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.

World Communion Sunday

You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. 

- John 13:13

Jesus was a sage, a teacher of wisdom.  Regularly addressed as “teacher” during his lifetime by followers, opponents and interested inquirers alike, he has been hailed by subsequent generations of Christians as more than a teacher, as indeed he was.  Nevertheless, he was not less than a teacher….Jesus was not primarily a teacher of either correct beliefs or right morals.  Rather, he was a teacher of a way or path, specifically a way of transformation.  – Marcus Borg, Jesus: A New Vision

This fall we are working our way through the book Freeing Jesus by Diana Butler Bass, in which she explores some of the ways people may understand who Jesus is.  Last week we considered what it means to call Jesus friend.   I hope you’ve been thinking about that from time to time during the week.  This week we’re asked to think of Jesus as teacher, a title he gave himself.  In fact, of the 90-some times Jesus is given a title in the gospels, about 2/3 of them are some form of the title teacher.

What does that title “teacher” mean to you?  Someone who is knowledgeable?  Authoritative? Demanding? Interesting or boring?  One stereotype is the teacher who pours knowledge into students.  I picture college students frantically trying to write down lectures word-for-word so they can repeat them on exams.  I suspect that’s an out-of-date image in the age of technology!  My daughter is a teacher of special needs elementary students.  Her current project is teaching kindergarteners how to behave so a classroom can function.  Her rules include don’t bite, swear, kick or punch others.  That seems like a good starting point.  Some of Jesus’ teaching recorded in the scriptures would include ways to behave and basic knowledge about God.  But Marcus Borg reminds us that Jesus’ primary purpose wasn’t correct belief or right behavior.

Think instead of those teachers you have found most inspiring.  The ones who asked the best open-ended questions.  The ones who assigned research projects that led to more questions than answers.  Teachers who were comfortable with rousing debate in class and were able to share basic knowledge AND invite you into the mysterious complexities of their chosen fields.  That comes closer to the kind of teacher Jesus was. 

The word often used for teacher in reference to Jesus is “rabbi” or “rabbouni” (which means “my rabbi”). When we hear that word, we think of Jewish rabbis today – the men and women who function much the same as Christian pastors.  They are indeed teachers, and administrators, and counselors and comforters.  That image places Jesus in the synagogue, and there are stories of Jesus teaching people gathered in local synagogues.  But in Jesus’ moment in history, there wasn’t a rabbinical tradition.  In fact, Bass tells us that Jesus is the first person called “rabbi” in written literature.  He wasn’t adopting a traditional role of leadership, but was forging something new.  He wasn’t the guardian of a body of knowledge to be share, but was a radical re-interpreter (along with others beginning this new role), crafting what came next when the priests who had been the religious leaders for centuries no longer played that role.  Soon after Jesus’ death the Temple in Jerusalem would be gone and the rabbis would rise to prominence.  Jesus helped begin that movement.

Jesus had knowledge of life and of God and shared it freely, but his teaching wasn’t a catechism or fixed body of knowledge you could memorize and hold the right answer.  His sayings were gems of truth, but they were designed to make you think what they might mean in your own context.  His parables or stories often turned things upside down, and even today those who read them find many layers of meaning in them. 
                “The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who hides yeast in flour and bakes bread.”
                  “Your neighbor is the outcast who becomes your caregiven.”
                  “God is like the shepherd who misplaces a sheep.”
We’ve all struggled to decide what these stories are really about.

Most of all, I think, Jesus taught by example.  “Come with me,” he said, “and I’ll show you the reign of God.”  Then he demonstrated boundless trust, incredible compassion, miraculous healing, anger at injustice, enduring patience, unquenchable hope.  Being with Jesus was a series of teachable moments in which people became like him by living with him.  That’s still true today.  When we are “with” him through stories, through mystical connection, or through his body the Church, we become like him.  He shapes us.  And we shape him.  That’s what a teaching relationship means.  We continue to grow together as we learn to love God and neighbor in a changing world. 

Because this is World Communion Sunday, we might add a little bit to Dr. Bass’s book and acknowledge that Jesus is our special teacher and also one among many teachers who have improved the world.  Jesus himself was shaped by the prophetic tradition of a thousand years of Jewish development.  He shaped the teaching of Mohammed, who knew and treasured the knowledge of Jews and Christians he met in his trading journeys.  We are blessed by the teachings of the Buddhists, the Taoists, the climate scientists, the medical researchers, the poets and the musicians.  We are part of a big beautiful world, rich in many traditions and cultures, all of which have wisdom to offer.  Jesus would have and still does welcome that diversity as we travel together seeking the best ways to love God and one another.  There is always more to learn!

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 7:33-34

“Close friendship is made up of three things:  somebody to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy.” 

- William Rawlins

 Welcome to week two of our sermon series following the outline of the book Freeing Jesus by Diana Butler Bass.  Last week we started with Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am?”  I want to remind you that this isn’t a quiz and we’re not looking for the one right answer, or even the three best answers.  The question isn’t, “Who is Jesus?” but rather “Who is Jesus to you?”  That question might have several answers, many of which change over time.

Today we’re exploring Jesus as friend, as one of the options Bass chooses because they speak to her.  I wonder if you have, at some time in your life, thought of Jesus as your friend.  Bass reports a time in her childhood at Sunday School looking atht a painting of Jesus welcoming children when she felt that Jesus was her childhood friend.  Reading this chapter this week I was reminded of the time when I first decided to enter ministry.  I was quizzed by many groups about why I felt called to do that.  I had forgotten that my answer at the time was that I wanted people to know  that Jesus is their friend.  It brought back a time when I understood Jesus to be my companion in life and my trusted support system – not a bad understanding at all.

To think of Jesus as our friend, we need to remember what friendship means, and what it doesn’t.  What do you expect of your closest friends?  A listening ear?  Someone to have your back through thick and thin?  A person who care deeply for you?  How about someone who’s fun to be with? Or someone who makes you laugh out loud?  All of those are good reasons to think of Jesus as a friend.  Here’s a not-so-good reason:  Jesus solves all our problems and takes away all our troubles.  I realized as I wrote that that we’re singing a song at the end which says just that.  It’s an oldy-goldy so we’re going to sing it anyway.  But Jesus doesn’t do that for us.  Life happens, whether we believe in Jesus or not, and not all of it is joyful.  It would be too bad if we expected Jesus’ friendship to mean that he made everything easy for us, because when we struggle, we might give up on Jesus.  We don’t do that for our other friends.  We don’t blame our friends for the things that go wrong in life, so why would we blame Jesus or turn away when life is hard?

Our second reading today suggests that friendship means three things:  somebody to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy.  Talking to Jesus can look like prayer, or it can be pouring your heart out as you think though a tough situation.  That’s easier if you have a sense that you can depend on Jesus to listen and to care.  That’s a big part of faith – believing that God/Jesus is paying attention with compassion and understanding. The third part may be a new idea for us – enjoying Jesus/enjoying God.

The enjoyment part is what Jesus and the disciples modeled.  We see them travelling together, eating together, maybe laughing together, always telling stories.  That same kind of friendship is what we’ve learned to see in the first century church:  people gathering, eating and drinking, working through problems together, protecting each other when they could.  Most of all, following Jesus meant having a good time with friends.  I think it still does.

As you think about Jesus as friend in the days ahead, consider especially this idea of enjoying each other.  The Bible is full of stories that suggest God loves us, not to control us, but to enjoy being with us.  What does it mean if God isn’t just some cosmic kind of love, but a being who likes us, wants to be with us, laughs at the Joke of the Day, feels great when we pull off a big project.  What if Jesus is the kind of friend that wonders what adventure we’ll think of next and can’t wait to have that with us?  That feels more real, more approachable to me.  We surely benefit from being friends with Jesus, and perhaps he benefits from being friends with us.

That kind of friendship brings people together for good.  Bass talks about her roots in the Society of Friends – the Quakers.  They were committed to seeing all people of the world as friends, and to connecting with people heart to heart.  When you see everyone as a friend, then you treat people with respect and dignity. We can think of friendship with Jesus not as just a one-to-one relationship, something that benefits us personally, but also as a friendship that connects all the peoples of the world.  How many of our current frustrations with how the country is going would be shifted if we all treated each other as friends.  One of our communion songs reminds us that “strangers now are friends.”  It may be easy to think ill of or mistrust a stranger, but not a friend.

Bass suggests that friendship between two people is very nice, but it has little impact on the world.  On the other hand, friendship that spanned hundreds or even millions of people would have an impact.  She says, “changes everything.”  I suspect that’s the kind of friend Jesus wants to be.  Someone who know everybody and can’t wait to introduce us so we know them too.  Someone who wants to be there for everyone and bring the whole world together, one people, working for a common good, enjoying life across every boundary.  Having Jesus as a friend is most real when it means we’re friends with everyone.

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

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

 Mattew 16:13-16, 20

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

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

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

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

Hear how Bass describes this in her life:

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

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

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

Bass continues:

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

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

PRIDE Worship at Family of God

Luke 15:1-10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Isaiah 58:6-14

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

 from Loves Braided Dance by Norman Wirzba, p. 150

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are two strands that braided together make us stronger:

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

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

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

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 12:29-40

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• When we can cheer for the Boy Scouts…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Colossians 3:1-13

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

- Love’s Braided Dance,  Norman Wirzba

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Without love the world literally falls apart.” 

With love we can pick up the pieces and heal.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Colossians 2:6-10, 16-19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

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

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

But this is not new.

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

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

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

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

• Hospitality: relying on the welcome of locals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus recognized and honored:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Richard Hagen

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Galatians 6:1-10

The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please by Rosemerry Trommer

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

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

Second Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 6:32-38

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Sunday after Pentecost

Proverbs 8:1-4

The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer, pages 8-9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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