Comma Faith
Sermon related to Exodus 3:13-15 CENTRAL FOCUS: We are a tradition of continuing revelation. Spirit comes to us as an unfolding of new understandings of faith, new expressions of faithful living, and the opening of possibilities for compassion in action. But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”[a] He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” 15 God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord,[b] the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations. For the Word of God in Scripture For the Word of God among us For the Word of God within us Thanks be to God The Rev. Otis Moss the III stepped to the podium. Over 3,000 of us at our 2009 national UCC gathering quieted ourselves to listen. Starting off slowly, as is often the case with the style of preaching common in many African American churches, the Senior Minister of Trinity UCC in Chicago, picked up speed as he spoke of punctuation. That’s right, punctuation. Isn’t that inspiring and exciting? Yes, punctuation; Semi colons, quotation marks, apostrophes, parentheses, and….hold on to your seat….. brackets! But punctuation can be relevant and inspiring when the dominant story, the status quo power or culture or system insists on a period while the Good News of God insists on a comma. To the drug addict to whom the incarceration system says ‘three strikes and you are out,” period, the Good News of God says, comma, change your direction, comma, "God is making all things new." To the Hebrews enslaved, Pharaoh says work without rest or wage for the Empire, period, but the Good News of God says, comma, "together you shall walk out of bondage," comma, together you shall journey to liberation and a new way of community. To the teacher and healer and prophet Jesus, the Roman Empire said, your way is ended, period, the Good News of God says, comma, not so fast, comma, there is life and resurrection stronger than death, comma, stronger than violence and the desire to dominate. To the broken spirit whose inner critical voice says, that’s it, there’s no hope for you, no meaning, period, the Good News of God says, comma, “my Grace is sufficient,” comma, “nothing is impossible for God.” This is the kind of proclamation by the Rev. Moss that had us on our feet by the end of his sermon as we felt the Spirit flow through his speaking that our God is in the comma business of making things new, healed and hopeful, and resistant to the period makers of the world, those who choose and serve a status quo of fear, hard-heartedness, injustice and cynicism. I recently thought of that message delivered by Rev. Moss because it still lives in me, especially when I feel or I see the drift toward hopelessness and loss of possibility. I feel and see that drift now. Climate change marches on, women’s rights to control their bodies is curtailed, aggressive war mongers on the march, the weapons of war sold to angry and hopeless citizens and then tragically used for mayhem and mass death. Over twenty years ago our national denomination, the United Church of Christ, was looking for a phrase to define itself. They found the perfect words from the late Gracie Allen, the wife and comic partner of the late comedian George Burns. A brilliant and perceptive woman in her own right, she left a message in her papers to be discovered by her husband after her death that has become the motto for the United Church of Christ: “Never put a period where God has placed a comma.” Gracie was encouraging George to remember that life had many chapters. George was 68 when Gracie died. Rather than place a period after his career, Burns went on to star in a number of movies, including playing God, twice. He died at age 100, having lived the life of the comma. Our faith is that kind of faith. Our church is that kind of church. Because many of us come from other kinds of churches or may have few connections with the larger network that we are as UCC’ers, I’d like to share about how a characteristic way of being together as the United Church of Christ embodies more of a comma faith than one of periods, one where Spirit writes new chapters, where Spirit comes to us as an unfolding of new understandings, new expressions of faithful living, and new possibilities for compassion and justice in action. There are threads of this comma faith woven into the UCC fabric from all the branches of our family tree that came together in 1957 to become one network. And it comes right out of our ancient faith stories in Scripture. . Our Scripture story today has Moses at work. Perhaps Moses just wanted an ordinary day at work, a simple day of watching and wandering with the sheep, period. But Spirit seemed to have a different plan. The bush that was burning, comma, but was not consumed, appeared to him and he turned aside to an encounter with God. In this encounter, Moses asks the name of God. In these ancient stories, having the true or secret name of the deity, gave power to the namer to invoke and use the deity’s power. And, here, God refuses to be boxed in by a simple title, a single nature or power, or even by time. The Hebrew wordplay here can be translated as “I am what I am,” “I will be who I will be,” or, most simply, “I will be whoever I will be.” God even refuses to box God’s Self in with a name. No periods here, just a commas. God is free to become and be. This is all about commas, all about an openness to the Divine Mystery of what might be coming, what might emerge, what might be needed, what might be chosen, what new thing might be revealed. While reflective and rational Greek philosophy leaned toward a more static even impassive understanding of the Divine (the all everything list), and that strongly influenced Christian tradition in the reading of Scripture, Hebrew understandings of God actually were more about the lived experience of God and were open to the Divine as moving, morphing, and changing. Like the Hebrew people themselves journeying to the Promised Land or back from exile, or like the families of Abraham and Sarah, or Ruth and Naomi, or Joseph and Mary, or like the Wise Ones from the East following a star, it seems the people were on an unfolding journey, discerning the new place that Spirit called them to go in order to serve life at that time, in that situation. In Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, where he is portrayed by Matthew’s community as the new Moses, you can hear the new being indicated by the phrase, "You have heard it said, (comma) but I say……" There is innovation here, going beyond something like "eye for any eye," which in its day helped stop escalating revenge cycles, to something that went into the inner work that stops cycles of revenge and separation altogether, "love your enemy." You see, although our Bible has a back cover, and the tradition has not admitted new books into the Bible for over a millennium and a half, that does not mean that God is mute, that Spirit stopped moving or speaking at the time of Jesus or the time of Moses. God is still Speaking, we say. And we, as the UCC, are trying to listen. We have done it before. In 1620, on their way to North America, pilgrims seeking spiritual freedom heard their pastor, John Robinson, say “God has yet more light and truth to break forth out of his holy Word." This is a statement of the continuing revelation that is characteristic of the UCC, the assumption that there is more understanding to come. It is a way of seeking and holding truth that keeps us open to reading our Scriptures and mining our tradition in new ways as our understandings and experience change. This kind of way has encouraged us, not exclusively, but characteristically to be on the cutting edge of social change in the church. Congregationalists were among the first Americans to take a stand against slavery. In 1700, the Rev. Samuel Sewall wrote the first anti-slavery pamphlet in America, "The Selling of Joseph" laying the foundation for the abolitionist movement that came more than a century later. In 1773, five thousand angry colonists gathered in the Old South Meeting House in Boston to demand repeal of an unjust tax on tea and inspired what might be called the first act of civil disobedience in U.S. history—the "Boston Tea Party." In 1773, a young member of the Old South congregation, Phillis Wheatley, becomes the first published African American author. Poems on Various Subjects was a sensation, and Wheatley gained her freedom from slavery soon after. In 1785, Lemuel Haynes is the first African American ordained by a Protestant denomination. In 1839, enslaved Africans broke their chains and seized control of the schooner Amistad. Their freedom was short-lived, and they were held in a Connecticut jail while the ship's owners sued to have them returned as property. But Congregationalists and other Christians organized a campaign to free the captives. The case became a defining moment for the movement to abolish slavery as the Supreme Court ruled the captives are not property, and the Africans regain their freedom. In 1840, a meeting of pastors in Missouri formed the first united church in U.S. history—the Evangelical Synod. It united two Protestant traditions that had been separated for centuries: Lutheran and Reformed. In 1846, Lewis Tappan, one of the Amistad anti-slavery organizers, organized the American Missionary Association--the first anti-slavery society in the U.S. with multiracial leadership. In 1853, Antoinette Brown became the first woman since New Testament times ordained as a Christian minister, and perhaps the first woman in history elected to serve a Christian congregation as pastor. In 1897, Congregationalist Washington Gladden was one of the first leaders of the Social Gospel movement—which denounced injustice and the exploitation of the poor amidst a new industrializing and urbanizing society. In 1959, Southern television stations impose a news blackout on the growing civil rights movement, and Martin Luther King Jr. asked the UCC to intervene. Everett Parker of the UCC's Office of Communication organizes churches and won in Federal court a ruling that the airwaves are public, not private property. In 1972, the UCC's Golden Gate Association ordained the first openly gay person as a minister in a mainline Protestant denomination: the Rev. William R. Johnson. In 1976, General Synod elected the Rev. Joseph H. Evans president of the United Church of Christ, the first African American leader of a racially integrated mainline church in the United States. In 1995, the United Church of Christ publishes The New Century Hymnal—the only hymnal released by a Christian church that honored in equal measure both male and female images of God. In 2005, the General Synod called for full Marriage Equality, marking the first time that one of the nation's mainline churches expressed support of marriages for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons. I share these not to boost our UCC egos, but to en-courage our spirits with so much of the country and some churches wanting to go backward, to fix the faith and the culture in a less inclusive and less just past with a period. I share this list to encourage us that the God of commas has been and is at work even amidst the current appearance of reactionary, restrictive, and violent forces. And what about us? How is our comma faith? Where have we placed a period where God would place a comma? Where have we precluded possibility, or sidled up to cynicism, or jockeyed into judgment, or given in to impatience in such a way that we placed a period where Spirit was seeking a comma, a new way through, a re-visioned path, a resurrection? My guess is that often we protect our hearts with the period placing energies of judgment or criticism, or of cynicism and passivity. Or we protect ourselves and calm our fears in the midst of the anxiety of change by focusing on too much order. We forget that God can work through all of this, even the right kind of chaos (“good trouble” the late John Lewis called it). We forget that God may have another timeline or another way to get where we are going. I have not been here long enough to know the full history of Plymouth church and how you have found ways to do something and become something that others would have thought not possible. But, I did see a video on our website where the late Ray Becker narrates the story that recounted the German speaking ancestors of this church escaping Czar Alexander II leaving their familiar homes in Russia to come all this way, that showed them starting a church without a pastor, that showed them coming together with only 64 members to build a church building and then the faith years later to sell that building and move all the way out of town to Prospect Avenue where they built the whole shell of the church themselves, where we now worship, when they had 184 members. And now, to meet a challenge to support our comma faith ministry, we raised last Monday over $75,000 to meet that goal on Plymouth Gives Day. My friends, I know some of you have had difficult days and there may be more for you and for this country and the world. But somewhere just after the necessary, appropriate, and healthy grieving of the disappointments of our world and our lives, there is a time, there is a choice to faithfully punctuate our stories with a comma, to re-envision new possibilities of manifesting God’s Realm here on earth in your life, in northern Colorado and in Plymouth church, in the world, and then to act into the new. As our UCC promotions often say, God is Still Speaking. Our call is to be listening and discerning and following the Still Speaking God calling us into a faith where we are placing the life-giving commas of compassion, of courage, and of creativity, where others would place the death dealing periods of complacency and complicity and resignation. We are invited into an adventure of faith where the comma is always opening us to the renewing of our minds, the reconciliation of the alienated in ourselves and others, and a re-visioning of any way of being that is less than Shalom for all Creation. As Gracie said, Never place a period where God has placed a comma.
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Liberation into Life
A post- Pentecost sermon related to Psalm 146:5-9 The person whose help is the God of Jacob-- the person whose hope rests on the Lord their God-- is truly happy! 6 God: the maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, God: who is faithful forever, 7 who gives justice to people who are oppressed, who gives bread to people who are starving! The Lord: who frees prisoners. 8 The Lord: who makes the blind see. The Lord: who straightens up those who are bent low. The Lord: who loves the righteous. 9 The Lord: who protects immigrants, who helps orphans and widows, but who makes the way of the wicked twist and turn! For the Word of God in Scripture For the Word of God among us For the Word of God within us Thanks be to God Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen is a physician, an elder, and an author known by many for her books Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings. She shares the story of a story, a story of her grandfather, a Jewish mystic, who told her on her 4th birthday a story of the birthday of the world from the Kabbalah, the ancient Jewish mystic text. As the ancient story goes, there first was only the Divine Presence as the Holy Darkness, the ein sof. Then this Holy Darkness birthed a great ray of light…. But, as she tells it, then there was an accident and the light was shattered and scattered into countless shards which fell into all things and all events, though deeply hidden. Humanity is here to find that light, to lift it up and restore the innate unity and wholeness of the world. This great project of purpose is known in Judaism in Hebrew as tikkun olam, the restoration of the world. Tikkun olam is a collective task in which all humanity is called to participate. Tikkun olam, the restoration of the world. Beautiful. Woven into the stories of humanity and even into our some of our Scriptures are stories that forget the original and ultimate unity of Life, and therefore the unity of humanity, the unity of Creation, and instead act out a story of separation, an illusion of separation where the unlikeness, the differences, become primary and set the stage for preferences, ranking, and suspicion and put us on the road to de-humanizing or objectifying the other or even ourselves. We forget who we are as a part of a great circle, and what the world is as a whole. Indeed, there are many expressions of the illusion of separation and several are mentioned in our text for this morning, Psalm 146. Did you hear them mentioned? Oppression, imprisonment, hunger, burden, estrangement. This is where God and where the activity and invitation of the Divine come in to meet these degraded and life-draining conditions with something else, with the antidote from the consequences of separated living: liberation. Liberation back into freedom and dignity of being a Divine spark of Creation. Liberation into the enlivening connection, blessing, and responsibility of Life’s unity as we serve and honor that of which we are a part. Liberation leads to Life. Here’s another ancient Jewish story to help us along. The water started at his ankles, but then he went further in. Up to his knees……. and then thighs….. and then waist. Behind him, his people stood watching, curious and anxious. And behind them, close enough to see in the distance, the Pharoah of Egypt and his troops in pressing pursuit. And here he was, Nachson ben Aminidav, walking into the water. You see he had been told that God would act, that there was a way through, even though there seemed no way. Despite the inspiring victory of his people leaving their slave camps just a while ago, they were a long way from their hoped for Promised Land. And now, faced with the sea in front of them and the pursuing slave masters behind them, the people were trapped, in a tight jam, you might say. In fact, that is what is implied in Hebrew where the word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, is a sound play with the word meitzarem which means a tight space, narrow straits. So the people found themselves in a tight jam, with seemingly with no way through. But Moses had said that God would act and the waters would part, yet the waters hadn’t parted, and so Nachson went into the water, faithfully, hopefully. Further in he went, waters rising, ever rising. Past his waist, up to his chest and over his shoulders. But he kept going, right up to his nostrils the waters came. And then, only then, when the waters threatened to cut off his very breath of life did the waters begin to separate, allowing the people to cross and find a way through their tight jam into the spacious liberation on the other side. This Jewish story from the midrash, the ancient Jewish commentary on the Scriptures, illustrates that acts of initiative that involve risk and discomfort are part of our co-creative task if we are to realize liberation that gives life. Psychotherapist Estelle Frankel draws on her Jewish heritage in her book Sacred Therapy and sees in the Exodus story a description of the psyche’s journey to liberation. And on that journey, we come to places of particular tightness and narrowness, of seemingly no way through, places of constriction and contraction. And so we, too, like those Hebrews, in order to further the passage of life from bondage and contraction and restriction into freedom and dignity, into love and life will sometimes need to get in up to our nostrils before Spirit’s liberating movement is evident, before the signs of passage or transformation even begin to emerge. Making those steps is a creative act of trust, of faith. It’s not possible to faithfully engage our tradition and teaching without engaging the great myth of the Exodus story. Foundational for Judaism and for Christianity, it is a deep human story reminding us of the deep longing of life for liberation and the journey that is taken to realize it. And that liberation in the Scriptural saga is both internal and external. As the old Hasidic saying goes: It was not enough to take the Jews out of Egypt. It was necessary to take Egypt out of the Jews. There is an ongoing internal journey to liberation for all of us. And, liberation is external. Our tradition and certainly the Divine teaching and witness of Jesus was to alter the situation of suffering that a person was in. Whether through healing an illness or injury, or through bringing someone back into community, or teaching a freeing truth to affect a situation, Jesus liberated people from the external situation they were in, helped to change their external circumstance. So often, the internal and external are linked. In the Jesus stories and in the Exodus saga, those liberating changes came with actions born of faith, born of an internal orientation of trust and vision, a willingness and a kind of courage to step out in faith. So often Jesus would say, "Your faith has made you well." In the midrash story we just heard, one wonders what was it that led Nachson into the water, all the way up to his nostrils. I might imagine that in him somewhere deep down there was a vision of what liberation might feel and look like, and a desire, a determination, a longing to taste it. My spiritual hunch here is that this comes from the piece of the Divine planted in each of us. Maybe it’s like an image, or a spark, or as the ancient Jewish story says, a shard of Divine light. In these times, do we still have that vision alive in our hearts? Do we lose our heart of vision, our faithful imagination? Is it too painful to remember God’s Dream for us all, too easy to be cynical rather than vulnerable to being broken hearted? Theologian Robert McAfee Brown notes that one of the core elements of liberation theology is hope, the hope that generates the sense of possibility that things can be different, that we are not fated to a forever of injustice and suffering. The poet Wendell Berry’s says “be joyful though you have considered all the facts.” I think Spirit, when we really tap into her flow, inspires that kind of knowing and joy. I think that kind of faithful inspiration is what is coming through the Psalmist of our Scripture reading today. Psalm 146 begins with praise, high praise that comes from that flow of joy in the vision of liberation; prisoners set free, sight to the blind, food to the hungry, justice for the oppressed, inclusion for those pushed out and forgotten. Ah, what joy that is and will be! The Psalmist bears witness to the GodMystery whose business is liberation. The Spirit whose enduring presence and movement and love opens up space, makes a way in the midst of tight straits, in the midst of our contraction of disappointment and anxiety, or fear and hard heartedness. Poet and great elder Maya Angelou said simply that “love liberates.” She ought to know. Maya was sexually assaulted as a child by a man. When she told, that perpetrator was found dead some days later. Some say her uncles did it. She thought she had killed him by speaking. So she didn’t speak. For six years. And while other children called her dumb and a moron for being mute, her grandmother just kept telling her, “Sister, I don’t care what they say. When you and the Good Lord decide it’s time, you will be a teacher.” It is the God of Love, the Spirit of Love that comes through people like Maya Angelou’s grandmother, that liberates, that sees hope and possibility, and, like Nachson, the one who entered the sea up to his nostrils, that has the courage to act and to endure in faith. We all have that Divine Spark in us, that place that already knows what liberation is, what our deep Divine unity is. And every time we nurture, magnify, and listen to that place in us and in others and in Creation, we will have the vision and heart and Resurrection faith to walk into the waters of our liberation and our re-union. Today is a holiday of liberation. It’s June 19th aka Juneteenth. Juneteenth commemorates the occasion of some Africans’, and their descendants’, enslaved in America, learning of their emancipation on a June day in 1865 in Galveston, Texas. Juneteenth was proclaimed a federal holiday in 2021 by President Biden. This designation introduced the Juneteenth holiday to a wider American audience, although the holiday has been celebrated for over 150 years among some African Americans. Racism is one of the most effective ways to keep us in a story of separation, to keep us from God’s Liberating, life-giving Presence. It’s bad for people of color and for white people. And racism doesn’t have to look like burning crosses and crazy people with guns, though we know all too well it is still violent and lethal for people of color. Sometimes racism works effectively by simply sidelining and ignoring. I had never heard of Juneteenth until a few years ago because Eurocentric, white culture was so deeply centered in so much of my education and exposure and relationships. Racism also works in subconsciously. Only in retrospect did I realize, in my hometown where there were a number of people of color, even a few in positions of authority, that our town probably would not have stood for any more in leadership and probably expected them to be more perfect. Nobody told me this explicitly, but, somehow I absorbed it. I knew it. This is racism and a form of oppression, holding down, holding back, a form of separating. There is not enough time this morning to go further in this specific form of painful separation known as racism except to say, my friends, that for most of us there is a lot more wading into the waters of awareness about the subtle and powerful ways that white supremacy continues to live in us and in our community. And, let us be clear, white supremacy is in opposition to the liberating God of Jesus and to the ongoing project of Liberation that God is ever about. I’m happy to be in the ongoing discussion and practice of liberating ourselves from racism and to recommend further resources. One practice is simply to acknowledge what has not been acknowledged: Today is Juneteenth and to learn about it. And tomorrow is World Refugee Day. Both days are about liberation, aren’t they? Like those enslaved who sought refuge from it, all those seeking refuge whom we call refugees are those in a tight space seeking enough security and enough resources to be liberated for a new life. I am so glad that we as a congregation are joining others in supporting the Jan family who came to Fort Collins from Afghanistan. As mentioned, COVID visited the Jan household this previous week so we will postpone our reception for them until this fall. But our work of serving their lives and liberation continues. May they travel further on the path of liberation. So this morning, the invitation of faith, the way to being an Easter People, a people of the Holy Spirit, offered is to celebrate the Liberating Spirit of God, the Maker of Heaven and earth, and to firmly hold the Divine vision of liberation and deep unity. And then to act, to follow Nachson right into the waters, up to your nostrils, if necessary, so that Creation and all people might reach the other side, so that we might participate in tikkun olam, the restoration of the world. On this Juneteenth Day, let us ask ourselves how we might participate in God’s liberating movement and let us pray for the guidance, vision, vulnerability, and strength to do so.
An Easter Vision for All
A sermon related to Rev. 21:1-5a Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a wedding partner adorned for the wedding. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them; they will be God’s peoples, and the Holy One will be with them; 4 God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ 5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new...’ For the Word in Scripture For the Word among us For the Word within us Thanks be to God When things are tough, how do we know it’s going to turn out? How do we stay the course and keep hope? When problems seem so large, how do we keep going? When you are young and wondering how to find your place and deal with the big world, how do you keep confidence and seek direction? When you are old and life is short, where do you look for meaning and possibility? This year, I’ll turn 59. Might sound young to some, old to others. But it sure makes me reflect on more than half a century of living; highs and lows, mistakes and learning, growth and gratitude. Yet, in all my years, I’ve never seen a couple of years like our last two. What about you? We’ve had a new worldwide pandemic, the old pandemic of racism unveiled anew to many, the increasing effects of climate change seen in hurricanes and wildfires, armed white vigilantes in the streets and the Capitol, even in grocery stores. But if you think the last couple of years have been tough to view, it can’t compete with the biblical vision we know as The Revelation received by the anonymous author we refer to as John. John’s vision has beasts, a sea monster, plagues, horses of multiple colors, the archangel Michael fighting a red dragon, a giant pit, a pregnant woman, and a day of God’s wrath. Likely in a trance or non-ordinary state of consciousness, John saw and recorded this vision. It is not for the faint of heart nor is it for simple literal interpretation. And there is a lot of lousy interpretation out there that claims The Revelation of John as its verification; end of the world stuff predicting dates and events and such. It’s generally poor Bible analysis and bad theology. The Revelation is best approached with humility and a good understanding of Hebrew symbols and Hebrew prophecy. Seen this way, Revelation can become what it was for the people of John’s time and for many Christians over the centuries; an inspiring, encouraging vision that helped them in bad times to keep going, to faithfully resist empire and the false gods of society. Indeed, The Revelation received by John was an underdog story that served them as they faced tough challenges and big questions of history and of their lives. As the last book of the Bible, it is a kind of symbolic end, not necessarily in the sense of time ending, but of purpose, the telos, the end toward which we travel, the meaning of history and life. Of that which is symbolic of that time, we know that John was referring to the Roman empire as the beast and anti-Christ Presence. The Pax Romana, the dominating peace of Rome, that way of empire was not the Peace of Christ. John knew that. The early Christians knew that. So those early followers and communities of Christ were called to live differently, to resist the way of Caesar and choose the way of Jesus. But when Rome is so big, when the system seems so pervasive, or even when life takes an unexpected and unwelcome turn, how do you do deal with that? Many of the faithful looked to The Revelation of John as an alternative vision of what ultimate power was at play and trusted in that Divine power. Through this story, they rejected the conventional menu of what was inevitable and cultivated an alternative consciousness of what was possible. In this, they found hope. Hebrew scholars like Walter Brueggemann and theologians like the late great James Cone will tell you that Pharoah and Caesar’s greatest power is the belief in their ultimate power and the limitation of possibility to change the status quo. There is nothing new in the empire. There is no different future, only anxiety about a different future (which might inspire something like Make Rome Great Again). Maybe that is the genius of the Medieval Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart when he wrote: "God is the newest thing there is, the youngest thing there is. God is the beginning and, if we are united to God, we become new again." Sound strange, God as the newest thing? Maybe being part of a historic Protestant denomination and a congregation with institutional history and a solid brick building makes it harder for us to know the God who is always new. Maybe we relate more to God as a fixed external absolute, as the Ancient of Days. Or maybe we can attribute it to the repeated habits of heritage. (It is said that the last seven words of the church are “We have never done it that way.”) Yet like the new births of that come to our congregation, God comes, too. Not just as the birther, as the mother, but as the new birth itself, as the new itself. And new in Revelation means different. Did you hear it in the Scripture passage read? Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; John said. Both for those of the first centuries of the ancient near East and for us, the new heaven and the new earth has not come. This morning’s news from Buffalo, New York, and many mornings’ news tell us that. Pharoah, Caesar, demonic conscious and unconscious systems of domination still have power. And they take root in human souls such that violence against another person or group or country becomes a siren song, a tragic temptation, an illusion of solution: if only we or I could just get rid of or control this ‘other.’ Projecting inner tensions and fears and insecurities onto the ‘other’ and making them an enemy, a dehumanized object is as old as Cain and Abel and at the core of what keeps humanity alienated, in conflict, and out of step with Divine Love. The Revelation of John is not without its troubling aspects, yet ultimately tells a new, alternative story where empire is not the last word nor the only possibility. Connecting with that Divine alternative vision is the beginning of liberation for us all. Through song, ritual, prayers, or art of this liberating story of reversal, where empire is not ultimate or final, we can connect to the power of the story of a new heaven and the new earth. We can anticipate its full coming by tasting and expressing and living it now. We can participate in its emergence now. We can live the new now, and in so doing allow its call to stay rooted in us and sustain us in the long arc of history. And for those being crushed and exploited by the empire, whether the oppressive empires of history or the inner oppressions of the wounded soul, Good News comes when a new vision of possibility is made visible and, like communion, taken in, even if only in part. When this taste of inner liberation comes, hope comes, affirmation comes, and fortifies the spirit for endurance and for liberating action. As Choctaw nation music artist Red Eagle raps in his song, “Still Here,” Wounded Knee And we still here Sand Creek And we still here Cortez And we still here Slavery And we still here Small Pox And we still here Boarding Schools And we still here Damn it feels good to be a native Damn it feels good to be a native Good News comes to those who hear and trust the God who says ‘See, I am making all things new...’ even in the midst of empire, injustice, and violence. It comes when you truly hear Jesus say ‘the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.’ It comes when you know that, even if in the short term of history, it looks like the forces of death and oppression are winning, you know the story of the Resurrected One who came in a lowly stable, lived with, taught, and healed the lowly ones, and who, dying with the lowly ones, conquered even the power of death. As we continue in the resonance of Easter, our sacred image from John’s Revelation reminds us that we arrive together in the end in a New Heaven and a New Earth. It is an Easter vision for all people and for all Creation. In the words of Lyla June, Navajo Nation artist in her song All Nations Rise “this time, it isn’t Indians versus Cowboys. No. This time it is all the beautiful races of humanity together on the SAME side and we are fighting to replace our fear with LOVE. This time bullets, arrows, and cannon balls won’t save us. The only weapons that are useful in this battle are the weapons of truth, faith, and compassion.” Truth, faith, and compassion. The alternative way of Jesus. Cultivating and living in these ways are how we participate in the coming of this Easter Vision for All, God’s Beloved Community, a New Heaven and a New Earth. This is what we do to be an Easter People amidst times such as these. This is what we do to allow God to dwell with mortals, Immanuel. Finally, a brief word for our graduates from Sister Ilia Delio, a Sister of St. Francis and Professor at Georgetown University who says, God is always new; life is always new. Every end is a new beginning and every arrival, a new departure. There are no dead ends in life unless we ourselves die in despair. For you graduates, I say do not despair, but have faith in the God who says ‘See, I am making all things new...’
An Eastertide sermon related to Genesis 2:4b-10a, 15
CENTRAL FOCUS: That the Easter vision of resurrection is an Anastasis of Creation as well as all humanity. Genesis 2:4b-10a, 15 In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed an a-dam from adamah, and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life; and the a-dam became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there God put the a-dam whom God had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flows out of Eden to water the garden… The Lord God took the a-dam and put it in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. For the Word in Scripture For the Word among us For the Word within us Thanks be to God. As I’ve mentioned before, the Hebrew word play here is missed in English. As I’ve said before, it is not Adam, a male human being with a personal name that is formed, but, in Hebrew, an ‘a-dam made of the ‘adamah, ‘an earthling made of earth.’ You and me, we, are earth. All that is here on earth is of earth, a family of earth, relatives. As the Lakota say: Mitakuye Oyasin, “All my relations.” My friends, to be faithful to this sacred story, we must acknowledge that the relationships among earth relatives are troubled, due mostly to the number of humans and the nature of the activities of human beings. I won’t belabor the data, but the picture is deeply troubling and with each re-evaluation, like the recent one from the UN panel on climate, we see that our window for action to alter or mitigate the damage grows smaller by the month and year. The predictive models have not overestimated the speed of this undesired change, rather they have generally underestimated it. Science and technology are not lacking here. We know enough to act effectively for positive, life-giving change. Adaptive cultural and political patterns are lacking. Spiritual and psychological wisdom is lacking. There is trouble on the inside of our personal and cultural psyche. There is a spiritual malady, a deep infection of spiritual dis-ease that keeps us from being loving neighbors to our earth relatives. Theologian Thomas Berry says, The difficulty is that with the rise of the modern sciences we began to think of the universe as a collection of objects rather than as a communion of subjects….The world about us has become an it rather than a “thou.” Or as the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner said, “To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took inventory.” As I said, it is not the science that is lacking. The cultural and religious stories related to the earth that we in the West have held in the modern centuries and that are still largely in effect are not life giving, but life taking and life draining. They are so because they largely objectified and commodified the rest of Creation. We must reclaim the Genesis story of our sacred origins as the story of our earthiness, our earth-being-ness. Religiously true, scientifically true. We are earth. The spiritual shift invited here is the shift to an earth identity and story of relationship, of communion. With such a shift, our favorite earthly outdoor place is not merely an it, an object, but becomes another earth being like us, and then can become a friend, a sibling, a companion, or maybe even a teacher, an elder, a cherished relative that our sacred story asked us to care for and to keep, to be in loving and balanced relationship with so that the garden might flourish. And, in this Eastertide, we must reclaim the full sacred story-truth of Resurrection which we have largely lost. Anastasis. Do you know the word? It’s Greek. It means ‘up rising.’ Above murals depicting the resurrection story of Christ, on the walls of many ancient churches of the East, written in Greek, is the word anastasis, up rising. These images show Christ breaking down the doors of the land of the dead, standing atop and subduing Hades, and grasping the wrist of Adam and Eve and leading other saints in an uprising, a jailbreak triumph over death. In his book Resurrecting Easter, John Dominic Crossan documents these images and what we in the West, Protestant and Roman Catholic, have lost; the sense that the Resurrection is a universal resurrection for all humanity and all Creation. Recognized in the mythic language of its time, it is a vision of triumph as a Christ-led countercultural way of life and its power to overcome ‘the soul and body death’ way of being of the empire. In the West, we too often limited the Resurrection story to an individual story of Jesus and maybe as a story of individual hope, while in the Eastern side of Christianity, the Resurrection was an anastasis, an uprising, a universal uprising at that, not against mere individual mortality, but against the imperial and cultural powers of death, the power of Caesar, of Pharaoh, of all those internal siren voices and external fear-filled forces that claim life and peace is served by a law and order of violence, of domination, of intimidation, of punishment, of separation, including separation from Creation (as if we are not also of earth). We have forgotten that Resurrection is about rising up, together with Creation, throwing off the powers and principalities of death, the systems and values of domination. To truly be an Easter people, a people who sing of and have a trust in the story of Jesus and the power of Resurrection, we are called to rise up like the A-dam (earth creature) and Eve (mother of all living), taken by the wrist by the Risen Christ rising up with Creation and all of our earth relatives into another way of acting, another story of what is possible. Another story of what is possible. We must have a story that leads to action. Yes, we can act effectively, especially if we act together as a body, reducing the carbon and water footprint of our church property, voting together for policies and candidates who support the environment, teaching our children and learning from them. Indeed, if you can’t quite feel the passion to act here maybe you can feel it if you focus on the children, grandchildren, and the seven generations to come. It seems it is easier to act against a short-term drama like Pearl Harbor or 9-11 than it is to comprehend and act in the case of this slow-moving emergency of environmental crisis. But that does not mean that it is impossible to do so nor that it is not imperative. I have seen the depth of that imperative at Standing Rock. The Lakota Reservation that borders the Dakotas rose up in 2016 to fight in the courts and on the land against ‘the black snake,’ the Keystone XL oil pipeline that was deemed too risky to put upstream of the white community of Bismarck, but not too risky for the First Nation Lakota peoples water supply. When my wife and I spent a week there at the camp in late October of 2016, we were impacted by the determination of the people to protect the water and the life of Mother Earth. In Lakota, it was spoken simply, mni wiconi, water is life. And we were impacted by the clarity that this encampment was a prayer meeting where the sacred fire never went out and where the prayers that supported their actions never ceased. My friends, I believe that we at Plymouth Congregational as a community of faith are well meaning and well-meaning toward God’s Creation. What I have not yet seen is that intention cultivated into the fullest fruit of collective action for the earth. I have not yet felt what Dr. King would have called the ‘urgency of now’. It is time, time for our prayers and actions to strengthen. We have, in our faith, the spiritual resources and impetus to support this intention. And we have stirrings in our congregation to do just that. I believe Spirit is moving now at Plymouth for earth action, not only through the strategic plan calling for concrete action for the earth, but in the passions of those in our midst. We had/have a Forum today to move us forward as well as sign-up sheet for a new earth action oriented team, and a handout detailing actions that you can take now. The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, the late Kenyan environmentalist and political activist said, We are called to assist the earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own -- indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty, and wonder. Oh, and lest you think this is some new-fangled recent fad of faith, hear the words of none other than John Wesley, the 18th century founder of Methodism. I believe in my heart that faith in Jesus Christ can and will lead us beyond an exclusive concern for the well-being of other human beings to the broader concern for the well-being of the birds in our backyards, the fish in our rivers, and every living creature on the face of the earth. --John Wesley (1701-1791) On this Earth Day Sunday, in this Eastertide season, we are called as an Easter People of the Resurrection to rise up with the Risen Christ against the powers and systems of Death. That means honoring the earth story that we received from our ancestors of faith: that we are earth beings, a’dam from the Adamah, and therefore kin to all other forms on the sacred earth. As the Lakota say: Mitakuye Oyasin, “All my relations.” The New Creation envisioned in faith is a place where love of God and love of neighbor IS love of all our earth neighbors and God’s precious earth. Following the Risen Christ, it is time we at Plymouth deepen our faithful action for Creation on every front; prayers, votes, messages to government, purchasing and consumption habits, everything within reach and maybe a little beyond that. Like the Risen Christ, let us rise up so that together we can do something faithful and meaningful! May this be so. AMEN. Sabbath as Perspective 2 of 2 in a series on Sabbath, related to Luke 12:13 – 21 CENTRAL POINT: Sabbath time is different in its awareness and valuing of time, the blessing of now, the focus on non-commercial relationship, and an appreciation of kairos. Someone from the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus said to him, “Man, who appointed me as judge or referee between you and your brother?” Then Jesus said to them, “Watch out! Guard yourself against all kinds of greed. After all, one’s life isn’t determined by one’s possessions, even when someone is very wealthy.” Then Jesus told them a parable: “A certain rich man’s land produced a bountiful crop. He said to himself, What will I do? I have no place to store my harvest! Then he thought, Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. That’s where I’ll store all my grain and goods. I’ll say to myself, You have stored up plenty of goods, enough for several years. Take it easy! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself. But God said to him, ‘Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?’ This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.” For the Word in Scripture, For the Word among us, For the word within us, Thanks be to God. Fill in the blank: Time is _____. (money) Not if you were W.K. Kellogg in 1930. It was then that he decided his cereal factory would move from three 8 hour shifts to four 6 hour shifts. Amidst the Great Depression, immediately there were 30% more jobs available at Kellogg. Kellogg paid his six-hour shift workers for 7 hour shift the first year, and for an 8 hour shift the second. Productivity rose significantly not just from new technology, but from new work incentives and these new hours. When the US Dept of Labor surveyed the workers after a couple of years of these shorter shifts, the workers overwhelmingly preferred the time more than the money they might have made. Nothing could replace the time with family, for taking care of the home, and for leisure and civic activities. Relationships and the freedom of time were more important than money. After the Depression was over, Kellogg workers consistently voted to stay with the six hour shifts for the freedom it provided them. (Not until 1984 did the workforce vote to return to an 8 hour shift.) Time is NOT money. In this morning’s story from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is confronted by a man wanting money from an inheritance. As he so often does, Jesus does not respond with a simple answer or even agree to be in the role he is asked to be in. He chooses instead to tell a parable about a rich man who was having a banner economic year. This man says to himself, ‘I will tear down my barns and get bigger barns to hold it all! I’ll never have to worry or be anxious. I’ll have enough stuff, enough money.’ I think he was saying ‘I’ll be secure.’ But what money and goods can’t buy him is time. His time for death comes and all the money in the world will not give him more time. Jesus follows up this parable in Luke’s Gospel by telling people not to worry about their material security, and that worrying does nothing to make it happen by using the story of the birds and the lilies of the field where neither birds nor lilies worry, yet they seem to do just beautifully. Somehow God and God’s Creation supports them. A few weeks back I talked of Sabbath and how it is a sacred exhale, like God exhaling on the seventh day. Indeed, we must exhale in order to fully inhale, both are important to the rhythms and cycles that make for vitality. Likewise, our vitality comes from the perspective that Sabbath time can bring. After that sacred exhale, a different quality of time can be realized where we can appreciate what is truly worthy, what true riches are. An illustration about time can be helpful here. The Gospels and letters we have in what we often call the New Testament were written in Greek. While the English translation can come out the same as simply ‘time’, Greek language can talk of both chronos, measured chronological time on a watch or calendar, and of kairos, or God’s time or sacred time. Kairos doesn’t go in a straight line or at an even pace. Kairos is a time like the seasons, moving in cycles, dependent upon the relation of things to the whole, waiting until the time is fulfilled, until its own conditions have come to be, until it is the ripe and right time. You can sense kairos time by the way something feels, by the length of shadows, or by color and shade, or by how soft or firm a fruit is in one’s hand. Kairos certainly doesn’t respond to our measured schedules or personal plans and wishes. Kairos time certainly cannot be bought. Jesus says to not hoard things, or to worry or be anxious. Allowing ourselves to be in kairos time of Sabbath means we have faith amidst the present unfolding of things. We rest in God. We let go of production time and getting more done or making it happen. We get out of social media and the news cycle and repetitive cycles of anxiety. Instead, we rest underneath the fruit tree and trust that things will ripen in time. We let go of obsessing about tomorrow’s outcome and let ourselves be held by God in the now, releasing the anxiety and worry of tomorrow. In this sabbath “Kairos” perspective, we remember and live not as chronos and commodity, but as a child of God and as an earth and human community. We remember our relationship to life and each other, grateful and humble. The keeping of Sabbath time, whatever day or time one does that, can bring one into the quality of the Divine perspective, sacred rhythm, and relation to the whole, to what is really important and deeply true from the perspective of Spirit. This practice helps us resist the cultural flow toward only busy-ness and distraction, toward narrow and limiting frames of reference where we no longer see the forest, but only the trees. During World War II, the British wanted to know how they were doing in producing enough stuff to fight the war. They decided to measure the sum of all goods and services produced. They called this the ?????. That’s right, the Gross Domestic Product. The U.N. and the rest of the developed world adopted this standard. Whenever we hear on the news that the economy grew by 2% or shrunk, it is this measurement to which they are referring. And we all seem to cheer when it goes up as if this is good for us all. But the GDP doesn’t discriminate between social activities. Indeed, you could make more bombs, or build and staff more prisons, or clean up after disasters, and the GDP would go up. There could be more income equality though the GDP goes up. More is better as far the GDP is concerned and it is only more if it can be measured in money and more stuff in bigger barns. The GDP is not necessarily just, or healthy or, as our story says, "rich toward God." And what about the things that money can’t buy? What about the effort of any volunteer or family member who takes the time and energy to care for the home or family member, to help a neighbor, or to serve the community? The GDP won’t recognize this, let alone value it. Wayne Muller’s book, Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest, references those who bemoan the lost values of our society. Muller notes, “All these ‘lost’ values are human qualities that require time. Honesty, courage, kindness, civility, wisdom, compassion – these can only be nourished in the soil of time and attention, and need experience and practice to come to harvest.” Keeping Sabbath time means taking the time to honor and nurture these kinds of values. Money is of value and the chronological time that is related to money has its place, but it is keeping Sabbath time that can maintain our perspective, can keep us from forgetting the other kinds of value and time and rhythm that are not as valued by the capitalistic, individualistic, materialistic culture at large. This is Sabbath as perspective, helping remember the whole and what is truly of value in God’s Creation. As our story suggests, one of the great interrupters of chronos and business as usual is mortality, death. It is on my heart and mind this morning because just last night we helped our 16-year-old cat to take her last breath. With family gathered around and with many tears, we did the right thing to end her suffering and it put us in a different sense of being and time. And, just as those humans nearing death will say, that transition moment with death near put things in perspective. Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Ware writes of phenomenal clarity that people gain at the end of their lives. Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware: 1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. 2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Missing their children's youth and their partner's companionship. 3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. 4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. (They did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. Old patterns and habits got in the way.) I invite us all in this Lenten journey to look at our lives and see if there are practices that regularly connect us to what is deeply true so we don’t have these regrets, so we don’t forget what is most important. Jesus called it being rich toward God. This is Sabbath as perspective, practices of sacred exhale and shifting out of our everyday habits of doing. Maybe it is….
I invite us all to enter more deeply a Sabbath time and space, like sitting on a mountaintop vista, where we can see the big picture and wonder, let go of our burdens and trust in the unfolding of this moment (no matter where our lives are), where we can focus on relationship with Creation and with each other, where we can value all those things that money can’t buy and be grateful for the blessing of life. We can practice being in a Sabbath time that has a taste of God’s time, that has a Sabbath perspective of what is truly rich toward God and is truly life giving. AMEN. AuthorJ.T. comes to Plymouth as an experienced interim pastor, most recently, as Bridge Minister at University Congregational UCC in Seattle. Previously, he served congregations in Denver, Laramie, and Forest Grove, Oregon. Read more Listen to POdcast here Part One of series on Sabbath, related to Genesis 2:1-3 CENTRAL FOCUS: Sabbath practice is a core practice of the soul; rest, quiet, slowing, appreciating, blessing, enjoying, celebrating, intentional remembering and focusing, valuing, re-creating Genesis 2: 1 – 3 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that God had done in creation. For the Word in Scripture, For the Word among us, For the Word within us, Thanks be to God. ****** Breathe. That’s all. Let’s all take a breath together: inhale…….exhale. Two more: inhale………exhale……… inhale……… exhale. It’s a cycle, isn’t it? Both parts are important. On the seventh day, God rested, says the first Creation story. We just heard that in our morning’s Scripture reading. What you didn’t hear was that the Hebrew word for refreshed “vaiynafesh” literally means exhaled. The Hebrew text is saying that on the seventh day God exhaled. Our culture is more inclined to inhaling, to taking in; do more, want more, gain more, be more, take in more information, more data. Being busy can even be seen as a sign of importance. But are our lives busy or full? Did you know that the Chinese pictograph for ‘busy’ combines heart and killing. The Christian mystic Thomas Merton actually went so far as to equate activism and overwork with violence. Are our lives structured not just to inhale, but to exhale? Do we know how to exhale and rest in the arms of God, in the cradle of Creation? A big part of the first Creation story in Genesis is the teaching of the importance of Sabbath to the Jewish community. It was a characteristic practice to stop all work on Friday at sundown when the traditional Jewish day ends and to enter into Sabbath time until the next sundown. There is a story told of Jesus walking with his disciples on the Sabbath. They plucked some heads of grain to eat. The Pharisees, who tried to protect the people’s piety and to respect Torah law through lots of rules, accused them of sinfully breaking the Sabbath. Jesus’ wise response was that the Sabbath was made for the people, not the people for the Sabbath. So how can Sabbath as an exhale be for us? How might we learn from and be served by this teaching? In the Lenten journey at this church, we have been invited to seek being Full to the Brim. I suggested at our Ash Wednesday service that, like our cycle of breath, we cannot be vital and ‘Filled to the Brim’ without the whole cycle. Likewise, we cannot be whole and vital without rest. And our first sacred story of rest is the Seventh Day story of the first Sabbath, the first great exhale. I’m not talking about a return to dour restrictive rules of Sabbath that drain life; no dancing or card playing or visiting with people or frolicking and such. I’m talking about the wisdom and the necessity of exhaling in the service of the cycle of life. Go ahead, inhale fully again and then feel a long exhale again. Let it bring you to rest and ever closer to stillness. Exhale, that’s Sabbath. It completes the energy cycle of life, re-balances it. In that first Creation story, we are given an image of the earth as without form and void. It is a kind of chaos that seems empty. Creation happens out of a kind of emptiness. We have to exhale in order to make room for the inhale. The womb has first to be an emptiness in order to be filled with the growing creation of a new life. This emptiness is not so much a denial of life as it is a letting go and a letting be. It is a kind of re-balancing. In our human body, it is a chance to blow off CO2 as a part of our life-giving cycle of respiration, in preparation for bringing in more O2. The first Creation story begins in emptiness and ends in a kind of emptying, a resting, a stillness, an exhale, a Sabbath. Like a hibernating animal, like a planted bulb or seed in winter, there is an appropriate and necessary time to rest, to lie fallow, to not do. I was trained as an exercise physiologist after college. It is a basic principle of exercise training that the process of becoming more fit and healthy requires rest after we challenge and exercise the body. It is in the rest time that the rebuilding to a better state happens. How many of us trust that cycle? How many of us here are practicing Sabbath rest? I’m not talking about just laying down on the couch, although that could help. I’m not talking about kicking back and watching TV, although some quality viewing occasionally is renewing. We are invited into a Sabbath space and time that has a sacred intention, a certain quality of delightful exhale that puts us back in touch with the blessedness of Creation, the part of the first Creation story when God says, “It is very good”. Pastor Jane Anne, before her recent sabbatical suggested that all church committees take time in our Lent season meetings for forms of Sabbath, not doing tangible committee work, but sharing in Bible study, prayer, and connection. She was inspired by the book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, in which Wayne Muller suggests we embrace “Sabbath as a way of being in time where we remember who we are, remember what we know, and taste the gifts of spirit and eternity.” Our worship celebration here could be a Sabbath practice if it helps us remember who we truly are… as images of God made of the dust of the stars, as humble mortal beings of made of mud, as a people called to Grace and to justice, as part of a wondrous Creation with other wondrous Creatures and features. Our worship celebration or any practice that we have can be a Sabbath practice if it slows us down enough, focuses us enough toward Spirit that we remember and feel again in our bodies and souls the Grace of God and the gift of life. Any practice could be a Sabbath practice if it truly re-creates in us a sense of rest, renewal, gratitude and connection to the GodMystery. It doesn’t have to be Saturday or Sunday, or a particular ritual or prayer, though those things might help. In our Gospel stories, we often have Jesus going not toward the people and crowds, but, after his healing work, away from them to solitude and prayer. One way to translate what is translated as prayer is “to come to rest.” Jesus had the practice. He went to rest and renew. (And the disciples came after him, “hunted” him some translations say.) It’s not that Sabbath time is superior to work time. It’s that our work time is served by the wisdom and energy of balance and wholeness, Sabbath rest and its intention to be in a different way of being serve balance and wholeness. The spiritual paradox of this Sabbath rest and not doing is that it does create in its own way. The Rabbinic tradition says that on the seventh day God created menuha; tranquility, serenity, peace, and repose. The Jewish tradition also says that on the Sabbath we are given an extra soul, Neshemah Yeterah, a Sabbath soul which more fully appreciates the blessings of life and the fruits of our labor. How are we nurturing our Sabbath soul? I watched my Dad for years come home from work, empty his pockets and often change his clothes. It was a simple ritual of shifting from work to home. Now, I love the moment I get home and empty my pockets of keys, cell phone, and all the things I use in the outside world of work and marketplace. I empty my pockets and exhale. This can be a Sabbath moment on any day if I use it to really slow down, breathe, and pause to appreciate the gift of the day, of life, of the whole Mystery. And even if you are not working outside the home, or are not ‘doing’ as much as you once did, you are not exempt from the call to Sabbath, for it is possible to fill all our not doing time with things that don’t help us exhale, rest, and renew in the whole-making Spirit of the Divine. That’s because Sabbath is not just a time or even space that we reserve. It is also a quality of presence or consciousness. It is effortless, nourishing rest. It is stillness that can produce a unique kind of renewal and insight. It is an awareness, a return to perspective, a sacred perspective that is about depth and delight, about re-balancing and re-creating, about remembering and feeling that we belong to God, to the Mystery, and that we are to love ourselves, each other, and all Creation. There is a poem by Jane Kenyon that may help us feel into Sabbath time and space. The poem is related to the traditional Jewish day beginning in the darkness right after sundown. Let Evening Come Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn. Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come. To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come. Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come. As we continue in a Lenten journey of becoming Full to the Brim, I invite to us to remember that there are rhythms and cycles that make for life, ultimately, that make possible our coming back to acting for compassion and justice, to acting in service and offering a helping hand. No matter our age or stage, in our lives and in our culture, we can distort those rhythms and cycles and then distort and compromise the life force that sustains us and Creation, not allowing ourselves or the Earth to exhale, to rest, to renew. God exhaled on the seventh day, resting and savoring the blessing that is Life. Today, the sacred invitation is simple. Remember the Seventh Day and exhale. AMEN AuthorJ.T. comes to Plymouth as an experienced interim pastor, most recently, as Bridge Minister at University Congregational UCC in Seattle. Previously, he served congregations in Denver, Laramie, and Forest Grove, Oregon. Read more
"The Welcome We Offer"
A sermon related to Matthew 25:34-40 CENTRAL FOCUS: The unity of humanity and life (non-dual consciousness) is the Good News and our realization of this Good News (salvation) is illustrated by how we engage the margins. Then the Sovereign will say to those on the right, ‘Come, you that are blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer, ‘When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the Sovereign will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.’ For the Word of God in Scripture, For the Word of God among us, For the Word of God within us, Thanks be to God. ---------- This scene of the Last Judgment portrayed in Matthew, Chapter 25 is familiar to many in our tradition. Like most Biblical stories and scenes, it is not literal, but is a collage of symbols and images. It is a teaching vehicle. Such end time or final moment scenes are a way to teach about ultimate values, a way to say when it is all added up, in the end, this is what matters, this is what is true, this is what is of value to Life. So what is Matthew’s Jesus trying to show us, to teach us? Apparently, it involves the margins of life and our relationship to that. The sick and the imprisoned, the thirsty and the hungry, the naked and the alienated. These are the people and realities at the margins of life, aren’t they? These are those who are suffering and struggling for what is necessary to live. They seek the life-giving realities of health and freedom, clean water and food, shelter and a place to connect and belong, a place to be welcomed. In one sense, Matthew’s Jesus is teaching a simple faith of compassion that is known in its simple concrete compassionate actions. There are those in need, meet their need; visit them in prison, care for them in their sickness, provide the basics of clothing, shelter, and food. Participate in giving directly to another in their need. If that is all you get from this story, that is good and faithful. That is an important part of the way of life. And … we can go further. This can be an image also of social, systemic justice. To use another image, we can give people fish, and can even teach them to fish, yes, but we can also ask why there are so many without fish. We can ask why the waters are not plentiful with fish or why only certain people get to fish in the waters that are plentiful? This systemic understanding also is a worthy and faithful teaching of this story. We can extend this story to the collective common good and be faithful with our communal and political actions to serve that good; we advocate, we vote, we act in large blocs and seek to organize our society differently. A second layer of this teaching. Go and do likewise. And there is yet another truth level to this story. There’s a deeper layer, a paradoxical spiritual truth of the unity of Life, a mystical reality where we include ourselves in the marginalized possibility, where identity of self and other is not so distinct. Over the years, in churches like ours, we may have gotten used to hearing this story as the one in which we are the givers always, the ones with water and food and shelter and clothing, always the ones visiting. But in Jesus’ identification with those on the margins, The Christ Voice is acknowledging the whole condition of life as including the margins. In Jesus’ life, as one who was willing to be at the margins, to be the suffering one, to be the one in prison, he is including the margins as part of the whole for all of us. As it is said in the wisdom traditions of the East, “I am that.” At the level of spiritual paradox, beyond individual egos and individualism, we are each humanity in all its forms. Indeed, we are that. The root spiritual knowing of the unity and interdependence of humanity and all life is the taproot for the welcome we are called to offer, a welcome of compassionate engagement with the margins. It draws the circle wide and wider still. Let me clarify: This does not erase the difference in our social locations. The damaging fiction of race and the realities of unequal wealth and education and opportunity and healthcare are real and have real world consequences. But even as that is true, the good news from Matthew’s community is that the way through this injustice and inequality, this separation and hardheartedness, requires also the mystery of unity so that we are always engaging the margins with a compassionate egalitarian welcome as partners, as kin, as compatriots in the situation and miracle of life. The spiritual truth of Christ being there, of us being there as humanity, keeps us from a sense of superiority and separateness. We cannot be a gated community of secure givers, seeing ourselves only as havers and helpers. We also must have a humble identity of sameness, equality, and solidarity. As Lilla Watson, Gangulu nation woman, professor, and activist of Australia says….“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” As the hymn we will sing today at the end of our service says, In Christ there is no East or West, in Christ no South or North; But one community of love throughout the whole wide earth. Christ Presence is on both sides of the equation because ultimately there are not two sides at the deepest level. The Christ Presence is the one that meets the needs, alleviates the suffering, is in solidarity with those on the margins and, at the same time, is the suffering one on the margin receiving care and experiencing relief and liberation. I wonder if we can stretch our spiritual imaginations to imagine that. Perhaps you are one of the people who has seen themselves as resourced, as having those things that people on the margins do not, and you see yourself as a person trying to meet those needs of those on the margin. Wonderful. That is one of the good and simple teachings of the story. And it is also in our Bible story that the very conception of giver and receiver breaks down as Jesus in the role of the Christ slips into the mystical identity of the other. Just as God-with-us, Immanuel, became the imprisoned one, the naked one, the suffering one, the vulnerable one, so we too know this can be true for any of us, literally or spiritually, and that at a deep level, we are all in this being human together. Perhaps another story can help us. Once upon a time there was a wise abbot of a monastery who was the friend of an equally wise rabbi. This was in the old country, long ago, when times were always hard, but just then they were even worse. The abbot’s community was dwindling, and the faith life of his monks was fearful, weak and anxious. He went to his friend and wept. His friend, the Rabbi, comforted him, and said “there is something you need to know, my brother. We have long known in the Jewish community that the Messiah is one of you.” "What,” exclaimed the abbot, “the Messiah is one of us? How can this be?” But the Rabbi insisted that it was so, and the abbot went back to his monastery wondering and praying, comforted and excited. Once back in the monastery, he would pass by a monk and wonder if he was the one. Sitting in chapel, praying, he would hear a voice and look intently at a face and wonder, ‘Is he the one?’ The abbot had always been kind, but now began to treat all of his brothers with profound kindness and awe, ever deeper respect, even reverence. Soon everyone noticed. One of the other brothers came to him and asked him what had happened to him. After some coaxing, the abbot told him what the rabbi had said. Soon the other monk was looking at his brothers differently, with deeper respect and wondering. Word spread quickly: the Messiah is one of us. The monastery was suddenly full of life, worship, love and grace. Their prayer life was rich and passionate, devoted, and services were alive and vibrant. Soon the surrounding villagers came to the services, listening and watching intently, and many joined the community of monks. After their novitiate, when they took their vows, they were told the mystery, the truth that their life was based upon, the source of their strength, the richness of their life together: The Messiah is one of us. The monastery grew and expanded into house after house, and the monks grew in wisdom and grace before each other and in the eyes of God. And they say still, that if you stumble across this place where there is life and hope and kindness and graciousness, that the secret is the same: The Messiah is one of us. Welcome has been named as core value of this congregation, a radical and abundant welcome. The very first strategic goal listed in the recently approved strategic plan. The welcome we offer will need to come from that place of compassion that meets the concrete needs of those on the margin, yet also calls us into the deep place of nonduality where we are no different from and even identify as humanity marginalized and in need, each seeing that we can be The Christ giving and The Christ receiving. What if we welcomed each other and anyone as The Christ? What if we welcomed ourselves as having Christ within us, both the humble Christ in need who receives and the Christ of compassion who responds? This is Good News that is offered to us. Let us welcome it. AuthorJ.T. comes to Plymouth as an experienced interim pastor, most recently, as Bridge Minister at University Congregational UCC in Seattle. Previously, he served congregations in Denver, Laramie, and Forest Grove, Oregon. Read more AuthorJ.T. comes to Plymouth as an experienced interim pastor, most recently, as Bridge Minister at University Congregational UCC in Seattle. Previously, he served congregations in Denver, Laramie, and Forest Grove, Oregon. Read more
For the first Sunday after Christmas, the three pastors share stories and poems of Christmas.
AuthorJ.T. comes to Plymouth as an experienced interim pastor, most recently, as Bridge Minister at University Congregational UCC in Seattle. Previously, he served congregations in Denver, Laramie, and Forest Grove, Oregon. Read more |
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