"Timing" November 29, 2015

Jeremiah 33:14-16 Luke 21:25-36 There is always a choice of TIMING on mornings like this. Being “Thanksgiving Weekend,” do we preach on Giving Thanks, or with Turkey Carcass made into soup and The Dinner made into sandwiches, do we look ahead in HOPE and Anxious Anticipation to the First Sunday of Advent? Thanksgiving, while a National Holiday recognizing European conquest of the land and inhabitants; a day of gorging and intoxication; a day of parades and football, is not prescribed by Scriptures! YET, a Sabbath of giving thanks to God is prescribed in the Torah and Prophets, over and over; our stopping individually, and as a Nation, and over the world as a people of God, every day, every week, every month, every year and periodically throughout life, in order to recognize who we are in relationship to God, and just how blessed we are in life. I love everything about Thanks-Giving as a celebration of faith! Gathering with family and friends. Sharing in cooking family recipes, the house smelling of pies and turkey. The table with extra places intentionally created, covered with our finest china and crystal, as a symbol of the Psalm “Thou hast prepared a Table in the presence of my enemies and my cup runneth over!” and Deuteronomy's creating a place for the Sojourner in your midst. Most especially, that people who often do not give thanks or ask the Lord's blessing, on this day: Do! But my confession is that as a very young child, I have a painful memory equated to Thanksgiving, which my family never ever let me forget. As a child I was captivated by Cartoon television shows! In particular: The Flintstones and The Jetsons, but especially when not about every day but Holidays we have. On the Thanksgiving when I was 3, there was advertised, a Thanksgiving Special of the Jetsons Meeting the Flintstones, and I could envision nothing better. However, the only time, our family ever went out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving happened that year... Throughout Thanksgiving dinner, I was anxious we would miss the “Real Thanksgiving” happening on television. At several occasions I was instructed to be silent or face the consequences. When we got home, on Thanksgiving I faced those consequences. More painful however, was that at every family celebration since, over 54 years, my brothers have reminisced about this. I truly do not recall the punishment, but I do recall afterward asking if it was now time to watch the Jetsons - Flintstones Thanksgiving Special? And was told to give up hope for that time coming. Over the years, my role in my wife's family has been to clean and stuff, cook and carve the Turkey, in part because one year someone had not removed the neck and heart and giblets before cooking; another year the bird was still frozen after it came out of the oven; and one year someone stuffed the Turkey the night before. Over the years, this has changed from volunteering to help at her grandmother's, to other's homes, to the years we went to the Macy's Parade, the year we had to have “Turducken,” and the year after when the Vegans demanded “Tofurke,” the year the bird was cooked outdoors in a deep fat fryer, and years when it was soaked in brine for days; and this year's suggestions the bird be cooked inside a Pillowcase, wrapped in Bacon, or barbequed in a trash can. The question, dependent upon whose oven, how cooked, and how large a turkey, was always TIMING. How to prepare the pies, stuffing and bird during the Parade, to be complete before the Rockettes and Santa arrived at Macy's, in order to be cooked, carved and hot but not dried out, at the perfect time for dinner? Recently, my friend Scott described that the NY Times published 75 different ways of cooking the Thanksgiving feast, searching for the ideal, whether in a slow oven, in a bag, basting, a roaster, on rotisserie spit on a grill? Their conclusion was that the ideal was TURKEY OF THE APOCALYPSE, with the best flavor, crispy skin, and moistness throughout, and pyrotechnics!, all from placing the bird in an open pan in a pre-heated 550 degree oven for 90 minutes! However, during cooking, every person would be forced into exile by the fire department because of smoke, and afterward the pan and oven needed to be replaced due to burned on grease. There will always be 3 year olds who are more pre-occupied with things other than eating. There will be family who are required to be present at multiple Tables. But the point of everything in this season, is for us to stop in Sabbath to recognize how blessed we are, LIFE is too short. Beginning a few decades before the year 2000 and correlated to events continuing today, there have been those who identified Present Signs with A Final Apocalypse and those Left Behind. They have brought their questions to the Bible and lifted these words out of context to make them mean what they worry about. There will be Earthquakes and Hurricanes, Fires, Wars and Refugees. HOWEVER Advent is the Antithesis of Worry! Advent is waiting so expectant as to Hope Fulfillment! Jeremiah in the First Testament, is continually filled with doom and gloom and exile. But here, when arrested and imprisoned, which at the time would have been to be dropped into a sink hole or the bottom of a well, still Jeremiah has HOPE that God's Time is not our Time. If we do not pluck out our favorite words, making the Bible say what we want, but instead, connect passages of a similar place across the Gospels to ascertain their meaning,... just before the warning of this morning in Luke 21, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, at the climax of Jesus' Journey of Healings going toward Jerusalem where he would be crucified, there comes a Rich, Powerful, Young, Man to ask what he must do to inherit Eternal Life? Not unlike our own family members who as soon as the meal was served were asking about Black Friday Sales and where they could go to GET THE BEST DEALS. In each of the Gospels, these whom our world identifies as Successful, Having It All, identify that they have done everything commanded: They have honored their Mothers and Fathers, they have not Lied, Cheated, Stolen or Committed Murder... To which Jesus commands one thing, that in each case causes them to go away sorrowful, Jesus asks them to Give, Give away all you have gotten, all you possess. This first Sunday of Advent is akin to Simon and Garfunkel's: “Sound of Silence” beginning “Hello Darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again.” There is a story about those lyrics having been written in 1963 at the assassination of President Kennedy, at the Apocalypse of a Time, the death of one set of illusions and adoption of another. But in each of the Gospels, this is followed by a Blind Beggar, in Mark the oldest of the Gospels he is identified as as Bartimaeus, just before Jesus entering Jerusalem to describe that time is short and his purpose is about to be fulfilled. The curiosity being that the Name Bartimaeus only occured in Ancient Literature twice! In Hebrew the first three letters BAR identify this as “The Son Of” like Johnson or Stevenson, would be. So one identification of this Blind Beggar is identified as The Son of our Time = BAR-Timaeus, which is odd because Timaeus is not a Hebrew Name but Greek. The other occasion of there being a Timaeus is the Greek Philosopher Plato, who lived within 200 years before Jesus of Nazareth. In Plato's Writings, he names Timaeus as the Greek Ideal of being Educated to believe in the Theoretical, in separating the Physical of Life from the Spiritual of Faith; Timaeus provides the only description of the location of Atlantis, Timaeus identifies the formula for the Golden Ratio used by the Great Painters and by Apple in their designs. So, here we have a man, possibly the same Rich, Powerful, Young, Ruler of a few verses before; identified as Child of the Learned, Child of Education and Society's Ideals, who here sits on the curbside as a Blind Beggar. Perhaps like our own generation's children so deeply in debt from education, unemployed in the careers of their training, feeling lost and blind, now Demanding Fulfillment, demanding that Faith and Education and Life, Ideals and Reality be Given! What Bartimaeus said is recorded as “Jesus, Son of King David, Have Mercy Upon Us!” In the Church we prefer to ritualize this as on Palm Sunday singing “Hosanna.” The purpose of having us read these passages about the End of Time at the Beginning of Advent, are that from our Greek Ancestors we inherited two understandings of Time: Chronos from which we get Chronology, that Time had a Beginning and a Lifespan and will naturally have an End. And Chiros, which is the same root word as Christ, meaning that there is Time before our faith in Christ, and Time after Claiming Christ. There are those this morning who will feel disappointed. Who, trying to please family, got up early on a Sunday to come to Church in Advent, and there was only one Christmas Carol, there was no Virgin Mary, Donkey or Baby, or Wisemen. All of which are Christmas and After, not Advent, ADVENT is Waiting, Expecting, Demanding Change in our lives, Hoping. To be ready for Christmas, to Prepare to greet Christmas as the Scriptures intend for us, is to look for God to Fulfill HOPE for the Poor, to provide HOPE of Comfort for the Grieving, for the Lost, To Provide HOPE of Freedom for those addicted and held Captive by fear or Mental Illness, The Savior of the World, Savior of all Time coming for all the Nations, then comes in surprising fulfillment of all these Hopes as an innocent baby, coming to forgive the sins of all the world.

"God The Wild Card", November 15, 2015

I Samuel 1:1-20 Mark 13: 1-8 In ancient times, there were sacred texts reserved as being available ONLY to the oldest of male priestly scholars. It was thought that the symbols, ideas and imagery could not be understood by anyone enslaved, younger, or female, without an advanced formal education in theology. By similar token, I have had a number of colleagues who blatantly dismissed that as a N.American/White/Male/ Educated/Married/Presbyterian I could understand OPPRESSION. Attending Seminary in Harlem in the early 1980s, the emphasis was on Black Theology and Feminist Theology and Asian Theology, all of whom began with self-identification of having being Oppressed, and that the best others could do was to understand our identity as Oppressors. Even 9/11, could not be compared to having generations before you in Slavery, or South Sudan, or in Afghanistan or on the West Bank. Living with constant war, fear of extermination, lynching, prejudice CHANGES YOU, changes your perspective on life from acceptance of whatever comes to railing against. But what has happened over the last 30 years, the numerous unending wars, the financial collapse of governments and our own expectations, multiple attacks most recently in Petra and France have changed us, to Anomie. Hopeless, Isolated, Alone, Depression, with No Way Out, Anomie... That is the context we have to understand for these passages about Hannah from I Samuel. Routinely, in the Church, at Worship and Bible Study, we take passages out of the Biblical whole, even at best, we read them within the context of their Book, or their half of the Bible. But this week, this morning, I suggest a new and different awareness. Suddenly I have come to a different conclusion than I have seen anywhere else, that HANNAH is the Archetype for the whole story of faith in God. For everything, from Adam& Eve, Abraham & Sarah, Jacob with Rachel & Leah, Moses, the tribes of Israel, the era of the Judges those flawed heroes of Samson, Gideon, Jephthah, Jonah and Ruth, ALL BEFORE HANNAH, and everything AFTER HANNAH: King Saul, the Monarchy of David, Solomon, the exile in Babylon and return to a devastated place, all eventually leading to the Gospel, Spirit and Savior. I believe simple, Hannah, whom no human understands, this beloved wife, trapped in circumstance, to be the turning point for the whole Bible. One of the recurrent images throughout human history is that more than biology, the identification of “being unable to conceive” meant that that generation has no hope, they have no future, their END their APOCALYPSE is NOW. For Hannah, more than a child, Conception is also a statement of survival. Whenever a husband died, the wife inherited Nothing, everything went to his children or his brother. So in this case, where there were two wives, and one had children, Peninah's sons would inherit all; being expected to care for Peninah and their own sisters, but having no responsibility for Hannah. Her husband seems to not understand her fears or loss, emphasizing everything her love means to him. Peninah rubs in her biological failure, by needling her. But Hannah does something even other women in similar circumstance had NEVER DONE; which is why I believe this is such an important passage. When confronted Adam blamed Eve; Sarah, used her Egyptian Slave Hagar to get a child; as did Rachel and Leah use their slaves; Naomi used Ruth the widow of her son to get children for her son/ to get grandchildren after his death. But Hannah turns to God, without using others, without reservation. Her prayer, which we recited as our Unison Confession, not only names her plight, the plight of the Nation, of Humanity, our TOTAL NEED for God, but then gives up any benefit for herself of getting a child, by making an OFFERING of that child's life and service TO God. In the New Testament, when Mary conceives, her song is based on Hannah's, but Mary's circumstance is different. I think, the only equivalency to Hannah's Prayer of Total Devotion and Giving this life to God without benefit for self, is Jesus on the Cross asking God to “Forgive them, they know not what they do.” That is a profound equivalency! Growing up, one of our favorite Board Games was Monopoly. Except, we were not yet skilled in reading, we saw GO with an Arrow and Dice to count how far and quickly grew to adapt our own rules. We did not understand Income tax or Luxury Tax so did not pay these. Beyond the money that was printed, we printed our own $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 dollar bills and if you could put 10 High Rent Luxury Hotels on Broadway and Park Place, why wouldn't you? Once all of us had learned to read and discovered the rules were different, it caused us to question what the difference is between a Closed System where there is limited amount of currency, and Land and Laws, with the possibility of a true Monopoly, an End! Versus an Open System, where anything is possible? Years later when taking Economics in College, the professor described that our Economy is based on Investment, which the Closed Board Game does not provide for. You witness a need, you have an idea, you create a Business Plan, you find the investors to raise the funds, you risk going from nothing to a new future. Will it work, who knows. But it does not work, without trying, without risk. But this is not theoretical economics, this is real life, at its earthiest, Hannah goes to the Temple to risk everything, to pray to God. In essence, when God enters in, God provides a WILD CARD changing a Closed System to have new goals, a new outcome, and everything assumed changes. The Bible describes Hannah “Was Deeply Troubled, Prayed out of Great Anxiety and Vexation.” What better description of railing against a closed system, against Anomie, against the present Apocalypse? God does a New Thing in the birth of Samuel, leading to a new and different end than ever before conceived. The First and Second Chapters of I Samuel are Not about Samuel; they are about HANNAH, her desperation and faith in God. Hannah's Song becomes the “Interpretive Key” to our Understanding Faith, in spite of the horrors to come, in spite of the reality that Hannah will disappear from the Narrative after the first 5 Chapters, and even Samuel will die before the end of the first Book, HANNAH's Prayer is in a GOD WHO CARES, WHO ENTERS IN, GOD WHO IS ACTIVE, GOD CHALLENGING THE APOCALYPSE WE KNOW, CHALLENGING THE STUFF we have based our lives upon. We like our stuff, our routines, our safety. We like driving up to our homes, pushing the button to have our garage door open for us, our dogs greet us with excitement, our lights come on when we enter a room or touch a button. Hot water and cold and frozen foods preserved forever, microwave cooked in seconds. We like our control of our normal. What if nothing happened at our control, as we assumed? Our fears over the Housing Bubble, over the Stock Market all were rooted in fear that where we placed our trust was valueless! What if we lost everything we had? Who would we be without our stuff? What would we be, if our identities and relationships, suddenly meant something different, or meant nothing? Throughout human history, Kings, Empires, Religions have all built Palaces and Temples to their Grandeur. It is as if the bigger and more extravagant, the greater the stability, the greater the prominence and expansion of the future. So when Jesus came out of the Temple at Jerusalem, one of the Disciples commented What Beautiful Stones! The Washington Monument, the Vatican, Westminster Cathedral, Riverside Church in Manhattan, St. Paul's Cathedral, St. Peter's,... the list goes on and on, of Churches and Leaders fighting against their own mortality, against their limits by creating something of grandeur and permanence. When I returned to South Sudan, Government Officials and Professors from George Washington University in Washington DC toured the Clinic and declared “Emperors and Kings have built Palaces, Religions have built Sanctuaries, all to their power and influence, but a common people in a church in Upstate New York have created Health Care for people they will never meet or know.” Hearing this I sat down and wept. But Jesus replied: all of this, will be turned to dust. I wept again eight years after the Clinic was Dedicated, when everything that could be stolen, was. What I find marvelous is that the people on the ground, here and in South Sudan did not ever give up hope, and have continued to act and reach out in caring, without stuff. Repeatedly the reaction to Jesus, the reaction to proclamation: APOCALYPSE, is WHEN will this be? We want to worry over the details, the minutia, wanting security, wanting to control details in a closed Economy. Jesus replies, WHEN Does not matter! Instead of Punishment or Retribution, or a Day of Judgement, Jesus offers the most Optimistic Affirmation of the future: All the destruction and decay of built up security for ourselves, fighting against our mortality, will not be the end of God's Creation only of humanity's control, and this signaling the birth contractions of something New GOD is Doing. What if? What if we lived without concern for the stuff of this life, for belief in economies and rules as we know them? What if all our fears, of Natural Disasters, of Wars, of Terrorism, of Economies were pointless. What if we lived in that Apocalypse Now, believing God is about to do something New in GOD'S CREATION!

"Two Hinges" November 8, 2015

Ruth 1 Mark 12: 28-34 Have you ever had one of those moments that something happens, or is said, catching you off guard to re-evaluate everything else in life? This happened to me twice this week! Perhaps, it is having been away from routine, away from responsibilities for a month, quite possibly being vulnerable. First in the Bible Study Wednesday evening, we have been reading together the story of David in I Samuel, and are at the point of contest between David and King Saul, where the army of each is trying to win, to dethrone the other, but more than that to eliminate them as competition. When the body described that being King is a leadership shift to believing you alone have the answers. And as a knee jerk confession, it occurred to me that in the pastoral ministry this is something we cannot do, that you listen for the needs of the community, you channel the resources of the church to where they are needed, and while I have been in ministry for over 31 years, served with you for almost 19 when I have set goals they have been where I know the body intends to go with leadership rather than what I want to do. The second was sincere and humbling, that at the Y one morning, someone asked how I was feeling and I described the overwhelming support of the congregation in cards and pictures from the children, and gifts of food. To which the other simply said “We love you.” In the ministry, you hear a number of "Nice Sermons", you know the affection is there, but we all need to hear it at different times. Our culture is based on success, on being first. In this regard the Culture of the first Century was not only Survival, about being the First, the Winner, but also that the first set the example, the first stone laid became the cornerstone determining level and the parameters of what was to be constructed. So declaring what is the foundation, what is primary was vital. Jesus response was a foundation of love, love of God and compassion for everyone. How different from a foundation of self-sufficiency, of Law, of security, that our foundation of faith and life is compassion and commitment to God and the world! This week, we participated in a general election, and now we are formally a year away from electing our next President. Painfully, what we hear from every candidate is a single issue of what is wrong with the world, what is wrong with America. There are problems with the world, there are real, legitimate fears, but I wish we could more often hear an affirmation of what is right and good with our world. Oddly, the last many weeks the Lectionary has not had us following the Gospel of Mark. We began there, but as Jesus came into the city of Jerusalem, he is asked by one group about Divorce, by another group about Taxes. The last few weeks we have taken detours to read the Book of Job and Revelation, when suddenly, we are right back in Mark with a Scribe asking “What is the most important Commandment?” To be a faithful Jew, you had to follow 613 Laws from Scripture, over 300 of which were “Thou Shalt Nots” Whichever Commandment he chooses, Jesus will offend someone, so what do you stand for, what is the greatest commandment? Jesus does something no one had ever done before, he chooses two and describes you cannot do the one without the other! Literally his words are “On these two together hinge all the Laws and the Prophets.” This made my mind leap as I recognized that every door, whether the door to your home, or office or bedroom, the door to a cabinet, all have two or three hinges. One hinge will never work, because the weight of the door causes it to bind, but two or three hinges both maintain the connection and the balance of the door. Tiger Woods and Venus Williams excelled because each have families with the means to allow them, and the commitment to devote them, to using all their heart and mind and balance and intellect and effort to their sport, and they did; but we cannot ignore that each also was fortunate to have talent in these sports. I have tried playing golf and I know that no matter how much time and effort and practice I put into this, while I would get better I would but not be a professional. There is a subtlety to Mark's Gospel, that when asked by a Scribe outside the Temple at Jerusalem: what is the First commandment? Jesus replies with the Hebrew “Shema,” the commandment which set Judaism apart from the rest of the world. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One and God only will we serve with all our Heart and Soul and Might.” But Jesus changed the words of the Bible! Jesus said “With all your Heart and Soul and Might and Mind!” A simple addition, but the difference that makes all the difference is that Jesus is stating “Faith in God is not only about Religion, following the Laws, YOU have to think.” For the last Century in America there has been argument over Science versus Religion, for the last 500 years there has been debate over which held the answers to truth. Here Jesus names that this cannot be an argument over which has more Heat, but which also provides more Light. In Religion you do not simply burn your sacrifice, focus on your sins, NO instead we need to wrestle with ourselves, to wrestle with God, and our responsibilities for others. There are some passages that are equated to one experience or another in your life, the passage read at your baptism, the passage you read at your Confirmation. This passage from Ruth was read at my parents' Wedding. But theirs was not a traditional wedding of two persons starting life together. At 37, my father was already a widower, with three young children. My Mom had been in love with her High School Sweetheart, and the night of the Wedding Rehearsal, after the rehearsal and before the dinner, the groom came to the realization he could not go through with the wedding. And now these two, with broken, imperfect lives found love and compatibility, but also commitment, that they would support and provide for each other. Ruth is not a passage of young love, but of people with baggage with brokenness making a covenant commitment to each other, and in so doing make a commitment to God which lasted for 50 years. Following on the Book of Judges we can assume this was a time when each person did what they thought best, and only afterward considered what God was calling them to do and turned around. Here there is a famine in the land that drives a family of Israel from the Promised Land, from the land of Milk and Honey, literally from the City of Bethlehem which means The Breadbasket, to immigrate to a foreign land, and live amidst a foreign people in Moab. Part of the question of immigration is not only how to accommodate the number of people, how to provide jobs and homes and a quality of life for them, but also where are they coming from, what happened that has driven them to leave. The setting for this story is that after leaving all that they knew, Elimelech's family is further violated by the sudden death of their father Elimelech. Can you be an orphan as an adult? The sons of the family, Mahlon and Chilion take wives outside their religion, outside their race and ethnic group. Then the sons die. The setting for this book of faith is “What represents the family of Israel, when distant from home, culture, religion, when in a patriarchal culture the father and sons are taken, and the family becomes the Mother without husband or sons?” Naomi feels so broken, she no longer wishes to be called Naomi a name which means sweetness, but instead call me Mara, a name which means “bitterness.” In this culture of denial, where the family of Israel is outside the land of Israel, and without family or the resources to provide for family, Ruth: a woman, a foreigner, not of Israel, makes a vow of commitment. The pain of Ruth's identity, is that we do not even have a direct meaning for her name, we know the opposite of Ruth is to be Ruthless, singleminded, to be committed to destruction, committed to violation, without God; which leads us to understand Ruth as being Committed to rebuilding, committed to healing and wholeness, one who is with God. The beauty of those multiple hinges on a door, is that each provides connection between the door and the frame, but also, each hinge keeps the other in balance, not only from gravity which is a reality, but also from being understood in isolation. How different our commitment to one another, when this is not only a contract between two individuals, but sacred before God. How different our faith, when our beliefs are not only about what is sacred and sinful, what is the Law and means of atonement, but also how does our faith in God, our belief in the Law, in truth, in Freedom effect other people? We live in one of the few cultures in human history who adopted an amendment to our Constitution that there is a freedom of speech. I may at times disagree with a neighbor, I may be offended by their actions or ideas, but I also protect their ability to speak their mind as wrong as they are. A Christian Faith hinged on both unconditional Love of God and unreserved Love of Neighbor is not easy. Our assumption about the Pharisees is that they were committed to God's Law, regardless of how this played out for people. One of the assumptions of our culture today, is if the relationship does not work out we can always divorce, we can always walk away. The difficulty of faith is believing in unconditional Love of God and unreserved Love of the other person. That does not create a Venus Williams or a Tiger Woods, who are singularly focused on being the best at their sport; but rather a Ruth who is committed that “Where you go I will go, your people will be my people, your God is my God, and where you die I will be buried as well.”

"The After Life" November 01, 2015

The Wisdom of Solomon 2:21 - 3:9 Revelation 21: 1-6 According to Consumer Reports, we in the United States now spend as much and more on decorations and costumes for Halloween than we do for Christmas. In other parts of the world, focus is not upon All Hallow's Eve, wearing costumes, passing out candy, or shaving cream, toilet paper and eggs; but instead on this All Saints' Day, a time for naming those who are with God, going to cemeteries, lighting candles, singing a favorite hymn. We are troubled that no matter how many times, we beat cancer into remission, no matter what we have overcome, what we have accomplished, no matter whether we reach 100 years and more or not, we are mortal, we are creaturely, and we die. All Saints' Day is the proclamation of a counter-cultural reality: that Christ conquered death, and baptized with Christ, sharing in Communion through him, God is with us not for 70 or 80 or 100 years, but for all eternity! Etiology is the study of stories of origin. Where have we come from. According the Rudyard Kipling, “How the Elephant Got its Trunk” “How the Leopard Got its Spots” “The Cat Who Walked by Itself”. According to Iroquois Indians “How all creation sprung up on the back of a great Tortoise”. Genesis “How God Called Time and Space into Being, forming Humanity in God's Own Image, and breathing God's Own Spirit into Us as Life.” While every culture has stories of their etiology, the origin of things the origin of life as we know it, periodically in human culture there is fascination with Eschatology, with where we are going and the End of life as we know it. Just as the first lines of Genesis describe the identity of a thing is contained in its seed, we are who we were made to be by God, so also in Revelation our goal in life, our purpose and end also describe who and what we are. T.S. Eliot described “Our end is our beginning”, described in Latin by the Early Church as “Exitus Reditus: All things come forth from God, all things ultimately return to God.” A year ago we spent time in California with our son, and friends there described their perception of the difference between the East Coast and the West, that on the East Coast we have a 300 and 400 year history, which inspires a love of what is historic, the origin of things; whereas on the West Coast emphasis is on what is new, what is next, where we are going. Reviewing recent novels and films produced, there seems to be a pre-occupation with the end of the world, cultures particularly of teen-agers who survive ordeals, who win over conspiracies, confronting what is next after this world, after this life. Throughout the last many years we have worked to improve and restore the beauty of this Sanctuary. But as much as we have attempted to confront issues of Accessibility, Lighting, Hearing, Musical Instruments and Acoustics, this Sanctuary was designed in the late 1800s with every image, the shape of the room, the trinity of Arches, the Stained Glass Windows all taken from the Book of Revelation. Particularly from this image of a new Heaven and new Earth, a City of God. The Scripture Lessons for this day are different from our norm, the First lesson not actually included in our Pew Bibles. In an earlier era, there was what was referred to as the Catholic Bible and The Protestant Bible. The primary difference being that the Catholic Bible, and now most Bibles being published included The Apocrypha, and some the Pseudopygrapha, where the Protestant Bibles did not. The Pseudo-pygrapha were books of Gnosticism, including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Judas, which although from the same time period and geography as the Christian New Testament were considered by those who codified the Biblical Canon, as based too much on Miracles, Magic, Philosophy and not on Christian Truth. The Apocrypha were books written after the period of the First Testament, after the Hebrew Bible was canonized, and before the writing of the Epistles and Gospels of our Christian Testament. These include Tobit, Judith, additional Books of Esther, The Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, and additional Books of Daniel. Resolving our hearts and minds to death is painful. Imagine the early human creatures, whether Eve and Adam, or Professor Leake's Lucy. You have your partner, your mate, your companion, without whom your life is at risk. They share in your safety and hunting, and cooking, they are your lover and the other parent to your children. Last night as you went to sleep, you cuddled up against their warmth. But this morning, their body is cold, cold as the dawn air. Their flesh is not full, but sagging from their skeleton. All color has left them, and they do not respond to your voice or touch. After a few days they begin to smell. How do you cope with this change? How do you reconcile that at one moment they were sleeping beside you, sharing in all of life, and now they are dead? Ancient Judaism believed that after death, we were dead, our bodies and souls went to Sheol, the place of the Dead, the Foundations of the Earth. It was from the Hebrews that we had the image of On a Final Day, the day of the Lord, the day of Judgement, all souls would be released from Sheol and rise up from their graves to be with God. Greek Culture believed in a Duality to Life, that there is the Physical and the Spiritual. As described by Plato in “The Cave” I could show you a throne, a Rocking Chair, and a stool and describe all of these as being Chairs; yet, if you closed your eyes and I named for you “A Chair” we each would envision our archetype of what a Chair is supposed to be. So also with human life, that this physical life has many experiences and varieties, but there is a Spiritual life which is Immortal and Eternal. The Romans had a three-tiered conception of the Universe, with this life, and Heaven and Hell as three separate yet connected realities. Because the Greco-Roman culture co-opted Christianity, because Christianity became the religion of the Holy Roman Empire, we have inherited many of these ideas, which were not Christianity. Roman culture required that when a person was near to death, a family member or servant was paid to sit vigil beside them, in order that insofar as Breath is equivalent to Soul, when you gasped your last this other person was to catch your last breath in their mouth, from which Roman Christianity developed what is identified as A Christian Kiss, to be shared at any of the Sacraments. However our Texts for today describe something wholly different at the end of this life. According to The Wisdom of Solomon, “God created us for incorruption, made in the image of God's own eternity.” So the point of being formed in the image of God has nothing whatsoever to do with having a beard, sandals, long white hair, being male or female! We were created in the image of God, as eternal! That eternity was interrupted by the sin of humanity, and restored by Jesus Christ! “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, where nothing can ever touch them.” Revelation describing that “The Home of God is among Mortals” defies that after death we see a bright light, or we are transported to the Pearly Gates, or that there is a Purgatory for working off and atoning for your sins, No. But that in this life, God wrestles with us, we wrestle with relationships and brokenness, and after death instead of our crossing over and going somewhere, after death God enters into each one of us. The question of the After Life is not who gets in and who does not, who is saved and who is corrupt, but that all of us, All of us, have acted and said and thought things which are not of God. After Life, God is in all of us, we are all brought together as God intended for Creation, and Communion, this physical act as well as the relational reality where we forgive one another and we are forgiven. Forgiveness changes us, and grants us a foretaste of the Kingdom of heaven where all of us serve one another, and all have enough. How amazing if instead of looking at a stranger, and questioning are they for us or against us, are we in competition for survival, for the goods and chocolate of this life, instead if we could see all the saints in our midst.