Third Sunday in Lent

Galatians 6:1-10

Empathy, by Megan Harper Nichols

Let me hold the door for you.
I may have never walked in your shoes,
but I can see your soles are worn,
your strength is torn under the weight of a story
I have never lived before.
Let me hold the door for you.
After all you have walked through it is the least I can do.

Today’s words are compassion and empathy.  I put them together because they are very similar, but not identical, and both speak to the very heart of our enterprise, creating a better world.  These two words almost don’t need a definition.  We recognize their importance right away.  We practice compassion when we write a check for someone in our community with a need – rent, bus pass, birth certificate.  It’s an important thing to do and it makes a difference to that person.  Sometimes, we don’t just write the check, we hear the story.  Why is someone in danger of eviction?  Illness, job loss?  What else is true about them?  They are parents?  They have been without shelter before?  When we enter into their story, we feel their need in a deeper way, with empathy.  When we help these folks it not only makes a difference for them, it also changes us a bit.  We see the world more clearly.  We know more about the experiences of people in our community.  So compassion and empathy are interwoven.  Both the giver and the receiver grow into a new place through their interaction.

In my teens my grandmother gave me a copy of the Good News Bible, what was originally called “Good News for Modern Man.”  This edition was illustrated with simple line drawings.  The drawing for the verse, “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ,” showed a line of people of all genders and ages, each one carrying a sack that looked heavy over their shoulder.  In the line the artist drew people’s left hand holding the sack on their shoulder and the right hand reaching forward to lift the bottom of the sack of the person ahead.  Each one carried a heavy load, but no one carried it alone.  When we live in an atmosphere of compassion, giving and receiving empathy toward one another, all our burdens are lighter.

 Our second reading talks about the need to know the story others are living by.  I want us to focus on that word “story” for a minute.  When we think about our own lives, there are many stories we tell ourselves about our history and our experiences.  Our Buddhist friends remind us that there are events, and then there are the stories we tell about the events.  Those of us with adult siblings know that the stories about what it means to have grown up in our families vary from one person to another.  My favorite grandmother was my brother’s nightmare, the same person experienced in very different ways.  The story we assume about a person standing on the Walmart corner with a sign and the story they might tell us about their life are probably very different.  But we both put meaning into the stories we tell.  We need to hear another person’s story in order to understand how they experience life.  Listening to that story is part of lifting their burden.

Our Buddhist friends also tell us that we don’t need to be trapped by a story, once we see it for what it is.  Every story can be told in more than one way.  We wave to a friend across a crowded room and he doesn’t wave back.  We can tell a story about being offended:  he’s ignoring me; I must embarrass him; he never liked me.  Or we can tell a different story:  he can’t see me without his glasses; the crowd is so large; I’m going to tease him about not seeing me the next time we’re together.  How we tell the story changes the experience.

 Our effort to describe a better world is giving us many words, but those words don’t change us or our world unless we put them into action.  Part of practicing compassion toward ourselves and others, part of living with empathy, is learning not to be carried away by the stories we tell.  We practice compassion toward ourselves when we make room for positive stories about our experiences, rather than focusing on hurt or pain.  We practice empathy when we listen to the real story someone wants to tell us, rather than just the story we have in our head.  And when we really listen, we first honor the story folks tell as theirs.  And we may be able to help them see small ways to tell that story differently, ways that bring healing to their pain.

What do you have to add to the conversation about compassion and empathy?

When have you experienced receiving compassion from someone else?

When have you acted on compassion or empathy you felt for another?

Who comes to mind when you think about persons you would like to show more compassion to?

Second Sunday in Lent

1 Cor. 12:12-26

A reading from the Inclusion Hub by Lisa Dunn

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) encompasses the symbiotic relationship, philosophy and culture of acknowledging, embracing, supporting, and accepting those of all racial, sexual, gender, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, among other differentiators.

Diversity: Acknowledges all the ways people differ: race, sex, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, religious beliefs, and more.

Inclusion: Is about diversity in practice. It’s the act of welcoming, supporting, respecting, and valuing all individuals and groups.

Equity: Is often used interchangeably with equality, but there’s a core difference: Where equality is a system in which each individual is offered the same opportunities regardless of circumstance, equity distributes resources based on needs. We live in a disproportionate society, and equity tries to correct its imbalance by creating more opportunities for people who have historically had less access.

Belonging: Infers that an equitable structure is in place and functioning to make all people, no matter their differences, feel welcome. When you reach for equity, you’re striving for a system that benefits everyone, no matter their circumstance. Belonging is when this not only works, but no one feels as if their inclusion is questioned. Equity, diversity, and inclusion all mean different things, but interact with and rely on one another. Equity is the goal of diversity and inclusion.

Justice: Is the mission of equity, in which an equitable system works so well it eventually eliminates the systemic problems driving the need for the latter. In other words, everything is fairly and evenly distributed to people no matter their race, gender, physical ability, or other personal circumstances. Where D&I focuses on making all groups feel welcome, DEI also addresses the systemic ways access to things—such as education, food, the web, and more—are unequally distributed.

Sermon

Our scripture today is a clear case for the importance of today’s word:  diversity.  Each person is unique and important.  It takes all of us for the community to be whole.  The apostle Paul refers to the people who followed Jesus as the community, but it is just as true that it can apply to all people – the whole human community. 

We’re used to narrowing our understanding of community.  Last night’s hockey game identified the Central High fans and the Red River fans.  Either way, the wider Grand Forks community wins.  Americans are notorious for thinking we’re exceptional, caused in part by our history and by our geography, an ocean or more away from much of the rest of the world.  When we became more active with Global Friends, we soon met people who had come from far places and learned that we had so much in common.  Plus we learned that those with different life experiences added to the goodness of our community.  We’re better together! 

Our mission this season is to describe the world at its best, and diversity is one of the descriptors we’ve chosen.  In choosing that, we stand up to some of our neighbors who don’t see it that way.  Part of our government is targeting diversity as a negative attribute these days.  Our scripture lesson gives us a way to counter that idea.  So does our second reading, taken from a website that explains the importance of diversity, along with equity and inclusion.  DEI has been banned from official communications, but we can still advocate for its importance.  I can’t add much to the reading in describing why we all benefit from welcoming diversity, advocating for equity, and including everyone.  To say that we live in a system that has benefitted some more than others isn’t meant to make us feel guilt; it’s an opportunity to make corrections and do better going forward.  It’s possible to see DEI programs as benefitting everyone, not punishing those who were once advantaged. 

I find it interesting that the letters DEI spell the Latin name for God.  DEI isn’t a substitute for God, but it’s an attitude that God would approve of – having created diversity and valuing every part of life equally.  Sometimes I’m tempted to hang a big banner on every church that reads “Imago Dei” (in the image of God) to remind the world that God recognizes each and every one as being part of God’sself, of the whole.

When we watch current events or listen to the partisan conversation that fills our airways, we see what happens when we forget that every person is made in God’s image.  We can’t see God in one another and still approve of warehousing immigrant detainees or bombing folks from other countries.  I think we’re struggling to know how to stand up for the rights of our neighbors – those who look and live like us and those who don’t.  It’s more complicated than just shouting back, “Thou shalt not…”  People who agree with us matter and so do all those folks who don’t agree.  If our goal is to create a world that reflects God’s vision more closely we have to advocate for what we think is right, but we have to do it in a spirit of love and   openness.  We need both backbone and humility, and that’s what one of my granddaughters used to call “pretty tricky.”

My hope for this series is that we’ll find positive energy in describing what we believe life can be, not just longer lists of what’s going wrong.  But keeping that positive energy isn’t easy.  It seems like we’re all carrying heavy loads just now.  Aside from the fact that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, there’s the daily stuff we all deal with.  Friends, family, personally there’s the health stuff and the job stuff and the family stuff.  We’re a pretty small group and yet the heaviness of what we’re facing is real.  I was thinking about that this week when another “word” came to me.  I share it with you, hoping it’s as helpful to you as it was to me.  That word is cherished.  In a time when it’s understandable to feel dumped on and a little unloved, God says to us, “You are cherished.”  Not only loved but loved because of who you are and how you live.  Loved because you are you.

I bring you that word in the context of diversity, because it seems that’s how God sees us and is asking us to see one another – cherished.  In all our diversity of color and culture, we are good – loved beyond imagining.  When we see one another through the eyes of God’s love, it becomes much easier to value both our similarities and our differences, and to ask every person to treat others from that perspective.  We can disagree about our preferences – language, food, recreation, style – but God has told us we have equal value.  God hasn’t just accepted each of us, but actually cherished each and every one.  That may be the entry point for our doing the same.

I wonder how you have come to value diversity.  What benefits do you see in the rich variety of the world?  How have you learned to love your neighbor?

First Sunday in Lent

Mark 7:24-30

There’s an assumption in Christianity that God is unchanging:  the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  That’s a comfort when we want assurance that God is faithful to us, ever present.  It’s wrong, I think, if it means that God is fixed.  God begins completely perfect and never changes. Today’s scripture clearly refutes that, if we see Jesus as God present.  In this story, Jesus changes his mind.  He’s been travelling.  Everywhere he goes people flock to him, wanting something – usually healing.  He’s burned out and wants a rest, so he travels off the beaten path – to Tyre.  He stays in a home where no one  is expecting him; you can almost hear his sigh of relief when the door closes and the crowd is gone.  Then here comes this woman, begging him to heal her daughter of a disturbance.  Jesus frankly is rude to her:  You’re not even Jewish.  Why should I help you?  Leave me alone, you dog.  But she is spunky back at him:  even dogs get crumbs from the table.  It works!  You can see Jesus thinking, “I like this woman.  She has nerve.  Maybe I can help someone other than the Jews.  Why not?”  And he cures her daughter.  Not only is this a nice story for the daughter who is healed, it’s a pivotal moment for a movement which eventually focusses no just on Judaism but on the whole world.  Jesus becomes more inclusive in this encounter.  Good news for us gentiles!

Today’s word is flexibility.  This story is a moment in which Jesus shows flexibility – able to take in new information, change his mind, and behave differently.  It made me think about times I’ve changed my mind about important things.  I suspect you have done the same.  My mind-changes include realizing that gender identity isn’t only male/female but much more complicated, and that I need to be on the side of LGBTQ rights.  Or realizing that the world’s religions have more in common than they do differences and we can hear truth from one another.  What are some of the shifts you have made in your thinking over time?...

Many of us were raised by parents who wanted to teach us right from wrong.  Unfortunately, that didn’t always come with nuance.  In my world it was “right” to be American, Christian (Presbyterian version), Republican.  It was also “right” to support civil rights and befriend the Jewish students who opposed saying the Lord’s Prayer in public school every morning.  You’ll recognize that there were benefits and drawbacks on my list.  It’s part of growing up to be able to say, “Maybe I should re-evaluate my list of absolutes.”  But that doesn’t make it easy to make significant changes. 

Tara Brach’s reading reminds me that people often fear change, partly because we’re not sure we’re up to it.  There’s comfort in staying the same.  We don’t have to take a risk or figure out new ways of thinking or acting.  Becoming flexible is an act of trust – trusting ourselves to be able to grow and trusting the rest of the world to help us.  There’s freedom in flexibility, opening ourselves to new information, new people, new possibilities.

I wonder how we would describe flexibility as a positive attribute?

• Being open to new information is part of it.  We’ve recently lived through a few years of new awareness – becoming woke.  We woke up to the ways systems privilege race and class and education.  We’ve learned to recognize that our assumptions about the world aren’t the only ones.  Maya Angelou reminds us that “when we know better, we do better.”  We’re receiving more information than was available to us before. We’re learning to do better. 

• Seeing the world through others’ eyes is a part of flexibility.  That’s how we get new information, sometimes.  Our Community Fund puts us next to people who’s reality is very different from our own, and shows us the humanity behind poverty. Knowing many refugees shows us the inequality of the world right now. 

• Compromise is an important part of flexibility.  I’ve heard many folk expressing nostalgia for times when government was about compromise – give and take that got us to a better place for everyone.  Here’s a simple example from my week – I had to decide whether I wanted to be right about the way I took minutes for the quilt guild or I wanted to be friends with the people who wanted to make corrections.  I chose friendship.  I wouldn’t have always done that.  People grow.

• Relationships matter in flexibility.  We bend a little in deference to others.  Fifty yeas ago there was a big to-do about truth not being relative – truth is truth and there’s only one right answer.  At the time I thought truth wasn’t relative, it was relational.  When you are in relationship with another person, you listen to their viewpoint, you hear their story, and you realize there are many right answers in complex situations and each of you might have an important piece of a way forward.

 If it’s good to be flexible, is there ever a time not to be?  I think Jesus gives us a hint about that.  What matters most is the people involved.  He healed the woman’s daughter, even though she wasn’t Jewish, because he cared about her humanity.  Flexibility is good, but there are red lines that shouldn’t be crossed.  People shouldn’t be harmed.  Everyone should be treated with respect and dignity.  It’s ok to say that some behaviors aren’t ok when humanity is paying a price.  I love the image of the people in Minneapolis singing to ICE agents:  It’s OK to change your mind.  And I love that they are doing their best to keep ICE agents from harming their neighbors.  They are showing us how to say “no” but still keep lines of communication open.  To say “no” to actions while keeping the door open to human connection.

Last Sunday after the Epiphany

John 9:32

Today is our annual observance of Religion and Science Sunday, falling on the weekend closest to Darwin’s birthday.  This observance is 21 years old this year – a coming-of-age moment.  It began when clergy in Wisconsin stood up for science in opposition to an attempt to mandate the teaching of creationism in schools.  Teaching the beautiful stories of God creating life is literature or religion, but not science, and the clergy wanted to be on record as supporting both religion and science as compatible but not the same.  We’ve honored this Sunday for many years at Family of God as a celebration of how faith and science complement each other.  This year’s national theme is Truth Matters, a timely assertion, so we’ll choose the word truth for our values project today and see if we can’t coordinate the two efforts.

The question, “Is it true?”  seems like a simple question, but Wikipedia reminds us that nothing is simple.  Truth can mean many things.

Jesus tells those who become his disciples, or adopt his world view, that the truth will make you free.  Seeing the world through the eyes of love – or as we’ve suggested so far in our series, the eyes of kindness, welcome, inclusion and truth – is freeing spiritually.  It describes a better way to live as a community or a country.  When we say that the teachings of Jesus are true, we say that they reflect the values we believe should be universal.  Some folks assert these values are universal because God has endorsed them and then given them to us through Jesus and the prophets, reflected in scripture.  But then those of us who follow Jesus disagree on exactly how the teachings are to be applied.  Is truth in the official interpretation?  Or the most loving application?  Or the actual words, even when they aren’t clear?  I suspect we aren’t the only ones who want the truth to reflect our preference!

In the context of Religion and Science Sunday truth matters refers in part to the scientific enterprise.  It includes the effort to describe reality accurately.  To conduct controlled experiments, verify results, and propose summary statements about discoveries.  Over time, our understanding of what those discoveries mean can change and grow, but in any given moment we are able to say, “These are the facts.”  Or “This is true.”  A number of faith communities have put their weight behind the assertion that finding facts and making life choices accordingly is important. 

All of the mainline Christian denominations have adopted statements in support of climate science.  We have said that we have a God-given responsibility to care for the earth, and so we need to pay attention to the way human activity is harming creation and creatures.  Just this week our government declared that climate science is wrong, the earth is not in danger, and we no longer need to regulate how people treat the environment.  We would say in response, “Truth matters.”  When there are facts that support particular conclusions, we can’t responsibly pretend those facts don’t exist.  We can debate appropriate responses, but neither religion nor science can make something true simply by wishing it to be so.  Some truths are hard and demand change in our behaviors, changes we may not want to make.  But I suspect that the more difficult a truth is, the more important it is that we pay attention.

Truth Matters also applies to telling the truth in social situations.  It’s a kindergarten lesson to be honest when telling the teacher how something got broken or someone was hurt.  It’s not easy to admit fault, but it builds character in us and promotes trust among us.  When we learn as children to tell the truth, then we can trust our justice system, our work environments, our media.  The functioning of our social system depends on being able to believe what others tell us.  When that’s in question, we have a stake in protecting truth as a value.

Truth Matters when we are describing our history and our common life.  Over time people make choices about how they will treat one another and how society will function.  Those choices change.  As Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.”  It can be painful in a personal relationship or in a whole country to admit that we need to do better, but pretending there was never a need to change doesn’t serve us.  We learn from what we do well and from mistakes we make.  That’s part of being human.  It’s not a failure to recognize a need to change and to make improvements.  It’s how we build life together.  It’s how we evolve as a society and come closer to reflecting the values we share – the values we believe God has taught us.   It’s not helpful to try to erase facts about the past just to feel better.  Being able to see progress also feels good, and we can be proud when we do better.

What else matters to you when you think of the value of truth?

Fifth Sunday after the Ephipany

Matthew 5:13-14

You Are Welcome a poem by Schuyler Brown

Good morning salt-seasoning of the world, light bearers of the presence of God!  Thank you for doing your part to make God’s love visible in this moment in time in this corner of the universe!  Salt takes what is bland and ordinary and makes it zing.  Light shines so that everyone can see what’s beautiful and true.  Jesus was salt and light to the people of his time and he’s commissioned us to carry on that work.  Then he’s promised to come with us to help us see how that can happen.

Mostly, Jesus lived to tell the world that everyone is precious to God; everyone is loved and valuable.  He did that by treating everyone as if they belonged with him, inviting them to join in the amazing things God is doing in the world.  We’re spending this season considering how to describe what God is up to, and today’s words describe Jesus to a T – welcoming and inclusivity.  When some of the power-folk of his time wanted to criticize Jesus, they said, “He even eats with sinners and tax collectors.”  To which Jesus might have replied, “Thanks for the compliment.”  Inviting everyone in was what Jesus was about!

To understand how radical that was, we need to recall that the religious leaders of first century Judaism were about exclusion.  They prided themselves in being God’s people – different from everyone else.  Then they focused on the rules, which were incredibly hard to follow, leaving behind those who were poor or hard-working or not born Jewish.  They described how this was supposed to work in what were called the Purity Codes, and told people that if they weren’t pure, God didn’t want anything to do with them.  Then they encountered Jesus who broke the rules to make room for everyone and had the audacity to tell them that’s the way God wanted it because God is love. 

In Jesus’ time, good religious people didn’t eat with sinners, especially tax collectors who worked for Rome.  They ate with people who knew how to wash properly and so were clean.  They ate with the right kind of people.  They couldn’t believe the nerve of this Jesus who told them people mattered more than rules and God loved them all.  So if we’re going to introduce people to the love of God as Jesus showed us, we’re going to have to break those rules too. 

I’m beginning to think that every week of this series, we’re going to find ourselves saying it all comes down to how you see people, and God sees all people as important.  There aren’t good people and bad people, in people and out people, friends and enemies.  There are just children of God. We’re all one family.  We’re all in this together.

When we say, “Welcome!” we aren’t saying, come on in and we’ll tolerate you.  We’re saying, “You’re family.  We belong together.”  We don’t do that because we want to be nice, but because it’s true.  Every single person is a part of who we are, and everyone brings something essential to community.  In God’s world, there aren’t divisions between rich and poor, gay and straight, men and women, old and young, white and brown.  Each one is unique and each one is important.  We have a way to go to internalize that reality, but we’ve made a beginning.  We’re learning how to see the man on the corner with a sign begging as a brother and the woman on the corner with a sign protesting as a sister.  We’re learning how to open our hearts and our minds to internalize a Jesus-sized world view.

Do you remember when we decided to spend a lot of money fixing our roof and our windows and painting this place?  We said it was an investment because we wanted to fill this building up.  It was a down-payment on welcome.  Look at what happened!  Three churches on Sunday and meditators on Monday and Moslem prayers on Friday.  Singers and piano players and Boy Scouts.  Quilters and gardeners and readers.  Who knows who’s going to come tomorrow.  Welcome and inclusion is about making space and then letting people learn from us and help us grow, too.

I remember almost 50 years ago when I started in ministry, it was new for women to be welcomed.  (Some places that hasn’t happened yet.)  Back then when the women got together, they’d complain that they’d been invited to the table but hnot heard. The men still ran the meetings, and no one listened to a woman’s ideas until a man repeated them.  I suspect that happened in more than just ministry once-upon-a-time.  Not so much now; or at least it’s better.  Welcome and inclusion are about not just letting folks come to the table, but letting them talk and dream, letting them influence the menu and the after-dinner dancing.  It’s about letting people matter not just because it’s the nice thing to do but because we’re all better for it.  We become better people when we make the effort to really see and hear our neighbors and to let them count.  

Because that’s what Jesus did and it’s what he continues to do when we let him show us the way.

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk.  Be gentle with one another, sensitive.  Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.

Ephesians 4:31-32

One of my favorite quotes is taped on a wall in my office:  “To be kind, you must swerve regularly from your path.”   Tara Brach, Trusting the Gold.

Family of God’s mission statement is “We share God’s light by being progressive servants in our community.” And our vision statement is what we wear on our t-shirts:  We’re here for good!  When we were talking our way toward those statements, we were thinking about what it means to follow Jesus in this time and place.  In other words, how do we live in a way that reflects Jesus’ teachings into our time in history and our bit of the universe.  In the next few weeks we’re going to put some flesh on those bones by describing “Life in Christ” in more detail.  I’ve asked you to give me words that you think describe the best way to live, and we’re going to focus on one word each week until we’ve covered the landscape.

We find ourselves in these times listening to the news and thinking or saying, “That’s not right.”  We have a sense that rounding up immigrants and shooting protestors and kidnapping presidents isn’t what we had in mind to describe “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”  Victoria and I spend our community fund each week after week and hear the stories of desperation that are very real for many of our neighbors.  Often we commiserate with social workers that things are broken.  But we can’t fix the system until we can describe what “fixed” looks like.  The words we’ve collected, and can continue to collect, are a beginning at describing what we want our world to be like.

Jesus and his first followers lived under an oppressive empire, which also provided many benefits – good roads, safe streets, peace so long as you kept your head down and didn’t disagree.  They would tell us their world was also broken, and they had much less power than we do to make change.  They formed communities of like-minded people and lived with as much grace and compassion as they could, taking care of one another.  But forming those communities wasn’t easy.  They had to figure out their words to live by.  What words they would use to describe how Jesus lived and what he taught.  What words worked for them as they tried to live well together.  The apostle Paul often wrote letters to some of these communities, giving them practical advice for living.  Today’s letter includes good words:  watch how you speak to one another, be gentle and forgiving.  That seemed like a good description to use with our word today:  Kindness.  Those who are kind speak respectfully and treat each other with gentleness and forgiveness.  Kindness sums up much of what we’re missing in the news – people just aren’t being kind.

Tara Brach speaks of going out of our way to be kind, and explains that with a story of a research study done at Princeton Seminary.  Students were asked to prepare a short talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan, a man who showed kindness to his neighbor.  Then they were told that they would be giving these talks at a gathering across campus.  Some were told they must hurry because the meeting was about to start and others were told they had plenty of time to get there.  As each student traveled  across campus, they came across a man in obvious medical distress.  The study wanted to know who, thinking about being a caring neighbor, would stop to help.  Of those in a hurry, only 10% stopped to speak to the actor pretending to need help.  Those with more time did better – two-thirds were helpful.  Brach tells this story to remind us that if we are going to bring kindness into the world around us, we have to be willing to be inconvenienced.  We have to be scanning our horizon for opportunities to show kindness and then “swerve” out of our way to respond.

I wonder what we would see if we made a pact this week to look for at least one chance to be kind each day?  Who needs help carrying bags or opening a door?  Who needs us to stop long enough to hear about a worry?  Who even needs us to yield our turn at a stop sign to someone in a greater hurry?  Or maybe it’s a matter of actually seeing people we pass long enough to smile.

I’ve been thinking about kindness all week in the context of Minneapolis.  We hear of so much kindness there:  people shopping for groceries for friends afraid to leave home.  People protecting children before and after school.  People filming government agents who still say, “I’m not mad.”  In some ways it’s a demonstration of Minnesota Nice for the world to see.  But something tells me the Kindness is more than just being nice in passing, on the surface.  It’s good to say a kind word to strangers in passing.  But I think there’s a deeper level to kindness that goes beyond nice.  I can speak politely to someone with a smile and then think, “Well, he was nuts!”   I can be civil in groups conversation while thinking disrespectful things about others to myself.  We are watching what happens when human beings don’t value one another as equals.   I’m not sure it matters how nice we are on the surface if our care for each other doesn’t run deep.

Yesterday Lotus Meditation Center had a retreat about the practice of loving-kindness or metta.  It’s a practice of sending good will to others – people you care about and also those you don’t know or perhaps even dislike.  Underlying the practice is a sense that all people are one people, and all people deserve the same good things in life.  Peace, safety, health, happiness.  The practice works best when the focus is on our connection to one another, even if we don’t know each other well.

I suspect that kindness is most genuine when it comes from a deep sense of connection, even among strangers.  I am most able to be kind when I go beyond surface pleasantries and acknowledge that human to human we are one.  I was thinking about that in the context of our community fund.  I can be nice to folks when I hand them a check for rent and they thank me, but I am kind when I share resources as an equal, not a benefactor  When I truly feel how hard it must be to have to ask a stranger for help to avoid eviction for your family.  When I avoid blaming folks for not working hard enough or planning well enough to avoid a tough situation.  That kind of kindness involves getting me out of the way to truly see another. 

Kindness across our national landscape involves seeing refugees as people and not as a problem.  It involves seeing people who live in other nations as neighbors and not as opportunities for enrichment or threats to our superiority.  Patriotism is good, just like it’s good to root for the Vikings to win the Super Bowl, but nationalism that dehumanizes people not like us is wrong.  We can love our country, work for our country, and still feel unity with all human beings, with all beings.  Kindness that comes from the realization that we are all, after all, one people, one human race is truly transforming.  Jesus says, “Do unto others what you want others to do to you.”  That is a good word, a starting place for renewing the world.

First Sunday after the Epiphany, The Baptism of our Lord

Mark 1:1-13

Do you remember your baptism?  If you’re like me, you probably don’t. Those of us baptized as infants may have heard stories about our baptisms, but have no memories for ourselves.  I remember my brother’s baptism, vaguely.  It was the Sunday before Christmas.  All the family had gathered, being fresh from my uncle’s wedding.  And the minister forgot to baptize him, skipping over that part of the service.  So there was a rush after the benediction to remind the minister and gather in the small side chapel to repair the damage.  My brother had to have his chance at a good start and the family had to have pictures to remember by!

That’s the image of baptism many of us hold, but it’s not what John was about.  Before Jesus’ ministry, John’s baptism wasn’t an initiation into Christianity.  John’s baptism came from the Jewish tradition of washing away the past and beginning something new.  Jewish law is full of rules about washing – washing food, washing bodies after menstruation or illness.  First century Jews built large ceremonial bathtubs for bathing and purifying.  It was woven into the fabric of their culture.  When they wanted to show they were ready for something different, they bathed. 

John was an agitator.  Not long after this story, he was arrested by Herod and lost his life!  He was denouncing what living under Empire had made of religion and the people.  He was having nothing to do with it.  He went to the edge of society, by the river, the wilderness.  He made his own clothes from camel hair.  He foraged for food – locusts and honey.  And he called out the ways people were ignoring God’s love and adopting the values of Rome.  People were intrigued by that counter-cultural message and they came to hear him.  He put on a good show!  For some his message struck a chord, they remembered the scriptures about God’s way of living, and they committed to following God by being baptized, by bathing in the river.  It was a first century reform movement and it challenged the Empire’s ways.

Jesus and John have an argument about Jesus’ baptism.  Who will baptize whom?  We take that to mean Jesus is more godly than John, because we understand baptism as a spiritual thing.  Later theologians have suggested that Jesus was sinless and baptism was about washing away sin.  No sin: no baptism needed.  But we can also understand that baptism for the forgiveness of sin was a statement about people’s intention.  They were bathing to leave old ways behind and begin anew – a turning from what wasn’t godly and claiming a new lifestyle.  If this baptism is a commitment to a way of life, then Jesus is declaring publicly that he’s in the movement.  He too is going to advocate for a new way of living.  He’s going to expand what John is doing and take it beyond the river to all the villages.  Right after he’s baptized, he goes on retreat in the desert to clarify and plan.  He’s expanding on John’s message, hoping to reach more people.  Calling everyone to a new way of life.

Mark tells us that there was a miracle at Jesus’ baptism:  the heavens opened and the voice of God called out.  “You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  We know Jesus as the son of God.  Remember that in the first century this title was also given to the Emperor.  The birth stories we’ve been reading from other Gospels tell us that Jesus is like the Emperor,  is God’s son.  In Mark that happens not at his birth, but at his baptism.  All the Gospel writers want us to know that we should see Jesus as equal to the Emperor.  He’s bringing us a kingdom, only measured by other standards.  He’s challenging Rome like John did and those who want to sign on can be baptized and begin life in a new way.

Every year when we read this story we’re encouraged to remember our baptism, or if not the actual event, remember that we are baptized.  To be baptized means that we too have signed on with God to live God’s way.  We’ve joined Jesus’ movement; we’re living in God’s reign right now.  We too are called children of God, and our lives are meant to show it.  If Jesus is the light of love the world is meant to live by, then we’re the light that shows what that looks like each day.  John pointed out that a new way of living was needed; Jesus explained what that way looked like; when we follow Jesus, we put his teaching into action. We’re a modern-day lesson in kingdom living:  love, compassion, mercy, kindness, honesty, generosity.  (Those are the values we’re going to explore on Sundays through this winter.)  How do we put Jesus’ teaching into practice?

For most of our lives, we’ve done that by being nice people.  We’ve worked hard, stood up for what’s right, taken care of friends and family.  The world we lived in mostly followed the values of Jesus.  Right now that’s not so true.  I was reading the teacher Katherine Golub this week, who was acknowledging that our world is falling apart in ways we never expected.  The social systems have never been perfect, but they have been for the most part civil.  Now not so much.  When things seem very broken, it’s hard to know how to model Jesus’ teachings.  It’s hard to know when we’ve done enough.  Welcome to the first century!  Jesus also lived in a time when the world was broken and life was cruel.  His followers declared that living by his standards made a hard life better.  So that is what we can do.  Live by Jesus’ values.

 Unlike the first century, we can have some impact on the systems around us.  We have a public voice and a vote. Although protests are becoming more dangerous, we can still safely hold a sign and stand in the town square, if that’s our thing.  We can tell our representatives how we feel about bombing fisherfolk and kidnapping presidents and murdering protestors.  And on a local level we can love our neighbor, including our immigrant neighbors.  We can feed our friends, especially those whose benefits are reduced.  We can give shelter and warm clothing in winter weather.  We can speak up when those around us applaud cruelty, even if it’s just a quiet question. 

Signing on with Jesus isn’t just agreeing to endorse values and behaviors.  It’s seeing the world through new eyes – God’s eyes.  There are some pretty loud voices right now who don’t see that way.  The President says he can do anything he wants, just because he wants it.  That anyone who disagrees is evil.  That smart men get rich and fools advocate for income equity and justice.  The White House crowd wants us to believe that immigrants are criminals.  That fraud and graft are good business.  That rich folk deserve more and poor folk aren’t working hard enough.  That’s not the way Jesus taught us to see the world.  Jesus says God is love and every person is beloved.  Jesus says share your food and your extra cloak.  We’d add and your health care and your education and your affordable housing.  Jesus says resources are meant to be shared so everyone has enough.  Those who accumulate excess are missing the point.  Jesus says we can live in peace and respect and honor differences and build each other up.  When we object to government behaviors, we aren’t just challenging what they do, we’re challenging why they do it.  We believe that when you see people through God’s eyes, you form a community that reflects God’s love.  You act differently because you see the purpose of living differently.  You are building God’s kingdom for the benefit of everyone, not elbowing your way to the top and stepping on those who get in the way.  When you see the world from God’s perspective, you build a government that accomplishes God’s goals.  Not a narrow set of rules for behavior, putting down those who don’t conform, but a wide-open invitation for everyone to contribute and everyone to thrive.  We don’t start with the question, “What’s best for me?” but with the question, “What’s best for us?”  And “us” means all creatures, the whole earth.  We are in a struggle to claim a good vision for all of life, and we’re not always winning.

But sometimes we are.  It's important for us to do what we can, and to identify that what we are doing is because we follow Jesus’ way.  Remember, not even Jesus fixed his world.  We can’t do it all.  What we do keeps his way and his hope alive for another day.  We look around us a see what’s not right.  But we also look around and see that God’s reign is breaking through in small ways around us every day.  We can be a part of those bits of light shining in the darkness. We can name the light, and when we name it, we give it life.

The Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-16

If you are celebrating the twelve days of Christmas, today is the day for pipers.  Flautists or bagpipers, take your choice.  Tomorrow is dedicated to percussionists.  And then Christmas is over and Tuesday brings the festival of Epiphany.  When I was a child, we celebrated Epiphany by gathering our old, dried Christmas trees in the church parking lot and setting them ablaze in the evening dark.  It was glorious!  That custom would break so many rules today; but not to worry, Christmas trees are now treated with so much fire-retardant you can’t burn them if you try.

Setting bonfires in the dark reminds us of our pagan ancestors who burned logs at Yule to celebrate the winter solstice and the turning of darkness toward light.  We live in the perfect place to internalize the longing for light in the darkness, and warmth in the cold, and life in the face of death. 

Epiphany is the season we need right now.   It begins with a star, blazing against the Middle Eastern sky over several months, alerting astrologers to a momentous event, the birth of a new king.  They went to Jerusalem, assuming a royal birth would be known in the seat of power, but the court hadn’t heard the news.  They were busy bringing as much darkness to the country as they could.  Busy with corruption and intrigue, murder for power.  Notice the sages didn’t leave their gold there.  (Someone should tell folks making pilgrimage to our Oval Office not to leave the gold in the court of the false king.)  Instead they followed the star to a stable nearby in Bethlehem.  The king they found was still a baby.  Poor, not rich.  Humble, not obsessed with power.  Filled with love.  Someone to grow into a man with a vision of equality and shared resources and transforming hope.  Full of God’s light.

Jesus’ followers told this story about his birth to affirm that he was indeed Light for the world – the whole world – even sages from far away.  The baby in a manger was indeed a king who brought us an entirely different way of living.  Light in our darkness.  Love challenging division.  Hope overcoming despair.  Life overcoming death.  Epiphany is the season of inspiration and new ideas.  It’s when the world gets bigger and everyone is invited to “see the light” and come together. 

Jesus himself lived as a shining light of hope and possibility, pointing to a new way of being God’s people.  He was always the light in contrast to darkness.  He traveled Palestine to teach about love, and shared the road with Roman soldiers.  He gave food to people who were truly hungry.  He healed people whose illnesses brought them to the edge of villages and the edge of life itself.  When people spoke of his movement as light, it was because they lived in very dark times.  I love Christmas lights, but their light is a little too easy to give us a sense of what Jesus the light meant to people.  Better to think of campfires in Gaza, or sheltered flashlights in the subways under Kiev.  The season of light in darkness is indeed beautiful, but it is also strong.  It speaks of hope that can look despair straight in the eye and not waver.  It calls for courage and conviction.  Christians are people who have seen the light of God’s way and will not allow darkness to win.

Maybe the best line in today’s story is this one:  Being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they returned to their own country by another road.  Like the song says, they looked at Jesus, and then at Herod, and they went home another way.  Jesus and Herod represent a pretty clear choice – love and life or power and death.  The sages don’t go back and tell Herod he’s wrong, but they take the back roads and go home to live by another light.

I’m surprised these days how many people I meet are worried about the darkness rising around us.  It’s easy to make a list of things that are wrong – lying, cruelty, warfare, demonizing immigrants…these are clearly not ways of light or living in Jesus’ light.  We’re lucky to be relatively safe and able to have a voice that speaks out, but our influence doesn’t seem to be growing at the rate we think it should.  Maybe that’s why this year the sages seem so important to me.  They left their gifts and went home to live, guided by the light they had seen.  They encountered goodness, and I like to think they went home to spread that goodness.  Maybe the early followers of Jesus told this story because it spoke of what they themselves were doing.  They had seen Jesus, they had named his truth as Light, and they were doing their best to live by that light, even in the darkness around them.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot put it out.

I’m getting a little tired of shaking my head over all the things that seem to be going wrong.  I suspect our energy is better spent doing what we can to be the light.  If we can’t change what those in power are doing, then maybe it’s time to just do what’s right, to go home another way, the Jesus way.  I’d like to propose that we spend the season of Epiphany lifting up ways that we can let the light of God’s light shine through us.  I suggest we stop making lists of what’s wrong and list what’s right.  What are the good values we want to live by, and how can we do that?  I’m going to put paper on the church door so we can make a long list of what’s light in our world.  Let’s list our values, our projects, our positive dreams.  And then let’s use our time together, the sermon time each week, to explore what those good things mean and how they show up in our lives.  Let’s shine as much light as we can to encourage each other and push back a bit on the darkness.  Maybe that will help us describe another way to be home.

First Sunday after Christmas

Luke 2:22-38

There are very few stories in scripture about Jesus as a child. Today we read one of them. After Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, his parents wait eight days. Then they take him to the temple in Jerusalem, about six miles away, and make the prescribed sacrifice of two turtle doves because he is their first-born son and so belongs to God. The doves are an offering of joy and gratitude and also a ransom, allowing the family to keep this child. While they are in the Temple, two very holy elderly people independently see the baby and pronounce prophecy about his future greatness in the story of Israel.

During Advent in the run-up to Christmas we’ve already heard prophecy about this baby. Luke gives us the angel Gabriel announcing a special birth to Mary and hosts of angels declaring the birth of the Messiah to shepherds. Matthew has an angel persuade Joseph to keep his promises to Mary because her baby will be the savior. Next week we’ll read how the stars help sages find the child which is to be a king. Today’s stories reinforce what gospel writers want us to know: Jesus is the equivalent to the Emperor. He is the one who brings God’s reign to earth. He is savior of all his people, giving them a new kingdom. Even rulers from across the world recognized his significance. The holiest of those worshipping in the Temple saw him as the One to change the world.

We’ve learned that in the first century everyone expected these kinds of stories about the ruling emperor. They were a statement of a ruler’s significance, not a history of his infancy. But how amazing that they were told about Jesus by his early followers. Even more amazing when we realize that they were written down shortly after Rome destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE, murdered most of the people there and took the rest as slaves. Think of the audacity of the earliest followers of Jesus. Their leader was a peasant, never raised an army, was crucified by Rome as a way of ending his movement. They themselves were alternately ignored by Rome and persecuted. They were scattered across the Empire in small groups, not necessarily connected to each other. Yet they believe that Jesus has conquered the world and tell stories to report that everyone always knew he would do it. This against all evidence. Why?

That’s a question without a definitive answer, but it is useful to speculate a bit about it. It’s really the same question we could ask about Jesus himself: why did people follow him and believe in him during his lifetime? And it’s the question we ask ourselves: why do we follow him and believe in him today? Most of us would point to qualities we admire about him: he welcomed and accepted people; he healed people; he took people seriously even when others had given up on them; he respected people, even those who were poor or disabled; he fed people; he healed people; he LOVED people. Jesus also assumed that people could treat each other in the same way he treated them. He called for leaders to put their people’s needs before their own, for creating a reign based on God’s love rather than wealth or power. For building community. It’s the kind of world we would all like to be part of. It’s a vision that’s sparked hope and revolution across ages around the world. It was a better way of life for everyone, and they named it as God’s intention for creation.

I wonder if what we’re dealing with here is a distinct world view – a way of understanding how life works. Much of history tells us that those who are rich and powerful win. They end up owning the wealth of nations and often other people. They use and abuse power to grab benefits for themselves and to exploit others. It’s a grab-what-you-can world, often ending in wars for territory and resources. No one would describe it at God’s best way.

But woven through all of history is another story. It’s a story that says God spoke a word of creative love and brought forth life in abundance. Everything that was good was given for us to enjoy. People were meant to live in community. Resources were meant to be shared, On rare occasions societies have lived by this other vision and have thrived. There has been peace and cooperation and respect for earth. This is the story told by John of Jesus’ birth: The Word was first,

The Word present to God.
God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
In readiness for God from day one.
Everything was created through him,
Nothing – not one thing! –
Came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
And the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness
The darkness couldn’t put it out.
The Life-Light was the real thing.
Every person entering Life
He brings into Light.
We was in the world,
The world ws threre through him,
And yet the world didn’t even notice.
He came to his own people,
But they didn’t want him.
But whoever did want him,
Who believed he was who he claimed
And would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
Their child-of-God selves.
The Word became flesh and blood,
And moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
The one-of-a-kind glory,
Like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
True from start to finish.

Across all ages there have been peoples and sometimes cultures who believed that life was born from the heart of God, that Earth was a gift to the people to be cherished, that each individual brought a gift to the community of great value. Maybe these were the eyes that Simeon and Anna brought to the Temple; eyes that could see a tiny infant and believe in the man who would become. Eyes that could look past the soldiers on crowd control around them and believe in a world of peace. Eyes that could acknowledge hunger and poverty and believe in a beloved community where everyone could thrive.

We live in a very different time, but one that’s also very similar. We too live with two ways of seeing the world. One feeds on power and the other on kindness. One grabs for wealth and the other practices generosity. One abuses others for personal gain and the other offers respect and dignity and compassion. We have more power to impact our world that those first followers of Jesus, but we haven’t yet found a way to transform the world by God’s vision, not completely.

But we stand in our moment in time with the promise of God that two things can be true at the same time. We can live in the power-hungry world and the world of peace simultaneously. We can be “in the world” society builds around us but “not of it.” We can be children of God’s holy reign. We can live by the values of Jesus. We can be signs of light and hope. We can feed and heal and teach and value those around us. We can believe that the reign of God is real, and because we believe we make it real, day by day. With each act of respect or kindness. With each word of understanding. With every smile and every song, we make the reign of God our reality. We can say each day, “Our eyes have seen your salvation!”

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Luke 2:8-14

We have been following the angels this Advent, and now that we’ve come to the last of our four Sundays, we’ve found angels in abundance.  We asked the Wednesday Kids to draw as many angels, of all sizes and shapes, as they could fit into our sanctuary windows, and they did an excellent job of surrounding us.  In the process we asked ourselves, “If a lot of geese is a gaggle, what is a lot of angels?”  Google didn’t disappoint when it told us what we have is a heavenly host!

The angels have been bringing us messages this month about how God is moving in our lives and where we might expect to see holiness.  Often angels show up when humans are in trouble.  Abraham had run out of good grazing land for his flocks. Joseph feared he had been betrayed by his fiancé.  Mary was pregnant, a life-threatening condition in many ways.  Today we’re hanging out with shepherds.  Men who lived with smelly, stupid sheep. Men whose livelihood depended on keeping these sheep together, protected, fed and watered  They got no respect for it. These shepherds and their sheep lived on the edge of the village and on the edge of the Empire.  They were subsistence farmers.  The world around them was full of soldiers and tax collectors and peasants trying not to starve to death or to be arrested into slavery.  They were not going to make anyone’s list of up-and-coming entrepreneurs.  They kept their heads down, did their job, and stayed away from trouble.

These are not the kind of men expecting to see a sky full of angels, cavorting as only angels do.  Many years ago I came across a favorite Christmas poem written about how excited the angels were when Jesus was born.  God was entering into Life in a new and amazing way.  A baby born while his parents were traveling, cradled in the barn on the hay, was going to change the world.  The angels were beside themselves with joy, whirling and tumbling across the sky, singing at the top of their lungs, when they noticed how their celebration had terrified certain “shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.”  So shrugging their shoulders, they paused in midair, having no choice but to come near and assure them:  fear not.  It was almost an afterthought.  Since they had been noticed, they had to let the shepherds in on the story.  They had to share the good news causing angels to cavort.  The Savior has come.  The baby is born.  These were not the men you would invite to your first-born’s coming out party, but invited they were.  They shrugged their shoulders and said, “We might as well go see.”  And what they found changed their lives.  A baby.  Young parents. A dream of Empire overturned.  The conviction that God has come near.  God is changing the world and you get to be a part of  it.

Here's a miracle story for today.  God is changing the world and we get to be a part of it.  We are the wrong people to hear this good news, but here we are.  No more likely to be world-changers than a bunch of smelly shepherds wondering whether or not to believe their eyes.  We’re still dealing with Empire promoting violence, grabbing wealth, making life hard for the least important.  We’re still wondering if there’s any reason to hope.  We’re still putting bandaids on the wounds of the world when tourniquets are needed.  Paying back rent.  Calling to complain to legislators who ignore us.  Standing on a street corner for an hour or two.  It all makes me feel a lot like a shepherd who accidentally came to the wrong party.

Here's what the angels said, and keep on saying, “Fear not.”  Of course there is every reason to be afraid.  Of course we are powerless in the face of massive systems sweeping across the globe.  Of course we have no way of telling how any part of life is going to turn out and if any of what we do will matter.

But then, just when we’re not paying attention except to try to get the sheep of our lives more or less gathered up for a few minutes of rest, we think we see an angel, out of the corner of our eye.  We hold a newborn.  We pay a $20 bill that gives a stranger hope.  We hear the angelic voices of children singing their hearts out. And the world shifts on its axis.  Maybe there is something more.  Maybe this “God is love” stuff is real.  Maybe there are tiny miracles waiting for us to trip over them.  A new treatment for illness.  A different way of seeing immigrants as friends.  A politician with a bright idea. 

This is what I want to believe is true:

• God is with us.
  Love is the fabric of the universe.
  We can come together, help and respect each other..
  There is light in the darkness.
  There are plenty of reasons to be afraid, but we can still live without fear.

This is the beginning of the church year, when we start again, one more time, and we are reminded – the world can be made new.  There is reason for hope.  The light will come among us and shine through us.

If you ask me why I know this, I will tell you:  an angel told me.  Sometimes, that angel is you.

Third Sunday of Advent

Luke 1:26-56

Today’s scripture is the tale of two women, women it turns out who had famous sons.

Mary of Nazareth is young, unmarried, and pregnant.  That means she is in trouble, about to lose her future marriage (although we learned last week that fiancé Joseph pulled through and that turned out better than it might have).  The news of a baby coming can’t have been welcome to her.

Elizabeth is old, married a long time without children.  She too is pregnant.  Perhaps she was overjoyed at the possibility, having waited a long time. 

We read that Mary travels to seek Elizabeth’s company.  An older, wiser cousin who can help her process this unsettling news?  A safe place to stay as her pregnancy begins to show, a shelter until she figures out what to do next?

Although the circumstances of these two pregnancies differ, both of these women were vulnerable, in danger.  Pregnancy has never been a truly safe condition.  So much can go wrong.  We sometimes forget how many women have died in childbirth over the years.  Or how many have been condemned for being pregnant inconveniently.  If we’re going to understand how these women saw God moving in their lives, we have to acknowledge their vulnerability.

The story tells us that Elizabeth celebrated Mary’s pregnancy.  Surely it helped Mary to have that support.  A baby is something to celebrate, even if the circumstances are uncertain.  And the story tells us that Mary also celebrated.  I wonder how long it took her to work around to that.  How she managed to get her head around that reality.  She decides this child is going to change the world.  Maybe every mother thinks that – she’s carrying a doctor, a famous actress, a priest.  Every child has the potential for greatness. 

We give great credit to the two men these women birthed – John the Baptizer and Jesus of Nazareth.  Both spoke to troubled times…violence, poverty, illness, Empire. Both gave voice to God’s Word, coming to people waiting for some good news.  Both pointed to reform and change – the coming of God’s reign among us.  These are miraculous births!

Before John and Jesus changed the world as we know it, they were raised by Mary and Elizabeth.  We put a lot of emphasis on the role God plays in raising up these prophets, and we should.  But what of the role their mothers played?  Who fed them, protected them, healed their skinned knees?  Who taught them to see God in the world around them? Who taught them to speak out for justice and change? Surely their mothers played a part in creating their vision and their commitment.

The story says that from the beginning Mary and Elizabeth shared a vision of what these babies might mean.  I like to picture them, young and old, both worried about what comes next.  Both determined to bring healthy babies into the world and both dreaming of the difference these babies will make.  Listen again to the way Mary described what God will do through this change that’s coming:

God’s strength will shape the world and scatter the proud who seem to be in charge.   

God has brought down the powerful and lifted up the powerless.

God has fed the hungry and sent the rich away.

God has rescued the people from Empire, and created the world of God’s promise.

She doesn’t say, “Oh, I hope this will be someday.”  She says, “It’s done!”  Then she has this baby, raises him, and sets him loose on the world to make the promise come true.

Theologians talk about God’s working in the world as a mystery of time…things that have been accomplished that haven’t yet happened.  It’s already and not yet.  Mary’s song is an already/not yet prophecy.  God’s way has come to be the way of the world and someday it will be so. 

Today’s angel message to Mary is that things that are coming are already accomplished.  It’s a message of hope and possibility.  What we can believe, we will one day see.  What we can imagine as coming from the heart of God, we can create as God’s way on earth.

This Christmas many of us are struggling with unimaginable things happening around us.  If I had told you last year that the United States would end food aid to the world and to our own people, would you have believed me?  Would you have believed that Gaza would be flattened, Ukraine in limbo, health insurance cut off, drug lords pardoned and fisherfolk bombed in their boats, hardworking people deported without process, education programs cut short…  Every day I hear people – all of us – say, “How can this be?”  We feel powerless.

The angel tells Mary that what needs to change is already changing.  That even a young peasant girl in trouble can be an agent of miracles.  That the next baby born, or the one graduating from high school this year, may be the leader who makes a difference.  And in the meantime, while we’re waiting for history to turn and the world to shift, God is with us.  No matter the trouble around us, God is here.  We are not alone.  Those who seem to be in charge will not have the last word.  Tell everyone who longs for good news:  God who has come is also coming.  The poor will be lifted up, the proud scattered, the hungry fed.  The world CAN change and will change. 

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Second Sunday of Advent

Matthew 1:18-25

This Advent we are reading the story of Jesus’ birth through the eyes of people who encountered angels and through those encounters became players in God’s good vision for life.  Before Matthew tells the story of Joseph, in a predicament, he gives us a genealogy of Joseph.  This isn’t a genealogy like Ancestry.com, which traces generations backwards and finds amazing surprises.  Matthew knows where he’s going before he starts.  He doesn’t much care about physical ancestors so much as he wants us to know that the spiritual ancestors of a carpenter named Joseph, a first century peasant, are the great people of Jewish history.  Joseph inherits faith and trust in God from a long line of people who followed God’s way, beginning with Abraham, tracing through the greatest king David and several prophets, right up to Matthew’s time.  There aren’t the genealogical surprises like those found on Tracing Your Roots, but there are some big spiritual surprises.  In a line of famous men, Matthew has placed three women:  Rahab, the prostitute who helped Israelite spies escape from Jericho before it was conquered; Ruth, the widow who persuaded her husband’s cousin Boaz to take her as a second wife after she moved to the land of Judah with Naomi her mother-in-law; the unnamed wife of Uzziah, whom King David abducted, raped, and took into his harem, having made sure that her husband was killed in war.  She becomes the mother of famed King Solomon.  These aren’t just any women, but three women whose interaction with men involved their sexuality, the men’s power of life or death over them, and the continuity of God’s people into a future. 

In that setting we read about Joseph, inheritor of this history, who learns that Mary, his fiancée, in pregnant, not by him.  The angel comes in a dream to tell him, “Don’t be afraid of Mary’s condition.  God is going to use it to work miracles for the people.”  The prophecy is quoted, “Behold, ,a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.”  This is the prophecy people quoted in their hope for a Messiah to free them from Rome. There are a couple of things we should know about this prophecy.  First, it’s a mistranslation of the original Hebrew, which says, “a young woman shall conceive.”  It foretells a birth, but not necessarily a miraculous one.  Simply the birth of someone who will rescue the people.  Second, in the first century to say that someone was born of a Virgin was to claim that person as the Emperor, entitled to power.  In that age, every emperor crowned was given a new birth story, telling how he was the son of his mother and a god and therefore himself divine.  To claim virgin birth for Jesus is to set his future kingdom alongside Rome, equal in significance and glory.

Over time this claim led Christians to assert that Jesus was “born of the Virgin Mary.”  It’s a physical miracle. And it may be.  But it also may be a way to say something spiritual about the significance of Jesus at a point in time when people would have been unaware of the physical miracle they were projecting.  Some scholars today suggest it’s more likely that Mary was raped, perhaps by a Roman soldier.  It’s curious that the three women Matthew places in Jesus’ lineage were also physically at the mercy of men around them.  Certainly rape or physical abuse would have been a common experience of women in the first century when they were considered property, without rights, living under military occupation.  Even today rape is a much more common reality that we like to admit and women can easily find themselves with unexpected pregnancies.  However we understand this story, miracle or predicament, it would have been unwelcome for Joseph to find his new wife pregnant with another’s child.

Because Joseph is a kind man, he doesn’t want to accuse Mary of infidelity publicly, condemning her to punishment, social ostracism and possible death.  He will “put her away quietly.”  But the angel insists, “Don’t be afraid to marry her.  The child is about to become a great blessing to the world.”  So Joseph takes a chance on Mary.  Perhaps he already loved her.  He completes the marriage and becomes the father of the one we call Messiah.

Last week the message from God was that blessing can come from difficult circumstances and from taking risks.  This week Joseph is asked to take a risk with Mary in order to bless the world.  He has every right to reject her and condemn her to an even more difficult life than a peasant girl would normally expect.  But he takes a chance.  I’m thinking God is telling us that blessing comes from taking a chance with people.  Many folks face hardship in life, often through no fault of their own.  How much blessing happens because someone sees them without judgement and dares to offer another chance?

When Jesus grew into adulthood and accepted his ministry, he went about the country taking a chance on folks others had rejected.  Unclean women who were bleeding.  Unclean people with leprosy whose bodies were decaying day by day.  Unclean tax collectors who were hated by their villages.  People with mental illnesses who couldn’t function.  Those with crippling injuries who couldn’t work.  Children.  Pharisees.  All sorts of people no one else wanted to befriend.  He welcomed them, accepted them, included them, and helped them become whole.

When we were feeding the folks at LaGrave on First we saw what happens when people on the street are given shelter, sobriety, work skills, and trust.  Sometimes they turn their lives around.  Every week you give me the privilege of saying to people in our community, “You matter to us.”  You give them a chance to stay housed, to have transportation so they can work, to receive prescriptions so they can be healthy.  You are taking a chance and shifting the future of folks bit by bit.  When we said “yes” to Global Friends, we took a chance to welcome New Americans into our community.  They have become our friends and continue to make this town a better place.  My daughter and all the special ed teachers in this town take a chance on children who are struggling every day, and with support some of them are learning new ways to grow into healthy adults.

The angel message:  Don’t be afraid; take a chance; trust this person…is an important message in this moment in our history.  Day after day we’re hearing another message from what constitutes the Empire of our time. 

• I don’t want them here.  They are the worst of the worst. Immigrants aren’t welcome.

• Those who live in poverty are lazy.  They don’t deserve to eat, or to have health care.

• We don’t want to see people without shelter.  They are a danger on our streets.

•  If one person commits a crime, thousands of others should be punished – for their color or their language or their birthplaces.

• Drug trafficking is an excuse to kill people without due process or trial or even evidence.

• Often all this and more is spoken in the name of God, of Christianity.

The message to Joseph gives us a way to push back on those who would dehumanize or divide us.  We are about to celebrate God coming into this world to redeem it.  To show us how to live by a better vision – to trust each other, care for each other, lift one another up.  We are invited every day to take a chance on people, some of whom may be in trouble, different from our expectations, a little scary.  That is God’s way.  One person at a time we can lift people up, give them a chance to put life together, invite them into community.  When we do, slowly the world changes.  That’s what it looks like when we become a blessing, and when God redeems the world through God’s people.  That’s the world we are building together.

First Sunday of Advent

Genesis 12:1-3

Today we begin the celebration of Advent, the time of getting ready for Christmas.  It’s also the beginning of the church year calendar – so Happy New Year!  Like any New Year’s celebration, it’s a good time to reflect on what’s been and what’s next.  A time for taking stock, celebrating accomplishments, and setting goals.  This year for Advent, I thought it might be fun to focus on the voices of angels.  Angels play a big role as messengers from God in scripture.  They help us put into perspective what’s happening in the world and how God is moving around us and through us.

There are plenty of angels in the Hebrew scriptures explaining how God’s people came to be.  In the story of our ancestors Abraham and Sarah angels show up at key moments, often arriving in the form of visitors traveling thorough.  They come to tell Abraham and Sarah that the promise of children is about to come true, even though they are so old they have given up on that one.  They come to tell them that Sodom is about to be destroyed and perhaps they want to warn their nephew Lot to move on.   Today’s scripture isn’t strictly spoken in an angel voice, but it’s a clear message from God.  “Move on. It’s time for something new.  You are to become a blessing for the whole world.”

Abraham and Sarah are part of what we call our “origin story.”  They explain how God’s people became God’s people.  In the ancient pre-history of the people of Israel, there were wandering tribes known as “Habiru” or “Hebrew” which moved across what is now Israel.  They followed their herds, looking for pasture and water.  Sometimes they moved into the neighborhood and stayed.  Sometimes they moved on.  In scripture we read, “A wandering Aramean was my father,” and we hear echoes of these wandering tribes.  Often important stories aren’t so much remembered as they are written backwards.  At a future point in time people will want to explain how their relationship with God works, and they will tell a story about how it might have come to be.  This story says that Abram and Sarai were living with Abram’s father Tehra in Hebron, now in Iraq.  They had many flocks and servants.  God spoke to them and urged them to move to a new land, which turned out to be Canaan.  God promised that if they went, they would become fabulously wealthy, but more importantly, they would become the ancestors of a great nation.  “By you all the families of earth shall be blessed.”

A thousand years later, when God’s people were living in Canaan, they remembered that they came from wandering stock.  And they understood that their relationship with God asked them to be a conduit of blessing – God to all people’s on earth.  It all started with Abraham and Sarah, they said.

What is it that we learn from Abraham and Sarah?  One important lesson is that they were willing to take a chance. “Go!” God said, and they did.  As the poet reminds us, “That has made all the difference.”  Way back before we can even imagine, some shepherds with hungry sheep decided to pack their tents and follow good pasture.  A thousand years later when the story was told, the storytellers reminded people that when you strike out in faith, good things can happen.  God can be in them.

In 1989 I moved my family to Seattle to pastor a smallish church in the north end.  It was the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and a member of that church had started a hospice for those people dying of AIDS.  That was the time when everyone died.  The larger church in Seattle said homosexuality was a sin, but that woman showed me that people are people and everyone deserves respect care.  What an important lesson that was.  It would have taken much longer to learn if I hadn’t been in that place. 

In 2019 you sent me to ask what was needed at LaGrave on First.  Do you remember?  We thought we could bake a few cookies!  Then we served thousands of meals over 5 years and now the organization itself provides meals every night.  That journey began with one question.  Who knew we’d become the church that feeds people!?

As you reflect this Advent, I hope you will be able to identify moments in your own lives when you took a chance, did something unexpected, and changed everything.  Maybe it was saying “yes” to a job or a person.  Maybe it was staying put when life got hard, adjusting to new medical realities or financial circumstances.  Maybe it was trying a new volunteer opportunity or learning a new skill.  When you look back, where do you see angels pointing out new possibilities.

I also hope you’ll ask yourself how you have been a blessing to others.  Abraham didn’t move just to make himself wealthy.  Our ancestors were clear:  God blesses us so we can bless all people.  Where have you been a blessing?  Who have you mentored or helped in other ways?  Who has eaten? Or learned a new skill?  Or known you to be a life-saving friend?  Who has hope because of where you have been and who you are?  Angels don’t just talk to people in the Bible in years past. Angels whisper in our ears.  They show us new places to go and new ways to be.  And they go with us, so we never go alone.  I hope by the time we’ve walked this Advent journey, we see places where angels have blessed our lives, and helped us to bless others.

Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Acts 2:43-37

On this Sunday before the United States celebrates Thanksgiving, it seems good to stop for a few minutes and think about gratitude.  Often when we’re asked what we’re grateful for, people list things that make them happy.   We’re grateful for food, clothing, and shelter.  My granddaughter is grateful that her mom bought a second car.  I met a young man this week who said he didn’t care about things, but he loved travel experiences.  Instead of wrapped presents this holiday, his dad is taking him to New York for Thanksgiving and his mom is taking him to the Caribbean for Christmas.  He knew how lucky he was, and he was grateful.

Sometimes we think gratitude is connected to good circumstances in life:  enough money to be safe and well-fed, friends and family near to us, a good job, a chance to be useful to others.  These are easy to be grateful for.  But spiritual leaders tell us that the attitude of gratitude doesn’t have to be connected to happy situations.  Gratitude is a way of looking at life, no matter what’s happening around you.

The Psalms in our scripture are full of prayers of thanksgiving.  People thank God for beauty, for harvest, for protection, for victory.  All these are good things.  But the Psalm weren’t written only when ancient Israel was doing well.  Many of them reflect tribal warfare, uncertain harvests, or illness.  Even in difficult circumstances, or maybe because of difficult circumstances, people were grateful for God’s presence in their lives.

Our scripture today describes an idealized version of early Christian communities.  People gathered for worship, for potlucks, and to support each other.  They ate “with glad and generous hearts.”  We know that first century followers of Jesus didn’t have easy lives.  Many were enslaved.  Most were poor, in debt, at the mercy of rich overlords.  Some were persecuted for their faith.  All lived under the thumb of Rome.  Yet when they got together they had a good time and they were grateful.

As we celebrate this week, there will be people celebrating because we have pooled our resources to share with others.  We paid half a utility bill this week and Tri-County social services paid the other half so a family has heat and lights.  We paid another family’s back taxes – only a few hundred dollars, but it means they won’t lose their mobile home at the end of the year.  We helped feed 220 people on Monday traditional Thanksgiving dinner and another 100 on Friday.  They were all grateful, although they didn’t all eat the vegetables.  Having enough to share can make us grateful for that privilege.

When we celebrate this week, there will be some folks who have little reason to be grateful.  I think of those whose countries are at war:  Ukraine, now being asked to accept a peace agreement that favors Russian aggression; Gaza, where an uncertain ceasefire is only the beginning of a long road of recovery; Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria, Myanmar, Venezuela, and so many other places where life is dangerous.  But even there, people look around and find reasons to be thankful. 

Willie Nelson, the country singer, is reported to have said once, “When I began to count my blessings, it changed my life.”  Nine years ago our friend Pat and I celebrated Thanksgiving in the transplant house at Mayo Clinic.  Volunteers brought us piles of food.  We were warm and well-cared-for.  I was healing.  It was a good celebration.  I’ve told you before that while we were in Rochester for a season, we kept a daily gratitude journal, listing every evening at bedtime all the good things that had happened that day.  There were successful procedures, gifts of food, flowers on the porch, and always kind and helpful people.  Like Willie Nelson, I would say that the practice of looking for some reason to be grateful every day changed the whole experience of serious illness.  There are many times in life when we can’t change what is happening to us, but we can change how we react to what’s happening around us.  It’s not always easy.  We don’t have to do it perfectly.  We only have to make a beginning, see one good thing, and that will make a tiny crack in negativity and start the process of transformation.

There are lots of myths surrounding our story of the first Thanksgiving.  We imagine it was much more of a feast than it probably was.  Life in a new place wasn’t easy.  The work was backbreaking; many died of illnesses we never experience now.  But there was a harvest and hope for food to last the winter.  There were neighbors who helped and friends.  They were thankful.  Over the years our country has celebrated Thanksgiving when times were plentiful and when they were not.  During peace and war.  Through pandemics which separated us, after natural disasters, and in times when we prospered.  This year we’ll feast in a variety of ways.  But the most important won’t be how much food is on the table or how many people are around it.  The most important will be our own gratitude.  To be thankful for what is and hopeful for what may be.  Thanks be to God, who gives us life and allows us to enjoy it, to treasure each moment, to share it with friend and sometimes strangers.  And to be grateful.

Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Revelation 22:13

We know Jesus through our experience.  There is no other way to become acquainted with one who lived so long ago and who lives in ways we can barely understand through church, scripture, and good works and in the faces of our neighbors.

– Diana Butler Bass

Since we live in a sort-of-small town, it’s pretty common when a person’s name comes up in conversation for someone to ask, “Do you know them?”  Then folks wrack their brains, muttering the name over and over, until someone replies, “Yes, I’ve heard of them.  But I don’t really know them.”  The only way we truly know someone is if we have experience with them, some kind of relationship, however superficial.  We know the people we’ve spent time with, worked with, shared neighboring hockey seats with, or in some way interacted.  The more experience we have with someone, the more we can affirm, ”Yes, I know them.”

So what happens when someone asks us, “Do you know Jesus?”  Jesus lived 2000 years ago.  None of us interacted with him during his lifetime.  There’s a lot of distance between us; we live in very different parts of history and vastly different cultures.  Yet people often say, “Yes, I know Jesus.”   Knowing Jesus begins with hearing his story – in Sunday school or worship, by reading the Bible or picking up information from the public domain.  But we’ve heard stories about George Washington and Amelia Earhardt and we wouldn’t say we know them.  Beyond the story, Bass points out that we know Jesus when we have some experience of him.  We’ve been reading her experiences with Jesus this fall, which led her to name Jesus as her friend, her Savior, the presence of God.  I hope you’ve been asking yourselves over the past few weeks about how you know Jesus and how he shows up in your life.

We’ve come to the end of this book, Freeing Jesus. Now is a good time to summarize how 21st century people experience Jesus who lived in the first century.  We certainly begin with his story, but only in the ways that story enters into the story we are telling about who we are and how we understand ourselves today.  When the life Jesus lived begins to inform the lives we are living, we can say that we encounter him in a real way.  When the values Jesus stood for and the lessons he taught match up with our values and his lessons answer questions we’re asking, then his life informs our living.  We can say we meet Jesus in the thick of our everyday lives.

I want us to look this morning at two ways that happens.  First, Jesus spent much of his time thinking about and critiquing the systems of his day – the way society around him, powerful and powerless people, worked.  Much of his conversation about how we should live highlighted what wasn’t working in the villages and cities of Roman Empire.  He had harsh words for rich and powerful men who enjoyed luxuries while neighbors went hungry, lacked shelter or clothing.  He encouraged people to live in peace in spite of the violence around them.  He used his abilities to heal people crippled by disease.  Jesus often talked about the reign of God as a new way of living in society where everyone had what they needed to thrive.  I’m confused these days when churches and governments denounce DEI, Diversity Equity and Inclusiveness, because Jesus was always paying attention to those who were different or outcast, those who were treated as lesser than the rich and powerful, and those who were outcast.  His teaching lifted up a better way for people to form communities that truly cared for everyone.  I find that I encounter Jesus when I’m applying those values to the way we live together in this moment in history.  Jesus calls us to rethink how society works and to make life better for everyone, and when we do that work, we meet him in the middle of it.

The second way we experience Jesus is in his acceptance and love for everyone.  Many folks talk about being born again or saved and finding their lives changed by Jesus.  I suspect at the heart of those experiences is acceptance.  Hearing that Jesus loves and values us, particularly if we’re not feeling cherished by anyone else, can be transforming.  The stories of Jesus show him talking to those who lived on the margins, listening to women, the ill, foreigners, impoverished folks.  Jesus saw people as whole and valuable, and they responded by seeing themselves that way, too.

We all benefit by hearing that God loves us, Jesus values us and believes in us.  We hear that from Jesus through the voice of his community.  We form a relationship with Jesus by forming relationships with each other, which his people.  Everyone who comes to this place should hear words of welcome, inclusion, respect and joy.  We hear Jesus naming us a friend when we name each other that way.  We experience the presence of Jesus in the heart of the community here.

We also share the love and acceptance of Jesus with others when we treat them with respect and dignity.  This week I had the privilege of sharing Jesus’ love through the community fund.  Because you are generous, we bought antibiotics and pain meds for a young man with a toothache.  His gratitude was even more generous than our funds.  We also gave a young mom a check for back rent so she could stay in her apartment.  We gave her $200 so that she has time to earn the $200 she needs to finish the payments next month.  She too was profoundly grateful. We said to her:  we trust you, we believe in you; we’re giving you this without strings attached or judgment.  It’s the kind of thing Jesus would do, and when we do it, we keep him alive among us. When we hold Jesus’ vision for what life can be, and do the work he taught folks to do, he is alive and thriving here. We learn to know him by receiving his love and passing it along.  Like the old song, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”  Jesus is the love, and he lives within it wherever love moves among us.     

Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 9:18-20

The Christian faith is different from what the world teaches.  The Christian faith is not “seeing is believing,” but rather, “believing is seeing.”  We must open our eyes and hearts and see Jesus’s presence in our lives. We need to see him in the places that we dare not to look and dare not to think about.  – Grace Ji-Sun Kim

This fall we’ve been “reading” Freeing Jesus by Diana Butler Bass.  We’ve considered some of the ways she understands Jesus in order to think about who Jesus is for each of us.  We’ve heard about Jesus as friend, teacher, savior, Lord, and way.  Each of you may have resonated with one or more of those descriptions.  Today we think about Jesus as the presence of God in the world and with us. 

There are two key ways in which human beings think about God.  We can think about God who is holy, divine, and utterly different from us.  That is God as other.  God in heaven – mighty, controlling, pure.  The word the church uses for that God is “transcendent,” a being that transcends or is above and beyond all that we are.  We recognize that God from many Bible stories and church services.  The other way to think about God is the God who has chosen to be born in Jesus.  This is the God who comes to earth.  Immanuel, God-with-us.  This is the God who seems near to us when we’re in trouble, when we pray, when we hold a new grandchild, when the world seems full of goodness and light.  The word the church uses for that God is “immanent,” a being as close as breath or a heartbeat.  We recognize that God from the Psalms and the testimony of both ancient and modern people who speak of God’s love.  The immanent God, known in Jesus, is the God of presence. Jesus who said to his disciples, just as he was leaving them, “I am with you always to the end of the age.”

You may be able to tell stories about moments in your life when you felt that presence.  I suspect those times are precious to you.  People associate words like “comfort” and “hope” and “courage” with those experiences, and they convince us that God’s love is real.

I’ve been preaching about transcendence and immanence a long time, and I want to suggest a further option for you to consider.  The transcendent God watches over us; the immanent God draws near to us.  I’ve come to believe that God is in us – not just near but a part of the fabric of who we are, of all that is.  We’re coming up on Christmas when we’ll be talking about God born as Jesus.  Certainly those who knew Jesus said they saw God in him and through him. We consider it a great mystery and miracle that God would come to humanity as human.  Ancient Hebrews believed the Spirit of God was a wind or a breath.  What if God’s Spirit is in our first breath and every breath we take after that?  What if the spark that is our life is the very presence of God?  What if when God creates all that is by blowing across nothingness like a wind and speaking the words of creation, the very existence comes from the exhaled breath in those words?  God is not just near, but God inhabits our lives and the life of all that is?  

I know there’s a lot of evidence of humanity not being at all like God.  We could make long lists!  But there’s also a lot of evidence that God is truly present in the lives of many folks.  We list those signs of light every week!  Grace Kim invites us to believe in the presence of God in the presence of Love, and because we believe God is there, we see that evidence all around us.  We all know that when we’re looking for things going wrong, it’s easy to see them.  But it’s also true that when we’re looking for things toing right, we see those too!  A month ago in the middle of my moving process, I realized that when you all asked how things were going, I told you everything that was broken or missing or not happening on time.  But the greater truth was all of you were helping me and lots of good things were coming together and I really like my new house.  Sometimes we make a choice about what to look for and that’s what we see.  Believing Jesus is still living and breathing through us helps us see him every day.

We talk about doing God’s work often.  Bass reminds us this:  We do not build a kingdom: we participate in creation.  Just as God breathed creation into existence, our living, breathing presence in this world continues that creation.  When we choose to see God at the heart of it, that’s what we create – a godly, loving reality that gives this world Life. 

Grace Kim invites us to look for Jesus every day.  We look for him where we dare not:  perhaps in the face of the mom whose SNAP benefits aren’t there yet, who has to put groceries back; or the face of those unhoused in our country, those misplaced by war in far places.  Jesus tells us he will always be with those in need.  But we will see him also when we hand someone a check for a rent deposit, when we fill food boxes, when we speak up for peace. 

Believing in the presence of Jesus among us and even in us, gives us courage to hope. Courage to keep trying to right wrongs and stand for justice.  Courage to believe that the small acts of kindness we manage will multiply and the cruelty of some will end. 

Some folks are waiting for the return of Jesus to bring God’s reign on earth.  We say Jesus never left.  He’s here with us.  And we can see God’s ways breaking through all around us.

All Saints Day

Hebrews 12:1-2

Today we are celebrating All Saints Day, which was officially yesterday.  It’s a day dedicated to “the great cloud of witnesses” who have over the centuries attested to the importance Jesus holds in their lives. Sometimes we honor those friends and family members who have entered eternal life on this day, but we did that on Memorial weekend this year.  Some traditions have a procedure for naming particular outstanding persons as saints.  Usually some kind of miracle is required for this recognition, as well as exemplary service and often martyrdom.  It makes the application list rather short.  Our traditions have held instead that all those who follow Jesus are among the saints.  We are part of the “great cloud of witnesses” by virtue of living our lives in connection with Jesus.

This fall we’ve been “reading” the book Freeing Jesus by Diana Butler Bass.  In each chapter she has described one way to understand Jesus – friend, teacher, savior, way…  I’ve been surprised how each week we end up in much the same place, putting emphasis on living in community and working out together what following Jesus looks like.  It’s a hands-on process of putting faith into action.

Over the past few years we’ve talked often about life in the first century among those who heard Jesus story and tried to adopt his way of life.  They also emphasized community.  They enjoyed meals and conversation, they watched out for one another, and they worked out among themselves how to love God and neighbor as Jesus inspired them.

In our present time, we are facing some of the same disruptions to life that the first century experienced.  We are watching abusive power harm some of our neighbors.  We’re watching leaders claim the power of empire for themselves.  We’re unsure of how to make a difference or to stand up for democracy and justice. Wise folks suggest that we do much of what first century folks did – enjoy meals and conversation, watch out for one another, do our best to love God and neighbor.

All Saints Sunday gives us an opportunity to reflect on how that happens among us and to name some of the folks who have taught us about living our faith and impacting our community.  I want to invite you to share names or even stories of people who have been important to you.  I know that not everyone enjoys speaking aloud in worship, so please feel free to name people in your own heart.  If you’re watching online or reading this after the face, take the time to reflect on your own experiences.

Let’s begin with people who influenced us when we were children.  They may be family members or Sunday School teachers or coaches.  Who are your adult mentors who stand out in your memory as showing you what it means to follow Jesus or live with integrity?

Now I invite you to think about famous people who have influenced you.  Musicians?  Philanthropists? Authors? Politicians?

Next let’s think about contemporary people who make life better for us.  Who are some of the people in your life that you value?

Who are the folks who stand up for justice, near or far, in this present moment?

Finally, I want you to think about yourself as one of the Saints of God.  I won’t ask you to share this part aloud because that would put us all on the spot.  But please think about one person you helped in the past week, even if it was just a phone call or a smile…

Think about a value you hold that makes the world better…

Think about one thing you can do in the week ahead to show your faith…

We aren’t just people waiting for God to make the world better, we’re people who hold a vision of God’s justice and mercy and peace.  When we act on that vision we are co-creators with God of God’s reign on earth.  We’re bringing life with God into reality all around us.  It’s not just miracles or big deeds that make us saints, it’s participating in the community that believes loving your neighbor matters.  Treating people with respect and dignity matters.  Living with hope matters.  It’s easy to be overwhelmed or to give up, but that’s why we hang out together.  We need to remind each other that what we are doing makes a difference.  God is counting on us to be a part of the new thing God is doing among us.  We can claim that for our own. 

Look around at the saints who have gathered here.  Let’s thank one another for what each one is doing to make God’s way real among us today.

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

John 14:6

There is a journey you must take.  It is a journey without destination.  There is no map.  Your soul will lead you.  And you can take nothing with you.

– Meister Eckhart

Christianity is not, in essence, a set of teachings, but a way of life. Christian faith is a vision of flourishing that bears witness to God’s love everywhere at work in the world.  To say, “God is love” is neither sentimental nor facile; rather, it expresses the truth that God’s love is the ever-present, ever-active source and sustenance of all reality.

– Norman Wirzba

We are walking our way through Diana Butler Bass’s book Freeing Jesus this fall, as a way to consider who Jesus might be for each of us.  So far we’ve talked about Jesus as friend, teacher, savior and lord. Today we’re looking at Jesus as the Way, as in our scripture, “I am the way the truth and the life.”  Just a note about process:  Next week we’re going to take a break and celebrate All Saints’ Day.  In preparation for that, I’d like you to think about people in your life, living or in eternity, who represent the love of God for you.  We’re going to share some of those names next week during the message.  Then we’ll finish Bass’s book before Advent.

Since we’re more than halfway through this project I’ve been reflecting on the overall themes emerging from many ways to think about Jesus. I’ve been surprised by how often I find myself saying, “This isn’t a formula, it’s an adventure.”  In each of the ways we’ve looked at Jesus we’ve found that there isn’t a “right” answer to discover, but a relationship to be lived. As we’ve learned more about the first century experience of Jesus, both during his lifetime and after, we’ve discovered that being a disciple wasn’t like attending a training academy with a fixed curriculum.  You didn’t go through the program and emerge a “Jesus person,” kind of like becoming a Marine after bootcamp.  Instead Jesus invited people to live with him for a while and in the daily interaction of the community, they learned and grew into something more than when they started.

Often when we hear, “I am the way,” we understand that like a curriculum or a roadmap.  You follow it, memorize the content, follow all the directions, and when you finish you arrive, you graduate, you’ve got it.  But Jesus didn’t have a scope and sequence or a final exam.  His band of disciples walked between the villages and talked with people.  He told stories and when he finished people weren’t sure what the stories meant.  They had to talk it over and think about it. People asked questions and Jesus had to think about how to answer.  They responded to the news of the day.  They were all part of shaping what the ministry was becoming. 

Meister Eckhart tells us that life with Jesus is a journey.  The experiences you have along the way shape where the journey goes and what it means.  I have a friend who used to put his family in the car and drive out of town on a small road, not the interstate. When they came to a stop sign, they had to choose – right, left, or straight.  At each pause, they chose again.  They never knew where they were going until they got there and all of them were a part of deciding the way. 

Your journey with Jesus is like that.  It’s not a fixed program you have to try to get right.  It’s an experience and Jesus is your companion.  The choices you make along the way, the times you learn something new or change your mind, are a part of the way.  You are helping to create what it means for Jesus to be your way.  Bass talks in each chapter about times in her life when her faith was quite different from what it is now.  She spent years in very conservative churches, trying to follow the rules and get everything right.  Her wisdom for us is that “right” isn’t a thing.  There are many ways to follow Jesus, and no one can tell you what’s right for you.  It’s not like hopping in the passenger seat and waiting for Jesus to drive you to the right place.  It’s like taking the wheel, inviting Jesus to ride along, and working out together where you want to go.  If one map doesn’t work so well, then try another. Have a conversation about what would work better and give it a try.

Those of you who have experienced good marriages know that the plan you started with isn’t the plan you followed.  Life happens along the way.  Your interests change.  You try new jobs. You learn better ways of communicating.  As you mature in your understanding of yourself, you mature in your relationship.  No one dictates what will happen for everyone; you work it out together.  Following Jesus is working out your life in conversation with him and with all the ways God speaks through people and circumstances so we can hear.  We don’t always know where we’re going – but we know who we’re going with.

Long ago a young teacher told me that the problems of troubled youth would all be solved if we just posted the 10 commandments in the classroom and made everyone follow them.  Jesus was very familiar with the 10 commandments, but when people asked him about the law, he didn’t quote the 10.  Instead he said, “Love God.  Love your neighbor.  Love yourself.” I always thought that what troubled youth needed more was someone to love them, take them seriously and ask them where they wanted to go in life.   Loving relationships don’t follow a formula; they evolve in conversation.  Wirzba reminds us that Christianity isn’t following the rules – a map – it’s a way of life – a journey taken in company with God.

Jesus is God’s love made personal and real in our lives.  If we are going to follow him, we’re going to have to watch for where love shows up.  We’re going to have to let love direct us.  We’re going to have to work out together how to be love in the world.  Following Jesus as the way means waking up each day ready to see where love will take you.  How love will show up when you need it.  Who you will become when you let love guide you.  The way isn’t a rulebook or a roadmap, it’s a process.  It’s a journey you share, and Jesus is willing to share it with you if you ask him to. 

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 6:46-47

To say “our kinde Lord” was to say “our kin Lord.”  Jesus the Lord is our kin.  The kind Lord is kin to me, you, all of us – making us one.  This is a subversive deconstruction of the image of kingdo and kings, replacing forever the pretensions and politics of earthly kingdoms with Jesus’s calling forth a kin-dom.  King, kind, kin.

-  Diana Butler Bass, Freeing Jesus (p. 150)

Let’s review the ways Diana Butler Bass has suggested we might understand Jesus now that we’ve passed the half-way point in our series.  We’ve considered Jesus as friend and as teacher.  Last week we thought about Jesus as Savior, and suggested that meant not that we were “saved” from the world into heaven, but that the world was redeemed so we lived in community in a new, more holistic way.  This week we’re asked to examine what it might mean to say, “Jesus is Lord.”  In the first century, this was a claiming of the common phrase “Caesar is Lord” which would have been required of everyone in the Empire.  Caesar was the one and only ruler, whose will and every whim were followed.  He was seen as becoming divine because he was so worthy to rule over everyone.  When Christians said instead, “Jesus is Lord,” they were giving their ultimate loyalty to Jesus.  Some of them died for saying it publicly.

We are inclined to hear “Jesus is Lord” as the equivalent of saying “Jesus is Caesar.”  Not only does Jesus take first place in our lives, but he takes it in the same way Caesar ruled the Empire. He should replace Caesar as ruler.  That would indeed have been treasonous, and surely the phrase was understood that way in the first century, too.  But that’s not the only Christian way to understand Jesus as Lord.  Bass quotes Julian of Norwich as calling Jesus “our kinde Lord” using the middle English word “Kinde” to describe Jesus.  You’ll recognize the connection to our contemporary word kinde.  Even more than just being nice or “kind,” the word describes Jesus as being the merciful and just one who connects us as one family.  We’ve sometimes used prayers from the UCC worship resources which replaces the word “kingdom” with the phrase “kin-dom,” and “kinde” carries that connotation.  Jesus is the one who makes us “kin” and when we follow him we are related, one people, one community.

These are two very different options for understanding Jesus as Lord.  A powerful ruler, imposing his will on everyone versus the one who claims our loyalty because of his kindness and goodness, who unites us as one.  Bass doesn’t comment on the issue of Christian Nationalism in the context of Jesus as Lord because her book was written in 2021, when we weren’t focused on the rise of Christian Nationalism, but the difference in the ways of understanding Jesus as Lord illuminate the difference between following Jesus and being a Christian Nationalist.  Christian Nationalists say “Jesus is Lord,” meaning that Jesus should rule the earth, or at least our nation, as the supreme leader. It’s a claim of power.  It suggests that only those who follow Jesus are right and all others must sign on to being Christian, or at least agree to follow the Christian rules.  For some in that movement the rules include male superiority, white supremacy, the primacy of the oligarchs and wealth, the end of programs which help people who might be ill, or poor, or struggling in favor of rewarding those who seem successful – even though no one really succeeds without a little help.  This Jesus IS Caesar.  He’s in charge and he’s rewarding those loyal to him with wealth and power.  The problem is, this is a Jesus made in the image of those who worship wealth and power and not anything like the Jesus who lived and taught before the birth of Christianity.

That Jesus said things Christian Nationalists find disgusting:
Love your neighbor.
Welcome the stranger.
Share your food and clothing and shelter with those who are without.
Use power to help others. Do justice.

These are the principles the first Jesus followers practiced in their kin-dom because it’s the way he taught them to live.

Saying “Jesus is Lord” isn’t about changing who is in charge – Jesus instead of Caesar.  It’s about changing what being in charge means.  We follow Jesus’ principles rather than living by the values of the world.  Jesus is Lord is about being kind and merciful.  It’s about having compassion for people rather than judging their circumstances and dismissing their pain.  It’s about sharing bread and work and economic equity.  It’s about practicing peace, turning the other cheek, and forgiving.

Christian nationalists want the United States to be a Christian nation by giving Christians, especially white, male, straight Christins, the upper hand.  Those who follow Jesus practice living the way he showed us to live.  Then the nation, or all nations,  become fair and just and loving – a good place for everyone.  And if folks want to call that way of life Christian, so be it.  But if they want to call it Jewish or Moslem or Buddhist or humanist – that’s ok too, as long as the values are shared and benefit everyone.  Jesus isn’t Lord in order to make rich white Americans the best game in town.  Jesus earns authority among us by showing us the best way to live. We say, we’re part of his kin-dom because he’s inviting us all to this good life.  He becomes our Lord by helping us create the world which works for us all. 

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 2:10-11

We often thing of being “saved” as being rescued and when it comes to Jesus as Savior, the popular conception is one of Jesus snatching believers from the perils of hell.  Jesus saves us by taking us to heaven.  That is not, however, what the word “salvation” means.  The word “salvation” comes from the Latin salvus, which originally referred to being made whole, uninjured, safe, or in good health.  Salvus was not about being taken out of this life; it was about this life being healed.  In this sense, salvus perfectly describes the biblical vision of God’s justice and mercy, peace and wellbeing, comfort and equanimity.  This is the dream of a saved earth – one where oppression ends, mercy reigns, violence ceases to exist, and all live safely under their own “vine and fig tree.”  Jesus the Savior is the one who brings this dream to reality; he is peacemaker, light of justice and the good physician.  Jesus saves in all these ways and more.

-   Diana Butler Bass, Freeing Jesus (76-77)

We’re working our way through Diana Butler Bass’s book Freeing Jesus in order to discover a number of ways it’s possible to understand Jesus as someone who finds him important and wants to follow him.  Sometimes we think there’s just one way to understand Jesus – the RIGHT way.  But Jesus lived as a real flesh-and-blood person in a particular moment in time, and that means that he, like all humans, was complicated and multi-faceted.  He lived in relationship to many different people, and none of those relationships was identical to others.  He was subject to moods, hunger and exhaustion, frustration and great joy.  Jesus was, and for many of us IS, real.  So when we describe in a variety of ways, we’re affirming his real-life complexity.  That also means that we aren’t looking for the “right” words to describe Jesus; we’re exploring options.  The ones which speak to us are right for us.  The ones which don’t speak to us may be right for others.  It’s possible to be historically inaccurate or way off-base, but we’re not looking to prove anyone wrong about Jesus – just to find meaning for ourselves.

In the chapter about Jesus as Savior, Bass tells the story of some of the many ways she understood “Savior” in her own lifetime.  Like many teens, she spent some time in an evangelical youth ministry in which the purpose of talking about Jesus was to help kids have a particular kind of salvation experience (accepting Jesus as Savior).  This kind of conversion can be life-changing and important.  It is, however, based on some assumptions about Jesus which don’t have to be universally accepted.  This kind of theology of salvation begins with the assumption that people need to be saved.  That there is a fatal flaw in humanity, a factor of birth since Adam and Eve began it all, which defines being human as being sinful.  Sin isn’t just actions or thoughts you DO; it’s the condition of who you ARE.  Step two in this line of thought reminds us that God is perfect and holy and HATES sin.  Therefore, as one woman explained to me, “God isn’t able to look at me because I’m so sinful.”  Because Jesus lived at a moment in time when many religions dealt with their gods by offering sacrifices, nice roasted meat or grain to show God how much they were loved and honored, Jesus death is seen as the sacrifice which takes away sin.  God requires death to overcome sin, and a perfect Jesus is the sacrifice that makes people right with God.  Those who believe in this explanation, get to go to heaven when they die as a reward, their sin having been forgiven.

This particular story line has become so prevalent in Christianity that we forget there are other options, options endorsed by people who consider themselves Christian.  For instance, not everyone believes in “original sin.”  Most folks agree that humans are quite capable of doing things wrong, but not everyone believes that means humans ARE wrong.  Humans also get things right, acting with love and compassion and selflessness.  And who says God requires that we get everything right?  Making mistakes and learning from them can be an important experience. 

The Bible is full of stories describing God as loving, compassionate and merciful.  So why isn’t it possible for God to forgive people and stay in relationship with people because God forgives?  Who says something must bleed or someone must die in order to purchase forgiveness.  I don’t know about you, but in my lifetime I’ve forgiven some folks just because I wanted to.  It seems like God should have the same option.

During his years of ministry, in the stories we read about Jesus in the Bible, we often hear him tell people they are forgiven.  We see him invite people into a new way of living.  We watch him teach people new ways to live in community.  Jesus didn’t wait until after he was dead to give people new life.  He lived in a new way WITH people every day.  Bass suggests that this healing of the world and forming of community is also a way of being saved.  It’s a way of finding new life together.  Jesus is the savior who shows us how to heal the world, care for one another, reshape society to be just and merciful.  In her understanding Jesus saves us by including us in this new way of living, and we don’t have to wait for heaven to come in order to experience it.  We work it out together and enjoy it now.  We read in scripture how many groups of people formed Jesus communities and enjoyed salvation by caring for one another.  They said, “Jesus lives among us.”  They told their friends they have found new life.  Jesus is our Savior not just because we agree to words about him at one point in time, but also because we can spend a lifetime learning how to live from him and with him.  That’s an expression of God’s love for us, our love for God and each other.