Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

It’s fall, and that means it’s time for us to begin a new focus as we finish the church year.  Several weeks ago I came across the book Freeing Jesus by Diana Butler Bass.   Bass tells the story of  her praying one day in a side chapel at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., near her home.  She knelt before a painting of Jesus that was familiar to her, but her usual prayers seemed blocked that day.  After some time of nothing, she recalls hearing a voice saying, “Get me out of here.”  Although no human was near, she heard again, “Get me out of here.”  Eventually she became convinced that she was “hearing” the voice of Jesus, and she came to believe that she was to write about Jesus and who he is, beyond the traditional “churchy” teaching about his life.  She tells this story in the introduction to her book and the scripture she chooses for that introduction is the one we read in Matthew 16. 

 Mattew 16:13-16, 20

When Jesus arried in the villages of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “What are people saying about who the Son of Man is?” 
They replied, “Some think he is John the Baptizer, some say Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
He pressed them, “And how about you?  Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter said, “You’re the Christ, the Missiah, the Son of the living God.”…
Jesus swore the disciples to secrecy.  He made them promise they would tell no one that he was the Messiah.

We can read about possible answers to the question, “Who do people say that I am?”  The answers in Matthew include several dead prophets, telling us that people heard the voice of the prophets in Jesus’ teaching.  When Jesus asks the disciples, “But who do YOU say tat I am?”  We get Peter’s answer recorded, “You are the Messiah.”  That answer holds hopes of political and spiritual change, of remaking the known world, of the presence of God entering forcefully into their lives.  When we read it in the Bible, it has the sense of being the one “right” answer.  Jesus is the Messiah, even if we don’t really know all that meant to first century Jews or even what it means now.

I decided about six weeks ago that we’d “read” this book this fall, and like so often happens, I had no idea that it would have particular relevance beyond being interesting to consider.  Then last week Charlie Kirk was murdered and we began to hear that he is a Christian martyr and we must all salute his amazing message of faith, especially his desire to imbed this faith and his politics in our nation’s youth.  Kirk’s death is a great tragedy and certainly a call for us to reduce gun violence in our country.  He should not have been killed.  But as he filled the news, his teachings were repeated over and over.  They gave me a profound sense that when Charlie Kirk answered Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” he was wrong.  His politics and his faith and his Jesus bear no resemblance to the Jesus I know.  That reminds me of how many times I’ve chosen scriptures for worship and had them mean much more in the moment they appear on the calendar than they would have when they were chosen.  Diana Butler Bass is going to help us understand how there can be such vastly different understandings of Jesus and what his life means.  Charlie Kirk, Diana Butler Bass, each one of us…we’re going to answer the question about Jesus over the next few weeks.

Bass reminds us that over 100 years ago Bible scholars began to distinguish between the Jesus of history – a Palestinian Jew who lived under first century Roman occupation – and the Christ of faith – a Messiah that 2000 years of church theology has given particular meanings to.  One is a person of significance; the other is a way of understanding God.  They are related, but not identical.  And both are obscure.  We can’t track down the historical details with any certainty.  We can’t understand the theology without it being colored by the experiences of the people who first suggested its truth and by our own experiences of faith.

Hear how Bass describes this in her life:

(From Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way and Presence. Diana Butler Bass)

Understanding the Jesus of history has proved helpful (and even life-giving) for me; and I appreciate the theological traditions surrounding the Christ of faith.  Yet neither historical scholarship nor conventional doctrine quite captures who Jesus is for me – the skepticism bred by one and the submissiveness inculcated by the other do not fully tell the story of the Jesus I know: the Jesus of experience. Well before I studied Jesus the Jewish peasant or worshipped Christ the King, I knew Jesus.  Even as a small child, I knew his name.  I had a sense of his companionship.  I knew he was the heart of Christian faith.  Although I now understand both history and theology, neither intellectual arguments nor ecclesial authority elucidates the Jesus I have known.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to let Bass help us explore six ways she finds meaning in the life of Jesus:  friend, teacher, savior, Lord, way and presence.  Each time we consider one of these, we’re also going to ask, “Is this a way that Jesus has meaning for me?”  I suspect no two of us will have the same responses.  Jesus was never meant simply to be an object of faith to get right.  From soon after the moment of his death his disciples began to insist, “He is alive.”  And so we cannot any one of us say who Jesus is without also saying how we encounter Jesus alive in our own lives.  How does he live among us?  Who do WE say that he is?

Bass continues:

My story can never be your story…But my story might inform yours, or be like yours, or maybe even add depth or another dimension to yours.  If nothing else, sharing our stories might lead to greater understanding, tolerance, appreciation, and perhaps even celebration of our differences.  (Introduction)

As we begin this journey, I want to say, “Jesus matters.”  At the outset, I don’t have a finished answer to the question, “Who is he?”  I feel in my bones that Charlie Kirk’s answer, while it may have held deep meaning for him, is not my answer.  There’s a part of me that wants to cry out NO! when I hear his ideas about what Jesus wants.  I know that Jesus has meant many things to me over my life, and I’m looking forward to reflecting on those along with our author and maybe adding to the list.  I hope you’ll come on this journey with me with an open mind, an open heart, a sense of more possibilities than you’ve considered before.  And I hope you’ll continue to ask the question of yourself, “Who do you say that I am?”  I’m pretty sure we’re going to find many possible answers, that we’ll discover a rich diversity of experience and thought, and that along the way we may be surprised by faith.

PRIDE Worship at Family of God

Luke 15:1-10

There are three stories in the Gospel of Luke about being lost – the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.  We’ve heard two of them today and I’ll bet you know the third about the son who takes his inheritance and squanders it, until destitute he crawls back home and is welcomed. 

There’s a strong theme in Christianity about being lost, the remedy for which is being saved. You may be suspicious of me choosing this theme for PRIDE worship, simply because there are plenty of churches where you could hear a sermon about LGBTQ folk needing to get right with God and be saved – and at the same time denying their reality and their joy.  Don’t worry – we’re not going there. 

First I want you to notice that these stories are not about things or people who are missing.  They are about how excited a shepherd, a woman, a father and GOD are to be reunited after a separation. Follow that line of thought and we realize that when lostness ends, it’s not just the “found” one who benefits.  GOD rejoices!  There is joy and celebration attached to homecoming.   

For many years I’ve had a hunch about the theology of being lost. Mostly  I’d say it’s not possible.  How can anyone be lost from God, who is in all and is all?  The idea that we can be separated from God is impossible.  I’ll give you that we can feel separated from God, indifferent to God, unaware of God.  I think of it like this.  At a certain age my grandchildren become very independent.  They think they can do things for themselves!  Most of them insist that they are grown up and capable.  They make me hide my eyes while they draw a picture or pour their own milk.  Mostly, I try not to peek.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not intensely interested in what they are doing or that if they changed their mind and asked for help I wouldn’t be right on it.  How could God care about us any less than a mere grandma?  We often think we’re on our own, but that’s an illusion.  At any moment we’re willing to accept it, all the help and support in the world is available to us…from God, from the community of God’s people, from those who care about making life better for everyone.  He celebration is for us, because we’re connecting, because life is better when we’re in it. 

We can never be lost from God.  But I chose this scripture for PRIDE because I think all too often we are lost from ourselves.  We’re disconnected from who we are, how we want to be.  At some point in life this is true for almost everybody.  We find ourselves playing the wrong sport or the wrong instrument.  We are stuck in the wrong job, doing things we hate because we need the money or somebody told us they thought we’d be good at it.  We end up in wrong relationships – romantic relationships we don’t know how to improve or end; friendships that don’t support us; co-workers that treat us badly.  When we are lost from the core of our own being, it’s hard to find our way home.  Usually it takes someone who cares about us to walk along side us until we can find the way. 

The tragic truth about our current world, is that for many folk who identify as gay or lesbian, transgender, nonbinary, or any reality not in the current mainstream, there are often more roadblocks in the path than companions.  One reason it’s important to celebrate PRIDE is to change that. We are here to say that we’ll walk with anyone searching for their truth.  We’re here to say that every person has value for who they are, not only when they conform to social norms.  It’s possible to celebrate everyone. It’s our joy to help each person see their worth and claim their place among us.  And if someone is acting out because they’ve been put down and cast aside too long, then we can stick with them while they heal.  We can give them the safety they’ve been missing.  We can show them true friendship looks like. 

The church should be a place where everyone can try identify on for size to see if it fits.  A place where we can try out ways to be and things to do.  Are you a singer?  A quilter? An artist? A runner?  Do you love being single?  Or connected to a surprising partner? Do you want to do something you’re not very good at. Or never do something you do well again?  Life is full of so many possibilities.  Let’s claim all of them and hang on to what fits and what builds up community.  Let’s rejoice in the way God shows us each time someone comes a little closer to being home with themselves.  Let’s say loud and proud that no one deserves to be lost and it’s a celebration every time a person says, “This fits me.” 

God rejoices when the lost is found, because finding ourselves is worth celebrating.  It makes us proud and whole and holy. 

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Didache 12:1-5; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-9

On this Labor Day Sunday, we’re honoring the request of national unions to celebrate Labor in the Pulpit.  That gives us an opportunity to acknowledge the important differences unions have made in American history.  Those of us who have only lived under fair labor laws, OSHA regulations and such need to remember that life in our country wasn’t always as safe and fair as we have known it.  Safety rules, the five-day work week and 8-hour day, the right to bargain for fair wages workers compensation for injuries, benefits including healthcare, sick leave, vacation days and holidays – these can be taken for granted as a way of life, but they haven’t always been so, and for some people they still aren’t a reality.  The work that unions have done on our behalf and that government has supported when it supported unions matters.  And it matters when we see many of those rights eroding in this moment as contracts are ignored and workers’ rights threatened.

In that context, we read our two scripture passages, both written in the first century BCE in similar communities of Jesus’ followers.  Both the Didache and the second letter to the church in Thessalonica show concern with people travelling through and needing to work.  Although it’s unlikely that Paul himself wrote 2nd Thessalonians, the author was familiar with Paul’s practice of staying several months or more with churches he was founding and supporting himself as a tentmaker while he was in town.  He worked for his livelihood and taught about Jesus after hours. 

The Didache is a training manual for early Christian communities and introduces us to the reality that these communities served as hostels  ar BNB’s for many who followed Jesus and were traveling through.  Scholars suggest that many of these folks could have been escaped slaves, men released from debtors’ prison, or those fleeing violence in their villages.  The Didache presumes that many travelers who needed to stay more than a couple of days before moving on to a farther destination were healing from some trauma.  The community could well want to provide a safe place for these folks, but they needed a plan to do so without them bankrupting people who were mostly themselves poor.  They are encouraged to make a plan:  who can employ these people as an apprentice, or give them space in the corner of a shop to use a skill they already have?  How can they lend an extra hand to someone already in business while they are getting their feet on the ground?

The need for people to work isn’t only economic, although certainly if people were going to eat, they needed to contribute to the grocery bill.  People who have lost everything need to know they still have value.  Finding a skill and earning a living is healing to a broken heart.  Becoming a productive member of the community gives a person dignity and hope.  Having work and purpose is good for everyone.  Just like in our day, helping people find work is rehabilitative.

Over our lifetimes the meaning of work and its social reality have shifted.  Once among the middle class mostly the men worked for pay and the women took care of the family.  Before that many families were farmers and everyone worked to be sure the family ate and was clothed.  Those at the lowest income levels have always worked, needing two incomes or more to cover the basics.  We’ve watched the workforce become more diverse and inclusive.  We’re watching now as hundreds of thousands of workers are arrested and deported, not knowing what that will do to industry and business.  Some folks assume that those who don’t work are lazy, without considering shortcomings in training or health care or mental health treatment.  When most of the population lived in very small towns, people divided up the jobs that needed doing and each worker played an important role.  When towns became much larger and less personal, there weren’t always jobs in places where there were people.  Our town struggles with some workers without transportation being able to get to where the jobs happen.  Some who want to work have no affordable child care. I suspect that we’re at a new inflection point and we’re going to see many changes in just a few years.  Will the minimum wage become a living wage?  Will everyone receive benefits that make work possible – sick leave, health insurance, retraining as new skills are needed?

With more questions than answers about the world of work, it’s good for us to celebrate the people who stand up for workers, like the unions.  We need the people who ask the important questions and suggest helpful solutions.  If we’re going to see big changes, we need to work together to push those changes in positive directions.  We could use a little out-of-the-box thinking about what workers deserve, how we all benefit from various skills and jobs, and how to thank those who do work we would never want to do ourselves.  I’ve long wanted to celebrate Labor Day and unions by recognizing the importance of the work that we do – real jobs for real people – so today we’re going to do that.  If you got the word in advance and have brought a symbol of your own work, great.  We’ll take turns creating a work display on the alter.  Please say a few words about the work you’ve chosen to celebrate and why.  If you don’t have an object, please join us in celebrating by sharing just the words.  What matters to you about what you do for a living or as a volunteer.  We can take our time and enjoy these stories.  When we finish we’ll pray the prayer provided by the AFL-CIO and enjoy Ron’s music as a finale.

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Isaiah 58:6-14

For the people Isaiah was addressing in today’s scripture, God had proved to be unfaithful.  They had been conquered, taken into exile far from home.  “What did we do wrong?” they asked.  Did we not make enough sacrifices?  Did we not sing enough psalms or offer the right prayers?  Like many of the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures, Isaiah tells the people that the rituals of religion are not a payment for God’s favor.  Saying prayers, making burnt sacrifices, keeping all the rules about being religious don’t guarantee an easy life.  God isn’t impressed with external trappings, but cares deeply about matters of the heart.

If you want to live a good life in a prosperous country, create a good life in a country where everyone prospers.  Isaiah tells the people what matters:  justice, fairness, economic opportunity for everyone.  Before first Israel and later Judah were conquered by invading nations, their prophets had warned them about income inequality, the rich exploiting the poor, those with comfortable lives ignoring those who struggled to put food on the table.  If you don’t stand for justice, they said, you will fall.  And fall they did.

Jesus knew the prophets and internalized their message until it formed his very core.  Then he repeated it in his day.  He told those with power that they weren’t going to get ahead by cooperating with Roman occupiers or exploiting workers or sharecroppers to line their own pockets.  He denounced those who didn’t care when children had no bread or adults had no work.  He repeated the message of ancient prophets:  If you want to live a good life, create a life that’s good by your daily actions.

The first century followers of Jesus weren’t able to change the ways of Empire around them, so they created communities of people who lived by Jesus’ values in spite of Empire.  They focused on ways to love their neighbor – sharing food, giving shelter, offering food.  They learned to tell the truth in their dealings with each other.  They cultivated generosity.  They protected people from the harm of Empire as much as they could.  They still had to deal with the hardships of first century Empire, but they also lived lives of joy and purpose.  They believed they were living in God’s reign in spite of also living in Caesar’s reign.

I love the ways we are growing into creating a first-century community in our own time.  We even use some Isaiah-like vocabulary when we talk about being light in the world.  We take seriously the fact that people need food and shelter.  Right now we’re working with other churches and agencies to help a man who is camping in a storage unit.  He would qualify for housing vouchers, but first he must pay over $4300 in past-due rent.  Together we’re going to pay that bill.  Housing will give him stability and allow him to access food assistance and medical care.  Helping one person doesn’t solve the problem of people without homes, but it does plant a seed of hope that the problem can be addressed.  It makes a public statement that the problem of homelessness belongs to the whole community, not just people having a hard time.  It says we look forward to the time when enough realities shift that people in financial trouble get redirection before they fall in a hole so deep they can’t get out.  When housing is affordable and medical care doesn’t bankrupt families.  Shelter, food, medical care, work -these belong not just to the rich and powerful but to the community and we get to decide how it’s shared to benefit everyone.  When we center justice and dignity in the heart of who we are, then we create a God-like community in which everyone can participate. We make the love of God and the reign of God visible every day in our everyday lives.

Our passage today mentions the Sabbath.  In Isaiah’s time and Jesus’ time there were lots of rules about how Sabbath was observed.  Rules about not cooking or walking or working.  People hoped that keeping the rules would earn them a reward.  Prophets tell us that keeping rules isn’t the same as being holy, being steeped in the heart of God from the inside out.  You can keep every rule and not be kind or just or generous.  But you can’t be filled with the presence of God and not be kind or just or generous.  Good deeds don’t count unless they come from your heart and your heart beats in tune with God’s love.  Lots of people want to keep the letter of the law and earn credits toward heaven.  Jesus tried to show us that living the SPIRIT of the law creates heaven right now.  In his day, keeping the Sabbath meant not doing everyday things on the sabbath day.  Instead he wanted people to make every day a day to put God’s love into action. The sabbath was meant to help people focus on God by resting.  But when the needs around us are so great, we focus on God by helping and caring.  When God’s love flows through us, even though we are working to help others, we’re resting in God. And when we physically rest from that work, we know we are that much more connected with God.

I’m not telling you today that until we fix everything that’s wrong with the world, we can’t rest.  Or that every problem needs to be your personal problem.  I am telling you that we have the privilege of seeing the world through God’s eyes, and that allows us to see some ways that we can bring love to a few folks.  We do what we can, when we can, but God allows us to see both a need and a solution. By being God’s hands in this bit of the world, we find God’s joy, we see God’s hope and we rest in knowing we’ve made a difference.  We are creating God’s reign in partnership with all those who allow God’s Spirit to move through them into this holy life.  Watch for it, and you will see it.

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

 from Loves Braided Dance by Norman Wirzba, p. 150

Hope is born when people come together and commit to the nurture of each other and their shared places. Hope lives in the diverse forms of “love’s braided dance covering the world.” The braiding of lives in the joining of hands is the fundamental need of our existence. Hands reaching out, hands cradling another, hands clasping hands, hands offering comfort and support, hands protecting and building, hands nudging and releasing, hands cheering another on - gestures like these demonstrate our shared vulnerability and self-insufficiency, but also our fidelity to and our desire to live for each other. When we intentionally join together, we communicate, however inchoately, our conviction that the future is worth working toward together. Hope is the power that propels people to give themselves to the care and celebration of life with fellow creatures.

Today’s passage from Hebrews is a long list of heroes and sheroes from ancient times up to the moment it was written.  It’s a catalogue of the important people who made up the history of Israel plus some recent (at that time) martyrs who stood up for the faith.  Because this was a violent thousand years in history, it’s a bloody and violent list.  But it’s also a hopeful list – these people stood up to the tyrants of their day and prevailed.  It’s a list meant to encourage folks living in tough times that they can make it through.

The Bible as we know it was gathered from the stories people were telling about the heroes of their past and written down when the times were especially hard…after the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE, after the southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians in 587 BCE, after the Greeks conquered the new Israel in 333 BCE.  Whenever the nation was in danger of extinction, scholars and priests gathered their history so people could remember who they were – God’s people.  Telling stories of the past help a people remember their values and their identity.  During the sometimes violent opposition to Christianity in the first and second centuries, authors like those who wrote the book of Hebrews reminded people of their heritage as a way of helping them claim their faith and their commitment to the new way of living taught by Jesus.

It's important for us in this moment in time to remember that this heritage is also our heritage, as well as the many stories of our nation’s founding and evolving into a nation of values today.  We need to keep telling those stories so that we can hold strong to our values, and so we can acknowledge mistakes and build a better future.  We remember the founding fathers and the women who were their partners; those who fought to end slavery; those who fought against aggression in the 20th century; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks and John Lewis and so many more who were the freedom fighters of the civil rights movement; those who settled the prairies; those who struggled to maintain Native culture in the face of settlement; those who speak out against climate change; those who resist authoritarianism in our moment. Some are trying to erase that history in an effort to redefine greatness by values different from equality or opportunity for all. They are trying to erase the mistakes we made so that we can no longer learn from them.  We can’t let that happen.

So it’s important that we name folks who are our mentors and our heroes, whether they are famous or whether they’re just folks around our family tables.  Who would you name who inspires you by the story of their courage and persistence?...

Remembering our ancestors and their courage is a part of our faith heritage.  It’s worth insisting on our right to do that.  Norm Wirzba reminds us that one of the keys of our past is when people stood up for one another.   When people called out injustice or acted with compassion toward one another.  Jesus was all about forming communities where people practiced living by the rule of love.  That practice is just as important today as it’s ever been.  We are living our faith when we insist that love be our guiding principle.  It’s love that helps us stick together and say, “times are hard but we have each other.”  It’s love that calls out mass deportation or unequal incarceration or the ending of health care or whatever as wrong.  It’s love that prays for those who are ill or struggling and makes spaghetti sauce (like Victoria did for me in the middle of my 3-day garage sale marathon). 

Here are two strands that braided together make us stronger:

• Remembering our history and that folks have made it through hard times before, even becoming better for it.

• Hanging on to each other with compassion and support no matter what each day brings.

We do both of these things because they work and they remind us that God is with us through whatever our moment brings us.  People have believed that for 3000 years, and we can believe it now.  And then we can live in that confidence and that hope one day at a time.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 12:29-40

Let’s put today’s scripture into the context that Luke gives it when he edits his gospel:  Jesus has been teaching the crowds about income inequality.  The stories that precede this one are about the greed of rich and powerful people.  In particular, a wealthy landowner has so much grain that he has no bins in which to store it.  So rather than returning some of the grain to the struggling farmers who grew it, he tears down his small bins and builds big ones.  There his excess grain can be stored, where he can see it and be glad of how much he has.  The twist of the story is that the landowner dies suddenly in the night and all his wealth hasn’t saved him from mortality.

In Jesus’ day income inequality was everywhere.  There were a few men who owned the land and everything it produced – grain, wine, sheep, fish.  They had more than enough for a comfortable life of feasting with their rich and powerful friends.  Most of the people worked for these landowners as farmers, fisherfolk, servants, day-laborers.  They literally didn’t know where their next meal is coming from. If the landowners had shared, there was enough food for everyone.  In practice, most people were hungry.  Jesus is speaking against that injustice.

He tells the crowd that wealth doesn’t come from possessions; it comes from participating in the reign of God in which everyone shares in the bounty God provides.  Wealth isn’t a bank balance, it’s an attitude toward life that sees the world and all her peoples filled with the goodness and the presence of God.

People practice living in God’s reign by being generous, confident that God will provide enough to share and still have what’s needed for life.  They live this way because they see God everywhere they turn.  God is in the opportunity to hire someone without work, give bread to someone without supper,  offer shelter to someone without a home.  Treasure isn’t in a bank balance, but in the experience of living in community with all God’s people and lightening the load some folks carry.

Jesus goes on to explain that they should expect to see God moving among them all the time and should live in anticipation of seeing God show up in unexpected places.  He says it’s like servants waiting for the master to come home from his honeymoon, staying up late so they won’t miss the arrival.  Those who are waiting are rewarded for their diligence.  The master shares the banquet leftovers with them and serves them, rather than expecting to be served. Being ready to serve each other is pretty much the point.

These days we’re encouraged to be vigilant…to watch out for undocumented folks trying to take advantage of us, to guard the national budget against people expecting food and health care without earning it, to report coworkers who dare to say something inclusive or accepting of others.  That’s no way to live.  Instead, Jesus tells us to be vigilant for the ways God’s love shows up as opportunities to help each other.  God shows up all the time.

• When the community fund spends a few dollars for life-saving medication…

• When the weeders pick up a neighbor’s branches downed by the storm…

• When we can cheer for the Boy Scouts…

• When you encourage a store clerk having a bad day…

We do Light Signs every week to remind us that we can see God in ordinary places every day, and seeing God there makes each day holy.

The first century folks were in a battle with the Empire over who got to define how life worked.  Was the Emperor in charge, making life scary and threatening?  Or was God in charge in spite of the Emperor, making life a beloved community where there were signs of love everywhere.  More and more we’re in the same kind of battle with a similar Empire.  Are we to see each day as a struggle to grab what we can from a world that’s out to take what’s rightfully ours?  Or are we to see opportunities to share God’s abundance with one another so everyone thrives?  Are we to see ourselves surrounded by enemies or encouraged by neighbors?  Are we to watch our backs or open our hearts?  Just like those who first followed Jesus, we get to choose how we’ll see the world and how we’ll respond to one another.  We can live in artificially created fear, or we can live in faith and confidence that God is good and Love Wins.

I saved this week’s extra reading for this spot because it talks about living in troubling times.  The book is The Impossible Will Take a Little While, a collection of essays about how even when times are tough, people can do good for one another.  This essay is The Optimism of Uncertainty by Howard Zinn.  I want you to hear the opening paragraphs:

In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?

Some quick lessons:  Don’t let “those who have power” intimidate you.  No matter how much power they have, they cannot prevent you from living your life, thinking independently, speaking your mind.

Find people to be with who share your values and commitments, and who also have a sense of humor.

Understand that the major media will not tell you of all the acts of resistance taking place every day in the society – the strikes, protests, individual acts of courage in the face of authority.  Look around for the evidence of these unreported acts.  And for the little you find, extrapolate from that and assume there must be a thousand times as much as you’ve found.

Note that throughout history people have felt powerless before authority, but that at certain times these powerless people, by organizing, acting, risking, persisting, have created enough power to change the world around them, even if a little.  That is the history of the labor movement, the women’s movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the disabled persons’ movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the movement of black people in the South.

Remember that those who have power and seem invulnerable are in fact quite vulnerable.  Their power depends on the obedience of others and when those others begin withholding that obedience, begin defying authority, that power at the top turns out to be very fragile.  Generals become powerless when their soldiers refuse to fight, industrialists become powerless when their workers leave their jobs or occupy the factories.

When we forget the fragility of that power at the top, we become astounded when it crumbles in the face of rebellion.  We have had many such surprises in our time, both in the United States and in other countries.

Don’t look for a moment of total triumph.  See engagement as an ongoing struggle, with victories and defeats, but in the long run slow progress.  So you need patience and persistence.  Understand that even when you don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that you have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile.  You need hope.

In the first century people who followed Jesus looked their world square in the face and said no to greed and yes to community.  Now it’s our turn to see how our own Empire wants us to treat each other and to say “no”.  Instead we will share what God provides, see each person as God sees them, and believe in a world in which the kindom of God is growing among us every day.  Be ready, for God is working wonders among us and those who expect it to happen will see when it does.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Colossians 3:1-13

Love is the action that creates the social and economic contexts in which life has the best chance to thrive.  Without love, the world literally falls apart. 

- Love’s Braided Dance,  Norman Wirzba

We started out this summer looking for clues about the faith values that inform us and help us explain what seems broken in our country and the world just now.  What is it that matters to us and to God that looks and acts differently from what’s in the news?  If we have a chance to explain what we think is the right way to act, what words frame that?

I don’t know about you, but I was pretty uncertain we’d find a clear answer.  Sometimes when nobody seems to be paying attention, it can feel like we’re crazy.  What seems obvious to us is so out of the mainstream; if it’s not obvious to everyone, ho can we describe what a healthy world and nation look like?

Now as we’re a couple of months into the project, it seems clearer to me.  The scriptures have been saying the same thing over and over:  love God, love your neighbor.  Behave in the most loving way possible and you’ll be living the life Jesus described.  Duh!  Seems easy.  Only it’s not.  If it were ever easy, we wouldn’t have multiple Bible books ranting about how people were supposed to put love into action.  Living from a core of love is hard, especially when the world around you is looking out for themselves, abusing power, taking advantage of others…

Today’s scripture is yet another list of what love looks like (or mostly what it’s not):  profanity, lust, self-serving, greed. Remember back when we read Corinthians?  Love is patient, kind, not jealous or boastful or rude, not insisting on its own way?  In the midst of an Empire that is anything but loving, it’s possible to think with the mind of love, act with the heart of love, speak words of love.

Over the centuries folks have been inclined to see these passages as rules.  Lay down enough rules and everything will be fine.  A teacher once told me she thought all kids’ problems would be solved if we just posted the 10 Commandments in the classroom and made them follow them.  Not my favorite teacher.  I’m inclined to say the classroom would be better if we loved kids enough to listen to their hurts and understand that life can be brutal.  Kids who don’t know they are loved anywhere else, need a school that loves them.

We all need people who love us, believe in us, encourage us, walk beside us.  People who don’t pay attention to the things we get wrong more than when we get it right.  People to try to become loving community with us. We can learn how to live lives centered in love if we do it together.

We’re reading from a new book today:  Love’s Braided Dance by Norman Wirzba.  Wirzba is the son of immigrant parents who survived the holocaust. He knows first hand how the world can break us, and how we can heal.   His book builds on Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work we’ve been reading so far this summer.  She tells us that nature shows us how to care for each other and work together to thrive. Wirzba names that natural phenomenon “love” and explores how love works when we believe enough to try to make it the heart of our living.

Love isn’t a rule, it’s a world-view.  It’s a super-power.  It’s the presence of all that’s holy in the thick of all that’s not holy.  Neal Donald Walsh tells us the most important question around any action is “What would love do?”  Marianne Williamson ran for President twice telling us that we needed to learn how to love each other.  Love isn’t some smarmy option that pretends everything is great.  Love is the strong power that sees what’s broken and still believes it can be healed.  That acknowledges that people aren’t all the same but believes we can still work together.  That stands up to bullies without giving up on them.  That takes what’s MINE and makes it OURS until we all have enough.  Love levels playing fields, sees human in every being. Love is God creating the world through us.

There’s a lot of talk about being Christian these days, but not necessarily a lot of talk aout following  Jesus. I was taught that being Christian wasn’t about what you did – earning God’s love – but about what you believed – that God loved you.  That’s true.  But it’s also about what you do – loving God and neighbor.  It’s not about posting rules, it’s about caring about everyone.  It’s not about being rewarded, it’s about gladly taking resources and spreading them around until everyone thrives.

We do need to be able to explain what the world looks like when it’s following Jesus – or Mohammed or any of God’s messengers who show us a good way.  But when people aren’t listening to words, we just need to be about living it.  Treat neighbors with respect and compassion.  Share food and medicine and rent money.  Speak kindly but clearly.  Smile often.  Tell jokes.  Break bread.

“Without love the world literally falls apart.” 

With love we can pick up the pieces and heal.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Colossians 2:6-10, 16-19

I suggest reading The Message translation. How do systems change?  How can we move toward the just communities we need and want?  The natural process of ecological replacement highlights two mechanisms at work in replacing a complex system that dominates the landscape and seems too big to change.  Succession relies in part on incremental change, the low, steady replacement of that which does not serve ecological flourishing with new communities.  But it also relies on disturbance, on disruption of the status quo in order to let new species emerge and flower.  Some massive disturbances are destructive, and recovery from them may not be possible.  Other disturbances of the right scale and type, create renewal and diversity….Both of these tools – incremental change and creative disruption – are available to us as agents of cultural transformation.  I hope we will use them both.  In these urgent times, we need to become the storm that topples the senescent, destructive economies so the new can emerge.  (The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer, pp. 100-102)

What is Paul’s advice to the Colossian church, assuming they want to be followers of Jesus?  What will become Christians?  Live like Jesus.  Or even more simply BE Jesus by letting him live again through you.

Can you resonate with Paul’s frustration with people who want to make rules, have theological debates, structure the church as an organization, and generally make the focus of Jesus’ people on figuring out how to do faith right?  Forget it! He says.  Just do it.  And what does doing it look like?  Love.  Jesus says many times, “God is love.”  “Love one another.”  And Jesus did love:  feeding people, forgiving people, healing people, chastising leaders who made life hard for people.  Jesus at his best cuts to the chase:  help each other out and do whatever is most loving in each situation. 

We remember that the early church lived in difficult times, violent times, economically devastating times. They had almost no power to change anything happening around them.  So what are they to do to make Jesus’ vision of the reign of God happen?  Live like Jesus.  Love each other.  Take care of one another.  Even when you have to follow the outward rules of the Empire, you never have to adopt the mindset of the Empire.  You can always prioritize love.  You can always see a friend instead of an enemy.  You can always take the most loving action possible for you in any particular moment, even if it’s not everything you wish you could do.  You can BE like Jesus.

I’m tempted to make a list of all the things that went wrong in our world last week, but I’m going to resist temptation.  Every week the list gets longer and more discouraging.  Remember, Jesus didn’t fix his world.  He died trying, and he didn’t finish the job.  The Empire won.  Except that it didn’t, because even if you’re the world champion at whack-a-mole, you can’t hit every head that pops up.  The way the Jesus movement became a world-changing force was to just keep doing one small thing at a time, day after day, by 10 or 100 or 1000 people, until you couldn’t overcome all the good with evil.  The good got through some places, and when it did, it multiplied.

We’re trying to see the world with God’s eyes until the world can see itself that way.  We’re trying to love the world with Jesus’ love until the world can love itself and be transformed.  And we’re going to win this battle because at its very core the life of the world is love.  Those who want to harm others, puff themselves up and make the world enrich only themselves, are not the way life happens.  When we see life around us in nature, the bullies don’t win in the long run.  The plants and the bees and the animals and even the humans, keep working together until they make something beautiful that benefits everyone.  Even the bullies eventually end up as fertilizer for new life.  Life can heal itself, if we let it.  Life will teach us how to let love happen, if we keep looking around us with Jesus’ eyes.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is determined to build up the natural economy of shared goodness and tear down the false economy of scarcity the Empire has adopted just now.  She observes how that can happen – incremental change and strategic disruption.  We can be smart about causing both.

Incremental change happens when we keep on doing the most loving thing we can in each moment.  This week Victoria ran all over town buying bus passes and delivering checks.  I let two groups of people without a ticket check out the garden tour.  What did you do? …  When we do any small act of kindness we make the world different by being different in it.  Kindness multiplies.

We can also be strategic about disruptions that interrupt the status quo.  Protests are about disruption.  Jesus turning over tables of moneychangers in the temple was disruption.   A young white woman calling out ICE agents for arresting brown men she’s never met is disruption.  The Grand Forks City Council wants to eliminate funding for arts and human needs in next year’s budget.  Some people will speak against that.  What if there weren’t enough chairs in the room for all the people who came to just listen and applaud those speakers?  Would that be enough disruption to matter? 

We’re trying to work out how to live authentically and morally in an immoral country right now.  Here are two very important clues:  incremental change through loving kindness every single day, and disruption where the opportunity presents itself.   We can do this together, because we have been commissioned to be the Body of Christ in this time and place and that is what Jesus would do.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Today, we find ourselves living in a time when the rights of women are once again under assault—rolled back by the hands of power rooted in white patriarchy. We see it in legislation, in the courts, in the erasure of voices, in the control of bodies, and in the silencing of truths. And let us be clear: when the rights of women are stripped away, it is not just women who are at risk—it is every marginalized group, every person pushed to the margins of power, every soul who has ever been told they do not belong.

This is not just about one group—it is about all of us. History tells us that when systems begin to clamp down on one set of people, it is a warning shot for what will come for the rest. The regression of women’s rights is not the end of a struggle; it is the beginning of a wider unraveling.

But this is not new.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus walked into a world that operated in much the same way. A world where women were excluded from spiritual authority, where access to the divine was policed by power and privilege. And it is in this context—in the face of empire and religious hierarchy—that Jesus enacted something bold, brilliant, and radically inclusive. It is here that we turn to Luke 10.

In the beginning of Luke 10, we find Jesus sending out the seventy-two—seventy in some texts. Others.These were disciples, committed to the vision of “on earth as in Heaven.” Seventy-two trusted emissaries, if you will—people who had heard Him teach and had engaged Jesus directly. They could be trusted to follow His instruction to prepare the way, because, as Jesus told them:
“I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.”

They were all keenly aware that their movements and relationships were being closely monitored by the Roman Empire and the elite Jewish religious establishment. This was not a mission undertaken in safety or obscurity. This was bold. This was dangerous. And yet, they went.

Their objectives are made clear. Their mission is both logistical and spiritual—to create a network of support and witnesses through a strategy of:

• Hospitality: relying on the welcome of locals.

• Peaceful entry: discerning where the message is accepted, and staying only where they’re received.

• Spiritual scouting: identifying people and places ready for the Kingdom message—a strategic, preparatory role.

They were working the spiritual harvest by identifying those open to the message of the Kingdom. And they were establishing what we might call today: safe houses.

• Strategically, they were laying a relational foundation—a proto-network of receptive households.

• Spiritually, they were initiating Kingdom work in places Jesus planned to go.

• Practically, they were identifying where Jesus and His followers could later find hospitality, support, community, and safety.

Who were these seventy-two others, exactly?
We know they were students and followers of Jesus—disciples sent to teach, to heal, to build relationships. But they were almost certainly not all Jewish men. Jesus was countercultural in His teaching about who had access to the Kingdom of God. And that, of course, made Him deeply unpopular with the religious elite of His time.

While unnamed, it’s possible—perhaps even likely—that some of the seventy-two included:

• Women disciples—given that Luke pays close attention to women’s participation in Jesus’ ministry (Luke 8:1–3).

• Non-Jews or Hellenized Jews—if the mission had symbolic universality, as the number 70 or 72 seems to suggest.

This was at a time when women and non-Jews had no place in the religious order.

Let us journey back in time—two millennia past—to the hills of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem, where the rhythms of life were guided by sacred law and ancient custom. In that era, under Roman occupation and within the heart of the Jewish faith, the synagogue stood as the community’s spiritual center, and the Temple in Jerusalem, its most hallowed ground. And yet, within these holy places, the voices of women—mothers, daughters, sisters—were largely absent from the formal chambers of learning and instruction.

In the synagogues, the Torah was read aloud and expounded upon, but it was men and boys alone who were granted the privilege of such instruction. From a tender age, boys were taught to read, to recite, to wrestle with the sacred texts that had shaped their people’s destiny. Girls, however, were not welcomed into such study. Their education, when given, was confined to the home—shaped more by the duties of domestic life than by the scrolls of Moses.

Women were not called upon to teach the Torah, nor to interpret its mysteries in the public square. The rabbinic tradition—emerging more fully after the time of Jesus—would codify this exclusion even further, reserving the seat of teaching and leadership for men alone.

And yet—despite this—Jesus had initiated, demonstrated, and modeled the inclusion of women.

Jesus recognized and honored:

Women were never without knowledge, nor without voice. They carried the sacred stories in their hearts, passing them down through generations—by hearth and cradle, in songs, in prayers, in silence, and in strength.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, a few women rise like stars in a darkened sky:
Deborah, judge and prophetess, who led Israel in wisdom and in war.
Huldah, whose words of prophecy guided kings.
These were not ordinary times, and these were not ordinary women. Their appearance was rare—but their impact, enduring.

And then, into this world, came Jesus of Nazareth—a rabbi, yes, but one who confounded the expectations of His age.
For Jesus did what others dared not:
He taught women.
He welcomed them as disciples.
He spoke theology with them—as He did with the woman at the well.
He allowed Mary of Bethany to sit at His feet—the posture of a true student of a rabbi—while Martha busied herself with the duties of custom.

It was women who stood faithfully at the cross when the Twelve had fled.
It was women who first beheld the empty tomb, and carried the message of resurrection—the first evangelists of the risen Christ—though the world dismissed their testimony.

Thus, while the institutions of the time did not honor women with the title of rabbi or scribe, the Gospel narrative lifted them as bearers of truth, vessels of faith, and witnesses to divine revelation.

Let us remember, then, that though history may not always have recorded their teachings, the voices of women were never silent.
They whispered prayers over their children.
They held fast to stories of deliverance.
They looked into the eyes of the Messiah—and knew Him.

And perhaps that is the deepest truth of all:
That God has always spoken through those the world would overlook—
And in the life of Jesus, those once overlooked were seen, taught, honored, and sent.

-Richard Hagen

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:21)

There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus  And if you belog to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.  (Galatians 3:28-29)

The earth will rest, justice will prevail, the poor will rejoice and peace will return, once we no longer act as predators but as pilgrims.  No longer each of us for ourselves, but walking alongside one another.  (Pope Leo XIV)

This summer we are working on a project to identify clearly the values we want to live by so that we can articulate them when we try to explain to others the kind of world we believe God envisions for people.  One of the big issues in the news these days is immigration, and we’re watching as masked men in street clothes without ID round up people at church, school, or work, families in their neighborhoods and immigrants who have come to court appointments according to the rules and send them to inhumane detention centers or deport them to dangerous prisons in countries they have never been in.  There’s a lot of questions about the lack of due process or about how this is making our country safer.  Safer from hardworking parents or their children?  Many people feel like this is wrong – inhumane, lacking compassion, racist, not who we want to be.  How do we explain why it’s wrong beyond “people shouldn’t be treated that way”?

As a general rule, I’m not a fan of picking a Bible verse here or there to prove a point, because every verse has a context which is essential to its meaning.  Today we’re going to pick verses, and I’m going to try to be accurate about their context.

One of the foundational stories of the Judeo-Christian faith is the story of Abram, who with his wife Sarai was told by God to leave their home in Ur and travel with their extended family, flocks, and servants to a land God promised to give them.  Another primary foundational story of our tradition is the story of God freeing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.  Both of these stories star in our scriptures today.

Before we look at what these stories tell us about immigration, let’s remember what these stories are as “origin stories” and how they function.  When we are talking about very ancient peoples, before recorded history, our sources are the stories or “myths” these people have passed down to us as tradition.  We tend to think of them as historical events, but since we’re talking 3,000-4,000 years ago, we don’t have actual recorded history to verify them.  Both of these stories come to us from that ancient time. 

Here’s what we know about that time and those people.  About 3500 years ago when the land we now call Israel was being settled, there were a number of nomadic tribes, more like extended families, wandering across the land with their flocks, interacting with other tribes.  Some of these tribes were identified in ancient tablets as ‘Apiru, perhaps the ancestors of our Hebrews.   In Genesis we have the stories of tribes led by Abram (who is later called Abraham), Isaac and Jacob.  People who study how ancient manuscripts have been edited tell us that these were probably leaders of separate tribes who eventually merged and combined their origin stories into the story of Abram’s family as we know it today.  These wandering tribes are mentioned at times in Egypt, where we know groups of people were enslaved as laborers for the pharaohs.  By the time about 3,000 years ago when writing was more developed and we have more historical documents preserved, the ancestors of these ancient wanderers lived in what is now Israel, considered themselves a single tribe, and remembered that they had been led to this place by God, having experienced slavery in Egypt.  When I tell you that this is a story developed over time, I mean that it’s not based on historically datable events, but that it is true.  It’s true because it has emerged from the experience of the people over centuries and it reflects their understanding of who they are and how they got there.  It is a story about values and identity and it guides their behavior.  It is more significant than simply retelling a story about what happened once.

Today’s two pieces of that story tell us some important things.  One is that these people, our spiritual ancestors, believed they were in a good land because God has brought them there, and the purpose of their relationship with God wasn’t just to receive a blessing, but to become a blessing to everyone else.  “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  That tells us that when we receive something good, we become stewards of that goodness, that resource, in order for it to benefit everyone.  Think how different the nation of Israel would be behaving today if they understood their country not as a blessing they received in compensation for being treated badly, but as a resource to use to benefit others.  Their defensiveness makes sense in light of their recent history, but it isn’t true to the original understanding of the gift of the land.  There are many Jews today who see that dissonance clearly and would like to do something about it.

Our second ancient story reminds the people that they have themselves been wanderers and strangers and therefore they should have empathy for those among them who came from other places.  Do you hear the echo of “do unto others what you want them to do to you”?  Resident aliens are to be treated fairly, not oppressed or wronged.  That’s a pretty clear condemnation of the way we are treating immigrants right now. Our history in this regard is mixed.  Each new wave of immigrants has been marginalized as “other”, but we have also celebrated the great melting pot that’s made our country great.  School children have heard those immigrant stories and learned about the Statue of Liberty who welcomes people from all parts of the world.  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  That sentiment is still worthy of guiding our treatment of immigrants today.  With few exceptions, we are all descended from people who moved to this country.  We too can hear, “you were once aliens.”   

Twelve centuries after that reminder was first spoken, Paul wrote to new followers of Jesus, “There is no longer Jew or Greek.”  The Roman Empire was also a melting pot of people from all across the known world.  For the most part no matter where you came from, you were part of the one Empire.  When Paul talks about breaking down all kinds of barriers that might divide people, he reminds them of the promise to Abraham.  And that promise isn’t for wealth, or for special status, it’s for the privilege of blessing others.  Anything good that has come to us, is for the purpose of passing blessing along.  Pope Leo speaks in that vein when he talks of walking alongside each other. 

Some of you will remember the first time astronauts photographed earth from space, the beautiful big blue marble.  There are no national boundaries visible in that photo.  We are all one people.  National boundaries are convenient for governing, but they are not meant to split humanity apart. Although there is an identifiable American Christianity, Christianity is not an American religion.  It’s a global faith, a global guide.  Along with the other great religions, we share principles of justice, freedom, hope, compassion.  It’s good to be proud of our country because we have done many good things for the world.   But whatever blessing that has brought us, isn’t meant for us alone.  It’s meant to be a blessing for others.  We have lived that at some of our greatest moments.  We have supported our allies in great wars for freedom.  We were instrumental in founding the United Nations.  We brought food, medicine, and knowledge to many through USAID.  When people suggest in this moment that those movements were a mistake, we can correct them.  They are ways that we have fulfilled our vision of being a blessing to others.  When people tell us that manifest destiny means we should take all the blessings of this place for ourselves, we can remind them that blessings multiply when they are shared.

The values scripture lifts up, are values that make us better people.  To welcome the stranger, to live with generosity, to see ourselves as a global people make us better.  Yes, we can be proud to be American, but only so far as being American makes us good and kind, generous and noble.  At our heart, we don’t belong to a country, but to God.  We are one global family, and we are better together.

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Galatians 6:1-10

The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

(Kimmerer describes the mutuality of a serviceberry economy.  The berry bush receives gifts of sun, water, and nourishment from the soil.  Bees pollinate blossoms which then become berries.  Birds gorge on the berries and pass their seeds through their digestive system, spreading them widely.  New berry bushes may result.)

I lament my own immersion in an economy that grinds what is beautiful and unique into dollars, converts gifts to commodities in a currency that enables us to purchase things we don’t really need while destroying what we do.  The Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity rather than accumulation, where wealth and security come from the quality of our relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiencty.  Without gift relationships with bees and birds, the Serviceberries would disappear from the planet.  Even if they hoarded abundance, perching atop the wealth ladder, they would not save themselves from the fate of extinction if their partners did not share in that abundance.  Hoarding won’t save us either….All flourishing is mutual….

Imagining human economies that ar modeled after ecological systems is the real of ecological economists…Ecological economists ask how we might build economic systems that meet citizens’ needs while aligning with ecological principles that allow long-term sustainability for people and for the planet.  Ecological economics emerged observing how the neoclassical economic approach fails to provide for everyone and does not adequately consider the ecosystems that are our life support.  We’ve created a system such that we self-identify as consumers first before understanding ourselves as ecosystem citizens.  In ecological economics, the focus is on creating an economy that provides for a just and sustainable future in which both human life and nonhuman life can flourish.

 We are again today hanging out with Paul and the Galatians, who are describing a way to follow Jesus by creating communities of people committed to living by Jesus’ vision.  It’s a good fit with our summer project, which is to learn to describe how we can, in this time and place, create communities of well-being for everyone – generous, just, compassionate, loving.  Paul insists that we live with intention, to BE the way we want the world to be.  He suggests that if we plant weeds, we’ll get weeds.  If we plant goodness, we get eternal life starting today.  This week, I took that personally.  I’ve been wrestling with weeds all week.  Invasive weeds in my garden.  Weeds in the church garden.  Weeds in my daughter’s yard.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t plant any of these weeds, but I get to pull them out anyway.  Buckets and buckets of weeds.  It takes some energy to become motivated to pull so many weeds.  But it sure feels great to see patches of bare ground and flowers and vegetables standing unencumbered, ready to grow freely.  If unkind, selfish habits are weeds in the life we’re building together, I have plenty of those to deal with, too.  I’m not much more motivated to weed out bad habits than I am to pull weeds, but once you get started there’s a momentum that takes over.  And there’s that same satisfaction setting good habits free to flourish.

 Paul cautions us not to be self-righteous about other people’s weeds.  Jesus said something about taking logs out of our own eyes before dealing with visual splinters in others.  Paul says, “save your critical comments for yourself.  You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out.”  If we’re going to build community, we need to work a lot of grace and forgiveness into the soil.  It’s easy to judge.  It’s more productive to understand.  And when we need to suggest there might be a better way, we need to do it gently.  We might be wrong.  For example, our president came to Iowa, in our back yard, just to let us know that he hates Democrats.  I’m inclined to return the favor, but that’s just more weeds choking out communication and cooperation.  Neither the president nor I exercise productive leadership by driving wedges between people.  What does a better way look like?

 “Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed.  Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law.  If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.”

 How do we share one another’s burdens?  This week we memorialized our good friend George.  His family and friends are heartbroken by his death.  We gave them a space to display lots of memorabilia and to tell his stories.  We ate his favorite cookies and ice cream floats.  We said right out loud that he died too young.  For a little while we helped his family carry the burden of grief.

This week the community fund paid for a gas card so someone can get to work.  We paid a $25 service fee so a young man could get a drug test and stay in compliance with probation.  We paid that with 20 minutes to spare.  I can’t tell you how grateful he was.  He gave me a big “air hug” because he was sweaty from Thursday’s heat, and I gave him an air hug back because I was sweaty from too many weeds.  That’s when I realized that the community fund is one of the best gifts you give ME because I get to give it to so many grateful people.  I also realized that these bits we pay for aren’t really charity.  They are one way of balancing the world a bit, building a community of equals.  Some of us have a little extra cash, and others have hard work, hopes and dreams, stories of persistence, which make us all better.  Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us that “all flourishing is mutual.”  Those who give, receive.  When you plant goodness, you harvest LIFE. 

Kimmerer talks about ecological economies.  When the whole system is healthy, when each part gives and takes in balance, everyone thrives.  We’re trying to build a community that acknowledges how important each part is to the whole.  We’re trying to support systems that help everyone do and be their best.  Paul reminds us that selfishness is one of the worst weeds in destroying life.  No one takes more than they need.  Not more food at the potluck.  Not more honor in leadership.  Not more ego than is healthy.  The community is in balance when folks give and receive, care and are cared for, and resources serve the common good.

This week congress passed the Big Beautiful Budget Bill.  Some people are pretty excited about how wonderful it is.  I’m having a little trouble seeing their flowers for all the weeds.  Today’s readings give us some measuring sticks for the bill’s provisions?  Will it make it easier for us to bear one another’s burdens?  Or have we pushed some people down in order to lift others up?  Does it share resources equitably so that everyone’s needs are met?  Or does it allow some to horde resources the community needs?  Does it teach us to respect the humanity of all parts of our community?  Or does it demonize some to justify detention and deportation, withholding of benefits, judging some unworthy of community support? 

Paul reminds us not to criticize without offering options.  Maybe this bill isn’t a done deal.  Maybe we can still suggest other ways.  Can we  fund more immigration judges so detention isn’t necessary?  Can we find a path to citizenship for those who are contributing to our economy?  Can we restore programs that save lives here and abroad?  I read about a program in Denmark using turbines placed deep in the ocean to generate electricity.  I read about a church using their land for tiny houses for those without shelter.  I read about Oregon funding healthcare for everyone.  I read about Minnesota providing free school lunches for every child.  Can we say “yes” to good ideas and “no” to cruelty?  I know we can.  When we do, we lift each other up and bear the burdens of those who need a hand.  We become a strong and loving community, and we show the world what it means to enjoy eternal life.

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

In today’s scripture Paul is writing advice to the churches across Galatia, an area now part of Turkey.  He and his helpers had talked about Jesus and started house churches across this area, and now he was adding to their knowledge of what it means to be a community of Jesus-followers.  This is practical advice about how to think about their priorities, interact in relationship with others and become a living example of the “reign of God” Jesus invited people to experience.  Paul frames this advice under the umbrella offreedom.  If you want to be free, this is how you live.

Freedom in the first century Roman Empire meant something quite different than the word means to us.  We think of freedom as self-determination, the ability to do whatever we choose.  No one can tell us what to do.  In the Roman Empire, very few people had that kind of freedom.  It’s quite likely that many of these people were enslaved and almost all of them were peasants who worked for someone else.  Their daily lives would have been controlled by those with more wealth and power.  But their minds and hearts were their own, so Paul talks about how they think about community and how they treat one another to the extent that those things are under their control.

Notice what’s not allowed – selfishness, actions which take advantage of others, anything which is cruel or unloving.  And what’s encouraged – love, joy, peace, patience, endurance, compassion.  “A conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people.” 

Paul is quick to point out that these aren’t rules.  They aren’t the Ten Commandments posted in classrooms or courtrooms to make people behave.  Even then Paul knew that you couldn’t legislate goodness; it comes from the heart as a way of being.  Religion sometimes tells us that if we keep the “rules” of the Bible, then we’ll be rewarded with heaven when we die.  Jesus and then Paul were telling people that if you become a godly person, then your life is already heaven each day. When they created communities of people who lived by Jesus’ example – with love, compassion, and respect – they became the reign of God. The reward was in the living out of a better way.

Sometimes we’re tempted to take the lists of good qualities from scripture and make them a behavioral checklist.  Like the part of your elementary report card where you get + or – for “plays well with others” or “completes work on time.”  It’s more complicated than that.  You know I’ve been calling Washington, DC every day, encouraging legislators to vote for the right things.  I realized after a while, that what I’m really asking is that they BE the right people to lead us.  It’s not just a list of legislation to support with their vote.  We want our leaders to embody the principles that make for godly community.  I want them to value and respect people, to treat everyone with dignity, to care that everyone eats, has a home, learns a skill or two, can raise a family to be healthy and happy. Martin Luther King, Jr. called that the “beloved community.” Others have built on his teachings to call us together to become the community we want to live in. 

We have much more freedom than first century folk.  We can set our own course, live and work almost anywhere we choose, join or leave any number of groups.  That freedom doesn’t bring us into the beloved community unless we choose to BE the kind of people that community describes.  Across the centuries, Paul is telling us, “If you want to be truly free, then pattern your life on the example of Jesus.  Love one another.”

We have the freedom to speak out about the principles that make life truly good.  We see them as religious principles, but they are also the values of basic human decency.  We pattern our community after Jesus, but other prophets and faith leaders called for the same values.  It’s a community that includes all that is good and welcomes everyone, regardless of their starting places.  We can use our freedom to say “no” to those things which don’t build people up and “yes” to those things that make life better for everyone.  Is there a simple list of what to do?  No, but it’s true that we “know it when we see it.”

We live in times  which can be discouraging.  Each time we think nothing else about our government can break, they prove us wrong.  It’s hard to focus or to know what to try to fix first.  Remember the first century folk who had no chance of fixing their wider world and let’s do what they did:  start with themselves.  Yes, we need to keep weighing in on better ways to treat people and work together, but first we can commit to living as the beloved community.  We can commit to being the kind of people who love neighbors and practice kindness.  We can be generous and gracious and hopeful.  When we change ourselves, we change our immediate neighborhood.  A country full of changed neighborhoods, changes.

Our second reading calls us to that work, gently and with hope:

Please by Rosemerry Trommer

If you are one who has practice meeting
the pain of the world,
we need you. Right now we need you
to remind us we can be furious and scared
and near feral over injustice and still thrill at the taste
of a strawberry, ripe and sweet,
can still meet a stranger and shake
their hand, believing in their humanness.
We need you to show us how
we, too, can fall into the darkest,
unplumbed pit and learn there
a courage and beauty
we could never learn from the light.
If you have drowned in sorrow
and still have somehow found
a way to breathe, please, lead us.
You are the one with the crumbs
we need, the ones we will us to find
our way back to the home of our hearts.

Friends, for over 2000 years the ones who follow Jesus have believed that his way of living together, caring for each other and the world, is the reign of God.  They did that, imperfectly, because they chose to come as close as they could to being the way he invited them to be.  We are in good company.  Let us be kind.  Let us be hopeful.  Let us share jokes and good food and help friends and strangers the best that we can.  Let us be brave in speaking freely against injustice and steadfast in loving even those who ignore our words. Let us be the beloved community, the presence of God in this time and place.  Today.  Tomorrow.  For as long as we can.

Second Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 6:32-38

My son-in-law, Dave, teaches high school economics, and the first principle his students learn is that economics is about decision making in the face of scarcity.  Anything and everything in a market is implicitly defined as scarce…  In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away.  In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away.  The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity.  A gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is “we” rather than “I,” as all flourishing is mutual.

The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, pages 30-33 (excerpts)

Yesterday I listened to Krista Tippet, the long-time creator of On Being for public radio, interview Ocean Vuong, a young Vietnamese American author.  They were talking about how to find hope in difficult times, and I was particularly struck by Vuong’s assertion that we must be careful to speak hopeful words because we are “speaking our future into existence.”  That reminded me that in the beginning of our scripture, we read that “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”  Our ancestors understood that all creation came from the Word of God.  The words that we use to describe life, create the life we experience.  I think that captures the essence of our summer project, to describe a way of living that matches our faith values and our vision for how we want to live in this community and this country.  We are “speaking our future” into existence in a way that’s consistent with who we are as followers of Jesus.

Today our words from Jesus give us many practical ways to live as a community
     Do to others what you want them to do to you.
  Love the unlovable; love your enemies; help without expecting thanks or return.
     Be kind; don’t criticize; be generous with your possessions and your self.
It’s generosity that I want to focus on for our few minutes.

When I was in elementary school, my family was one of those every-Sunday-in-the-same-pew families.  And every Sunday when it was time for the offering, the minister quoted today’s scripture (in a more traditional translation):  Give, and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.  For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.  Talk about words that matter – those words formed me in a deep and lasting way.  I can still hear his voice in my head. Of course my 9-year-old self heard them much more transactionally than I want us to hear them today, and I noticed that although I dutifully put my envelope in the plate every week, no one returned my nickel to me. ( Although truth be told, I did get a nickel bottle of soda every Sunday during coffee hour.) “Generosity begets generosity,” Jesus tells us.

Robin Wall Kimmerer tells us the same thing when she advocates for a gift economy rather than one based on scarcity.  When everything economic is based on grabbing mine before you take it from me, it’s hard to trust each other and even harder to share.  My brother posted on Facebook this week an article about how his county wouldn’t be delivering commodity food to those in need in the county anymore, because although they still had food, DOGE had eliminated funds for transportation.  One of his friends responded that this might be a good way to “cull the herd” of the undeserving who won’t work.  You can imagine that got lots of responses. 

Consider this story Kimmerer tells instead:  A linguist was studying a Brazilian tribe.  He noticed that it was relatively difficult for hunters to find and kill animals in their forrest, but when a hunter was successful, he cooked the entire beast and invited the whole village to feast until everyone was stuffed and the meat was gone.  Because he was trying to learn the language, he asked a hunter what the words were for curing or preserving the meat for future days when the hunt was unsuccessful.  How was the meat stored?  The hunter couldn’t understand the question.  He had no words for keeping the meat for himself.  Instead he said, “I store my meat in the belly of my brother.”   And when my brother kills a boar, he feeds me, too.

The educator Parker Palmer has written for years about “the myth of scarcity” in our country.  This myth teaches us that if we are to have what we need, we must take it from someone else and guard it.  We are convinced that only 10% of a class can do work deserving an A.  Only the cream of the crop can get good jobs.  If everyone gets food from the pantry shelves, will we go hungry?  What if we assumed that there was enough for everyone to succeed, for everyone to eat, for everyone to be housed and receive health care and be taught by the best teachers.  Would seeing the world that way create that reality? 

I was trying to remember the other day how we got to be the church with the community fund, the ones who say “yes” to as many requests as we can.  Do you remember?  I think it started with the noisy offering.  It seemed like a fun thing for children to do when we had children.  Then we had to do something with the coins, so we bought something someone needed.  I don’t remember what.  Now when there’s lots of money in the account, we pay rent and fix cars and do expensive things.  When there’s a little, we pay $50 utility deposits and buy $9 specialized nail clippers.  Somebody else pays the big bills in those times.  If I had suggested that we budget $40,000 a year to give away, you would have thought I was crazy.  But that’s what we did last year, with a lot of help from our friends.  Generosity creates generosity.  Believing that there is enough to share, makes it true. 

Last week we talked about seeing the world as a gift, and all the resources Earth provides as generous gifts we receive.  The logical extension of that vision is a gift economy – when those who have share.  I’m not suggesting that we give away so much that we can’t care for ourselves.  We don’t have to become poor to serve those who live in poverty.  But we are living proof that when you assume you can help, you can.  When you see the world through the eyes of love and connection, you become instruments of love and connection.  It’s an experiment in creating community.  What if we watch the words we speak, and speak less about scarcity and more about abundance?  What if we speak less about what we can’t afford and more about what’s possible? What if we speak less about who doesn’t deserve help and more about how we can be helpers? I wonder what future we will speak into existence.

First Sunday after Pentecost

Proverbs 8:1-4

The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer, pages 8-9

 I want to talk a bit about our summer project.   It’s a project that begins with questions:

• If we are saddened by the ways our world seems broken right now, what does it look like when the world is whole and well?

• If people and nations are divided by ideas and interests, what does it look like when we form communities of respect and care for one another?

• If we believe that we should live by values shaped by faith, what are those values and how do we put them into practice?

I’ve been working on this project for several months, collecting relevant bits of books and listening to people talk about how we are to respond to the current realities of our lives.  Some of that ends up looking political, like the signs at yesterday’s protests.  But it is more than that.  Politics are, after all, the way people come together to shape a common life.  They aren’t just about who we vote for.  In fact, we can hold common values and vote differently about how to accomplish them.  I’m convinced that we lack clarity about what matters most to us.  We are inarticulate when we try to describe how we understand the world we are trying to create together.  We need a clearer framework on which to build a common life.  Some of that comes from our faith, the Judeo-Christian scriptures and thinkers over the centuries.  We are also informed by the wider world.  By Indigenous people, and Buddhist teachings.  We gather pieces from scientists and economists and educators and grandparents.  We learn from stories that touch our hearts and sometimes break our hearts and sometimes give us hope.  The closer I come to actually making this project happen, the more elusive it becomes.  I can’t see how it all falls together, but we will start anyway.  We will make a beginning and see what happens.  I hope you will add your wisdom, suggest resources that matter to you, and shape this as we go along.

Today we make a beginning with a few verses from Proverbs:  Does not wisdom call and does not understanding raise her voice?  Everywhere we turn, we see clues about how this life works best, what God’s vision for goodness might be.  We are encouraged to pay attention.  What is Earth telling us?  What wisdom comes from scholars and children?  Where do we see something holy moving among us?

Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is a botanist and a member of the Potawatami nation, has written about finding wisdom while she was picking serviceberries (or June berries to us).  Her neighbors planted a big patch of berry bushes, and when they were ready with their first harvest, they invited everyone to come pick a pail or two – for free.  It was advertising for a new you-pick enterprise, and it was a gift.  A gift from the farmer and a gift from the bushes themselves.  A gift of sunshine and rain and fertile soil.  A gift of sweetness. 

What if one of the gifts of wisdom we can see around us is the way Mother Earth provides for us.  We are so used to thinking about how humans have wrestled a living from the world around us.  We focus on our labor – the planting of crops, the manufacturing of products, the production of words for which people are paid.  We say we MAKE a living.  That is true.  But it is also true that life and resources and everything we need is a gift.  We had nothing to do with creating the raw materials of life; they are simply there, and we take them.  For most of us we long ago stopped saying, “Thank you”

What if we recover a sense of gratitude for our very existence?  What if we notice in new ways where our food comes from, who cleans our common spaces, who takes care of our children and our elders, whose unseen labor makes our days easier?  It’s possible to see the foundation of life not in what we own, but in what is given to us.  Not in how successful we are but in how generous Earth and circumstances have been.  Of course our efforts matter, but it’s possible that we are not the center of the universe.  Maybe the world is bigger than we are, and it’s a privilege to live in it. 

Those who are truly grateful, are moved to share.  Those blessings we receive, not because we have earned them, but because we are simply alive, do not belong to us.  That which we have passes through our hands on its way to those who need it most.  Of course we enjoy those blessings, but we aren’t meant to horde them.  They belong to the community.  Family of God is learning how to be a conduit for resources on their way to help those whose need is greater than our own.  I think the privilege of being a steward to that aid is changing us.  Maybe it’s helping us understand what it means that life is a gift and that everyone is meant to receive as needed.  It’s leading us to think less about what’s “mine” and more about how what’s “ours” can best be used.  Think of the berries that are best when eaten with a friend.

I’d like to try an experiment this summer to help us remember that the resources of Earth are meant to circulate and be shared.  Robin Kimmerer talks about free garden tables in her neighborhood where excess produce is put out for the taking.  I remember years ago a plate that made its way around a workplace so cookies and other treats could be shared friend to friend.  Right now I have an abundance of daisies, so I’ve put a few on the table in the entryway today.  If they call to you, please take some home and enjoy them.  If you come across something you might share in the weeks ahead, feel free to add it to the table.  It might be a book, or a poem, or part of a batch of cookies, or a tool you have three of.  It’s okay to take without giving, and to give without taking.  But it must be a free gift of your abundance and never a responsibility.  It’s ok to watch others and not participate yourself.  I wonder what will happen over the summer and if it will change us.  I wonder what wisdom we’ll find along the way.  That too will be a gift.

Pentecost

Acts 2:1-8, 12, 17-18, 43-47

Last Sunday I was in Ohio with my sister, and was telling her that I was excited to be home the next Sunday because it was Pentecost.  My sister turned to her friend and commented  that her church in Africa also celebrated Pentecost in a big way, and she just couldn’t understand it.  How could churches celebrate Pentecost when they didn’t believe in the gifts of the Spirit – by which she meant speaking in tongues. What we have here is a colliding of two worlds.  One world takes this Pentecost story literally:  it’s about speaking in unknown languages and everyone becoming Christian.  When we talk about Pentecost being the birthday of the church – which we often do – we’re lining up with that world.  This is the literal day that the first church was born and baptized 3000 members.  That’s a great story, but it’s just a story.  It’s a story told long after the fact by folks who weren’t there and who needed a way to give their Jesus movement some history.  In actuality, there’s no way Roman soldiers less than 2 months after crucifying Jesus were going to let 3000 people join a movement in his name in the heart of Jerusalem.  By the time this story was written down, Rome had completely destroyed Rome and torn down the Temple for less than that.

All week I’ve been thinking about why we celebrate Pentecost – why it’s my favorite Holy Day.  I want to be on record here and now that Pentecost is much, much more than just ecstatic languages and the institution’s origin story.  It’s about God bringing the people together and giving them life – new life.  So just like we celebrate Easter/resurrection every Sunday and we celebrate Christmas/incarnation every time we sense the presence of mystery in this world, we celebrate Pentecost whenever we connect with hope and community – which is to say virtually every day.

 Why do we celebrate Pentecost?  Pentecost is about finding hope in the face of despair.  The story tells us the followers of Jesus – many more than just the disciples but all the men and women who had traveled with Jesus and signed on to his mission – were all together in one place.  They were hiding out because they were afraid.  Jesus had been executed at Passover, a festival when Jews from near and far were gathered in Jerusalem to remember their common heritage.  Now it was Pentecost or Shavuot, the first of several harvest festivals.  Jews from across the Empire were once again gathered in Jerusalem to bring the first of harvested grain to offer in the Temple.  It was a celebration of life, and Roman soldiers were once again in the city in large numbers to keep order.  Jesus’ followers wondered if more of them would be executed as part of the crowd control for the holiday.  They were afraid. 

And then God set them on fire and they were not.  They already had the sense that Jesus was resurrected – still alive and among them in the strongest way.  They were beginning to understand that his death hadn’t been the end of his ministry, but that there was still more to do.  Still ways to tell the story of God’s love the way he had told it.  Still the possibility of being the reign of God in their time, like he had told them they were.  We don’t know exactly what changed, but they went from hiding in fear to preaching to anyone who would listen.  They had a story to tell of a better way to live, and they were going to tell it.  Maybe not to thousands in the public square, but to friends and neighbors and people they met on the street.  What Jesus had given them wasn’t dead but still alive and strong within them, and it was too good not to share.  It overcame fear of Empire and gave them hope that new life was real.

Then they set about living that life, the way Jesus had taught them.  They healed folks the way Jesus trained them to do.  They accomplished tasks they never believed they could do.  The gave praise to God because God’s love was strong in them and they felt it.  They pooled their resources and took care of each other, and a lot of folks around them.  They ate together.  They enjoyed life together.  They made a difference in their neighborhood by helping others.  And they grew – not by thousands in a single day, but slowly and steadily they became a movement that spread across the known world.

Here's what we’re celebrating:

God’s love overcomes fear.  The Empire can be strong.  Public opinion can be against you.  Life can feel unsafe at times, but God gives courage and people stick together.  The possibility of new life is more important than fear.

New life is possible.  The Roman Empire did its best to divide people and to make them fear both Empire and neighbors, but you can live under Empire and still live by Jesus’ vision.  You can love your neighbor.  You can share your bread.  You can care for those who become ill and shelter those who are homeless.  And you can have a good time doing it.

There’s always hope.  Hope is a gift of God that is planted in our hearts as a sign of our humanity, and it’s stubborn.  It doesn’t depend on life around us being hopeful.   It’s like that fire that burned in the first Pentecost story and touched everyone without harming them.  It can be dimmed by circumstance, but you can’t put it out.

Courage.  Life as a community.  Hope.  Those are great reasons to celebrate.  I propose that we celebrate them all summer long.  We begin by naming them as our Pentecost today, and then we explore the many things they can mean together week by week.  Let’s build ourselves into a courageous, hopeful community that makes Jesus’ vision real right here, right now.  And let’s have a good time doing it.  Let’s celebrate!

Flower Communion Sunday

For the Flowers Have the Gift of Language

Speak, flowers, speak! Why do you say nothing?
The flowers have the gift of language. In the meadow they speak of freedom,
Creating patterns wild and free as no gardener could match. In the forest they nestle, snug carpets under the roof of
Leaf and branch, making a rug of such softness. At end tip of branches, they cling briefly
Before bursting into fruit sweet to taste.
Flowers, can you not speak joy to our sadness? And hope to our fear? Can you not say how it is with you
That you color the darkest corner? The flowers have the gift of language.
At the occasion of birth, they are buds before bursting.
At the ceremony of love they unite two lovers in beauty. At the occasion of death, they remind us how lovely is life.
Oh, would that you had voice, Silent messengers of hope.
Would that you could tell us how you feel, Arrayed in such beauty.
The flowers have the gift of language. In the dark depths of a death camp They speak the light of life.
In the face of cruelty, They speak of courage.
In the experience of ugliness
They bespeak the persistence of beauty. Speak, messengers, speak!
For we would hear your message. Speak, messengers, speak!
For we need to hear what you would say. For the flowers have the gift of language:
They transport the human voice on winds of beauty; They lift the melody of song to our ears; They paint through the eye and hand of the artist; Their fragrance binds us to sweet-smelling earth.
May the blessing of the flowers be upon you. May their beauty beckon to you each morning And their loveliness lures you each day,
And their tenderness caress you each night. May their delicate petals make you gentle, And their eyes make you aware.
May their stems make you sturdy, And their reaching make you care.

Fifth Sunday of Easter

John 13:31-35

Jesus says, “Everyone will know that you are my disciple if you love one another.”  That seems pretty straightforward.  Jesus told his disciples that love was the glue that would hold them together and keep them faithful to him and his teaching.  He told them that just before their lives got really hard.  Jesus was arrested and executed.  They were afraid.  They didn’t have a master plan for what they were supposed to do next.  Some of them were also executed within a few years.  Before all of them died their country was crushed, their temple destroyed, and Jerusalem leveled.  Some days we think we live in scary hard times, but this is nothing compared with what these disciples were about to face.  So what advice is sufficient for people whose lives are about to fall apart?  Love one another.

They surely weren’t surprised that this was Jesus’ bottom line.  It’s what he’d been saying the whole time they had known him.
       God is love.
       Love your neighbor as yourself.
      Everyone is your neighbor.

Over the centuries church teachers have written volumes about what it means to be a Christian.  Councils have spent years debating the fine points of theology. There have been schisms and reformations and great awakenings.  But the basics remain the same:  love one another.

Sometimes I think so much else is written about how to be a disciple because the love part is darn hard to do.  God knows all of us are sometimes unlovable.  We say the wrong things.  We think the wrong things.  We make huge mistakes.  We alienate friends and families and sometimes even make it hard to love ourselves.  Jesus doesn’t say we have to get it right all the time.  We just have to keep trying. God is love and nothing can separate us from God or from love.

Then there are all those other folks that make love so hard.  The ones who are truly cruel.  The ones who lie, cheat and steal.  The ones who call us names.  The ones who undercut us at work or school.  The ones who commit crimes.  The ones who vote for the other party.  Jesus doesn’t say we have to like people.  Or like all the things people do.  In fact, he spent much of his energy calling folks out when they did harmful things. But he extended love to everyone.  Love that looks like respect for the person even while condemning their actions or beliefs.  Love that holds hope for change and gives second and third and endless chances.

Every week I’m reminded that there’s a lot about this moment in history that reminds us of the first century, and other moments when life was hard.  Much of what’s broken in our time shows that folks still aren’t taking Jesus seriously about this love stuff.

Love doesn’t start wars.
Love doesn’t bomb civilians or withhold humanitarian aid from them.
Love doesn’t see refugees as a threat or deport people without due process.
Love doesn’t turn folks who dissent into criminals.
Love doesn’t withhold healthcare or food aid.
Love doesn’t reject and endanger people because of race or gender or gender identity.
Love doesn’t lie.

We could make a long list.  During Lent we acknowledged many unloving actions when we focused on the desert experience.  This Eastertide we’re trying to remember that in spite of cruelty, love still exists.  There are still helpers trying to do what is right and care in any way they can.

It’s important for us do two things at once:

To hold the standard of love against what’s happening in our world.  That let’s us celebrate the good around us and name those actions we believe are wrong.

To love all people as best we can.  Especially those who make us cringe.  To treat every single person as a beloved child of God.  For there is no one whom God does not love.

Jesus’ command to love one another is also his gift to us.  We can love extravagantly only if we know ourselves to be loved – accepted, respected, valued, cherished.  When we belong to a community which grounds us in love, then we are empowered to extend love to others. We need a home base where we can rest and reflect if we are going to be the transforming power of love in the community and in the wider world.  We need to love each other so we have the strength to love everyone else.

Whether we like it or not, the foundations of our society are shaking right now.  I’m convinced that the most important things we can do in response is to get very clear about what it means to love as God loves, and to support and care for each other along the way.  I’m working on finding the resources to help us understand what that means for our summer project. I welcome your suggestions.  Who gives you hope?  What authors or musicians clarify your thinking? Where should we be putting our collective energy? How do we form strong community to sustain us? Most of all, what does it mean to love one another?  That’s the journey we share together.

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Psalm 23

When Psalm 23 was written, many of the people of Israel were shepherds.  They knew what it meant to take care of sheep – to lead them on safe paths, to find them lush pastures, to bring them to water in a quiet place where it was safe to drink.  The Psalmist drew on one of the most caring relationships in everyday life to describe how protected he felt by God.

People cared for their sheep because they made life possible.  Their wool clothed them.  Their milk and meat fed them.  Their lambs became their generational wealth.  And they cared for their sheep because they spent a lot of time with them.  You have to pay attention day and night if you are going to be a good shepherd.  It was comforting to think that God was paying constant and benevolent attention to them.

Three thousand years ago there were very few atheists.  Every nation or tribe had at least one god.  The realities of daily living were explained by telling stories about gods – gods of war and peace, or hunting and hearth, of day and night, of planting and harvest, of love and justice, of life and death.  Some of these gods were kind and generous; many were not.  Everything that happened in life was controlled by one god or another.  The Psalmist is celebrating that their god is as caring as the best shepherd.  They can have confidence that God will care for them.

We often read Psalm 23 when we need someone to care about us and for us.  It’s a star at funerals.  It whispers in hospital rooms.  Children memorize it about the time they start striking out more on their own and need some extra protection.  Our  modern world has scientific explanations for most things and we no longer believe that the details of our everyday life are controlled by one god or another, but it’s still nice to believe that there’s some good power behind all that is which is on our side.  Even when our life story sends us down some dark valleys, and we all have dark valleys from time to time, we can assert that we’re not walking alone.  God is present.

Last week we read the story about Jesus asking Peter to feed his sheep, placing the care of the earth and her peoples in the hands of the disciples.  Sometimes we understand that to mean the church is responsible for taking care of folks.  We sing that every Sunday:

                  Christ has no body now but yours…
                  No hands, no feet on earth but yours…
                  Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.
                  Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

I don’t know about you, but right now I’m feeling like that’s a lot of responsibility.  I’ve told you that I call our three people in Congress five days a week.  You’d think I’d run out of things to tell them, but the fact is most days there’s so many things I have trouble choosing.  Almost all of those days I’m pleading for them not to hurt someone:  stop bombing, release aid, fund health care and education, restore research grants, stop firing people.  Lots of times I tell them, “You have to care about people because I can’t afford to care for them without you.”  I feel like we’ve earned the right to say that, because we certainly try to do as much as possible.  Being good shepherds for all God’s flock is one of the ways we understand how Jesus people live in the world.  It’s an image that works.

I was thinking about how long Jesus people have been at that job this week, and I realized it’s OK if we don’t finish the job.  There are lots of folks before us who worked at it, and they didn’t finish either.  I used to say it was enough to make a little progress.  But progress isn’t a straight line upward, so these days I say it’s enough if we are kind and do what we can.  Following Jesus, loving God’s people, is a way of being, not a job that ends.

The church has been at this way of being for a long time.  This week the part of Jesus people who used to be the only game in town got a new leader.  I was hoping for someone I’d like, even though I knew they wouldn’t ask me.  I think we got a keeper.  He cares about the people.  He sees everyone, even those some would push down or throw out.  He understands about taking care of earth.  He has a vision for peace.  He’s excited about the work that needs to be done.  He’s not afraid.  Even though we’ll never meet him, he’s our partner in creating something new for this world.

One more thing about this Psalm – we’re asked to be the shepherd, but we also get to be the sheep.  We can take a break and let folks care for us.  We can sit out one protest or one project.  We work together AND we can play together.  Good food.  Good music.  Good jokes every Sunday.  We can trust God and all the power of the universe to fill our cup to the brim when it’s dry, to give us a safe place to rest, to show us a way forward and to have our back.  I know that’s hard to believe.  There are a lot of broken places in this world.  There are broken places in our hearts.  Three thousand years ago a singer wrote this psalm to tell us God’s love and care are true.  Two thousand years ago Jesus told us God IS love and we can love each other.  One of the most important things we do for each other is to affirm the truth of God’s love, even on days we don’t much see it.  To stand by each other until the darkness lifts and the light returns.  And to say over and over, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”

Third Sunday of Easter

John 21:1-19

Two weeks ago we celebrated Easter.  Now, in this Gospel lesson we have Jesus appearing to a group of the disciples some time after Easter.  We know that some of the disciples were fishermen by trade.  We know that because when Jesus called Peter and James and John to be disciples, he called them from their fishing boats to come and follow him.

They left their fishing nets and followed Jesus.  Now Jesus is no longer with them.  Or is he?  It is difficult for them to get their heads around, just what is the current situation?  They know that Jeus was crucified.  They know that he was raised from the dead.  They have seen the risen Jesus. What does that mean for them now?  They do not know what to do next. 

A few of the disciples are gathered on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias.  Normally we refer to that body of water as the Sea of Galilee, which would be what it was called by the locals, by the Jews.  The Romans, when they conquered Israel and took over, changed the name from the common name which had been used throughout history, to a name that the Roman leaders liked better.  Imagine a ruler thinking that he could change the name of a body of water from a name that had been used historically to something he liked better.  In that context Peter says, “I am going fishing.”  I have heard several people say that they will go fishing at times that they need time to think.  The disciples needed time to think, but the fishing nets are mentioned.  It does not sound like sitting with a fishing rod.  The fishing described is like describing as a professional fisherman letting down his nets to catch fish.  It is like describing fishing for a living.

Commercial fishermen on the Sea of Galilee normally fished at night.  The weather was warm enough that the water during the day was warm enough at the surface that the fish were driven to the deepest parts of the lake where the water would be cooler.  These disciples had fished all night and caught nothing.

If you were fishing just for the fun of it, fishing all night and catching nothing could be enough to convince you to quit and try again some other time.  It does not seem like these fishermen were quitting, just that they were close to shore.  At any rate, they caught nothing. 

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach, but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.  Why did they not know that it was Jesus?  The lesson says that they were about a hundred yards off shore.  Maybe at a hundred yards it was not clear to see who was there.  Maybe the resurrected Jesus looked different.  Maybe they did not pay much attention to this person on the shore, or at least not at first.  At any rate, the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?”  They answered him, “No.”  It could sound like Jesus already knew that they had caught no fish.  I have read that traditionally they would have thrown the net off the left side of the boat.  Maybe, maybe not.  At any rate, at a point where they have had no success all night, all Jesus asks them to do is try one more time.  There certainly are a lot of times where that is good advice.  If things are not working, give it one more try.  They try one more time and the net is full to overflowing.

The disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”  There are times in scripture where the disciple John is referred to as the disciple whom Jesus loved. I have a couple reactions for Peter at that point.  I could picture Peter answering something like, “Why didn’t you say so sooner?  When did you first know?”  Then we see the impulsiveness that Peter is known for, as he jumps into the sea to go to Jesus.  Before he jumps into the sea, it says he put on his outer garment.  If you are working and you take off your jacket when you get heated, or take off your shirt, that makes sense.  I do find myself wondering about putting that outer robe back on, and then jumping into the water.  It would feel so good to have that wet robe, probably wool, clinging to you and weighing you down, as you go that hundred yards to shore.

The other disciples, did they complain that Peter left them with the work of getting the fish to shore?  Maybe that is why Peter went back aboard and hauled the net ashore.  Maybe the others were saying, all right, we got it this far, now you finish the job.  The net is full of large fish, 153 of them.  Not just fish, but large fish.  The number 153 gives the idea of a lot of fish, they could eat breakfast and still have a lot of fish to sell.  The number 153 may be symbolic of a lot.  There would be a lot of countries, a lot of areas, that Jesus would draw in to himself, like a fisherman drawing in a net and catching all with that net.

Jesus took the bread and gave it to them and did the same with the fish.  It sounds like a very simple meal.  It is told to us, sounding almost like communion. I wonder if the disciples were reminded of the Last Supper.  It was also on the shore of the Sea of Galilee that Jesus fed the 5000.  Would the disciples have thought of that also?

 It would be easy to stop the story there.  It would be a nice ending.  It would be an ending with us pondering meanings of the fish and communion.  Jesus, however, does not stop there.  We then have Jesus questioning Peter.  Three time Jesus asks Peter if he loves him.  Peter gets frustrated with being asked three times.  We can remind ourselves, or remind Peter, that it was not very long before this that Jesus was arrested and tried and crucified.  It was not very long before this that, during that trial of Jesus, Peter had denied that he even knew Jesus, not once or twice, but three times.  Maybe in asking Peter if he loved him, Jesus is also reminding Peter of those three denials.

We had sheep when I was growing up on the farm.  It was pretty common for us to refer to the lambs separately from the old sheep.  The lambs did require more attention, if you were intending to raise them to sell.  And those older sheep required more tending than to just feed them.  We moved them between 3 pastures.  Sometimes we needed to haul water for them.  Fences to be checked.  And the list can go on.  There was work to do in caring for the sheep.

Jesus is not trying to educate Peter, or us, on the raising of sheep.  He does come to us, like to those disciples, at times and places that we may not expect.  He does do things for us that we may not understand, like this appearance on the shore and the breakfast and the conversation.  But our faith does not stop there.  That would end up with a highly intellectual faith.  Knowing things, an intellectual approach, is important at times.  Jesus does not stop there.  Jesus takes that knowing and goes to peoples in need, and cares for them.  The questions for Peter are about loving Jesus, but also about using that love to care for those in need.

Jesus clarifies that to love is to care in active, tangible, life-giving ways.  Jesus does not instruct Peter, or the other disciples, or us, to simply pray for the hungry or to confess their faith as proof of love for him.  Jesus does tell Peter, and the other disciples, and us, that love is action and mutual aid; feeding, tending, caring for all of God’s children, for all in need.   May we always put that love into action.  Amen.

Second Sunday of Easter

John 20:19-21

Today we get to talk about Thomas, who has a reputation for being the disciple who doubted.  It’s been held against him for centuries, and I think it’s a bad rap.  Before we start on today’s story, I want to back up a bit to the story in which Lazarus was ill and his sisters sent word to Jesus, wanting him to come.  Going to Lazarus at that moment was dangerous, because Lazarus lived in a small town just outside Jerusalem, and the  authorities in Jerusalem had it out for Jesus.  All the disciples advised against Jesus going.  “If he's going to die anyway, you can’t do anything about it.  Don’t risk you life on a fool’s errand.”  Yet when Jesus seems determined, it was Thomas who said, “We might as well go too.  If he’s going to die, we can die with him.”  I always wish Thomas was remembered for loyalty and not doubt.

There’s a part of me that thinks doubt was a logical response to the story of resurrection.  Sure Jesus had raised Lazarus, his friend, but can a dead man raise himself?  And does anyone else among them have that power? Think of any one of the people you’ve known who have died recently.  When you arrived at the funeral, would you have believed a story of resurrection?  Don’t bother with the eulogy, let’s just have lunch together? I’m thinking not. 

I’ll bet Thomas wanted to believe the resurrection stories, but a little healthy skepticism can be a good thing.  Don’t believe he’s risen until you see the wounds on the body.  Don’t buy the timeshare until you’ve checked out the reviews.  Don’t take the miracle cure until the FDA has weighed in on the safety.  Don’t believe everything you read on Facebook.  A little doubt in the beginning can save you a heap of trouble in the long run. Some days I’m wishing doubt was a skill more folks had perfected.

Over the years the story of Thomas has been used to teach good church folk the nature of faith.  “Blessed are those who believe without seeing.”  In some church circles, you get more points for faith that believes the impossible.  The more unlikely a doctrine is, the more credit you get for believing it.  God works in mysterious ways, so if we don’t understand something, it must be more holy.

There is indeed a lot of mystery in this world, and there are still many things we can’t explain.  That’s one reason research is so important to push back the boundaries of the unknown.  It’s the reason we hold out hope for people who seem lost and situations that seem hopeless.  You never know what new life just might rise up. 

On the other hand, there’s been plenty of religious snake oil sold on faith.  I’m inclined to caution against believing everything you hear is true, even from a pulpit; even from me.  Thomas saw and then believed, and that might be a good model for us all.

Does that mean those of us living thousands of years after the first century have no chance of believing?  No, because there’s more than one way to see.  A resuscitated Jesus isn’t going to walk into the sanctuary today, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to see Jesus among us.  If we’re watching, we see God moving in our lives every day.

When I tell people about Family of God, I most often tell them about our practice of naming Light Signs every Sunday.  I think we started doing that by accident, but it’s been a happy accident.  It reminds us that God shows up in all the places we live every day.  How do we know that God is there?  By the ways we see life happen.  Jesus told us that God is love.  I suspect that’s his most important teaching that we can remember.  If there is love, God is there.  If there’s no love, then whatever is happening isn’t a God thing. 

Think about the times in your life when you most felt the presence of God.  It may have been when you were in a place whose beauty took your breath away and you felt in your bones what it means to be one with the world.  It may have been when you were grieving a terrible loss and suddenly realized you weren’t grieving alone.  It may have been when you were scared to death about something about to happen and were filled with a strength you never knew before. 

I’d like to suggest that we are not people of faith because we believe even though we haven’t seen resurrection.  We are people of faith because we have seen resurrection in places we never expected to find it.  It found us.  God holds us when we have no strength.  God comforts us when we are beyond comfort.  And day after day God gives us hope.

The older I get the less I care about knowing the right doctrines about God and Jesus and teaching them to folks.  I care a lot about what you believe, but not much at all about that being the right stuff.  I just want you to know that God is alive among us, and we can see God every day.  I want you to know that God loves you and will give you the power you need to love each other.  I want to invite you to join together to create the reign of God right here, right now.  I want us to be a joyful sign of resurrection for the whole world.  If you doubt that’s possible from time to time, that’s OK.  We’re in this together, and we can take turns with the doubt as long as there’s a friend to keep the faith until ours comes back.  As long as there’s even one voice to say, “God is alive!  Look!  God is moving among us right there.”