"Savoring Redemption" September 15, 2013

Jeremiah 4:23-28 Luke 14: 34 – 15: 12 Last Sunday, Rally Day, our worship of God was accompanied by a marvelous new Organist; the anthem of the Choir was conducted by an incredible new Director, a daughter of the congregation demonstrated her maturity of voice and character by singing a piece from Leonard Bernstein's Mass, and immediately after worship at the encouragement of our Session we as The Church embraced an issue which has been divisive and lacking for over 50 years, and we boldly acted to begin a search for additional leadership. Yet in all these things, we responded like the person who endured surgery and chemo therapy and radiation. We were incredulous at announcements of being healthy, we await the dropping of the shoe, the falling of the ax. People of the 21st Century believe there is always going to be a calamity, we await the next catastrophe holding our breath. Had there not been flooding in Colorado and fires in New Jersey, I do not know what we would have done. Being Christian is not accomplishing miracles and waiting for punishment. Believing in God is not looking for blasphemy, judgment, and devastation. Believing in God, being Christian is identifying that we were lost, we do experience tragedy BUT ALSO we have hope! We believe in unmerited, unwarranted GRACE. We have read the parables of Luke 15 so often, that we hear of the one lost sheep, and we skip over the 99 who are safe, to search for the lost coin, because that will lead to the Prodigal Son who comes home and the Elder Brother who did not know he too was lost, because that will lead to the rich young man, and eventually to the Crucifixion. What I would tell you this morning, is that the purpose of the parable of the Lost Sheep is not to lead to finding Lost Money, building to the Lost Son, but just the reverse. The last several weeks we have listened as Jesus described the Great Wedding Feast that God has provided and we, ALL Humanity claimed to be too busy to celebrate. We started a new business, we purchased a new home, we started a new project, we fell in love, we purchased new golf clubs, so could not be bothered with something so banal as faith in God, I mean faith in God has been around since Moses and the 10 Commandments, since Abraham wandered the desert. Why would we stop what we are doing to celebrate faith, to celebrate what we believe? Then we heard challenge and logical questioning of Who among us would not stop before taking out a mortgage to question if we could ever repay it? Who would enter a war without trying diplomacy, without having an exit strategy, without considering the End game? Yet, as logical and reasoned as those questions, if we stay with the Biblical text, if we listen to Jesus, the conclusion to be drawn is WE are the ones who enter into wars without a plan for peace or forgiveness. We are seduced by building and assessed values without consideration of the cost and true worth to us. We are the ones who deny our own place at God's Table, and are shocked and embarrassed. The key to understanding faith, to understanding all these parables from Luke, to being Christian is two things: FIRST, every time the lost is found, Jesus describes a CELEBRATION of REDEMPTION. The Shepherd comes home with the sheep on his shoulders and throws a party. The woman who turned her house upside down searching, and lit every lamp, when she finds the lost coin, invites all her neighbors to rejoice with her for the lost is found. The Father who welcomes home the younger son, who had wished his father dead, not only celebrates his redemption, the father seeks out the father's elder son to share the celebration. Redemption is costly and painful. Redemption requires that we not move on to the next, searching and waiting for what next, but that we go back to claim and reclaim what was lost. Recently, I spoke with a man who had fought in Vietnam, who when he came back was spit upon and hit and shamed for having fought for his Country. The indignation and pain were still as fresh as the day his plane landed and he took off his uniform, because the soldier had never really come home. Twenty-five years ago, many who were here knew a co-pastorate was a mistake, but we allowed it to happen. When the dust cleared and the Interim was here, we discovered that twenty years before, horrible abuses had been allowed to happen and we had just moved on without prosecuting, without redemption, without acknowledgment, so during that Interim we as a church had to go back and reclaim what we lost to memory. September 11th happened twelve years ago. That night, here in this Sanctuary our community gathered as we listened to this description from Jeremiah 4. Prophesied thousands of years before, Jeremiah described Ground Zero, where because of the impact and the airplane fuel there was no life, no birds, no bodies, no sound. If in Genesis, at the story of Creation, we voiced with God: “It was Good” then here as everything was attacked and destroyed, we want and need to say “It was Bad, It was Very Bad.” But if a dozen years later, we live our lives in fear, then the terrorists won. If we look on anyone with a turban, or dressing differently, as being a terrorist, then the terrorists won. If we fear the future, if we still act with the hostility that anyone who is not for us must be against us, then the terrorists won. We need a V-E Day or a V-J Day, the End to the Great Depression and Celebration of Recovery, celebration of the present and future hope! We as a congregation, undertook great debt and dismantling of what we had had, in order to create one of the finest instruments for worship in Central New York, so that this church can provide the community as patrons of music and the arts. We have growing Choirs, with wonderful personal abilities and leadership who allow us to laugh and sing together. We have children in the church, babies being brought to Jesus, and children bringing their parents, and youths who are mounting with wings like Eagles, who run and do not grow weary. We are beginning a search to be far more and far different than we have been before. We need to envision this time in our lives, we need to envision coming to Church as a Great Celebration. We need to Hope and to believe in GRACE, savoring REDEMPTION. SECOND, for we said that to understand these parables from Luke, to be CHRISTIAN required two things: Second is that seemingly cast off phrase at the end of Chapter 14. “Salt is Good, but if Salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is fit neither for the land nor the dungheap, people throw it away.” Throughout all of these parables, “PEOPLE” has been synonymous with the world, society, those who do not believe. And “people” have thrown their faith in God, their faith in the Church, away. So how do we restore the taste to salt? As much as many of us today try to avoid Salt, at one point salt was used as a Fertilizer, and as a weed killer, Salt is used to melt the ice, to preserve food, to enhance taste... The Taste of Salt, Saltiness, Salt provides SAVOR... SAVIOR! Christian Faith is not just about accomplishments, or being members, or morality, or righteousness. Christian Faith comes back to the reality of The Savior. Christian Faith is acknowledgment that we cannot live life on our own. When given the choice: we will not show up at the banquet, we will wage wars without anticipating an end, without planning for Peace, without welcoming home the soldiers who fought for us, without recognizing the costs and values and intrinsic worth. Being Christian requires that the church be more than a Free Parking Lot and a Building for Community use. Being Christian requires that we claim to BE: The Church in this time and place. The recurrent phrase throughout the Bible is the reality that ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE WITH GOD! So when Salt has lost its saltness, when people (WE) have thrown away what we believe, and who we are, we still need to trust that All things are possible with God... God can use EVEN US. Without redemption, we are a people without hope, and we are far from Hopeless, we are a people of Grace, who have not received redemption because it was deserved but because we are loved by God.

"The Benefit You Provide" September 8, 2013

Jeremiah 18:1-11 Luke 14:25-33 Perhaps like me, you love old movies, especially the Silent Movies with scenes of car chases, or riding a horse to chase a train. But as fast as those chase scenes seemed to be, realize that the cars in those old movies had a top speed of 24 miles per hour, and while racehorses today are bred to run up to 50 miles per hour for a quarter mile, when the cowboys were chasing a runaway train, saddle horses could run a maximum of 20 mph. Today, life comes at us so fast. We are surrounded by so much information, instant communication, there are an average of 300 emails sent to every business every day (85% of those being SPAM), so many decisions, that we rarely have time, or take time to clarify our convictions, what we care about and are committed to, especially in faith. But that, is what faith is all about! What are you willing to live for and die for? Not simply a choice between fish and beef, between soda, beer or wine, but between whether we choose what seems easiest and least costly in the moment, or whether the decisions of our lives will Benefit Others? Last Sunday we read the first half of the 14th Chapter of the Gospel of Luke, with multiple reference to Weddings and Wedding Feasts, yet the second half of the Chapter this morning pertains to Bearing your Cross, Family, Building Towers and Waging War. Throughout the week, I wondered about the relationship between Weddings and Wars, between Family and Faith, and why these had been juxtaposed. The Gospels are not simply a collection of Jesus' sayings, but the telling of a story, like a word from the Prophets, or a sermon, to convince us to live our lives in faith, bearing the cross. Saturday morning, I came into the Church and had a message from the night before, from a couple who identified they had been engaged for over a year and had gotten their license and decided this would be the day to be married. They had no plans, no limo, no reception, no DJ, no flowers, no photographer. Suddenly the gear dropped into place, the relationship between these passages is not between Weddings and Wars, between hating your family of birth and choosing instead a family of faith, but that as individuals, as believers, whether we have thought things through, whether we are absolutely convinced about and totally convicted by our decisions? The SECOND part of this is what BENEFIT DO WE PROVIDE? Is our role as the Community of Faith, as the Church in the world today, to provide services to whom ever pays the fee? If so we are not a religious non-profit, but a corporation in the wedding business just like the photographer or DJ. Do we have convictions about Engagement and Marriage, or have we succumbed that weddings are about the Guest List and Flowers and Reception? How convinced and convicted are we of our role as the Church, that we have the authority and resources in order that we can provide people Marrying that we are not simply officiating but blessing their relationship, making their union a communion? Jesus' counsel to those who listen, is when facing a major decision, to undertake a major project, to commit to an act of war, to confront family, or to choose to believe in God, FIRST we need to sit down and center ourselves, to consider Our Own role and function in the world. We are not simply judges making decisions, Technocrats deleting and replying to emails, we are human beings living life, and in particular we continue to choose to try to be Spiritual, to be Children of God, to act as we believe. So before any life decision, we need to pray that we would be used by God, as an instrument of God to be of benefit to others. In the Old Testament, Jeremiah struggles that the Nation has lost faith in God, has become a secular culture. Jeremiah was instructed to go to the Potter's Shed. Years ago, I worked for a potter cleaning their studio, loading and unloading the kilns, and on my own time enjoyed throwing on the Potter's Wheel. I tried, in preparation for this morning to have a Potter's Wheel brought to the Sanctuary, but among all the schools and local artists none were able to loan us a Kick wheel. They had motorized wheels, but for worship, that is like starting an engine on a Sailboat, besides there would be the droning sound of a motor to listen over. So I need you to imagine with me, that we have a Potter's wheel. The Bible simply describes that Jeremiah saw the spoiled pot cut off, set aside to be reworked again… But even more, when even good pieces of pottery are rushed to mature to quickly, they crack. When they become too brittle or too saturated, or in anyway bumped, broken, ruined, they are dumped into a can, like a trash bin filled with water, where over time everything breaks down to its natural form. When this mass of primordial matter is no longer clods of waste, it is put into plaster, covered and left, until it is needed and ready to be reworked. Even the bisque-fired broken pieces can be ground to form grist and absorbent grit for the mixture. Nothing is ever lost, nothing is unusable to the potter. When time comes, the clay is pulled from the lump, and kneaded like bread, worked by pressure and folding, until uniform and of the consistency desired by the potter. It is not possible in terms of physics to place a pot in the exact center of a wheel. Even if by engineering and calculus we could determine the exact center and perimeter. Instead, the potter sits down, taking the clay they have worked, the potter sets and roots the clay to the turntable. There is the plane of reality we see and know in daily life where the potter centers and opens the rooted clay, but with the potter's wheel, what moves the turntable platter is an unseen rod connected to a stone. The artist, sets the stone in motion and rotation with kicking clockwise, creating the speed of centrifugal force, then on the opposite side sets their hands. It is the friction of rubbing against the hands, that causes the clay to yield and conform to find its center. None of us can one day decide we suddenly want to be more centered. It is the friction of rubbing against, of being worked and of yielding that brings us to our center. Only after the potter and clay are centered, does the artist reach out their thumbs to divide and open the clay to form a vessel. If the clay is not consistent, or circumstances happen with the pressure of the potter's touch, the rotation of the wheel, even the smallest thing, the pot can collapse. The ancient Hebrew word for clay or earth is "adama"and the creature formed from out of the adama is then called adam. Similarly, a word for earthen matter is humus and we are humans, or literally the earthlings from out of the earth. It happened that when the couple came down to the Sanctuary, this Potter's house, they were a couple of maturity who had known one another since high school. They had carefully thought through and discussed their relationship, their commitments, their family and their faith. They had forthrightly decided that all the other stuff that has come to be the business of weddings was not essential. The decisions before the church this day are not rushed, have not been taken lightly. Over 50 years, we have time and again done what Presbyterians do, we have formed Committees and talked and studied. Every time, every time, we have come back stating that what we the church needs and wants is to have an Associate Pastor, in order that one could focus on some things and the other could focus upon others. But every time, we have backed away from our convictions, fearful of the cost, fearful of change. We have tried Christian educators and Certified Christian educators, Co-Pastors and Parish Associates. For the last three years, our Session have explored our mission, our core values, our priorities, our finances, and differentiated the responsibilities. A significant adaptation in this decision, is that as Pastor, I need to let go of some things. In a church, a pastor seemingly becomes a bit of a control-freak, because you care, because you are invested, but in communion we choose intentionally to serve one another to benefit all God's Creation. There are several different emphases in every worship service, one is that we have been part of the primordial mass throughout the week, being worked on by all the sludge and water of life. We make a choice to come to worship, we get up on Sunday morning. We arrive and visit with strangers and friends. We pray as we listen to the postlude trying to transition from our secular lives to our faith life. Then we stop and pour out the water from the pitcher recognizing we often cannot take in one more thing, we must lket go of what has been in order to continue to take in to grow. There is a reality, an imperfection we as potters have had to adapt to, that due to the cost of housing, due to changes in our culture and jobs, the number of children enrolled in our schools in this community has dropped by 15%. SO the purpose of this associate is not simply as Youth Pastor, or Christian Educator, but to continue to reach out in new and advancing technologies, to provide greater visitation and pastoral care as well. In essence that the church would benefit by growing in new ways.

"I Love to Tell the Story" September 01, 2013

Jeremiah 2:4-13 Luke 14: 1-23 We were at a Wedding reception yesterday, and several different people introduced themselves saying “I used to go to church, but all they ever talked about was Attendance and Money, then there was a fight about music and we stopped going.” Let us challenge the most basic precepts of Christianity today: The purpose of faith is not Attendance, not Money, not Music, not even the perpetuation of Religion. The purpose of Faith is to love God, and loving God to change the world! As a pastor, a part of my job is simply to act as Cheerleader, not to judge whether we can give more or attend more, but to say “Well done, good and faithful servants of God!” This is Labor Day Weekend. Opportunity for us all to have one last day of summer before school begins and we return to routine. This is an opportunity for us to stop in sabbath to recall who we are and what we do, to remember our context. We have made the American Dream marrying, raising children to get a good education so as to get good jobs, so as to marry and raise their children until eventually at 65 or 70 we can retire and enjoy life as a permanent vacation. BUT WHEN did a vacation from reality become life's goal? When did our children change from aspiring to be Engineers, or Teachers, Captains of Industry, to dreaming of one day being retired? As the Old Testament Nation of Israel, the people were to remember that your most basic identity is “You were slaves and God rescued you.” God gave you the Covenant of the 10 Commandments, and your purpose your identity is to follow the Law, to live the Commandments, to love God with all your heart and soul and strength. As Christians, we are to remember that left to our own devices we get into trouble, we sin, so once, for all time, God became incarnate, took on human flesh and lived and died to make a difference in our lives. God did not become human, did not suffer and die on the cross just so we would have a religion to worship on Sundays! God changed reality, God took on human flesh and the immortal became vulnerable, became human, mortal and died for us, in order to rescue those who were in misery, the child prostitutes, the drug addicts, the untouchables in every society. When we forget that salvation, that rescue of the Lost, we make the Church into a Fraternity a club instead of the means to change the world. Advancement, Progress, is a wonderful thing, and more than any generation before us, we have witnessed in our lifetimes the radical advancement of technology. But often, too often, we become so entranced with our accomplishments, our ability to make ourselves safe and secure that we are blinded to the reality of the way things are, blinded to Creation, blind to the needs of others, the vulnerable, those who live in misery. The last couple years for vacation we have gone out to Cape Cod, to step away from our routine, lie on the beach and read and listen to the rhythm of the ocean, to sea whales and seals and sharks, to build castles and rest. We discovered marvelous beaches, National Parks, virtually deserted, with pristine endless sand. One of the beaches, has a natural inlet caused by the rising of the tide, to create a channel and sand bar just across on the other side. Families seem to prefer this beach because they can spread out their blankets and wade in the channel which is a little warmer than the ocean, there are virtually no waves, and you can enjoy the salt water, enjoy the sand, without getting knocked over and turned upside down by waves, getting sand in your suit and salt in your throat. But as the tide recesses, the water in the channel disappears and the shoals are revealed, the stinky, smelly silt at the bottom of this basin. This was the indictment of God through Jeremiah. Because the people wanted to settle in a place without worry, wanted to live in cities, without concern whether there was enough pure clean water, they built for themselves cisterns to catch and hold rains, brooks and streams. Generations later, much like we and our children, the children of Israel had come to know only that water came out of a faucet, from a pump, from the reservoir. Their minds could not fathom that the rains and snows through every year provide the water to replenish the reservoir we drink. But for the last many decades the Nation has been at war. Concentrating all efforts on war and survival, the infrastructure of the cisterns had cracked. Their technology had let them down, and being dependent for survival upon a broken infrastructure, their faith in themselves rather than God, like their water, had gone down the drain. Incredulous, the Lord indicts the Nation, “God saved you from the Pharaohs, those who called themselves gods of Egypt and had made you slaves. The Lord God saved you from the Canaanites, Jebusites, Perizzites, and all those who worshiped and were led by false gods and idols. God gave the Nation a land of freedom, with blessings. YET, not only have you forgotten God, you wasted and destroyed the blessings that were here! Never before in the history of humanity, never in the history of the world has there been a people who rejected God to worship themselves as their own gods. There have been people who had no faith, no God, who found God. There have been people who worshipped idols who found God. But this is a people who have thrown away and polluted the blessings they were given, the freedom and identity they had been given by God Almighty, in order to have cisterns to control water when they wanted, and then allowed the cisterns to fall into disrepair. The problem was that they failed to tell their stories of faith, to pass these to a new generation. Let's try something this morning. In Harry Potter, what are the names of Harry's Best Friends. And of he who shall not be named? But what is it that was written on the wall in the book of Daniel? We know our culture's stories, we know about vampires and werewolves, but are unfamiliar with the symbols of faith. But such is the complaint of God before all Creation. Reading the Gospels, we can look for the standard set-ups. Whenever someone is wronged, or oppressed, we know Jesus is going to try to help them, that is who Jesus is. When there is a Wedding we know that the real Bridegroom is Jesus. Whenever there is a Feast, we know this is going to be related back to Communion. When my brothers and I were little, we watched reruns on television. We got to the point that we knew every time Lassie and Timmy found a well, Timmy would fall in; when The Lone Ranger came on, we knew every time Tonto went to town he was going to get beat up. We would chant at the television, “Don't Go to Town Tonto!” SO when on the Sabbath Day, Jesus goes to a Feast at the home of a Most Respected Leader among the Pharisees, we know there is going to trouble. Even more, Luke tells us, they were watching him! CS Lewis was a great Theologian and story-teller of a generation ago. Lewis claimed to believe that God was not a terrible Judge of who goes to Heaven and who goes to hell, but rather that each of us, in choosing to act I faith, choosing to participate decide for ourselves if we want to be with God in heaven or not. “Dropsy” was a medical term of the day, today we would describe this as “edema”. The man's heart and kidneys are retaining fluid, making it hard to breathe, giving him high blood pressure and he needs a diuretic. In those days, anyone who was in any way lesser, was put down as having sinned and therefore shunned as a lower caste. Rather than rejecting this man, or belittling him as sinful, Jesus does asks the crowd what we expect Jesus to do? And there is silence! Jesus asks whether you would have concern for your business or your pet when they are in danger on the Sabbath, and again when there was silence, Jesus heals the man. According to Luke, never again was Jesus invited to the home of a Pharisee on the Sabbath,... indeed the next time Jesus shares a meal it is with a Tax Collector, and then at the Last Supper. Like at our own parties, when there is a pregnant pause, a total lull in the conversation, someone can be counted on to say : “Hey, How about those Cubs!” In this case, a man fills the void by saying “Blessed is he who shall eat Bread in the Kingdom of God!” Which Jesus takes as a cue to share a Parable about a Wedding Feast, where the Save the Date Cards had been mailed out and received. But come the time of the wedding, all of those with something else that they could be doing, were doing it. So the Wedding Banquet, the Feast in the Kingdom of God is for the poor and the homeless and all who are in need. As a pastor who officiates at a lot of wedding, there are a great many Wedding stories, one of my favorites comes from about a decade ago. A family were celebrating their daughter's wedding with all the usual and customary anxiety. When two days before the wedding the Mother of the Bride's best friend experienced the death of her husband. You might imagine, both their families going into chaos. Should we postpone the wedding? Should the best friend of the Bride's Mother who is in mourning, not attend or wear black? As the Church, do we refuse having a Funeral on a Saturday, because we are scheduled to celebrate a Wedding that afternoon? As it turned out, the two each recognized the needs of the other. At 10am we had a Memorial, and seated beside the grieving widow was her best friend also in tears. At 3pm that same day, we had a Wedding, and as the father escorted his daughter up the aisle, the Bride's Mom stood in the front pew accompanied by her best friend beaming with pride. In the ancient world, much like our own, HONOR and GLORY, ACCOMPLISHMENTS & PRIDE were among the highest of people's goals. This morning's Scriptures invite us to consider that if we are loved by God, everything else will take care of itself, and we can humbly enjoy our role in life.

"For Us or Everyone Else?" August 11, 2013

Hebrews 11 Isaiah 1: 10-20 Luke 12: 32-41 One Sunday morning in worship, I looked out upon the congregation, and saw that here upon the floor in the second pew was a child turned around backward engrossed in coloring her bulletin program. The parents smiled that everything was as it should be, and I smiled back reassuringly. But during a pause in the preaching of the sermon this cherubic voice spoke out “Mommy is he talking to us or everybody else?” Rubbing her back, her mother said “Shhh, it's all right dear go back to what you were doing.” Suddenly it hit me that this is what we have done to faith. Instead of Salvation being our hope and goal and longing, rather than teaching the stories of Scripture as the foundations of our faith, we have conditioned and reassured our children that they do not need to pay attention to reality. We distract them with games and devices, teaching them that being polite is saying “Thank you” and “I am sorry” and “I love you” to family, even when you are not. It happened again this weekend, that we had a wedding. A beautiful affair with all the friends and family gathered. The couple described that what was unique, was something they had gotten from Amazon.com. Throughout the wedding, there was an empty vase before the couple. At the climax of the wedding, the parents came forward each with vial of sand in shades of silver, gold and brown, which they poured into the vase to form a foundation. After the parents were reseated the couple took their own vials of colored sand and layered these in a beautiful pattern upon their parents foundation of silver, gold and brown. Then, when the vase was almost overflowing, they took an oil candle and placed it upon the top, which became their unity candle. It was a beautiful thing, and a symbol of the sharing this couple hoped to have based on all their parents had provided. But as we walked down the aisle one of the guests leaned over asking “So what difference did that make for their staying married?” We are easily distracted and caught up in ritual, in the drama of the moment, without realizing there is a great deal more to life than going through the motions of saying please and thank you, and I am sorry... without meaning. That the simple words “I love you” are a promise and re-assurance of faith that together we create meaning, together we can believe in more than everything we have seen and known. The current Matt Damon Sci-fi “Elysium,” like the “Matrix” series, follow the theme of John Bunyan's classic Pilgrim's Progress, in which at the very beginning the hero awakens from the reality of everything they have known to believe there is something far better, another world. In each of the current manifestations the goal becomes shattering the difference between worlds, bringing that reality down once and for all to be in concert with what everyone else knows as real. In the Puritan classic, Pilgrim's Progress, the Character “Christian” reads a book, and suddenly realizes the reality he has known is a City of Destruction focused upon its own consumption, a Sodom and Gomorrah, and he sets out on a journey for The Celestial City of God. Each of these are about more than a quest, a great journey, stories are our search for meaning. A quest for whether what those before us claimed to know and believe has meaning, or where we find salvation. The Word of God as it comes from Isaiah, names God's frustration with a people who only go through the motions of life. At the time of Isaiah, worship in the Temple had gone on for hundreds of years. Over those Centuries, instead of worship being about the celebration of our faith, about wrestling with priorities and ethical values, worship had followed a formula. We are sinners. Sin is a debt owed to God. Sinners must make a sacrifice to atone for their sins. There are two corruptions here: The corruption that the more sacrifices that were offered, the more sinners who said they were sorry, the more successful the Temple Worship. There were more people. There was ore money.This is success, Right? And also, whether we are anything more than sinners? God, who only wanted to love, to have relationship with Creation, is drowning in the blood of all the sacrifices that people had made. There was a constant parade of people, bowing down, saying I am sorry, and after hundreds of years of this, according to Isaiah, God said “ENOUGH!” So what do we think has changed in the thousands of years, we have continued? The point is not in making a sacrifice. Not in saying “I am sorry” or “Forgive me” or “I love you.” The point is whether we are transformed and changed to live in love, to live in forgiveness, or not? Years ago, there was a young man who went searching for faith. He found a great teacher, and asked that the teacher would show him what he needed to believe. The teacher took the man by the neck and forced his head under water and held him there as the novitiate wrestled and struggled to survive. Finally, the drowning man was allowed up. As he coughed and sputtered, and pushed the water from his face, the teacher asked “Why did you struggle, what were you searching for?” The waterlogged man replied, “I was struggling for air, searching only to breathe so as to survive.” The teacher replied, “Come back to me, when your struggle for faith, your need to believe is as desperate as for air.” The other day, I spoke with a man, who described that after 64 years of marriage, knowing his wife was dying day by day for the last many years, had held her in his arms as they slept. When he awoke, she had died. And he described feeling like he had been kicked in the stomach. That is to be desperate to believe. I hope that you know, your pastor is not so sadistic of a teacher as to try to drown you. And I do not believe God intentionally causes us pain. The point of faith is not to shock, or to entertain, or to console. For years now, we have celebrated in worship, in many and different ways. Barking like a dog. Praying in Confession. Laughing and Singing. Making Offerings. Sharing Communion. Serving one another. We could replace the Bibles in the pews with Kindles to read the Scriptures. We could replace the Hymnals with projections of words. We could replace the preacher with pyrotechnics, or actors, or a live band. The point of faith, is not whether we said the right words. Not whether we got the right people, or how many people. The point is whether we believe, and believing whether we pray and act, as we believe. We began worship this day, with the 11th chapter from the Letter to the Hebrews, which has a succinct recap of the journey of Abraham and Sarah. One day when he was 70 years young, Abram was called by God to leave home and family, and everything they had ever known to follow God. He took his wife and followed. Day after day, for years and decades they journeyed in hope of an inheritance. The nuance there, is that an inheritance is not fulfilled in your own lifetime. You are struggling, you are on this journey, so that there will be future generations after us, who might receive, who might believe. We said last week, that part of the nature of an inheritance is whether our parents, our loved ones, loved us as much as we thought, as much as they loved others; in this case whether God loves us; but even more whether we treasure their love. The particulars of Genesis, include that Sarah was very beautiful. Year after year as they journeyed, they encountered powerful, kings and pharaohs. Being afraid, Abraham had told his wife Sarah to tell the Kings and Pharaohs that she was only his sister instead of his wife. She bore this indignity. She bore their flirtations and gifts. Every time, their secrets would be found out, because secrets can never be hid. Finally, when they had wandered the earth on a journey approaching 40 years, when Sarah was 90 and Abraham over a 100 years of age, Abraham told his wife they were going to have a child. She laughed. After everything she had been through, journeying beside this partner. Now, when he was as good as dead, when it was long past the time of conception for her, they were going to have a child? But though she laughed, still she believed. Searching for our Celestial City... searching for what will be home for us... searching for fulfillment, can we believe? Jesus said: “Fear Not, little flock, for it is God's pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” We know God's desire. The question is whether we believe this is for us, or everybody else?

"The Illusion of Individualism", August 4, 2013

Hosea 11: 1-11 Luke 12: 13-31 There is an irony to Preaching. Ministers do not simply read or perform a prescribed speech. The craft of writing a sermon is in taking archaic texts, from different languages for different cultures, and developing a thesis elaborating upon their themes as application for our time and our concerns, developing meaningful ideas, pearls of wisdom, that will be worth the time of diverse people, different every week. Yet, week after week, at social engagements, on the street and at home, the Preacher is asked in One Word, or in Sound Bytes: What is the Sermon about? Last evening when I was asked, I quoted the title: “The Illusion of Individualism”. No one is an island! But part of the power of this morning's Scriptures is that each goes somewhere, there is a change a “Therefore!” In Amos and Hosea, we have read how frustrated God was with Israel, with humanity, God wants to destroy creation, God sees just how out of plumb we are and resolves Never Again to Pass-By, to Forgive, to Passover Israel. But Hosea having put away Gomer, God having resolved “Enough! No More” to forgive, ultimately recognizes that God cannot be alone. The Luke passage is about Money, Inheritance, Consumerism: Barns that are filled with surplus so the owner resolves to build bigger barns, The American Dream, yet this is the only Parable in all the Gospels where God speaks, and what God says is “YOU FOOL!” This is a sermon about The Beatles' Song “Can't Buy Me Love.” The problem is not that money is evil, not that the American Dream of Success is Corruption, but underlying both the Old Testament and the Gospel is the sin of Covetousness, of Greed, of Want not because of Need, but only because I Want. David Noel Freedman was a genius of Biblical Scholarship. Quite literally, he graduated from High School at age 13, College at 17, and had earned his first PhD before age 20. Freedman was the Editor of the Anchor Bible and an Old Testament Scholar at the University of Michigan, later at Princeton Seminary. After decades of research, Freedman came to the conclusion that the first 10 Books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel and Kings, all were demonstration of Israel's violation of the first NINE of the Ten Commandments. Honoring God, Idolatry, Reverence, The Sabbath, Honoring Parents, Adultery, Murder, Stealing. Evidence of the first Nine, because for Murder there has to be a Body. For Adultery there has to be a liaison. For Theft, some thing has to be stolen. But according to Freedman, to Covet is internal, and therefore has no outward manifestation. Underneath everything else, the hardest sin of all is Desire, Covetousness, Greed. Adam and Eve was not about knowledge, not about Apples, but that when they could have anything and everything, this couple coveted what they could not taste. David and Bathsheba, was not about only about adultery, and about murder, but what prompted both was coveting the spouse of another. Not because we need, but because we want. Oddly enough, Greed is not born out of Drought and Economic Collapse. Greed is created out of success and prosperity. Having our needs met, we want to consume more. It is a human condition, our wants translate into desire for satisfaction. But when our our wants are filled, we still want, not because we are hungry, not because we need, but because we are not satisfied. Prosperity creates a sense of fear of scarcity. If my needs are currently met, but still I want more, will more stuff be there when I want? Coveting is not about Money, not about the possessions themselves, but Coveting is the insatiable desire to satisfy what can never be satisfied, to accumulate in a culture that can never have enough, to possess a monopoly in a world of scarcity. I have a couple of scandalous suggestions for you this morning. Scandalous because we live in a Village that sells a lot of stuff, stuff that we may not actually need... Can you go a month without buying stuff? Not that we halt the economy by not making any purchases, but all the excess stuff that we buy just for the sake of buying, that at the moment we had to have, to consume, to possess, we might go without. I heard about a grandmother, who decided that this year, her son had enough ties, her daughter had enough scarves, and sending a check to the grandchildren did not seem at all satisfying. So for her own birthday, she sent each family $1,000 with direction that they should use this to make a difference in the life of someone other than themselves. The sum was large enough, they could not forget to send a thank you, they could not ignore what the gift had been used for. The $1,000 was unexpected and had not been needed, so how would each choose to use it? The difficulty of the Bible is that the parables have become so familiar to us, life is so familiar, as to have lost the shock value of having been heard the first time. We think we own the passage, we know the meaning before we listen. The parable of the Rich Man and his Barns must be told within the context of the question posed. One in the crowd cried out to Jesus “Make my brother divide the inheritance fairly.” Growing up, I had three brothers and there was always a question of fairness. Our mother created a game, that whoever was in charge of division, of sharing, of cutting the desert or pouring the juice, could not be the one who was able to chose first. Knowing that yours was the leftover, the last chosen, ensured that every portion was exactly the same. But I have come to realize something, from all the years of memorials and funerals, what is important is not that we sung their favorite hymn, not the flowers, not that the worship service was beautiful, not that they were eulogized with all their accomplishments, not even that Aunt Jeanne did not make a scene. Funerals, Memorials, Death is about Closure, and as human beings as much as we covet reconciliation and resolution, we do not like the finality of closure. Throughout life there are all these unresolved threads, which dangle after death. Our desire for closure is to resolve what had been unresolved, to weave in and end what had been spurious living things. Related to this, inheritance is not about that lamp, or the Trust fund or portfolio, or the house on Skaneateles. The division of inheritance is about our parents' love. Whether Mom and Dad rewarded me the same or more than everybody else, whether I got more of their love and attention than anyone else? Painfully, we have each already made our lot in life, we have found careers and employment that have allowed us to meet our actual needs. Inheritance is about possession and control of the stuff beyond what we need. The reality is, that life is not about us in isolation. Our identity is composed of all the relationships we have, the accumulated worth of being our parents' children, our siblings' sibling, our neighbor's neighbor. Like God in the Book of the Prophet Hosea, there do come times when we want to cry out “Enough, No More!” But also like God, we look through our memories like a photo album. Instead of the baby coming home, we see the home we made for them. Instead of seeing the child taking their first steps, we see our finger holding them up. Instead of seeing their first birthday, we see the fuss we made over them, the cake, the party, our desire to love. I have come to realize that the prophecy of Hosea is not about taking a Prostitute as a spouse. None of us is so filled with self-hatred as to do so, or to name our children: Valley of Death, or Not my Child, or Unloved. While there may come times, when we want to send our children or our spouse away forever. I have come to believe that Hosea is the story of having to take responsibility for your Mom or Dad over their wishes, taking charge of your Husband or Wife, of your own Child. At Weddings we emotionally commit to “For Better and Worse and Richer and Poorer and Sickness and Health” which with the little we have experienced at 23 or 43 years is a monumental vow. But the heartache of Hosea, is if and when because of Worse and Poorer and Sickness, you take responsibility and take control for the other, how can you ever approach one another again as partners, as equals, with trust and the freedom to love? According to Hosea what God came to realize, is that God is not a human being. Faith is not ordinary or rational. God is God and as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of Life, God must find a way to love anew. We so often imagine Jesus as having been betrayed by Judas, abandoned by the Disciples, Arrested by the Sanhedrin, put to death by Pontius Pilate and the Roman Empire. But also, presiding at the Table, giving the disciples bread and wine as his giving his body and blood, his life, was Jesus' gift that instead of closure offered the possibility of redemption and life different, never again alone or isolated by living our lives as part of the body of Christ, sharing the riches of God.

July 28, 2013, "A Marriage Made in Heaven"

Hosea 1: 2-10 Luke 11: 1-13 To what shall we compare God's Love, not as an abstract but God's love for You and me? What we as a congregation know best are weddings, we celebrate more weddings than any church I have ever known, and where some churches have restrictions about only being married inside on Saturday afternoons we try to accommodate people's needs and desires wherever they are, as sacred. Imagine a wedding...As you come up to the Sanctuary the pastor is waiting outside beaming as this is a Marriage made in Heaven. There is space for every guest. You enter the wedding and the most beautiful music is playing. There are flowers and ribbons. Once everyone is gathered, the Bridegroom escorts his mother and father to their place and intently watches the door for the coming of the Bride. The Bridegroom has been transformed from that infant whose existence changed the lives of everyone, and that gawky teenaged boy asking questions beyond his years, to a man, robust and poised, exuberant and joyful. He stands at the Communion Table in full tuxedo and smiling from ear to ear at having found the partner for all time. This is a Marriage Made in Heaven for the Bridegroom is God the Creator, is Christ one with humanity, and the partner, the Bride was chosen by God, is the Creator's own creation. The command is given to rise, the trumpets fanfare, the doors burst open and the Bride enters. But something is amiss. Where the Bridegroom is in love, is captivated and committed with everything they have and are to this other... The Bride is distracted, appearing as though they would rather be anywhere else, with someone else. As the Statement of Intention is asked, the Bridegroom's voice quivers, he pauses to swallow and commit himself fully for ever saying “I AM and I DO”. When the Bride is asked whether she will love, honor and cherish her partner, she replies “Whatever, I Guess.” The problem named in Hosea is prostitution, in its most base sense: whoredom! But the problem of prostitution is not SEX, but that the common person sells themselves, sells their very soul for money to feed their addiction. Ironic, in that there are so many unnamed women in the Bible, that the bride of the prophet Hosea is personally remembered. Hosea's prophecy makes faith scandalous, shameful, intimate and personal and real. Something happens to us, something hard and calloused when we sell our intimacy, our emotions, our love, our soul for what can never satisfy. This week a 17 year old from this community died of heroine overdose. Not in Auburn, or Syracuse, but here in this, our Village, under our watch, a child is dead. I remember when a husband got passed security in the hospital and beat his wife to death, and the community was so outraged that hospital security was changed and there were community discussions about domestic violence and abuse. I remember when there were alcohol related deaths on the lake and the streets, and there was rage, who could have left a couple for dead, who could have provided liquor to those underage. Why then, when a 17 year old is dead from Heroine, are we ashamed to talk about it, to do something about it? The problem is not drugs, or alcohol, or prostitution, or all the things we often blame as evil, but that all this stuff represent addiction, addiction to escape, to avoidance, to what can never bring joy or satisfaction. Week after week at weddings, I watch as Father's escort their daughters down the aisle and kiss them goodbye. I watch as they dance at their weddings. We treat one another as precious, as sacred, as a gift to this one in love. None of us could imagine committing to a relationship of “Yeah, whatever, I Guess.” Recently, I was in conversation with a health care tech caring for people with active HIV AIDS, and with a Hospice Nurse caring for those who are terminal and actively dying, and with a spouse caring at home for their partner with Alzheimer's. The AIDS tech described the dangers of a stray needle stick, or a cut. They spoke of how normal and ordinary their patients were, a lawyer, an engineer, a mother, a son, not the GRID that was feared and ostracized a few decades ago. The Hospice Nurse described being called any hour day and night. Named cleaning wounds and bed sores, and trying to provide comfort, closure, dignity; but that the hardest thing of all was the accumulation of so many deaths that you fear becoming numb to mortality, to suffering, to humanity. The spouse caring at home, named that doing stuff was the easy part, the hard was when the one you love cannot figure out who you are. One who had gone with us described Sudan, where nothing is clean, where cattle are everywhere, and feces and flies and smoke. Where just to survive due to poverty and climate is miraculous, but there are diseases and war that make us fear anyone who is different. Each one in turn described “You could not pay me a Million Dollars to do that.” And each one in turn realized, they did not do the work for money. One had a father who had died alone in a hospital, where everything seemed sterile, scientific and cold. One had a sister, lost to the family, maybe by caring for people with AIDS she might find someone who knew someone who knew her, or if not at least she had cared for one like her sister. The spouse had committed to better and worse and sickness and health, and believed that somewhere beneath that vacant expression was the one who still loved them. “Hard” does not begin to describe the level of commitment. In relationships like these, like Hosea's love for Gomer, like God's love for us, there come times when you say to yourself, “No more, I Cannot” but you see them struggle, you see their need and you have to care. It is scandalous, far beyond what any one imagines on their wedding day but that is the commitment of God to humanity, distracted. These passages this morning are about shameless relationships. Not only that Hosea loves Gomer with a love that cannot be returned, that God loves us wanting only love in return and we are instead distracted. We question the mechanics of love and marriage, like our questioning the mechanics of prayer. The disciples, as faithful students ask, “Teach us how, what, when to pray.” But prayer is not a magic incantation that if we do the right things and say the right words, will be guaranteed a desired outcome. The great pain of prayer is when our prayers go unanswered, was it that God did not care, that God was not able, or that we did not pray had enough, faithfully enough? What Jesus described to his disciples is that God loves us shamelessly, without any reserve, so we need to pray shamelessly without reserve! Prayer is not about following the right formula, or paying enough, or being more faithful than anyone else. Prayer establishes relationship. Not How, When, Where or What to Pray, but who are You and to whom do we pray? I am dismayed how often we get hung up on which is more correct “Forgive us our Debts, or Trespasses, or Sins” and whether to end “For Thine is the Kingdom, Glory and Power, Forever” or not. Luke is not worried about getting all the words right. First, who is God? Religions throughout time have identified God as Master, and identified with with different attributes, praying to a God of War versus God of Love. Judaism prayed to One God, Law-giver, Emancipator, who set us free in a Promised Land. But from Jesus we have an identity with God as being personal, even intimate. This God is not separate and objective, up on Mount Olympus, but messy, passionate and caring just as we are. God is to be honored and revered and Other, so Hallow God's Name. Recognize and claim from the outset that God's Will will be Done. We can plead and beg and shame, knowing that ultimately God's will will be done. That is our safety, like having a Moderator or Referee, we can try anything and everything available to us, confident God will keep us from going too far. Having recognized God as God, honoring and revering God's identity and that all life is God's will, WHAT DO YOU NEED? ...FOOD, FORGIVENESS, FIDELITY. Give us this day our Daily Bread. Forgive us our Wrongs. Although we may deserve it, Do not ever abandon us or lead us into temptation. The point of prayer is not whether we did it right or wrong, whether we prayed hard enough or enough times, whether we were worthy to pray. The point of prayer was without regard for Shame, did you pray sincerely for what you need and want to be in relationship with God. It is not about the needs, or the wants, or desires, but about being in relationship with God. From 1930s Sunday School Classes many of us have this iconic image of a Blonde Haired Blue Eyed Jesus in white robes smiling as he stands outside the door quietly waiting. THAT is not what Jesus himself described. In that culture even more than our own, demonstrating Hospitality was paramount. In an age before robo-calls and SPAM solicitations, before commercials selling us anything and everything, if someone was desperate enough to express need, we needed to be desperate to respond. Every person had obligation to respond when asked. If a neighbor appeared at your door at Midnight, asking even for a piece of bread for someone else, you needed to respond. We need to envision not Jesus gently tapping outside our door, but a neighbor, one who looks like us pounding on the door, and God in pajamas inviting us inside!

July 21, 2013, "One Thing Is Important"

Amos 7:7 – 8:7 Luke 10:38 – 42 I greatly appreciate the opportunity to have been away last weekend to have a Bus drivers' vacation by officiating at a family wedding, and understand that Elder Weiss preached on The Good Samaritan. One of the difficulties of our recalling that passage is that it has become so familiar to us that we all want to be Good Samaritans, instead of perceiving that the Samaritans were a feared and hated people. The shock and surprise of the Good Samaritan parable for Jesus' listeners can only be heard today, if the Samaritan were compared to a member of Al Qaida who stops to help a stranger. If instead of Trevon Martin and George Zimmerman each “standing their ground” with weapons, the Neighborhood Watch guard had protected and accompanied the other on his way to his parents' home. The point of Jesus' parable was not to choose to be a Samaritan, but rather that even one we have no expectations could act in faith, can act as neighbor in the way God intended for us. Some react to the hearing of that parable by interpreting, what the Samaritan did was to busily do stuff. Where the Priest and Levite walked by on the other side, the Samaritan got down, cleaned and bound his wounds, placed him upon the Samaritan's own beast, took him to an Inn and paid for his care. In response to which comes Luke's passage for this morning. Martha acted with compassion and hospitality by inviting Jesus to her home, but then realizing that the Messiah sent from God was coming to her home with 70 of his closest disciples, she anxiously frets and is distracted by many things. The verb Jesus used to describe Martha, was that she was being pulled in many different directions. The model for Martha's behavior is Abraham. Our Call to worship this morning Genesis 18, is readily used to describe acts of hospitality and hosting, the Chuppa in a Jewish Wedding is a dwelling like Abraham sat in, when it was over 90 degrees, open on all four sides so as to greet strangers. However, before these visitors could even introduce themselves, Abraham rushed to get water to bathe their feet, instructed his wife to bake bread, milked the cows, butchered and cooked a goat. Jesus' response to Martha is not “Well done good and faithful servant. Mary act more like your sister!” but instead “Martha, you are distracted by many things, one thing is important. Mary has chosen that thing and it shall not be taken from her.” Faith is not a problem to be solved, not a challenge of figuring out that one thing, but rather a lifelong journey in discerning and making applications to our lives. The Bible does not change, but every time we read a passage, we hear new elements based on who we are different from ever before. The Book of Amos is not one most pastors choose to model their lives upon. About a year ago, the Wednesday Bible Study challenged that someday they wanted me to preach a hellfire and brimstone sermon. I do so here, with fear and trepidation, because Amos well loved, is not caring and compassionate and forgiving, but if our faith is to have integrity we must hear the gospel both in words of challenge and rebuke as well as words of comfort. Even more, Francis of Assisi is credited with having said “Preach the Gospel everywhere and in all things, if you must use words!” Roger Shinn was professor of Ethics and Theology at Union Seminary, who was fond of asking “What is Theology?” Students would respond “God, Spiritual stuff, Teachings of the Church.” And he would say “NO, Theology is about everything!” There are religions of people's own manufacture blessing God for our comforts, prosperity and securities. But Judaism and Christianity emphasize that God cares about everything, everything in all Creation God uses for us to be in closer relationship. According to the Book of Amos, on the occasions where the prophet finds God, the Almighty is angry. Periodically, people will lift up the “moral decay” of our times, in reference to personal relationships, sex, family values and divorce. But according to the Book of Amos, God's anger is over Economic Injustice, over Systems created to protect and make safe those with excess while buying and selling the poor as if no longer people. First, God is fashioning a swarm of Locusts and Cicada to consume all food so people rich and poor will be equal in their suffering. And the Prophet says “No, Lord.” Next God is creating a heat and drought, not dis-similar to our last several weeks, a fire so hot as to burn the oceans, lakes and rivers. And the Prophet entreats God “No.” But God having relinquished twice, names to the Prophet that the People have not changed from their sin. God shows the Prophet a third vision. In the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, the vision is of “anak” which is translated as Plumb-line. The traditional interpretation of the vision, is that God is revealing just how corrupt and off-base the culture is. The only solution to a wall being out of plumb is to tear it down and build again. The difficulty is that “anak” in Hebrew does not mean “plumb-line.” In the Syro-Phonecian language, anak means plumb-line, but in Hebrew it means “tin”, which could refer to the weight at the bottom of the line, or that God was smelting tin to copper to form Bronze weapons to wage war against Israel. However, we need to remember that just as the Bible was not originally written in English but translated, neither was the Bible originally written using a printing press or computer, but a crude pen and ink on parchment or skin. The difference between anak and anah is simply the addition or subtraction of a dot inside the letter, but anah with a soft “h” did not mean “plumb-line” but rather “a sigh.” So what the Lord showed to Amos in the third vision was not a hard and fast line, but rather a sigh, that God is distressed by the inability to change us. The real vitality of this prophecy then becomes the verb of what God is promising to do because we refuse to listen to God's sighs. God vows to never again “abar” to never again pass by Israel. Recall that what identified Israel was not Circumcision, not eating a Kosher diet, what identified Israel for all time to all peoples was that God had “passed over” Israel bringing judgement on Egypt and the Canaanites. So for God to reveal that God will never again “pass-by” is that no more shall Israel have “passover!” No more shall Israel be protected by God's forgiveness, but the people of God shall suffer like everyone else in the world. Finally, God provides a pun. God asks the Prophet Amos what he sees, and Amos says “a bowl of ripe summer fruit” what the Prophet is supposed to recognize is summer is quickly vanishing, Fall is approaching, and with Fall comes “The Fall” of all of us. The point of which is not rush trying to hide everything in the closet because company is coming. The point is so recognize how important is sharing every moment with one another and with God. People are funny in our reactions. Amaziah was the King's own prophet, something like being the Chaplain at the United States Senate. If you were pastor and prophet to the Congress, would you speak truth to power, or bless those elected in everything they decide? Amaziah's response to Amos was “If you want to prophesy doom do not do so in the King's Temple. Who do you think you are?” As clergy, when asked “by whose authority” often respond with our pedigree, that my father and father-in-law were Presbyterian ministers, my father within the church, my father-in-law in alternative ministries; we list the schools and seminaries we attended; we bring out our resumes of serving on this committee or that; or when pressed we describe the nature of our Calling. Amos when challenged by Amaziah responded “I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet. I am a herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees, whom God took.” Years ago, I recall John Dau asking for someone to go for the Sudanese refugees to S.Sudan. I turned to the person next and said “I do not want to presume, but I just had all my plans cancelled and I could go if it would be helpful.” Over the next six weeks I wrote letters to everyone in every position of authority for support and guidance, hearing back nothing. I got all the shots and bought everything I could think to carry. When I arrived at Kenya and was greeted by the Pastor of Duk who had been displaced by war, he asked “By whose authority are you here? This is my parish, I am the pastor and priest, who do you think you are ministering on my turf?” I responded that I had written letters to his Bishop and other leaders but got no response. He said “That's correct. By not responding to you, they were denying you permission. But now you are here, so we each must pray asking God what to do with you!” The following day, he volunteered to act as my companion if I would pay his way. The difficulty of being a Presbyterian pastor with a church, is there is no Bishop, not outside authority with abstract guidance for how things should be done. Instead a pastor and Session are installed, as human beings in relationship. We are a very human church, of very human people, who listen to one another, sometimes laughing, often “sighing” but in relationship with one another. Arriving in S.Sudan, one of the chiefs took his one year old child, stood him up on his own legs and steadied him by allowing the child to grasp the adult's finger. He said, this is who we are. “We do not need you to do for us, to give to us. We need you to stand along side and offer support while we learn how to stand and walk on our own.” How hard it is for us, when we see a need, or feel threatened to not act, but to be in relationship as true partners and companions.