Reverend Lindsey's Blog

"Changing Default Settings"

2012-02-12T05:39:00.000-08:00

Twenty-five years ago, I bought my first personal computer, a “Leading Edge Model D” with an incredible 3 Ram of Memory. Part of the beauty was that you did not need to know anything to use it. Once all the cables were plugged in, it worked just like a Typewriter, with a built in Calculator; but having been raised with the mantra “Read the directions before using any piece of equipment” the computer came with various different manuals. This was before CDs and DVDs, when all your information was backed up on 7 ½” disks. It did not play music or movies, was not connected to the internet, but it could do so many things. A dozen years ago, I bought my first Apple laptop computer. This configuration was completely different, in some ways easier, but you needed to know how to do what. After several tutorials from a member of the church, who had advanced degrees in computer engineering, I knew how to turn it on and get in and out of programs. Yet, gradually over that dozen years, the laptop began operating more and more slowly, until one day earlier this year the screen completely froze and I was informed I needed to get a new computer. Taking it out of the box, the dimensions were just the same, the plug slightly modified, turning it on, all the familiar icons and applications popped up. However, when I began to use it, there were now innumerable pre-set controls, locking programs every time it was turned on. In the updates to software, they had added various settings, to automatically lock and store information, so every time you opened a file or program you needed to unlock the data. The choice was simple, learn to adapt to these new default settings, follow along, but I longed to change the default settings to make the computer do what I wanted the computer to do.

That was Naaman's problem. Namaan was a skilled warrior, who knew how to win. As a Commander of the Syrian Army of King Aram, he knew how to follow orders and how to give them, he understood the chain of command. Hundreds of thousands of troops obeyed his orders. But, as a man, Namaan also had leprosy. Leprosy is viral, but more, leprosy was a social disease that created fear in people. Those afflicted knew constant itching and pain as the skin died and peeled away, and other people did not want to touch you or be near you, as if this were a matter of cleanliness. In addition to the physical disease, there grew belief that the suffering was related to sin, that the leper was being punished for something they or their family had done.

On a far more minor scale, after years of marriage, I began developing a callous from my wedding band, perhaps you have had something like this. No matter the creams or ointments, to soothe or to peel the skin, the sore would not go away. And being on the ring finger, this meant not wearing my wedding band. Do you know what it means to have to remove your wedding ring, to not be able to wear this gift of love and commitment?

Namaan would have done anything to cure his affliction. So when the suggestion comes that he go to the enemy of their nation, to be healed, he accepts this indignation. He travels great distances, bringing payment that demonstrates how much he wants to be healed. He has trunks filled with Silver and Gold and fine Clothes. He has a letter from King Aram to the King of Israel, that by the authority of the King Namaan should be healed. We have each known times in our lives like this. Times when you would pay anything, do anything, use every connection and authority, because you have Cancer... because your spouse has Parkinson's... because your child has a problem with their heart that will kill them... because your spouse is losing their memories... because you have lost your job and no one will offer you a chance, it means more than income this is about identity and self-worth and family survival.

When finally, Namaan is able to reach the Prophet Elisha, the man of God does not even bother coming out to meet him, seemingly does not offer the recognition of being a man, let alone a man of influence and power, a man who commands the death or salvation of whole cities. However, his servants challenge Namaan, that if the prophet had commanded something great Namaan would have done it, so why not something simple. Go to the Jordan River, get down off of your horse, strip off everything you have, everything, and immerse yourself, not just bathe in the waters, but give yourself up to the water, immerse yourself completely, submit. Get out and dry yourself, put yourself together. Then repeat seven times over. How this worked we cannot say, it is a miracle. Surely, by the seventh time doing so, Namaan wanted to be clean, wanted to submit.

But at this point, I wonder about Changing the Default Settings, not only on computers, but in Caring. Human beings, churches, pastors in particular, are very good at Crisis Response. So much so, that we even have to be taught to not rescue, to not fix people's problems for them, because we are very adept at responding to crises. When someone else is in need we drop everything we are doing, to react. When there is a death in the community, we bake a casserole, we change all our plans and schedules to do whatever is needed to get their loved ones and the community through this crisis so as to to return to normal. But rarely, so rarely I cannot recall an occasion, when not only the individual, and their immediate family, but we as a community stop to recognize what this death, this loss, this disease, this dis-ease is going to do to us as a community of faith. If discomfort, dis-ease, disease and divorce and death can cause us to recognize the meaning of change, then what about a birth, a marriage, a choice?

Would that instead of reacting, pulling our hand away from the leper, pulling our children away, instead of crisis response, we as a community of faith could commit to others with hope and possibility, and affirmation of their humanity knowing it will change us.

There is something missing in our reading from Mark. We know that in literature and in history, context effects everything. What we know from context is that John the Baptist came from the wilderness preaching repentance. Jesus of Nazareth came and was baptized by John and went into the wilderness where he was tempted and prayed. After John was arrested, Jesus called fishermen who left what they were doing to become disciples. Jesus entered the Synagogue and people were in awe of his authority. A man came to him possessed by evil, and Jesus healed him. Peter's Mother-in-law was ill and Jesus took her by the hand and she was healed. Jesus went out to a lonely place in the dark to pray. And beginning in Chapter 2 we are going to have Pharisees and Saducees, Priests and Scribes, even Governors and Roman authorities questioning BY WHOSE AUTHORITY DO YOU DO THESE THINGS. We know all this about Jesus, but what do we know about the man who comes to him? The man is a leper, who came beseeching Jesus, kneeling before him believing Jesus alone could make him well. As such, we know he would have tried all his life to be healed. We know he would have gone to the Priests to be healed and they sent him away as a Sinner. We know he has been told he is Unclean, and people withdraw from him not wanting to touch him. To beseech and kneel were not the attitude of Namaan. This is a man who is begging, who believes in Jesus as the only one who can heal him.

The English translation says Jesus was “moved with pity.” That does not cut it. The Greek is far more explicit, Splanchnizomai is a visceral reaction, uncontrollable caring, a passionate compassion. This man is a leper, to touch him is to become ritually unclean. This is a man who affirms his faith:
“If you will it, you can make me clean.” And Jesus reaches out his hand, touches the man's wounds and proclaims “I Will; Be Clean.” To reach out and touch, is to take this man and his affliction into him, knowing he can never be ritually clean again.
And again, the English translates “Jesus sternly charged him” where what the Greek states is “Snorting Indignation” Jesus sends him back again to the Priests, telling him not to say anything, but to make an offering of Thanksgiving top God as the Law of Moses required.

What will it mean for us to Change our Default Settings, our preconditioned responses? We live in a time in this society, where communities are voting to not pay taxes for schools. We raised our kids, we sent them to college, we survived all that and paid our bills, why should we pay for others. Increasingly we are becoming a divisive nation, even as a church. I recall a Sunday, a little over 5 years ago, after I had been with you here for 10 years. We described that there was now a running challenge that when children were fussing, the pastor came and got them, holding them in his arms. Yet in Baptism we have claimed not only that this is a child of God, but a child of the church and we have a responsibility to the family of this child to love them, to forgive them, to care for them. So we began giving the children of one family to others. That morning we had over 50 children in worship, and everyone was given to someone who had none. More miraculous than the curing of leprosy, as I recall there was no crying, no fussing, as eeryone reached out to care for one another.

February 5, 2012 "Amnesia and Anamnesis"

2012-02-06T05:58:00.001-08:00

Isaiah 40
Mark 1:29-ff
As eloquently as this was read this morning, one can hardly recite these words without recalling the Scottish brogue of Olympic runner Eric Liddell in the film Chariots of Fire from a Church in Paris.

There are three points in this passage from Isaiah, and the same three points to recall when reflecting upon the conclusion of the first Chapter of the Gospel of Mark:
1)We suffer from Theological Amnesia
2)God is really the one in charge
3)Only when we are so weak and helpless as to be vulnerable, whether very very young, or very very aged, do we allow ourselves to experience the grace and power of God who raises us up on Eagles' wings.

First, the assumption that lies at the core of Israel's entire Testimony, is that Faith begins with Memory. Have you Not known? Have you Not heard? Remember the story of Creation. Recall the Covenant with Noah, the Promise to Abram, Isaac, Jacob. Remember how for 40 years in the wilderness, Israel claimed to be lost and alone, but God never lost sight of God's People. Faith BEGINS with Memory.

But notice how subjective and selective our memory! If we are Critical and Pessimistic, we remember only the awful things, harsh words, bitter relationships, errors, mistakes and wrongs. If we imagine we are perfect, we remember only the good. Theological Amnesia is especially common when life goes well. We forget God loves us and has a plan for Creation, we even forget the Presence of God with us. This was the perpetual problem of Israel, and why the Prophets continually called the Nation back.

What happens when we forget God, as being The Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer and Companion of life? The moment we get into trouble, we fold with anxiety and stress. We hear the doctor describe a spot or lump and we jump to the conclusion that it is Cancerous, and malignant, and we are going to die. We are challenged by coworkers, or supporters and our hostility makes us want to take them out, or to quit. We have a difficult spell in life, and we want to give up on our marriages, wash our hands of the responsibility of children, pull the covers up and make the world go away. Isaiah 40 is not a word of comfort, but a slap in the face, grasping us by the lapels to demand “Have you not heard, have you not seen?” Where have you been throughout history? In many ways this passage goes along with Elijah, who as a Prophet of God had arranged a great contest to determine if the God of Israel or the Gods of Ball were the real and true God. Elijah had contested against Queen Jezebel and all the Prophets and Priests of Baal, and when the contest was over Elijah was afraid of what he had done, afraid he felt so alone, he ran to the mountain of God, into the cave where Moses had seen God, and the voice had come asking “What are you doing here?”

The question is not If God has Forgotten Us, or if God has grown tired of us, because God loves us, God could no more forget you than forget to breathe! No, the painful question of Amnesia is whether we have forgot, whether we tired of God? As much as we want the Bible to be about David or Elijah, Simon Peter or Mary, or you and me, the Bible and Life itself are about God. How different every passage would be, if instead of reading this as history, instead of entering the Stable to see the gift of the child for us, instead of standing on the shore listening to John the Baptist, instead of standing at the foot of the Cross, if instead we questioned how God feels? Suddenly we hear the Psalmist ask: Have you not heard? Were we not there?

The hardest lesson of life, is that we have made ourselves so busy, so strong and protected, so satiated by all the fulfillments of our dreams, that we do have room for the Holy Spirit. We look for the doctors to operate, the insurance company to pay the bills, the care providers to make us comfortable, but despite our plans, despite all of our control... When we become vulnerable are the moments we see, no even more, when we are vulnerable are the only moments we allow ourselves to see God.

Jesus left the Synagogue and entered the home of Simon, whose Mother-in-law lay in bed with a fever. Those who know the book of Leviticus would hear in this a reminder of Leviticus 26:16 “I will bring terror upon you; consumption and fever, that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away.” In the 21st Century, we are appalled that Simon Peter brought guests into his home when she was ill, even more that she is healed so she can serve them! But those are not questions that would have been asked in that culture. The role of every disciple is the serve. The purpose of every creature formed by God is to be. This fever has made her as good as dead, and Jesus taking her by the hand, dares touching a woman who is ill.

In the early 1980s I served as a Chaplain at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Harlem. We had a man on the infectious disease ward who had a mysterious disease, described as GRID, because it fit a number of characteristics, among these Gay-Related, Infectious Disease. At the time, we knew not how it was passed, so the nurses and aides did not want to touch bed-linens or bedpans or bandages. Where other rooms had the door standing open, and curtains allowing light in, the curtains were always drawn and door shut tight. The only ones going in or out were immediate family. Even as a chaplain, we were required to gown, glove and mask, just to enter the room to sit and to pray. How far we have come with control of disease and medication in 30 years, that the Legislature is now considering whether organs from HIV donors can be transplanted to HIV infected patients.

What happens in these verses is Jesus remembers God. Jesus has been growing in popularity by healing and preaching. YET, while it is still dark, he goes to a lonely place and prays to God. The disciples came hunting him down, and he informed them that they needed to go where God would lead throughout Galilee and to the ends of the earth.

We began by stating that FAITH BEGINS with MEMORY. Have You Not Known? Have You Not Heard? HOWEVER, Faith does not stop with Memory, but uses memory to transform our experiences as experiences of faith. ANAMNESIS is one the words used to describe Communion, because in this sacrament, our memory of all God has done leads us to forgive and to seek to be forgiven, and therefore brought closer to God.

January 29, 2012, "Prophetic Authority"

2012-01-30T12:48:00.000-08:00

Deuteronomy 18: 15-20
Mark 1: 20-28
A distinctive characteristic of Mark's Gospel is the drumbeat of the word “Immediately.” To improve grammar and readability, to heighten interest, translators routinely change this to “And Then,” or “Next,” but the evangelist intentionally repeated the word “immediately” matching our heartbeat with the Gospel's rhythm, to emphasize the Gospel is not theoretical philosophy, and the Gospel is not at our pace, when we are prepared and ready, but alive and active.

One of the first lessons we learn in any position, be that employment, volunteer, or relationship is the difference between responsibilities and authority. Responsibilities are all the many specific things we are accountable for, whether in a Job Description or that catch all of “Other duties as may arise.” Authority, is whether we have the right, whether we have been given credibility, to carry them out.
What I find especially striking this morning, is that regarding most aspects of our lives, there are responsibilities which we immediately take on, whereas authority comes over time and must be earned.

When I first came to this call, there was someone in the hospital. I went to visit them and introduced myself, and she opened her eyes and looked at me, and said “You are not Dr. Eastman.” And I said “No.” And she said, “And you are not Dr. Dobson, I loved him, but he's dead.” Unsure how to respond, I offered to take her hand and pray, and after only saying “Merciful God” she said “That'll do.” I thought this was her cue that I should leave, when suddenly the nurse came in and looking rather surprised said “She's gone, Father.”

As Deacons, we learn how to fill the candles, how to pass offering and communion plates, how to adjust the sound system, to care for the flowers and visit those who cannot attend worship. We bring our capability and our personality to bear, but feel intimidated when asked to pray for someone.When the Officiant proclaims the couple husband and wife, there are immediate responsibilities, some shared some delegated most renegotiated over time: Who will be responsible for banking, who will shop, who will cook, who does dishes, who takes out the garbage, which side of the bed we sleep on. When we become parents, we learn to feed them, and bathe them, pamper and hold, comfort and put to sleep. But being husband and wife to one another, being parents, and caring for our parents graciously, all must come with time. Yet in the Bible, Moses and Jesus, and those who come after, are given Authority to address the responsibilities they encounter.

In the Old Testament we have a variety of leaders. There are Priests who are Levites, who like Aaron lead the people through Prayer and Offerings and Sacrifices. There are Judges, like Samson, Gideon and Deborah, who are great warriors leading the people in battle. There are Kings, Saul, David, Solomon and all who would come after in the lineage of David, sitting upon the throne of Israel. Priests and Kings lead because they inherited the responsibility, because the Nation, the people needed to have a King, or a Priest to confess their sins and offer forgiveness. But Judges, Priests and Kings each became stuck in their institution. Prophets are a different kind of leaders. Prophets arise whenever needed. Prophets challenge the status quo. Prophets offer a different way of looking at life; rather than through our eyes, through the eyes of the marginalized, the poor, those most in need.

What is unique about the Prophets is their authority. The authority of a Prophet comes not from their office, not by blood, but from God and from compassion for those in need. “Authority” is not so much about power, as about recognizing one's self as being a vehicle through which the Spirit is able to speak and as a vehicle knowing we are not in control, not directing or determining where we are going. The wonderful part about prophets is that they address what the institution is least willing to see. The problem with prophets is that they are unreliable and cannot be counted upon to show up when you need.

According to Mark, Jesus had Authority, not as the Scribes, who parsed their words and justified everything they did. What is wonderful about this teaching, is that in demonstration of the authority of Jesus, a man comes into the synagogue, and the man is troubled by an evil spirit. In Modern times, we would prescribe that he needs Medication. In Medieval times they would have prescribed Magic, an incantation. But instead of either, Jesus provides a Miracle. Rather than a potion, or incantation, Jesus responds to the man who is suffering and has compassion on him.

Years ago, my brother got married in Florida. While ministers tend to have a file of wedding stories, often the stories from their own family are the worst. Everything about the occasion was a disaster. The best man missed his flight. Every member of the Bridal party except the Bride and Groom came down with the flu. While we had all travelled to Florida for the occasion, it rained the entire time. We ordered roses and champagne to be delivered to the Bride and Groom and the bellhop pocketed the money. During the evening's festivities instead of sitting and talking with the 97 year old grandmother, people got her one vodka tonic after another. Later that night, in their room, the grandmother fell and cut her arm. Smelling the alcohol on her, my aunt who had become a charismatic preacher began trying to exorcise the demons out of the grandmother. When the ambulance had taken them to the hospital, I went and spent the night holding the grandmother's hand as she waited to be stitched up. While her skin was paper thin, the cut was not deep or in any way dirty. While she had had far too much to drink, that too would pass. What she needed and wanted most was simply to hold the hand of someone who cared.

While we want to affirm that Jesus' authority comes from God, and that his authority is demonstrated in caring for the man, we cannot avoid what is identified in this story, that there is evil. We tend to dismiss such things today, but the presence of evil is real and destructive, especially to those who try the hardest and are most alone. What I have come to experience is not so much that one person is holy and another evil, as there are times when we allow ourselves to be conduits for one or the other. Times when it is not we who are speaking, as saying things we wish we had not, or that somehow we were in the right place at the right time to say what otherwise would not have been said. The only thing I know to have been different at those times, has been that when speaking evil, it often comes in the heat of the moment without thinking, and there is a feeling like watching yourself, hearing yourself say what you know you should not. And when speaking prophetically, often there has been a moment, just a moment when you try to collect yourself and all you can think is “Lord may the words of my mouth be acceptable to You.”

As often as we celebrate the Sacraments in the life of the Church, when in Baptism we come to the words of Institution, I am humbled and shudder at saying “All Authority is upon me and has been given that you should go forth and baptize.”
The question this morning, as we consider what responsibilities we each shall take on, how differently we might be led than the stayed institutions, is whether we have been given authority? And Immediately, what we will do.

"Arrogance and Repentance" January 22, 2012

2012-01-22T05:36:00.000-08:00

Jonah 3:1-10
Mark 1:14-22
There is a mistake in this morning's bulletin. There was no fixing it, no avoiding it or covering it up. For the last many years our Session have been trying to find a way of opening up issues related to Christian Education and Spiritual Nurture. We have been cognizant that for this congregation this is heavily laden, with shadows of the failed co-pastorate, and Christian educators, and abuses that happened 50 years ago. We have known that any way we address it is going to cost money that was not in our projections of a Budget. At the same time recognizing that what we have done over the last many years, what every church and synagogue has done, has not been working. And that we had a staff member with unique gifts, who if given opportunity, could do very creative things. All of this came to a head this week, as our Session proposed a solution, which we will be able to announce next week at the Annual meeting, and then we learned our son was in danger. Knowing that the Prayer had a level of redundancy and repetition, and that it might pinch most of us a little too close, when the challenge came that there might be an error, I looked it over too quickly and missed what was right before my eyes. I had been arrogant. Only after the bulletins were printed and folded and stuffed and the staff had gone home, did I realize my own mistake, not only in repeating a line, but in arrogance.

The last many years, the problem of arrogance has come up again and again, and this underlies our morning's Scriptures. The Prophet Jonah was commanded by God to get up, and to go north to Israel's enemies at Ninevah, preaching their need to repent and follow God. But Jonah was arrogant. Where God told Jonah to get up and go up, Jonah instead went in his own direction, down to the harbor, down into the hold of the ship, going south, down into sleep, in depression, in avoidance of the world. When calamity struck, when the chaos of the sea erupted, Jonah had himself thrown down into the sea, where he was swallowed by a fish, and carried down, three days journey, to the place of the dead. When he could sink no lower, Jonah turned to God and prayed. There are times for us all, when we realize we have been caught and we confess. Tragically, what we confess is not arrogance, not our responsibility, what we ordinarily confess is that we got caught. Jonah's prayer is “Okay God, I can sink no lower. You caught me with this stinking fish and took me to a place without life, without hope. I beg of you to let me go, and I will do what you commanded.”

Grace is an amazing thing. Where Jonah had gone south instead of North, where it took three nights for the fish to reach the place of the dead, immediately when Jonah prays, God puts him on the shores of where God wants Jonah to be at Ninevah.

However, Jonah's prayer had not been a confession of arrogance. Jonah's prayer had not been an acceptance of responsibility, or a reversal of commitments. Jonah's prayer had been, “You win God. You are a God and I am a mortal, so who am I to compete with you, I lose.” There is no contrition here, no responsibility, only realization that I got caught, I did not win. The word of God again comes to Jonah, saying Get Up and Go and Call the people to faith in God. Jonah Got up, and Jonah Went, but Jonah preached the word he wanted to preach, rather than the word of God. There was no mention of God in Jonah's Word. What is striking is that Ninevah this foreign city, this place of Israel's enemies, is considered by God to be a Great City. There is a point of humility, even for God, to recognize the accomplishments of one who is different, who is totally other. Ninevah is described as being a three days' journey across, if a person walks at a steady pace, we could walk 20 miles in a day, so Ninevah was 60 miles across! With all the anger and venom and arrogance within him, in vindication that I got caught by God and forced to prophesy but I am still going to do it my own way, Jonah offered the shortest, most brief prophecy in the Bible... “In 40 days, you will all be destroyed.” No mention of “Because”, no allowance for “Unless”, not even acknowledgement of God being behind this. “In 40 days, destruction.”

A preacher's greatest fear is not that they will be like Jonah. A preacher's fear is that like Ninevah the people will hear what the people were ready to hear not what the preacher had intended. This Foreign people, this City Great in the eyes of God, this totally other enemy, had humility to hear not only the words of the prophet Jonah but the word of God underneath. Ninevah recognized their arrogance and not only confessed, but repented. Talk about a total and complete conversion! All the people of Ninevah from the King to the poor, everyone acknowledged their sin, they even rubbed ashes on their cows and donkeys and refused them food in this fast as well. And the text describes, that God witnessed the humility of Ninevah, and God was humble enough to let go God's arrogance and forgive. The difficulty of the Book of the Prophecy of Jonah is recognizing who is this message for? The prophet of God is sent to Ninevah. And all Ninevah responds and repents. Even God repents and reverses from what God was going to do. What will it take for the nation, for Israel, personally for Jonah, for us to repent, to reverse from what we had been doing, to confess arrogance and follow God?

The Call of the first Disciples in Mark, is like the Book of Jonah.
Mark does not include the Christmas stories of Matthew or Luke. Mark does not describe what the temptation in the wilderness was. Mark describes that John came preaching Repentance as Preparing the Way of God. Mark describes Jesus' Baptism as the separation between heaven and earth permanently and irreversibly ripped open. Mark describes Jesus was driven into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan, and when John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus immediately came preaching Repentance, declaring the Time is at Hand. Jesus goes into the Synagogue on the sabbath and preaches with authority, not like the scribes. There is a sarcasm about the beginning of Mark, challenging us to witness the arrogance of our lives.

But the challenge of Jesus' Call is not “Follow me and I will teach you how to Fish!” Andrew, Peter, John and James were commercial fishermen. Like us, they might have responded to lessons of learning a new way, a better way, as I could have time on Thursday... How about three times a week, can anybody do Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 2:30pm? Instead, of learning yet another responsibility, following Jesus was learning a new way of being. The text is explicit, that Andrew and Simon Peter left their nets; James and John left their father Zebedee. They left their careers, their livelihood, their families, all that they knew for a different way of life, a different way of being, instead of being fishermen, to be fishers of women and men.

What if Christian Education were not a curriculum that children go to learn, not a program that we master, but instead the nurturing of one another in every faith and circumstance? Challenging and being challenged “What are you looking for?” When we marry, are we committing to sharing our bed and checking account, children and finances, or is there a spiritual union? When we baptize our children, are we giving them a name and celebrating their presence, or questioning all our commitments of life and death as being in the hand of God? When we retire are we changing our routine, giving up our identity, or choosing to enter into a time of mentoring and volunteerism, or what?

A monumental shift has taken place in this church, a response to Christ's call like that of Peter and Andrew, James and John. There was a time, when the membership of the church and membership of the Country Club were virtually indistinguishable. We were a Pillar church, where membership meant something. In recent years, I cannot recall a circumstance in this community, that has not affected this congregation. Domestic Violence, Alcohol abuse, Embezzlement, Divorce, Cancer, our Schools, our Investments and Economy, War, Health care, Political unrest. Rather than trying to take on relevant issues, we have become relevant, and the faith and spirit of every person has become something vital. Personally, I struggle whenever I hear reference to our Village or Town because of property values or affluence, because every individual struggles with their faith, with their own arrogance. Human life would be better if instead of admitting getting caught, we could confess our arrogance and repent, but that might mean acceptance that the Kingdom of God really is at hand. It is far easier to deceive ourselves with our arrogance that we are in control.

January 15, 2012 "Tingling Anticipation"

2012-01-15T07:52:00.000-08:00

I Samuel 3:1-20
John 1: 43-51
We come into every relationship, every circumstance, with expectations and preconceptions. When going into a meeting, we do not ponder what shall we do, there are anticipated motions with a Yes or No answer, in fact we would not have placed the item for discussion if we did not expect: Yes. In the Courtroom, a lawyer does not ask a question that they do not know the answer to. In education, business, in politics, in investing, expectations are valid, even critical, and we pay for the expertise of professional expectations, but in faith/life our ears need to tingle with anticipation for what we might encounter.

Adopting these Scriptures for our lives, we need to hear the inscription that undercuts these stories... The WORD of the LORD was rare in those days, visions had ceased to be seen and miracles ceased to be heard. According to fossil evidence, Millions of years ago, Dinosaurs roamed this earth. Thousands of years ago, Miracles were so common as to be the hallmark of faith experiences. If you want to know if a faith encounter is real, look for a burning bush! There was a Pillar of Fire that led Israel and a Column of Smoke that hid the nation from the rear. Great Seas opened up, fish swallowed prophets and spew them where God needed them to be. But that was long ago, and I Samuel describes that the eye of the Priest Eli had grown blind and dim, though the flame of the lamp in the Temple where the Ark of the Covenant was stored and where the child Samuel slept had not yet gone out.

This morning's Scriptures are not about Manna from Heaven, or the Dead coming back to life, not about the fingers of a leper being restored, or walking on water. Instead of expecting miracles, the invitation this morning is to listen, to allow your ears to tingle, your heart to beat with anticipation.

I Samuel comes after the time of Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob, Moses and Joshua and the Judges. When the people of Israel had settled in the land of Canaan, the Promised land of milk and honey. But life was not all promise and blessings. There were long years of war and fear of terrorism, there were hard economic times, times when peoples' dreams and expectations became dull. Samuel is the last of the Judges, the last of the Priests (for God had determined to end leadership by Priests), and Samuel becomes Kingmaker who would ordain Saul and David, setting up the Monarchy of Israel. This generation had lived with reality so long, that even the Priests of God had given up believing; the sons of the priests had perverted everything sacred in the Temple. As a Preacher's Kid, who married a Preacher's Kid, and as a Pastor who had kids of our own, I know the trouble Theological Offspring can get into, trying to prove you are more human than holy. But Eli's sons went far beyond this and Eli callously allowed it, for he no longer anticipated anything, Eli no longer cared.

This is not a Miracle Story. This is not a cute bedtime story. In order to hear this experience, we have to understand that Hebrew names have Meaning. ELI was the old Priest, the name Eli means “MY God.” Recall the dying words of Jesus on the Cross “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani” My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me. Eli represents a self-righteous faith that we know who God is and can call on our God when we want. So in the telling of the story, every time you hear the name Eli, we are to respond “My God.” Whereas the name Samuel means “God has heard.” “Samuel” is assurance that God lives, and listens and God cares, so when you hear “Samu-el” we are to respond “God has heard.” In biting commentary, the Bible describes that no one expected to hear the word of God in the Temple, it had become like a museum, a place out of the past. When in the night, the boy heard “Samuel” (Congregation responds “God has Heard”). And the boy comes running saying “Eli, Eli” (My God), but Eli says “No, close your eyes.” And a second time the child hears “Samu-el” “God has heard” and replies “Eli”My God, but is again told “No, close your eyes and lay down.” Finally a third time, the child hears “Samu-el” God has heard, and is told to respond “Speak, for Your servant listens.” The Word of God comes to him vowing that God will no longer offer blessings through Eli's line, but instead God will provide a new form of leadership through Kings. As a figure of transition, the horrible tragedy of Samuel's own life, is that his children were no better, no more faithful than Eli's had been. It was only after Samuel has failed at being a father that he was able to ordain a righteous and good king.

Anticipation is vital. Our preconceptions and expectations can set us up for believing there is nothing new, nothing to believe in, nothing to live for; or anticipation can make us tingle with excitement. This Christmas we prepared for all the worship services, as well as having all the family at our home, where everyone would sleep, when and what we would eat. When suddenly the telephone rang. I had not seen my cousin's daughter in 25 years. She had been the first grandchild and was adored, and the last I saw her she was about 8or 9. The reality of today, is that families lose touch, we go our separate directions, not out of animosity or anger, but simply a lack of caring because life is too busy. This prodigal daughter described living in Manhattan, that she had a 2 year old child, and no where to go for Christmas. I think I was more excited at seeing this child and her child, than about anything at Christmas. Now remember this year, in the Lindsey household, we have two puppies. When the two year old saw the puppies, he began to shake and tingle with anticipation, you could see the giggles and screams begin at his toes and erupt through his head, which in addition to puddles on the floor created a similar reaction from the puppies at seeing a two year old. After trying to settle both down for half an hour or more, we would take the puppies to their kennels in another room, and for 20 minutes or an hour he would be fine. Then the 2 year old would realize the puppies were gone and let out with a blood curdling wail, until we took him in to peek at the puppies, which would cause them and him to squirm and wriggle and giggle all over again. How different that experience is, from our experience of worship, of prayer, of starting any day let alone the week or this first month of the year!

John's Gospel is different in describing the Call of the disciples. Mark, tells of the Call of Fishermen. But John's Gospel witnesses to the many names people have in anticipation for who Jesus is. Joseph's Son, Mary's boy, the Christ, the Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the Carpenter from Nazareth, Son of Man, Son of God, Fulfillment of Everything of Moses & the Prophets, Son of David, The Ladder on which People and Angels would descend and ascend to God.

Several of you have commented that the description I prefer for Jacob in the Old Testament, Jacob who deceived his Brother and his Father, and his Uncle Laban, is The Trickster. There is a nuance to Scripture, that Jacob is that Deceiver, that Trickster, always trying to win at someone's expense. But on the way to reconcile with his brother Esau, Jacob encounters a stranger at night wrestles with this one hand to hand and cheek and jowl without relenting all night long. For having wrestled with God face to face, Jacob is changed, no longer is he the Trickster, the Deceiver, who will do anything to win. Jacob is renamed as Israel, meaning one who wrestles with God face to face. When Jesus greets Nathaniel, his description is “Here at least is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit, no guile.”

But I think the most fitting words for today are those spoken by Nathaniel at hearing from Phillip that they had found the Messiah, Jesus from Nazareth... Nathaniel responded, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Prophecy and past experience had identified great cities... Alexandria, Cairo, Bethlehem the bread basket, and Jerusalem the City of David. There were cities of great business, cities known for education, others known for reverence and faith, some for terrible battles. Nazareth was an old city that everyone took for granted. No longer do we live in an age of Miracles, beginning in the 1960s we came to understand that the age of Christendom when the Church would conquer all the world and through great missionary enterprises evangelize everyone to be members was Over. Christianity became marginalized, much as we were in the early Church before Emperor Constantine. Seeking to resolve the problems of the world, we look to Wall Street, we look to Washington, we look to the re-emergence of Detroit, Texas and Florida, we even look across the oceans to Stabilizing the Euro, to new governments in Afghanistan, Iraq, a new Africa, Japan rebuilt after the Tsunami. Updating Nathaniel's question: “Can anything Good come out of the Church?” Does anyone in the world anticipate that the Church could be the source of World Peace, of Economic Stability and Growth, of New Dreams? In the Age of Christendom, the Church did make social pronouncements, about war, about power, about the economy. Today, when the Word of God has been rare, we need to question, whether what we are looking for is the Old Priest: ELI justifying ourselves (MY GOD), or whether like the child, we respond to life “Speak Lord for your servant listens” as God calls us SAMUEL “God has heard!”

"The Cosmic in the Mundane" January 8, 2012

2012-01-08T05:35:00.000-08:00

Genesis 1:1-5
Mark 1: 4-8
A good and faithful friend advised this week, that we need to be careful when reading the Hebrew Bible of the Old Testament beside the Gospel of the New Testament, that we not become SUPERSESSIONISTS and as Christians take over the faith, but allow room for the faith of Israel, alongside the redemption of Jesus Christ, preserving the integrity of each.

Reflecting upon these passages, I suddenly recalled the words of The Preacher in Ecclesiastes 3. Not only the familiar “To everything there is a season and time for every purpose under heaven...” but the explication of that:
I have seen the busyness that God has given to the Children of Man to be busy with. God creating everything beautiful in its own time; AND ALSO putting eternity into the mind of humanity!

Because what each of our passages describe, is: the need for MYSTERY, the need for REVERENCE in Human Life. Just as there is balance in God's Acts of Creation, that there be Light over against Darkness; a firmament in the heavens to separate Heaven and Earth; and that there be Land in the midst of Waters; there is need for constant balance between the Mundane and the Cosmic. To live life, with the believe that that we are witnessing more than what we can know, what is Spiritual, Divine, Holy.

The ancient Nation of Israel knew from history, that the earliest event of their origin had been as slaves in Egypt. Human Chattel, who were bought and sold as property, without rights, without identity, as if without soul; whom God set free. To enter in and interrupt human history God must have loved them. From this witness, came the giving of the 10 Commandments, instruction for creation of the Ark of the Covenant, the Tent of Meeting, which over generations became the Great Kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon. Yet as the people became preoccupied with their buying and selling stuff, accumulating possessions, Times to be born and to die, times to plant and time to reap, times of War and of Peace, Israel forgot about REVERENCE, they forgot about God. And when in human imagination we believe there is No God, we attempt to fill that void ourselves, acting as if we had not only power but also authority over Right & Wrong, Life & Death. REVERENCE is the learned wisdom, that comes from having been brought low, that God does exist, that God is God and we are but foolish mortals.

The remnants of faith began telling a PREQUEL to their Earliest Slavery, that just as there was then and the more recent now, there would be a future, because there was an earlier past. SO it is that Scripture begins “IN THE BEGINNING GOD.” Rather than focusing upon Humanity, rather than beginning with our calling upon God and God responding to us; Genesis begins with God in Creation, before humanity. As acts of Divine Perfection, fullness and completion, God created Light out of Darkness, Order out of Chaos, the fullness of the Oceans, and the delicate balance of the ecosystem. Surely God is God because no Human being would have created such beauty and simplicity as life. The point is not that God loved us, as if God needed us, but that humanity perpetually needs God, to CREATE, to REDEEM and to SUSTAIN LIFE.

Each of the Gospels is unique, the Gospel of Mark is different in that there is no Narrative of the Birth of the Savior, the origins of the Messiah who is both Fully Human and Fully Divine. Instead, the Evangelist of Mark emphasized that Jesus was a human being like all of us, who did not know his role in life, who was unaware of his spiritual identity.

Baptism by John was not the presentation of a baby, and gifting of a name. Mark plainly records that throughout history there have been those PREPARING THE WAY for what God would do. John the Baptizer, but also the Prophets, Solomon, David, Moses, Sarah and Abraham, Adam and Eve, ALL had lived their lives preparing the way for what was to come. John is recorded as the Baptizer, but what John did amazingly well was to Preach. He called the World to REPENTANCE, to Confess faith in God. AND most amazingly, the world did. Whether business owners, property owners, learned teachers of the universities, Pharisees of the LAW, or common country peasants, ALL came to John. BAPTISM was a claiming of our most primordial essence. Before birth we were in the waters of life in our mother's womb; before humanity was created we were formed in the primordial waters of Creation; and before anything else in all Creation there was God, so we all kneel down and are baptized.

In recent years I have heard several colleagues adopt cute phrases about “RENEW YOUR BAPTISM” or “REMEMBER YOUR BAPTISM”... the difficulty if that for many of us we were baptized as infants. I am told I was Baptized at three months of age, that I picked at my father's collar and hick-upped throughout. Having been a Father, I recall my own children having urped up and been very odiphorous. But as infants none of us remember our baptism. And as Sacrament, Baptism needs no repetition, no ratification, we are claimed by God, complete. Instead, I would put forward, that especially on this Baptism of the LORD Day, that we RECLAIM OUR BAPTISM, that we REPENT and embrace REVERENCE that God is God, that we came up out of the waters of Creation, that emerging from the birthing waters of our mothers we are mortal and human and creaturely.

But the Gospel of Mark does not simply state Jesus was Baptized. Rather that being Baptized, Heaven itself was ripped open. According to the 20th century Theologian Karl Barth: That Firmament in the Heavens which separated the waters from the waters and kept Chaos safe, was re-created as Open through Jesus. Throughout Church History, we have placed great emphasis on the Birth of the Savior, and The Crucifixion and Death and Resurrection, but what a cosmic event, that the firmament established by God at Creation should be opened?! With Heaven Open, the Heavenly Spirit came down and came upon Jesus. No longer, could Heaven and Earth be declared as separate, because according to Mark's testimony Jesus Baptism had opened the way between the Cosmic and the Mundane, between Humanity and God. CS Lewis is recalled as having described that matter has weight, substance, is tangible. So which do you imagine is heavier, Created matter or Spirit? And Lewis claimed that SPIRIT is the heavier, because it is always descending to brood upon the face of the waters, to come upon Jesus, and that Spirit is always united with tangible signs. So as heavy as a rock, the weight of remorse, or the depth of sorrow, or the burden of a lifetime, are far heavier.

The point of all of this, is that in the midst of the mundane, the ordinary, the most human events of life, we need to be humble enough to search for God. As Deacons, visiting shut ins to know that you bring hope and love and faith to those who often feel isolated and forgot. As Deacons, to understand that in Worship you are doing everything possible, all that is needed so that the Preacher can Preach, and the Communion can be served, and worshippers can hear. As Elders, to understand that while we approve Budgets, and move dollars between hear and there to install necessary rooms or provide staffing, what you are actually doing is PREPARING THE WAY for what God may do through others appointed by God.

January 01, 2012 "New-Ness"

2012-01-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 61:10-62-4
Luke 2:22-40
Christmas Eve found us, surrounded by worshippers, many in pajamas ready for dreams of sugarplums, others with a diamond or a new gold band on their finger. Christmas morn our homes were lit with trees the floor covered in discarded paper. The morning after Christmas the guests who had stayed too long had left, when the phone rang with report of a friend who had died early on this day after. Returning from time with the family, the funeral home called with news of another member from the 1970s who had died, and their family wanted to come home for the burial. Then the mother of a bride called, for one of the weddings this May. She was inconsolable, as it appeared the 25 year old groom had suddenly and unexplainedly died. As much as we try to make preparations for Christmas, as much as we shop and decorate and bake cookies, Christmas belongs to God... Christmas is so much more than Christmas Eve and Morn, it is all the most-ordinary of life juxtaposed by God miraculously entering in. As great as our expectations are for Christmas, our human means are limited, and the birth of Jesus is not only about the Shepherds and Manger, but about Simeon who has been waiting decade upon decade for the coming of the Christ. Christmas is about Anna, whose life of nearly 90 years was very ordinary, yet she had been promised that before she died she would see the coming of the Savior!

The post-Modern theologian Miroslav Volf has described that there is a difference between Optimism and Hope. Optimism is living life, believing based on all we have ever known of life, that there is possibility. Hope is grounded in the reality of God, hope is belief in what has seemed unreal. In 1945, in Poland, a Jewish woman named Ruth Krauss wrote a children's book, titled The Carrot Seed. In the story, a child plants a carrot seed, and waits, watering the ground, watching for something green to appear. His parents know that the earth has been bombed, the soil saturated in the blood of death. For their child's sake, they want to believe the carrot could grow and they satisfy themselves that he is busy. Yet, the child who planted the seed, who waits day after day, nurturing hope, believes against reality, and when finally the carrot greens are pulled from the earth, not only is there a carrot, but the carrot is bigger than the child.

If All we do is live in the moment, working hard, and playing hard, we have no expectation of what could be or what is, only memories of what has been. We long for the economy to turn around. We wait for the next election, without expecting anything other than a shift of power the other way. We long for peace as the absence of war, without righteousness or justice, or respect for the humanity and dignity of the other. We make resolutions to live life differently, without the willingness to wait, even more the dedication to change.

Across Africa across the world, Doctors Without Borders and CARE International have built thousands of Clinic buildings, that stand as eroding shells, lifeless husks, because after the building was built, after optimism of what could be was established, a new clinic needed to be built, a new crisis grabbed attention. After 7 long years of dedicated work, where we set out to build a clinic for $30,000 over $3M of donations have been raised and spent, and out of Civil War there is a new Nation in South Sudan. We have been responsible for changing the infant mortality rate from 8 out of 10 dying before age 5 and the maternal mortality rate from 50% dying in child-birth; the possibility is before us that the clinic will continue self-sustaining without our involvement. The question is not about numbers or dollars, not about lives saved, but about what this mission, about what this 7 years, has meant to those who gave support, to witness that we can make a difference in the world.

Sometimes, that difference is about offering life out of death, about changing the world. At other times, it is about what Emerson described “To laugh often and much... To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children... To earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends... to appreciate beauty... to find the best in others... to leave the world a little bit better... whether in the life of a child, the planting of a garden, or the redemption of a social condition... to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived... This is to have succeeded.”

Our Biblical passages this morning, in the week following Christmas, are less about celebrating another year as “The Birthday for Time,” than about the realization of hope against our grounding in the past. In Ancient Israel, the great Monarchy was destroyed. Babylon rose to power, and all previous cultures were brought down. The Great Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem, was laid waste, not one stone left upon another. For decades, those who had been kept alive from what once was Israel watched and waited, as the empire of Babylon rose and fell. Persia rose and fell. Greece with Alexander and Aristotle and Plato rose and fell. The whole history of human culture, of the building of dynasties and power is about rising, only to be destroyed. Isaiah's witness is counter-cultural, that out of what was crushed will come new-ness. Out of the rubble of the past, will come something as yet unknown. Where the world knows only the rise and fall of time, faith believes that only after the seed has fallen into the ground can the husk be let go for new life to sprout.

Martin Luther described that God became small for us, showing us God's heart and vulnerability, that our hearts might be converted. A child has immense power over us. The most burley calloused hands of a man, cradle a newborn as if pillows of down. The most powerful and resounding of voices is changed to a falsetto cooing, by the touch of a baby.

These stories from the Bible remind us that Birth is dangerous. We have come to believe in the hope of expectation, that months before birth, we know the sex and the name, Grandparents schedule supersavers to be present when the baby is born. But Birth is dangerous. In America, where the amount we spend per birth is higher than anywhere else in the world, our Maternal Mortality rate is the 11th highest among developed Nations; and from 2009 to 2010 doubled from 7 per 100,000 to 13 per 100,000 with serious life-threatening complications for the mothers in 65 out of 10,000 births; and while the Infant Mortality rate has declined in the last decade, in America we still bury 24 babies per 1,000. Birth is dangerous, Life is dangerous! The point of the birth stories in the Bible is not so we would have creches on the mantle, but to bear witness that God did not come from Heaven as a Warrior invincible, untouchable, but instead embraced everything of life as we live life. There was reason why the Law of Moses required a sacrifice be offered for the birth of a child, ...to thank God! For most of us, we cannot imagine a sacrifice for a birth... the required sacrifice was an unblemished lamb, for a poor couple a pair of turtledoves.

For centuries, Church teaching has wrestled with the strict adherence to the Law regarding Jesus. He was the Messiah, God in human form, so without sin... why then did he suffer on the cross? Why did he need to be Baptized? The answer being that on the cross he suffered for the sins of all humanity. In his baptism, all the world was forgiven. So in the sacrifice for his birth, there was sacrifice for all the mothers and babies of all the world.

In the Christmas story, we have come to expect the Donkey and Ox, the Shepherds and Sheep, the Wisemen and Camels, none of which does the Bible name. What we never expect is Simeon and Anna. Anna, whose whole life had been so ordinary. She had married and been widowed and devoted herself to the care of others... could there be a more ordinary life, yet Anna was promised that she would see Salvation! And Simeon, whose whole life had been waiting for the Lord, not only for a few moments, or for a week or month or years, but for decade upon decade waiting for the Lord before he could die. In this New Year, there will be deaths and births, there will be the fall and rising of Nations, in the midst of all that is new, may there also be what has meaning, may there be sacrifices which are given in sincere thanks to God for the living of Life.

"The Word Became Flesh" Christmas Day 2011

2011-12-25T04:53:00.000-08:00

John 1:1-14
Funny, how much we have invested in Christmas being about Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem. While every Christmas pageant in every Christian Church for 800 years has portrayed it that way, only Luke's Gospel of the four has the couple going to Bethlehem, only Luke and Matthew even have the story of a birth. What we celebrate at Christmas is the incarnation of God becoming one with humanity. While the crucifixion and Resurrection of Easter are about the Atonement for our sins, Christmas is ALL about the grace of God, God's desire that we not be alone and broken; and in response, our desire for God

John's Gospel is a different Christmas reading.
Not about a Manger, or Shepherds or Kings, a Virgin, or a Star, not even about a birth of a baby. Instead, the Beloved Disciple identifies the birth of the Savior as having happened before time and space, before humanity, before Moses or Abraham, even before Noah and the flood.

“In the Beginning was the WORD.”
A strange identification for the Savior, the Messiah sent by God, and yet, going back to Genesis, what we hear is that “In the Beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” In the Beginning in Genesis is about creation of Time and Space to fill the shapeless, formless void. And according to John, Creation is also about the Light of God and the Word of God (which already exist) coming into Creation. Human Thought, Reasoning, Language about God, stories of the Divine in Human life offer light in the darkness. Our language, our words, betray our allegiances, our convictions. When we speak of CREATION, what do we imagine? If “Life,” this planet and universe, and the balance between all things, by calling this Creation, are we not naming our predilection that there is a CREATOR?

Genesis 1 tells the Order of Creation, and identifies that before anything or anyone else, rather than hypothesizing a Big Bang (that all life as we know it was formed by the accidental cataclysm of gases), that instead, before anything else, the Creator was/is God.
Genesis 2 tells a different story of Creation, not in contradiction of the first, but emphasizing the role of humanity with God in Creation, having power to name all that exists.
Genesis 3 tells another story of Creation, again not in contradiction of the first two, but explaining the origin of Good and Evil...how it is that God could have formed all creation and Blessed Creation calling it very Good, when there was evil.
Genesis 4 tells yet another story of Creation, as to why there are generations of humanity, and anger and jealousy between us as family members, why as family systems we pass on behaviors.
After which Genesis tells the story of Noah and the flood...
But what about all the rest, all of human understanding and words, language about God...When, How and Why did our caring about who God is, about the possibility of changing our lot in life, come into being? The Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ according to John, is not about the birth of a baby at Bethlehem, but another Genesis of how human thought, human desire to change, human want to know God, came to be.

How much we try to hide in life, how much darkness and gloom and control we try to exercise, how little of life is really creative and how much of all we do is killing? According to the Gospel of John, our darkness, our human control, death, could not extinguish the light that is the WORD from God. This is what the whole of the Good News from God will be about, This Cosmic struggle between the forces of Darkness and of Light. The Empire, Civilization, all Human Knowledge, Logic/Reason, Death and our Fears of Death, human understanding on one side, and a man sent from God on the other. Can one person make a difference? Can one individual change the nature of the whole human race, change the nature of history?
Written down in the time of the fall of the Roman Empire, when taxation for the sake of taxation was the norm, when the Roman Military had been used as a weapon against Rome's own citizens and people, during the worst of human existence, John witnessed that humanity had another nature.

First, there was a man sent from God, whose name was John, who came calling people to “repent.”
He was not the Light, he was not the Word, but he came to bear witness to what was coming.
That John (John the Baptist) and the John who authored the Gospel are not the same individual, but the similarity of their names is not by accident... as John came to bear witness to the Light of God, so also John the author of the Gospel will witness to what he has seen and believes. This is one of the elements we have lost today. The ability to “Witness,” I am not necessarily talking about knocking on doors to ask if the person knows Jesus, but that at somepoint in our lives we speak to those we love, whose lives, whose existence are important to us, to whom our lives are important, naming what we believe and why.

I have a close friend, with whom I have worked on the Clinic for 7 years now, and suddenly yesterday, a woman I knew as a friend in college 30 years ago asked “Do you know my brother?” Until that moment, I never had put the two together, never had thought of other human connections for someone I work with. That is the power of a witness, not to accuse and name the culprit, but to make connections, to identify meaningful relationships without realizing they are meaningful.

Even with this witness testifying that this is the true light sent from God, no one received him, no one believed. People were caught up in their own lives, in their own existence and survival, in the struggles of power and control, good and evil, struggles of women and men, struggles of family systems. As much as humanity has developed, as great of civilizations as we had developed in Egypt, Israel, Babylon, Greece and Rome, as great as our Law, and our philosophy and reason, no one had considered whether we are born of the flesh as animals, or what it might mean to be born a child of God. The Great Philosophers debated whether humanity is basically Good or Evil? The Greeks and Romans theorized a whole civilization of Gods separate from and parallel to Humanity. But no one had considered whether God might care about Creation, or whether Creation might care about God. SO according to this story of Creation, God became human to dwell among us, full of grace and truth.

When did the relationship between God and Humanity begin? It is basic to human life, basic to our Created Order. As we accept the rotations of Night and Day, as we believe in a firmament an atmosphere we cannot see, so also there is a bond and tension between us and God. Is it any wonder then, that Jesus would refer to God as Father? Judaism identifies God as Law Giver. Islam as giver of Prophecy. Christianity claims relationship with God as Father, because the Word of God became Flesh as a Human Messiah.

Even so, while the bond between God and Humanity is intrinsic to who we are and who is our Creator, as Human Creatures one of our Creations is history, the orderly progression of developments in Time and Space. SO when did the Word of God become flesh? For as Poetic and Mystic as John's Gospel, he is also witnessing to the reality of Jesus Christ. According to John, FAITH is not simply thought, not only Philosophy, but that in TIME & SPACE, in our relationship to all the world around us, within the STRUGGLE OF GOOD & EVIL, in our FAMILY SYSTEMS the life and witness of Jesus Christ matters.

So we return to the earlier question, IF at a particular time (actually the most debauched corrupt, evil time in human history) the Word Became Flesh to dwell among us, when in our lives will we witness, will we share with one another not only a tie and perfume, not only a gift in your honor to this wonderful cause, but how precious it is to our lives that this other is part of who we are?

"You Shall Be CALLED: Sought Out" Midnight Christmas Eve 2011

2011-12-24T13:20:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 62:6-12
Luke 2:1-20
The school was having their annual Winter Concert, so called because the public schools could no longer have a Christmas Concert, and the regular program included songs about snowmen, reindeer and Santa. One class at a time, from eldest to youngest, the classes stood up from their cross-legged position and marched to the stage. Finally, it was the Kindergarden class' turn, and daring to risk protocol the teacher had them singing a song “Christmas Love.” Each child held a large placard with a letter which they held up at the appropriate time. “C” is for Children, “H” is for Home, “R” for Ribbon, and so on. But a young girl about halfway down kept turning her card round and round uncertain at age 5 if the letter was supposed to be an M or a W, as it could have gone either way. When she held up the “W” everyone began to snicker, the older kids pointing... until the song was done, and suddenly everyone stopped laughing and each began pointing out for another, because by her flipping the M to a W, instead of spelling Christmas Love, the message spelled “Christ Was Love.”

Skaneateles is an idyllic place, every season of the year, perhaps every home town is. But of all the moments of all the year, this is one of my favorites. After the Candle Glow, just before Midnight.

From January until September every year, we hear the High School Seniors anxious to get out of this tiny town, where there is nothing to do and no where to go, and whether we want to or not, we know every family's scandal, be it football, or divorce, saying the wrong thing, or doing the wrong thing.
Yet, something happened in the last four months, or 16, or 4 years or however long it has been, by being gone, home has been missed. Even more, traveling the world with Rotary, going to college and discovering new ideas, falling in love, marrying, having children of our own, we have come home to question whether everything we knew and experienced growing up, is still true... or whether like leaving cookies for Santa and carrots for reindeer, our perspective of what is real changes as adults. Once you've been exposed to Bowen's Law of Thermodynamics; once you understand Pascal and Fortran; Plato and Aristotle, and Freud, Niebuhr and Tillich; can Silent Night still warm our hearts? Can we still believe?

The same is described in Isaiah, the Old Testament people had taken faith in God for granted. We had David and Solomon as our kings, we had the largest economy, the grandest palaces, the mightiest army, the world had ever known! Then, everything seemed to fall apart and everyone was dispersed, they called it the DIASPORA. The best and brightest, were sent to Babylon to be immersed in a new and different world, with different foods, languages, ideas and customs, as if being thrown into the deep end to see if you can swim. Others, for survival – escaped, to far distant places, seeing the world. Still others were made slaves, bought and sold by the very economy they once cherished.
Generations later, the word of prophecy, the call of faith is to return to God's Holy Mountain.
Come from the four corners of the earth! Go through the gates! Prepare the way for others! Say to one another: “Behold, Salvation Comes!” and you shall be called holy, redeemed, sought out, a city not forsaken!

Everything is different. That is the point of redemption, of being Holy and being sought out.
We have now been taught to know about micro-biology and plate-tectonics, and virtual worlds. Must there be an either or choice? Rather than leaving behind all we knew, we are now adults with minds that can think and debate. Dictators have been overthrown. Terrorists put to death. Can we recognize there is more to life than the stuff of survival?

Redemption is more than putting in your time, serving your sentence, working 40 years and retiring. Redemption requires reflection upon who we are and what we are doing and why.

The fact of the matter, is that as much as we thought, adolescents grinding on the dance floor, or divorces, or pregnancies, or our daughters and sons and peers being arrested, CHRISTMAS is redemption of the greatest scandal that could ever be. Almighty God, Creator of the Universe, the Force behind all that is, the Ancient God of Ishmael, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who gave the LAW to Moses, that God created humanity with Free Will, so as to be able to choose to love God; but instead because of our own vanity, our own desires, our own blindness to everything except our reflection, we turned away from God, seeking what shimmers and sparkles, but can never satisfy. For thousands of years, Almighty God watched helplessly, as we destroyed ourselves, as we built up for ourselves what rusts and rots in decay. Could there be any greater tragic lovestory? Could there be any greater scandal?

But God has done what seemed impossible. The Divine stripped off divinity. Could anything be more naked? The ruler of Heaven and Earth, left Heaven to be one with us. The Creator stepped into creation but rather than coming as a God, as all knowing, all powerful, invincible and immortal, God came to us in the most humble most vulnerable way of all, as a newborn baby.

Each of us is unique, individual. Imagine what you have wanted more than life itself... I am not talking about the red bike, or the third Lexus, or the house in St. Croix... Imagine the Father of the Prodigal Son, willing to accept the indignation of his child wishing he were dead, willing to face the embarrassment of the world by longing for his child to come home... Imagine you trained for a career and now have been without employment since 2007... Imagine, you want to be reconciled with your family, to be validated and respected... Recognize you have wanted this so long and so painfully that giving up the dream seems the only way out. When suddenly, there is hope, there is a way forward. Redemption, Being “Sought Out,” cannot be taught. There is no mathematic equation, no chemical formula, no technique or training of the voice, this is not linear thinking... But belief that life is HOLY.

In the time of Ancient Rome, not of Julius Caesar, Cleopatra and Marc Anthony, but when the Empire was falling into ruin and decay; when the Legion the Army of Rome had attacked her own people; when taxation for the sake of taxation was the norm, and humanity was powerless to stop, one individual, one person came forward to make a difference in the world, one person can change the world and all human existence. Not the most powerful, not the most influential, not the wealthiest, or smartest, truly one possessing nothing out of the ordinary, who never gave in, never compromised being faithful.

SO which is the great scandal? That God formed humanity to love God, and humanity did not? Or that God so wanted to redeem the world, that God would cheat? God became human in order to redeem us, to love us. More than having a title, having an identity, a career, “You/we are Sought Out,” we have a Calling, to lead as Christ leads, to serve as Christ serves, to trust as God trusts, to love.

"Believing in Christmas" Pajama Christmas Eve 2011

2011-12-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

Luke 2:1-20

Grown ups do not "get" Christmas!
When you have seen Christmas 100 times, well okay 30 or 40 or 50 times, you begin to think this is all ordinary, that Christmas is Ordinary, as if Christmas is going to come every year.
If you ask me, the grown ups have seen Dr. Seuss' Grinch too many times, and they actually think that without all the Who-Presents and and Who-Carols and Who-Turkey and Who-Beast, that without Suzie-loo Who, still Christmas would be just the same.

The whole point of Believing in Christmas, is in believing in the Ordinary as Not Ordinary!
And believing that when we are uncomfortable, where we are disappointed, to see that life is not over, God is with us.

The school was having their annual Winter Concert, so called because the public schools could no longer have a Christmas Concert, and the regular program included songs about snowmen, reindeer and Santa. One class at a time, from eldest to youngest, the classes stood up from their cross-legged position and marched to the stage. Finally, it was the Kindergarden class' turn, and daring to risk protocol the teacher had them singing a song “Christmas Love.” Each child held a large placard with a letter which they held up at the appropriate time. “C” is for Children, “H” is for Home, “R” for Ribbon, and so on. But a young girl about halfway down kept turning her card round and round uncertain at age 5 if the letter was supposed to be an M or a W, as it could have gone either way. When she held up the “W” everyone began to snicker, the older kids pointing... until the song was done, and suddenly everyone stopped laughing and each began pointing out for another, because by her flipping the M to a W, instead of spelling Christmas Love, the message spelled “Christ Was Love.”

Christmas is believing that God, the God we pray to at night, the God who made the whole Universe, the God who was with Adam and Eve and Abraham and Moses, the God in Heaven who commands Angels, the God who does miracles, WOULD BECOME human!
That God, with all the divinity and holiness and power of being God could become a baby!
AND, that that event, that Baby, that ONE PERSON in all the world, in all the history of all the Nations, could make a difference!

What would happen, if suddenly one ordinary thing changed? If suddenly there was no gravity? What would happen if a second sun appeared in the sky? What would happen if flowers suddenly appeared in winter? What would happen if your greatest wish came true?
So what do you believe would happen, if God was born as a baby?
All the world would change, stars suddenly stop in the sky, we would be able to hear angels singing, wise-men would cross the world to see what had happened and bow down before what is truly great!

Joseph and Mary had had a comfortable life. He was a talented carpenter who worked hard and had a nice business, she lived with her parents, they were planning to get married, everything was comfortable. Then everything changed. A miracle happened and Mary was going to have a baby. Have you ever seen somebody when things do not go their way? They get kind of red in the face and their ears especially, and sometimes they scream and are angry at other stuff because what they planned and what they thought was going to happen in ordinary times, does not. But Mary does not cry. Mary does not get embarrassed, she says, OKAY, this is what I have to do.

Joseph could have made a terrible scene, he could have ruined Mary and her family. He had every right to walked away, in fact it probably would have been right for him to do so, not to stay with her when she was going to have a Baby and he was not the father. But Joseph loved Mary, for better and worse.

Then the Government, the Government announced new TAXES, and even more, everyone was told you had to move! You had to leave your business, your family and friends, and everything you have ever known to get to a different place, all so you could be counted, COUNTED as if you were sheep.

How many of us tonight, have travelled a long way from our homes and routine, what is ordinary, to be here? And we have to sleep in a strange bed, maybe on a couch, our routines have been changed.
Maybe we lost our job this year. Maybe someone we love died and Christmas is different. When things are not ordinary, we sometimes get afraid.
Mary and Joseph finally got to where they were told to go, and there was no room for them.
Having been treated like sheep, they were offered a place in the Stable and were thankful to have that.

When suddenly, it was time, and the baby was born. Could there be anything more common, more ordinary, a Stable, dark and dank, with the smell of animals and sweat, and diapers and a baby?

There are moments, when it seems time and space are full and ripe.
At the start of the worship, when the room was full of the warm glow of candlelight and all the voices sang “Silent Night,” Christmas morning when you wake up and realize what day it is and the tree glimmers and everyone is happy.
That was the mood of the Stable after the Baby was born.
Ordinary and yet for Mary the mother of Jesus, everything was suddenly different.
For Joseph, as ordinary as this was, as much expected, all of life was now different.
At that moment, you do not need anything, especially not visitors. But suddenly, there are people poking their heads in the door, and sheep, whole flocks of sheep. Do you know how smelly and loud a whole flock of sheep can be. Yet, these uncouth shepherds tell of having witnessed the most amazing thing. The whole sky lit up, and angels appeared, there was singing, and a voice from heaven telling them that the world had changed. Telling them that they needed to go see what seemed to be the most ordinary of things, a poor couple in a stable who had a baby, and the baby wrapped up as you would wrap a baby... but that this would not be ordinary, this would not be common, this would be Christmas!

December 18, 2011 "Nothing is Impossible (For God with Us)"

2011-12-18T07:54:00.000-08:00

2nd Samuel 7:1-11
Luke 1:26-38
Earlier this week, someone stopped me to say, “You better be planning something really spectacular for Christmas! We usually have a big family dinner with all the relatives, we sing carols, and tell stories as we eat Christmas cookies staying up late, then we go to bed and get up before dawn to open our presents to one another, before we have a huge breakfast. And you want us to change our tradition, by coming to Church both Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning! All I can say is, you better be planning on doing something really different.”
The Word of God becoming Flesh and blood, the birth of God, the coming of the Savior of the World, somehow just does not stack up against our snicker-doodles and rum-balls.

This passage from 2 Samuel 7 is a wonderful word for us at this beginning of the 4th week of Advent. For this Word brings together all the dangling threads of promise that went before, and establishes everything that will come after. Since Genesis 12, we have followed stories of God's promise to a family, that Abraham's children would be a great Nation, would live in comfort and peace in a land flowing with milk and honey. Since the Exodus presentation of the Law and Commandments to Moses, we have followed the movements of the Ark leading in battle, resting only momentarily within the Tent of Meeting. And not since Cain and his brother Abel, have we had a Man who wanted to DO FOR God. In the case of Adam's sons, to each make offerings for God which led to Cain killing Abel; in this case, King David dwelling in peace, given rest from all his enemies, living in the luxury of palaces, wanting to build a house of cedar and gold for God, that will lead to his killing Bathsheba's husband. As Handel's Messiah described “The Glory of the Lord shall be revealed, because the Mouth of the Lord has spoken.” Not, we are a people who have dwelt in peace and prosperity, wanting to experience greater and greater spectacles, so show us the glory of the Lord!

How curious that King David, ruler over the greatest most powerful nation on Earth, would seek advice from the prophet Nathan. In our Nation's Capital, there is a role for Chaplain of the Senate, who prays in the beginning of the meetings, but when it comes to decision making and policy, the Cabinet are composed of Political, Financial and Military advisors. I wonder what would have happened if in the course of these long years of wars in Muslim nations, our leadership had sought the advice and counsel of American Muslim Clerics, Jewish Rabbis, Priests and Pastors.

We have to question, what Nathan did not that day. Why does the Great King desire to build a palace for God? Is it purely out of faith, or is it to be seen as being devoted, that David would be remembered as having built The Palace for God? What God reminds Nathan in the night, is that God is the prime actor, and being created in the image of God, we respond and react to God. When we try to be the prime movers, when we define who God is and where God is allowed to be in our lives, we try to make ourselves God. Perhaps, part of the message of this passage is why we need to give the gifts we do this Christmas? Is it as response to the other being in our lives; or is it to be seen as being generous, as ignoring the reality of the economy?

I remember one Christmas long ago... after years of having a Lionel train circle round the tree and presents, neighbors with lights making their houses glow, my brothers and I thought it would be exciting and different if we created a tree-stand that would rotate. More even than the tree, we fashioned a plywood base on which the tree and presents could be placed. In this way, we could stay still and Christmas would spin round and round, showing all the beauty of all the ornaments, and bringing the presents to us. We wired the lights to the stand, and the stand was connected to a rheostat dimmer. When the tree was decorated, we flipped the switch and those large egg shaped colored electric lights began to glow, then we turned the dial and the tree and platform began to move. After three revolutions, we turned the dimmer down, confident all was prepared. Christmas morning, we returned from church, with snow on the ground and the smell of coffee in the air, we came into the living room as the sparkling tree and stacks of presents slowly spun in the middle of the room, but as the dimmer warmed up, the tree began spinning faster and faster and faster, ornaments began flying off the branches as Christmas was out of control. Quietly, calmly, Mother went to the wall outlet and unplugged the tree, which slowed and stopped, bringing Christmas to quiet.

Mothers have a way of quieting things, centering. Mary is described in Latin as THEO-TOKIS the one who bears God. Overtime, this became one of the great schisms between the Protestant Churches and the Roman Catholic. Whether Mary was a simple common woman, as the God-Bearer,Theo-tokis or whether Mary was to be revered as being like-God? The point of the Magnificat, is not to venerate the Virgin, but to realize that Nothing is Impossible for God, not even that a common, simple girl could be the mother of the savior of the world, or that we like her could also present God to the world.

Mary gets what the Prophet Nathan, and David the Great King of Israel, both had forgotten. Mary did not volunteer, saying: “Hey God, I am financially secure and ready in my career to have a Baby!” or “I am going to have a baby, and I want him to be the Messiah!” No, but when God acted, when God sought out Mary, saying you have found favor, God has appointed that you bear God's son, who in this way will be fully Human and fully Divine, Mary responded “Behold, I am a servant of the Lord, let it be to me, according to The Word of God.”

The wonder of these passages, is that no matter what, Nothing is Impossible for God...
not that God could make a Father, and lineage out of a man like David;
not that a virgin could give birth, nor even that God could become human through a common person, nor that any of us could be servants of God, Theo-tokis, bearers of God to the world!
The words of affirmation have become a colloquialism, so common to us that we forget the meaning: “You shall call his name Emmanuel,” this is the greatest impossibility of all, that God would be One with us! Rather than Pygmalian's myth of an Artist making a statue so lifelike that it comes to life and becomes real... that The Creator, the author of Life, the Almighty, the Artist of Reality, should choose to enter into Creation and become vulnerable, become human, even forgive the world for all our sins. But that is the real power of forgiveness... Forgiveness is not forgetting what took place, letting the other go. Forgiveness is the realization that the division between us is causing great pain and suffering. Hearing this word tis morning, that not of our own volition, not because we are so comfortable or powerful that we choose to, BUT instead, in response to God, we see ourselves in the role of bringing God to others by our forgiveness.

December 4, 2011, "Future Faith"

2011-12-04T10:56:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 40:1-15
Mark: 1:1-8
When we cast ourselves in the Christmas story, we readily accept that few among us are kings let alone wise. Few in history have possessed the purity, innocence and humility of Mary. No, the role many of us quickly accept is of the sheep and shepherds, going about our regular routine, waiting for God to do something, waiting for a heavenly host of angels to appear and with Gloria In Excelsis Deo to tell us the miracle of God is ready. Following our routine, doing what we have done for generations, waiting for God to tell us God is ready.

Over and over, throughout the Bible, there is the recurrent phrase “THE WORD OF GOD WAS RARE in those days.” What if the role we have been assigned by God, is not as Shepherds or as sheep, and Lord knows we are no angels. What if we are to be the John the Baptists, of this time and place? John is an unforgettable figure, with an ill-temper, saying whatever occurs to him, a belly full of locusts, his beard, face and hands smeared with honey, clothed in camel skins. He is not the sort your mother wanted you to bring home. Yet, John the Baptizer does what no one else in history has done.

The people have been searching for a Messiah, a leader, a Savior sent from God to change the world, and John responds “Not Me. There is one coming, whom I am not worthy to kneel before, whose shoes I am not worthy to untie.” When is the last time we heard a leader, someone running for office, describe that anyone before or after them is better than they are? What if Steve Jobs last speech, instead of announcing the latest technological advancement, had proclaimed “Together we are creating the means for great ideas yet to come!” or if the College students who invented Social media had said “Thank you Ben Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, because without having had electricity, the telephone, the personal computer, we never would have had the experience or desire to create this!” We look for Saviors, to ordain as Kings. We search for individuals with the ego and the charisma, the self-assurance to say “I am It!” John's word, in all sincerity and humility is “The world is not yet ready! We are not yet prepared to greet such a one. We are so many separate individuals in competition with ourselves/ let alone one another. I can only prepare the way for the coming Savior.”

The Gospel of Mark begins differently than the other Gospels. Not only in the absence of stories about the Virgin Birth and Manger, The Good News of Jesus Christ according to Mark begins with two monumental shifts in reality. In response to John, all the people across the countryside, from farmers, to soldiers, from prostitutes to parents, professors to lawyers, everyone who heard his word reflected upon their own lives, repented of something that had happened, repented of something they were doing, and confessed their desire to live their life differently. Everyone it seems has some story of repentance, everyone is searching for what we have not been. Without that realization, without the recognition that we are imperfect, incomplete, without naming to ourselves that we are in need, we are not ready to hear and receive the Good News. The Great Swiss Theologian Karl Barth, described that the Gospel reaches out and grabs you, the Words engage you not merely as history of people long ago, but as our story.

About a year ago, we asked this congregation repeatedly, if you were to describe this Church, this people of God, what we believe and represent, described either to someone who does not know what Church is, or as unique compared to other Churches, what would you say? Among the adjectives used, was Believing in REDEMPTION, no one is ever thrown away or abandoned. The Good News of Jesus Christ, according to John the Baptist, is that all of us have a past, all humanity are searching for God, searching for redemption. Confessing this need, bending our knee, to be baptized, bending down to serve, kneeling to untie the sandal and wash the feet of another, that confession is the only way to be prepared for the coming of the Savior.

We described that the Good News of Jesus Christ begins with two shifts in reality, according to Mark. First is that all humanity need to, want to, be redeemed to live life differently. BUT ALSO, reading on in the 9th and 10th verses of the Revised Standard Version of Mark, when Jesus did come to be Baptized Heaven opened. The Greek is more explicit: the perimeter between Heaven and Earth, the gulf between the divine and the mortal, the limitations of reality, were irreparably ripped open by God. The Good News of Jesus Christ is that all Humanity want to and can be redeemed, every person is worthwhile, no one is lost; BUT ALSO that God wants to redeem us, God does not want to see us damned, God's desire is to forgive, to see us whole, to love.

This same truth was declared Centuries before in the time of the Prophets Isaiah. There is this monumental shift at the end of the 39th Chapter, before the beginning of the 40th. The first 39 Chapters have dealt with the Fall of the nation of Israel. The Prophets preached and preached , and people's ears were thick and their vision cataracted. The people of God were conquered and destroyed, the Great Temple of Solomon was desecrated before their being carried off as slaves to Babylon, where they would labor for 150 years. George Steiner the great Literary critic and author of descriptions of the Holocaust at Cambridge University describes that a powerful thing happens when language and circumstance coincide, when our hopes of what is beyond reality and our belief in God agree. Steiner describes that in our minds, the PRESENT and the PAST are as One. Not only do we continue to live out the continuing effects of what has gone before, we also replay both in our minds, and in our experiences the events and relationships of the past, again and again. The power of language, that occurs in Chapter 40 of Isaiah, is that instead of continuing to describe the past, instead of present circumstances being a continuation of what is fact, what is dead and no longer living, God speaks of a future faith. God uses a Grammar of Creation, of WHAT SHALL BE, WHAT WILL COME, and IF. These are the passwords to a different reality. Instead of living according to what is and has been, what is fact but no longer alive, faith calls us into a different living future of what could be. Rather than a people who HAD needed to be punished, who HAD deserved retribution, who were Conquered and Abandoned and Enslaved, in Chapter 40 God commands Heavens Angels “Comfort, Comfort, My People says your God! Her Warfare will be ended, She will be Pardoned for the past. Every Valley shall be lifted up, every mountain hill shall be made low. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed as we prepare the way of the LORD.

Isaiah proclaims this double edged prophecy, that humbles the powerful, and provides hope to the oppressed. Quite simply, the Prophets asks: What should I Cry? And God 's Word is “All flesh is Grass, beauty is like the flower that fades and grass that withers, though the word of God stands for ever.” As we began this day, we search for what was before. Who created God? Who taught God? Who provided counsel and wisdom to set God up? And part of the nature of God is that God is older than time itself, and God shall always be.

In this season as we seek the latest, biggest, tiniest, fastest, the leaders of the next generation, we need to listen to the power of words. Whether we are stuck in the past, hiding only to relive our sins; or whether we can own our failures, name our brokenness and confessing faith live a future reality of being redeemed by God. There is a marvelous movie, just released, titled HUGO. While the critics will have many different story-lines, I think that what the film is about is a child who sees the world as a great machine. Machines are designed to work, perpetually to be wound up and run. Machines do not come with extra pieces, every part, every person has a purpose. The boy comes to realize that his function in life is to repair what is broken, to mend human lives, to comfort and to redeem. May we be like this, like John the Baptist, calling one another to claim our pasts as very real to our present and to claim faith as a means for embracing the future with God.

November 27, 2011 "Awakening Hope"

2011-11-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

I Corinthians 1:1-25
Mark 13: 24-37
Do we really need reminder at the beginning of Advent, to “Keep Awake!”?
Three months ago, Labor Day happened, and we began the rush of Back to School programs/activities, followed by Halloween, and this last week driving 6-10 hours, so we could defrost the butter to bake the pie crusts and chop the celery and onions for stuffing, to put in the defrosted bird, during the Macy's Parade, all perfectly timed so everything came out of the oven just as Green Bay beat the Lions, in order that we could begin shopping before Black Friday.
We are a hyper-vigilant people, always waiting for the shoe to drop.
Keep awake?
If anything, we want the Church as alternative to culture, to pass out Sleep-Ease, to pacify and calm.
We have over 17,000 Starbucks Coffeeshops in 55 different countries, 11,000 here in the United States.
Keep awake?

For a decade, we have lived with war, fearful of attack, fearful of what has happened to sons/ daughters far away, fearful of the economy. Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi all dead, each of the nations of the Middle East and North Africa changed, the axis of evil shifted, yet the genie is not back in the bottle, the dead have not been returned, prestige and honor feel tarnished. War and economics have not brought us a clear and decisive WIN.
Keep awake, not out of fear of the number of shopping days until Christmas, not because it is our turn to host the family and we have home repair projects to finish, not because we feel obligated to have the latest Zelda X Box game of Elmo Rockstar...

Keep awake, because as Christians, we know God loves the world, we know Christ has come and suffered and died and rose, to come again. We live expectantly waiting in HOPE for the redemption of the world. Keep awake, because Christ has come and will come again. Keep awake, spiritually, because there is so much around us to pacify our desires, to fill us with tryptophan, to comfort us with momentary wins and so much anxiety about loss.

Throughout the Old Testament, the people of Israel lived in fear, first of Egypt, then of the Canaanites, then the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Persians and Medes and Greeks, by the writing of the Gospels the Romans, the Pelipenicians, the Anglo-Saxons, the Europeans, … One empire after another, one invading army, one economy each built upon the failure of another.
The apocalyptic vision of Mark is not a specific warning about a specific end of the world on 11-11-11 or 12-12-12, but rather that basing our values and ethics on invading armies, the dominance of cultures, the power of economies, ultimately will bring loss.

Jesus begins with a different starting point, a different goal in mind.
Rather than our being focused on winning and losing and control, open your eyes to the broader vision, You witness stars falling from the sky and the sun and moon going black, open your mind to God's Cosmos.
One of my favorite moments as a pastor comes on Ash Wednesday. In the presence of all gathered, we burn the past, the palms of a year ago, our words of praise, our vain attempts to conquer, and one by one the people of God come forward to be marked with the ash and soot in the sign of the cross, and to be called by name as we hear the words: YOU ARE FORGIVEN.
At Advent, we each are blessed and given Hope.
YOU ARE LOVED. You are God's Little lambs, you are BLESSED;
and everything, all the world, everything of time and space and imagination, has been created for you. What will it take to open our eyes to see, there is no need to fight with one another?
No need for dominance. There is need for only one thing, to be responsible for what we are given.
The whole point of the coming Christmas is that we each and every one of us have the power to BLESS others. God loved the world so much, God entered in, God gave to us God's only begotten child, as Children of God can we not also enter in, into our own lives and relationships to bless one another?

This is an amazing community! Not because of Dickens. Not because of our schools. Not because of our businesses. Not even because of the wonderful churches and people. Truth be told, this is a community with great scandal and avoidance and suffering, with alcoholism and abuse. BUT this is also a community in which as a man, I have witnessed what I can only describe as miracles.

In a culture which demands, “WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME” one person after another has stepped up to say I do not want to be presumptuous but could I do this to help?
A few weeks ago, as the adults passed around a clipboard asking people to lead as Liturgist and Manor server, Chris said to his father: “I could do that, I would like to, can you help me do that.”
I have seen the pain of chronic illness, that we try to manage, that we chemically control, disease that escalates and symptoms become more frequent, knowing that this is what we will live with the rest of life and you have lived from crisis to crisis with fear of what is next, when suddenly there is HOPE, hope beyond anything you have ever experienced or believed was reasonable to expect.

At the start of Stewardship, we heard description of an ancient curse turned into a blessing and reality: MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES! For an oppressed people centuries ago, this named that we would go from one situation to another, from one conquerer to another. For a people who had experienced stability and consistency, INTERESTING TIMES is naming of Change all around us. The BLESSING that is here, is when we open our eyes and minds to possibilities.
I am hopeful that the housing market will pick up again soon. Not because of economic worry & fears.
I love the old historic homes of this community, but after living in a house for a generation we often begin to see the house only as it has been, with limited future possibilities. When the house turns over and someone new moves into the community, walls begin to move, windows and porches appear.

Corinth was city of transplants, educated, upper-middle class immigrants, brought to populate a place. Each began to identify their loyalties, their identities out of personal relationships and possessions. The Church was structured differently in those days. The Church described itself as a community of faith, a religious society, without a church building, without a Session or Pastor or Presbytery. When problems arose, they appealed to their founding pastor, the Apostle Paul. As a Pastor, he BLESSED them, simply for being the Church in this place and time. Then called them to live into being what the Church could be, as more than so many individuals.

This Church in Skaneateles, in our earliest days identified ourselves as a Religious Society, a Community of Faith. Two of the chief functions of the Church in those days were to act as the Courts before their were local judges and lawyers, and to acts as the Church. What I mean by this, is that rather than being focused on judgement, crime and punishment and fines and imprisonment, the focus of the Religious Society as Court was to bring about ATONEMENT, REDEMPTION and FORGIVENESS between people who had wounded one another. In an era when in other parts of our nation the Hatfields and McCoys began feuds, when our leaders were deciding whether our new nation would have its Capital in Philadelphia, Washington DC or New York City, Skaneateles sought to be a community of faith. But also, we have as a society, as a church neglected what it once meant to be the Church. The focus of the Church was upon the Sacraments, and the preparation of believers to receive. We did not simply consume communion because it was the first Sunday of a given month, but we each considered how we have lived our lives, what is beneath our pains and squabbles, and whether spiritually in the presence of God we were ready to be forgiven, blessed, in communion with God. KEEP AWAKE and AWAKE anew!

November, 13, 2011 "The Rule of 72"

2011-11-13T12:19:00.000-08:00

Judges 11: 29-32
Matthew 25:14-30
The parable of the Talents is not about Stewardship! Just as the story of Jephthah's Vow is not that it would have been better to ask forgiveness than to ask for permission.
Both are descriptions of HUMAN FEAR, our desire through Knowledge, by the power of Knowing, to Control our Fears, to create Security and Safety, Protectionism.
In ancient Palestine, just as today, burying one's assets in the ground seemed better than leaving our livelihood exposed on the open market. Who among us, would not possess more today, if five years ago, before the Housing Bubble burst, before the Dot Com crash, we had taken out all we had and buried the value in the ground? This is not Biblical guidance about investing, or stewardship of assets, it is about a faithful response to Human FEAR.

If you asked an Investment Banker, one of those engaged on Wall-street in Wealth Management, how to double your investment, they would describe The Rule of 72. Assuming a guaranteed Interest rate of 5%, you divide that rate of interest by the number 72, and you have the number of years it will take to double it, 14-15 years. If you want that to be faster, you take on greater risk, with greater possibility of failure. In the world of Venture Capitalism, the norm used to be that 1 out of 5, some claimed only 1 out of 10 would make it, all the rest would lose everything. The reason why Preachers can describe this from the pulpit, is that today, no one can guarantee an Interest Rate of 5%.

Faith, we have been taught, is not about Venture Capitalism. For most of us, our Personal Faith is just the opposite of Risk. Our belief in God is a description of creating our Personal Comfort Zone in this life and the life to come. Faith is like theoretical acceptance of ideas about God and Jesus, a list of intellectual precepts and morals we accept as foundational. Faith becomes getting our personal theology right, then living a good life by avoiding what we know to be bad. Religion, is a pretty timid non-risky venture, if anything the salve and antithesis of our fears. That is NOT Biblical Faith.

Remember that according to Matthew, Jesus told this Parable in the midst of a string of parables about the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the Fig Tree, Noah and the Ark, Daniel and signs of the End of Time. All of which are about the END coming, Christ and Judgement being delayed, and how believers are to act. We are to follow through on RESPONSIBILITY, especially when we do not know, when we are afraid.

A man was going a long journey so divided up what he had among three servants, giving each an enormous sum. To one, he gave 1 Talent = 15 years wages, to another 2 Talents 30 years wages, to a third 5 Talents the equivalent of 75 years of his wages. The one with the least, was the most afraid, claiming “to know” that the Lord was harsh, he hid what he had been given responsibility, so as to be able to give back exactly what he had been given. Does it change the story at all, to put dollar values to what was given? Imagine, the least was given $1,000,000. The second $2,000,000, the third $5,000,000. No longer is this about one being trusted with 5 times as much as the one with only 1, because that one is $1,000,000. Time goes by. When the LORD returns, the one with $5,000,000 risked everything and made $5,000,000 more, the one with $2,000,000 also doubled what she was responsible for, the rule of 72 is not about the dollar value but the risk of doubling. So following this rule, the one who actually risked the most was the one who risked nothing, and had nothing more. You have to wonder, it is not the way Jesus told the parable, but what would have happened if the one with $5,000,000 had lost everything? Given the telling of the parable, I have to believe, the LORD still would have greeted him saying “You risked everything you were responsible for, you tried, well done.”

Fear is a very present reality in our lives, we each know ourselves to be trustworthy, yet we live in a time of fear where everyone doubts the other. The first several days of the Occupy Wall-Street protests, no one seemed able to describe what they were protesting. For some it was a lack of jobs. For others, that they had lost everything. For others, that education had already put them over $100,000 in debt before ever starting out. We live perpetually on Orange Alert, waiting for the next terrorist attack, accepting as norm that we must remove out shoes and belts and be searched before flying. There has arisen a mood of helplessness and anomie. Nothing we do seems to effect our lot in life. There is unending war, that few are able to describe what we are fighting for. Our leaders seem detached concerned only with re-election and blaming the other. We are pre-occupied with entertainment and trivia. Because of all of this, we have become a polarized society of fear, each side blaming the other.

Jephthah is an odd hero. Rarely does the Lectionary have us read from the Book of Judges, yet in many ways this is an apt description of the times in which we live. There is a recurrent phrase throughout the Book of Judges, “The word of God was rare in those days, each person did what they judged to be right, what they knew to be right, in their own heart...” Jephthah was the son of Gilead, but whose mother had been a prostitute. Gilead had taken responsibility for Jephthah, but Jephthah's brothers feared and rejected him. Jephthah went to live with the most worthless kind and became a mercenary. His mother had sold her favors for money, so he sold his ability to kill for a price. And the people of Israel were afraid of the Canaanites, especially among them the tribe of the Amonites. They contracted with Jephthah to kill the Amonites. He went through Town after Village, killing everyone in his path, eleven cities were laid waste. But after all this, on the night before his final battle, Jephthah was afraid. Desperation and fear, do terrible things to us, and Jephthah made a solemn vow. Some of us might make a promise to turn over a new leaf and live life differently. Some before going into battle might make a sacrifice. Some this morning might instead of purchasing more stuff for Christmas, use our gifts for Alternative contributions, providing in a loved one's name a gift to the Food Pantry, or Health care, or Cancer research, or for care of our elders, or for purchase of a heifer to a village without milk. Jephthah makes a vow, that IF he could KNOW he would be victorious he would sacrifice anything, so if he wins, then he will make a sacrifice of the first thing he sees coming from his property... a lamb, a goat, a heifer, a field of grain, even a servant. Jephthah goes into battle and does win, he utterly and completely destroys his enemy, and knowing this, knows he must make a sacrifice, but when he come home his daughter, his only child comes running out to greet him. Fear does terrible things to us, more than anything else, fear makes us want to BIND our fear to something, to blame, to take our fear away.

Today, there is no guarantee of a 5% rate of interest. There is no guarantee of a rule of 72. We live in an eschatological time, an end time, where the world we knew, everything we assumed is changing. There is a great deal of fear all around us, fear of the unknown, fear of uncertainty, fear of a lack of control. This is not reason to sacrifice our what we believe in. Fear is not answered by protectionism, or a faith of abstract moral ideas. Faith is about risking everything for what you are responsible. When meeting with those presenting a child for Baptism, we tell them that you are claiming an identity for this individual, that they belong to God, they are known by God. When preparing couples for marriage, that in the same way, they are claiming a new identity of being responsible for one another, their identity is as wife or husband to the other for richer and poorer, better and worse, in sickness and in health.

I think there is a very creative commercial on television, that shows handing to someone a briefcase filled with $100,000 and describing that each of the persons who were asked to hold this, did not open it, did not take even a single dollar; though in our economy the banks, the investors, the government all take their share. Few of us are going to have someone hand us a $100,000, or $1,000,000 or $5,000,000 but simultaneously, the Social Media has created Facebook and Linked-in, and Tweeting, such that any of could between the people we know and those they know, could have 5,000,000 contacts, people we are responsible for. You possess a treasure, a pearl of great value that nations have gone to war for, a gift which people have given their lives for. Faith is taking responsibility for what has been given us. Will you use the faith given you? Will you pass your compassion, your charity, your ability to make a difference on to others? Or will you protect what yo have, live in fear, and bury your faith in the dirt?

November 6, 2011 "Choose of Chosen"

2011-11-06T12:42:00.000-08:00

Joshua 24:1-4 & 14-25
Matthew 25: 1-13
A scientist in Idaho recently put forwad the following undisputed facts: The chemical compound "dihydrogenated-monoxide has been implicated in the deaths of thousands of Americans every year, mainly through accidental ingestion. In gaseous form, it can cause severe burns. The chemical is so caustic that it accelerates the corrosion of many metals... is a major component of acid rain, ... has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients. Symptoms of ingestion include excessive sweating and urination, and humanity has become so dependent upon this chemical that complete withdrawal means certain death. The presence of dihydrogenated-monoxide has been confirmed in every river, stream, lake, and reservoir in America.  " Judging from these facts, do you think dihydrogenated-monoxide should be banned?"   86% of those surveyed agreed it should be banned. Follow-up surveys at the University of Notre Dame, Glasgow, Scotland, Stockton, California, yielded similar results.  However, dihydrogenated-monoxide is commonly called water (H2O)! The scientist, fourteen-year-old Nathan Zohner won the Idaho State Science Fair by proving his project's thesis: "How Gullible Are We?"

This morning I would like you to reflect with me, not only on answering questions right, but the levels of our commitment... the depths of our faith, whether we have thought through that the answers we give are what we believe... and whether our words, whether what we believe matters?

With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, God had freed the Hebrew slaves from Pharaoh, by miracles God had brought them out of oppression through the Red Sea into the wilderness, through Moses God had given the people the 10 Commandments and Ark of the Covenant, God gave them Manna from Heaven and water out of solid rock, day in day out for forty years God had led and provided for the Chosen people. Moses died before entering the Promised land and Joshua had been appointed to lead after Moses. Israel had crossed the Jordan and conquered the city of Ai, then the great city of Jericho without a single weapon being fired. Now, after all of that, possessing the Law, possessing the Covenant, possessing the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, before Joshua dies without leaving a successor, he asks the people, the Chosen people of God “Choose again, whom will you serve?”

A simple comparison would be to ask the couple married for over forty years, after all that has happened, after worrying about the paying of bills, after putting one another through school, after the birth and raising of children, after building your home and paying down the mortgage, knowing that for many of us our life and death choices change in the last year of life, we spend 90% of the world's cost for Health care in the last 10% of our lives, will you choose to share your days with this partner?

Perhaps the more relevant question to the times we live in, after working a lifetime for a company, day in day out, in good economies and bad recessions, through world-wars, when you prepare for retirement, will the company still honor your pension?

This is an archaic story from a Biblical time far removed from our own. Our cultural values are not only of a manifest destiny, that every person can succeed and hard work results in profits, but that we so believe in democracy and individual rights we will go to war for other nations other people to have these rights. What Joshua was affirming this day, was not human rights, but loyalty to a Divine Power. Can we make the division, that economically, socially, politically people have the Human Right to vote, to decide for themselves what is right and wrong, changing our minds as we often do; while at the same time committing to a loyalty to God, that not only on the day we join a congregation, not only when we are baptized or on the day of confirmation but deeper and deeper every day we affirm “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, I trust and love the Lord”?

Many of us cannot. And if not, we need to be honest with ourselves, honest with our faith, that there is one God, and God only will we serve. Everything else will take care of itself. We do not need to be concerned with the latest electronic car, DROID or popular possession. Because to choose the LORD and not be faithful may be worse than never to have known God at all. We become a prostituted people who claim fidelity to God, while lusting after all the other idols.

To be a Believer AND to be in the world today requires a balancing, that as a citizen, as a human being, we have rights and responsibilities of freedom, to work hard and do our best; HOWEVER, always to remember that as much as the commercials are selling us on CHOOSING to possess the latest, hottest, sexiest thing, as much as we desire to choose to keep up with our neighbors, even that we would choose to lay down our lives defending the basic human rights of others, we are also a CHOSEN people of God, and all our lives are lived in response to God loving us. The most difficult part of which is that being a Chosen people may mean our being used by God to demonstrate that loyalty, that fidelity, that love.

The problem of the bridesmaids was not that they did not know they were bridesmaids, not that they had not brought the right wedding garment, or that they had forgotten their role as bearers of the light, but that they were distracted by worry their lamps would go out. A different wedding tradition than we are accustomed to, where the groom does not see the bride before the wedding and everyone tries to get the Groom's expression as the Sanctuary doors open and he says “Whoa!” At this time, all the bridesmaids and guests gathered at the Bride's parents home and when everything was ready at the Groom's home, when the dowry had been paid, when all was prepared, then the Bridegroom came to escort his bride to their wedding together. The parable of the Kingdom of Heaven, is that the bridegroom is delayed in returning. Christ died over 2000 years ago, yet we are still here... Some came prepared with extra flasks of oil for 2000 years of waiting. Some panic at the last moment that they will not have enough to light their way and the way for the guests. They abandon their identity as bridesmaids at a wedding, to go buy more at midnight. While some are prepared and some are not, the question not asked is what would have happened if the foolish bridesmaids had not run off to CVS to get more oil? The Scriptures are filled with stories of there being only a dram of oil for the feeding of the Widow and her son, yet it was enough to feed them and Elijah for 40 days and nights, the story of Chanukah is about the oil not running out.Surely as Bridesmaids on the way to the Kingdom of Heaven the oil would have lasted, or if not, they could have joined the other guests but they were pre-occupied by having their own supply, by buying the stuff that would satisfy their fears.

As a Chosen people, Choose this day whom you will serve, Choose Again.

October 30, 2011 "After the Tribulation"

2011-10-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

Revelation 7:9-12
Matthew 5:1-12
When my father died, someone in the church gave me very sage advice: “People are going to insist on telling you all kinds of stuff. They have a need to say it, but you are in no place to receive it. So give yourself permission to not have answers right now, recognizing that the purpose of therapy is to spend years figuring out what is our stuff, and what stuff is projected from other people, and whether any stuff has meaning.”

Ancient Judaism had a tradition of sitting SHIVAH for two years after a loved one dies. Gathering at each Sabbath with those who know you, with those who will tell you the truth, gathering for a meal. Because at the times of death, we are so overwhelmed by emotions by disruption to our lives we are off balance, and with good friends, it takes a full two years to unpack and sort out, finding new balance so we can go on.

There are certain celebrations like Christmas Eve and Easter, in which you want to gather the whole tableau, hearing the shepherds filled with awe and wonder, the angels singing Glori in Excelses Deo, the wisemen on bended knee adoring mother and child. Or the witnesses of Easter's Resurrection with Mary being consoled, Peter and the beloved disciple breathlessly staring into the empty tomb, the visitors to Emmaus, the soldiers frozen in fear, the Roman Centurion having proclaimed “surely this was the Son of God.” We experience crescendo upon crescendo of majesty. There are other occasions, like All Saints, in which we proceed far more slowly, turning over everything we thought we knew, because the images are not the philosophical constructs of Paul, or the narratives of Abraham or Moses but VISIONS of Imagination.

Pidge and Marne Dowley each died earlier this year. Marne was blind and had been failing for some time, she seemed close to death's door, with Pidge waiting on her lovingly. Then suddenly he had a stroke and was gone. Suddenly, Marne rallied and had several months in which she cared for their estate and their children before she too passed. I recall stopping in one day, as she sat beside the fireplace. She inquired of her pastor, “What is Heaven like?

Trying to be a good counselor, I asked why she asked... And she retorted “Because I want to know if that's where I really want to go.” I recall describing that most of life seems a puzzle to me, and that I believe, when I die, God will reveal that the complex puzzle I thought I had been working to solve, really amounts to only one small piece in the puzzle of history and humanity. I also recalled a Robin Williams Film in which after he dies Heaven and Hell are like living inside a lush series of paintings, where anything we imagine can be tangible and real.

Tragically, we have been afraid of what to do with The Book of the Revelation in the 21st Century. Hollywood has grasped it's images, and in one film after another, from The Exorcist to The 7th Seal to Indiana Jones, we have made the images terrifying. In the last section there was guarantee that the Holy Number of 12 times 12000 of each of the 12 tribes of Israel scattered as they once were to the Diaspora, all would be brought home. Everyone known and expected and counted upon. But just as our Choir's Anthem had this marvelous counterpoint between the dirge of numbering each who has died and the celebration at the resurrection for ever more, Revelation shifts to a vision of All the Saints that are beyond numbering. And while there robes had been filthy and saturated with blood at endurance of suffering life, they have made them white as snow. The text is specific here that while usually in reference to resurrection we identify a passive voice that “GOD raise up Jesus” here the emphasis is active, that the saints each had a role in their own salvation, in there making their robes/ our robes clean.

What would those white robes feel like, soft as silk, or freshly laundered and stiff with outdoor air? What would be the feel of the blood of the Sacrificial Lamb? How does it feel to stand in the presence of God, not alone like Dorothy before the Wizard of Oz, but standing with an entire population of people all of whom love the Lord? How awesome to imagine the one who was sacrificed for us, becoming our shepherd!

How quickly we bury our words... “All The Saints Had a Role In Their Own Salvation.” What do we mean by salvation anymore? There are certain words like Evangelism and Morals and Salvation, which in the mainline Church became passe for a time. We are a self-satisfied people who despite Inflation and Recession, and constant Wars, live a pretty good life. Are our values, the priorities of our lives based on account balances or on the salvation of our souls? DO we even worry about the immortality of our souls?

Whenever a person dies a chill runs up a preacher's spine and should, as we wonder what words to say. How do we encapsulate in a few moments all that this person represented to others and in their own salvation? Mary Soderberg, Ed Belinski, I read through the list of names and for each recall their identity as so and so's mother, their father, their wife, 2 year old Cameron. While others have had all kinds of interpretations about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, representing one like Moses bringing the Law to the People from the Mountain... what I hear in the Beatitudes this morning is discerning what is really of value. Would I want to be outed by Jesus looking out and saying “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit,” “Blessed are those who Mourn, Blessed are the Humble.” But regardless of whether I wanted to be identified or not, what he offers is clarification about what life and death is really all about. A searching for the Kingdom of God, a desire to be comforted, the promised land, righteousness being satisfied.

October 23, 2011, Sing to the LORD a New Song

2011-10-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

I Corinthians 13
John 2

The Choir just sang "Sing to the Lord a New Song!"

This is the first day of your life together as Husband and Wife.

When announcement was first shared about having a wedding on Sunday morning during Worship, there were those who responded, “You know you are starting a precedent, and soon everyone is going to want to get married on Sundays.” The truth is that up until the 20th Century, from the time of the Early Church, Weddings and Funerals often took place on Sunday mornings. Worship of God was not a 60 minute time-block, but an all day affair. Lately, we have had Saturday weddings, Friday, Thursday, even requests for Sunday afternoon weddings... not because these were a celebration of the Church as the Body of Christ, the Community of Faith, but because Restaurants for the Reception have a vacancy.

As a society, we need to rethink what we are expressing in Weddings. When everything is spectacle, how many bridesmaids, how lavish the flowers, how extravagant the reception, we have lost sight of marriage. My favorite comment, as guests come forward after a wedding to describe how beautiful it was, is to remind them that “YES and They are Married! That is the best part!” We have made marriage in America all about the Bride. Or how adorable the Flower-girls. In Sudanese weddings, because the wedding is negotiation of the Dowry, it is all about the Groom. When “The Wedding” is about “The Marriage, the covenant commitment” between these two.

At the height of the Reformation, Church leaders were concerned that in the Mass, worship seemed like a Magic Show, a performance, in which what was rehearsed was executed before the masses, the words were pronounced and miraculously, magically, the dead were raised up, the bread and wine became body and blood. Consequently, the Church began to emphasize fellowship and education rather than what was created during worship. But the fact of the mater is that by the stating of their Vows, Anna and David are changed, from being two individuals, to as happened in their baptisms claiming a new identity before God of living for one another.

We have taken marriage so much for granted!
How many of us had one or the other of these readings in our weddings?
Yet, neither of these was written for reading at weddings.

The Wedding at Cana, is evidence in John of Jesus' first miracle. And what that miracle demonstrates is the SUPER-ABUNDANCE of GOD's Love. When the limited wine has run out, there is now gallons and gallons to be shared. And the quality of the new wine, is far richer, far better than anything anyone had ever shared. We can try to recreate it. We can attempt to explain the miracle... but that makes this a trick. The miracle is that what once was impossible because of the limitations of each as individuals, even both working independently, now is possible because of joining together.

First Corinthians 13, so equated with weddings that it is often identified as The Wedding Passage, or The Poem about LOVE. The English language does not have the nuance of other languages. In English, we have only one word, to describe the bond between siblings, between grandparent and grandchild, for the parent walking their adult child down the aisle, or for a nursing mother, or as between neighbors and co-workers working as a team, who spend a lifetime helping one another; as well as romance and passion, and erotic desires between two; as well as for empathy and compassion and self-sacrifice motivated by faith, motivated by commitment. Love. But what the Founder of the Church was describing here is AGAPE, The Love originated by God, expressed by us as individuals for others that changes the lives of all the world. Paul was not writing about a wedding, but about the whole community of faith, the Church, and how we are to respect and live our lives for one another.

The Latin translation of AGAPE was CARITAS, which in English are where we derive the words CHARITY and COMPASSION. In the KING JAMES VERSION of the Bible written 500 years ago this year, this passage was always translated as FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY abide these Three, but the greatest of these is CHARITY. What a different direction that provides for reading these words at a wedding! David and Anna, Faith and Hope are vitally important in a marriage, but more than all of this, is CHARITABLE COMPASSION. When the other is in need... When there is something you can do to care for others... something motivated by God, affecting the whole world, do so in love.

Often I hear couples describe, I did this and that and all the “honey-do” things on the Refrigerator, when do I get what I want? When is it my turn in marriage? There is no score keeping. There is no budget for the costs of love. Act out of living your life for that other person.

More than a few have raised an eyebrow that today we are celebrating both your Marriage and the Baptism of you child. But then again, there are many in the church, who had not been active for years, who by having children, by the children asking about God have been brought to faith. The question we need to be concerned with is have the couple made a covenant commitment to one another to act charitably, to act in devotion to the other's needs, and have the couple claimed an extension of their faith in God for this child, claiming this child as a Gift from God?

Faith, Hope, LOVE, abide these three, but the greatest of these is LOVE.

Oct 16, 2011 "What Are We Going to Do"

2011-10-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

Exodus 33: 12-23
Matthew 22:15-22
Last time, we spoke of the Golden Calf, how like Adam and Eve ate of the Apple when given the Law not to, that even before Moses could come down the Mountain with the 10 Commandments, the Nation had already violated at least three; more than breaking laws, both the eating of the Apple and worship of the idol, were violations of trust breaking the heart of God. For Adam and Eve, taking the apple did not mean death, but it was an end to life in the Garden of Eden and beginning to live with the curse of human actions. So also for this people who were not yet a people, what is to happen, who are they to be to God once they broke trust, violated the commandment to be God's people?

There is a tension in Scripture, between humanity being created good, very good and blessed to be; versus having sinned, being corrupt. How can we ever forgive broken trust? Forgiveness of trust broken is basic to all our circumstance. The act of redemption, the assurance of forgiveness are foundational to Christian faith. It is not that the SECULAR WORLD is SELFISH, and the SACRED is TRUSTING, there are times when the most sacred thing is to be private, to claim what is precious to you; and there are times when as a society we can act on behalf of others in need. There is a correlation between belief that God was Dead, that God Grew Tired of Us, and the “ME Generation” of the last several decades. Not causation, but correlation, that on Christmas and Easter, and at Funerals, Marriages and Births, people seek a relationship with something beyond themselves. But the reality that we are easily seduced, if given the chance we will choose for our desires rather than for commitment, the truth there are broken hopes and dreams and trusts, is foundational to human life. So what are going to do?

On the first day of Seminary, we had a class on Preaching. The professor read the story of the Golden Calf, then separated us into three groups, almost half the group as the Hebrew Nation, an equal number were to take the role of God, and three of us were to play the part of Moses.

Those who were the people, were admiring one another's clothes and earrings, their houses and cars, and worshipping the celebrities in the tabloids, they took great pride in being One Nation Under God. Over a loudspeaker came the voice of God, saying “I have given you all the Laws and the Prophets, everything needed to be faithful, Don't Mess up!” and they dropped the Bible on the floor.

And the professor turned to those of us who were taking the part of Moses and asked “Now, having heard the Word, and witnessed reality, what are you gonna do?”

Moses gathered the Nation and preached “So who do you want to be?” ...possessing a few moments of fame, having the largest pile of belongings of anyone you know, to claim to be a Nation under God ...or to be a people in relationship with the Creator, Judge, Redeemer and Sustainer of all that is and will ever be?

Moses left them to work on that and knelt down before God, preaching differently. How often we think “preaching” is only when the minister stands in the pulpit on Sunday morning and talks to us... But the other half of preaching is being in relationship with God. Can God be vengeful? Yes. Can God forgive? Yes. Can we act, seeking redemption, humbly sincerely asking God for hope, and believe God could change circumstance, either by expanding possibilities beyond our knowing, or by changing our hearts? Again the answer is YES.

But part of this passage in Exodus, is recognizing what WHIMPY BELIEVERS we have been.
Moses does not mumble, and mutter under his breath: I guess I should be sorry, I want You to fix things give me another chance God. NO. Moses stands toe to toe with God. Moses' prayer has CHUTZPAH! “Hey God, Just what do you think you are doing? You have said I have found favor in your sight. You have said you know me, you know my name and trust me. How do I know you are with me? Please do NOT destroy this people unnecessarily, because that would not look good on God or on me as a believer! If the people return and are faithful, forgive them, be their God. But also, if I have found favor, if you do know me and trust me, then I need to be able to know you and trust you, and see your presence with us.”

Moses is not giving a list of demands or frivolities. But his prayer takes God seriously... takes himself seriously ...takes faith seriously, as sincere, honest communication of what we believe and stand for. That is the greatest flaw of our world today... our word does not stand for anything. The news reports are filled with video of defendants, even world leaders lying, covering up the truth. There is a seeming assumption, that on our wedding day we repeat the words given us, and if something else comes along, if our lives change, we can divorce. Increasingly, I think that before a couple divorce, they need to gather those who were witnesses and explain to them, and explain to God, seeking not just to get out of the contract, but to redeem the relationship.

Evaluating the contract, parsing words, these are what the Herodians and Pharisees were trying to do. Just like in the political debates of our times, they posed a “Gotch Question.” A legal debate that either makes you for us or for them. Like the 18 yr old blonde MTV Reporter asking of the President: “Boxers or Briefs”, not only is it an affront to ask this kind of question of a person in this position; but it is not a question, it is a political trap. We pay Federal and State Income Taxes, County, Town and Village Property Taxes, School Taxes, Vice Taxes on Alcohol and Cigarettes, Child Care Taxes, Social Security taxes... There was Roman Law that the Taxes paid to the Empire had to be paid in Roman Currency with an image of Caesar and inscription “Our loyalty to our Emperor and Priest Caesar, son of the August Caesar.” Judaism being practiced at Jerusalem, was within a Roman province, so one of the few claims to religious loyalty was that animals bought for sacrifice at the Temple at Jerusalem had to be bought with Jewish currency, and just as we have a currency exchange at borders, it would be a profanity to bring Roman currency into the Jewish Temple. As King Herod was a political appointee of the Roman Emperor, the Herodians were in favor of paying Taxes to Caesar. Pharisees who spent their lives debating nuances of Jewish Law were against paying any tax to the Government, in favor of giving buying sacrifices at the Temple. So Jesus, are you a Republican or Democrat? Conservative or Liberal? But instead of being concerned about political parties, or which Tax loopholes to reform, Jesus speaks to the Faith of the issue saying I do not have on me any of the coins used to pay Roman taxes, show me whose image and inscription are upon what is given. And the Pharisees reach into their purse and take out Roman Coins... To which Jesus responds “RENDER to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Therefore, not only, give silver and gold to governments who manipulate and control the printing of currency, and as you are in the image of God give yourself and all you have to the service of God; but also, if you have come into the Sanctuary with currency of the Emperor in your purse, it would be profane to claim that you belong to God.

Interestingly, the word for the Roman Coin with the image of the Caesar was called an Eichon, which in English is where we acquire the word ICON. And Jesus word “RENDER” literally meant “Give what is obligated” so not as a free will offering or a pledge or tithe, but purchase for what you receive. And what Moses demanded of the People and God was that they Give to God what is Owed in being Faithful, and that God give to the people what is owed of one who knows them/us by name, knows our actions and has seen us.

Generations later, when Elijah was running away from Jezebel for having killed al the prophets of Baal, this is the cave that Elijah sought, where he might profess that he had been very Zealous for the LORD and he, he alone was left who was faithful, where Elijah saw Earthquake, Whirlwind, Fire and Flood, but God was in none of these, and a Still Small Voice asked what are you doing here? What Moses sought was to see God, but there was no description of Earthquake, Whirlwind, Fire or Flood, but that Moses was able to witness the GLORY of God with him, to witness where God's presence had been. We are a jaded people who have seen miraculous things. It is hard for us who have witnessed people walking on the moon, video links around the world, the ability to split the atom and splice genes, to look for the GLORY of God... but in the end what else are we going to do?

October 2, 2011, "Universal Faith"

2011-10-02T04:46:00.000-07:00

Genesis 14:13 - 15:6
Hebrews 4:14 - 15:14

Many years ago, recognizing that this is World Communion Sunday, the one time in all the year when every church of every denomination break bread and pour the cup of reconciliation and pray for peace, that we sent a postcard to everyone related to the Church inviting them to “The Feast of God's Blessings.” The Sanctuary was filled, the music spectacular, but after worship at the door, several families asked “And where do we go for the Dinner?”

Another year, we emphasized that on this day, Catholic and Lutheran, Episcopal, Baptist and Pentecostal, UCC and Presbyterian all would share communion. I am told, the following morning some of our parishioners greeted colleagues at work, describing “How wonderful that we could all celebrate communion on the same Sunday and maybe we were not so far apart after all.” To which they were told, by Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal friends, “We celebrate Communion every week, where have you Presbyterians been?”

One year preaching at the Ecumenical Thanksgiving Worship; knowing that through the Lutherans there were now accords with the Roman Catholic Church, and the Episcopal and Presbyterian and Methodist; and knowing that the Latin word for Thanksgiving is Eucharist, I proposed that we all come together in this worship for the sharing of Communion, we set out the elements of Bread and the Cup on the Table, then realized that while there were accords for the future, in order for Presbyterians to participate we were required to have Elders serve, for Anglicans, the Cup needed to have fermented wine, for Methodists it had to be Non-Fermented Grape Juice preferable Welch's as Welch had been a Methodist, and for Catholics a priest needed to serve who could not serve Protestants.

We cannot simply declare that all shall be one, a universal faith, leapfrogging over the last 500 years of Church History, to resolve our differences. Instead what Genesis and Hebrews affirm is going back before the creation of separate religions, to our roots and core beliefs.

In Genesis, we follow the love of God for all Creation and after several failed attempts, God's Covenant commitment with one family for all the earth. Abram and Sarai take Abram's Nephew whose name was Lot, and follow where God leads. Not simply Nomads, but a people of Promise, who traverse through all of Canaan, for a new home. Abram and Sarai , as well as Lot, each grow in prosperity as they follow God's Promise. Yet the world can be a hostile place, and Lot and his neighbors in Sodom are kidnapped and taken prisoner as slaves. When Abram hears of Lot's captivity he leads his household and all the surrounding community as if a great army. Abram executes military strategy as he recognizes the strengths of each and divides their number to form companies, Not attacking from one side alone, but in the dark of night, attacking from every side. The Bible describes not only did they win, they “routed” their enemy, the opposing 5 kings and their armies running and falling down the hillsides.

Victorious Abram, Mamre, Aner and Eshcol, return home, with all the people and possessions that had been taken, as well as all the belongings of the 5 kings. And at the Valley of the Kings, 2 other Kings come out to greet them, the King of Sodom and the King of Salem. The King of Sodom is thankful for the victory against their enemy and wants to reward Abram with the booty of war. The King of Salem, brings out bread and wine, to bless Abram and to bless God for what has happened in these last hours. There is recorded evidence here in the 14th Chapter of Genesis, that long before the Sacrament of Jesus' Last Supper, before Moses and the Manna from Heaven, before the Passover while slaves in Egypt, even before the births of Isaac or Ishmael, there was a sacred meal of bread and wine, as we blessed one another and blessed God in thanksgiving for the events that happened.

We tend to overshadow this story with memory that Sodom and Gomorrah were places of sin and corruption. There was a time in which the Chosen People of God, lived as neighbors, acting in ways that benefitted both Israel and Sodom. While another neighbor, Salem was not Sodom. Salem is the ancient name for Jerusalem, “salem” having the same root as “Shalom” and in Arabic “Salem” meaning PEACE and RIGHTEOUSNESS. The King of Salem was also a Priest of God. We know the name of the King who also was a Priest, Melchizedek; but his faith in God had no name for God, only The God Most High, where Abram knew YHWH and spoke directly with God as trusted companion.

The Letter to the Hebrews, is a sermon to a Christian Community, a Church. This people have become Secular. They understand social behavior. They have all the right words and customs, but no longer remember the WHY of faith. Their prayers have become a shopping list of “O God, I Need and end to War, an end to Famine, give rain where there is drought, and dryness where there has been flooding, Also I need toothpaste, a loaf of bread, and why not a bottle of Grape Juice while we are at it.” For them, Prayer and Faith, had become rituals, meaningless routines. The Preacher here, reaches back into their faith history and affirms, before Christianity, our ancestors were the Jews of Ancient Israel, who under Solomon and King David had become a Great and powerful Nation, but long before even that, our ancestors of faith had wandered with Moses in the wilderness with the Tent of Meeting in which was the Ark of the Covenant containing the 10 Commandments. Once each year, on the holiest day of the year, the High Priest would take the Confessions and Prayers and Offerings of the People of God, entering into the Tent, passing through the Veil into the Inner Sanctum, the Holy of Holies, where the High Priest being a man, acknowledging his identification with the people, would offer his sacrifice and prayers, along with those of the people. The Preacher affirms, We Have A Great High Priest, able to fulfill all that those Priests of old did, but more because our Great High Priest is the Son of God Most High.

Can our High Priest identify with us, yes He was Fully Human, tempted as we all are, but he chose to be without sin! Could he enter the Holy Tent of Meeting God in the Wilderness, Passing through the Veil to the Holy of Holies? More than that he has passed through the veil between Life and Death, to sit at the Right hand of God! Can he carry our prayers and offerings, and make our sacrifice? More than that he can, he already has, with the personal sacrifice of his own life. Where other High Priests needed to repeat their sacrifice annually, his sacrifice is for all time and all people, for he is a Priest in the order of Melchizedek, he is both King and Priest.

So what is required of us? That our Confession be what we can HOLD FAST TO. Make your Confession of what you believe, what you believe! Jesus offered his sacrifice, with prayer and passion, blood, sweat and tears. May Our Faith not be something we recite like a Christmas list of wants, not weekly confessional making up what we could have done. But recognizing the moments in our lives that are holy and giving thanks to God with Tears and Laughter.

This week, the former Priest from our Village sent me a story from over 40 years ago. We all remember the 20th of July 1969. That was not the Summer of Love, which was the year before, it was the summer of landing on the Moon. We all remember watching and listening as Neil Armstrong stepped down the ladder from the Landing Module stating “One small step for Man, one Giant Leap for Mankind.” But do you remember the other guy? There were two in the Module, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, not Buzz Lightyear, but Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin in addition to being an Astronaut, was an Elder sitting on The Session of a Presbyterian Church in Texas. Weeks before the Mission, at their Session meeting he had asked, “So my job is going to allow me to do something that is a first for humanity. How shall we remember it?” And the Session celebrated Communion together, giving to him the Chalice, a vial of Wine and a Wafer of bread. After they set foot on the Moon, the words spoken by Buzz Aldrin were: “Wherever you are, whomever you are, I would like you to stop what you are doing and give thanks for the events of the last several hours.” Taking the wine, he poured it into the cup and at 1/6th the Gravity of Earth it floated out like balls of gelatinous mass, which entering the cup dissolved and washed up the sides. They held the Bread and the Wine blessing God and all Creation repeating the words of John “I am the Vine and You the Branches, all things are possible with God, cut off from me you can do nothing.”

"The Reasons Behind", Sept 25,2011

2011-09-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

Judges 9:1-26
Matthew 21:23-46
Last week, following the Worship Service a Coffee Clutch were looking for a place to meet, and asked if it is permissible to drink coffee in the Sanctuary? We are adults, there is no carpeting to be stained, I knew of one church that the walls of the Sanctuary were lined with mugs in order that listening to the sermon you could have a cup of coffee to hold and sip while listening. All of which refers, as do our Scripture lessons for this day, to the question of : “By Whose Authority and By What Evidence do we make important decisions?” What are the REASONS BEHIND OUR CHOICES?
How do you know, if the decisions of this day will be pleasing to God, or evil, benefiting you alone, or benefiting your family, our community, history, and does it matter which you try to please?

In the Book of Judges, the chorus that is repeated after every story is that at that time there was no legitimate monarch in Israel and each one judged what seemed right in their own mind. After Moses, Joshua, among the lineage of Judges was Gideon, who fought against the Midianites to claim the land. As a warrior leader, Gideon lived a long time, fathering over 70 children! But after Gideon died who would rule, who would make decisions, how do we know whom to trust? One of Gideon's illegitimate sons Abimelech, poses the question in the negative: “So which is less offensive, to be ruled over by one king or by 70?” Would you fear being ruled by Abimelech alone, or all 70 of his brothers squabbling?

In addition to having Gideon as a Father, Abimelech's mother was from the people of Shechem. Abimelech appealed to them out of a sense of race and culture, shared history, that we are bone of bone and flesh of flesh. Therefore, do not trust the other 70 brothers, instead trust the one who is like you. And the people of Shechem followed Abimelech in murder of all 70 of the Sons of Gideon, Abimelech's brothers

There are two rules given ministers in Seminary. That when you come into a new Call, do not make any changes for the first two years. And, while you could change anything in the church, do not change where people sit on Sunday morning. When we came to Skaneateles, Capital Campaign I was in debt, the architects were ready with Capital Campaign II, the Organ Task Force had been working for ten years, and past abuses of a pastor had recently been prosecuted. Not doing anything, was not an option. At the end of our second year together, we moved all the pews, maintaining roughly where seats had been before, but now with different aisles and clear focus on what we are doing in worship. However, among the first things we did, was to reread our history of this Church, coming to know each other, and claim that heritage as bone of Adam and Eve as bone and flesh of flesh, claiming that this was not the first or only time there had been controversy, and partnering to claim a shared identity in using the church's resources for mission in the community and world.

We sing the songs and wave the palms of Jesus' entry on Palm Sunday, but when Jesus entered Jerusalem, entered the Temple, the Temple Priests and Scribes and Pharisees asked: “By What Authority do you do these things?” To which Jesus replied, did John the Baptizer, whom you rejected, baptize on the authority of God, or not? It is easy enough to reply “History will Judge” but what do we do in the meantime? And how can we rebuild trust when we make a wrong decisions?

At times it seems as though the Bible is OBTUSE. Why, when a straight forward question is asked, does the Bible not give a straight forward answer, but instead parables. There are direct answers that we refuse to listen to. By addressing answers in metaphor, allegory and parable, we are required to mull over the answer, remembering the story and questioning if it applies to us.

There are great tragedies in Jotham's Parable, not only that the Thorny bramble represents Abimelech, but that among potential Kings of the Forest, the Olive Tree did not see itself as being governed by the Olive Branch of Peace, but only by having to give up the fatness that honors Gods and Men. The Fig Tree saw having to give up sweet pleasures and good fruit. The Vine is not the New Testament Vine that all branches are part of, where nutrients are pushed up from the roots, but only that it would need to give up wine and celebration, in order to govern. In short, according to Jotham's Parable because no one else was willing to risk giving up what they had, in order to make hard decisions, to lead, the Authority of the Forest was the least satisfied member. And in poetic twist, Jotham's Parable that if they truly trust the Bramble inviting all the other trees to gather in its shade, wherein they are consumed by fire, in the end, Abimelech leads his army to siege a city, burning their crops, pouring salt on their fields, which in the battle causes them all to die. Abimelech has his neck broken by a woman in the tower dropping a millstone upon him, and wanting to not be remembered as having been beaten by a woman, Abimelech begs one of his own to kill him. Questions of Authority are terrible awful stories.

A few weeks ago, when hurricanes showered the East Coast, and Earthquakes shook Washington DC, some of the Political candidates claimed authority for the destruction was from God. Then backed away from the rhetoric by claiming they were only joking. The point of such devastation is not that these were ACTS OF GOD, or even CHAOS being unleashed. But rather to claim and accept that LIFE IS FRAGILE, and far too short, therefore to wonder whether the business we have been about is pleasing to God, or inviting chaos. As we re-build DESTINY in Syracuse, are we only constructing a shopping mall, or creating buildings that not only leave no carbon footprint, but actually benefit the Earth?

Jesus replies to the Authorities of the Temple with a series of Parables. Among these is the Parable of the Vineyard, which has often been misconstrued by Anti-Semitism and Hate, that earlier authorities in the Church directly equated those who killed the Prophets and Killed the Son and Heir, as being the Jews. This is one of the passages that was used by Naziism to justify what they called the “Final Conclusion” the Gas Chambers of the Holocaust. The difficulty in imposing our perspectives on a parable as being a one dimensional Analogy, is that the interpreters ignored the reality that all the Prophets and the Son were also Jewish. To which, Albert Einstein made the claim that the only Social Organization that could stand up to Naziism was the Religious Community. The point of this parable is not Anti-Semitism, but that any time the Community of Faith rejects the authority of God, rejects the call of the Holy Spirit, ignores faith, we risk being like those tenants.

The parable of the Sons is not that the one was Judaism and the other Gentiles, but that real authority is not that which we immediately respond to, but rather that which rules our lives and decision making. What are our authorities? Do we act in response to God, or out of our own desires, or motivated by our lusts, our greed, evil? What are the reasons behind our choices and when questioned do we have authorities to believe in? Part of the beauty of the Parable of the Sons, is that we could always turn again and do what is right...

"Enough For This Day" September 18, 2011

2011-09-18T08:06:00.000-07:00

Exodus 16:2-15
Matthew 20: 1-16
Years ago, I knew a man who had discovered what he thought was the secret to salvation.
His parents had made sacrifices for him to go to the best schools. Early on, he had learned that if you show up and listen, giving back what you are told you will at least get a C, for attendance /competency. However the harder you work, the more you apply yourself, the more you will succeed. He took this to College, and work, and family life, believing his success, his life, his salvation, were all in his control. Building success upon success, he quickly rose in authority and management, and affluence. He began searching for the gold ring, the last big contest, which would allow him to feel satisfied that whatever he put his mind to, whatever he attempted, he could win. Then one night, a long dark night of the soul, he encountered something he could not control. He could not fix. He could not win. All he could do, was watch and wait, hoping to have the strength to pick up the pieces. He turned to prayer, and at every crisis he sought answers from God, sought miracles, learning to cope. Having learned earlier lessons well, he applied himself to caregiving, that he could be the best caregiver in history. But this was a hollow victory, as their family went from crisis to crisis. Suddenly one day, a new treatment was offered, it was an all or nothing risk, as they would abandon all the therapies they had known for something else. For the first time in his life, this man knew what it was to “hope” against every reality, against every experience.He had discovered that what he had known was about “success” which is all in our own hands, versus “hope and salvation” which are daily gifts of God's grace.

God providing Manna in the wilderness, represents a different kind of miracle, a different faith reality! We have read story after story of Almighty God creating the universe by commanding it to be. There have been the stories of Abraham and Sarah, unable to conceive, far advanced in years, giving birth. The Great Pharaoh of Egypt, all his Armies and Chariots, pursuing Hebrew slaves, when the Red Sea opened up.

Humans want to believe in that kind of God. Above the Altar in the Ancient Roman Temples was an inscription of three words: Do Ut Des “I Give in order That You may Give,” there is a certain kind of fairness, that gods would respond to our demands, we paid our offerings, demonstrated our commitment, give us the winners' prize. We made a sacrifice, paid the offering, if you are really God, then give us victory. There is a basic human belief, that if we are “good,” if we obey the rules, if we are “kind,” if we are generous and faithful, we will receive blessings; whereas if we lie, if we cheat to get ahead, if we steal, if we are immoral, there ought to be some form of Karma: punishment.

But life in the wilderness represents a different reality for us and the God of the wilderness is different. Within human society there is a certain safety-net. It may not be attractive, the Hebrews complained to Moses, while we were slaves of Pharaoh we were always given bread to eat. The wilderness is a place of anxiety, a reality where food is not guaranteed, where food-stress and freedom-stress and faith-stress are somehow inextricably linked. The point is not One Great Miracle, one success where we have it all, but rather daily to turn to God. One of the lessons of the Manna in the Wilderness is how often, how tempting it is for us, to modify the Lord's Prayer from “Give US this day OUR daily bread” to “Give ME, MINE.” The 40 years in the Wilderness is about a change of culture, a change of humanity, from individualism and survival of the fittest, to the community and salvation of every soul.

Old Testament Scholar Terence Fretheim of Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul Minnesota has demonstrated that actually in the Sinai Peninsula there is a form of lice, which bore into the fruit of the Tamarind tree, secreting a yellow white substance, which when it is cold congeals into balls, and when it is hot forms a flaky substance, the consistency of flour, high in carbohydrates and nutrients. The indigenous tribal people of this region still today, gather this substance to make into bread and call it MANNA. The odd nature of Manna, is that if you gather even a small amount, it is enough. If you gather all you can, to hoard a supply, it goes rancid, developing worms and flies and mold.
We as 21st Century Westerners have a hard time understanding the concept of “ENOUGH” and also that among our In-Alienable Rights as Americans is not a guarantee of HAPPINESS, but only a guarantee of the PURSUIT of HAPPINESS. Since the Great Depression, and one could argue throughout all of American History, we have been bred to believe we could have everything our parents had and more.

Like the Wilderness Wandering, we are in a time of cultural change, change to the basic assumptions of humanity from how to put a Man on the Moon, to instead consider how do we end War on Earth?
Can we stop all the Saddam Husseins and Osama Bin Ladens and Molmar Ghaddafis, to live in peace?

Whereas earlier generations believed they could work to accumulate excess, eventually to retire, for many of us that will not be a possibility, at least not the same. That shift, that change, is unfair. Our problem as believers, is that the Bible does not claim FAIRNESS, but instead offers God's GRACE. Fairness is not about Justice or Righteousness. Fairness is an assumption that the rules will be the same for all of us, on the basis of which some can Win and others Lose. Again, that is about individual success not about Salvation of the Kingdom of God.

There is something about this parable of the Vineyard that strikes us as blatantly unfair. This parable comes from a section of the Gospel, we too often read in paragraphs. We read of Jesus' teachings about Marriage and Divorce, Celibacy, Children, Sex, Economics, Success, imagining each of these are each separate lessons for us as individuals, when all of this is about us as a community of faith. This parable is directly linked to the Successful Young Man asking what more he needs to do; to which Jesus replies it is not about doing, Eternal life, faith itself are not things you can win at; but only participate in. The story of the Successful Young Man and the Parable of the Vineyard are also then tied to the response of the Disciples “we left everything to follow you”, to which Jesus says “So What?” Faith is not about accomplishment, not about skills or abilities, or affluence, or success, but only about being thankful to be able to work!

What we, like the workers, tend to see, is that we reported early and tried our hardest. We negotiate a fair-wage for a day's work, believing their will be a Pension and Social Security. We work all day, giving of ourselves. Others came later, they were promised only work. At the end, those who came late and barely worked at all, receive the same as those who work all day long. If the point were SUCCESS and PROSPERITY, this would be an unfair parable. But instead the parable is about GOD's GRACE, and what is fair is that everyone whether they came to work generations ago, or for who knows what reason that is not even explained come to work late, ALL are able to work in God's Vineyard. In not that what we have trained our lives for? We ask our toddlers and High School students what they want to be when they grow up. The answer we want to hear is not I WANT TO RETIRED. The answer is to be an Engineer, and Architect, a Firefighter, a Soldier, a Police, an Artist, a Musician, a Teacher, one who gives their life for others.

SALVATION is not about WINNING, not about extravagant Miracles, not even about Success. Salvation is daily having ENOUGH FOR THIS DAY, enough to work and enough to provide others to be part of a community of faith. By daily witnessing God, in the little things, like having food for the table, and sharing with others, we reduce our anxiety, we build resources of faith against stress, and we can be confident that when extraordinary miracles are needed God will provide those too.

"In Honor of The LORD", September 11, 2011

2011-09-12T06:17:00.001-07:00

Exodus 14:19-31
Romans 14: 1-12

What are we doing? What have we come here to do this day?
On September 11th 2001, we instinctively knew what we were to do. The clergy were gathered for our regular morning together, when word reached us, we prayed, then the Catholic priest and I went to Welch Allyn's factory to console and counsel; while the Lutheran and Methodist ministers went to the schools. That afternoon, we continued with Engineers and Technicians in the local business who had not left their desks all day because they were getting medical equipment to crisis areas. That evening at 7pm the whole community came together in this Sanctuary to worship and pray, to try to discern what faith and life meant now that our former reality had been shattered. In the week that followed, our doors stood open and a constant stream of persons came into the Sanctuary to pray to God.

As much as we retell the story of Crossing the Red Sea, with a Charleton Heston-like Moses raising his arms as the new Nation marched across from slavery to emancipation, from oppression to freedom, the reading of this story is too much like September 11th where we, none of us saw what was coming. God led them all the way around the Philistines, knowing that if this people encountered war, faced an enemy, they would rush back to the security of being slaves. Their human addiction to what they knew would would drive them from their fear to food and shelter even if in the long-run it meant their death. Such is the power of our addiction to what we know. All night-long the East wind blew upon the face of the water creating a dry riverbed like road, as the people of Israel fled, and the army of Pharaoh pursued, hidden by a cloud and pillar, they walked right passed each other. Then like a reversal of Genesis' Creation, God unleashed Chaos upon Pharaoh's army. In the words that follow, the angels began to sing of God's victory, and God stopped them, saying “But my Egyptian children are dead.” Increasingly, in the 21st Century, we need to question, no longer whether you are one of us, whether to fear one another, but rather why this people is any less worthy, any less human than our own.

What are we doing? What have we come here to do? On September 11th 2002, the High School Seniors and Fire Fighters led our community in an impromptu service in the middle of Genesee street, with a flag over the roadway and singing of Amazing Grace.
The last two years, there have been weddings on September 11th, because as the couples themselves described, we want to put that experience behind us and reclaim our future.
A Decade... Ten years... Ten years... is this a Celebration of that day? Is it to be a Memorial of Fear? There were hundreds of thousands of people who were so traumatized by the surreal nature of that morning, they have not flown on an airplane again. There are those who have saved the clothes they were wearing that day, unable to wash off, to wash away, what they remember.

By marking the tenth year, are we closing that chapter? Ten years of terrorism... Ten years of War... Ten years of Economic upheaval... Have we reached the time when we no longer have to take off our shoes at airports, not because the ground is holy but because of exploding soles? Have we reached a time when we can put aside our fear of persons in turbans, people who kneel down to pray to God?

What are we doing? What have we come here to do? This is not the first time, nor tragically will it the last that we have a day like today. From those who survived the brutal crossing of the Mayflower, and the first long year of crop failure, starvation and disease, we created a feast of giving thanks to God. There was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Ford Theater, the attempted killing of his Secretary of State and Vice President. There was December 7th 1942, a day that will live in infamy. There was November 22nd 1963, where for a generation who were invited to consider not what was owed to us by the government, but what we could do to serve, who each remember where they were that day.

At that hour, on that day, every citizen became a hero. Every person responded to their neighbor. What I especially remember and want to lift up from that time forever, was that people stopped one another at work, on the street, in the post office and grocery, to listen to one another, to express concern and care. However, we found it hard to live that way, perpetually. For a few weeks, several months, there were occasions of sabbath when we stopped to name that life is now different.
In Christmases past, we thought about what we did not have, now we recognize what we do.
In Christmases past we placed wreaths on doors, now we place them on graves of heroes.
In Christmases past we counted the money in our 401K, now we count our blessings.
The worst tragedy of reflecting upon the last ten years, is that we have become increasingly divided.

Would that we could, live differently, would that we would live with concern for the weak. Writing to the Church at Rome, in these verses Paul never names Jewish Christian versus Gentile Christian, never names Circumcised versus UnCircumcised, Indigenous Greek versus Roman. Instead, Paul describes that in our midst are persons who are strong, and others who are weak.

The issue in ROMANS is not over whether to worship on this mountain or that, whether to pay taxes to Caesar or not, instead of VENUE Romans is a controversy over MENU. One part of the community of faith had been raised according to Kosher laws, not only that there were clean and unclean animals, cloven hoofed and uncloven, not only that in the cooking of foods you did not serve meat and dairy together, but that in the butchering did the butcher pray before taking the life of the animal? Did they pray to the Roman Statues and Caesar, or did the butcher sacrifice this animal to Almighty God. Here, we are not describing offerings sacrificed in Pagan Temples versus a Jewish or Chistian Altar, but something so offensive it was like the food we eat, that we buy in the market... Was that food prepared by one who washed their hands, or by one who had soiled them?

For the last many years our nation has been divided over prayer in school and practices of religion in public places, what if, instead of being concerned whether everyone else was praying, whether everyone else said Debts or Trespasses, we were concerned whether we prayed at the start of the day.

Several years ago, there was a delightful film and book under the title Like Water for Chocolate, in which the emotions, the passions and faith of the one preparing a meal were transferred in the cooking to those who ate of it. Would it matter whether in the preparing of Holy Communion, if the elders prayed before they began, or whether they fought over some divisive issue while breaking the bread and pouring the cups for us to receive the Sacrament?

Paul's response is that as a people of God we cannot condemn another, because they are a child of God and doing so we condemn God. We cannot condemn one another because we then set ourselves up as if we were God.

What we do this day, is not about fear, or celebration; while we pray for those who died, this is not even about their loss. This day, and every day forward we give honor to God. By what we choose to do and what we choose to refrain from doing. We intentionally choose to act as a people of God.

"It's Personal" September 04, 2011

2011-09-06T06:32:00.000-07:00

Exodus 12:1-14
Matthew 18:15-34

Part of the beauty of Scripture is that it applies on so many levels, both globally, Nationally & most
of all personally. While this is Historical record of what took place between Egypt and Israel, verifying
the building of the Pyramids, authenticating the freedom of Slaves and origin of the Hebrew Feast of
Passover, this is also the personal story of those involved, and of us as the recipients. Faith is Personal.

Would that faith was theoretical, limited to Law, or to Philosophical ideas, that could be proven
and accepted or refuted and dismissed. Would that Scripture were reported as News stories by FOX or
CNN, the BBC, or even John Stewart or Michael Colbert, as we would have the story told by a
disinterested third party, or at least according to their identifiable bias.
But Faith is personal, personal to each of us and personal to God. As such, we need to identify, both
the abstract and the personal. The story of the Passover is the story of a plague befalling Egypt that
every first-born died, but Passover is also the personal story of a Sacrifice to God, a sacrifice by God.
Forgiveness according to Jesus, requires not only a naming of the wrong committed against us, but
our claiming of the other person as more important, and a claiming of our power to forgive.

Passover is the story of sacrificing of all first-born human and adult in a single night. Not only the
infants, but all the First-born. If you are the first-born in your family, would you rise. And if you are
the child of a first-born. What kind of sacrifice is it to God, that all these would die?

To appreciate the events leading up to Exodus, we must remember Pharaoh attempted Genocide.
Pharaoh ordered that all “God's people” would no longer be human, but slave; not of the same worth as
an Egyptian; that race, that class, were as animals, as property, inhuman stuff, to be bought and sold.
This is the story of Moses, this is our story, yours and mine as the community of faith, the people of
God.
Discontent that Slavery, denying these people their humanity did not destroy them, Pharaoh attempted
to have all male babies killed.
Still unhappy with the results, Pharaoh ordered all Non-Egyptian babies to be put to death. All of which
makes this story personal, personal to the people and personal to God.
Pharaoh did not perceive himself to have offended Moses, he was above the Law, “they” were not
people to him. Pharaoh had in his own mind, dismissed the reality of God and made himself God.
Having sent Moses to make the complaint, and Pharaoh refused, God gave Pharaoh opportunity after
opportunity. According to Exodus, this is not the story of the killing of the first-born; this is the Faith
Story of a Sacrifice to God. Every household of the people of God, were to make a sacrifice, and to
wipe the blood of the sacrifice on the doorposts and lintels. Every household made a sacrifice, either
the blood of a sacrificial lamb, or of the one who would inherit.

Marking of doorposts and lintels is an ancient rite. When Anon, the mother of Sudanese, was reunited
with her children, she fashioned baskets full of rice and beans and bound these together, to hang
above our door, as a blessing that our lives would always be bound together in plenty. When this
Sanctuary was created, above the door to the outside world, was placed a symbol that those who
believe in God's Plan and those who believe in Human Will are united here as one.

This reading from the Gospel according to Matthew is not the institution of a Sacrament; not the
Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus explains “Blessed are the Poor, Blessed are you when Men revile
and persecute you;” or a miracle of healing, neither is this simply the story of interaction between
Jesus and his disciples. It is all of those, but more, Jesus takes the question from Peter about
forgiveness and makes the point personal and extravagant.

Peter's question seems legitimate. It is one we have all asked at different times. But it is not really about
forgiveness, because real forgiveness does not count how many times, even 490.

Oddly, we can compartmentalize disputes within our family, that we did not pick our family
members; he has always been like that; but as demonstrated in the Sacrament of Baptism, we have
chosen one another, voluntarily submitted to one another as our Church family of choice. So when
disputes arise among those we have chosen to be a part of, how do we forgive?

First, take time to take a step back to reflect and recognize, is this important enough to be concerned
about. Due to stress, lack of sleep, worry, fears, hormones, we all are prone at times to taking minor
debts and trespasses and making them into monumental sins against humanity, mountains that separate
us.
If so, go and share with the other how you feel. Counseling churches and mentoring pastors on how
to move forward, I have amazed not that there are problems, or by how small and petty an issue can get
blown up into a dispute, but over and over, of the simple need for one person to say to another, I am
sorry. I did not know you were in the hospital. I did not know, I was so busy I did not pay attention,
I should have and I am sorry.

If they listen, you have redeemed what was lost, you have saved your relation with your brother.
If not, you are no worse than before.

We said, personal and extravagant, because as Jesus told this parable everything is extreme. Matthew
has attempted to control the meaning of this story, as if an allegory, that the Master has to equal God,
the Debtor has to equal a Sinner, Debt equals sin, Forgiveness equals being made right with God. But a
Parable unlike an allegory, is not confined to mathematic equations, a parable like poetry can exist on
multiple levels.
A Talent was equal to several days work, exactly how many we do not know. A servant owed 10,000
Talents. So, if a Talent were worth even a Single day's work, then working 7 days a week, it would take
30 years for this one to repay his debt. It was impossible for him to ever make repayment. So as was his
due, the Master ordered the debtor and his spouse and children to be indentured servants to make
restitution. But the servant humbly asked for forgiveness, and just as absurd as the magnitude of debt,
the Master forgave everything. Imagine having a $500,000 debt cancelled as paid in full!
That is forgiveness. But forgiveness is not simply about saying what needs to be said to repay a debt,
forgiveness is a change of reality, a change of who we are.
The Forgiven Servant finds another who owed him a paltry sum, yet though this debtor recites exactly
the same words, he is grabbed by the neck and was put into prison.
Just as fast as he had been forgiven, the first servant is back before the Master, and rather than being
made an indentured servant, he is now made a prisoner of his debt.

The point is that the debt, the sin, the problem with our brother eats away at us. Like a secret, that
pain has a power over us. In all likelihood the brother is never going to offer an apology. The question
then becomes, whether to allow the debt to have power over you, or to forgive, naming the wrong
committed, naming the hurt and division, but intentionally claiming power over the division.

The piece of this I have always wondered about, is Jesus final charge regarding how to forgive. If your
scoundrel of a brother does not repent when you name the wrong, even when you do so before others
who can hold accountability, even the whole community of faith “Then let him be to you as a Gentile
or Tax Collector.” I think what this means, in the Gospels, is let them be as those you attempt to seek
out as needing forgiveness and needing faith.

August 28, 2011, "DISTRACTED BY MANY THINGS"

2011-08-28T05:15:00.000-07:00

Exodus 3: 1-15
Matthew 16:21-28
There is fighting in Libya. Hurricane Irene made landfall and is working the way up the East-coast. An earthquake struck Washington DC. All the things that technology was supposed to do for us, and thus far, we have access to many bits of in formation and we become distracted by many things. I am never certain if when something happens, I am supposed to TWEET first, or FACEBOOK, to send a TEXT or LINK-IN, or EMAIL, and wonder why we cannot simply TALK TOGETHER FACE TO FACE? We now are developing APPS for anything we could want to do, but HOW this affects us, and who we are becoming, we have not yet come to know.

Yesterday afternoon, I had a wedding, and as the guests were entering I heard a voice from decades ago a man we had known in college in the Midwest 35 years ago was walking up the steps. In that lull after the wedding and before the reception begins, we visited together with quick and deep summaries of the important events and circumstances in our lives. He described his partner and how they had met a dozen years ago. As a very gentle and soft-spoken man, I was not surprised nor concerned that he described having come to the awareness that of knowing himself, and that he was gay. And the way he described it, the process of coming to know who he is and claiming who he is, I responded: “I have never thought of it this way before, nor heard it described as such, but I think most of us, speaking for myself, I also have spent most my life searching for who we are, at 53 still questioning what I want to be when I grow up. That has been punctuated over the years with marriage and children, education and experiences, but for you it has seemed to have been focused on your most intimate commitment.” With all the distractions of life, jobs and careers, the economy, worries about children and pets, we lose sight of what we hold most dear, what we believe and who we think we are.

The story of Moses begins here, not in a palace, not in the Temple, not while doing the most grand of things, but rather the most mundane. While this orphaned Hebrew child may think he knows who he is, raised in the household of the Pharaoh of Egypt, who recently witnessed the racism and prejudice of an Egyptian beating a slave, and instinctively struck and killed the abuser, tried to get away from his past, tried to go to a new place, marrying and herding sheep for his father in law Jethro a priest and leader of Midian. STILL, God knows who he is, where he is, what he has done, and God cares.

We often become distracted reading this passage, by the burning bush. After all, it's FIRE, and yet the bush is unharmed, not consumed by burning. Listening to the story in context, it is as if, the whole point of the burning bush is to DISTRACT MOSES FROM DISTRACTIONS. Seeing the bush out of the corner of his eye, he could no longer look down at his feet. Seeing the bush burnt but not consumed he had to take his eye off the sheep, off the path, off his worries and doubts and regrets, and look up. Moses had to pause his TEXT MESSAGING about what he saw and GO SEE rather than TWEETING about it as an observer he was Called to participate. From that moment of DISTRACTION, there is no longer concern about the burning bush, but GOD who speaks and is present with Moses here on Holy Ground. What a perfect metaphor for the CHURCH, WORSHIP, being the COUMMINTY OF FAITH to one another, we were never supposed to be an Institution, Perfect, we were never to be the IDEAL. As brilliant as the sermon may be, as much as we may rehearse and practice, despite the brilliance of the windows, the majesty of these gold pipes and the music created, all of worship is to DISTRACT US from OUR DISTRACTIONS to consider what is of value, who we are and where we are going. This is a passage about a Calling, a vocation, the seriousness of what we believe to how we live.

Like many of you, I had a mentor growing up, going to school, the early years of my career, who has now gone. Whenever I returned, he would ask the same Biblical question, “What's the latest theory about the TETRAGAMMANON?” When first he asked I was not certain what TETRAGAMMANON even was, but quickly came to know he was referencing Moses' 4 letter name for God.

In that this mentor had also gone to seminary and been a preacher, I thought of all the things that have not changed since you went to seminary probably at the top of the list of what has not changed is the meaning of this 6000 year old name for God. But deferring to his wisdom and experience and concern, I thought it a teaching exercise, so attempting to prove my knowledge recited “YHWH is so holy, we never speak it, but seeing the letters instead choose to speak ADONAI. The Word YHWH is the Verb TO Be, so anything that has being God is in it. Literally, “I AM WHO I AM, I AM WHAT I AM and WHAT I HAVE DONE and WHAT I WILL BE.” He smirked replying that “I AM WHAT I AM” is the catch phrase for POPEYE the Sailor, not the God of all Creation, Lord and Redeemer.
Over the years, I had struggled to understand and come to explain what I thought this mentor was asking. Now that he has died, listening to the text again, We hear the VERBS of what is said from the bush: “I HAVE SEEN,” “I HAVE HEARD,” “I HAVE KNOWN” are part of a recurrent identification from God, the fourth verb of which is “AND I HAVE REMEMBERED” the promise.

The point of the name for God, is not which is the prettiest name, or only as an explanation of identity, but that of all places, in this most common, most mundane, while taking sheep to pasture, Moses sees the BUSH that is a Reality, it is on fire and it is not burned. If Moses had simply heard a voice, while doing his task, the words would have been intangible, invisible, like theory, idea or philosophy, Abstract WORDS only something to know; but this bush is real and the burning is real, and it not being burned by the burning is also real, so the words that are said, that this is Holy Ground, that God IS, and God SEES, and GOD HEARS, and GOD KNOWS and GOD REMEMBERS, and that no matter how far away we may run, God is with us, all that is the REALITY. The Winds and rain and flooding of Irene have been the story of the last 72 hours, the tremors of Washington have already ceased, be those the ones of politics or those deeper in the earth, the fall of a dictatorship, even the intrinsic worth of our homes and land, and the problems of this week, all is distraction, all will pass. What Moses discovers is real, is that as much as he tried to run away from who he was, to hide what he had done, God sees, God hears, God knows and God remembers the promise. That is the FOUR PART IDENTIFICATION OF GOD, the Tetragammanon.

As much as we try to “Create” ourselves, as much as we try to hide our secrets and what bothers us most, the Burning Bush is physical evidence God knows and is not distracted by who we are. God accepts us, and stays with us through all our arguments, until finally we are left without distractions.

We recall the question of Jesus to the Disciples “Who do People Believe is the Messiah, and Who do you think I Am?” to which Simon replies with the Confession “You are the Christ, son of the living God.” Yet, the meat of the revelation comes here afterward. For just like Moses having found the Bush, Simon found the right response, each now have the resources to know who and God is, Christ is, but each is also very human, responding to adversity, to obstacles and threats with “NO, God forbid.” The core of the Confession in response to Jesus is the Christ, the Redeemer, Son of the Living God, is to cut through all distractions to say “Yes, AND he suffered and died, that nothing, not suffering, not death, not anything which may frighten us CAN EVER separate us from the love of God.” That is the meaning of Salvation.

Amazing, when we see and hear and know and remember the Promise that nothing can ever separate us from the Love of God, suddenly all the storms and distractions, the TWEETS and POKES and PINGS, the FRIENDING and UNFRIENDING, the Crises of the Day, even the anxieties about who we really are, all seem to fall into place.

August 21, 2011 "Biblical Juxtaposition"

2011-08-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

Exodus 1:1 -2:10
Matthew 16:13-20

Part of our desire for control, the means by which we make the world our own is through knowledge and understanding, to be able to plan with confidence, to make happen what we desire. But as much as we plan out for our children where they will live, where they will go to school, what they will study, there are circumstances of this life that surprise. What we do with those circumstances, how we choose to respond, these are acts of faith!

For the last hundred years and more, a controversy has swept Western Culture...whether we choose to believe Genesis' account of Creation, or whether we choose to believe in Evolution from a Big Bang. The Bible makes emphasis through juxtaposition, through Irony. The ultimate irony being that from a people who have biologically and culturally evolved, we have faith in God. There is irony that the more technologically advanced we have become, the more predisposed, absolutist and intractable.You have to be Democrat or Republican, you have to be rich or poor, for or against. The great joke of Western Society is that The Bible is Counter-Cultural! This sacred manuscript beginning in Ancient Mesopotamia long before the Caesars, before Alexander the Great, this foundation of morals, law, human culture, faith and ethics, emphasized MULTI-TASKING before we learned to use our opposable thumbs for typing on a Smith-Carona let alone an iPod or iPad. The Scriptures routinely explain one idea in tension with another; we only understand freedom when set against the backdrop of slavery, we only understand defiance when set against an absolute degree of control; we understand grace over against Law; we understand hope in the midst of loss and despair.

Our ancestors had two stories of where they came from. The first is that our ancestors were Nomads, wandering Arameans, descended from a childless couple. We possess these many ancient stories of Adam, of the Tower of Babel, of Noah, of Abram who while free, a nomad traveling the earth like the wind, he possessed no Land, no Name, and no Child. There was also the reality that our parents and grand-parents for generations had been slaves in Egypt. The Bible is not concerned with trying to determine which is right, which will win, the Bible draws the threads of all the parts of reality together.

The Book of Exodus begins with a series of Names taken from the conclusion of Genesis. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob was the father of 12 sons and several daughters who along with their families settled in Egypt during the great drought and famine. At that time, Jacob's family numbered 70 persons, and Jacob's favorite son: Joseph, whom he thought he had lost was the most powerful person in all Egypt. In the midst of this drought and famine in a foreign land, the descendants of Abraham, our ancestors multiplied just as commanded in the book of Genesis. Eventually Joseph and all of their generation died off. There came to power a new Pharaoh who no longer honored what had been established in the past.

There are many forms of exterminating a culture. We have heard story after story of Genocide, from Esther to the Holocaust, from Rwanda to the Middle east and Africa, where one race attempts to eliminate another. To control the economy, to control the means of production, to deny education are also means of eliminating others. To consciously make another people slaves, is an attempt at control, at domination, at denial of their humanity, the reality is that both the slave and the master lose their humanity. According to Anti-Slavery International, the oldest organization tracking this, there are currently 20 million people who are slaves, sold for as little as $15 a head.

Ten years ago, we began relationship with refugees from South Sudan. How wonderful that we have come to know these persons and Jacob and Santino, John and Martha, Andrew and Mary Ninkir. We have often referred to the story of their village being burned and the children walking across the country. The fact of the matter is that throughout Africa, India, China, South America, Europe and America today, there are still slaves. 20 million people.
The Book of Exodus is wonderful in its subtle portrayal. This new Pharaoh, the leader of the nation who is responsible for the welfare of their people creates an economic recovery plan of building Storehouse Cities. Pyramids filled with food for future generations, but built by human slaves. The first means of CONTROL, the first means of extermination of this people that have grown numerous, is slavery. But it seems the more harsh the slavery, the more humanity is denied, the more they reproduce. The second means of CONTROL is to kill all the male babies at birth. The foolishness of Pharaoh is not thought through because by killing off the male babies, he is killing off the future workforce, future slaves to build his pyramids. But Powerful and Mighty Pharaoh, ruler of the Ancient World gives orders to the Midwives to kill the baby boys. What is the role of a Midwife? To do whatever is necessary to preserve the life of those being born, and Pharaoh commands them to do the opposite. Now names are important to us. One of the most loving acts parents provide are to give their child their name. And in the wedding celebration, the couple choose their identity and name. In this story from Exodus we have very few and important names. What is the name of the Pharaoh who built great food storehouses? What is the Pharaoh's name who ordered murder? What is Pharaoh's daughter's name? We do not know. What are the names of the Baby's mother and father, we do not know. But the names of the MIDWIVES, those who trust God and defy the Pharaoh are named Shiphrah and Puah, “Life” and “Fulfillment”.

SO in an act of CONTROL, of increasing desperation, Pharaoh bypasses the Midwives and goes directly to the parents, telling them when you give birth to kill their children. To demonstrate what lunacy this is, Pharaoh has a specific means of murder, they are to throw them into the River. But the name of the River in Egypt is The Nile, meaning SOURCE OF LIFE. So the people are to follow the laws of Pharaoh by killing their children in the Source of Life. We do not know the name of this couple, the Bible tells only two things, they are of the House LEVI, meaning the holy order of the Priesthood and they love their baby.

This un-named woman acts in faith. She does what the Pharaoh commands placing her child in the Nile but she does so recalling the story of Noah, fashioning an ARK of gopher reeds and bitumin and pitch to make it waterproof. AND she appoints the child's sister to act as witness. A witness is not an innocent bystander caught unaware who reports what they think they saw. A witness is intentionally appointed to observe and to bear testimony, if possible to intercede to act in faith. The baby who is brought up out of the Moss and Water, is given an Egyptian Name: MOSES and a nurse who is his own mother.

As much as we try to control, try to know and understand, there are conclusions which surprise us. There are times in which juxtaposition is not one idea against another, so much so as one idea informed by another. According to Matthew, Jesus and the Disciples were talking as they walked together, and Jesus asked Who do people believe is The Messiah, the Savior, the Son of Man? And they gave all the traditional answers. Then Jesus asked “Who do you think I am?” Putting A and B together Simon responded “You are the Son of God!” Now up until that moment, no one in all history had put together that the Representative of Humanity, the Son of Man, would also be the Son of God. That these two were united in one life was a new thought a new reality, that God had become human. In response Jesus gives Simon a Nick-name, a name meaning two different things. Up until then there was no name Peter this has become adopted by our culture, the name Cephas has the same root origin as “Petrified” like in Petrified wood that becomes like stone. However, “petrified” can also refer to being immobilized by fear. Cephas can mean the Moveable Stone, this brick that will be used, as well as this immense immovable rock. The problem for the Church is that at times we have been elements, bricks used to build society, at times we have been an immovable wall, at times we have acted in fear, and at times, we have been able to be transformed from being one thing like a tree into something different and permanent like stone.

The question for us as a People of Faith is not which are we, Rich or Poor, Right or Wrong, Republican or Democrat, but whether we can serve as Witnesses for what is going on in the world. Whether we will make connections, between which companies own which subsidiaries, which movies and television shows are paid for by which advertisers, what are the connections between governmental policies and human lives, and are we willing in our places of comfort and security to recognize that slavery and inhumanity still exist.

August 14, 2011, "Shifting Paradigms"

2011-08-14T05:55:00.000-07:00

Genesis 45:1-12
Matthew 15:10-31
Our Scriptures this week, demonstrate the difference between understanding what you have known and believing what you hope will be, a shift from knowing the Promise through what has been to Dreaming of a new and different future yet to be revealed. The difficulty of Israel was how to connect from Ancient Stories of our Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to the reality that for generations we have been slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt. The Passover, the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments, the Wandering in the Wilderness and coming into the land as a new Nation, Freedom and the Law, all this only make sense against the context that our ancestors were slaves. So how does a people, a culture, shift from the beloved histories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to Moses?

Joseph is different from the Patriarchs before him. The last many weeks we have shared the stories of Abram, who left home and family to follow God, believing in a Covenant Promise of a Land and Name and as many children as there are stars in the heavens. We shared the Promise of Isaac, whose name means laughter, and the joy that was brought to this family long after they imagined possibility. We recalled how Sarah had used her Egyptian handmaid Hagaar to get a son under her control, then was jealous of Ishmael, when far beyond her time she conceived and bore Isaac, that Sarah wanted the Egyptian's baby Ishmael put to death, instead Abraham sent him into the wilderness where Ishmael's crying was heard by God.

We emphasized that Isaac was a model of the Promise, questioning whether Abraham would be willing and able to sacrifice the Promise, to sacrifice Isaac, or if possessing, he would abandon faith in God. After Abraham, we followed his son Isaac who fell in love, but he and his wife each played favorites among their twins, until her twin Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright by using Esau's hunger, his need for food. Having tricked his brother, Jacob deceived their father Isaac, then ran away to a far distant country, where he took as a wife Leah and Rachel the woman he truly loved, and also conceived by their handmaidens, after decades returned with his family to wander with God, following the Promise of a Land and Name and Generations in the land of the Canaanites.

The Patriarch Jacob had 10 sons and a daughter, when his beloved Rachel gave birth to her first born Joseph, then years later Baby Benjamin and she died in childbirth. Jacob, like his parents before him played favorites, that while he loved all his children, he treated Joseph differently. We remember the Coat of Many Colors, every color reminiscent of the lush Promise of the Garden of Eden. Some paradigms seem universal to all families. The elder ones are the first born and doted upon as infants, but by the time younger children come along not only have the parents been worn down, when the younger ones come of age we tend to have more time to listen and talk together, sharing hopes and dreams as adults. Joseph uses his relationship with their father Jacob against his brothers, tattling on them as younger children often do.

Joseph recognized from the first, that he was different from his brothers. What may not be immediately apparent is that Joseph was also different from the Patriarchs before him. Where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob, had all been focused on the Promise of God, Joseph never mentions the Promise, rarely even mentions God, Joseph instead is a Man of Dreams, who believes in the power of his Dreams. Rather than a Promise of Land and a Name and Children, in Joseph's Dream all his brothers bow down before him. In another, his brothers, his mother and father, are as the Sun and Moon and Stars, that all bow to the earth before Joseph. As the third of four children, like Joseph I recall spying upon and tattling on the older ones. I also recall being suspended by my ankles and dropped through the haychute by those same brothers. Joseph's brothers drop him into a pit, then devise to sell him into slavery to Ishmaelites. The brothers return to their father Jacob, and deceive him to gain the love he had for Joseph. But Jacob is inconsolable in his loss of his son. Jacob retreats into himself, believing the promise is no more, the child he loved is dead, he focuses only upon his loss.
Joseph gets into all kinds of trouble when away from family, when away from the Promise of God. Eventually, Joseph finds himself in the Pharaoh's dungeon, imprisoned as a slave. But it is here that Joseph uses his dreams and interpretation of dreams. Joseph, like his father before him, could have wallowed in grief, mourning the loss of what had been. Instead, Joseph uses his dreams to benefit his others, the cook and butcher who feed him, eventually even guiding the Pharaoh's Dreams.

After the Recession two years ago, the political games of the Debt Ceiling, and the turbulence of the International Stock Market these last several weeks, many of us have lost sleep.Two years ago, when the Housing Market Recession began, I recall forecasts that it would take two years for our Economy to recover to where it was. A month ago, the forecasters described another two years before things would be back like they were before. With the losses and gains of this last week, does anyone remember what the values used to be?

Last night I had a dream. I was down at the water's edge, when Seven Fat Porkbelly's came down to drink, and they drank with a great thirst, but the lake was still replenished. Then Seven Sickly Scrawny Pork-bellies came down, and these consumed the seven fat Porkbellies. And I recalled the Dreams of Joseph and Pharaoh, except that just before I awoke I heard a voice proclaim, “Stay away from the Porkbellies, you are Kosher.”

Joseph is a different Patriarch, from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They each believed in the Promise of God, they spoke with God and followed God, knowing God heard their cries. Joseph's is a Civil Religion, Joseph rarely even mentions God exists. Joseph believes in his Dreams. But when given the opportunity, when his brothers are in need of food and he has all the power, instead of retribution, instead of recalling past hurts and losses, rather than being focused on forgiveness Joseph loved his brothers, and acts for their future, letting down his guard, to reveal who he really is to them. And it here, that Joseph describes God has been present using all our circumstances, even the ones that seemed to be for evil turned out to be for a purpose that benefitted life.

We live in changing times, times when old Paradigms, old ways of thinking and relating seem out of touch. There are certain of Jesus' words that strike us as being out of touch, especially harsh when it was not needed. Others have looked at this collection of passages in the 15th Chapter of Matthew and guessed that he had a bunch of miscellaneous stories so put them all together; but I think there is a link here, that it is not the way things were created, not the circumstances that present themselves that are good or bad or evil, but what we choose to do with them, whether we choose to act as if this moment is a circumstance of healing of faith or not, whether we see God in this moment and act in faith or only by our past devices.

How odd, that Matthew does not identify this woman who seeks out Jesus as being a Gentile, a non-Jew, as being a woman of Tyre or Sidon, as he was wandering through that non-Jewish region, but instead, rather than identifying her as a Greek or a Roman, she is named as a Canaanite. She has no individual name, but is identified as one of the Rejected People of the Old Testament, one of those displaced by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses and David and Solomon. She seeks Jesus out. The automatic response is rejection, the Messiah has come for God's own people. Over the years, I have heard many describe frustration with this passage, that they actually prefer the company of their dogs to their own children, or that their dogs were better trained. I think perhaps the meaning of the words is not that Jesus insulted her as a Dog, or as a Rabid Wild Beast, but as a Pet, a member of the household who is not a son or daughter. But still she presses to change the relationship, she acts in faith. Matthew is unique among the Gospels, for Matthew Jesus is not only the Messiah, not a dispenser of miracle cures healing the whole world, but repeatedly in addition to caring for the crowds, he responded to someone from outside the faith community, the Gerasene Demoniac who identified himself as “Roman Legion”, this Canaanite woman, who themselves crossed the boundary of distance to act in faith, to believe life could be different and asked for help.

Too often, we in the faith community, are like the Sunday School teacher beginning a lesson on the Parable of the Publican and the Sinner who each went up to the Temple to pray, and though the Teacher has a wonderful, insightful lesson prepared, begins the class with a prayer “Thank God we are members of this Presbyterian Church not like that Publican who condemned the Tax Collector.” We need to question changing our paradigms, considering whether we have lived in the past, held back by our losses and grief, whether we have judged others as Canaanites, and whether we act only to fulfill our dreams, or if we could envision that God uses even our circumstances for life, helping others to believe.

"Naming What Was Hidden" July 24, 2011

2011-07-24T05:39:00.000-07:00

Genesis 30: 25-43
Matthew 13: 31-35 & 44-52
Years ago, when my bride and I first married, we had very little. We lived in a Studio apartment on the Upper Westside of Harlem in Manhattan as I went to Seminary and she to Grad School. As wedding gifts her grandparents had refinished a table and chairs for us, and our most precious possession was a noisy, metal, 20 year old used window air conditioner from her uncle. Routinely, in each week's trash we would find a broken chair, a trunk painted the wrong color, and we carried these back to refinish and furnish our home. When we graduated and went to the first church, the movers said “Now all these antiques need to be insured.” Over 30 years, with two children now grown, we have accumulated a lot of stuff, and periodically we want to bring everything out, new and old, discerning what is really needed. The same is true in faith, except perhaps what is brought out of our faith is more obscure.

Parables... Guilt... Forgiveness... Predestination... Rights of a first born... Let my people Go... A 2000 year old weapon of execution... Conversion... Salvation... How do we bring out into the open, all that we have hidden and accumulated, in order to discern what we truly believe in? Recently, I learned a wonderful interpretation of “Predestination” having nothing to do with circumstances being fore-ordained, with damnation or election, but that Predestination is the response of those who do believe that who they are and what they experience in life is a gift from God. As opposed to “The Devil Made me Do It,” or “Being a Victim of Society,” or simply “Bad luck,” to intentionally claim “You are Blessed by God.”

Some of us grew up Catholic, must they throw away the Holy Rosary; some began life Jewish must they abandon the Table fellowship of the Seder and the saying of prayers to worship; Christian denominations separated 5-800 years ago are there still pieces of value that separate us, or do we cling to being separate from others? While many of us grew up as Presbyterian or Episcopalian, Baptist and Orthodox, it seems the fastest growing most prevalent faith today is what is described as “Shiela-ism.” You won't find the times of worship services for Shiela-ism listed in the newspaper, on-line or on a sign board. Shiela-ism, is Shiela or Steve or Sally deciding for themselves what they think is going to be important, making it up as they go along.

There are three primary differences in Shiela-ism and Presbyterianism. First, because Steve-ism is going to be different from Sheila-ism, Shiela-ism only has room for one, each of us individually going about life trying to make sense for ourselves. Second, because Shiela-ism is focused only on what we choose to believe, there is not even room for God, and we believe and worship only ourselves. Third, that having no one and nothing, not even God to relate to, we obsess and fill ourselves with guilt, crazy ideas others would have been able to challenge or to share, or to forgive us for ages ago, but we made ourselves the center of our identity and faith, without the ability to be forgiven or to know we are loved. Funny how much we worry about the estimated value of our homes, how much we try to effect the curb-appeal, when the value is only realized when we sell our home to move on; yet our faith in God, our ethics and values of what is really important go hidden gathering dust, until crises arise, and suddenly we desperately want prayer to work for us, suddenly we want to find the faith we used to have.

Faith is not about having occupied a pew for an hour each week, not about knowing when to stand up or how loudly we sing, not even guilt over how few Bible verses we memorized. Faith is what gives your life meaning and purpose, what would you live and die for? Part of the reason for a disconnect between that generation that fought WWII and the Generation who matured in the 1960s and 70s and between that generation and those fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq today, has been whether we knew we had something to believe in, whether we believe in our band of brothers, or whether cynically, we questioned if there was anything worth believing in. What would it be, to be working at our jobs as routine as plowing a field back and forth all day every day, when suddenly you find a buried treasure? The parable questions, would you pocket what you found, always concerned someone would contest your having it, or would you go about proving your right and ownership before claiming the prize. The underlying question however is what would it be to find a treasure in the midst of daily routine? Something worth selling everything else, risking everything, to be part of.

The ancient story of Genesis is marvelous. For while it is external, following the misadventures of all the generations of the dysfunctional family of Abraham, there are pearls here for each of us.

The story of Jacob, begins with Isaac and his wife Rebekkah playing favorites between their twin sons. Isaac loves Esau who is all boy, a hunter and fisher, an outdoorsman. Rebekkah loves Jacob, Mom's boy who helps her and takes care of whatever she needs.Through their children, Isaac and Rebekkah play out their relationship, and try to win, over each other as to who is more important, who is right. Jacob, the younger twin, the favorite of his mother, tricks his brother, deceives their father and having gotten the better of everyone has no place safe once he has won, so runs away.

Jacob returns to the land where his grandfather Abraham had grown up, goes to his mother Rebekkah's family, to Rebekkah's brother Laban. And what do expect is going to happen? Rebekkah and Isaac did not invent their relationship out of thin air, their relationship was modeled after that of their families, so right away Jacob and the extended community are contesting for who will dominate, who will win. There is a custom that everyone wait until all the sheep are brought in, and together the shepherds roll away the rock to water the flocks. In a feat of strength, challenging cultural norms and concerned only with his own success, Jacob rolls the boulder away to water the flocks of Laban's daughter Rachel. Jacob the trickster, the deceiver, now gets tricked by his uncle Laban into marrying Leah the first born as well as Rachel the wife he prefers and committing to 14 years of free labor. There is no thought to Leah's feelings, or to Rachel's, Laban like Jacob seems to see people as objects to be manipulated, possessions to be used.

Our passage this morning comes after Jacob has worked for Laban for nearly 20 years. He has two wives, and their maids, 11 sons and a daughter , the youngest of which is his favorite Rachel's first-born Joseph. With Joseph having been born, Jacob wishes to return to the promised land, but Laban does not want him to go. Laban knows that he has prospered by having Jacob work for him, so when push comes to shove offers to pay Jacob. Each one tries to manipulate and trick the other, without revealing to the other what they are really about.

How difficult to read this passage this week, as the leaders of our government contest over the Debt. Hopefully, we will not offend anyone's politics by naming what may have been hidden, that what drives the debate is not concern over the National Debt, over what will happen to our economy and future. One side wants to protect the entitlement of those who worked for and accumulated their wealth. The other side wants to protect the entitlement of programs for the marginalized. Both want to protect the wants of their constituents, both want to be re-elected, and both sides want to win by whatever means. Not far different from Laban and Jacob in their game of breeding and hiding flocks.

The contest between Jacob and Laban is finally settled by Jacob's wives, Laban's daughters who saddle their camels and making ready to leave. Returning both men to what this was really all about, Laban letting Jacob's people go, a phrase that would be echoed in future generations between Moses and Pharaoh. Yet, even then, the daughters as members of this family trick their father one last time.

Would that in the midst of this current debate, someone would question the intrinsic meaning of our DEBTS, and whether we really believe the words of Our Lord's Prayer. That we turn to God asking for daily bread, and asking that our Debts would be forgiven as we forgive our Debtors. Perhaps in that way, rather than this being an 11th hour political fight between parties, we would consider our value system, and International Debts between nations who can never repay the principle let alone compounded interest.

"Thin Places" July 17, 2011

2011-07-17T07:43:00.000-07:00

Genesis 28:10-ff
Luke 8:26-ff
In Ireland, they have a name for places like where Jacob slept and dreamed of the Ladder between Heaven and Earth, places like where the one whose identity was Mob/ Legion/ Demoniac met Jesus. They call these “THIN PLACES,” locations where the separation between heaven and earth are thin.

In our Feng Shui, Martha Stewart obsessed desire for perfection, we imagine places where we would meet God as being perfection. Where grass would not crunch beneath our steps from dryness, gardens would be immaculate without a weed, woodland creatures would be called Flower and Thumper, and rather than the sound of traffic, we would hear the rhythm of wind through leaves and the melody of water spilling over a brook. But the Bible is not pristine and composed, those who have shared their faith here know that life is messy and often times brutal. Thin Places more often are desolate, harsh, places of banishment where uncontrolled persons would be put away as if dead. Both passages this week are of these Thin Places, Places of Banishment, Places where Heaven and Earth meet, where we most often encounter God.

In order to receive what is here, we need to grasp what it is to be banished. In our Family Systems, our sense of Normal, when there is that which is a violation, abhorrent, something we cannot accept or tolerate, we execute a Cut-Off, we Banish. In a time in human societies when union between people of the same sex is legalized, when dictators are overthrown without being put to death, it is hard to imagine that only a generation ago for a Catholic to marry a Protestant would have been grounds for the family to never speak to their son or daughter again. Quite possibly, while televised coverage and the legalization of human rights have created safeties, prejudice and hostility are the more dangerous because they are less visible, more subversive. When Isaac realized that Jacob had tricked his Father into giving Jacob everything, when Esau knew that his own brother Jacob had stolen the blessings of his inheritance from his father, Isaac sent Jacob away.

In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is banished for the accidental killing of Juliet's cousin. Romeo describes that to be banished is worse than the punishment of Execution; to be kept alive, but sent away from everyone and everything you love, never to be able to go home, never again to embrace or simply be with your family, never again to do what is normal what was taken for granted. Imagine a family genealogy, in which there are those whom the family does not claim as being one of us.

By stealing the birthright, by claiming what was not his, by tricking everyone, Jacob has cut himself off and now as one without Country, without Family, without place or heir, he wanders through a place unknown, and exhausted lays down to sleep. We have to be careful in interpreting Holy Scripture from our contemporary understandings. We read of a son who was loved by his mother more than she loved anyone else, and we jump to Sigmund Freud; we read of Jacob having a dream of God and having been influenced by Carl Jung we look for Symbols and Archetypes behind every image. Before we suggest electro-shock therapy or lythium for the one Jesus encountered, we need to accept the importance of what is described to people of faith in their own time. This dream was not a working out of Jacob's oedipal complex. This dream was not a desire to kill his father. This dream Jacob saw as an encounter with God, as real and tangible as Moses' Burning Bush, or the parting of the Red Sea, or Isaiah having his unclean lips cauterized by a flying Seraphim. The importance of this being a Dream is simply that Jac ob could no longer control and manipulate outcomes. This is who Jacob had been, he manipulated his brother into selling his birthrights, he controlled and manipulated his father into giving him the family blessing and promise, but in our dreams we are witnesses not manipulators in control.

What Jacob witnessed, when he was not in control, is that rather than God being the Judge he anticipated, sitting in a far off Heaven, Earth and Heaven are connected. Not only is there a web of ladders connecting us, but as isolated and cut-off as he was, still God was present with him. In essence, by his trickery and manipulation, by the sins of his life, Jacob had created for himself the identity God knew Abraham and Isaac to have had. Read in this way, I am not certain Abraham or Isaac had ever claimed in their own identity that they were without Nation, without Family, without Home, without … because they had had the Promise, they were with God. What Jacob witnessed was the reality of the Incarnation, GOD IS WITH US, even when Banished, cut off, isolated and absolutely alone, without the ability to communicate or make connections, still God is with us.

In this dream, God vows three things: God re-establishes the PROMISE given to Abraham, and the INCARNATION that eventually would be promised in Jesus Christ that the Lord would be with us, but ALSO Jacob is given Hope in a future HOMECOMING. The Banished, Those in Exile, The Lost would eventually be redeemed. There is a subtlety here, that Almighty God, Eternal and Everlasting Creator, Redeemer and Judge, vows all this to Jacob, and in reply Jacob says IF, IF you will, then I vow. Imagine on your Wedding Day being invited to share your vows of Commitment, Fidelity and Loyalty and Love, and in response to the other professing For Better and Worse, Richer and Poorer, In Sickness and in Health AS LONG as we both shall ever live, you respond IF YOU DO, THEN I WILL. A Vow is not a contract, not even a Sacred promise or Covenant. A Vow is a YIELDING of our Self, rather than claiming our wants or our needs, or our desires, rather than seizing the day, and going for the gusto, a vow places ourself in relationship to fulfillment of the other's needs and wants.

The one Jesus encounters, on the other side, no longer is claimed as a human being, in his raging, in his torment, his family, friends, neighbors have found the only means they thought they could of coping. They chained him to the tombs of the dead. This is a scene filled with images. He is dead to them. Like Eve and Adam after being found sinful, he is Naked and knows he is Mortal, Sinful and LOST from God. But Jesus does not banish this one. Jesus sits down with him, treating him as a man. Ironically, here we have tried to describe him as “One” rather than The Person, or The Man, because his Town and Village and Family no longer claim him as being a person, a human being, and yet when asked his identity, this one claims so many voices in head that he is a MOB, a Military Legion of Rome WARRING inside him. The difficulty of Mental Illness is that it would be far easier if like this one, the person knew and claimed the desire to yield, but instead when a person is raging they want the rest of the world to change to fit them. Increasingly, I think our whole world is ill believing everyone and everything can be manipulated and controlled and made to fit our individual realities. The Rupert Murdocks and Bernie Madoffs, truly believe they have done nothing wrong, they each have created ethical constructs in which they are the center of their world, they are God and there can be no other. The most difficult part of this story, is not that the Savior healed this man, but that the town and village and his family preferred he had stayed as he was, because they knew how to respond to that. Accepting him as a Man, yielding to trust him again as a whole person, especially when the cure had cost them the sacrifice of a whole herd of livestock is a risk.

But the THIN PLACES of life, the SANCTUARIES are not Ivory Towers with Majestic Pipe Organs. In another church, in an earlier time, we had a man come to worship one day, saying that years ago he and his wife had lived in this community. He had devoted himself to his business and had no time for anything else. Now he was retired and she had passed, their children had their own lives. SO he wanted to make a gift to the Church. Seeing the Sanctuary had solid Oak Pews, he volunteered to donate the upholstering of cushions to make the pews more comfortable. It took the congregation 6 months and the appointing of two committees to decide to accept the gift, because they were not certain they should be comfortable in the Sanctuary, they sort of appreciated the discomfort of the hard Oak Pews.

The hardest part of REDEMPTION, the HOMECOMING promised to Jacob, is letting go our “IF-s” and choosing that we can yield to the wants and needs and desires of Vows to others.

July 10, 2011, "The Seeds that Change the Soil"

2011-07-12T07:09:00.000-07:00

Genesis 25:19-34
Matthew 13: 1-9 & 18-23
The Parable of the Sower has been told and retold, to where even Matthew has made the telling an allegory, with a static meaning. The Trodden Path is this, the Birds refers to that, the Good Soil is what we all desire to be. But what Jesus taught was not an allegory with one singular static meaning, he shared a parable. The beauty of a parable is that it can be examined for ever fresh understandings, which because of our vantage point, our blinders, our historic perspective may have previously been limited to only particular understandings.

The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point, the parable could be about understanding the Sower whom we are to emulate, or the seed, or the differing kinds of soil, or...
What has always been surprising, has been Jesus immediate description about the Sower. The Sower does not discriminate between good soil and hard or broken soil. The Sower does not treat the seed as a limited expensive commodity, but rather lavishes all the earth with a blanket of seed. How often, we treat acts of God, acts of Grace, Blessings, Good things as a rare occasion!

The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point the parable could be about the miraculous abundance of the seed. Ordinarily a seed of wheat is planted, and every stalk has the potential of growing 30, 60, even 80 kernels. Some of the seed does not germinate, some does not grow, some is carried off and consumed, some choked out by weeds. So the yield of the wheat is decreased as well. A Sower who was able to sow, having every seed produce 30 would have enough to feed their family for a year. A Sower who was able to sow, having every seed produce 60 would be able to feed and care for their entire Village. But this seed the Sower sows yields 100 fold, without waste or loss.

The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point, the parable could be about the power of the seed sown by the sower to change the world even hard rock. The Sower does not carefully cultivate and furrow the soil for every seed to have the optimum opportunity to yield. The Sower does not get down on their hands and knees planting individual seeds of grace. The Sower lavishes the seed upon the ground like water, as if the seed were to change the earth, rather than the earth providing nutrients to the seed. But what if that is the way of the world? A tiny seed, when planted, has the force and power to break open, sending forth microscopic hairlike tendrils, which enter the crevices and cracks between particles. The tiny tendrils then grow and swell becoming larger, and in this way break open rock.

Years ago, in another community, a child murdered both of his parents. He was sent to a Federal prison for children. I had never before known such a hard steel place of brokenness and despair. I recall driving through gates high electric fences the tops and gates with razor wire. Coming inside, you needed to empty everything from the outside into a locker, taking off belts and shoes as well. When your number was called upon, standing before a guard who opened your mouth and physically searched you. Then a door slid open in a steel wall as the guard said “Step inside.” The door slid shut and loudly clanked locked, five seconds went by before the door on the other side slid open and after you stepped through, slid shut with a metallic locking sound. At which point you were guided through a series of corridors and cell blocks. The children were each in a locked cell, with a small opening like a mail-slot about three feet from the ground. Hands reached out, eyes peered through. What I recall was the deafening silence of being surrounded by so many children not talking. At one point I remember saying to one pair of eyes “God loves you.” The words were like seed of God falling on hard steel and rock.

Last evening, a child in our community drowned and I went to Children's Hospital with the family. It was surreal, to be surrounded by room after room of children, children who I thought should be playing, reading, singing, laughing and instead were dying, suffering. It was broken hard soil where it would be easy to lose faith.

Sometimes, the hard soil, the impermeable rock is not places like prisons or hospitals, but our family systems. Each of our families behave in the ways they do because these are the only ways their parents and ancestors knew. We repeat the family systems, making the same mistakes over and over, becoming more and more intractable, harder and harder. What would it be to have a Seed of God planted?

That is the story of Jacob and Esau. Though twins, Esau was the first born and should have inherited everything. But favoritism took place, election occurred. While Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, himself the heir and fulfillment of the Promise of God, loved Esau, Rebekah loved Jacob. And God entered in giving the Promise to jacob instead of the first born. That election, that claiming by God, disrupted everything; the conflict disrupted the family. Everything about Genesis changes because Jacob receives the seed, the blessing of promise.

My own children contacted me recently to say, Dad we have watched and observed you, and in many ways we behave exactly like you. We no longer want to be treated as just your children, we want to be your confidants, your trusted colleagues, your adult children and friends. How hard it is for us to change behavior, to change our systems, to change what we have always known, and witness that the seeds of change change us as well!

This has become a Church guided by Mission. While we have a strong music program and a strong educational program, we live as a missional church. The wonderful nature of this, is that while in mission we have tried to care for others, to give to others, we have been changed by mission. This morning the Chancel of the Church is knee deep in a wall of 3500 pair of shoes, our giving of our excess to those who have none. In the process we develop different relationships with one another, we soften and yield and come to know and trust each other in ways we never would have before. Mission is not simply about writing a check, or volunteering, not only about work overseas and around the corner in our neighborhood, but the “soil of our being” being changed.

July 3, 2011 "How Shall We Respond"

2011-07-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

Genesis 24: 34-67
Matthew 11: 16-30
The Scriptures appointed for this day, represent a hard word for a community of successful people, particularly on the weekend of National anniversary. For the hard sayings of Jesus are not “Well done good and faithful servants, you have succeeded! You have taken 5 talents and made 5 more. You have used your wisdom and intellect to amass great power for yourselves. You killed your enemies, now dance upon their graves!” But rather to ask, as we approach the 10th Anniversary of September 11th, what will we celebrate, what are we honoring? Do we witness great accomplishments of human achievement, passing out awards as if someone has to have this so who has not received recognition lately, do we perceive summer as reward of time off for a long year of hard work? Or is it possible for us, in the midst of life, to recognize God's hand at work, not in miraculous, magical, impossible circumstance, but with resilience: Believing and Affirming? Only, only in the midst of these challenges to why did we not witness and believe in miracles; these curses to those who believe that they have succeeded because of good looks or because they showed up, do we receive the familiar and longed for words of comfort “Take my yoke upon you.”

The Bible has a different starting point than we assume in most of life. The Bible defines our lives in Affirmation. Trust is not earned, Trust is automatic, and can be lost. Rather than approaching one another as enemies, as adversaries and competitors, rather than living life in Suspicion, to begin in Affirmation of Life as a Gift and Unmerited Gift from God. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!

We have done an odd thing in our Lives, First, they are not ours but belonging to God. Related to this, Baptism is not an about birth. Graduation is not the endurance of years of schooling. Marriage is not for everyone, and does not automatically come after Graduation and before children. Communion is not a ritual or Sacrament of the Church. All of these are opportunities to name and claim Faith in God. Baptism does not make life guaranteed, inoculated, or easy, if anything the opposite, because claiming this life for God, we must then question: So God where were you, and why, and how is this life holy? Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!

The love affair of Isaac and Rebekah is a marvelous story of love and faith, for it is a story of Love at First Sight, and also of the Trust of an Arranged Marriage. Remember that in the Abraham narrative of Genesis, everything is about trusting the Promise. God found a couple already advanced in age and promised to bless their lives, Promising to give to them a Name and a Land and Children whose lives are a blessing from God. Time transpired, and the woman conceived and bore a child, an only child, he grew and matured, and the Promise of a Name and Land and Children as a Blessing, was passed to Isaac. The Mother died, and the question became, where is the woman worthy to continue as the new Sarah, where is the wife of Abraham's Heir, who will be the mother of God's Promise?

There is this unnamed servant who goes at the Command of Abraham, searching to fulfill the Promise. He may have thought the clouds would part and a shaft of sunlight would illumine her, that birds would sing and flowers bloom. But instead, the unnamed servant himself humbly offered a prayer to God. “LORD, May the one of Your choosing be gracious and generous, offering hospitality.” He sits beside a well in the heat of the afternoon and asks for a cup of cold water. She hears and responds in faith. Not only does she get it for him, she provides for his animals as well. What is miraculous in this story, is not trumpet blasts, not magic incantations, but rather very subtly in the text, the Bible describes that an angel has led them. How often we perceive circumstance, we see development of our accomplishments... Faith is naming the presence of God in all things. Would that we could respond to life as an affirmation!

Throughout the Bible there is recognition of covenant, commitment, loyalty and fidelity, honesty and integrity, compassion and love, but this passage also names a frequent Biblical Image of being Led. Just as the Psalms describe “You lead me beside still waters, You lead me in paths of righteousness,” as the Abraham narrative had told of Sarah and Abraham being Led, so also later with Moses and the people being Led through the wilderness for 40 years, here Rebekah is Led to Isaac. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!

The Love Story of Isaac and Rebekah is marvelous because their's is at the same time both the Story of Love at First Sight and an Arranged Marriage. One of the questions we ask of those getting married, is “How did you decide you were ready to be Married?” Not how did you meet. Not why is he perfect. But the realization, that while often others have not been ready, there does come a time in our lives when we want to be married. Years ago, in another congregation, there was couple who had had an arranged marriage. Until their wedding night, they had never seen one another face to face. Their description was that they were ready to be married. They trusted their family to find someone for them. And over a lifetime, you learn to love, to make accommodations and to be husband and wife to one another. Rebekah looked down over the Valley, as Isaac lifted his view, and they saw one another. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!

Throughout the last two decades, those who have led us as a Nation, both Leaders of the Church and Leaders of our Governments, have been accused of abuses. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, neighboring priests and pastors, all have been given great responsibility, and are rightly revered for their accomplishments. But each has also had their dark side. As stories of abuse have come, they often felt like a Neighbor having Cancer. We recognize it as horrible, we bake a cake, or drop off flowers, but we do not allow it to affect us, this is not our problem, once we sent the card, or delivered the flowers it was not ours anymore. Then my father died and a man contacted the family to say our father was his father. His story was that this had happened between my father's marriages, lonely people comforting each other. But, the very idea was offensive, it undermined all we knew all we believed about the one we loved most. What is given to us is the greatest trust, we are to be present in the fullness of life, and in the midst to name miracles, to witness to the presence of God. As we do, we recognize human frailty and vulnerability, power corrupting, rather than affirmations of love.

This Sacrament we have shared is not about everyone closing their eyes as the priest renames what we have known as common bread and juice is now holy and miraculously different. This Sacrament we have shared is that in the hard stuff of life, we name and claim that there is brokenness, and that there is a cup of hope, there is forgiveness, as refreshing as being offered a cup of cold water. We pray God will use us for generosity and graciousness, offering hospitality to those we do not know, that through our lives God's angels may call others to believe and respond.

June 26, 2011, "God of Contradictions"

2011-06-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

Genesis 22:1-14
Matthew 10:40-42
“Whoever welcome you, welcome's me” is a statement about identity, as our personalities are constantly in flux. One moment you are the children of your parents, and by moving a tassel from one side of your cap to the other you go from being a High School student to a Graduate. You place a ring upon one another's finger and you are married. You bring a baby home from the hospital lay them on the bed and suddenly you are expected to be a mother or father.
Tom, I have heard describe, that you had no formal training in Choral Conducting, yet after 28 years, you have become our Conductor.
Mary has not chosen to join the Church, yet brought her sons for Confirmation, and has cared for and nurtured our gardens, replanting our roses. Knowing the blood, membership can cost and the thorns of those roses, you are claimed.
The PRAXIS of our lives defines who and what we are and what we truly believe.

I have a classmate on faculty at Yale Divinity School who has been researching a book on how Peace actually develops regardless of Governmental Peace Processes. She travelled through Northern Ireland, and entering a Presbyterian Church on Sunday morning was greeted by two women greeters. They began conversation with her, and every guest who entered, which while it came across as welcoming, quickly differentiated between whether the guests appeared by their name and the people they knew, to be Catholic or Protestant. The Protestants were welcomed and seated, the Catholics were encouraged to go to another Church down the lane. I contented myself that this was a story from decades ago, but she said no, it is the practice today. By fear, by experience of conflict, people find ways to test and to risk.

It is ironic that the Prayer which Jesus Taught, that Prayer we all recite whether Catholic or Protestant emphasizes the phrase “LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION”, when part of the nature of God is that God's Commands Test the Conditions of our Faith. Calvin and Luther agreed that what this well known story of Abraham and Isaac describes is that GOD's PROMISE & GOD's COMMAND contradict!
Further, Luther described that this is where Faith is superior to Human Reason and Philosophy, because logic and reason can only prove one thing or another, and faith wrestles with the contradictions. The only faithful response to God's Command could be “YES LORD”, yet sacrificing Isaac in addition to being abhorrent is a sacrifice of the realization of the promise, making it a only a promise.

Decades before, God had called Abram and his partner to leave home and everything they had known, to follow God's Command, with the promise that being faithful, they would be given a Great Name, a Great Land, and become the parents of new tribes of peoples. But for decades this older couple had been nomads, wanderers, they lived with only the UnFulfilled Promise. Eventually, by using others, Sarah is able to get a child for Abraham, by having her slave impregnated, who as a slave belonging to her as property, made the child Sarah's. Then Sarah conceived and bore Isaac, and being jealous that the other son was born first, had Ishmael and his mother Hagar banished.The test of this Passage is: now that Abraham possesses fulfillment of the promise, now that he has everything he ever wanted, will he follow God's Command even to sacrifice the fulfillment of the promise?

We said earlier that it was ironic the Lord's Prayer emphasizes “Lead Us Not Into Temptation” because part of the nature of God is to Test the conditions of our faith... But as much as God is Tempter and Tester, the Judge, the Commander; God is also the Provider, the Answer to our prayers, the Promise. Following God's Command, Abraham takes Isaac up the Mountain, and treats him as Sacrifice. It is important to realize that from this point forward, Abraham having taken their son, Sarah and Abraham never again speak. Having treated his son, not as a human being, not as Promise and gift of God, but as a thing, a Sacrifice to be slaughtered, Isaac and Abraham never again speak face to face. But up on the Mountain when Abraham follows God's command, when Abraham demonstrates that he so believes in God's Command that he is willing to give back the fulfillment as only a Promise again, suddenly it is revealed to them that there is a Ram caught in the thicket, a ram provided by God to be the Sacrifice.

The translation here, that God “provided” is unusual, as the literal word “ra-ah” means “to See”, but Karl Barth the great Theologian of the 1920s and our own Karlene Miller's Uncle, made the connection from Hebrew to Latin of “pro-video” meaning “TO SEE TO”, and thus from pro-video, we get the word provide. Barth uses this text as basis for his whole doctrine of “PROVIDENCE”, the Radical Affirmation that God knows all things good for us, and while there is fate, while there is evil, there is no other source of good in the world other than God.

We struggle, that God tests us, could lead us into temptations we do not want to face, but we take for granted that God does provide. This morning's Scriptures are not so much about the Testing of Abraham or even about our identity, as “Realization of Who God is”, and who God is in each of our lives. Because before we are ready to say the words, God is already part of our existence.

There is a tension in our lives, that as much as we try to consciously choose who we will be, where we go to school, what we will believe, as much control as we exercise over our lives, periodically God does does test us, with circumstance and with opportunities to choose the Good. The question is not only how we respond, but whether we acknowledge that God may be acting through us to one another? I was visiting with one of our members the other day, who said something to the effect of “I am not certain I am a Christian. I know Jesus to have been a real man, the best that ever lived, who as Lord and Savior brought me to God. But in my heart I worship God and him only.”
To which I can only affirm:
Jesus said “Whoever welcomes You, welcomes me, and welcomes the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward.
One who receives another, who is right with God because they are, shall receive righteousness.
And who ever is compassionate and charitable and caring in their lives, even giving a cup of cold water to one who is a child of God, truly I say, they shall not lose their reward.”

"Ever New Beginnings" June 19, 2011 Trinity Sunday

2011-06-19T15:39:00.000-07:00

Genesis 1:1 - 2:3
Matthew 28: 16-20
Every story growing up seemed to begin differently, “Once upon a time,” “In the Beginning,” “Long, long ago, in a far distant land, in a different galaxy,” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Yet, at the end of the story, all the plots were reconciled, all the characters cared for, “And they lived happily ever after,” or as in a Shakespearean drama, everyone save the narrator lay dead, and there was the postscript “The End.” But in every way, the Bible is a curiosity, just a little bit different. Every ending seems to be an Ever New Beginning. “And there was evening and there was morning.” Jesus, the Savior, the Rabbi and Teacher, was arrested and put to death, his body buried, on the third day he rose from the dead, led the Disciples to Galilee of the Gentiles and Commissioned that they baptize and teach in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We are a people, whose imaginations are locked in a fixed reality. For the last few hundred years, we have known the dimensions of everything that exists in length and height and width, by breadth and depth, even in order from beginning to end. Our greatest desire seemed to be to quantify, to qualify, to order and control life itself. But we now live in a New Beginning, where in addition to what is tangible IS what is Virtual. Where in addition to speaking words and writing language, we blog and text, where we can share all our thoughts. Our histories are written of persons like Paul Revere, who rode through Village and Town calling “To Arms to Arms, the British are Coming.” Of underground groups working together, communicating by code. In the last several months we have been witness to Revolutions across the Middle east, orchestrated and a critical mass accomplished by Facebook and Twitter. A generation ago, we were taught The Scientific Method as absolute, that the goal of education, the whole purpose of knowledge was to prove, to know, to have certainty. In the early 1980s two students working on their degrees in Education came to the realization that nothing could ever be proven. There was always exception to the rule, bits of evidence that began new theories. All we can know is our experience, and how that reality creates new beginnings for others.

In Confirmation Class, the minister attempted to explain the Trinity that God was the Creator. Jesus was the Redeemer, the Savior, who was born and lived and died and rose again 2000 years ago. Which meant that the Holy Spirit is God with us today. As if these were three separate historically bound Gods or God at different ages. But what if Creation is not fixed and static and controlled? What if God is continuing to Create ever new ideas, ever new dimensions to reality, today? What if Jesus were not only that one man born in Bethlehem in the time of the Caesars, but present in redemption, offering hope throughout human history? What if Genesis is not so much about HOW Creation Began, or WHY, but instead an affirmation of WHO Created?

There are so many delightful elements to this passage of Genesis! First, the Ordering, both that beginnings arise out of what has been before, not destroying so much as providing balance. Light does not destroy the darkness, Dry land does not replace the water, what is created creates a new beginning with a new balance. But also, that everything, all of creation from light and darkness, to microscopic organisms and sea monsters, God and humanity, ALL are inter-related in this creation. No one element can be removed without effecting everything else. The first half of Creation is about creating a HABITAT, a place of being. The Second half involves filling that Habitat with INHABITANTS and how they shall procreate and replicate and continue throughout time.

What is Fascinating about this narrative, is that thousands and thousands of years before Darwin, before Sir Isaac Newton, before Plato and Aristotle, the Ancient Believers got the Order of Evolutionary Creation! Prior to there being human beings, there had to have been other mammals, and before these birds and fish and organisms in the waters. Before Vertebrates and Invertebrates there had to have been plants and for plants there needed to be soil in balance with water, there needed to be an atmosphere, for lack of a better word a firmament (foundations that hold up what is out there) and that light was created out of the dark and void. SO before anything else, do we believe that life as complicated and complex as this creation, do we believe that life began as an accidental cataclysm of combustible gases? Or, do we believe that greater than anything we can know, before anything we can imagine, that there is God wanting us to exist?

Language, be it that “God Said Let There Be,” or the finest compilation of words and idioms, grammar and poetry, or the texting of letters and numerics to instantly express our thoughts inspiring revolutions, language continually opens up new beginnings. In the Beginning, the Spirit is described as BROODING OVER THE FACE OF THE DEEP. Do we understand this to mean that God was introspective, moody, searching the Depths of Chaos, Expectantly Waiting, all of which are words describing closure, focus, going more and more intense? But the same phrase which is translated as BROODING can also mean SWEPT as like a broom that pushes and moves, gathering together, while also scattering beyond.

A more basic and volatile argument than between Creationists and Evolutionists, has been over translation of the very first word of Creation. In Hebrew the phrase can be translated either “IN THE BEGINNING” or “WHEN GOD BEGAN TO CREATE”, which suggests that before time and space, God may have done something else. Which then also establishes that everything we know and have experienced is simply foundation for what is to come in Ever New Beginnings.

The end of the Gospel of Matthew is delightful. Earlier, Jesus had already SENT OUT the Disciples with power to Preach, to Heal, to Pray, to Accomplish Miracles. What happens in Matthew after the resurrection, is that The Teacher Commissions the Disciples to go and Teach. Rather than possessing some new power or understanding, rather than having mastered knowledge and being graduated to be experts, Jesus sends the disciples out as INTERNS. Interns have a wealth of knowledge and need to experience, need to ask questions, need to make applications of what they know, the miracles they have seen and heard done to their lives.

How different would our faith and understanding of life be, if the Canon of Scripture were not arranged from Genesis to Exodus to Kings to Prophets to Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Epistles to Revelation, but Instead Began with The Parables of WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR and REDEEMING THE LOST, Commissioning the INTERNS to Go and Teach and Learn and Baptize, that eventually led to EVER NEW BEGINNINGS?

The World, even our membership seem to have discounted what we believe/ who we are as believers, as if the Church were a static institution, a known quantity, with established answers as opposed to fresh experience and questions. I am about as thoroughly learned as a pastor can be having gone on for seven years of education after College Graduation, my father and mother were also were Seminary trained Presbyterians, and their fathers and mothers were Presbyterians. Yet, a few years ago, we experienced something I had never seen before. There was a woman who was an active leader in the Church, an ordained Elder, Chair of our Missions. Her husband was a man who had retired from Professional life, who had grown up in Edinburgh and though he now wanted to be had never been Baptized. We met together over several weeks, the morning we were to share the Sacrament, he walked up this aisle, and having recited the phrases we did this morning “We Baptize in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”, we asked “Who is Your Lord and Savior?” And rather than giving the established Answer, he stopped and you could see from his expression he was weighing the possibilities, thinking through what do I believe, who is the greatest authority in my life, do I have a Lord and Savior, and having thought about the answer, he replied “GOD!” I am not certain I can describe what witnessing that has meant as it created ever new beginnings of others being baptized.

"Would that the Lord Would", June 12, 2011

2011-06-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

Numbers 11:24-30
Acts 2:1-21
REMEMBER this day. Not because of some terrorist attack, or cataclysm of the Stock Market. Remember this day. Not because of some great birth, or some tragic loss. Remember this day! Because in about seven to nine months, we will be whining and complaining about the cold and snow, and many will have forgot that we had a week last June when the temperatures in CNY were at 100 and we cried out that it be cooler. The great difficulty is that God has No Modulation. Faith in God cannot be controlled. There is evidence God heard the people's cry and responded. There is evidence of God setting the people free. God dispersed the people of God to the ends of the earth. God became human, demonstrating what it is to be neighbor to one another, using neighbor as a verb-form of how to live/act and the human response was “But which neighbors? Who is my neighbor?” God is an All or Nothing. We cannot be devoted to God and also have other equal priorities. Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, Mary could not be a little bit pregnant, there was only barrenness, or being filled with the holy spirit.

There are those who read the Bible, self-assured that every passage has a particular answer, and all we need do is to be taught to have the proper questions when reading, to have the right answers given to us. But the beauty of Scripture, like a painting of one of the Great Masters, is that beholding the story, we glimpse minor stories in the crowd as well. The Book of Numbers describes the Wilderness Wanderings, as the escaped Slaves from Egypt are multiplied to become a great Nation. Numbers is the personal revelation of Moses, being changed from the Shepherd of his Father-in-law's flocks into the Archetype of Leader, who was Prophet and spokesperson for God, recipient of the Commandments, the leader of the Nation of Israel, who guided the people of God for 40 years, guided them from Slavery and Oppression to the Promised land. Here in the 11th Chapter, there is description of the miracle food of the Wilderness: MANNA. Manna was gritty and seed like, the size of coriander seed, and the consistency of gum resin, but dried it could be ground like flour, Manna was naturally filled with protein and nutrients. What Manna truly was, know one knows, for it was the food of the wilderness.

Like flour, manna could be made into pancakes and tortillas, doughnuts, and bread, cakes and pie crusts. Manna was the ubiquitous food that could become anything, and used to hold or compliment any meal... but therein was the difficulty, because there were no other foods. Manna was like eating Hotdog buns, without the hotdog. Like a multi-layer cake without icing, a piecrust without filling, a tortilla with nothing inside. So it was that the people were not satisfied and complained of wanting more, wanting meat, where's the beef. Moses heard their complaints and whining, and Moses did some complaining of his own. Being alone as Leader was no fun. The responsibilities were more than any one person could do. In addition to the expectations of the Job, there were people's other expectations, and his expectations of himself. Certainly there was with him Moses' brother Aaron, the first priest, but the last time Aaron was left alone to lead, there was that incident with the golden calf and idol worship. There was Moses' and Aaron's sister Miriam, but she had a rather vicious side, watching from the riverbank without saying a word as Baby Moses floated down the river Nile, dancing and singing over the dead bodies of Pharaoh and the Egyptians and their horses, the morning after the Red Sea. Pentecost emphasizes that as a people of faith none of us can be that community alone. No one of us can have faith for a lifetime, can change the world, can cope with the loneliness of life, alone.

The great difficulty is that God has no modulation, faith is an all or nothing proposition, where if we choose to believe in God, then God must be allowed to be God and we cannot try to be God ourselves. Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, Mary found they could not be a little bit pregnant. We had over 200 inches of snow, an accumulation approaching 20 feet and many of us complained wanting warmth, wanting sun light, wanting an end to snow. Whereupon in May and June here in the northern-most climates the heat rested in the 90s and approached 100. The people of Israel complained of the lack of anything but Manna, when suddenly they found quail, not just a few birds for 20 miles in every direction, three feet deep, there was quail. Like one of the Plagues of Pharaoh suddenly they had quail until it was coming out their noses! Moses had whined about the lack of leadership, the need to have others to share responsibility with; and at God's command he appointed 70 elders who went out to the Tent of Meeting to receive the Holy Spirit, but Eldad and Medad who had not gone out to the Tent but remained in the Village received the Spirit as well. Like quail 3 feet deep, like 100 degrees in the Spring, Moses recognizes God's gift of leadership cannot be controlled, and this is not an attack on his authority, but rather “WOULD THAT GOD WOULD APPOINT THE WHOLE COMMUNITY TO BE PROPHETS TOGETHER.”

We are very blessed as the Church in this place this day. We have one of the most gifted Sessions and Board of Deacons, any Church has ever known. This Church has continually had strong leadership, the distinction of this moment is that Session and Deacons each seem to recognize the gifts each possess and the enormous responsibilities of faith. In many ways, the tasks before the Church today are as monumental as any we have faced. No longer do we need to raise millions of dollars. No longer do we need to be displaced, with offices in the narthex and dust everywhere, because of renovations. But as a Church, we have invited and welcomed and broadened the Church, now needing to deepen commitment, to challenge involvement to accept the all or nothing of God.

"Returning to Return", June 5, 2011

2011-06-05T05:56:00.000-07:00

Acts 1: 1-14
Ephesians 1: 15-23
What do we believe? Of all the elements of faith, this is the one that gives rational people fits. We can explain away, how God created all Creation in seven days, speculating that as time was not yet created, there were more than 24 hours/ day, and as we have wished more than 60 minutes in an hour. We can conceive how Moses and the Israelites escaped through the Red Sea and survived for 40 years on Manna in the wilderness; how the blowing trumpets and prayer could bring down a City's walls.
We can even imagine that because God So Loved the world, that Almighty, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Ubiquitous God could take off divinity to be INCARNATE in Jesus Christ. We can listen to all the miracle stories, including the resurrection from death upon the Cross to life ever-lasting. For the last 40 days, we have read of his appearance and teaching the disciples after the resurrection of Easter morn, with proof of the resurrection in that he broke bread, cooked and ate fish with them, and they physically had touched his wounds and suffering. But that Jesus' body then stepped upon a cloud and flew into heaven, takes a suspension of reality most of us have difficulty understanding.

Faith is not about understanding HOW, unpacking those realities is a matter of science and physics. Faith gets at THE WHY of what else goes on in life. When a good friend develops dementia, we can hear explanations about the quantity of Seratonin and Neoponephran in the brain. When a loved one dies, we can have an autopsy done to determine causes of death, and how often we abuse ourselves questioning what we could have done to prevent this. But these do not address the hole and void we feel, at their being gone. Just as when a couple fall in love, we can interpret how differing experiences and stimuli were right to bring these two together at precisely this moment in their lives, but that does not explain love. All these do not address the WHY of the meaning of life.

To every person, there come points of realization, that as much as we try to control our lives, as often as we inadvertently attempt to make every circumstance about ourselves, there are limits to our control and influence, and we know there must be, has got to be, something greater than we ourselves. Whether the intricate complexity of the universe' intelligent design; the humility of another's compassion; or awe at the mystery of birth, with the beauty of cuticles and eyelashes; or simply the need for companionship in the dark nights of our souls, we need God. Not physical idols created by our hands, not gods of war, gods of love and gods of mountaintops, but need of God who is above all and in all, the source and judge of all life, who cares about each of us. Even more, that nothing in life, not Angels, Governments, or Armies, not Economies or Quarantines, not even death, nothing can separate us from the love of God, which was demonstrated for us in Jesus Christ! But as proof of his humanity, Jesus' body died and rose again.

The Ascension settles three things for us.
First, foremost, that all that Jesus experienced, knew in life and death and resurrection is not lost, gone. Generations afterward, we have the words of Lincoln; we possess the thought of our Nation's Founding Fathers, and the purpose of the Supreme Court is to interpret and apply their expressed intent in the Constitution to differing circumstance today; we possess the words of Shakespeare and every actor and director find ways to make the words come alive differently. However, the Ascension is faith that Jesus Christ is alive, able to feel, to suffer, to know. Not interpreted and applied, but that the same Jesus lives. Second, that the Messiah sits at the right hand of God. God may be able to be at all places at all times, the Holy Spirit is able to be felt and change the lives of people everywhere, but Jesus had a physical body, which atoned for our sin, which is right in front of God. Is there anything, in all of life, that God cannot forgive, seeing the witness of Christ continually before God's face?
He stepped upon a cloud and floated, we cannot explain, except that as Christ came from God, he returned to God, that he can return at any point in our lives, in our suffering or in our love, there will always be forgiveness.

What the Ascension does for us, is to allow us to believe spiritually, theologically, to think not only with our rational minds, but our relational selves as well. The Enlightenment is less than 500 years old, described as an experiment, to attempt to describe and to know the rules governing the natural world. But humanity knew of life long before the Enlightenment, before Descartes and Sir Francis Bacon, before Ben Franklin, before Isaac Newton. Somehow, we have come to believe that life was an either/or proposition; either we can believe in Natural Law and Natural Order, or we can believe in things spiritual. But as much as we have proven, as much as we can know, there are always exceptions to every rule.

The Letter to the Ephesians is delightful for so many reasons, chief among them, that it begins: “I have heard of your faith in the Lord and your love toward all the saints.” There is a difference between publicity and reputation. Publicity are those things we put forth about ourselves, for others to know. I have even had those, who so desired to control how people thought of them, that they left word for what was to be said at their funeral after they were dead. Part of the joy of celebrating weddings is working with couples listening to what they want their marriages to be. Reputation is how others describe us, what happens outside of our ability to control.

Yesterday, it poured rain, and the bride fretted about how to control the heavens. There was also a wedding across the street, and how to orchestrate parking. Yet, at the appointed hour, everyone came together, and as the bride stood with her groom, the two year old flower girl cheered “YEA!” And in that their day was also the anniversary of their parents' wedding, we had the parents stand and renew their vows as well. One of my favorite memories of any wedding, was the one where at the end of the wedding, I raised my hand for the Blessing of the Couple and the bride seeing my arm in the air, High Fived the minister. There is a spontaneity to life itself, far beyond our ability to explain, to document, to plan or to control. Far more important than what publicity we tell others about ourselves, are how we are known.

It would be easy for us as a congregation to publicize that in addition to our annual budget which designates 15% for Mission, we have created and partnered with others to create non-profit corporations funding a Clinic in Sudan, an affordable Seniors' Residence and Food Pantry, and so many other causes locally that together generate 4 times as much being given to Charitable Causes as we spend upon ourselves. But giving up CONTROL and trusting the Spirit, it is far better to hear others describe, “When my mother died, the church were there for her and for our family.” “When my daughter married, and her sister wanted her children baptized, the church found ways to make their dreams come true.” When the clinic was built, “Miracles took place” the day we discovered the well had run dry, a well driller came to a wedding in the village. In the past 8 out of 10 babies died, 50% of mothers in labor and delivery, and today infant and maternal death is seen as rare and preventable. Presbyterians in Central New York, particularly people from Skaneateles, are not usually known for our faith in miracles; but such experiences have changed us... empowering us to look at life and at one another differently, that this Reality is God's creation. That there is Forgiveness. That in addition to Forgiveness and making amends, there can be true Redemption. That in addition to our individual relationships with God, we also have a communion among ourselves, that as we are forgiven we are changed and brought closer to God, we also are brought closer to one another in Christ's love.

Each of the Four Gospels tell the events of Jesus' Life, Teachings and Ministry in slightly different order. I have always thought that the conclusion of the Road to Emmaus actually belongs with the Ascension. That he took bread and giving thanks to God, broke it, and their eyes were open but now they saw him in many other places in life.

"Naked Revelation", May 29, 2011

2011-05-29T09:08:00.000-07:00

John 21:1-9
Acts 17:22-34
When Simon Peter heard that it was the LORD, he PUT ON SOME CLOTHES for he was NAKED, and jumped into the sea. There are portions of the Scriptures which make reason self-apparent, Noah saw that it had rained for 40 Nights and 40 Days, so prayed! Jesus looked out upon the crowds and saw that they were hungry so fed them. But this, this is idiotic! Any parent who has taken a toddler to Diaper-Dippers in the Pool knows that once cloth gets wet it sinks like a stone. High school swimmers shave their leg and arm hair, even their heads, to have less friction and absorbency in the water. So why What is the Scriptures trying to tell us, that Simon Peter heard that it was the LORD, he PUT ON SOME CLOTHES for he was NAKED, in order to swim to shore?

The other parts of this narrative seem to follow such clear logic and reason. Days after the resurrection, Simon Peter was feeling depressed and despondent, so wanted something familiar, a place to think, and he went fishing. Understanding that Peter was depressed and despondent, the other disciples did not allow him to go alone but said “We are going too.” How often, when someone dies, we all rally round, we are there for the burial and the weeks immediately after, but we cannot live in that hyper-vigilance forever, and it is at those times, when after the resurrection has happened that life and faith and all relationships become hard.

There was a family, whose husband/father died, and afterward the wife and her adult daughter were out to dinner, when the mother looked around and declared “I can tell every person in this restaurant, by whether they are married or dating!” The daughter was slightly embarrassed, but also curious, and asked “How?” To which her mother said, “Those who are dating are asking questions and talking together, the married couples are silent.” and after a pause, she said “I miss sharing the silence with your father.”

Being stripped down for work, catching nothing and having Jesus declare “Throw your nets on the other side”, even coming ashore to have Jesus walk along beside Peter saying “Feed my sheep”, all is reasonable and follows logic, so why, why when Simon Peter heard that it was the LORD, did he PUT ON SOME CLOTHES for he was NAKED to jump into the Sea? Why not Skinnydip, and swim to shore? There must be something about putting on clothes to swim we do not yet understand.

Leaving Peter naked in the boat, or clothed and swimming to shore,... We turn to Paul, who at this point in Acts has made his way to Athens, to the Areopagus, the center of Logic and Reason, of Socrates and Plato and Philosophy.Throughout human history, there has been a dichotomy, between thought and spirit, between philosophy and religion, between what can be proven by logic and reason, and by what defies logic and must be accepted on faith, adhered to as Covenant or LAW. Typical of discussions of Religion and Politics, Paul quickly gets into a series of arguments. Being a people who love debate, they have Paul come to the Square, where he can explain himself and this new means of knowing.

So often today, we begin as adversaries, with a binomial understanding that the answer must be either 1 or Zero, Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Liberal. There is no middle ground, no grey area, all who are not for us, must surely be against us, we know one another's trigger and immediately go for the jugular. Yet this is not where Paul begins. In trying to meet people where they are, he starts out, “I perceive you are a people who are SEARCHING for MEANING, for UNDERSTANDING.” As I wandered about, I saw idols to everything in your creation, statues to the Greek Gods and statues to the Gods of Rome, to Music, to Love, to Art, to War, to Medicine, even a Statue to the Unknown. He identifies with the Athenians in their quest to understand, to believe and know with certainty and where that certainty is limited to believe in what is beyond our grasp. Are there any among us who have never stood in awe of what is beyond our ability to control? How a newborn infant has cuticles and eye lashes? How from the moment of their birth they know their mother's and father's voices, and how amidst of crowd, a parent can identify their own child's cry? Have you never sat in the presence of one who is dying, and known the peace and wonder of that acceptance. Not the warring struggle against entering into that long goodnight, but the peace of the ages, the comfort of knowing you are part of something far larger than yourself, part of all creation.

Paul's argument then shifts from Searching and Seeking after what is beyond our grasp, to what is known all around us. As powerful as are the greatest armies of war, there is a greater destructive force in Earthquake, Fire and Tornado. Have you ever waded into the waters and realized how small we are, how insignificant? How alive the water of moving creek-bed and lake, even the smell of living earth? Have you ever walked in the woods and in that absolute quiet, known you were not alone? Have you stared up at the heavens losing track of the sheer number of stars, each a universe unto itself? Have you seen a comet, or a storm of dying stars? Have you witnessed the divinity of a rainbow, or the aurora borealis dance in the northern sky?

Having met the philosophers of Greece in Seeking and Searching after what is beyond knowing; having shared in what we do know and the divinity of life all around us; Paul ratchets the argument one deeper. For while the three year old may be able to tell us the mystery that “God is in The Rainbow”; or the hunter may be able to identify with God's Sanctuary that is a mountaintop; Christian faith is about more than what we feel, see and hear and touch and taste; more than what human minds can ever know or reason to be unknowable; Christian Faith is grounded in the reality that the Creator and Judge, this unknowable GOD loves us, loves us so much as to become one with us in life and death, demonstrating that death does not part us from God, not ever. At this point, many scoffed, because faith is illogical and unreasonable. But where he did not convince all the world, Paul's witness, his own story of having been a thug, a gang member who terrorized and beat those who stood up to him, who one day was brought to his knees by the love of God, his blindness, his weakness, his vulnerability became Paul's greatest strength of faith, his story touched the lives of individual believers.

Maybe that is it! NOT that Simon Peter PUT ON SOME CLOTHES to jump into the Sea, but that finally Simon Peter who always leapt at having the answer who wanted to demonstrate his knowledge and his wisdom, and his control, in that morning after a long night of catching nothing, FINALLY saw what ADAM and EVE had first witnessed, that in their humanity, in their sin, they were NAKED before the LORD. Before he could stand before the Lord, before he could leap to swim to get to him, Peter KNEW HE WAS NAKED and put on some clothes.

Why the number 153 FISH? Some scholars claim there is relevance in abstract numerology. That if you multiply 15 times 10 and cube the number, numbers which added together equal 153, but given these mathematic formula you arrive at the number of days until the end of time. But then you would also need to add the 5 fish caught in Peter's clothing that represent another five months or else the date would be in error!

When Simon Peter reached the shore, Jesus had a charcoal fire burning. When we were younger, we would go swimming and afterward, chilled to the bone would stand beside a roaring fire to dry out the cold wetness. Have you ever? And the warmth of the fire, the crackling and popping of the flames, the smell of smoke reminds you of other fires. The last time, Simon Peter was recorded as being beside a fire was the night of Jesus' arrest, as first one, then another and finally a third asked: “Did you know him? Are you one of them? Are you one of his disciples because you are a Galilean?” and Peter had denied Jesus three times. Walking along the shore, clothed in heavy wet coverings, as Jesus asked of Peter three times “Do You LOVE Me?” is re-enactment of the worst sins of his life, but it is no longer the isolation and loneliness of night, it is the dawn and this time, three times, he gets it right!
Sometimes in order to witness a revelation, the truth must be naked right before our eyes. To some it will appear as non-sense, defying their binary sense of either you are a 1 or a Zero. To some the revelation will be illogical. Some will try to dress it up and hide the truth. But in our experiences, in our relationships of life, we know more than SEARCHING, and more even than the divinity of RAINBOWS, we know the FORGIVENESS and love of God.

There is a Post-Script in the Gospel of John, a PS. After covering himself, after swimming to shore, after standing beside the fire, after Jesus asking for his Confession of Faith Three Times, Simon Peter looks over his shoulder and asks “So what about him?” Peter, like Jesus, and Stephen, and so many others, died as Martyrs, dying for what they believed in. What about those who simply Love, and live their faith without dying for it? To which, Jesus responds “What is that to you? Follow me!” I have to believe that there are those who by their death witness what they believed. Soldiers on the battle field. Politicians who gave their life to public service. The women and men who brought down the plane in a field rather than allowing a fourth target to be taken by terrorists. Martin Luther King Jr. There are also among us, those who by the living of their lives have demonstrated what it is to live what we believe. I fondly recall my father describing the Ordained ministry, as a vocation where you work every holiday and weekend, and get phone calls at home, there is no such thing as a day-off. But that at weddings and births and deaths, we are privileged to be there. I would add to this, and to Paul's testimony to Illogic at the Areopagus, that faith can be standing alone when people call you all manner of different names, when they sue you, and when you have to stand alone even against those whom you have called friend; but that at times we are able to see the lost come home, the prodigal return, and we create a new relationship in the silence of being together, feeding the lambs.

"Our Parents' House", May 22, 2011

2011-05-22T04:55:00.000-07:00

John 14:1-14
Acts 6:8-7:6 & 7:35-60
Each of us have an image of our Parents' House, our ancestral home. For some, it was that place we longed to leave, to grow up/ away from. To get out on our own, to explore freedoms and diversity, without having to be responsible to sisters, brothers, parents, neighbors, and expectations. To others, our Parents' House was where we belonged and still long to return. As one of our earliest and most redundant set of memories, our Parent's House is hardwired into us with accompanying rooms, smells and music. Our Parents' Room, always neat with the bed made/the scent of Face Powder and Old Spice, the sound of Easy Listening Music. The Baby's room with the smells of Baby Powder and Diaper Pails, the sound of tinkling Lullabies. Sisters' room with Noxema and Chanel #5 and Blondie, or PINK. Older Brothers' with the smell of Sneakers and Right Guard, tripping over piles of clothes and Heavy Metal Music. And the Eldest sibling's room in the basement, that each of the others longed to possess; only as adults to revisit, wondering why a damp basement, with poor lighting, the neon light of a Fish tank, the constant squeek of a hamster wheel and the sounds of the Washer and Dryer, were so enticing? In our Parents' House there was a place for each of us, where we knew we had always belonged. Our Home.

Our family moved several times, so the lakefront home we lived in every summer was the House that stayed with us over time. There was no television, only One bathroom, so amongst all the swimming, one dip in the lake each day was with soap and shampoo. We played games and read books and talked beneath the stars. Family and friends would each come to our Parents' House for a week at a time. Older siblings' groups of friends loved visiting so much, that after the brother had gone to California, the group of friends still came without him. Often times, it seemed we entertained so many guests, that half the family waved goodbye to one group, while the other half greeted those arriving. Lots of family remembrances about living in our Parents' House with many rooms, one of which was our place. There was one rule, we all knew implicitly without it ever being spoken, that in front of guests, there could be No fighting. I do not know if it was the fear that without television, and only one bathroom, who knew what the parents might threaten to take away if we misbehaved; but there was understanding that shame would be brought on the whole family if we fought in front of others.

That is how this passage from Acts begins, with a dispute between family members, in front of Others. In these early years, the number of new disciples had grown with enthusiasm, both Greek and Hebrew speaking were part of the body of Christ, as Peter had described in his Sermon, no longer are their differences between Jew and Gentile, Slave and Free, Parthians, Medes, Cretans and residents of Mesopotamia. The Christian community had continued meeting at the Jewish places of worship and feasting, because the disciples had all been Jewish and had seen no reason to leave what was familiar. Explicit throughout Luke and Acts, is that being part of Christ requires different behavior from us, than is routine among Others in the world. Luke is the evangelist who gave us the story of the GOOD SAMARITAN. Throughout this continuation of the Gospel, when confronted with those we differ, when confronted with those we disagree, our responsibility is NOT to try to stone them to death, not to beat them into submission, not to try to win, not even to outlast their endurance, but rather to demonstrate the kindness of the Samaritan who though hated by others acts in compassion.

In this description, the Greek Speaking and the Hebrew Speaking Christians and all the Others, act as creatures do when concerned with their survival. The Greek speaking Christians were frustrated that the Disciples were not providing as much pastoral care to their widows and orphans, as to the Hebrew speaking Christians. In the world, in school, among neighbors, at work, affinity groups/cliques routinely form, that is natural. But when different groups are treated differently, it is a responsibility of leadership to make certain those in need, are cared for. Consequently, in this story, the leaders accept responsibility! We do need to be doing more in Pastoral Care, particularly for the widows and orphans, spreading the Word of God rather than waiting Tables.

The pain of the ministry is that we enter seminary and seek to be ordained in order to Nurture People's Faith, to do Ministry, and most often we are involved in administration and programs and meetings. I understand this and have learned to be quite adept at administration, programs, ministry and leadership, but if you ask a pastor what they long to do, it is to minister; if you ask a preacher, it is to preach. The conclusion of the disciples is to have the community elect additional leaders to serve as Deacons, to do what ever is necessary for the Disciples to fulfill the Word of God, which includes caring for all the community in pastoral care.

Luke's point is that this is “leadership”, this is taking responsibility for a problem and ensuring basic pastoral care occurs. But all that is prelude. For as soon as Stephen is ordained he is bated and accused as having blasphemed against God and the Law. When asked for a defense, Stephen provides one of the most eloquent and thorough recitations of the history of the people of God seeking to make themselves God, seeking to control God, and God seeking to love. But the people seeking to win, to dominate, the crowd took up stones to put him to death as a mob. Make no mistake about it, this is the Crucifixion being played out all over again in Acts, except that at the center is not Jesus, it is a follower of Jesus. Stephen acted as the Samaritan, who takes the abuse of others and offers healing and forgiveness.

There are probably no more problematic and divisive words spoken by Jesus than Jesus saying “No one comes to the FATHER EXCEPT BY ME”. Do we not believe in one, absolute and Sovereign God, Alpha and Omega? Had Jesus not only just stated that in my Father's House and many rooms. How do we put the two together? Pay attention to the particular words, Jesus used. He did not say “NO ONE COMES TO GOD EXCEPT BY ME”. Of all the different religions of the world, Judaism claims that we come to God by ADHERENCE TO THE LAW. Islam claims coming to God through STUDY OF THE KORAN. Buddhism one comes to God by SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT. Christianity, begins with the INCARNATION, that Jesus was God's ONLY begotten child, the only one who identified God as Father. Therefore, the only way to THE FATHER, is by Jesus. His words are not dismissive or blasphemous against other faiths, but rather that there is a place for us. Recognition that to each us, our room had no odor, and no mess, it was ours. While clothes and toys may have been in piles on the floor, everything was where we knew. It made sense to us, just as making the bed, shaving in a mirror and using Old Spice, or wearing gloves made sense to our fathers and mothers.

In our earlier description, every room had a different style of music. Music is unique to people. The question becomes how we judge, and whether we can admire and appreciate one another's choices.

The Romance Pianist: Franz Liszt was the 1800's version of a Rock Star! Liszt was flamboyant, for those over 40 he was the equivalent of Elvis and the Beatles rolled into one, for those under 40 Hannah Montana, Justin Bieber, the Cast of Glee! Liszt thundered on the piano. Women would throw their silk gloves. Women and men would faint at the passion of his music. All across Europe, his concerts were sold out. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, Liszt disappeared. It was said, he had had a break-down, his own description was that he had found God, or God had found him. His music changed radically, his lifestyle changed, he gave away all that he had. Rather than performing for sold-out amphitheaters, Franz Liszt delighted in offering piano lessons to the poor and to children. In Franz Liszt's last days he began work on a composition called “Out of the Depths”, and for days he pounded out these frenetic passages, each contrasting and tormenting the other, until gradually working themselves out in Shalom. Franz Liszt had a daughter who was married to the Anti-Semitic German Composer Wagner, who hearing his Father-in-law night after night going from frenzy and torment into calm and gentleness, is remembered as describing that Liszt had gone insane. The difficulty of any musician judging another, is which is the sane: Frenzy being resolved into Shalom; or the dominant, unrepentant , anti-Semitism of a Wagner?

Eric Clapton, arguably the greatest living rock guitarist, had a four year old son who fell from a 53 story window. Clapton took nine months off and when he returned his music had changed. The hardship had made his music softer, more powerful, and more reflective. You have perhaps heard the song he wrote about his son's death. It is a poignant song of hope:

Would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven? 

Would it be the same, if I saw you in heaven?

I must be strong and carry on,  'Cause I know I don't belong, here in heaven.

Would you hold my hand, if I saw you in heaven? 

Would you help me stand, if I saw you in heaven?

I'll find my way through night and day,  'Cause I know I just can't stay here in heaven.

Time can bring you down; time can bend your knees.  

Time can break your heart, have you begging please, begging please.

Beyond the door there's peace I'm sure,  And I know there'll be no more tears in heaven.

Like Stephen, we seek to do more than provide leadership in the community.
We seek to LOVE GOD with our whole Heart and Mind and Soul and Strength, and
to BE NEIGHBOR to one another, like the SAMARITAN, even as it means suffering for others.
For we know that this life is not all there is, Christ has gone before us, to create a PLACE FOR US, a ROOM OF OUR OWN within OUR FATHER'S HOUSE.

"Be Not Conformed to the Passions of Ignorance", May 8, 2011

2011-05-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

I Peter 1:1-2 & 13-23
Luke 24:19-35

It is Mother's Day, and it is not snowing in Central New York!
It is Mothers' Day. A time to focus on joy and love and the ones who nurtured and cared for us, baking cookies and being there for us to sort out life's problems.

Ten years ago, on a Tuesday in September, a terrorist convinced others to fly fully gassed up planes into the Center of World Trade, into the Pentagon and into The Capital Building and 3,000 people died, beginning the longest war in our history. Two weeks ago, tornados blew over the face of the Midwest and another 3,500 people were killed. One week ago yesterday, NATO forces bombed the compound of Molmar Ghaddafi and while he was not there, his son and grandchildren were killed. A week ago today, Special Forces of the United States Military entered Pakistan, landed in the compound of the one who was behind the bombing of the World Trade Center and took him out. Since Adolph Hitler, there has not been one so filled with the evil of hate, with desire to kill Americans as Osama Bin Laden, and he is now dead and buried in an untraceable grave in the chaos of the ocean depths. Moments thereafter, flash mobs took to the streets to celebrate.

All throughout this time, I have prayed what to say this morning.
Routinely we follow the Lectionary, as means of preaching the variety of the Bible, as well as all Christian Churches preaching on the same passages so that when talking with your neighbors, or when your children phone this afternoon, we all had common points of reference from the Scriptures. There is no law dictating that we have to follow the Lectionary, and at times of National or International Circumstance, we often select passages fitting to the moment.

This week, I had contemplated, that while we tend to remember Charlton Heston raising his arms as the Red Sea parted and the Israelites were set free, the Book of Exodus describes that once the Israelites had escaped and Hard-hearted Pharaoh and his Chariots pursued them, Moses let down his arms and the enemy was killed. Then Moses' sister Miriam led the people in singing and dancing over the death and destruction of those who oppressed and hated the People of God.

And in the period of the Judges, in addition to Samson and Gideon, there was a General of the Canaanites named Sisera who had killed many, and being pursued by Deborah and her army, he hid himself in the bed of a woman, who herself drove a tent peg through his temple.

For a moment, I listened to the word that came through the Prophet Jonah, who hating the Ninevites, wanting to see them destroyed, sat down to watch their decimation, and the word of God came to Jonah asking “Do you do well to be angry?”

Often believers quote the Old Testament out of context, as if there were a Law demanding an Eye for an Eye and Tooth for a Tooth, justifying revenge. When what the Scriptures actually describe is that if your neighbor has blinded your one eye, the worst you are permitted to do to him is to blind his eye. At the imagination of this evil man, sons and daughters, wives and husbands, fathers and mothers were killed, and now he too is dead.

Returning to the passages appointed by the Lectionary for this day, Two of the disciples were walking to Emmaus. Where exactly Emmaus was, or what they needed there is unclear. Like us this morning, these disciples were trying to make sense of what happened and where do we go now. For the last several years, Jesus had been their Teacher and they his disciples, and now he was gone. How can you continue to be disciples, when there is no one of whom to be a disciple? They had lost their homes and families and businesses and careers over these years. They felt the sense of personal loss watching him die on the cross, burying his remains in the tomb. Just for an afternoon they wanted to get away from it all, just for an overnight to leave our responsibilities and problems in Jerusalem while we go to Emmaus. For 10 years, we have been at war, our mothers and fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters all have fought. At the same time, the economy has changed, and many have lost businesses, homes, dreams. Perhaps Emmaus, is not so much a particular place, as a get away. The opportunity to delve into a trashy novel, to get lost in an old movie, to wander through a garden, to go away without responsibilities for a brief moment. Yet along the way, to discover that we can never go back, and our thoughts continue to try to make sense. When suddenly, we realize there is another component to the equation.

Before September 11th, we took life for granted. One of the newscasters the other day made reference to PAX AMERICANA, playing off of the Ideal of the Roman Empire, that during the time Rome ruled a citizen of Rome could go anywhere in the world in safety and security, PAX ROMANA. But eventually their eyes were opened to the needs of people where they travelled. In addition to being at war, during the last decade we have built schools and hospitals and roads, where there were none. We have left the comfort and security of our homes, and made new relationships, friendships and commitments, we otherwise never would have made. In recent months we have learned that the schools and orphanages and hospitals built by the fortunes of Oprah and Greg Mortenson's 3 Cups of Tea, have not done all the good they set out to do. But, we were motivated to care, in ways never before; and oppressed people, who never before were given the hope of education, or healthcare, or clean water, have had hope.

I love the beginning of this Letter from Peter, TO THE EXILES OF THE DISPERSION. That is who we are as believers, is it not? Dispersed individuals who believe in God, living in a Man-made world? We are the humanity of God, those spreading compassion, in a world bent on a margin of profit, a stock portfolio, technological advancement. Gird your minds, set your hope upon the grace of Christ, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, instead be holy!

Be honest for a moment, how many have wished for, coveted, wanted one of the latest and greatest technological advancements, only to have it, and discover you have no clue how to work it? While it is helpful, it requires more time of us? While it allows us to be connected, we do not have anything important to say?

I remember when my family first moved to Skaneateles, we arrived the Friday before Christmas. Which in addition to all the expectations and turmoil of the holidays and family visiting before boxes were unpacked, meant that we had multiple worship services that Sunday morning, and Monday evening was Christmas eve. And somehow in the move, my computer had crashed, with all the sermons locked inside. I quickly recreated Sunday morning's, and the Family service. But for the life of me, I could not recall the Word that was to be preached at Midnight. Desperate, I grabbed a book, titled A Cup of Christmas Tea. It described going to visit a maiden aunt in the old part of the City. There were worries about the safety of the car on the street. Worries about taking time out of a busy life. Standing on the doorstep, waiting in the weather, as you heard shuffling inside. The door opened and there were the familiar smells, and the warmth and glow as those eyes looked up at us from behind thick glasses and suddenly recognized us for who we were. And the story went on to describe spending the late afternoon together with this one who had loved us into being, who had always accepted us, comforted us and helped us find meaning. Somehow the worries of time no longer mattered, we were ransomed from the futile ways of perishable things, like silver and gold, to consider what has been since before the foundations of kingdoms, Empires and Nations.

There is something wonderfully fitting about Mother's Day coming in the season of Easter, as our humanity and hope and faith are resurrected anew.

"God's Word in Common Language" May 1, 2011

2011-05-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

James 1:1-9
John 20:19-31
According to a survey which has been repeated time and again, in every different denomination, ¼ of the Church believe the Bible to be the Literal Word of God, while another ¼ believe the Bible to be the Inerrant Word of God, another ¼ believe the Bible to be the Inspired Word of God, and the fourth ¼ believe the Bible to be the Word of an Inspired People of God. When asked “What are the Laws of the Covenant, some will respond The 10 Commandments, some will reply the Book of Leviticus, some will respond the Five Books of Torah, and others will reply the whole First Testament. It appears as though as Christians we have are hard time agreeing about anything!

With the excitement of Prince William and Kate Middleton, becoming Princess Catherine, to be wed this week, we remember an earlier time in the history of Great Britain, and the origins of the Church of England and Church of Scotland, from which arose the Anglican and Presbyterian Churches. In the 1500s, Martin Luther, called for Reforms within the Church, correcting the traditions that had grown over time, correcting the Sale of Indulgences, correcting that the preaching of the Worship service be in the language of the Nation rather than only in Latin or Greek. For which Luther was Excommunicated as a Priest, and over the next 100 years, an Orthodox Church and a Protesting Reformed Church began to arise. When Henry VIII was monarch, he broke with The Church at Rome, not over theology, faith in God or the Church, but over POWER, over SEX and the AUTHORITY of the Church versus that of the GOVERNMENT. Today, we have made it common, but when Henry wanted to be divorced and wanted to change from one denomination to another, this was monumental. His son Edward ruled a very brief time, then Henry's daughter Mary became Queen, taking the Church back to Catholicism and executing Protestants who were found, causing many to go to Scotland where John Calvin and John Knox developed the community of believers into the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. When Mary died, her sister, Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn took the Church back to the Church of England. Decades later, when James I of Scotland became King, he sought to end this persecution of both sides against the other, by calling for a fresh translation of the Bible.

We know from history, that the Scriptures of the Jewish people were written in Hebrew. When conquered by the Greeks, the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek as the Septuagint. When the Canon of the New Testament (Gospels and Epistles), originally written in Greek, were added to the Septuagint, the whole Bible was then translated from Greek into Latin as the Center of the Church was at Rome. What was once referred to as the Catholic Bible was actually an English translation of a Latin Translation, of a Greek Translation, which in Old Testament was written in Hebrew as the Scriptures. In establishing a new foundation for The Church, King James sought a fresh translation of the Old and New Testaments, without going through Latin, directly from Hebrew and Greek into English. But how do you go about translating the whole Bible? First you need scholars who can read Hebrew and Greek. But is there any competition between scholars and between Universities? Say between Penn State and Syracuse University? Or between Dartmouth and Harvard? SO on the 2 and 20th Day of July in 1604, King James commissioned 4 and 50 Scholars from Cambridge, Oxford and Westminster to each translate the whole of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into English. Then once we had three translations the Oxford, the Cambridge and the Westminster, to sit down with these and their notes, to formulate one Holy Bible. The translations were completed in 1608, and on the 5th of May 1611 three years later, the King James Bible was created. None was paid for the task, all were given letters of reference that they should be given every honor for having committed to this task. For seven years, from 1604 to 1611, translating, interpreting, arguing for what the Bible says. Not about personal beliefs but literally about what the Bible, the Word of God says and means. Their wording, simple phrases and poetry and rhyme, became the foundation for Shakespeare, became the basis for our Declaration of Independence, for Lincoln. In the last 20 years, differing publishing houses selling Bibles have each put forward new translations and transliterations. How different this from the practice of the making of the King James' Version of the Bible.

More than a simple task of translation, Hebrew and Greek each are filled with words that can have multiple meanings. When Jacob fell in love with the younger sister Rachel instead of Leah, according to the King James Bible it was because Leah had “Weak eyes”, yet the same Hebrew phrase can also mean “Tender and Beautiful”. At the reading of the prophecy of Amos, we have described that Hebrew had no word for Plumb-line, that this was a Syro-Phoenician phrase, but that Hebrew had a word that sounded like “Anah” which meant a “Sigh”, so do you translate the prophecy as Hard and fast and straight and narrow as a Plumb-line, or God's Sigh? In the most familiar passage of I Corinthians 13, the King James Bible did not translate the verb as Love, but instead as COMPASSION. How different all of our marriages might be, if instead of believing in the power of LOVE, as being greater than Faith and Hope and Prophecy and Generosity, instead we had heard “Faith, Hope, Compassion, Abide these three, but the greatest of these is COMPASSION.” Imagine every passage of Scripture, having these multiple meanings, and your task as the King's Translators is to publish the Word of God without error in the language of the Common People.

Getting it wrong is our principle concern, isn't it? If this is the literal Word of God, then to change it, to corrupt the Word, would be blasphemy. Funny the way, familiarity effects us. Will Rogers once claimed that “Rumor spreads faster, but doesn't stay put as long as the Truth.” Today, we are effected by the rumors of the day, by believing what seems to be true, what is repeated the most often.

Universally, this passage from John is accepted as being about “Doubting Thomas.” Thomas did not want to get it wrong, having witnessed Jesus' death, having had his heart broken, Thomas claimed he needed proof in order to believe. Actually, what he voiced, was no different than the doubts of each of the disciples, and the doubts we all feel at times. This is not a passage about the Doubts of Thomas, so much as it is about the Commitment of Jesus to meet those reservations. Thomas claimed, UNLESS I PUT FORTH MY FINGER AND TOUCH AND FEEL, I SHALL NOT BELIEVE, and seven days later Jesus stood among them and said “Thomas put forth your finger and touch and feel.”

Thomas should have been able to believe the Resurrection stories of the Disciples,
the Disciples should have been able to believe the resurrection stories of Mary,
without God taking on human form to become one with us, we should have been able to believe... but knowing we were not able, God became Christ, Christ died for us and was buried, Mary was called by name and her heart turned, the disciples were locked away in anxiety and fear when Jesus stood among them and breathed upon them, Thomas touched the wounds and believed.

The challenge of faith is not that we will get it wrong, in all likelihood, we will, the challenge of faith is whether we then give up, or persevere and try? The Letter of James is about perseverance. Human hope is not to be spared love, or challenge, but instead, when persecuted, when our hearts are broken, when we are overwhelmed with anxiety, shall we give up or shall we reconsider and believe anew?

"Creating A Memorial" Maundy Thursday 2011

2011-04-22T07:31:00.000-07:00

Exodus 12:1-14
John 13:1-17 & 31-36
Humanity thrives on story, we make memories of stories, we create memorials. In a vacuum, we will create stories to explain. Recently, I was visiting a friend's church and on the walls were gorgeous old photos and art work, but no one seemed to know the origin, or the stories behind these images. I am told there are those today, who so want to have history, to create memory, that they go to Antique stores to buy other family's photos to hang ion their walls, to create a heritage a memorial.

Twenty years ago, I had the great opportunity of being part of a tour of the Soviet Union. Part of the heritage of Communism was that Stalin was asked what to do about the Churches, and his response was "Do not worry, those old grandmothers' will die out as will the memory of the Church. But what he did not expect, was that the grandmother's would bring infants in their arms, to describe to them using the artwork and icons on the walls the memorial story of faith. I recall a tour of the Summer Palace at what was then Leningrad, and a tour guide who was identified as being a member of the Communist Party showing a painting by Rembrandt of “The Prodigal Son”. From Art History classes in High School and College, with reference to the Bible, we had learned that the figure with long robes cradling the other in his lap was Rembrandt's image of God, and the emaciated faceless figure in rags who looked like a survivor of the refugee camp at Dachau was The Prodigal, who represented Humanity. But this member of The Party, had a vastly different interpretation, devoid of faith that there is a God. For her, the resplendent figure was "The State", and the kneeling figure was a self-portrait of Rembrandt renouncing all worldly goods and worldly desires, bowing down to serve the Father/State/Mother Russia. Honoring Memorials, we have to be extremely careful to appropriate art, music, ideas, values from a different time and culture, that in addition to whatever we may want the image to represent, that we honor what the creator of their time and place had meant.

In John's description of the Last Supper, Simon Peter who has previously been identified as the Foundation for the Church, one who would become the archetype for the Pope and therefore for all Christianity, is described as misunderstanding Jesus' motives in washing their feet. Again at the Table, Peter misunderstands and vows to never deny Jesus, yet does three times before the morning. There is caution here from the Evangelist, that the Church/ Christianity, will regularly get the meaning of this memorial wrong!

Often in recent history, churches/ we, have tried to reclaim the lost sacred act of washing the disciples' feet. But the point is not the act of foot washing. Peter assumes that the water has some special purpose or power, which it does not, it is water. Again it is assumed what Jesus is doing is an act of sacrifice, but according to John's Gospel it is not. The cataclysmic event that changed history, according to John, was God so loving the world as to send the only begotten son into the world, and that the incarnation is what has changed the world. The point is not the foods we eat, or how they are prepared, or the words we say, or what new interpretations we +2000 years later can find to bring to them.

The point of the Passover is that Almighty God, the Creator and Judge, cared so much God entered into creation to save the oppressed slaves and make of them a people, a nation, Israel. The point of the Last Supper, which is interrupted by the foot washing, is the intimate affection of Jesus serving as loving host, which then allows us to to participate in this meal as Jesus offering himself to us, all the while knowing that despite our protests we are self-absorbed humans. We need to describe this as “Jesus Offering Himself” and not as Jesus giving up his life, because he never ever gives up, if anything by this memorial he embraces life, our life and the importance of his life al the more.

We are a people attracted to the dramatic, to the symbolic. Throughout Lent we have had Elder Nichols blow the Shofar, because this is an ancient musical instrument of faith dating back at least to Joshua and the rams' horns being blown by the Levites as they marched around Jericho. The Shofar is sounded at Yom Kippur's Day of Atonement, as it is a mournful sound calling people to repent. There were special instructions as to who was allowed to blow the Shofar, it was not to be blown by children, or pregnant women, not by those with mental problems, not by the weak or the angry, but only by those who are resolute in faith. Some blow as one long blast, while others use a series of short breaths. The point was not so much how it was blown, but that the people would be able to hear it as a serious call to repent.

In the Passover, while there is description of every element as a symbol: on which night the Seder is to be eaten, the posture of how we sit, unleavened bread, the lamb-bone and charoseth, bitter herbs and saltwater, the open door and empty chair, and the questions asked by a child. I think the most powerful part of Passover is the Call to Create A Memorial, which describes take a sacrificial lamb for your family, and at the Haggidda recite:
“Lord, it would have been enough for You to create the world. It would have been enough for You to give us life. It would have been enough that You formed every element with seeds of its future. It would have been enough that when we sought our own way, when we abandoned You, You never gave up on us. It would have been enough that You appointed the Stars and sun and moon and seasons for our growth and development. It would have been enough that You brought us through illness and suffering. It would have been enough that You gave us hope and vision. But YOU LORD, God of the Universe, Maker of heaven and earth, You entered in to save us. You acted in Love and Grace. Thank you.”

In the Seder of Passover, we remember that “life is fragile and we are children marked with blood.” Time and again, circumstances could have gone a different way, but while the world has known great suffering, while there have been plagues and pandemics, fires and floods and wars, Almighty God, who also experienced all of this, chose to love each of us. There must be a purpose for us to take up in response, because God loves us and created us for this time and place.

Throughout all of human history, there have been WORSHIP WARS. Here, I am not referencing Holy Wars fought for the liberation of oppressed people, or between Gods and between cultures, even between good and evil. WORSHIP WARS are not even the Crusades between Christians, Muslims and Jews, or the wars that continue today over lands sacred to both indigenous people.

WORSHIP WARS are the little jibes that take place over the time of worship, or if someone is sitting in our place, which hymns we sing and with what instruments, whether the children leave early or later, whether Baptisms and Offerings take place in response to the Word Read and Preached or as an act of Confession. All of which come back to our human desire for control, to be found to be righteous and therefore to judge. This morning someone described their son who worships and teaches Bible Study at a Congregational Church then rushes to the Catholic church each week, so as to receive Communion. I would not have considered it except that a few moments later someone greeted me describing “I guess you have not had as many worship services this week as we have at the Catholic and Episcopal Churches,” as if the number of times per day or per week we worship were an issue rather than our faith and relationship to God.

Worship is a unique act in human culture. In some times and places Worship is Didactic and Moralistic, in others extremely Rational and Doctrinal, at times Worship has been considered entertainment, at other times evocative, at times political, and at others a celebration of art and poetry. The point emphasized by both our readings this night, is that WORSHIP needs to be done RIGHT. Not as ritual, not as routine, not misunderstood as magic or sacrifice. In Worship we recognize God offering us love, unconditionally hosting us in God's house, feeding us without reservation; and in worship we are allowed to respond as we choose to God.

What is striking in John's description of the Last Supper is his emphasis on Loving: One Another. Where Matthew, Mark and Luke have the Sermon on the Mount and The Beatitudes, articulating what it is to love, the need to love neighbor as ourselves, parables explaining what it is to love our enemies and to love neighbor; John's Gospel is demonstrated in this one discourse at dinner (by Jesus' overt intimacy, stripping before the disciples, washing their feet as a loving host, drying their feet with the towel wrapped around his loins), that we love those with whom we are at table. In so many ways it is easier for us to discuss and accept the need to love our enemies, or to love our neighbors, than it is to love those who are our family, to forgive ourselves, to love those at table with us.

WikiChurch, April 17 Palm Sunday 2011

2011-04-18T12:52:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 50
Matthew 20:29 - 21:19
This week a piece of information was sent to me over the internet, which shocked me.
75% of all the churches Catholic, Pentecostal and Protestant did not celebrate a single baptism last year There once was a time in which the identity of America and those of the Church were synonymous. For the last 50 years, churches have been losing members faster than they had been gaining, but still we comforted ourselves in the blanket that the world was “implicitly” Christian, that people do believe. Suddenly we awake to the realization that not only does the culture not worship as we had been doing, but in many parts of our world, there is a belief that those who claim belief in God are hypocritical, insincere and out of touch with reality.

Recently a good friend was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, he was over 40 and overweight, but as we talked together we came to realize that our families have a history of Diabetes and Heart Disease, we do not get enough exercise, we enjoy comfort foods and desserts and a glass of wine, and the result is self-fulfilling. The problem cannot be solved by a quick diet, instead there needs to be a change of life. Is not this the problem of the Church? We have become a people waiting for others to come and join us. We are a people known for our meals and our fellowship, for entertainment and programs that occupy our time rather than feeding the world, and serving others.

In 1966, an Issue of TIME magazine was published that shocked the world, the cover was completely black, with the words “GOD IS DEAD”. This should have been the climactic moment of Christianity professing faith in the Resurrection, that while Human Culture had killed God, God's compassion, love and sincerity could overcome even death's ability to destroy. But instead, we accepted the headline as truth and moved on. If anything the last 50 years have professed the reality that HUMANITY IS DEAD for we have become less and less concerned with the needs of others, and more and more preoccupied with our comforts, with our food, with entertainment and activities that fill our days. Nation upon nation are rising up in revolution, claiming that The Emperor has no clothes, all that we had trusted and believed in Religion, Science, Politics and Government, Education, the Economy cannot be trusted to provide for our needs.

Just as with Type 2 Diabetes, we need a change of life style. For Diabetes, it is as simple as two things, Diet and Exercise. For Christianity, the change is also in two things, from an Internal Focus to an External Focus, and from Program Development to Nurturing People. Christ's great Commission was not that we should sit back and wait for the believers to enter our church, not that we should do faith better, but rather that we were to go out into the world to serve and disciple as he had done for us. The point of faith is not what we get out of believing, but that our lives have different meaning, different priority. Time and again as Jesus is begged by the blind and lame and children “LORD HAVE MERCY, SON OF DAVID HAVE MERCY,” in Greek: HOSANNA. Jesus never stops to ask What's in it for me? And those who were healed are not described as going home satisfied, but rather that they each followed him him serving others. The point here is not a numbers game, of how many baptisms, or members or children, but instead focusing upon serving those who are in need without reservation or concern for limitations.

Having grown up during this time, I would share with you that the Church, and by that I do NOT mean the Presbyterian Church only, but all churches, had become so afraid of connotations related to EVANGELISM, that we were afraid to say the word, referring to Evangelism as The E Word and “SALVATION” had dropped out of the Church's vocabulary all together. The Gospels each tell a different story about the life and purpose of Jesus the Christ. But in every one of the the Gospels, those who cry out for need do not cry HEAL US! Or MAKE US COMFORTABLE! Or even MAKE US SAFE! But rather SAVE US, for the path each had been living, we each have been following only leads to death.

I am told that in California, there is a church in Bel Air, that recognizes the people who live in their community are involved in the entertainment industry, in making Movies and Television shows. And what they have begun doing is screening movies and watching television shows together, then talking about them. In conversation about the themes, in conversation about the characters, these who are producing and writing and acting in the shows are being effected by talking about their faith. What if we gathered together to talk about the real circumstances in our lives? Business decisions, our fears and frustrations over our kids and our parents, the very real temptations in marriage, what it means to retire. In recent years, in this community, we have created a series of non-profit corporations, for the Manor, the Food Pantry, the Clinic in Sudan, even short-term ecumenical activities, we have made into corporations. What if we put that same ingenuity into our faith?

One of the fastest growing parts of the Internet, is WIKIPEDIA. As a child, our family had an ENCYCLOPEDIA which contained all the information and knowledge at your fingers tips. One of the earliest versions of this was even referred to as THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE. Wikipedia is an electronic version of the Encyclopedia. The added difference being that as INFORMATION is expanding so rapidly, instead of Britannica publishing Wikipedia, all those using the resource are able to add information to the discussion. 13,000,000 people are registered users of Wikipedia; making it the 7th most populated site in the world, in the last month alone 135,000 people have not only received information from Wikipedia, but contributed their own information to the database as well. WIKIPEDIA has become the source of All Knowledge, and has spawned specialized information sources about every topic, one of my favorites is WIKI-WOOOKIE which is knowledge about everything in Star Wars. There was of course an earlier version, before Wikipedia, called Nupedia, but Nupedia required that all information being added had to be screened and checked by a controller before being published, which slowed things down and gave the interpretation of the editors. The world today lives in a WIKI-WORLD where each is able to participate and to add to the sum of all, the world's knowledge. Rather than being pure, abstract fact, Wikipedia is very definitely influenced by the users, with the body as a whole interpreting, and redefining as information is amassed. What if the faith were to move from the comfort and stability of Committees, where we control what is appropriate and how to regulate spending, to a WIKI-CHURCH, where every person were able to add to the conversation?

For over a thousand years of the Church's history we were the authority of what is true and just and right. In a Wiki-World we give up control, we trust the amassed body as a community to self-regulate. Several years ago, this church began allowing others to use the church's resources. One of the users was the Public Schools in a program for kids who had gotten into trouble and been expelled from their regular classes. Early on in about the second year, we discovered one of the kids was trying to sell marijuana, by hiding it in the trash can underneath the liner and five other kids were the buyers. We had a member of the Church who was a NY State Trooper, who along with their Teachers and the Pastor sat down with the kids to let them know they had been caught. Six months went by when once again we found marijuana in the bathroom, that one of the students was trying to pass to another. I recall the feeling of embarrassment and fear for the future of the program, when meeting with the Session to explain what had happened. But the Session had two responses “These are kids who have had a history of getting into trouble, we have to expect things like this might happen, and they got caught, right?” and “The first time six kids were involved, this time just two, that's success!” In a Wiki-World of being the WIKI-CHURCH we give up control, of dictating how people will interact, how we will teach, and instead we learn from one another, we learn from the questions that are asked and the needs that are presented rather than trying to teacvh what we are comfortable with having known.

"What We Believe", April 10, 2011

2011-04-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ezekiel 37:1-14
John 11:1-45

This morning, we confront several questions, as we read our Bibles:
Did these things happen? Could these things really happen? What does it mean? And, So What?

A while back, I preached at the Installation of a new pastor in an inner-city Church. She had been working with latch-key and street kids, to get them to join the church instead of joining rival gangs; trying as much out of self-preservation as anything else to develop relationships with these young teens that would lead them off the street and into the community of faith. The whole Presbytery gathered, along with members of the church in the Sanctuary, as I began to preach, I saw the group standing at the door talking. SO I stopped what I was doing and invited them to come in, telling all that they were welcome. The whole herd began shuffling up the aisle, but instead of sitting in the pews, they came right up onto the chancel and made themselves comfortable. Meeting them where they were, I took off my robe and began telling the story. At which point one of the young men asked: DID THAT REALLY HAPPEN? I looked around, in the eyes of all the ministers of the Presbytery, and the church members, and the faces of these searching for what to believe, and at that moment, whether it HAD HAPPENED or not, I WANTED TO BELIEVE IT HAD.

That is where we are with the Story of Lazarus. We, more than any generation before us, know the limitations of life and death: How fragile the globe with hydro-fracking, earth-quakes, Tsunamis and Oil Spills; How fragile our political systems with one nation after another in revolution, with our own government having postured over one program and another whether to shut-down the government; How fragile the economic structures; With the passing of an entire generation, what Tom Brokaw described as “The Greatest Generation” we know just how fragile and limited life is. In order to question whether Lazarus could be raised from Death to Life, whether Ezekiel's Vision of the Valley could happen, we must each question whether we believe Reality to be fixed and limited, hard fact, or whether Life is PERMEABLE, allowing hopes and dreams and commitments to at times empower the Impossible to be possible?

FAITH IS NOT ABOUT Correctly Answering a Formula of Questions. Eight years ago, when this couple stood before the Church, family and friends, they were asked if they wanted to married, and responded “I DO” just as this morning, they stood with us claiming the desire to believe and to have their children believe in “Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior”. But the point of Faith comes not when we have driven cross country to stand up in our best clothes, but when we are at our worst. When there are deadlines at work, and the bills are due, and the children all have the flu. Tragically, we tend to reserve passages like this one about Lazarus, for Funerals, for Easter or Pentecost, instead of reading it and questioning it in light of our lives. The climax of this passage is in verses 25 and 26, where Jesus professes: “I Am the Resurrection and the Life.” This last week at the Lenten Soup Suppers, we named that as reticent as any of us are to discuss Sex or Money with our children, regardless of how old they are, what we most avoid discussing is Death. We hope and believe that in this life our Forgivenesses outnumber our Sins, and that we can live in communion with one another and God. But Death represents that Denial of Life, Denial of Relationship, the absolute End. The Question of this passage is whether God has power over Death, whether Jesus as the human manifestation of God, God present with us has control over life and death? If not, all of faith is moral and theoretical philosophy, and like those in Jesus' time who believed there was no resurrection, all there is is this life. But, if Jesus could raise Lazarus from death to life, if Jesus did call Lazarus out of the tomb, then faith is not only a theory a way of moral life, but everlasting communion with God, not only after life but in this life also!

What we know of Lazarus' Sister Martha from this passage and Luke, is that as much as she wants to believe, as much as she wants to have close relationships with Jesus and neighbors, she is a pragmatic realist. She was distracted by cleaning and cooking to host Jesus, rather than listening and taking in. Here, as much as she wants to believe, as much as she had hoped Jesus would have gotten there in time to stop Lazarus from dying, once dead and buried four days, she knows that when the tomb is opened there will be a Stench. Ironic, that for Martha and the Disciples, SALVATION seems to have been about STOPPING from Death, a Miracle Cure that would cause Lazarus not to die. How much more powerful that once in the grip of death, once pronounced dead and buried four days, Jesus had power to Call Lazarus from Death to Life!

The Vision of Ezekiel in the Valley is probably the best known passage of Ezekiel. This is now the fourth vision that the prophet has had. Different from Isaiah or Jeremiah, EXILE has begun. The Monarchy of David, the Kingdom of Solomon each are destroyed, a lack of hope, a lack of faith, long years of war have killed the people, and any life any hope they had was carried off in exile. Each of the other visions begin THE WORD OF THE LORD came to me saying... Whereas this vision starts out “THE HAND OF THE LORD WAS UPON ME and led me to a valley of dead dry bones”. This vision is unique, both in questioning whether those with no life left in them, no faith or hope left, can live and believe again; and also that for this to happen Ezekiel must call the dead to live. The SO WHAT of faith is that while God raised up Jesus from death to life; while Jesus Called Lazarus from the tomb; here Ezekiel, a person of faith like us, is used by God to call the dead to live.

This is a horrifying image. It is a forgotten battleground, where the bodies of the dead, hundreds of thousands were not buried, but left in the sun to decay and to rot, for scavengers to eat. The bodies and bones were scattered over time, and so much time has gone by that even the marrow within the bones has turned to dust and blown away. There is nothing resembling life here, nothing resembling humanity it a place of absolute death and abandonment.

Maybe, this passage was intended for Mitch Miller to write a song about the Foot bone being connected to the Ankle bone, the Ankle connected to the Shin, and so forth. But I believe, The Valley of Dead Dry Bones describes a world like we populate today. Where people are scattered. Where hope is no longer assured, people live from crisis to crisis feeling powerless over their futures, over what life will be like for their children, even if they will have a retirement. Where faith is no longer a simple matter of residency, and all our neighbors choose which church to walk to on Sunday morning. But rather that we make connections and call people to faith throughout the world.

This morning I overheard conversation between two co-workers: “Listen, I am doing the best I can. You are just asking more and more, and I am afraid it's never going to be enough for you.” Perhaps that crossed Ezekiel's mind, but what he affirmed in response to God was: Only God Knows! then he tried.

What would we say to call the dead to life?
Maybe it is as simple as “Can I help?”, or “We came to the church for our wedding and for our children's baptisms, for Christmas and Easter and family funerals, how could we share our faith in daily life?” Ezekiel has a dual role here, as do all of us. He prophesies to the dead dry bones to join together, he does his organizing and casting of a vision, but then he is also commended by God to prophesy to the Breath. Simply because we show up, because we choose a cause and get others to work with us, does not mean God will be in the place or in our hands. Ezekiel prophesies to the Breath of God, the Spirit. How often have we paused before we begin calling the Spirit of God to be with us? How different the day might be, if before we began we asked the Spirit of God to be with us. Possibly that is a prayer. Possibly, it is a devotion and Scripture reading. Maybe before we do anything else, we forgive those we believe have done wrong, and ask for forgiveness then set about doing God's work rather than doing what we routinely do.

"Life's Disappointments" March 27, 2011

2011-03-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

Exodus 17:1-7
John 4: 5-42
Recently, a note arrived, describing that the author had attended a beautiful Memorial, and it seemed there had been a lot more Memorials lately than usual, so could I cut that out. They were thankful that we seemed to understand they only attended worship sporadically. They closed by stating that in these gray leftover winter days of Lent, with so many more deaths than usual, the pastor's eyes seemed to have been sad, and they hoped the sparkle might return.

Last evening someone phoned with announcement of the birth of a child, that they hoped would be Good news for a change.

A certain man had been going to church all his life, his parents sang in the choir and were Sunday School teachers. He never went through rebellion as a teen, and was not expecting a mid-life crisis. There were no problems with drugs, no arrests, or real problems. By the community standards, his life seemed perfect, so why did he feel like such a phony.

A woman started coming to church when everything else in her life began falling apart. She would slip in during the first hymn, and leave during the last, in hope no one would notice her. She sat ¾ the way to the back, on the outside aisle. She had been having trouble with depression, with work, with relationships. She had come to believe she had more problems than anyone else ever could.
On the third week, having not identified herself on the friendship pads, the pastor asked if she might like to claim this as her church home. She smiled, with her eyes on the floor, and replied that she wouldn't be in town that long. The next several months she rarely missed a Sunday, but there was an odd routine. Week by week she would appear a little stronger, a little brighter, then she would be gone for a week and when she came back she looked pale, drawn and frail. She got thinner and thinner. Then she stopped coming all together. No one seemed to no where she lived, or anything much about her.

This morning's Gospel requires an acquaintance with overt Racism and Segregation. I remember as a child, growing up in St. Louis in the early 1960s, seeing signs on Restrooms larger than the ones that said Mens and Womens, which read “Whites Only”, and above a filthy, dirty drinking fountain that read “Coloreds.” Being white, and from the suburbs, I didn't really understand what it meant, except that my mother seemed to squeeze my hand tighter and say NO when I wanted to drink from it.

Like everyone else she needed to go to the well for fresh water daily. But, where others rose early, and went to the well while it was still dark and cool, visiting with one another as they pumped water for one another, She intentionally waited until noon, in the scorching heat of the day, when no one else would be at the well. She had devised a wooden yoke for her shoulders, so she could carry two buckets at the same time, rather than risking two trips. While allowing her to carry more, the wooden bar had worn a sore on her neck and shoulders. Carrying the empty buckets that day, she dreaded the long drudge back, carrying her burden.

As she turned the corner, she saw something worse than the burden home, there was a man sitting beside the well. As she approached, he lifted his head, and from the brown eyes and olive skin, she knew his race and class. What was he, a person of affluence and education, doing sitting at the well in a Samaritan Village? Did he not know he was on the wrong side of the tracks? At least, his being a man, he would not dare risk lowering himself to speak to her in public. But then he asked of her a favor! Could she draw water for him from the well, and offer him a drink from her cup? Imagine! A Rabbi of Israel, drinking out of the cup of a Samaritan Woman! Once, when she had gone to Jerusalem, Jewish people had crossed to the other side of the street to avoid having contact with her. And here he, a Man, a Jewish man, wanted her to draw him water, and from her Samaritan hand, he wanted to drink from her cup.
The conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in any of the Gospels. It is an odd conversation, but clearly he demonstrates having something she wants. If he actually has this living water, that could mean she would not need to expose herself to public scrutiny every day, she wants what he has!

Then Jesus asks about her husband. She could have responded that this was getting too personal. She did not have to respond. She could have made up a story but instead she says “I do not have a husband” As if he had X Ray vision, Jesus tells her the rest of the truth about herself. Now she truly feels exposed and attempts to change the subject, repeating what she knows to be a conversation stopper: “Where should we worship God, on the Mountain at the Samaritan altar built by the Greeks, or in Jerusalem at the Temple of Solomon?” But this does not put Jesus off, he pursues the conversation with her, this outcast, mixed race, woman. Not knowing what else to say, she replies “Won't it be great when the Messiah comes?” And Jesus responds, “That day has come!”
All this has happened out in public, at Noontime, at the Well. It would be like having the most important, most revelatory conversation of your life, in the middle of the Supermarket.

Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan Woman at the Well reveals that God knows exactly who we are. Despite our best efforts to cover up, to hide behind race, behind education, behind class, behind what is easy, Jesus seeks us out where we are, revealing to ourselves the secrets we have kept.

Alice Walker, in her Novel The Color Purple relates a long conversation about God, between the women Celie and Shug. Celie has tried to be a good Christian Woman, doing whatever people told her. But she has been abused all her life, finally deciding God must be Dead, because the only gifts she ever received were her Daddy being lynched and her Ma running off, and a low-down dog of a Step-Father. By comparison, Shug seems to Celie to be the worst kind of sinner, but Shug challenges Celie about what the God she no longer believes in, looks like. Celie describes a picture she saw once in Sunday school, that God is very Tall, and very old, with a long white beard and bright blue eyes. Celie responds that she gave up waiting for a God like that. Like the Samaritan woman she found God where she least expected, that God loved everything she loved and a mess of stuff besides. People always think God only cares about people trying to please God. But any fool can see that God always tries to please us and care for us, and once we feel loved by God, than it seems all we can do is love God back.

A few days ago, the phone rang, and a man asked “Did you know Sharon and he gave a last name?” I thought a moment and said “No...” Then he described her, and I realized Sharon was the woman who used to come and sit in the Sanctuary, who claimed she would not be in town long enough to claim this as her Church. He described being Sharon's brother and that she had died. He was going through her belongings and found a pile of bulletins from the church, covered in notes, words and phrases, and names of people to pray for. The whole bundle was carefully tied up with a ribbon and bow. The man described that their family had never had much use for religion, they had never been baptized. He and his sister had had a falling out when she had gotten divorced. He could not believe her stories about being abused by her husband, could not believe her claim that her husband had given her AIDs, what had seemed to kill her was Cancer. But now, going through her apartment, there seemed to be a lot about his sister he had never known, and it was comforting to know she had found a home where she could feel accepted and which fed her spirit. Then he read one note off the back of a bulletin: They welcomed me. They invited me to receive. With everyone else, I walked up to the Table. As I took a piece of bread, they said “You are forgiven” as I dipped it in the cup everyone else had dipped in they said “This is the seal of the New Covenant of God's love”. After I sat down, some one said “Peace be with you” and they offered me a hug, not a bone crushing hug, my bones feel so fragile, but they opened their arms allowing me to hug them. I finally have found a home.

Blind Faith into The Future, March 20, 2011

2011-03-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

Genesis 12:1-4
John 3:1-17

Recently we celebrated a life, with so many dimensions and involvements. It occurs to me, how many of us have a singular and flat purpose in our lives. The world around us “seems to have knowledge” that life is limited, that resources particularly time and availability, are to be saved and not to be squandered. But for all our time saving, all our hours banked and possessions accumulated, we have not been able to do anything more. Our readings this morning from the lives of Abram and Nicodemus are awareness that life is not flat, that the world is round and with faith, with promise and blessing from God life is a many faceted jewel, a treasure not only of three dimensions, but with meaning and relationships we knew lost can be redeemed.

After the beautiful poem of Creation that provides setting for all that is to come, the next 10 Chapters of Genesis describe humanity continually pulling away from God, seeking after our own desires, following what KNOWLEDGE teaches: Self-Determination, I can get what I want, I can fulfill my own desires, so what if it is at the expense of everyone and everything else.

I am continually perplexed by the assumption that Faith, particularly here in the Presbyterian Church is about Pre-Determination, God having all of life, all humanity figured out; that is not what we believe, but rather human history bears witness to the assumption of Pre-Destination that left to our own devices, following FREE WILL to it's natural conclusion all humanity will seek its own desires. What we BELIEVE IS in THE PROMISE and THE BLESSING and REDEMPTION of life.

The PROMISE is identified in Abram choosing to accept from God a new and different relationship. GOD continues to be the God of Creation, Humanity continues to have Free Will, but in Chapter 12 God offers a new JOB DESCRIPTION and Abram accepts! The God who created the Cosmos, who created all imagination and possibility CAN ALSO care about us, love each one of us, and WE CAN CHOOSE to live in relationship with God. ReConsidering life as something more than “What's in it for me?”. The Promise is that God will not be distant and removed, but will be in relationship. Instead of living life as a flat list of accomplishments, believing that who our parents were determined where we lived and went to school, determined what College and University we could attend, determined what we would do with life, and every event and accomplishment determining the next, INSTEAD life now had a depth of possibilities. INSTEAD believing in GOD as an IDOL, a distant, unconcerned third party to life, we live believe in relationship with a LIVING GOD. While we can be angry with God, and be humbled before God, we can never again live life assuming that there is not God.

The CHOICE of GOD OFFERING and Abram ACCEPTING THE PROMISE, just as much as the choice of Adam and Eve to eat of the Tree, effects Humanity and God and all whom Abram will encounter throughout life. The PROMISE of a multi-dimensional life in relationship with God creates the possibility of BLESSING.

Imagine that all life was Black and White and two dimensional, with length and height but without depth. When suddenly a figure enters the screen in full technicolor. And everything they touch, everyone they speak to takes on their own coloring and depth and dimensions.

I am part of the Baby Boom Generation, an era in human history where I remember the Landing on the Moon and the beginning of Space Exploration. I remember the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the hope of Freedom. I remember the beginnings of Glasnost and Perestroika and the end to The Cold War. As I look backward and reflect on those earlier years, earlier memories appear as if in Black and White, while the present is in full color, and in my mind's eye, I can envision a surreal future greater than my experience can portray.

An Implicit Part of the BLESSING is that our existence, our lives, are connected. We are not unique unto ourselves with every person being an island, or the center of their own universe; but rather all Creation effects one another.

If I understand Dvorak's Stabbat Mater, the passion is not The Passion of Christ's Suffering alone for all humanity, but the feeling of Jesus' Mother Mary witnessing his suffering on the Cross.
If I were a filmmaker, I would love to create a film, all in black and white, in which as each person feels, as each individual is touched by relationship with the love of God, be that Jesus' birth, or his miracles, or his teachings, or his suffering, that each would be colorized.

This is what Jesus attempted to explain to Nicodemus at night. But Nicodemus, like so many of us does not understand. He thinks as a Rational Human Being, that I ought to be able to reason and think and know what is possible. But LIFE is not THEORETICAL. FAITH is not a PHILOSOPHICAL CONSTRUCT. I shared with a few of you, that after a recent death, some one who loved them asked, “RATIONALIZE this for me” and without thinking I replied “You did not rationalize falling in love, there is no rationalization for getting married, there was no rationalization for your having shared the birth of children. ALL these are experiences of life, gifts of the promise of God, of the blessing that is relationship. So also is death, trusting that they are with God.”

Rationally, we make mistakes, if we live only in the light of the Past, we are hopeless. The Call of Abram and the Call of Nicodemus, are calls of REDEMPTION, from the barrenness of our past and present, from all the wrongs we KNOW, Following Blindly into an unknown future, to hope.

REDEMPTION is not simply showing up and having perfect attendance, but giving of ourselves, allowing our hearts and souls to be changed, to feel.

"ReFraming" March 13, 2011

2011-03-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

Genesis 2:15-17 & 3:1-8
Matthew 4:1-11
Among my father-in-law's treasures were a series of very fine artwork that he bought at art dealers in the 1960s. One in particular was a beautiful poster. But having acquired these in the 1960s, it had a polished aluminum frame, and a chartreuse mat. Having been around for some time, the glass also had a small crack. So I decided to reframe the piece. As I turned it over and began to unscrew the highly polished metal pieces, everything was under tension, and the frame sort of exploded. Surprisingly, underneath that chartreuse mat, what I thought was a poster had a fraction written in the bottom left corner, and a signature in the bottom right. It was only in reframing that we discovered it was not a poster but an original print. However, in order to show the print number and signature, the reframing had to be much larger and more ornate.

The passages for this morning are each works of art. Beautifully crafted stories, their prominence in the Church affirmed by each being among the first stories in the Old Testament and New Testament. While this could identify that these took place historically, during the time Adam and Eve were in the Garden, and when Jesus was in the Wilderness following his Baptism, in so far as we know of no scribe who accompanied each, there is probably another reason why these two stories have such prominence.

For purposes of reframing, to witness a greater sense of truth than we may have previously known, our reading of Genesis this morning is that this is not about historic Creation. This is not about the origins of Sin, or the origin of Death, or the origin of Sex, or even about how humanity came to be of two sexes, or definition of the Fall. And the selection from Matthew, is not about Miracles, not about Jesus ability to change stones into bread, or to take a leap of faith, or his willingness to accept the role of being Messiah. All of those images have been shown previously.

Instead, looking at the larger picture, In Genesis 1 God formed all of Creation in a completeness. In Chapters 2 and 3, the question is about what Thornton Wilder described as The 8th Day of Creation, the Destiny of Humanity IN the Creation of God. This is not a world of our making, not a Doxology of all things belong to God, but rather a reflection on who we choose to be, how we choose to live since this is God's creation.

There are explicit descriptions about Context, where the Garden is located, what is in the garden, how the garden functions. Humanity is given three defining purposes by God, as such these define who we are and also our relationship with God. Humanity is given VOCATION, not a VACATION trip to Florida in March, but VOCATION an Identity based on our responsibility, we are to be Gardeners caring for Creation. We are given PERMISSION, “you can do anything, eat anything, anything at all in the garden.” We are also given PROHIBITION, there is one tree, at the center of the Garden, the tree of knowledge, that according to God we cannot eat from. VOCATION, PERMISSION and PROHIBITION. There is probably something telling about humanity, that what we have traditionally lifted up out of Genesis is PROHIBITION only. Together, these three identify that the Garden, our role in life, our abilities are all defined by our relationship to God, our trust. God is the Creator of the Garden, we are in the image of God, so we too are Gardeners; God has given us absolute freedom, Permission to do anything and go anywhere; Out of trust and Authority, relationship with God we are asked to not do one thing. This is a story of living in COVENANT. Whether we choose to TRUST what we do not know to God, or whether we believe we must KNOW trusting Knowledge is power.

The “Temptation of Jesus” confronts every circumstance of Israel in the wilderness. They were hungry and thirsty and complained against God at Massah and Meribah. They wanted miracles at their command. And generations later in the time of Jesus when Israel was taken over by the Greeks and Romans, in order to be elected to office, in order to be an officer in the military, for any role of leadership, you had to swear an oath to the Greek and Roman Gods, to Idol Worship. All three of these temptations Jesus stands against. Rather than TEMPTATION, this passage is the Good News that the Messiah remained faithful when confronted with each. There will probably never come an occasion where we will be so starving as to want to change stones to bread. Or when we will be tempted to leap off the pinnacle of a Temple. The underlying theme of this is that every temptation that could be there for us, especially the temptation of whether to Trust God above all else, Jesus already met.

This morning as we each entered the sanctuary, we were greeted with the shocking news that Jean, a vibrant woman involved in every different part of the life of this community, had suddenly, without warning taken ill and died. Our immediate creaturely, mortal reaction, is grief and loss; but we need to reframe this in faith. Jean lived her life caring for others, doing for others, living in faith. We can be consumed by our sorrow, or like Jean we can trust where our knowledge and understanding fail, that she is with God. At every death, there seems a temptation to find out why. All that science can tell us is knowledge of the how, which does not address that after 49 years of marriage a wife is gone; after drying the tears of third graders and Nursery school parents, she is gone. There is a phrase from a prayer, I choose to use at every memorial: As God never lost her by her living her life among us, so we have not lost her by her return to be with God.

"Where Our Treasure Is" Ash Wednesday, March 9, 2011

2011-03-10T06:02:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 58:1-12
Matthew 6:1-21

Day in day out, month in month out, the years seem to go faster and faster. We routinely lose track of what is important, what is meaningful and awe-inspiring. I am thankful for the marking of Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season to set aside days for prayer and for faith. Until the 1980s in Protestant Churches we did not celebrate evening services during Lent, we had potluck suppers with a movie or speakers, but somehow we went from the season of Epiphany to Lent and Palm Sunday to Easter without acknowledging a distinction.

One church, every Lent, had the Middle School and High School students create a large wooden cross. We are talking about a 6 x 6, 12 feet tall, with a 6 foot cross piece, and on Ash Wednesday, we would carry the cross out to the roadside in front of the church, where we would dig a hole and set the cross, for the Lenten Season. On Good Friday, it would be draped in Black, and Easter Morning, helium Balloons would be tied to it.

One year, a college freshman, was on Spring-break mountain climbing with friends when he slipped and fell and died. Stephan had loved the outdoors, so his classmates had created an outdoor Sanctuary beneath the cross. It was an especially meaningful memorial, with many of his friends offering music, or poetry, or memories. But at the end of the Memorial, the Pall bearers carried the casket to the hearse, and as we all watched we heard the door slam and the car drive away, while we remained at the church. The reality of his leaving us, of this 19 year old dying was unintentionally too real.

The calendar sometimes plays tricks with us. I am told that in 2013 CareGivers day and Mother's day fall on the same day. The Presbyterian Women's Annual Yard Sale always fell on the last week of April, which because Easter moves, one year was the week after Easter. Advertising the Event, their husbands had made a large billboard like sign, that read “Trash and Treasure Rummage Sale” and carried it out to the roadside. It took about 15 minutes for my phone to ring, with a neighbor complaining that at the foot of the cross was a sign reading Trash & Treasure. I tried to explain that this was Biblical, as Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. I tried quoting that “One persons' trash is another's treasure” but getting into more trouble the longer I talked, I hung up the phone and moved the sign.

The Call to Illumination from the words of Wendell Berry describe exactly what Ash Wednesday is all about. Stop for a moment and collect all the emails of the last year, all the media concern about Charlie Sheen, all the anxiety over Haiti and Egypt, and Libya, Jordan and Kuwait, all the efforts related to interpreting Midterm Elections, and purge it. Would we be any the worse? Possibly we bury it on the earth, possibly we burn it to ash, but we mark an end to what was and a beginning to what will be, and we turn it all over to God.

Walking throughout the Village today, I ran into several individuals with the cross on their foreheads, they smiled at me as much as to say “See Reverend, I did something holy today.” There is this tension to Biblical faith that does not allow us to get away with anything, for while we are to pray, while we are to be active in our faith, we are not to desire recognition for our piety. The struggle of Isaiah 58 is that the people have been praying, have observed fasting, have made their offerings, but they did not get anything for it. Faith in God does not follow the market economy. There is no quid pro quo, I paid money, I said my prayers SO give me a good life, or solve my problems for me. That is the equation of the Sale of Indulgences. You paid money to buy a sliver of Jesus' cross, or a hair from the head of John the Baptist, or to drink from the Cup that is the Grail, and possessing this charm, you could be satisfied.

The last several days, the Morning shows have been marketing the idea that The American Dream has changed, our Treasure has been moved. For decades, ever since WWII, possibly even The Great Depression, the American Dream had been to send your kids to college, to pay off your Mortgage and own your own home, to have two cars, to be able to retire from work. According to the new economists, the new dream is not measured in possessions and accomplishments, but in savings. Knowing that Pensions are being invaded, knowing that Social Security is in trouble of becoming an unfunded mandate, rather than being concerned with College Loans or Mortgages for which you can get a loan, the question is how much we are saving for our future, because there is no Retirement Loan.

In much the same way, faith is not about whether we were a Church member, or for how many years. On the ends of each of the pews are brass plaques with numbers which correspond to a chart, and originally in this church it was prestigious to be in the front row, to be seen in church. Today, in any church, the seats which fill up first are always the ones in back, which makes me wonder if we want to not be seen. But the point of prayer is not how many times we prayed, or the words we used, or how sincere we made ourselves sound.

A small group of us have been in Bible Study together the last many Wednesday evenings. Reading and sharing together, we have come to understand the Presbyterian belief in PRE-DESTINATION, that with Adam, all Humanity will always choose selfishly, but that what matters is that God does offer grace that we can turn our lives around to live differently.
AND that this is different from PRE-DETERMINATION that we do not hold to, that all of life is pre-ordained and we are simply going through the motions.
That God is both Eternal, and All Powerful, and All Knowing, which make God God, but God does not use all these abilities simultaneously, God allows us Freedom of Will. God may well know what we are going to do, but choose to not act; or God may be able and willing to act but be uncertain what we will do.
AND the wonderful element of faith that we as believers routinely overlook is that humanity has had the ability to Change the Mind of God. The experience of The Flood, changed God to never again destroy the earth by chaos. The experience of Ninevah demonstrated to God that they were repentant.

Rather than being a purchase of divine services, PRAYER is a kind of conversation between us and God, which re-orients us to who God is, and what we can expect.
We begin with three statements affirming God in our lives:
God is our Loving Parent and Creator,
God's very NAME is holy.
Eventually the Kingdom of God will be worked out on earth as it is in heaven.
All we as Creatures can ask of God, is three things:
that our Daily needs will be met,
that a forgiving righteous God will forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors,
that God not lead us into temptation.
The Ancient Jewish story of Abraham and Isaac, the Muslim story of Abraham and Ishmael, both describe God testing Abraham's trust of God.

So we enter into this season of Lent, in which we re-orient our lives different from our routine.
We intentionally create and carry the cross out to the roadside.
We evaluate where our Treasure truly is, and what we Treasure.
We recognize that as Ken Blanchard described OUR CHEESE IS CONTINUALLY BEING MOVED
And we hope that through prayer, through starting again and acting with integrity, with compassion We can affect God, or bring our own lives in line, either way becoming one with the Almighty.

"The The Cloud" March 6, 2011

2011-03-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

Exodus 24: 12-18
Matthew 17:1-9
For the last four months heavy gray snow clouds have hung over us. As tired as we all have been of the snow, I think what eats away at us making us depressed is the seemingly never ending Gray. This week on the first of March, the clouds parted and skies were blue. Regardless of temperatures, regardless of snow and ice, suddenly it felt more like Spring. Yesterday a new cloud over shadowed us, different from the others, the steady gentle rains melted the ice and snow and soot, bathing everything clean. Underneath was revealed green grass, open water, the smell of worms. This is not to say that there will be no more snow, but better than consulting the shadows of a hibernating rodent, the gray clouds of endless winter will give way to Lent and the coming of Easter's Resurrection.

Clouds have meaning for us. There once was a Peanuts Cartoon, with Lucy, Linus and Charlie Brown lying on their backs on a hillside staring up at the heavens. Lucy asked what they saw in the clouds, and Linus described the clouds looking like Moses and the Israelites on one side, and Pharaoh and his armies, horses and chariots, coming down upon them, when behind Moses the way suddenly cleared, and a cloud of fire and pillar of smoke separated and protected them from Pharaoh. Lucy and Linus walked away, as Charlie Brown said: “I was gonna say a Ducky and a Horsey but it sounded kind of lame.”

In a recent series of commercials, the Family are dressed up and sitting on a couch for a portrait, but as the Mom looks at the picture, one looks board, another is texting, a third is shoving an Action Figure into the ear of the fourth. And Superhero Mom declares “To the Cloud” and with the advanced technology of Windows 7 Bill Gates is able to help Mom fix the photo to save the Day. In another the couple are bored, sitting at the airport as their flight is delayed yet again. The husband declares “To the Cloud” and the computer is able to provide television shows until they are able to leave.

“To the Cloud” has become an analogy to seeking technology to solve our problems, much as “To the Batcave, Robin” 40 years ago meant consulting data bases and a super-computer to solve riddles or understand clues. When Moses went up the mountain, and on the 7th day entered into the cloud, “To the Cloud” was not about technology, but about mystery, mysticism, holiness. The Cloud, was where Moses received the Law and 10 Commandments from God. The Law and Commandments represent our relationship with God and with one another as ordained by our Creator, Savior and Protector. “To the Cloud” meant seeking what is holy, seeking what is mysterious and mystical, seeking to know from God what does not make sense in this world of our control. Before the Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon, “To the Clouds” meant going where no human had gone before.

Hiking in the mountains, there comes an altitude, when you are above the tree-line, above where things grow, everything is rock, and you cannot make out what is below, obscured beneath trees and shrubs. The Clouds settle upon the mountains and it feels as though you are closer to God than to the world from which we come. In the cloud, the air feels heavy and moist, our eyelashes hang with dew and rocks, light, all reality seems to glisten and shimmer before us.Within the cloud, chronological time seems irrelevant, instead of measuring by seconds, or minutes, hours or days, you come to recognize that others who have gone before us erected stone markers, cairns, and often in the ethereal mysts of the Cloud all we can see is from one stone cairn to the next, one of life's milestones to another point on the journey.

The Transfiguration is one of the moments in the Gospels of Holiness, a moment of mysticism, a milestone that this time, this relationship with Jesus is unique, sacred. Jesus had been traveling with the disciples for a long time. He had been preaching and teaching, he had fed the 4000 with 7 loaves and a few fish. Jesus had asked who the disciples considered he was to them, and Simon Peter had confessed Jesus as being the Messiah, Son of the Living God! Not simply as teacher, or leader, pastor or priest or prophet, but Son of God. To which Jesus confesses, “YES, and as Son of God and also the Son of Man, this Son must be sacrificed for the sins of the world.” Six days later, on the Sabbath Day, he took with him Simon Peter, and the brothers James and John, to the Cloud on the Mountain.

This passage is directly related to what went before, because while Simon Peter makes the leap of faith that Jesus is the Messiah, the other disciples had identified Jesus as being like Moses and Elijah and John the Baptist. The Gospels have never narrated what Jesus said to Moses and Elijah, only that he prayed and Elijah and Moses came to him, as much as to say that Jesus was greater than Moses and Elijah, his ministry was to provide yet a new and deeper relationship with God than the Law or the Prophets had been able. There are people in this life, who serve a purpose for us, some who are our Moses and Elijah, some who are our Peter, James and John. Not that their lives do not serve a purpose for themselves and for God, but some also serve as mentors, some as spiritual guides, some as law givers and truth tellers, some providing wisdom and others demonstrating true humility.

Simon Peter jumps the gun, offering that he and the others could create booths here. It is unclear whether his intent was resting places to house Jesus and Moses and Elijah, that this experience could go on forever, never having to return to reality. OR whether, by creating booths, his offer was that people would pay money to see this, we should bring others here to see this. Either way, Peter's offer profanes what they are experiencing, and a bright cloud overshadows them, and a voice confirms and commands “This is my Son, The Beloved, Listen to Him.” To which, Jesus says what he said more than any other words, “Be not afraid.”

Personally, I have always been moved by what comes after, in this passage. Jesus instructed the three to “Tell No One, Until the Son of Man is Raised From the Dead.” They came down the mountain, and immediately there was a crowd surrounding a Man and his Son. And presumably, the Son lay on the ground in convulsions, because that was what the father wanted Jesus to save him from living. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus is quoted as describing how little faith the people have that they could not pray to God themselves. In Mark's Gospel, this elicits the Father confessing to Jesus “I believe, but Help My Unbelief.” I think that is exactly where humanity is! We do believe, in the Baptism of our children we confess our deepest desire, that our children would grow up to know and love Jesus. But we also, each of us, have unbelief, disbelief, fears and doubts and angers. We take a pill, we seek a counselor, we look for a new computer application to solve our boredom and our family issues.

If anything, what I hear in these passages of Moses and Jesus going up the Mountain to the Cloud, is that where our generation of humanity, our culture today seeks quick fixes, The Answers to solve our problems, instead the mysterious pilgrimage, the holy experience of Moses and Jesus was about redemption, an experience which changed them so severely that they did not come down the mountain the same. Going to the Cloud is not about a new Application, or how to fix photos so we can be proud of the picture, but seeking to be redeemed, to be changed by God.

"The View From the Balcony" February 27, 2011

2011-02-27T11:51:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 49:1-16
Matthew 6: 22-31
In our prayers, we lifted up concern for Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, the whole Southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Over the last many decades, each has solved the causes of infant mortality, where 4 put of every 5 birth died before age five. But with resolution of the deaths of infants, thirty and forty years later, the population began to adjust the number of children they were giving birth to. The result is a majority of the population under age 30 and ½ to ¾ of the population is unemployed. We prayed for the people of New Zealand whose homes and businesses and churches were destroyed by earth quake. We prayed for the Teachers and Legislators in Wisconsin, and across our Nation, struggling to honor the effects of past Collective Bargaining contracts, with limited tax revenues. We prayed for young adult children of this congregation, and the pastors of neighboring churches who have been affected by Cancer. And for one who is in Jail. Then we open the Gospel today, to a passage that says “BE NOT ANXIOUS!” How can we avoid anxiety! Through our choice of media, news services and the internet, we reinforce our perspective of what we know to be the answers, each of us becoming the world's experts on what we would do, as if we were God.

There are times when in preaching I feel like I am addressing myself, because I am a worrier. When in 9th grade I fret whether I could get the right combination of classes, so in 10th grade I could take the successive classes, to be able to take Driver's Ed. We worry and are anxious trying to control our fears.

You have to love the Gospel of Matthew, because he tries to apply the preaching and teaching and life of Jesus to both a formerly Jewish and Gentile now Christian congregation, tying together and making connections between everything that was said throughout the Old Testament and in the civil culture about who the Messiah is. In the midst of this, the evangelist inserts a pronoun to describe the community of believers, the church, he calls them “O Those of Little Faith.” Far different from a pejorative that says you could do better, what Matthew is identifying is this community does have faith, sincere and real faith in Christ, but like those still wet from baptism, those recently confirmed, what we have claimed is our desire to believe, and that faith is only one component in their lives. Those Of Little Faith need assurance and continual reminder of what we believe. This Gospel is a challenge to commitments, that rather than faith in God being one important element of our lives, what we do on Sunday morning: to choose to act in faith in all you do.

In essence the Gospel of Matthew is singing the old Revival Hymn “This Little Light of Mine, I'm Gonna Let It Shine,” he is taking that kernel of leaven that is the Gospel and kneading that ingredient throughout the whole loaf. Rather than a sermon about ANXIETY, what Matthew offers is ASSURANCE that we can CHOOSE TO MAKE A COMMITMENT. Matthew's Gospel is about what it is to be RIGHTEOUS, not Self-Righteous, not assuming we have a better or the true perspective others do not see. “RIGHTEOUS” according to Matthew is quite simply to re-orient our lives to be in right relationship with God. That right relationship being, to live wholly convinced that God is God, all our lives are in God's hands, we need not worry or be anxious, or try to dictate what others believe, rather we live trusting one another, trusting God.

Recently, I have had to learn all over again a basic truth of leadership and faith. In the midst of circumstance, it is difficult to gain perspective. It is easy enough to witness the different sides, to name the political and economic disparities within our Nation, and those throughout the world. It is easy to get drawn in and to take sides, or to try to rally leadership from the midst, but it cannot be done. It is easy when emotions and stressful experiences mount, for us to objectivize one another, not seeing ourselves as part of the problem or the solution. What we need instead, is to withdraw to a place apart, to gain the view from the balcony. It's difficult when you live in a place like Central New York to get the perspective of a time and place apart. As soon as you complete shoveling, there is more snow. When the snows are deep, you plan for ways to make the house more energy efficient, or to master your problems. But walking the shore, the sands extend in more grains than you could ever count, the waves lap at the shore, and as far out as you can see, on to the horizon, one suddenly realizes how insignificant they are and how little we can change or control.

The view from the Balcony is as described of Moses going up the Mountain “High and Lifted Up,” “set apart” so as to observe and gain perspective. What we often forget, is that in both Jesus going up the Mountain to pray, and Moses having done so, as often as they ascend they also come down again, because this is where the circumstance of life is worked out.

It intrigues me, that each of the previous Sanctuaries of this congregation had balconies, and this one never has. The first Sanctuary that is now the Baptist Church had a very steep balcony that wraps all the way around the three sides of the Nave. While the Sanctuary which originally stood on the site of this Church had a balcony that covered well over half the congregation below. Often the balcony is a most coveted spot, on mornings like this, it is always warmer the higher we go. But more, in the balcony, you feel as though an observer, distanced and removed, you watch what takes place without obstruction but are separate from what occurs down below. Instead, the change that has taken place in this Church in recent years is that we have gone from having the Pulpit elevated, and the choir cloistered in a box, to having the Sanctuary open and without impediment. When the choirs are leading, that other believers would take their seat in the congregation; when the choir is not leading that they are part of the congregation. When the children come forward that each feel comfortable sliding, crawling, being present at the table.

In addition to “Those of Little Faith,” Matthew's other odd phrase in this passage is “MAMMON.” Mammon was not a pagan God, it is neither good or bad, mammon is a thing, mammon is possession, mammon is acquisitions and accomplishments, mammon is accumulated wealth. The point of the Bible not translating the word mammon into the words “money” “wealth” or “property” is that it is like our capitalizing the phrase “The Almighty Dollar” it is not the mammon that is the problem, but the fear of what we have accumulated being put at risk. Here we have a choice between God and an idol, between God and that which is not God. So which will you serve. Easy enough for us to claim, we will serve God, but how often we choose to work extra hours to take on additional projects so as to provide for our families, rather than simply giving them our time and our selves.

The Bible has an implicit assumption: This life is not enough. This life and our knowledge of it, our control, are limited, we need to live our lives for something beyond ourselves, believing we can make a difference. Whether it is the soldier going off to liberate and defend. Whether it is the students protesting for democracy. Whether it is creating a business to provide what is needed. Whether it is confession that God is God and there is no other. All these are choices of what we make most important in our lives. Would that we could get the view from the balcony, of our own lives, to question when we are choosing out of anxiety to accumulate, fear of ever having enough, and when we choose to let tomorrow worry about itself, and today's own troubles be enough for today.

I said learned again, because when I was in Seminary, the Presbytery determined that a pastor should work on their anxiety and defensiveness, by serving as a Chaplain in a Hospital. The difficulty with anxiety, that our fears cause us to work harder, to try to control more. In a Hospital there is such a constant level of crisis, no one individual can master it. I was a Chaplain not just at any hospital, but at the Presbyterian Hospital in Harlem. As a Chaplain, one of the requirements is that a clergy person be present at every death, or crisis, so much like a nurse or doctor we carried a pager. I hated having the pager, because it seemed whenever I touched the thing it went off. I began to believe it was my presence that was causing the crises, within a single month we had 25 calls on my shift alone, sometimes while present at one crisis, another would occur. Suddenly you recognize that you cannot control life, you can control very little, all you can do is to provide that reassuring presence in the midst of a world of anxiety. As described by Yeats in our prayer earlier,”There are no words to take another's pain away. But we can bear witness to one another's sorrows and to each other's dreams, with a gentle presence; and live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even more passionate and fierce life, because of the resolute quiet.”

We have learned too well the image of the Good Shepherd caring for the flock, and of Jesus standing at the door knocking. We wait for God to seek us out and find us. There are times for each of us, when we believe as Israel did, that God has forgotten us. Visiting with a 90 year old, whose spouse died several years before, whose friends have passed, whose children are in their late 60s and 70s, who has seen so many changes. The question invariably is: Has God Forgotten Me here? What am I to do? Why am I here? Listening to those in their 20s and 30s there is a similar chorus, “What difference can I make?” How can I ever pay off school loans and hope to have a home, to marry to have kids? Is the dream no longer possible? Isaiah describes that God has a long and diverse memory, rather than God Growing Tired of Us, or Forgetting Us, or making it impossible for us to succeed, God allows us to live by freedom of Human Will, and periodically God begins again as God did with the Infant in the bullrushes and Pharaoh's daughter; as God did with the Nomads wandering in the wilderness for forty years; as God did with those scattered after the destruction of Jerusalem; as God did with Jesus in the Garden and on the Cross. That God reminds us of who we are and Whose we are, and ReCommissions us for a purpose. The point of acting in faith is accepting the opportunity to be a sharp arrow, to be a lamp to the world.

The charge I love, that recurs in Matthew is that You are a Light to the World, The eye is the lamp of the Body, bringing light into darkness with what you witness and see. It is not our light, that we shine, but rather God's light and what we know is our own darkness. So what is it you know better than anyone else in the world? Where is there darkness that you could provide illumination, or at least a different perspective? How can we help create a right-ness with God?

A Holy Social Network, February 20, 2011

2011-02-20T07:46:00.000-08:00

Leviticus 19:1-19
Matthew 5:38-ff
This week someone sent me an email, that as I opened read “Hahaha you won't believe what this fool did. When will they realize, what you put out there lives forever, going directions you cannot control.” I thought little more of it, until about ten minutes later, I began receiving emails from one person after another who claimed to have received an email from me, reading “Hahaha, you won't believe what this fool did...” and that people on their email lists, had then received this email as coming from them.

Every few generations, we develop a new social network. Who are your friends, and who are your enemies. Who, even are your frienemies, those friends who you keep close for fear of what they might do; and how we relate to each. In ancient Israel, long before the time of Kings David or Solomon, immediately after the exodus as slaves from Egypt, Moses addressed the people, defining by LAW, the Social Network. The LORD God is holy. The LORD God loves all God's Creation. The LORD God created humanity, as set apart among God's creation, to care for God's creation. Among all humanity, out of all creation, God chose this people, setting you apart to be a people of faith. Be holy. AND among the Nation, The LORD God chose you to minister, to be a people of faith in the midst of God's faithful people. Be holy.

Being HOLY, does not require wearing a halo, acting pious, accepting to live by poverty or chastity, to live as a happy person unaffected by tragedy, or to wear a dour expression without being moved by joy. Being Holy, is a claim of faith; that life did not just accidentally happen. Your being, is neither an accident, nor fate, nor a curse. There is a God, set apart from this world, and yet who cares, who loves, and has power over this world. God cares so deeply as to make every snowflake falling from the sky unique; creating everything for its own purpose. God set apart humanity, as those who use creation's elements to create, fashioning whole new worlds and possibilities from what God has given us. To be HOLY is to be SET APART by God for a purpose. Generation after generation there have been grave concerns over whether we called ourselves a Nation Under God, a religious people, some have even wanted to say a Christian Nation; even in the book Leviticus, I do not see evidence of this coming from God, but there is the requirement that we would be Holy: loving God, loving life, and loving others as we love our own life.

People have postulated all sorts of origins for the Golden Rule, that You love your neighbor as you love yourself. That Law is named here in Leviticus, and made explicit in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, by instructing that we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you. The point being that when we hate, when we fear, when in our minds and hearts we make others our enemies, we objectivize them “They,” take on all the negative elements of our hate, even the shadow of ourselves. In our minds and hearts we make “them” a construct of what we do not like about ourselves. This makes the other not us, but what remains as ours is our hate, our fear, our anger, which works upon and worries upon us, until we are worn out. Instead, what Jesus instructs is that we would work at loving our enemies, replace the hate, the anger, the fear, with a desire that they would be forgiven and let the love, the desire for their forgiveness work upon us.

Just like pushing the “Open File” on an email we do not know the content of, we need to understand the culture and context of Jesus' illustrations. The Old Testament Law of “An eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, was not a requirement that if someone hurt you you had responsibility to hurt them, NO. But rather, this was a limitation of force, that should someone cause you harm, even the blindness of an eye or the loss of a tooth, you could not kill them, or harm their children, the limit of vengeance in that Social Order was no greater than an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth.

YET, while not changing the Law, what Jesus described undercuts this, by shifting the SOCIAL ORDER that we not resist the other. In the Social Order of “Class structure” in the Roman World, there was created a distinction between better and worse, between rich and poor, between what is hard and soft, between external and internal. The Left Hand was used for personal hygiene, was covered and not extended publicly. As such, to be struck on the right cheek, was to be struck with the back of the hand; not just wounded, but also insulted, for one used the back of the hand to strike down in anger, or for one who was of lower esteem to acknowledge one who was greater by kissing the back of the hand. Where as the front of the hand was for a caress or the embrace of a trusting agreement. SO as means of challenging the Social Order to be HOLY, to not resist, the instruction that if one struck you with the back of the hand on your right cheek, turn to offer the left as well, required that that they had to demonstrate intimacy to you.

The HOLY SOCIAL NETWORK described in Leviticus, is that none of us are whole unto ourselves. Our identity as HOLY is in relationship to God, but also in how we relate to those in need, those with whom we work, and with our peers. Being HOLY, living our lives as a SOCIAL NETWORK with God, required that those who have received blessings provide for those without. All of this sounds much like the 10 Commandments, preventing lying, cheating, stealing, coveting and murder, yet also explicit here is instruction that we not delay in paying another their due. How easily, if we count our profit before repaying others, we count everything as our own and become jealous of having to pay out of our possession to others.

Jesus' Sermon describes “So if you are in a time of worship, and presenting yourself before God, and there remember that your brother has something against you, go first reconcile yourself, then present your gifts at the altar of the Lord.” There is a subtlety here. We expect Jesus to have said, “If you discover you have something against your brother,” but instead it is “if you discover your brother has something against you.” We have a mandate to make the first step, to reach out to those who might have reason to be angry with us.

This last line of Chapter 5 in Matthew's Gospel gives us all difficulty: “You must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” Ouch. Do any of us fill that? Actually, this is what Matthew wrote, but slightly different from what Jesus could have said, because Aramaic never had the word “perfect”. Perfection was a GREEK ideal, which Matthew in presenting the Gospel to his social network accepted as an appropriate equivalent. What it appears Jesus would have said was “shalem” or “tamin” the sense of which is to be “whole,” “integrated,” “complete,” “committed as finished,” “resolute.” The meaning of which is like the Law of Leviticus, “Be Holy, because God is Holy.”

Years ago, I knew a man who late in life came to realize some pretty horrible things about himself. Struggling, he asked, “With the sins I have done, with all the wrongs I have committed, is it possible God could forgive me?” The answer I know is not that you have to have been perfect to be forgiven, but that God so loved the world that God gave God's only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but be welcomed into everlasting life. That forgiveness is not just for the problems between us as children, but for all the sins of al the world.

How different this life might be, if we owned our anger,
if we saw this life as Holy as God is holy,
if we recognized a bit of ourselves in others,
if we treated others not as those who are not for us must be against us, but rather treating our neighbor as ourselves.
If we lived a HOLY SOCIAL NETWORK.

January 30, 2011 "Blessed Are You"

2011-01-30T07:54:00.001-08:00

Micah 6:1-8
Matthew 5:1-12
Only a month after Christmas, knowing that in CNY we can receive cold and snow through Easter and Mother's Day, to have had an accumulation of ten feet thus far this month, surely makes the downhill skiers shush and the ice fishermen dance a jig, but many at this time of year see an unending winter. Blessed are you, because of the warmth of your hearts, the compassion and caring of our fellowship.

From the time of Abraham, people have tried to know what they must do to succeed, to win, to enjoy life. Is it a matter of whoever has the most toys at death wins? What must we then do to satisfy God? If Kings want taxes and tribute, how much more must we give to appease God Almighty? This afternoon at Drummonds, the estate of Bernie Madoff is being auctioned off. Rolex watches, paintings by Picasso and Renoit, Ferraris and Furs, here was all the stuff one of the richest scoundrels in the world tried to collect, to make himself happy and full, but as one who had built his life on bilking others he could never be satisfied, and could not take it with him.

Some have used the passages this morning as a kind of treasure map, a secret plan to success, for what we must do. The problem is that the Beatitudes are not a check list that one can accomplish or possess. Despite the Reality Shows, it is not living for a month hungering, or in poverty, or meekness, that are themselves salvation. Others have psychoanalyzed these words to be a kind of Divine Consolation Prize. We know who the winners were, the ones with gold statuettes, for all the rest may you be blessed. NO.

No, there is a link between these passages, in perceiving what pleases God and blesses us in life. Of late, there have been several of those among us, who advanced in years have already given to God their spouses, and sometimes their children and peers, their hearing, and their eyesight, for whom getting out of bed is a major effort each day, not because of depression, that is different, but because of the effort of living. These are among the ones, for whom these passages were spoken.

To understand, we need to know what it means to be “blessed.” Throughout the Old Testament and Wisdom literature, even the Book of Revelation there are Beatitudes, pronouncing blessing. Typically, the word MAKAR is translated “Happy, At Peace, Salvation, Victorious, Okay, Good and Fine.” Can we agree to eliminate from common usage words without meaning? Four letter words, “Like, Just, Good, Fine, Okay” are filler telling us nothing of what a person feels, what they believe, who they are. Makar/ Blessed means a great deal more than Good, Fine and Okay, but as beatitudes, these refer not only to the persons being described, but are also indicative of God. “Makar/ Blessed” is to Be SEEN and KNOWN for what you have done, for who you are BY GOD.
Blessed are you who are Poor in Spirit, For your spirit has been paired with The Spirit of God.
Blessed are those who mourn the loss of others, For God will reunite you giving you comfort.
Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For you shall see God who has seen you.

To be blessed, is not only a statement of fact, that we have been seen by God, that lives matter and are known, but also to be blessed is to demonstrate to all the world that the existence of God, the presence of God in our lives matters to us. This is not a conscious choice but an implicit commitment.

This week as the Bible Study met reading Isaiah, we encountered the Biblical idea of “The Remnant.” What is it to be The Faithful Remnant, those who never gave up, the few who survived when all the rest were lost. Being The Remnant cannot be a matter of Self-Righteousness, like Elijah claiming before God, “I and I alone am left,” but rather being the remnant, the survivor, changes us, we have to make sense out of why God has used us. Being a Remnant, being Blessed, are not statements of Self-Righteousness not Arrogant claims of knowing better than others, but rather acknowledgement that we have been instruments of God, used by God without our knowing.
I would share with you one of my growing edges this morning. This is a hard issue especially for me and for this congregation, because we have many who are entrepreneurs, who see a problem and set out to fix it. My realization has been that whenever I have tried to figure things out all on my own, to understand why my brothers acted as they have done, or what are the needs of an individual or the community, when I have tried to discern right things on my own, I have invariably been wrong. Time and again, I have seen others come into a Bible Study or a Committee Meeting having figured out the answers to a circumstance from their perspective, which only fit in the abstract of their private thinking. Yet, when the body meet together, when we share as a physical communion, when we question and listen and converse from the heart, we come up with communal answers we never could have found on our own.

Part of Jesus Sermon on the Mount, is that he went up and sat down with the crowd, and named as Blessed, not only the poor, not just the meek, not the pure set apart or the righteous all by themselves, but that the crowd, the body, the church is blessed by having among its communion those who are poor in spirit, and those who are meek, and those who are peacemakers, all together.

What does the Lord Require? It is not having the right answer. Not winning, or avoiding wrong. Ironically, as the Covenant Community, what the Lord requires is not even obeying the Covenant. Not riches, or accomplishments. What does the Lord Require of us: To Do Justice, to love Kindness, to walk humbly through life as a human being with God.

We live in an amazing place and time. Not only for the technological advances, which are many. Not only for the beauty and majesty of this place, which we regularly forget and neglect to notice. Not only for the privileges which we often do not know we have compared to others in this world. We live in an amazing place and time, because of the people who are part of this community. Recently, the clergy from all the churches met together, to learn from one another about Baptism and Communion and Ministry, the nuances of difference in our traditions, as well as the communal understandings. No one was perceived as having all the right answers, but Protestant and Catholic, Congregationalist and Ordained, we could in humility and honesty share and learn from one another. The most amazing experiences of faith I have witnessed in this community have been when we shared together. Years ago there was a death in the community, and the priest had been on retreat, so the other clergy joined together for the visitation, to console and comfort. There was boating accident, and as a pastor, I was called forward by the priest at the funeral to kneel and pray at the table.

One of the realizations from our conversation, was that in other traditions, Catholic and Protestant, it is possible to receive only the bread, or only the cup, as the elements are seen to be complete and representative of the Sacrament; whereas in the Presbyterian Church the Bread is a claiming of our brokenness and need for forgiveness, while the cup is a foretaste of that hope of being in communion with God and one another. To receive the cup without the bread would be a cheap Grace. To receive the broken bread and not want to receive the cup, would be a claim of desire to reman broken and isolated.

Another realization was that as Presbyterians today, we are the only church, which elects, ordains and installs our leadership from among our membership. There are churches which elect their leaders. There are churches which have ordained leaders. There are churches which have elected, ordained leaders. But the idea of being chosen from within the congregation, as minister, elder or deacon, and given responsibility not simply as business leaders but as spiritual leaders, who then step out of that responsibility when we are done in order to trust and support others, this is unique to us as Presbyterians. Tragically, I have known Presbyterian Churches where the leadership did not step aside when their term was done, others whether these leaders vanished after their installation had expired.

January 16, 2010 "Losing Our Competitive Edge"

2011-01-25T13:08:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 49:1-7
John 1: 29-42
Six years ago, we shifted from the Church hosting Refugees from South Sudan in our homes, to traveling to Sudan to develop relationships and build trust, to promise the return of their sons and daughters who had been named The Lost Boys. I met John Dau's Uncles, one of which was a Military Veteran named Thor, a General of the Liberation Army, a guerilla soldier. Everything about this man screamed that he had been conditioned for war, as described by Isaiah: “a polished arrow, a sharpened sword hidden for battle,” the man stood over 7 feet tall in full battle fatigues, every muscle and sinew ready to react. One evening, he had held me at knife point and drawn a line from my jugular to my groin, stating that he would like to cut open my body in which to hide his children for them to get to America to start over; but that he hoped I might carry their cause and concern for them instead. In a word, he scared me. The next night, as we stared out at the stars, Thor asked “For as long as any can remember, we have been the people of this place, and we knew who were were. Now because of War, because of Deportation and Exile, because some have been refugees in America/ in Australia we are a diverse people. When “they” return from all these places, who and what will we be?” In the words of Isaiah: It is too light a thing that you should be a servant, to restore the remnant, you shall be a light to the Nations, that the salvation of God may reach to the end of the earth.”
I recall I responded to him, that rather than being diluted by having been dispersed throughout the world, their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, had been learning, and these would bring back knowledge and ideas his people had never before considered, creating belief in a new Nation; but that also these would have left their image upon the rest of the world, so we who had never before known of this people, never before cared, would now be concerned. AND that when we refer to people as “we” and “they” we accept the “we” as an extension of ourselves, and we distance ourselves from what is “other.”

Andy Warholl once described that everyone seeks 15 Minutes of Fame. Whether the Congresswoman, the Federal Judge, the 9 year old Student Council member, the gunman, or the President, each of these have in the last week had a moment in the spotlight. But the point of being a Light to the Nations is not to be seen, to be noticed, to be brilliant, but instead the purpose of light is to illumine what had been in shadow, to bring salvation to places of darkness. The task of the living is to use circumstance to reshape our future, to reconsider what might have been and might be in that light, otherwise we are condemned to continue what has been.

We are surrounded by messages in our culture which name “Carpe Diem, Seize the Day, Go for the Gusto, Reach for all you can Get, The world is in your hand, all you have to do is to stay on the Green line, to follow the yellow brick road to success.” We are a Capitalist society, where profit drives success. Governments are designed to provide what the culture values as infrastructure but which in the immediate may not be profitable to provide. Christian Faith is Counter-Cultural. Faith involves care for the widowed, the poor, the lost. Faith is not involved in winning and losing and profit and loss, but in resolving conflict, in providing human compassion and care.

Fifty years ago, in 1960, those studying Conflict, determined that there are different kinds of conflicts, and the question is not whether conflict is good or bad, but how we respond, to raise or lower anxiety. These identified Five Levels to Conflict.
The first is simple disagreement, I choose to sit on the couch when you want to go out and visit with others. I choose meatloaf and you prefer vegetables. Nothing is right or wrong about these, but by compromise, by sharing our differences and similarities, life is more full.
Level Two is that of a Parent to Child, or Teacher to Student, where there is belief in Authority and an intrinsic right and wrong, logic and reason, a willingness to use power to persuade the other, the child, the student, to consider what otherwise would not have been chosen, slapping the hand that would be burned by fire; an enforced timeout to stop a fight.
Level Three Conflict is a Competition determining who has the greater resources, the greater power, the more desire to win, recognizing that there can only be one winner and the rest, all the rest, lose. Level Four is about amassing power for security, so as to never be challenged again. Level Four is not about the right or wrong, profit or loss, or acceptance of one another, but recognition that competitors challenge the authority of the winner, challenge power. How many of our commercials today, are not about whether their product is good or better than another and why, but undermining and destroying the credibility of the other. We live in a world so accustomed to profit and loss that we assume competition, as we pull up to the stoplight everyone is our competitor, as we approach the Grocery check-out we desire to be first.
Level Five, at that time fifty years ago was believed to be theoretical, that our morals would never allow us to consider. Level Five is acceptance of killing.

At every level, the only requirement to escalate conflict is competition, a matching, a desire to not lose. When those who simply disagree are unwilling or unable to compromise, when one wants to teach the other a lesson, conflict is changed from Disagreement to Authority. When the child rebels against the parent, the student attempts to teach the teacher, there becomes a competition to win. At any level, all that is required to escalate Conflict is an unwillingness to compromise, a matching one to one of power. All that is required to lower Conflict, at any level, is a lack of willingness to compete, to seek something other than winning.

If there is a competition between The Bears and The Lions, whether in the Roman Coliseum or the Superbowl, the Christians are always going to lose. What we need to be about, is how to change the game, from faith competing with the world, to faith being valued, compassion and a desire to listen being prized. Despite what the Commercials emphasize Human culture is not about The Blackberry. Humanity is about relationships. How do empathize, how do we forgive?

The question of marriage is not about “whether you love honor and obey,” but that when you are overwhelmed and out of control, when you are lost, can you trust this other to care? Not to compete, but to care so much, that although they will be wounded and hurt because we are overwhelmed and out of control, that they will stay committed and caring. Even more, that afterward, and there is always an afterward, that they will reclaim and redeem as if a brand new relationship.

Part of the reason why we have so many conflicts today, more than in generations prior, is because of role confusion, we do not know who we are to one another. Are our parents our teachers, challenging us to succeed, or as servants providing for us what they never had? We live in a changing world, with changing roles and relationships. What the Gospel of John provides, is that after being Baptized, John continued to claim a relationship with Jesus. John plainly affirmed, and trusted, “This he of whom I said After me comes he who ranks before me.” The Gospel has numerous names for Jesus, recognizing he fulfills many roles simultaneously, but that these are not identities of power, rather these ore identities of relationship. Son of God, Lamb of God, He who takes the sins of the world.

And it is in following, in seeking, in accompanying on the journey that we learn not only Who Jesus is in our midst, but who we are in relationship and what is required to be a Disciple.

How do we change from matching one another, to giving up our competitive edge, without condescending or giving up? To instead remain engaged, but change the game, and not play? I once counseled a couple about whether to accept annulment of their marriage in the Catholic Church. While initial responses seemed to be a choice between whether to reject their relationship by claiming they were never spiritually united, or whether to name the other as a drunk and philanderer, the possibility arose whether to accept that the other had not at that time been ready for the commitment of marriage. This undercut the game, suggesting a possibility that had not been considered. It left the door open, that they could grow in maturity and relationship, without accepting responsibility or casting blame.

How can we, in this competitive culture, where we strive to be first in line, to be the first to finish dinner, to get life over, change and choose to give up our competitive edge in order to act in faith?

January 23, 2011 "What Do You Want To Be?"

2011-01-24T05:57:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 9:1-7
Matthew 4:12-23
In conversation with a twelve year old, they were frustrated by not knowing what they wanted to be when they grew up. It seemed to them, their friends had known since Nursery school that they would be a Doctor, a Lawyer, an Engineer, a Musician, a Homemaker. Poignant for me, because at 52 there are many days when I am uncertain what I want to be whenever I grow up. But pressing for why this had to be resolved, the child described “How could they possibly know what College or University they needed to apply to go to, if they did not know what they wanted to be, and if they did not know what college, then how could they know what classes they needed to take in Junior High and High School.” Our anxiety and stress have pushed us to the point of believing we have to have the answers and can only be one thing. God forbid we choose wrong at age 12 and ruin the rest of our lives!

Yet all of our world is caught up in how to fix the presenting circumstances. What one right choice do we need to make to get us back on track, to return us to prosperity, to a time before oil spills and excess snows, to bring our troops home safely and take us back to a time without war? How long will it take for the world's economic circumstance to recover and life to return to what we remember? According to our leading economists, it will take a minimum of five years for our economy to fully rebound. According to ecologists, the oceans are diluting both the oil and the chemicals used to contain the oil, and within 20 years the Gulf may be as plentiful as it once was. But all this assumes the circumstances of today remain exactly as they are, without change, without anything else taking place. Rather than five years for our economy to return to what it was, others claim that it will take fifteen years for a new World Economy to have developed. The Book of the Prophet Isaiah confronts the problem of a “Loss of Nostalgia.” We want to return to what we remember life was like, but not that it ever actually was.

Isaiah had been of the Tribe of Levi, of the order of High Priests, like all his family had been before him. In Chapter 6, we have this grand vision of the Kingdom of God and the Commissioning of the Prophet sent by God for Salvation to preach; from which our opening hymn “Here, I AM” is derived. But as grand and glorious and spiritual and majestic as the Court of God is, Isaiah is commissioned to the problem of people having faith. Their Ears will be too heavy to listen, their Eyes are already so shut by familiar experience to ever see what is around them. They will look without seeing, they will hear but not listen. It is as if, 10,000 times a day, for each of us, every day, there are opportunities for faith. There are visions for each of us, as spiritual, as awesome, as being in the presence of God surrounded by Seraphim (6 winged serpentine angels) flying overhead singing Holy Holy Holy, Lord God of Hosts! but we never see them. Miracles, Saving acts, the Spiritual reality is there all around each of us, every day, and yet living with our circumstance, we never see.

When I was in Seminary, I worked weekends serving two churches in Middletown, NY. One Saturday the pastor took ill, and Sunday morning a colleague filled in for him preaching. In contrast to all the sermons, week after week from the installed pastor, I remember the words of the visitor. He said “How easy it is to be a visitor, to stride in and offer a word that is fresh and new with possibilities. But the real work of faith happens day in and day out, year after year, as people try to make a difference in daily life.

The Prophet Isaiah envisions a future time, when there will never again be gloom, let alone anguish. This people who have lived with fear and death, literally walking in darkness, will see a great light. What if, the times in which we NOW live, are not only the culmination of all the advancement of all that has gone before, the greatest, most innovative time in history; BUT also, represent a Dark Ages, for what is to come? As much as we are intrigued by the latest 3D, the fastest and smallest, the newest solution, that in a time to come, here in this frozen and frigid place all people will live knowing God!

The teachers among us are welcome to offer challenge, but I am told that as periodically there are new ways of teaching, a New Math, Whole Language, Suzuki Music, that the current shift in methodology is to realize that if we can stimulate the minds of children with a fluency in Music, that the rhythm and harmonics, the repetitions and contrasts will aid their learning math and engineering, spelling and history. What if, the secrets to Joy, to Life, to Salvation and a new way of living without war, without oppression, require a shift of mindset from contrasting as opposites Faith and Knowledge, to perceiving all our realities as opportunities to witness the presence of God with us?

The first time, many of us heard the words of the poem by Barbara Kingsolver, which served as our Call to Illumination this Day, we were offended at the idea of Engineering, Math and Science being taught exclusively at the expulsion of Music and the Arts. But that was precisely the poet's point, that at times Legislatures are too concerned with making laws to affect Test Scores, rather than understanding the education and nurture of the whole person.

The Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus Call to the Disciples as a Call to Repent. But REPENTANCE is not described as Shame or Guilt, but The Contrast of a new and different way from everything we have ever known. Simon, Andrew, James and John did not abandon their businesses and way of of life, as if that was wrong and this is right. Instead, they listened to the Call to Follow and used everything they had known, now in new ways.

How do people become believers? Some describe a slow maturation over a lifetime. Others, a cathartic event in which their lives are forever changed. What I have seen are personal circumstances over and over again through life, where we are drawn deeper and deeper, where everything we thought we knew is contrasted to the possibility of what God may yet be doing.

For decades, this community had a food pantry in each of the churches. When suddenly someone had the inspiration that all the churches share together in one pantry. By so doing, not only would serve more people more effectively, but Catholics and Presbyterians, Evangelicals and Episcopalians might come to know each other as people who live their faith.

For thirty years Presbyterian Manor was in this community, providing an affordable residence for healthy seniors. We hired a new Housekeeper, who wanted to be able to go to Church on Sunday, which gave the opportunity for people from this church to each volunteer to share lunch with the residents, that this not simply be a thing we own and provide, but that we individually and personally become involved by sharing a meal on Sunday afternoon.

There was a teacher, a mother of teenagers, who was diagnosed with breast cancer, which then became Uterine, then became Bone Cancer. Knowing she was going to be in isolation for several weeks surrounding Bone Marrow transplant, she created a list for her friends and family. Everyone always wants to help but never know how. Her list were a 150 things that I would appreciate you do. Bake cookies for my kids, then eat them with them. When you find a great story or poem that touches you, would write it down and send it to me. So also, when you see and hear birds at your feeder, or smell flowers of spring, because I need you to do that for me right now. That you would tell my husband you are going to do the dishes on Tuesdays. That you would honestly and sincerely pray, because I am very much afraid, but have come to know that all things are possible with God. She got through her treatments and had a good summer. On the first day of a new school her Cancer returned, and she asked that friends and family would come sit with her as she crossed over. What a gift. Not making death scary, but encouraging others to share this most sacred part of life.

We have been very blessed as a community as a Church, to celebrate weddings and anniversaries and baptisms. Would that instead of simply offering what we possess as a resource to others, we could perceive these as opportunities for faith, each is a moment, as is each day, to see God. One of the things we have done over recent years has been to bring poetry into worship. Some have liked this, others have not. But a delightful part is that each of the poems shared come from a collection of poems that world leaders, teachers, philanthropists like you and I, have pinned to their bulletin board, taped to their door, written on their email messages to never forget.

Faith does not suddenly come when we most fear death, and may never come though we study for a lifetime. Faith is made real, when we choose to go from being fishermen to fishers of women and men. Faith will be a reality, when we see the present and future, not as a return to former glory days, but as a Renaissance a reclaiming of what is beautiful and important for a new time. The awesome joy of Isaiah is that this comes in the gift of a child, who is God with us. Years ago, there was a season finale of a long running show. As the characters lives interacted, they did not resolve everything, but instead the camera backed away, seeing the whole of the room, then out the window seeing how the events of this room were similar and different from those in all the rest of the hospital, and how that hospital setting was part of a neighborhood, part of a City, part of whole world. When the BOCES classes ended here, they created for the church a banner that hangs in Dobson Hall: When you Change your Thinking, You Change Your World.

January 9, 2011 "One Thing Matters"

2011-01-10T05:48:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 42
Matthew 3:13-17
Recently I was meeting with a young couple about to marry. He was in the military, and after the wedding they would be leaving family and the community they both had grown up in, leaving the State, to be based in Florida or Texas, starting life fresh. They had reserved the Chapel in Auburn, they had their flowers and rings, and cake and invitation, photographer and musicians, they had gone ahead and gotten the marriage license, and now after everything else they were meeting with a minister. In the course of the conversation, they affirmed that one had grown up Lutheran and the other Catholic, so they wanted a “Church Wedding,” but not a “Religious Wedding.” I inquired about the difference and they were clear that they wanted to be married in a Church, that it was important to their families to be married before God rather than by a Justice of the Peace, but Communion and Prayers and all the rest did not matter. I swallowed hard. They described that each of their parents were divorced, and that they could not stand the dogmatic authority of the Church. I risked asking, so after you are married, how are you going to practice your faith They looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language, and I asked “Will you go together to a Catholic Church or Lutheran, or separately, or what?” Without hesitation they boldly stated, “we won't worry about that until we are old and fearing death.”
Suddenly, I realized this was one of the few moments in life when seeds of faith could be planted, and suggested, “So after you get married, you are going to encounter things you never imagined, you will be half a continent away from home and parents and everything you have ever known. Maybe at that time, you will want to have a community, to be surrounded by people with a similar history and values who can support you, because if you wait to try to find faith until you are dying, it may be too late.”

I have a confession to make.
At New Years, I described hoping and praying that this year would be better than the year ended.
In the last year, my Father died, then my Mom, the last several years of family illnesses have been hard on our marriage, hard on family, hard on our faith.
We live in a community that was spared most of the economic lay-offs and unemployment the rest of the nation knew. So what do we pray for... that our 401Ks and IRAs would rebound? How much like praying to idols, is praying for the investment of our money on Wall Street?
We have known many of our sons and daughters who have demonstrated nobility and honor in enlisting to serve our Country, and despite our fears and worries as parents, thank God these have returned home to us safely.
The recent past has been a spiritually dry season, we all go through those times. Times when we are so distracted by all the things going on, that we lose sight of what matters. My confession is that during such a time, I know that in preaching, I have turned to Bible Study and descriptions about The Church, because it was easier and safer.

The last many months, I have had a recurrent dream, after having been led through the basement of the Church I grew up in, I was led up the stairs to the Narthex at the back of the Sanctuary and escorted to a seat in one of the back rows. I recall wondering as a leader why we had not been shown the front pews or the Chancel, and realized first you have to believe and you can always be invited to go higher. Among the most powerful texts to me has been “To whom much is given, much is expected.”
There are times when as a human being, I can be very naïve, we are often blinded by our projections.
I thought that recounting the experience of this church would be occasions for affirmation with the constant realization we can go higher. I thought that every circumstance had been an occasion of faith, but I have come to know that many have turned off at those times, perceiving these were just a listing of accomplishments of the institution, bolstering up the facade of this idyllic community.

About a year ago, someone in great pain made a comment, that has come back over and over again. He described that “Faith is so much easier, when all you have to do is sit back and listen. When you get involved, when you know the behind the scenes of reality, faith is so much harder and more messy.”

While I have known Churches which have read the Velveteen Rabbit, or Watership Down as a sermon; while there are Churches which have political action motivation as the sermon, in this Church, preaching has always been based on Scripture, not because it is religious but as being The Word of God and also based in current events circumstances in our community and world.

We are a 21st Century Post-Modern people, who through literature, through education, are already familiar with the basics of the Biblical stories. We take as fact that Jesus and John the Baptist were contemporaries, and as John called all the people to repent and be baptized, so Jesus was Baptized. Also if we know nothing else about Isaiah, that this Priest/Prophet/Pastor describes this image of a Suffering Servant. The Suffering servant is so familiar, this passage is even quoted by the Gospels as Jesus comes to the Temple to read: that the Blind will see, and the deaf hear and the lame walk.

What as the Preacher I hear in these two texts this morning are first,
that when Jesus was Baptized, the heavens opened up and the Spirit descended on him like a dove. All of the television special effects and computer graphic creations have made the alighting of a dove to be the most graceful and illuminating of events. A Dove is not like an Eagle or Hawk with powerful legs and talons which grasp and land; not like the wren, nuthatch or chickadee who are as comfortable on their legs as in flight; the dove is a pretty cousin to the Pigeon, whose legs can hardly hold up the body's weight let alone the velocity of flight. As a dove comes in to land, it often takes a few extra steps seeking balance, “the heaven descended spirit” crashes in and disturbs. Rather than the Spirit/ Faith floating down and surrounding the Savior with a warm glow; when he was Baptized, all time and space and relationships were changed, heaven was ripped open, and the Spirit of God knocked into Jesus, causing him to question and re-evaluate everything about life as we have known it. So also with us, when circumstances knock us off our balance, we need to question our faith and find a new normal, life is full of faith stories creating a new reality.

Some of us have said, “Pastor I need you to connect the dots. Make faith explicit, help me understand.” When you worked hard putting yourself through to be the first in your family to go to College and to provide for your family, and you discover that your grandchild is failing school, and does not care. What matters is not the Tuition. What matters is not what other people think. What matters, the only thing that matters, is your grandchild finding meaning and purpose in life.
When you are new to a community, and do not have friends, do not yet have routines of knowing where everything is. When you feel very much alone, isolated, intimidated, this is when faith is a companion. When you discover your spouse has been addicted to porn, to going on all those websites; or when they develop an anonymous emotional relationship over the internet, it is a violation, it is a betrayal of self.
When you care for others, and your caring becomes work. When you dress and feed people, who are living out their days, and you come home to feed your own children and undress them for bed...
When suddenly you realize that you cannot do what seemed the simplest things because your spouse needs you, and this is not going to get better but is a chronic condition that will get worse. All these are occasions of the spirit bumping into your reality, and asking about your faith in God.

I said first, because there is a second surprise in the texts this morning. Isaiah's description of the Suffering servant of God who sets free the Captives, and restores sight to the blind, does not lift up their voice, does not cry, will not fail or be discouraged. What I hear in this is not O SUCK IT UP, Suffer in silence, Not at all! But rather, that we need the Silence, as uncomfortable, and prolonged and painful as it often is, in order to recognize what is not from us, what is not distraction, but what is right and what is righteous before God. The Servant Leader recognizes in their own suffering the needs and vulnerability of others. The Servant Leader is not a leader who suddenly dons an apron and serves those who work for them. The Servant Leader identifies with the needs and concerns of others, and lifts these up trying to make a difference in the world. This is not a Savior on a White Horse, but rather a Wounded Healer, who is less concerned with winning, than for making certain the needs of the most fragile are attended to, being certain that the drowning wick is not extinguished, the bent and broken branch is not cut off or lost. Ordinarily, this congregation has a great number of weddings and a great number of baptisms and very very few funerals, but this last week, we have had far more deaths than our norm. What has surprised me in these, is that people who have known great suffering, circumstances that would bring a strong person to their knees, and their families have described “Never did I ever hear them complain.”

How easy it is to become overwhelmed by all the distractions of this life. The news cycle has a fresh tragedy every day. One thing matters, having faith in God.