not and could not love us and that we had no self to come home to.  Is it not possible that these are the words we all long to hear, even now, even here.  We long for, even yearn for community and unity in almost every aspect of our lives. 

            We long to feel at home—to hear someone say, “You are very special to me”.  And, I don’t just mean as lovers.  We long for friends for people to truly and deeply know us.  We long for encouragement and to be believed in.  When these conditions are met in our community, we unlock the human potential in all those who come in contact with us.  We discover for ourselves and introduce to others the beautiful and true that we wish to have in our lives. 

            This is the concept that lies at the heart of the coming of Jesus into the world as God incarnate—that, although we had been shown the truth for centuries, God loved us enough to come walk on this earth to show us the way.  The Divine Logos—this first word—is that which lies at the heart of all God’s actions in the universe.  It speaks to that which is true and beautiful—that which is completely good.  The Divine Logos wraps all that we know about God in the arms of love and gives it to us each morning as we rise and greet the sun.  This Divine Word is waiting for us here, today, to open us up to the possibilities that God has in mind for each and everyone of us. 

In The Message were heard these words:  “The Word was first, the Word present to God,
God present to the Word.  The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one”.  Are we ready for the transforming power of God’s word?  These are the days that call us to reflect upon just that.  Amen and amen. 

Welcoming God-Light 11-24-13

Mother God, Father God, God of all creation, show us the way to you.  Lead us onward and inward to experiences with you that will change who we are as we change the world.  Let us celebrate your presence within and all around us.  Amen.

            Many of you know that before moving to Florida, I worked for 25 years in the NY State Child Welfare system in various positions.  My longest position was as a Director of Staff Development for a fairly large county Department of Social Services.  One of my tasks there was to arrange for “expert” speakers to come in and give trainings to our child welfare staff.  One such expert arrived one day to give a talk on Reactive Attachment Disorder or RAD.  Now, in its simplest terms, a diagnosis of RAD implies that in one of many ways, the child or infant shows difficulty in forming attachments to caregivers.  There are numerous causes, but most practitioners point to interrupted or incomplete attachment to original or primal caregivers.  RAD shows itself throughout childhood and adolescence and is a source of great pain for child and caregiver alike.  Now this particular speaker was using an onion as an example—because of its layers, the onion gets used a lot as a metaphor.  However, this time it seemed different.  He kept metaphorically shedding each layer until he suddenly clapped his hands and said, “See, in a RAD child you are left with absolutely nothing, no core, no center, no nothing.”  This hit me hard, really hard, as all the Child Welfare workers were nodding their heads in agreement.  As a spiritual journeyer, I knew that this was horribly and completely untrue.  Yes, some brains appear to be hardwired for pathology, but I knew that my belief in God as Spirit, as Being, as Light itself could not and should not be reconciled with what this “expert” was saying.  From then on, I redoubled my efforts in the curricula that I authored to make sure that, even in the hard, cold world of child welfare a shining spark of goodness and light was found in each and every child. 

            This, of course, forced me to look at how I experienced my own inner divine and sacred place deep within my spirit; sometimes hidden by layers of pain—both present and past—and, oftentimes, lost in the busyness and craziness of my days.  This search, began some 40 years ago, has been the focus of my own spiritual journey ever since.  As you know, I am an avid reader and so I read.  I read about the child within, the yogi within, the animal within, and my all-time favorite, the warrior within.  I loved the book called Awakening the Warrior Within by Dawn Callan.  I read it several times and shared it with whomever I could get to read it, too. The preference for warrior showed up in my yoga practice as well.  The pose I found more of myself in than any other was Warrior II.   Virabahadra  (veer-ah-bah-DRAHS-anna)  or Warrior II is named for a fierce warrior, an incarnation of Shiva, described as having a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand feet, wielding a thousand clubs, and wearing a tiger's skin.  Aha—now that’s what I’m talking about!  What began to become clear for me was that I needed a strong woman warrior in my life at a time when I needed to stand up for my own life and live my own truth.  In that moment in my life, my divine spark was that warrior within; at least, that is how I experienced it.

            At other times I have experienced the deep sense of the inner divine as utter peace in a time of grieving or unadulterated joy after a time of depression.  In other words, there is no one way to experience the Inner Sacred—no one way that is the right way or even the best way.  God created each and every one of us with that Inner Sacred which is waiting on us to go deep enough into our spiritual lives to experience the Sacred within us in whatever way works the best for each individual.  Comparing experiences is utterly useless in spiritual formation.  Sharing experiences can be a method of mutual support and validation.  God as “Sacred within” manifests in ways as diverse as we are diverse. 

            If the God inside us is the same God as the God of creation, of nature, of space, what does this tell us, first, about God; and, secondly, what does it tell us about, well, us?  We’ll look at what it tells us about God first.  We use a lot of “Omni” words to describe God—omnipotent, omniscient, omni-present, omni-everything—no seriously, I made that last one up.  We say in these words that God is all- powerful, all-knowing and always present.  Yet, somehow, these words tend to cause us to look up, and out, and all around for God’s presence.  We are rarely encouraged to look inward for the Sacred itself.    It appears that many of us are afraid to experience God as living and breathing life into us from the inside.  I think it may go back to the Adam and Eve myth where God is pictured anthropomorphically as a man of god-like proportions kneeling down in the mud to shape first, a man, and then, a woman.  If I am Adam and I wake up and find a man kneeling over me, much like we do when we give CPR, I’m naturally going to think that God is life-giving, yes; but inside me, no.  It’s like we slept through the part where God is already present in our very bodies, breathing life into us, and awakening the God-self implanted deep in our hearts and souls.  Does this description of God inside you surprise you?  Though it is not meant to be scary, it certainly can cause discomfort when we are changing how we look at God and ourselves in relation to God—a paradigm shift, if you will. 

            There is more.  God inside us also means that God is, indeed, genderless, formless, and cannot be claimed by one group, or one tradition alone.  It means that when a Zen monk says “Namaste” to acknowledge the Sacred within the one he has greeted; it is the same Sacred that we meet when we say “may God bless you” or “Shalom” or “peace”.  This means that we already have a basis for celebrating diversity of religious expressions, histories, myths, and traditions.  For all these things are the efforts of humans to “get something down for future generations” or to record their particular tradition for their children and their children’s children.  Discord happens, and can only happen, when one or more groups claim that their tradition is the one blessed by God.  When we begin our discussion about God with the knowledge that God—the same God—is found in all of us, it makes no sense at all to spend time arguing over who has the exclusive on God. 

            So, what does this paradigm shift—this change in our thoughts about God—say to us about us?  First, and very importantly, it says that we can stop looking for God “outside” of us.  We do not need to ask God to come into our hearts, God is already there.  It says that language about God “accepting” us is really about God loving and caring for our own personal expression of the Sacred.  Indeed, how could the Sacred refuse to accept itself—the Sacred in us.  Once we allow ourselves to experience Divine Love deep inside the layers that we and life have placed upon it in our hearts, the sacredness of all creation, including you, and you, and you, and me becomes second nature for us all.  It also tells us about the nature of “right relationship” with God.  It tells us that our relationship with God must include more than asking for help in times of difficulty, asking for Divine Guidance when the way seems dark, and singing praise for a God who abides somewhere other than everywhere.  Our right relationship with God then, includes the unlayering of our hearts and spirits so that we can experience the Divine living and being inside of us.  It says that if we don’t love and care for ourselves, this body created to house God’s spirit here on this side of reality, then we cannot love and appreciate the Divine in ourselves and others.  It also explains why it seems so easy for people to injure and kill others and desecrate the rest of creation when we do not acknowledge, respect and honor the Sacred in everyone and everything.  Understanding that God IS in everything and IS everything gives us much instruction in our yearning for right relationship with God.  And, we will go on from here.

I am going to close the sermon with a poem from Esther Yff-Prins.  I invite you to close your eyes, listen, and experience the Divine in you.

Open

Slowly, the descent begins,

moving down,

down  into the

corridors of my heart.

Tenderly gently,

consent unbars the door

of a hidden chamber.

Now I touch the

breath of my soul;

taste the depth of

my longing;

hear the echoing

silence within.

Now I encounter

the welcome

of the Divine,

pulsating, poignant,

irresistible.

Awed by the

language of God

at the center of my being,

I linger, embraced

in wordless benediction,

sheltered in the Sacred.

(Pause)  Amen and amen.    

   

Melting Models 11-10-13

God of many names and experiences, lead us to know you well.  Teach us to be ever present and aware to your voice in the wind.  Show us your handiwork in the waves of the ocean.  May we be always alert to your presence in our lives.  Amen

            I think I may have told you about my great-grandmother before.  Her name was Emma, Emma Deckard.  She lived on this earth for 96 years.  By the time I knew her, her life was pretty well contained on the family farm; and when you take her life as a whole, she has much to teach me and, I suspect, you.  In the late 1800’s she crossed the mountains between Pennsylvania and Southern Indiana in a covered wagon.  She and her husband homesteaded the multi-acre family farm.  I remember that farm well.  There were hills (we thought they were mountains) to climb and streams to play in—they were called “cricks” in Southern Indiana.  There was a magical spring that we dubbed the “Indian Springs” and we spun yarns to make it all seem pretty exciting.  I tell you all these things so that you can understand what this farm meant to my Great-grandmother and to the subsequent generations as well.  Her life is a timeline of all the changes in the 20^th Century.  She saw the development of virtually all the inventions that changed this country from an agrarian society to one centered in big cities.  She also lived to see Neal Armstrong walk on the moon.  Think of the paradigm shifts she (and all of your grandparents and great-grandparents) experienced.  I bring my great-grandmother up because her generation and the generation that followed it are experts in paradigm shifting; that is, changing one’s world view or ideas about how the world operates and how you operate in the world.  With each new life-changing invention they shifted and survived.  There was little question about whether or not they could or would be willing to change.  If they wanted to live in the present, they changed.  We may want to remember this as we envision a church for today.

            I wish I had been old enough or wise enough to ask my great-grandmother what it was like to make all these changes—to go with the flow, so to speak.  There is one very sad story in my great-grandmother’s life.  In the late 1960’s the county decided to put in a human-made water reservoir.  You guessed it—her farm along with the farms of all her neighbors were taken (for not much money) and eventually most of her farm including the farmhouse were underwater.  Everyone, in the midst of their own grief and anger, seemed to be sure that this would “kill” Emma.  It will not surprise you to hear that it did not.  She moved into the house they were able to purchase and lived there another ten years or so.  She experienced the loss deeply, I am sure; but, kill her it did not. I am grateful that I was given an amazing mentor in the art of living with change.  I’m sure many of you have similar stories to tell.

            In the Church Growth Movement everyone wants to talk about the paradigm shift that we must choose to make.  A paradigm shift is no more than changing the models of how one views the world, including values, lifestyles, traditions, religion, and spirituality.  When we talk about “radical inclusivity” we are talking about being willing to let go of some of our models that we have for “doing church”, or, at least change them, and 7+our theology—or understanding of the nature of God.  It does not mean, as one of you asked this week, giving up your story, your God, your values or your spirituality.  What it does mean is that your model should not and cannot be declared to be ‘the’ truth.  It may be ‘your’ truth and no one is advocating that you relinquish ‘your’ truth.  That would make you less than authentic.  And in maintaining your authenticity you allow others to maintain theirs.  Radial inclusivity has as its core the principle of respect for others and ourselves. 

            There is more, however.  This means learning the art of listening rather than speaking.  It means listening without judging.  For some of you, Jesus is at the center of your spirituality.  However, I have heard some of you say, “Jesus just doesn’t do it for me.”  Radical inclusivity says, “that’s okay.  We can reach out to each other and love and accept each other in the source of all love, the Divine.  What you need to know in order to be comfortable in a community of radical inclusivity is that another’s belief system, their spiritual paradigm belongs to them as it has grown out of their life experiences.  Yours belongs to you, is sacred to you.  Celebrate that, honor it.  In fact, down the road, you may find that others bring marvelous variations of faith or spiritual practices with them into a radically inclusive community.  Rather than fear those variations, we can look at them as opportunities to learn new practices or alternate understandings.  And these variations may well give you new ways of meditation, worship, and living in alignment with what you believe.  I can almost guarantee you that learning about other faiths and traditions will enhance your current spiritual practices rather than threaten or lessen them.  We have much to learn and much of what we have to learn comes from peoples and places other than Christianity.

We can all sit together as people who exist in the same pool of Divine Love.  Let’s try it.  I want you to turn to your neighbors on both sides (this is why you might consider sitting closer together) and tell each other:  “I honor your spiritual journey and where you are in the present.”  Again, “I honor your spiritual journey and where you are in the present”.  That’s all—don’t ask them what they believe, we don’t have time and you don’t need to know in order to honor and respect them as brother and sister seekers of truth and love.  How did that feel?  How did you feel when someone told you that they honored your journey?  And, the opposite, how did you feel when you told them that you honored theirs’?  This is it—we just experienced radical inclusivity. 

Some of you may be thinking, well that wasn’t hard, we’re all basically the same.  I would suggest that not only is that not accurate, because we have not yet fully committed to Open Circle being the beautiful kind of place that everyone experiences acceptance enough to enable them to feel safe to share their truth with us, many have not.  That causes me sadness.  Let me give you some examples—if this fits you, know that I am not condemning you; but I am asking that you take some time later today and ask yourself if this is true for you.  If you have ever asked someone why they don’t partake of communion or why they don’t join this church, you may have a ways to go to understand radical inclusivity.  There are many other things we do and don’t do which lets us know that we are falling short of an inclusivity which builds trust between us and those who bring different stories with them.  

            The title of this sermon is “Melting Models”—not tearing down models or destroying models of tradition or spirituality.  What happens when you light a candle?—beyond the obvious flame, there is also the melting or softening of the paraffin or beeswax which supports the wick.  Wicks cannot stand up by themselves.  We naturally have core beliefs that hold up our other beliefs; but, the model of a burning candle is an apt one.  As the candle burns, we, being the paraffin, soften.  We change shapes, we send down long expressions of melting wax which serve many times to build up the candle itself.  This is what it means to be radically inclusive, that we allow our light (the flame of the candle) to melt our edges and make it easier for others to be accepted into our lives and for us to lovingly encourage one another as our edges melt and we become more and more open to experiencing the love of God in those with whom we may have theological differences.  When we think in terms of softening our edges rather than changing who we are, we may have an easier time understanding this thing called Radical Inclusivity.  Rather than abrupt change it is subtle softening and re-shaping.  We are drawn toward this metaphor of the burning candle because we are more able to think of the small, slow change in the body of the candle as the wick burns. 

            Will you not share the light of your candle and invite others—though different from you—to hare theirs.  Come, feel the passion and warmth of shared experiences and mutuality.  Loving each other enough to hear another’s story is all it take—loving, calling, being true to ourselves while embracing each other and those who are not currently among the each others of Open Circle.  If we are to heal the world, we must heal each other first.  Once we have reached out to those both like and unlike us we are well on our way to healing the world.  Amen and amen..