December 30, 2012 "Gradual Awareness"

I Samuel 2: 18-20, 26 Luke 2: 41-52 This morning we have a RIDDLE: What wears upon us all, but no one ever puts on? What is there none can avoid, yet all search to find? What is there that changes us, yet we can never stop or hold? What is there that defines yesterday, today and tomorrow? What has hands but has no arms? What moves but has no feet? What has a face, but has no smile? The answer to all of these, is TIME. Some years, the church calls for us to share the story of Mary and Joseph presenting the child at the Temple with the Offering of Two Turtledoves, and Simeon and Anna naming Jesus as Destiny's Child. Other years we read of King Herod murdering the children, which this year is far too close with the deaths of children in Connecticut. Instead, this year, we recall in the Old Testament that at the end of the Time of the Judges, in gratitude for the opportunity of giving birth Hannah gave her child to God; and annually she came to witness his growing, to give thanks for him in her life, and to be blessed. That regularly Mary and Joseph and their family had gone to the Temple at Jerusalem, but when he was about twelve, the family had left like everyone else, while Jesus had remained to ask questions and seek wisdom. Christmas Eve someone left their glasses, another left a purse, yet another left their gloves, and yesterday someone left a Cadillac at the church unfortunately they did not leave the keys. What is particular about these Scriptures, is that both the time of Hannah and the time of Mary were times of transition. The Old World was ending and a new era about to begin. In Hannah's time, everyone did what was right in their own heart, often being punished for it. Pharaoh, Moses and Joshua had been dead a long time. The Priest was named Eli and his sons did not follow in his ways, they were corrupt, immoral, abusive, evil. While the priesthood was passed by inheritance, something new had to come. Hannah wanted only one thing in life, not to be a mother, not to see her child graduate and marry and become a grandmother... but only to be able to have a child, at all. She vowed, that if she were to have the gift of having a child, she would give that child to God. Where others had made foolish vows only later to recognize the cost, Hannah meant what she had said, and literally gave her child to God. There is a level of devotion here, that is difficult for our world to identify with. In the Anthem on Christmas Eve and in the Carol “The 12 Days of Christmas,” we refer to OUR TRUE LOVE... Whom do we mean? Is our True Love, our Soul Mate? The one we fell in love with the first day of College, to whom we have been married and devoted to? Is our True Love: HOME, MOM, APPLE PIE, America? Is our True Love: SAFETY and SECURITY? Is our True Love our Self? Could our True Love be GOD? In Education and Career planning, we discuss Aptitude for differing subjects, what you naturally excel at doing, what you enjoy, what you want your career to be; now expecting, that there will be second and third careers. True Love and Devotion, being Given, seem in our world to be like Romance Novels and Children's fairy tales. As your pastor, I agonize and feel guilt at this time each year, not for broken New Year's Resolutions or failed dreams, there are actually very few of those, but for how many have served as Elders and Leaders, who then disappear all together from the Church. As our current Elders and Deacons complete their service in leadership, and the next prepare to be ordained, I wish we as the Church had the faith, the devotion, the love of one another let alone GOD, to express our thanksgiving for what leaders among us have done. It is wonderful every Spring to have those who have retired elsewhere return home, excited recalling that years ago there was no focus to the church, and we got down on our knees to unscrew and move the pews. Hearing the windows rattle and moan, some recalled the bellowing of the old organ. Work in mission has been something unique, making a difference in the world, where faith has been made real! Bible study has not been teaching, but sharing what we each believe and valuing one another's faith and interpretations. Like seeing Grandchildren, those who come home are thankful for change, but our awareness is often different in the day to day. In recent years, I do not think I can name one person who has not struggled with whether they should have resigned from leadership as their life had competing responsibilities, illnesses, job pressures. I fear that one of our most treasured symbols is a hollow one. At Ordinations, we invite and encourage all those who have been ordained, all those who have previously served in leadership to come forward, to stand at the Chancel Steps laying hands upon those being Ordained, passing the Holy Spirit from one to another, and literally standing behind those who currently lead to encourage. My fear is that while in this congregation nearly 95% of the body have served previously, rarely do any of us express “When I was on Session, we faced difficult decisions!” This last year, we installed a restroom in the Narthex that the congregation has been discussing how to accomplish for forty years. We live in an era in human society, in American society where leaders are targeted for blame, for responsibility. We have exceedingly great transparency and availability, yet someone needs to be the recipient of our fears and angers. One of the difficulties with the passage about Samuel, is that the Bible does not say, Hannah gave her child to lead as she wanted, or that Samuel entered leadership to remake the church. But that God blessed Hannah for her devotion, for following through on her vow, and used Samuel as a Gift of God not always as he wanted to be used. Our Parish Associate this last year, described to the Nominating Committee: “Be careful of people volunteering to lead! Often these have their own agenda, their own axe to grind that is not part of working together as the church.” A great deal has been said in the last fifty years about parity among the ordained, that if something is true for Elders and Deacons, it needs to be true for Pastors as well. The fact of the matter is that being Ordained, is different from anything else in life, it has to be because the church is different, faith is different, our relationship with God is a Devotion, a Love, rather than a responsibility or a job. This passage from Luke, with Mary and Joseph standing in the Temple staring at Jesus, represents for me one of the most exciting moments in life. Not the feeding of 5000. Not walking on water. Not even the Incarnation that the Word of God became a Human being, or the Atonement on the Cross. But that first moment that happens to each of us, when we go from being taught, given information to regurgitate, to instead questioning and devoting ourselves to what we Believe. There is a distinction in the Gospels over what is described as “The Messianic Secret” of whether Jesus fully knew, understood and accepted as a human being the cost of being The Messiah. There is the wrestling with the Devil, wrestling with himself, being driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, which comes at Jesus' Baptism. But here as a twelve year old, Jesus is witnessed to be struggling with who he is in relation to God, in relation to his family. Throughout the history of the Church, people have struggled with whether we come to faith through a Cathartic moment or a Slow and Gradual Maturation of Belief. What I see evidence of here, is that about the age of puberty, we have the first of many occasions when we discern by gradual awareness that what we believe matters. Like Jesus born into a time that would be the Fall of Rome, like Samuel born into a time that would be the End of the Judges and rise of the Monarchy of Israel, we are at the end of an era and beginning of something new. I pray, that we are at the end of an era where as quoted by the man in Webster, NY: he only enjoyed killing things. And that a new era is about to dawn when we wrestle with what we are devoted to creating. The difficulty of Dawning Times, is that they do not come all at once, or by evolution but through gradual awareness of something deeper, something we can devote ourselves to Be.

"Impossible Is What You Will Not Do", Christmas Eve Midnight

Isaiah 9:2-7 Luke 20: 1-20 Of all the worship services of all the year, this is my favorite. Some pastors dread it, assuming that those attending are doing so out of obligation, but I love this night because we know those who have been out in the world, away at college, in war, those who married and began their careers come home, juggling the realities they know, with what they were taught to believe. Coming home, knowing in experience that life is not as easy as we thought. Moving away from this little village, living in love until death us do part, is not what we thought. More than all the Sundays when we have “Given” texts to preach upon some more obscure than others, this night everyone knows the story, we have heard it since before we were two, before we could walk, or talk, before we knew a Manger was a feed trough WE KNEW THIS WAS JESUS CRADLE. And those who have passed these stories to us from Matthew and from Luke, knew also, that the one who came to be born in a stable was the One WHO WOULD DIE ON THE CROSS. So this is not the pajamas story, but wrestling with making meaning of life and reality. 2012 is a difficult Christmas, as hard as many have been this one even more so. For first there was FEAR, in the wake of RECESSION, Government stalemates and partisan bickering, an ECONOMY headed for the cliff, The ARAB SPRING which still is settling out as SYRIA's leadership is killing its own citizens. Then Super-storm SANDY, followed by SANDYHOOK ELEMENTARY. The description of being a people who have lived in darkness and fear, seems only too appropriate. That passage from Isaiah is about the past is over and gone, living in fear, in darkness, in blood is over. FOR unto us a child is born. The simple story shared this night is a story of hope, a story of the IMPOSSIBLE being REAL. This is a story never before portrayed, and never repeated. That God, the Creator of TIME & SPACE, would become Mortal, become human. That truly God so loved the world that God sent God's Only Begotten Son. A Gift, an unwarranted, undeserved, unexpected, even Rejected Gift, of an innocent baby, who IS GOD AMONG US, Emmanuel. Since the Reformation there has been a pendulum of human acceptance of the DUAL NATURE OF CHRIST. At times the Church, the World both emphasized Christ's Divinity, that this Jesus was HOLY and Pure. At times the Church emphasized the Humanity of Jesus, as being just like all of us with Temptations, with fears and suffering. Recently, I saw the Film LINCOLN, if you have not seen it, I would highly recommend. It focuses upon the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the question of whether All PEOPLE are Equal Equal to one another, Equal Under the Law, With the Same Inalienable Rights. Equality was the issue of Slavery. Equality was the Issue of Women's Suffrage. Equality was the issue of Child Labor. Equality was the Issue of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Equality has been the Issue of Women's Rights. Equality continues to be the issue which divides us and causes us to struggle, struggle with whether equality can be and must be legislated, or whether equality can be granted by us all in relationship. Witnessing this, it made me recall a verse from Philippians 2 “HE DID NOT CLAIM EQUALITY WITH GOD A THING TO BE GRASPED he poured out his divinity, taking the form of a Servant and was made Man.” Suddenly it occurred to me, that that is the crux of where we are today. Not only whether we are equal with every other person, or even just a little more equal than everyone else, but we live in a world where it is possible to believe, to desire to be Equal with God. We want to be able to determine how we shall live, whom we shall love, what we will become, when we will have children, when we die, how we feel. All the Powers of God over us. And yet, that passage names that Jesus, who could have Claimed Equality With God DID NOT! Instead, God chose to be ONE with us. That there is something about the human experience, the experience of life and love and death and after-death, that is uniquely human and precious unto God. I BELIEVE that in EVERY sense the IMPOSSIBLE has BECOME POSSIBLE for us. The Only distinction between what is Impossible and what is possible is what we are unwilling to do. BUT still the question of The Savior is CAN WE CHOOSE to not claim equality with God, Can we intentionally choose to take the role of The Servant? When everything is possible, limited only by what we will not do, what limits what we will do and what we will not not do? Instead of claiming some tasks are too menial, that we are not being treated equal, that we choose instead to risk and to serve.

Christmas Eve Pajama Service

Luke 2:1-20 One of my favorite Christmases was when my kids were very little and all the Grandparents came. The trouble was that there was a terrible cold and flu being passed around. Well, that Christmas our youngest who was about about 2 ½ received a Doctor's Bag for a present. He put on one of his father's white shirts, and had this head band with a reflector on top of his head. He would go from patient to patient lying on couches groaning, or sitting at the kitchen table sniffling and coughing. He would methodically set down his bag and open it, taking out what he called the THETHISCOPE to put in his ears. After a moment, he would shake his head saying “Very Bad, very bad, only one thing to do” Then he would lean over to give the Mom or Dad or Grandma a wet Kiss and declare “All Better.” In many ways that is what Christmas is all about. We are sick. There is an awful lot of groaning going on. There are a lot of hurts and hates, which anyone could diagnose as Very Bad. But what makes it better is the love of a child, a very special child, the child of God. Long, long, long ago, before well before there was anything else, there was God. And God decided it was God's job to Create, so God created everything, The world. The Stars and Moon and Sun. The mountains and rivers and lakes and oceans. God created the birds and fish and bugs and horses and cows and donkeys, and puppies. And God created people. And for a long time, that was all there was. But people did not do what God created us to do. Instead people hurt each other. So God did something no one had ever done before, and no one has ever seen since, something people imagined long before but nobody ever thought was going to happen. God recreated god-self as a human being, just like us! Now if God was going to live among us, that person would be pretty special wouldn't they? As God, they would be ALL POWERFUL, but he did not come as a Soldier, or Police or Firefighter. As God, they would be ALL KNOWING, but he did not come as a Scientist or College Professor or Teacher. God, the Creator of Everything that is, who had been around for ever, you might expect them to be VERY OLD, but God who is well GOD, became a BABY. Not “like” a baby, became a real baby. They would have to be born in the finest Palace, or Church, and his parents would have to be Celebrities or Heroes, right? Except his Mom was just a girl named Mary. And his Dad was just a man named Joe. He was not born in a Palace or a Church, or even in a hospital, he was born in a Barn, not even a real barn, just a stable for animals. And they did not even have a crib or cradle for the Baby, so they took the feed trough from the cow and donkey, the place where they put hay for the animals to eat and used this to put the baby in. And when Babies are born, you want everybody to know, so on the computer, or in the mail you tell everyone the baby's name and birthdate and how big the baby was. But when God was a baby ANGELS real Angels spread the news, not on Facebook, not in the NY Times or People Magazine. Instead The Angels told Shepherds! Can you believe it Shepherds out in the Country. Do you know ANY shepherds who command people? Shepherds do not even lead sheep, Shepherds follow the sheep, and push them, shepherds never Call out to the world: “Hey, Angels Told Us: God has been Born!” They did not know the Baby's name, or even his Mom or Dad's name... They did not have an address... they did not even know exactly when or any of the important stuff about the baby. Shepherds move slow, following their sheep, keeping them out of trouble. But instead, the Shepherds ran quickly and brought with them their whole flock of sheep. They went straight to the Stable where Mary and Joseph were with the baby. And the Shepherds told them everything that had been told to them.

December 23, 2012, "A Facetious Tale"

Micah 5: 2-5 Luke 1: 39-55 Centuries Ago, this the Sunday before Christmas was described as “The Feast of Fools!” A Carnival in contrast before the holiest night of all the year. The birth of the Child of God, the Messiah, our Savior and Lord, would turn everything we thought we knew upside down and inside out. Instead of a God, Jesus comes to us as an infant. Rather than the birth of a Priest and King ending one era and beginning a new, Jesus comes to us as the most common, most lowly, most ordinary of births. So a carnival was celebrated this day; both because the word INCARNATE and the word CARNIVAL come from the same root meaning FLESHY, REAL, of SUBSTANCE, and to emphasize that Jesus coming among us changes everything, that we would live differently. Those leading worship this day turned their robes inside out, they put chemicals on candle wicks to make them like sparklers, there was loud raucous singing and bawdy laughter, priests dressing as Jesters, choir members wearing the ears of a donkey, children singing in the worship of God. Two thousands years before that, the Nation of Israel lived in fear. Their kings and leaders had been disgraced. The Economy and infrastructure lay in ruins. The nation had put their trust in the weapons of power, and the Assyrians had destroyed them. Everyone was searching for leadership, searching for where to invest, what to trust, they had been disappointed and disillusioned so many times. Suddenly the prophet MICAH appears on the horizon. In contrast to the Wealth of Kings, in comparison to the pageantry of Priests, in opposition to the destruction of Sword and Fire, Micah pointed to Bethlehem. Cities as we know them, were impossible in the ancient world. There was not a sufficient system of supplying food and water, of dealing with waste to accommodate hundreds of thousands of people, the systems of industry and commerce had not been developed. Most major cities were a thousand people. Imagine 1/4 the population of Skaneateles without Dickens, without the tourists or summer residents. And in contrast to this, the Prophet Micah points to Bethlehem. Bethlehem was not a major city, not even a one camel town. Jerusalem had become the Capital City of King David, Bethlehem was the remote rural home of the birth of David the Shepherd boy. People relate to one another differently in a small town than in a city. In a city one might get lost. In a place like Bethlehem there were numerable contacts with the same people, there was a sense of community, where we know one another and are known. Rather than power and prestige, wealth and the accumulation of stuff, Micah pointed to a place and time where we have been real with one another, where we had connections and community. How very odd, that the Sunday before Christmas, this day before Christmas eve, we would read the story of Mary and Elizabeth! Not the story of John the Baptist preparing the Way. Not the lineage of King David. Not even the Covenant between God and Abraham. But the story of two women long ago, sharing their common experience of being pregnant. Just before this, The Gospel of Luke had described Mary being told she would conceive and give birth to a baby, as confirmation of this the Angel told Mary her kinswoman Elizabeth was also having a child. So if you were Mary where would you go? We do not know much about Elizabeth. She was the wife of Zechariah, who was a Priest of Israel. All their lives they had wanted one thing most of all, to have a child. But decades had gone by and they were unable. Zechariah and Elizabeth were now advanced in years. After the Assyrians, had come the Empire of The Greeks, and now the Romans with their Caesars. In that time, the role of the Priest required staying awake and attentive for when God might speak to the people. Therefore, there was a rotation among the Priests in each village, and it was Zechariah's turn to serve as Priest on call. The Priest listened to the confessions and prayers of the people, then the Priest alone went in to offer the people's sacrifices and prayers, after which the Priest offered Assurance of Pardon and Prophecy of Fulfillment to the people. Zechariah went in to offer the people's prayers and confessions for them, when suddenly what should appear but an Angel of God. In many ways, Zechariah and Elizabeth were symbolic of Old Israel; for generations the Nation of Israel had wanted a Messiah, but now it seemed they were too old and no one believed it could still be. This angel declared that God had heard Elizabeth's prayer and she would be given the birth of a Child who would be John the Baptist, the Herald of the Savior. Overcome, Zechariah laughed, and for this the Priest was unable to speak throughout Elizabeth's nine months. Because he had doubted, because he had disbelieved, Zechariah was unable to offer Assurance to the people, unable to offer Prophecy. Imagine how Elizabeth might have felt... We have this scene in Luke. Elizabeth is alone in her house, cooking. This is not Martha Stewart standing over a Viking Gourmet Stove. This is a home with a mud floor, with an open fire, with no chairs or table, so you stood, or sat or lay on the floor, or squatted. Elizabeth is advanced in age, with graying hair and aching joints, and now on top of this, feeling all the effects of being pregnant. Could you feel any more alone, isolated and frustrated. According to Levitical Law she could not be out in the Marketplace, she could not be among people, besides her own husband had laughed what would people think, what would they say. And to Elizabeth's door comes Mary. I have always envisioned this visit as being like the conversation between a Grandmother and grandchild. Well not my Grandmother, who used to begin letters “I am sorry you broke your arm. I assume your arm is broken because you have not written.” Instead, like my wife's grandmothers, who loved to have visitors to sit beside listening to your hopes and fears and dreams and connecting in ways we as parents never can because we are too close. Here are Mary and Elizabeth, each feeling like a beach-ball sitting on the floor. The wonderful nature of this scene is that the relationship does everything that is needed. Elizabeth was alone and isolated, needing connection and community; and Mary supplied this. Mary was overcome with feelings and experiences like nothing she had ever felt before, and there was Elizabeth to listen and comfort. To the world it was a facetious tale... but to these two, nothing could have been more precious. And according to the Gospel of Luke, who were the first to describe the meaning of the coming of John the Baptist and Jesus, not Archangels, not Priests, not Kings, but these two women connecting together. We all seek connections and community. Ironically, our society has given us more and more stuff, more technology that isolates us and creates games for competition. This has been an extremely hard season for many in our world. First, our world was primed by hostility separating and dividing groups, then immobilized by fear not only that the economy was failing but our leaders were out of control, there was the Storm Sandy that with wind and flood destroyed cities, neighborhoods, businesses, homes and lives. Then there was the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. All of which have left people feeling very afraid, isolated and raw. On this stage, come two pregnant women talking and laughing together, over the meaning of a kick and a cramp. Would that this Christmas, rather than focusing on our Diets, or How many presents, whether we got what we want, we could sit and talk with someone. It is so simple a thing, so real and common we might overlook. It does not have to be about solving the problems of the world, but connecting and sharing.

"Behaving As We Believe", December 16, 2012

Zephaniah 3: 14-20 Luke 3: 7-18 The temptation this morning is to speak tenderly to Jerusalem, saying “Comfort, comfort my people says your God,” recognizing that we are all in a state of Post Traumatic Stress. When the first Iraq War had begun, with minute by minute television coverage, our children now in their twenties were three and five, and they stood before the screen shouting “No More, No More.” Since that time, we have witnessed the bombing of Embassies, and hijacking of ships, the events of 911, killings in an Amish community, in a movie theater in Oregon, so many conflicts, so much war, we have begun to be numbed by the evil in our midst. Then 48 hours ago, a 20 year old in a community much like our own, shot and killed his mother, filled with hate and anger he tried to kill everyone that represented what he thought she most loved and 20 children in one elementary school are dead. There is a temptation, in response to this to react by placing guards and metal detectors in all our schools, to see the deaths of so many innocents as a cry for gathering up all the weapons across our society, to get rid of all the weapons of the world, in order to make this world safe, to make our lives secure. This is Advent, when we long to sit before the television watching Charlie Brown's Christmas and Frosty the Snowman, singing the Carols of White Christmas. Someone this weekend asked how we planned to respond to the events of Friday? Whether we would just go ahead with the Bible readings planned and celebrate Christmas as if nothing had happened? And without having to think, I replied the 3rd Sunday of Advent is focused on PEACE and SALVATION. Last summer, in the Evening Bible Study, I accepted a challenge, that as a pastor known for preaching trust and compassion, love and forgiveness, speaking softly and tenderly, that I would try to preach a sermon this year with Hellfire and Brimstone. We in the Church, have made of Baptism, a tender sacrament of parents presenting their infants for the love of God, however the origin of Christian Baptism comes from John. On Jordan's Banks, John preached to the people who came to be Baptized: “You Incestuous Nest of Blood-sucking Snakes! You Brood of Vipers, who warned you to Change?” We remember that John the Baptist preached and all the world, even Jesus, came out to be baptized. We remember that his was a baptism of water, proclaiming that the Messiah was to come, who was so holy and so pure that the lace of his sandal even John the Baptist claimed he was unworthy to tie. But the whole of the Gospel is that John came preaching “REPENTANCE” and later when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, Jesus came from the wilderness also preaching REPENTANCE. One of my children's favorite stories, when they were little was Rudyard Kipling's “Elephant Child or How the Elephant Got It's Trunk,” which ends with the affirmation that a leopard cannot change its spots, nor a person their skin, but we can choose to change. The fact of the matter is that we cannot get to Bethlehem, we cannot witness the birth of the Savior at Christmas, if all we have done is to buy a tree and presents, put up the decorations and send out greetings, even if we got exactly the gift that they always wanted. Christmas is expensive! Christmas requires our self-examination of whether we are living the words we claim to believe. According to Luke, the question of Advent is WHAT SHALL WE DO? The other Gospels describe John addressing the Scribes and the Pharisees with his rebuke, but Luke insists John the Baptist preached repentance to everyone, and instead of walking away the people asked what they/we must do? SHARE when you have more than you need. DO NOT SCAM others for your profit. DO NOT INTIMIDATE and cause others to fear you. But the first half of this Gospel passage is also vitally important. Luke names every historic person for that time, in National and Local Government, Tribally and Religiously, to say this is when this actually did happen in history. These events and circumstances are not philosophical, they are not myth, this is what took place. And John the Baptist went on to say, “DO NOT SAY TO ME, WE ARE DESCENDED FROM ABRAHAM.” Do not tell me I am a resident of Florida, or our church did wonderful things in Africa, or thank God we are not in Connecticut, because hatred and divisiveness and anger, like "family," are common to us all. And until we face these angers, until we resolve our differences, we are only prepared to drown in the River, not to be Baptized. The events of this week were horrific. I hope and pray we get over sensationalizing this, interviewing people on how they feel. But we cannot adopt an attitude of amnesia, that this never happened, because 20 children are dead, 20 families, a whole community, our Nation, the world, cannot forget. Violence, anger and hate, domination of others have become accepted in our world. IF we are to make plain the rough places, fill the lows and lower the highs, we must try to live life differently, to live as we claim to believe. That what is to happen within 10 days, is not a cartoon or claymation, not scripted in a movie. God is reconciling all of life to God. God is preparing to enter into our lives, are we cluttered, are we distracted, or are any of us prepared for God to judge us as we are?

12 02, 2012 "Longing for Righteousness"

Jeremiah 33: 14-16 Luke 21:25-36 Surprises are fun. To catch someone you love off-guard, to honor them by planning an event in demonstration of how much they mean to us, without their ever lifting a finger is fun. A year ago, the news was abuzz with story of a couple, who had been in a relationship so long she thought he would never propose marriage. Meanwhile the groom had planned their entire wedding so he could surprise her. He blindfolded her, had a limo drive until she was disoriented, when she took the blindfold off they were standing at the doors of the Church with her family and all their friends, the pastor and rings, flowers, photographers and the dress, and all she needed do was say “I Do.” The culture declared “How romantic!” At the time I wondered, and what would have happened if she looked at everything he did without her, and she said “No, I do not”? As stressful and expensive as weddings can be, the intent of Advent, the planning a wedding, like the 9 months of pregnancy, is to become one with another, to become one with this change in life's circumstance. As romantic as the story is, that the groom would want to do all this for her, and would spare her all the stress and decisions, this is not righteousness. We too often become jaded by being self-righteous, believing that we and we alone (using the Royal “We”) know what is best for everyone else, for all of our world. This first Sunday in Advent is about two things, first: Our goal, our intent, the purpose of human history is The LORD is our righteousness! Being right with God, and right with everyone, being right with everything in all creation, that is righteousness. This is not about winning, or accumulating, having power or prestige. Righteousness is having nothing hidden, but being transparent, being open, being honest, being one with all creation. At different times, as a pastor, I have been called upon to sit on Ethics Committees, for our Government, for Hospitals, and in the Church, in each case the focus has not been upon what is Ethical, or what is Moral, or what is Justice. The point of Ethics' Committees is that everyone involved be fully informed, fully able to make an informed decision about the costs and benefits and possible effects of actions or inaction. Our “Informed Consent” is the legal demonstration of righteousness, as we attest with our name and signature that we know what is going to happen and we are not only complicit we take our responsibility for ourselves. Recently our Village, Town, County, State and Nation held an election, and next week we as a church will elect our leaders. Our society is not a true democracy in which we each are able to express our opinion and vote on every issue, but rather our church like our government is a democratic republic, in which every person has a vote, but we vote to place our trust in others to make decisions for us. In truth, there are very moments in time, in which the pastoral ministry feels “holy.” More often than not, the ministry is worrying about how to have heat when the boiler shuts down, and how to pay for it when we have to call the repairmen on a Saturday. How to make everyone happy, when at times people have been unhappy enough with other parts of their lives that we have wanted a safe place to act out. Officiating at Weddings today includes being attentive that the Sheriff has been asked to stand guard in case the groom's mother shows up, and keeping the photographers and event planners at bay while the couple speak the vows of their hearts to each other and kiss. One of the few moments which truly are “holy” have been those times when persons have been prepared to reflect on their lives, to name what needs to be confessed and atoned for, before they die. Increasingly our world is about secrets, churches have disposed of “Confessionals,” and the point of a good defense is being able to tell the truth, without admitting the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Would that we lived in a time in history, where nothing was hidden, where we had relationships without secrets, when we could be wholly honest with one another and with ourselves, which would mean we could be one in righteousness with God. Righteousness with God and all Creation is one of the two themes of this first Sunday in Advent. The other is longing. The advertising business has been counting down the decreasing number of days left for us to get all of our shopping done, to have everything everyone wants for Christmas. Advent accepts a fluidity to time and space. We know all too well the words that will be spoken, words that have been professed for two thousand years. Similar to Once Upon a Time, or Long Long ago, the Gospel of Luke names a time in the past: “In those days, when a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled, the first enrollment when Quirinius was Governor of Syria.” Luke wrote down these words after Jesus' Arrest, Crucifixion and Resurrection from the Dead to identify the historic reality of what had been longed for, by a people counted as sheep by an empire, counted for taxation, and the hope of fulfillment after 2000 years of longing. There is something in me, I believe in us all, that feels discomfort with much of the Church year. At LENT we do not always feel ready to repent. On EASTER, there are personal circumstances that get in the way of feeling Triumphal, even with trumpet fanfare of feeling Joyful. PENTECOST is a long season, half the year in length, when as the church in this place and time we do not always feel spirit filled and spirit led. BUT ADVENT, all humanity can identify with the longing for what might have been long long ago, and which we hope and pray will come soon. Longing for a time, when we can be complete, and honest about everything in our lives, assured that we will be accepted and loved. Advent is the beginning of the year, as we begin in anticipation, waiting, longing for accomplishment, longing for acceptance of who we are with one another. On Thursday evening, our Village leaders affirmed the leadership of over 25 people from this congregation and the support of so many others in the church and throughout our Village. The Village Board extended a relationship to the Village of Jacob and John and Martha, and Andrew and Mary, and Santino, that our villages would claim one another as Sisters. And this day, and this coming week, representatives from here are traveling to the opposite side of the earth, to bring other refugees to their homes. Those refugees represent tribes that have been at war with the refugees we have known for thousands of years, longer than any remember. Bringing those refugees home to their families and villages, they will each then bring persons who are blind (from their tribe to the clinic located in what had been enemy territory, our sister village), blinded because they are so close to the equator, they will receive their sight. What a gift to long for in the ADVENT of Christ's Birth, that the scattered refugees dispersed over all the earth would be brought home, and the blind would renew their sight and see. Longing for Righteousness begins from tis moment on...

"Final Words" November 25, 2012

2nd Samuel 23:1-7 John 18: 33-37 This is a unique day in a unique year. Most frequently, the Sunday after Thanksgiving signals the beginning of Advent, and we progress full speed from Labor day to Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Year's. But there were 5 Thursdays in November this year, so we are able to pause, to reflect, to claim this as The Final Sunday in the Church year, Christ the King Sunday. In addition to seasons of waiting, the birth of innocence, the temptations and journey of Jesus, the crucifixion and resurrection, the season of Pentecost when we acknowledge the Holy Spirit with us, at Christ the King we name: Jesus Christ is Our Lord and Savior, our identity is as children of God, brothers and sisters of Christ, we are the Church. On this day, we pay attention to the Final Words of King David, the final examination and indictment of Jesus by Pilate. Final words have special meaning for us, as if all our lives were cumulative, building to this final conversation in which truth can be revealed. The Final Episode of a favorite show, the final words of a story, the last words charged and spoken. But life is not cumulative, often we do not know that these are going to be our last words, our final declaration. There are instead numerous events each year of our lives, in which we are able to reflect on all we know, to claim relationships and identities we desire. There are moments throughout life, in which we reveal to ourselves and to all the world who we are and what is important. We have so many different stories about David. The youngest son of Jesse, whom the last of the Judges Samuel, anointed to be King. Little David who slew Goliath with a slingshot. David the shepherd boy who played the harp to soothe the rage of King Saul. David who led an army against Israel. David who brought the Ark of the Covenant home dancing. David who wanted to build a house for God, and instead God created a new covenant that the House of David would rule Israel as a dynasty. David who committed adultery with Bathsheba, then murdered her husband Urriah. David whose own son Absalom waged war against him. Yet here, in what are named as The Final Words of the King, there is no mention of these truths, these real human failures, only the revelation of glory in having been used as the instrument of God. All our sins, all the individual events of our lives can be forgiven. What matters is the revelation of who we are before God and the community. When we recite the lineage of our ancestors, we do not name our great great great grandparents as having been found guilty and exiled to live in America; instead we describe the bravery of those ancestors who risked three month long ocean crossings to come to this new world with hope, establishing roots for who we have become. Decades ago, in the 1950s, The Baby Doctor prescribed that it was natural for children when they came of age, realizing they were not in control, to want to run away from home. Dr. Spock encouraged trying to talk rationally as friends/equals, to explore if they had thought through where they would go, what they would do, if they were running away to join the circus or to live in a cave, whether they had enough food and clean socks.The idea being to make the ideas become so real before setting foot out the door, they would choose instead to stay; or if not, that you had a clue where they might be going. Current wisdom is different, instead of trying to understand, to rationalize and reason with a 3 year old, family need to emphasize that “We are part of one another. We belong together. We cannot run away because we are running away from ourselves.” This morning's sacrament, everything about this day, is revelation that we belong, we are integral to who one another truly are. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Representative of Rome for the Occupied territory of Palestine whose capital was Jerusalem. Throughout the Gospel, those who have questioned Jesus' authority to teach, to heal, to preach, have been the Pharisees and Saducees; but here Pilate instead represents all the power of the Roman Empire. While the leaders of the Religious community had charged Jesus with Blasphemy of usurping the power of God to heal and to forgive, Rome had a different power base and different concern: Treason. When we seek decisions, what is our concern? Is it power? Is it vindication of our rights? The origin of this congregation in this community, had as our primary concern: FORGIVENESS. What will it take when you are wronged, to forgive? Rome's concern was to conquer the world. Through the Roman Legion to dominate and control the entire known world as the Empire under the rule of Caesar. Pilate perceived Jesus to be a man, only a man, not even a Citizen of Roman but a Jewish man; therefore if he must lower himself to deal with this, Pilate will make an example of Jesus. This is not a typical trial, not a standard indictment of one who is accused of a crime. Pilate is attempting to make a political statement about power. Pilate deals only in fact, in what can be proven. Jesus here is describing a different reality. Pilate questions whether Jesus is King of a Kingdom that can challenge The Empire of Rome. Jesus' implies that instead the Empire of Rome is part of the Kingdom of God. Where Pilate attacks Jesus for what he represents, Pilate represents Roman Authority, Jesus King of the Jews; Jesus asks Pilate to consider what he himself believes. What Jesus challenges Pilate to consider is not what is factual, what is truth, what are your rights and powers, but what is being revealed by the ways we live? This child baptized this day, needs more than to be fed and cleaned and allowed to sleep. A child, each of us need to belong, need identity as being part of something greater than ourselves, and understanding our role and responsibilities within that.

November 25, 2012, "Thanks Giving"

II Samuel 9 Mark:13:1-8 There are two vastly different starting points for a life of faith. One searching for what is spiritual in innocence, experiencing the world around us as new and grand, awesome and beyond reason. Exploring for ourselves what God's Plan might be for us. The other spiritual in thanksgiving after innocence was lost. When you are newly weds, it seems as though you are the discoverers of “love.” When you give birth to a baby, you witness a newborn's cuticles and eyelashes. When you have gone away to college and experienced life on your own, being presented with ideas and thoughts you never knew... Everything is new, all life is different, as you and loved ones journey to meet family, as together you prepare a holiday meal, as together you buy a tree creating memories for the first time. All of life, seems to have been created for you this day. And life is far bigger, more wonderful than ever you imagined life could be. This has been the theme of spirituality throughout recent years. After the turn of the Century, as we came to recognize the search to master and know, did not provide all of life's answers. Through a fresh examination of the Sacred Texts, trying ancient Spiritual Disciplines, acts of hospitality and discerning what is meant in Hospitality, The Church (and believers) have found new faith in mission and missiology. But there is another starting point, which has served believers for hundreds of years. We go to the shore, certain that while there are high tides and low, the waves only come so far. Building bricks, steel and concrete blocks are cemented together for all time. The World's Economies support one another in growth and expansion. We have seen hurricanes (not tornadoes) but hurricanes in Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio. Tsunamis have come ashore with a force that wipes away cities. We have seen steel twisted and concrete become rubble. The roller coaster of Atlantic City that turns our stomachs over was not the one made of steel and wood, but the wind and waves and fire and snow that have changed the coastline. “Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines, this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.” To have done without during economic depression, to have lost your job, your career and to survive... to have lived through the devastations of war, bombardment and killing... to have had Cancer or Mental Illness, any chronic disorder and come through to the other side, creates a feeling of thanksgiving, that inspires belief, that perhaps God has a plan for us more grand than that we would die and be buried. How do we live, when we have survived surviving? When our deepest fears and greatest accomplishments have been resolved, what then? The Puritans had fled generations of religious extermination. As at the decree of a Catholic Queen protestants were put to death; following which when a Protestant Monarch sat upon the throne, the Catholics were expelled. In hope of a new and different life, they spent everything they had to charter ships for the new world. But the voyage had been delayed and they arrived too late for planting. The Pilgrims endured the first harsh winter in this new world, with disease and starvation and cold, knowing only that they could not go back. The indigenous peoples showed them how to plant and hunt in this wilderness, and the first Thanksgiving was about giving thanks to God for hope beyond everything they had ever known. After the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and WWI and WWII there was an attitude of thanksgiving, simply for being alive. Our Scriptures this week are about the practice of faith after everything we have lived through is done. Jesus' disciples asked “Tell us when this will be, what will be the sign when all things have been accomplished?” Our Old Testament Lesson names a time when The Promise has been fulfilled. The children of Abraham, those who crossed the Red Sea into the wilderness with Moses, those who crossed the Jordan to fight against the Canaanites, are settled in the land. After the time of the Judges when each one did what was right in his own mind, they came together as a nation under a king, who has now been replaced by a dynasty. David the Shepherd boy, anointed by Samuel, who slew Goliath, who fought against Saul's army to be the Beloved Shepherd King of Israel sits on the Throne in peace. After everything has been done, David asks so is there anyone of the House of Saul who is not dead? One of the servants of King Saul is found, who tells a story from the earliest days of this civil war. That decades ago when David's guerrilla warriors first attacked the capital city, King Saul and his son Jonathan were fighting on the battlefields. Surprised by an attack on the Palace in the night, the nursemaid took up the toddler child of Jonathan, grandchild to Saul, in his blankets. As she rushed to get out of the King's Palace she tripped, and the full weight of the woman landed upon the infant child crushing his tender legs. All these years, the last surviving member of the House of Saul has been in hiding. King David sends his troops to find this lame child of Jonathan, the grandchild of Saul called Mephibosheth. Imagine that you are the last surviving member of the family of the former King. All your life, there has been war and killing, while you have been in hiding. Your legs, both, were broken by those trying to hide you away. Your life, your whole identity has not been about the pride of being royalty, the power of being a grandson to the King, but instead your identity has been about “shame.” For all the decades of your life, you have lived in the shadows, hiding, broken, knowing that as the surviving member, there was a reward for killing you, your secret cannot be found out. Then one day, as you are hiding in a hovel, in a forgotten little town, there is panic in the streets. At the horizon, you can see the flags and standards of the Soldiers of the King. You have been found out. Your secret has been revealed. The battalion of soldiers has come for you. They pound upon the door, crying out your name, and you are overcome by the shame of your family, the shame of everything that has happened in your life. Unable to walk, you balance on your crutch, as the door bursts open, and the soldiers of your family's enemy grasp you by the shoulders and legs and carry you out into the sunshine. The troops carry you, not as a redeemed hero, but as the child of the vanquished. They carry you where you most do not want to go. They carry you to the Capital City, to the Palace where your legs had been broken, to the thrones where your father and his father had ruled, and now instead King David sits. But instead of an order of execution, the King of Israel pronounces a blessing upon you. Your image, as the broken child of the hated king, is broken. Your shame is destroyed, as King David describes that for ever more you and your descendants will have a place at the King's Table. The King will not eat, until you are there. What happens when all the accomplishments are over, when the battle is finally done? Then Shame is redeemed. Images of hatred and loss are destroyed. Peace is not about the absence of war, but about the redemption of the lost. What do we do when we have survived the Cancer we believed would kill us? We live life in giving thanks to God, taking on challenges we never believed possible, because we have survived survival, and life itself has become a blessing. This Thanksgiving, may we do more than cook a bird, than watch a parade and a game and gorge ourselves to sleep. Instead, at this time of giving thanks to God, may we redeem the shamed. May we search for the lost of our lives, destroying the images which divided and separated us. This Thanksgiving, may we give thanks to God that we have survived surviving and are able to give thanks.

"Irony's Reversal", November 4, 2012 All Saints

Ruth 1: 1-18 Mark 12:28-34 This last week, rather than a Tornado in Kansas taking one house, Dorothy and her dog Toto to Oz, a Hurricane swept 19 States and the Emerald City of New York felt the force of Fire, Flood and Wind. In the wake of destruction, we know that God was not in the Fire, Flood or Wind, and in the still small silence we have been asking ourselves “What are we doing here?” “What meaning is there?” The last many weeks we have read the Book of Job, and in the midst of suffering had wondered WHY, Why do bad things happen, not only to Good people, not only Terrorism, but disasters that destroy so much? Our passages this morning address faith from a different perspective. Rather than the bold question WHY God? these passages are stated in IRONY, recognizing that there is devastation, there are horrible things that happen in life. The question of IRONY is WHETHER ANYTHING IS SACRED! When your home and neighborhood and everything you have ever known is destroyed what Meaning is there, what Purpose? If life is not a Prosperity Gospel where you pay by doing all the right things and receive God's Blessings, then what? If life is not as simple as Do Good and receive blessings, do evil and bear the curses, can we be faithful to God? Is it possible for us as a Human Creatures to practice the fidelity of Scripture, being faithful to God No Matter What? When a Hurricane destroys everything we have ever known? When flooding holds fire fighters from fighting fires, and whole neighborhoods: 110 houses in one place are reduced to ash? When our loved ones have catastrophic illnesses? When we lose our lobs? When we go through divorce? When there is no food to put on the Table? When we are diagnosed with chronic illness? When circumstance is hopeless, will we be faithful with the kind of loyalty God shows us, or will we give up on God? According to The Book of Leviticus (the LAWS of what it is to be a Holy People), when our ancestors were in the wilderness, when they had been rescued from Pharaoh and from the Red Sea, Moses stated the core of all belief: HEAR O ISRAEL, THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE, GOD ONLY SHALL WE SERVE, GIVING TO GOD OUR FULL HEART & SOUL & STRENGTH. According to Moses this was more than the First Commandment, this was the foundation for Living. The Holiness Code has many other restrictions, regarding what can and cannot be done on the Sabbath, Divorce, Race and intermarriage, regarding the eating of Shell fish, how long a period of mourning should be observed. All of which may have a place in a utopian society, in the wilderness apart from the rest of the world. But when there is crisis, when economic hardship and war and human struggle threaten life itself, do we adhere to all the moral restrictions, or to any, or what? To understand Ruth we need to read beneath the surface. We need to pay attention to the meaning of Names, the meaning of Actions, the meaning of Relationships. Are we animals grazing, breeding, sleeping and dying, or as Creatures in the image of God, Beings who have tasted of the Fruit of Knowledge, shall we use the minds we were given to look for meaning in life? There once was a Man of the House of Levi, whose name was Elimelech. The Nation of Israel understood itself not simply as ONE NATION UNDER GOD, but as a Holy Nation, a Chosen People. This man of the Nation of Israel, had a name meaning THE LORD IS MY GOD. He was of Bethlehem, which in addition to being the City of David and the Birthplace of Jesus, the meaning of the name BETHLEHEM was THE BREADBASKET. This was a place where food was in abundance, where crops were grown to feed the Nation. And in Bethlehem there was FAMINE. When there is famine in the Breadbasket of the Promised Land, what shall a man of Israel whose names means The Lord is My God, do? Elimelech took his family and fled, went away to a different nation, he abandoned everything, he banished himself. And when they had settled in Moab, he died. Living in the land of Moab, apart from Israel, the sons took foreign wives, wives of Moab, and after a decade, the sons whose names mean SICKLY and GONNA DIE, both become ill and died. Following all the jots and tiddles of the Morality Laws, this family broke the rules and suffered for it. HOWEVER, all of that is only the preamble to the book of Ruth, the question that must be answered is Now What? Naomi decides that even if it means death, she must return to Israel. Out of loyalty to family the widowed daughters pledge they will go with her. Naomi appeals to logic and reason, that she cannot provide for them. Over and over they demonstrate loyalty to her, but in the end Orpah weeps upon Naomi's shoulder and goes home.The distinction between Orpah and Ruth has nothing to do with one being good and another evil, one being of one family and one of another. The difference between Orpah and Ruth is that Orpah's loyalty is to Naomi and to family, where Ruth's loyalty is to the One True God. English does not do justice to the tone of Ruth's words, for as Naomi entreats her to go back, Ruth responds that what she asks is an attack on her faith/an attack on her loyalty to God/a shaming of Ruth whose very name means LOYALTY & COMPASSION. In the Book of Ruth, Morality Laws are identified as being secondary to the basic integrity of faith and loyalty to God. Simply because we are logical, or because we followed all the right things, does not guarantee a faithful relationship with God. However, even if we were not of the Chosen People, if we have absolute trust in God, everything else will naturally follow. Orpah is remembered as one who showed loyalty to Israel. Ruth is remembered thousands of years afterward as one who showed absolute loyalty to God, and was an ancestor to David and Solomon and eventually Jesus. Putting this conviction, of what is really at stake, what is important in faith, to the test, the Gospel of Mark described Jesus having entered the City of Jerusalem where he threw over the tables of money changers in the Temple. Priests, Pharisees and Saducees all challenged and tested Jesus about meaning. Having listened to this, a scribe (whose identity was encapsulated in making certain to copy down literally every dot and cross every T in all the Laws), asks Jesus a question: What is the First Commandment? Jesus repeats the Law of Moses, Hear O Israel, The Lord our God is One, there is no other. And you shall worship the Lord with all your Heart and Soul and Strength, but Jesus also includes with all your mind. It is not enough to have conviction and the heat of passion about being a believer, faith also requires having the light of reason and understanding. To this, Jesus also responds, that equal to and related to this, is to love neighbor as we love our own lives. It is not enough to believe in God, to follow a philosophy, we also need to practice what we believe caring for others. Because of circumstance, Death had always been a had issue for me. As such, I have had to struggle with the meaning of death and through that the meaning of life. What I have come to has been two inter-related thoughts. First, that as much as our lives are measured by degrees & accomplishments, by some in terms of wealth and possessions, or influence and power... when we die our lives are reduced to an Obituary, which overtime becomes fewer and fewer words, dropping all the degrees, all the accomplishments, and truly we cannot take possessions with us, until what we are known for, and remembered by is our relationships. A Neighbor who was like an Aunt to us. ALSO, that while it was once easy to glorify those who had died, and to provide a beautiful memorial, now those who have died are more than Names, more than Members of the Church, or Community, they are also Loyal Friends.

"Beyond Being Naive," October 28, 2012

Job 42 Mark 10:46-52 This week, one of the Board Members responsible for building the Clinic in Sudan, described that in retrospect what we had done was “Beyond naïve.” For our pastor, to volunteer to go into a war-zone, was beyond naïve. To have recognized there were no ATMs or Banks or Stores of any kind, so to carry packs of hundred dollar bills hidden in his shoes and taped to his own chest, was beyond naive. For us to think, that we could load everything and anything necessary, not only to build a clinic but to operate as one, into cargo containers in Arkansas to be shipped around the world, then trucked across open Savannah where there are no roads. To receive word one of the containers was stolen and to believe the other was lost, and still to send volunteers after them to build it was beyond naïve. To be at the Equator, needing water for survival, and to make concrete, let alone to provide health care, only to discover after arrival that the only existing well had run dry, all of that was beyond being naïve. And yet only when we venture into circumstances which are completely impossible can we allow our egos and intellects and desire for control to get out of the way, for us to witness miracles. Faith cannot be planned for, or orchestrated, or made to happen, if circumstances necessitate, then what we believe in is not faith, is not the act of God, but our own deceptions. These last four weeks we have been recounting the story of Job. Reading this together, I cannot fathom a passage any better fashioned for our time. For here is an adult man, who like many of us has always believed in God, always worshipped and trusted, and life had been good. 90% of Job's early success was simply in showing up. Naïvely, Job believed that good things happen to good people, so do what is expected, get an education, get a job, get married, work hard and you will live happily ever after. That is how the Fairy Tales we told our children end, is it not? Yet, suddenly both the Stock Market and the Housing Market collapsed, and the climates changed, there were Wars in multiple places, and catastrophic chronic illnesses attacking our bodies and in depression attacking our minds. Job lost his employment and his reputation; he lost his children and their home, their marriage and friends all turned away. Job's own life seemed to attack his body. Yet, where Job's spouse and friends all told him that God was not real, either give up on God, or just go through the motions of repentance regardless of what you believe, still Job held fast to the conviction that God is real, but Job came to recognize that perhaps his faith and life had been naïve. Beyond naïvely going through the motions of life, the seasons change time evolves and a different faith, different practices may be called for as life's circumstance change, not necessarily in a straight line of progression. Struggling with God, arguing with God, lamenting the circumstance of life, all were very real. We have been carefully acculturated to not lament. Lamentation is not wallowing in self-pity, but instead claiming what was, reflecting upon how important different relationships and circumstances were to us, is an essential stage of grieving so as to be able to move on. Without lamentation we would keep making the same mistakes over and over, without considering whether to change and why. Responding to God as real and living, in the end, regardless of what he had come to, Job would be blessed by God for having been faithful to believing in a living God, which Job's friends did not. The story of Job is a very real and appropriate book of faith for us and for our circumstances. Our times and place and culture are vastly different, yet the loss of jobs and foreclosure of homes, the eroding of marriages, the illness and death of children, attacks upon our reputation, shame, the loss of identity, and everything we thought we knew, ALL are very human realities and very similar occasions where some lose their faith in God. The great challenge to the church today, is not over the music we sing, not over the traditions we follow, not over the many and various socio-political issues that have divided the church, faith has survived all these. The great challenge to faith, today as in every time, is over whether we continue to believe in a living faith in a living God or whether we give up. Uniquely different, from the time of Job, is that the Messiah has come. God did not leave us in our circumstance, but like Pygmalian, the Creator so believed in and loved the Creation, that the Creator stepped into and became one with Creation. Even more, that the Creator so loved Creation, that the Creator sacrificed the Creator's own life to change Creation from a naïve faith, to something far beyond naïve. As we read this passage from Mark's Gospel, we recognize that this is the final miracle Jesus is requested before going into Jerusalem and to the Cross. We recognize also, that Jesus has healed many unnamed people along the way, those possessed with demons, those who are deaf and lame and unable to speak, children who have died, and adults with incurable diseases, the very first of which had also been a man who was blind. Reading of this second healing of a blind man, we have to wonder what is different, what has changed, we no longer naïvely doubt if Jesus can heal blindness we have seen it, so why describe the restoration of sight as a second miracle? Three things immediately are visible. In the first healing, Jesus must heal the man twice. The first time, the man opens his eyes, suddenly for the first time he can see, but people appear as if trees walking. The things of reality, the circumstances are indistinct and undefined, requiring Jesus healing his blindness a second time. Having followed Jesus through these last two chapters, this second blind-man is healed because Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he wants Jesus to do for him. Second, that Jesus had just posed that exact same question to two his disciples. James and John had come to Jesus as if Trick or Treating, asking him to give them whatever they want. Jesus responded to his own disciples “What do you want me to do for you?” and they had asked for power, to first among equals, that when he came into power that they would sit for eternity at his right and left hand. Having heard two of his favorite disciples' request, Jesus asks the exact same question of a blind beggar, who does not ask for power, but only for healing. Third, of all the people that Jesus heals in the Gospel according to Mark, Bartimaeus the blind beggar, is the only person who is named. Why, Who is he? We need to remember the context, the circumstance of when and how the Word of God has come to us. After the Egyptian Pharaohs, after the rise of Israel with King Saul, King David and King Solomon, came the Babylonians, then the Persian Empire, then the Empire of Medes, then advanced Alexander the Great and the Greeks with the Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and these gave way to the Roman Empire of the Caesars. Different from earlier transitions, the Romans preserved the teaching and philosophy of the Greeks. Anyone who was learned, anyone who had been taught to read and write had read Homer and Plato's Republic, and another discourse by Plato named after the principle philosopher in the piece “Timaeus.” Plato was in awe of the reasoned orderly intelligent design of the universe. According to Plato in Timaeus, in the beginning there were three forces, Chaos, Intelligence and Necessity. The eternal Craftsman of life, applied intelligence and necessity to the chaos that was, and from that point forward necessity and intelligent response have evolved all that is. Now according to Plato, these three are perpetually in tension, so when creatures do not behave intelligently or respond to necessity, they can also devolve toward chaos. According to Timaeus, Plato reasoned that if people have been “airheads” in this life they would be reincarnated next as birds. And according to Plato, remember this is Plato not me, when a man was weak or cowardly, they would be reincarnated as a woman. But, this theory being put forward by the philosopher Plato, the highest achievement of a man would be to be a philosopher, one who devoted their life to intellectual pursuit of what is necessary and how to build success upon success, achievement upon achievement, so as to become as powerful and wealthy and unconcerned about this life as a god. More than this, according to the Greeks there was physical sight and blindness, and also in philosophy, in understanding what is not perceived by the senses but only by the mind a true visionary would be blind in this life. We read this second story of healing a man, a blind beggar, not naïvely as the healing of blindness, but undercutting Plato, this son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, has come to recognize that despite all his achievements, all his philosophy and understanding still he is blind and the only way to truly see is to come to Jesus, to ask for healing from God. Before leaving Job, we need to name, that in order for Job's friends to be healed, in order for the blessings to be conferred upon Job and his daughters, first his friends needed to lament their own failings and hardships and faith struggle. Then Job needed to make an offering for them. What we do as the church is more often than not, for others in the community, in the world and in future generations, and not for our benefit. Our responsibility as the people of faith, as the sons of Timaeus and the daughters of Job, is to accept and embrace what is beyond naïve, to struggle with the realities of life and to struggle with God believing in miracles beyond our understanding, but miracles we have seen.

"Trusting God to Be God" Oct 21, 2012

Job 38: 1-11 & 34-41 Mark 10: 35-45 Among the classic beloved old hymns are: I come to the Garden in prayer when the dew is still on the roses and He walks with me and talks with me and tells me I am his own... Jesus loves me this I know... What a Friend we have in Jesus... Each of which assume this Biblical identity of God being like us, God is not a force, an unseen power, an electric current; God has hands and feet, the heart of a warrior, the compassion of a midwife or nursemaid. To a God like us, we can confess all that troubles us, knowing that God is just, God understands, cares, the dilemma we struggle with is whether God is All Powerful or All Good? For if God is all good and God is all powerful, then why, why is there pain and suffering and evil in the world? Either God is not ALL powerful, so as to allow evil to at times take over. Or God is not ALL good, and while often God blesses us, God also can be quite cruel. This is Job's complaint: Life is not fair, where is God! There are those who have come to believe that God cannot be both at the same time. Some who theorize that God is All Powerful over the stuff that is God's, Creation, Nature, Destiny, but God has also given us Free Will, which created a realm where God is not. Within the areas of our domination and control, we can bring evil upon ourselves, upon one another, upon the world, and even God cannot stop this. Because God is All Powerful over that which God controls, but Free Will enables us to control and abuse and neglect what we control outside of God. Therefore, God is ALL Good and All Powerful except where we have not allowed God in. There are others who speculate that truly God is ALL Powerful, but the definition of Good is not all left to God. We each are able to claim and determine what we desire to be Good, and what may appear Good to some may at the same time inflict suffering upon others. There is a give and take to life, as we contest for who's Good will be revealed in the end. According to these believers God is ALL Powerful, but the definition of what is Good is up to the beholder, and all the elements of the Universe cannot have their Good at the same time. Part of the problem with human understanding is that the foundations of knowledge, our foundations of everything we know, are based in earlier times. For the entire history of humanity up until 350 years ago, we perceived the world not only as Anthropomorphic, but also as Anthropocentric. Anthropomorphic refers to our expectation that all creatures at their most basic are just like us. Where we have feet, fish have a tail; where we have arms birds have wings, but reptiles, fish, birds, mammals all have two eyes, a nose, ears, a heart and brain. We can each know creation through our senses, so also all these living creatures like us, can experience life and know what we feel. All of which is based on a projection of life, even a projection of God, as being like us. Likewise, to describe the universe as Anthropocentric is to believe that all the universe revolves around us. When Copernicus theorized the existence of a Solar System with a sun at the center as a star, and all the planets including our own orbiting around that sun, what he was challenging was not only the placement of planets, whether the earth was the center of the universe or if the sun could be, but Anthropocentrism, and whether we/each of us are the center of our universe. The ramifications of Copernican Theory, not only deal with space travel and the possible existence of life elsewhere, but Copernican Theory challenges all our assumptions about time and space, even whether if we are not the center of the universe, does Creation even need humanity at all? This morning we Baptized two infants, Audrey and Grayson. Suddenly, miraculously a few months ago, the lives of each of these families changed, the center of their universe seemed to shift. Now sleep is determined by these tiniest of humans. It was difficult enough at your weddings to change your last name, your family identity, now rather than being Lauren and Joshua, Ben and Kerrie, you have become Grayson's Mom and Dad, Audrey's Father and Mother, and by extension we have all new identities. Such has been the power of Anthropocentism, and the challenge of Copernican Theory. God's response to Job, names that instead of being the center of our worlds, the center of the universe with our God, we are no more important than mosquitos or gnats. From this vision of Creation, we can imagine God reaching down from heaven to scratch the backs and stroke the ears of God's favorite pets which are not you and me, but Leviathan and Behemoth, Sea monsters like Loch Ness, Moby Dick or the Crocodile. All the questions of God to Job, reframe that rather than our being the center of our universe, we are merely human creatures, mortal and relative, and God is God. While Job has raised his fist at the sky and struggled for answers “WHY?” God has showered upon Job a thousand questions of Who, How, When, What, and Where. Do you know all the circumstances of life? When your child will be born, this is a human question. What will be their identity? What will your identity be? Who will they become? How will we live? When will we die? What happens then? All these are human questions. WHY, that is a question for us to trust God to know, believing God to be ALL powerful and ALL Good. The disciples James and John come to Jesus with a very human question they were not supposed to ask. We know they knew they were not supposed to ask it, because they introduce the question by asking for a guarantee...Will you do whatever we ask? Matthew's Gospel goes even further, and rather than John and James asking the question, he claims it was their mother who asked it for them. The painful irony of the Gospel is that Jesus had just described, now for the 3rd time, that being the Messiah he was going to be arrested and to suffer and to die, and instead of asking How, When, Where or even risking Why, the sons of Zebedee asked the very human question, SO, will you allow us to sit at your right and left ? And even worse, we each of us seem to have the gene of Zebedee DNA in our systems, we seek domination, our desire is to win. Rather than listening and hearing one another, rather than having concern and compassion for the whole of creation, we question how do we get connected to power, how do we get noticed, how do we get to be first. Imagine a woman driving her car during a rainstorm, when suddenly the car is struck by lightning. She returns home and relates the story to her family, and her son responds “Let's go buy a Lottery ticket! They say that you have the same chance of winning the Lottery as being struck by lightning!” We are very human. William Sloan Coffin was one of the great preachers of the 20th Century, Coffin described having been a College student at Yale, with three close friends. On their way back from Thanksgiving break the other three had been driving together, when the one at the wheel had fallen asleep, all three were killed. Coffin related his feelings of anger at the funeral hearing the words from Job: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” He was so frustrated, Coffin considered reaching his leg out from the pew to trip the Priest as he walked down the aisle. Just as he was about to do so, a voice inside him asked: Which part of what he said are you angry at? Coffin claimed the second, Who was God to have taken them all away! Then the first part occurred to him, “The Lord giveth,” their lives were not his to control, he was just a man, he could not be God and had to trust God to be God. We can be Baptized in Christ's Baptism. We can serve one another and share in communion. We can forgive one another. But all of this we do, because Christ first did so for us.

Oct 14 "Judged and Being Judged"

Job 23 Matthew 10:17-31 Of all the personalities, in all the Bible, none are more Judged than Job and the Rich, Young Ruler! Saul who persecuted the Christians, who would not even dirty his hands to pick up a rock himself but held the coats of others while they stoned Stephen to death, becomes the Apostle Paul. Simon who always jumped to the wrong conclusion, Jesus gave all authority for the Church as Peter. Even the Tax Collector Zacheus, because he wanted to catch a glimpse of Jesus is redeemed as a child of Israel. Sarah who laughed at God, became the mother of Isaac and grandmother to all Israel. Mary Magdalene who according to some reports had sold herself for money and possessed became a disciple. But the Rich Young Ruler was shocked by Jesus' words and went away sorrowful. What he represented was what our culture aspires to, he was affluent, influential, powerful, and young, we would guess highly educated from the very best of families. According to his own testimony he was moral and ethical and Church-going, who respected God and loved his mother. The only offense he made was that he sought out Jesus, he came asking what he must do to have Eternal Life? He did not try to buy it as Simon the Magician, he did not try to use Jesus' name, he was not seeking power or authority as James and John had asked wanting to sit at Jesus' right hand. He had not sought justification like Pilate questioning “What is Truth?” He wanted Eternal Life, is this not description of wanting Christian faith? The judgement against the Rich, Young Ruler, the sin of this man, was that he was like us, succeeding at all the world has to offer, he recognized this is not enough, there must be more, and that more is faith, but faith requires giving up everything else. Like it or not, we are continually judging and being judged. Buddhism has a very different starting point than most of us are accustomed to. Pregnancy makes a woman feel ill. Morning sickness makes you want to vomit, giving birth is the most exhausting marathon a body can endure. According to Buddhism, from the moment of birth we are dying. Life is a series of sicknesses as we age and wear out, until we discern that the only way out is to seek a different reality. The ultimate relief in Buddhism is to die, so as to become something else. Like Job's wife, we are left believing that if there is a God, God must be a vindictive merciless evil, and one's affirmation of faith becomes “Curse God and Die!” Judaism and Christianity have a very different starting point. In the Beginning God saw every element as it was made and pronounced it good, saw all of life in completeness and pronounced it very good. The great difficulty of living in a world we believe to be Good, is how we explain judgement and suffering. Job's friends suggest the world is a rational and ordered place. The first suggests: “You must have done something wrong.” Judgement is a punishment for sin. The only obstacle to a right relationship with God becomes confessing what you did, so you can be forgiven. In true works-righteousness, we need to confess our sins, and atone for them to be forgiven. A second friend says, “Well if not your guilt, then the sins of your parents and grandparents.” Like Freudian psycho-analysis we have to search through all our past to find our most deep seated guilt. Our family systems perpetuated from one generation unto the next, repeat broken relationships. The third describes “Job, it is not your fault, it is all humanity. As in the days of Noah, God looked on all the world and saw corruption. Someone had to pay, somebody needed to make things right and God chose you.” This is where our Old Testament lesson for this morning begins. Job is not satisfied with the answers from any of his friends or his wife. One of the great gifts of Judaism to Christianity is a tenacity of faith that does not stop with I'm Okay, you're Okay, let's do no harm to anyone, but a faith which argues with God. Like his friends, Job believes the world is ordered and rational, so what Job desires is his day in court. Job wants his opportunity to face God toe to toe and plead his case. I am not certain if I am like everyone else, but on long drives in the car, I often replay old circumstance from life. If only I had been able to to say... to justify my actions... to present my side of the story... surely I could be vindicated! The difficulty with those one-sided conversations is the ultimate reality that we have been doing all the talking, and in those original circumstance as well as today we probably needed to listen and to hear the other-side. Judgement is a hard reality, because as much as we want to be right, as mortal creatures what we seek in life is consolation, to know that we were not forsaken, we were not thrown under the bus. How often we read the 23rd Psalm, with words of comfort “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want” when the psalm just prior is this one, “My God, My God Why? Why have you forsaken me?” These are the words of one who feels judged. These are the words of Jesus on the Cross, feeling the shame of isolation and betrayal. But there is redemption in this Psalm as well, because the speaker does not cry out to an unknown God, but with great intimacy “My God, My God Why?” and this is followed with a recitation that God had always been faithful to our ancestors, and from the moment of our birth, when we were taken from our mothers' wombs and laid upon her breasts, we were cared for, provided for, loved. I think perhaps we have read something into the text of Matthew, that is not there. This man comes to Jesus, falls down before his feet and asks what is needed for eternal life. Jesus does not answer that question, instead Jesus describes The Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus describes what is required to be faithful and this man with honesty describes he has done this all his life. Jesus tells the man what he must do, and the man is stunned, the man is shocked and he goes away. What do we imagine this man did? Because he is male, affluent, well-educated, influential, and young, do we assume he went back to work scoffing “Well that was a waste of time”? Do we imagine suicide, that he just gave up? Actually, the text does not say any of that. Confronted with life changing circumstance, we would be shocked and stunned and go away to think. Receiving notice of a lay-off, or a cancer or divorce, that our child has to undergo open-heart surgery, that our parents or peers are dying. these are not the actual end of the world, but in that moment it can feel like it. Part of our cultural crisis is that we have made transitions too easy, planned for and anticipated. The child leaving their Mother to go to school, first has play-dates, then half-day, so when the full-day of separation comes we expect it. Leaving home and family to travel across the country or the world for an education, begins with smaller experiences. Death itself, instead of working up until the moment we cannot, we retire, then move to assisted living, eventually to Hospice Care where slip away. All of which sounds lovely and painless, but the fact of the matter is, ones whom we have trusted and loved all our lives are taken from us and at some point we need to grieve, we need to wrestle with why Lord? There was an era in American history in which we went straight from our parents' home to that with our husband or wife, and if that ever went poorly we went from one relationship to another never having to face who we are all alone before God. There is an importance to being shocked and stunned and thinking about who we are and what is important. This morning's Call to Confession came from the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews, claiming and affirming that we have a Great High Priest as our intercessor with the Judge of life and death. This priest is Jesus himself, who can empathize with us because he has been fully human, and who will appeal our case before God because he is fully God. All we need do is to love the Lord, follow the commandments, and continually follow him in giving all we are for what is truly important.

October 7, 2012, Testimony and CounterTestimony

Job 1:1 Mark 10:2-16 The Book of Job begins, and we know something is wrong, there is going to be a set up. “There once was a man from Uz, blameless and upright before the Lord, he did what was right and he was blessed!” Each of us at times have perceived there being someone who was always blessed, born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like a cat always landing on their feet, where other people seem to stumble into trouble, these always are blessed. As a pastor of 29 years, I can tell you that behind the facade is one who stares out the window sleepless nights, that despite the smile and grace of lines in another's face, the staring at the floor rather than looking others in the eye, tell the story of worry and doubt and fears. There is an ancient Sioux Indian prophecy that we need to expect bad things to happen, only when we have endured getting through the hardships are we ready and able to find and appreciate the good. The alternative would be the question many of us find ourselves asking, why do bad things happen to good people, what is the will of God, is God good or evil, is life cruel or are we set-up for challenge? 30 years ago Rabbi Harold Kushner published a bestseller in which he explained When Bad Things Happen to Good People? Yet even to this day, if you ask the title of the book, most will respond Why Bad Things Happen? Many came away from reading this saying, “Yes But,” he told stories of people struggling, and it is true that misery loves company, but we were looking for Why bad things happen to good people. The answer to WHY is what the Book of Job and Jesus' Hard Teachings are about. When I was in 3rd Grade, we were carefully instructed in learning The Scientific Method...that there are GIVENs about the way the world works, and whenever we create a new THEORY about what could be true, we need to test our theory with a HYPOTHESIS, we operationalize a test with STANDARDIZED QUANTIFIED METHODS, we OBSERVE, we draw CONCLUSIONS, and we prove or disprove our Hypothesis allowing us to believe our theory identifying new Givens, or we disprove this as wrong. All through Junior and Senior High and College and Grad School, we followed the procedures of The Scientific Method in both Natural and Social Sciences. When suddenly in the mid 1980s someone asked whether all the results always fit the Hypothesis? And the answer was NO, for nearly every question that is asked, every hypothesis, nearly all of the results fit but there are routinely a few that do not, these are categorized as spurious, random chance, fate. The question then became, if there are always some results which are spurious, maybe it is not that some individuals are wrong, some circumstances do not fit, but rather that we were asking the WRONG QUESTIONS, possibly event that our Scientific Method does not provide a complete understanding. Those researchers determined that rather than writing Theses PROVING CONCLUSIONS the purpose of research was to document and describe Case Studies, and the reader, the observer, the listener seeking answers would be able to determine for themselves if this answered their unique experience. Many approach reading the Bible as if a Book of Law, Instruction. That reading the Bible, we would know right and wrong, and how we are to live our lives. There are books, like Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, which are books of Law, naming that when you do right you will be blessed, and when you do wrong you bring curses upon yourself. Like a Two year old being told “Must Not Touch! The Stove Will Burn You” we tempt and test. If I touch the handle of the stove? If I touch it when it is turned off? How about when it turns Red? We learn there is Testimony that is true, but there also need to be Counter-Testimonies which together provide a more complete understanding, of what is true and what might be when what we assumed would be true happened differently. A week ago, meeting with the Confirmation Class, we reviewed the first half of the Book of Genesis, asking the question WHY? Why is Creation described in seven days, the very last thing named before the Sabbath being Humanity out of the Humus; and why, in the next section is the Human the first thing created and God brings everything to the Human? Suddenly it occurs to me, that perhaps the Biblical Testimony is Genesis 1. The Biblical TESTIMONY of TRUTH is that all life is this interconnected web, with the seeds of the future in each. But that rather than our being the center of our universe, long long before we ever existed, at the foundation of life itself, before there was an Atmosphere, or Matter, or Life, at our very Core Our World was a Dark and Shapeless Void, a place of Nothingness and Fear, AND there was and Is GOD. And with a word, speaking an idea, God rules Creation, to balance everything, and in that balance is the answer to our fears and to life. This Testimony explains all of life, as named in Genesis, AND IT WAS GOOD, VERY GOOD. But in our world, we also know ourselves to have a dominance, control over life and death. So what is the COUNTER-TESTIMONY that is also true where we are the center, the foundation, the first thing? There is the story of Creation at Chapter 2, with Adam being the first Creation, naming all the creature God creates, and through naming giving each identity in relationship to us, and following the story through with Humanity placed at the Center of the Universe rather than God, this also becomes the creation of Sin, as we seek to make decisions, to live life without God. The delicate balance of Testimony and Counter-Testimony is when the world begins to believe the Counter-Testimony only, to take the Exception as if The Rule. To do so is to ask Wrong Questions. The Covenant with God is often described as being THE LAW. However, the failure of religion has been that rather than perceiving the Covenant with God as Relationship, as a give and take tension of life, The Law became codified as an absolute. When we break the Law, we must confess, we must make an offering to demonstrate both our humility before God and our Thanksgiving to God, so in every worship service, there needs to be Confession and Offering and Thanksgiving, regardless of what we believe, or have done, or feel. In the time of the New Testament, the Lawyers (the Pharisees) brought to Jesus a question of Law. If Religion is The Law given by God, and if you are the Messiah, the Son of God, then interpret the Law! Much like our own time, for humanity is humanity, Divorce had become common. Men routinely went into marriage with the assumption that if it does not work, all I have to do is appear before the Rabbi and state three times I want a Divorce from her, and being in control of my life I can create my reality. Rather than a purely Jewish State, this was now a Roman Culture with Roman Laws, one of which was that Women could also bring suit against their husbands for divorce. With this new Roman interpretation added to the laws about Divorce, the Pharisees brought question to Jesus: What do you think about Divorce? Jesus' point is not to Condemn Divorce, or to condemn those divorcing. I remember when I was first Ordained, a woman in the congregation asked “DOES DIVORCE MAKE ONE A SINNER?” What she was asking was “My daughter is in abusive relationship. She took her children and left her husband. Regardless of who did what, because she is getting a divorce, does this mean God does not love her anymore, and that I cannot love her?” I have to believe that the answer is “GOD LOVES YOU!” The agony of this passage in Mark, is that the Pharisees assumed the reality of Divorce, assumed marriage was all about the division of assets and property and what belongs to whom to which Jesus replies THE INTENT OF GOD IS THAT YOU WOULD CLEAVE TOGETHER. Counter-Testimony is important. Counter-testimony provides balance with the Truth and Givens as we know them. The story of Job is Counter-testimony, when the LAW is questioned whether doing right you will be blessed and doing wrong you will be cursed. What happens when one who was blameless and upright and blessed has pain and sorrow heaped upon them? In C.S. Lewis' classic Screwtape Letters the old devil:Screwtape mentors the young devil Wormwood and describes “Evil is never more in danger, than when a human no longer wanting to be on God's side looks round upon the universe from which every trace of God seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, yet still believes in God and obeys. Such a testimony of Faith is much more than a means to a selfish end.”

"Righteousness," September 30, 2012

Esther 7:1-6 Mark 9:38-50 Mark Twain is said to have been asked Believing in A Believer Baptism whether he believed infants could be baptized? To which he retorted, “Believe in it? I have seen it happen!” Recently someone asked, as a learned and rational person, whether you believe in evil, in the presence of demonic forces all around us, in Satan and in Hell? The way I would want to answer the question is that there is evil in the world, there is great physical, emotional and spiritual harm we do to one another, and Yes when we turn a blind eye to suffering, when we allow fear, hate, prejudice and anger to rule, then the demonic is all around us. BUT, do I believe in Satan and Hell? As a man of God I must say NO and challenge you NOT TO BELIEVE IN HELL either. The point here is not the existence of Hell or Satan, but whether we give power to that which is wrong by BELIEVING in it. Mark's Gospel tells us that after Simon Peter confessed that he BELIEVED Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of the Living God; Peter and James and John went up the Mountain with Jesus where they experienced one of the most spiritual and mystical moments of human history as Moses and Elijah appeared before them, as Jesus was changed before their eyes, as they heard the Voice of God profess a blessing “This is my Beloved Son with whom I am Well Pleased, Listen to Him!” As they come down off the mountain the other disciples had been trying in vain to heal a child convulsed by something terrifying. Jesus prayed and the pain and suffering and fear and torment leave. Does the Bible encourage in belief in the spiritual and acknowledge that evil exists? Without question, ABSOLUTELY. However, there is a distinction between acknowledging the presence of something, fighting against it, versus in Believing in and lending credence, or turning a blind eye of tolerance to support what is evil. After all these spiritual mystical, faith-filled circumstance Jesus' disciples describe they saw a man who was trying to use the name of Jesus to heal someone. Having stood up for and defended Jesus, his disciples name that they rebuked the man. Instead, Jesus puts forward one of the most basic precepts of believing in God: “Anyone who is not against us, is for us!” In 2001, the world experienced a terrifying event, an act of hate and destruction, a circumstance of evil intended to change the world. Incredulously, commercial airplanes designed to fly above the heavens were made to crash into skyscrapers. What happened that day, was not simply that the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were hit, not only that thousands of people died. What happened that day was that people across the world changed from believing in Innocence that “anyone who is not against us is for us,” to believing in the evil and suspicion and fear that “anyone that is not for us must be against us.” That is the power of terrorism. That is the power of believing in evil. The Biblical passages appointed for this day demonstrate the meaning of “Righteousness.” Not to be right! Not to be Moralistic, not what it is to Win, to dominate, to control, to believe in your own way at the cost of all others, that is Self-righteous, that is the way of Genocide and total annihilation of all others. Righteousness is a statement of solidarity, that we stand with God, we believe in God and the power of the Cross that nothing can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. That being right with the world, we believe in the power of hope, the power of compassion and empathy with those in need. We may have nothing in common with them, but the world is not our enemy, the stranger is not someone to be feared. Anyone who is not against us, is for us. Do we name what is evil, and root it out. Yes, because ignoring our problems does not make them go away. Lie a cancer ignored, hate and fear metastasize compromising more and more of the body. But we cannot allow ourselves to succumb to hate and fear and intolerance. The Book of Esther is an obscure tale, one which Christians rarely take time to read. We skim names like Ahasuerus and Mardecai and Haman, and we skip ahead to the suffering of The Book of Job. The Book of Esther comes from Iran, from the ancient kingdoms of Persia. After the Fall of the Nation of Israel, after the deportation to Babylon, the people from Jerusalem were carried off as Prisoners of War and Slaves. But generations later, the Babylonians were defeated in battle by the Persians, who in turn took the Babylonians as slaves. Esther is the story of a woman in world dominated by men, who was a Prisoner of War of a people who themselves were Prisoners of War. This is a story of being powerless. Esther is a comical farce, to the extent of mellow-drama, the basis of the Jewish Feast of Purim. Not just a soap-opera, whenever the name of the Villain Haman was mentioned, everyone hearing would BOO! Ironically for a Biblical narrative, throughout the story, God is never directly mentioned. Whenever the Jewish Hero, Mordecai, the old man who like a benevolent uncle acts quietly behind the scenes is mentioned, the crowds would CHEER! To show what a farce this tale represented, the King of Persia is described as so full of himself and the facade of appearances that he attempted to demonstrate how beautiful his wife the Queen was, and how jealous all the other men should be, by having her appear at a State Banquet, Nude. When she refused, the King decided to replace her as Queen by having a Beauty-pageant. Because of all of this, whenever the name of King Ahasuerus is mentioned, the response from the congregation was “Duh!” And when Esther, the Jewish girl who becomes Queen by winning the title of the most-beautiful woman in Persia, is mentioned everyone WOLF-WHISTLE. In the course of this narrative, evil Haman (BOO) plots to have Old Mordecai hung on a Gallows 75 feet tall in his front yard, and all the people of Mordecai, that is The Jews, killed in a Genocide. Haman practices the fear of believing in evil: Those who are not for us, must be against us and must be killed. But throughout the story, Queen esther has kept her being Jewish hidden. She followed all the cultural norms of the world around her, questioning if being a Child of God actually mattered at all. When she learns of the plot of Haman to kill all the Jews, Esther determines she must stand in solidarity with her people. HOWEVER, in addition to being a woman, Prisoner of War of a people who were Prisoners of War, Esther knows that the King is a ruler who will not tolerate being challenged. Even to enter the King's Chamber, or to bring up a topic the King does not want to consider, are crimes punishable by death. Esther determines to gain solidarity from the King. She asks the King if he would do her a favor. Of course he accepts the request, But her favor is that the Vizer Haman, and the King would do her the favor of accepting her invitation to dinner.They come and she provides a lavish banquet, and when again Haman and Ahasuerus ask what they might do for her, she entreats them to do her the favor of coming to dinner again tomorrow night. Having now gotten the King to offer to do her a favor, and twice providing lavish feasts, at which the King offers to do whatever she asks. Esther reveals that she stands in solidarity with her people who are being exterminated by evil Haman. While a satiric mellow-drama for the Feast of Purim, the hatred and fear between Iran and Israel is not a new thing. For us all, it is arduously difficult, when abused, when insulted and made fearful, not to react in fear. The difficulty, is best described in another passage. After the people of Israel had wandered the Wilderness for forty years, after Moses had died appointing Joshua as his successor, they cross over Jordan, and in the early morning Joshua got out of bed unable to sleep.When suddenly he saw a fierce warrior with a mighty sword. And Joshua asked: “Are you on our side, or the side of our enemy?” What we need to hear, is the reply of the Stranger: “Neither, but as Commander of the Army of God.” As a people of God, we have witnessed miracles. Those who believed they would die, have lived among us. A child, whose parents thought she might die in infancy, has lived among us, whom we have fallen in love with. When those who were refugees first came to live among us, they questioned why over a 20 year war America had done nothing. And we have now changed their circumstance from dying infancy and childbirth, to life and health. From blindness to renewed vision. Anyone who is not against us, must be for us.