"A Community of Caring" February 21, 2016

Genesis 15 Luke 13: 31-35 In the Lenten Wednesday evening Soup Supper discussion of Christian Faith issues in Harry Potter, we asked people to consider: What is Your Call to Ministry? IS it the Great Commission to Go forth into all the world, Baptizing and Spreading the Gospel? Is it the Great Law to Love the Lord with Heart, Mind, Soul, Strength and Neighbor as self? Is it about Redeeming the Broken and Repairing the Breach? Is it preaching like Paul, being an Apostle or being the Messiah? Is it about polishing the raw into professional? Is it building up and protecting Security Is it protection from Loss? A neighboring Church had closed for 50 years and when it re-opened that generation instilled in the next, your responsibility is to keep this church from closing. While in a time many in our culture have been leaving the Church, We have married, baptized, grown; while we have rebuilt the infrastructure and facilities, instruments and programs and endowments; while we have gone out into the world to provide health care to the poor and malnourished in war... It occurs to me that what we have been about is building Connections, developing a Community of Caring. This is what has allowed us along the way to overcome obstacles, to persevere through conflict, because the Building program, or The Pipe Organ, or whatever was not important, ALL that was important were our Connections, our valuing one another as Worthy. Because in every endeavor, we could envision when the Organ was installed, when we had musicians to play, when the Building was built and debts repaid... When those who had been Refugees had grandchildren in this Church... We could always believe in a future beyond time and space... What we could not believe in was loss of connection to people we value as worthy. Someone pointed me to a TED Talk by Brene' Brown, who is a Researcher/Story Teller out of Texas. Brene' Brown describes that basic to being Human is our need for Connection, because connections whether with Grandparents, Parents, Teachers reinforce our sense of Worth, Worthiness, Belonging. Who have been those people in your life who gave you a sense of worth and reinforced you with love? What she found as a researcher is that in opposition to Self-Worth and Worthiness, is Shame; because Shame links to isolation and being devalued, and made to feel unworthy or less than human. All of us have a fear of Shame: “I am not good enough, not skinny enough, not smart enough, not successful enough.” And the less we talk about our Shame, the higher our level of Shame. Beneath both Worthiness and Shame is Vulnerability. In order for us to make Connections, we have to reveal who we are, we have to let others see us. To be vulnerable, you have to risk applying for the job, asking someone out, initiating a relationship, firing someone, talking honestly to our kids, parents, spouse. We live 24/7 in a World of Vulnerability. Often when we think of vulnerability it is negative, related to our being the most in Debt, most Obese, Medicated and Addicted adult generation in American History. But vulnerability can also lead to Joy, Love and Fulfillment that can only be found by beingVulnerable. The distinction Brown identified is that those who have a strong sense of Love and Belonging, are surrounded by a Community of being Worthy of Love and Belonging. She described that people in a Community reinforcing the Worth of Being Loved and Belonging, had three things in common: Courage, Compassion, Connection. Courage comes from the Latin “Cor” which refers to the Heart, These were people who told their story with heartfelt conviction. As Courageous people (remember that does not mean brave or heroic, but Heartfelt) they embraced others with Compassion and Forgiveness, having already loved themselves, because you cannot love someone else or forgive them, until you can love yourself. Third, as people who live their story, and have compassion for others as well as themselves, they were able to use their connections to believe in a circumstance beyond the here and now, to imagine possibilities. This, is the point of entry for me into Abram's story in Genesis 15. He has left home and family, following God for years. He has just won a great battle against three other kings, but Success is worthless if you have not successor to inherit. Abram wants proof that God is not only going to use him for God's purposes, but that Abram is going to get what he wants out of this, he is impatient for a child, which at 90 seems unlikely. And God tells Abram, Nothing is IMPOSSIBLE with God, you will have a child, no one else will succeed you but your own. But also, God gives Abram a dream vision, believe in a time and place beyond the here and now, where your descendants will be. The subtlety of this vision is it reinforces whose role and responsibility in this future....God will be there, God will provide, your descendants will be there, though they will have been slaves, and you will sacrifice and pray to God. 400 years from now, your descendants will come into this place, to inherit this land as their land. That would be like speaking to Miles Standish and the Pilgrim Puritans in 1620 about America of today, or promising this community in 2016 that there would be a community of faith beyond the Space age in the year 2426! There will be hundreds of years of hardship, and slavery to foreign empires, but your successors, your children will inherit this land. Imagine what you can do if you do not need to worry, if you never again had to doubt if there would be a future? Jesus knows and believes in a different place and time and purpose, a community of Worth, Believing in the power of Love and Belonging. So when Herod and the Pharisees threaten him, he has no fear. We tend to stumble because we receive a diagnosis of a Cancer, we fall from a ladder, we are divorced, and we fear each coming day... What if we believed not only we are going to survive the current struggle, we will have a new resolve for life? In these few verses, the verb “To Want” is named three different times, expressing different desires. The Pharisees describe Herod WANTS to kill you. Jesus WANTED to gather Jerusalem under his wings. Finally, Jerusalem is described as a city who WANTED Not to be gathered. Are our Wants prompted by Murderous Revenge, like Herod? Do our WANTS and desires come from a place of vulnerability, wishing we could protect, and facing the cost of being rejected? Or Are our Wants to be rejected, wanting to be anything but what is familiar, what is controlled, what is welcoming? I spent summers as a child in Upstate New York, and one of my roles as the youngest grandchild, was to gather eggs from the hen house, this was little larger than an Outhouse, without any light, and opposite the door were rows and rows of nests. The first few times you tried to reach under the hen for the eggs, she would peck at you, and in the dark, surrounded by the screams of the hens, this was horribly frightening. But quickly, you learned to feed the hens outside the chicken house, and while they were busy eating, you could gather from their nest. I am told that long before they hatch, every chick begins chirping and pecking, and that even before hatching, the hen knows the sound and rhythm of her chicks. But like Jesus's wants for a Jerusalem that wanted him not, our pastor growing up had a son who had everything. He was named after his father, he was handsome, sent to the best colleges, had an incredible car. But Jamie got into drugs, and as much as his parents wanted him to come home, he wanted not to, to isolate himself. I recall his father, much like Jesus before Jerusalem, like the father of the Prodigal and Elder sons, our Pastor WANTING nothing more than for his child to come home.