Palm Sunday

Mark 11:1-11

I think this is my 49th Palm Sunday sermon.  The story of Jesus entering Jerusalem, welcomed by people who had heard rumors of his teaching and his healing is a great story.  It’s certainly worth reading every year.  Besides that, it calls us to celebration about how important Jesus still is in our lives.  We like celebrations.  Waving palm branches makes us feel young again. It honors the fact that we’ve signed on to something important.  It’s a good thing.

If you’re going to preach about something 49 times it has to mean something.  So I ask myself, “Why does this matter?”  In order to answer that question, we have to ask, “Why did it matter to the people who first remembered it and to those who wrote it down a couple of generations later?”  It’s a fun story to remember, and it certainly was part of what drew enough attention from the authorities to get Jesus executed.  But it has to be more than just the explanation of why Jesus was in trouble for every gospel writer to include it in their stories.

In the past few years scholars have suggested that this story is more than just an event.  It takes on mythological dimensions in the context of Passover week in Rome.  We’ve talked before about how Jesus is riding into Jerusalem from the east on a donkey, a symbol of peace, about the same time Roman legions are marching into Rome from the west, leaders on war horses, to keep peace by threatening violence as the crowds gathered for the Passover celebration.  It’s a stark contrast between peace and war.

We’ve also learned that the earliest Jesus followers formed communities of support to help them deal with the violence of their era during Rome’s conquering of most of their world.  They gathered together, shared meals and conversation, and talked about living in Jesus’ way as an antidote to the horrors of their daily lives.  If this story is about the contrast between Rome’s control of life through violence and Jesus’ way, what are some of the principles it would have represented to his early followers?  What can we lift up and apply to our world today?

Jesus honored everyone and treated them with dignity and respect.  We see him hanging out with the peasants who were his people, his neighbors for his whole life.  Fisherfolk and farmers.  We also see him welcoming women, who were almost always separate from whatever important was happening in the world.  He broke with custom to speak directly to women he didn’t know, and we are told that some women traveled with his band.  They were disciples. Jesus healed those who were ostracized from the villages because of illness – beggars, lepers, the mentally ill and more.   Jesus is often criticized for befriending tax collectors, representatives of the hated government.  We love the story of how he helped Zacchaeus turn his life around.  Leaders of the religious community came to talk theology with Jesus.  He challenged them to use their power and influence to help people rather than to make life harder for them.  Some of them also became disciples.  Jesus tells us that the whole of the law people can live by is love God, love your neighbor, love yourself.  In a world where it’s popular to emphasize difference and separation, to fear those who are strangers, Jesus gives us a new basis for community.  He asks us to look for our common humanity with all people and to treat everyone like a friend.  He often disagreed with some influential people; he challenged their thoughts and actions; he did so respectfully.

Jesus advocated for economic equality and generosity.  One of Jesus’ critiques of his own society was the heavy economic burden carried by the poor.  The peasants eked out a subsistence living because most of what they produced went to wealthy land owners.  Fishers owed a portion of every catch to Rome, who owned the waters.  Slaves worked for food.  The 1% lived in luxury.  Their life expectancy was double that of ordinary folk.  Jesus fed people and told those who had something to share with those who lacked basic necessities.  The Jewish people were used to the concept of owing a tithe of their crops and livestock to the Temple to support the priesthood.  It was an obligation.  But Jesus isn’t asking people to feel obligated to share what they have.  It wasn’t a requirement, it was a way of supporting each other.  If you have two coats, share one because you can.  The community that formed became its own safety net.  If you share now, when you are in need, someone else will share with you.  It’s like when we feed LaGrave or Christus Rex or when we use the community fund to help those who have no where else to turn.  We do it because we can, not because we’re forced to.

When that principle of community comes into our century, it doesn't look like putting everyone on welfare, as some assume.  It looks like economic equity.  Labor unions advocating for a fair wage for workers.  A minimum wage that actually covers expenses for those who work a 40 hour week.  For a few months our country had a child tax credit that lifted millions of children out of poverty.  Then we let it go.  Giving children the security of a place to live and enough food to eat is an investment in the future for all of us.  When children thrive, they become adults who contribute their abilities to us all.  It’s good that we help those who are in urgent need, but it would be even better if we advocated for policies that meant no one was one illness away from poverty. 

Jesus called for peace in the face of violence.  One of his best-known teachings is to turn the other cheek.  Remember he lived in a time when no one could fight a Roman soldier and win.  Everyone was at the mercy of their bullying.  But to turn the other cheek gives dignity to the one struck.  It gives control.  And it de-escalates the situation.  When the Empire is always at war, living in peace is an act of defiance.  It challenges violence.

Standing for peace in the 21st century is complicated.  I called Senator Hoeven’s office and asked for funding for Ukraine as a way of bringing peace.  My friend there suggested that billions of dollars in armaments was an odd way of peacemaking.  He’s right.  How do we stand up to aggressors without violating our commitment to peace?  Maybe it’s giving Israel defensive armaments and insisting they end the destruction of Gaza.  Maybe it’s negotiating a two-state solution.  Or a nuclear deal with Iran.  Maybe it’s choosing not to be the largest manufacturer of arms in the world.  Maybe it’s ending the threat of gun violence in our schools.  Maybe it’s learning how to talk with people whose politics differ from ours with respect.

Palm Sunday is a celebration about Jesus standing up to Rome and showing people a better way to live.  We get to decide what that means today.  And then we get to work together to make it happen.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Matthew 7:24-26

I want to remind us about where we are in the sermon enterprise right now. Last summer/fall we "read" After Jesus: Before Christianity over several months. Through that we learned that the earliest Jesus communities (in the first two centuries) were a diverse and loosely related number of small groups who lived by Jesus' teachings in a variety of ways. Their common focus, which they lived out with endless variation, was how Jesus' vision for the world made their own lives better when they put it into practice. As we finished that, I began to wonder: if we put Jesus' teachings into practice in our century, what would that look like? Which led me to the question: What did Jesus teach? What were the principles and practices that the first followers remembered and tried to implement?

We've been hanging out since then in the Gospel according to Matthew because it's the source of what's called The Sermon on the Mount, which is a collection of what people remembered about Jesus' teachings gathered into a single literary device- a sermon. They were written down two generations after Jesus died, so by the time they were gathered, they had already withstood the test of time. If we assume that a preacher tells you what he or she really wants you to know or do, then The Sermon on the Mount become what early followers thought Jesus really wanted them to know and especially do.

I'm finding the teachings a little repetitious. Jesus wants us to love God by loving one another. He admonishes us to feed and clothe people, to share resources fairly, to be just and inclusive and compassionate and merciful. This doesn't seem to me like rocket science and it makes me wonder why in 2000 years we haven't come much closer to making it the heart of our society than when he first suggested it. In fact, global culture as a whole may be further away from this vision of life than the small groups who hid themselves in plain sight and tried to help each other live good lives.

Let's remind ourselves that these early Jesus folk weren't about creating a new religion or reforming an old religion. They were about making life better for themselves and others. Their faith didn't focus on what they believed so much as what they did with and for one another. They trusted the teachings of Jesus to describe a better way of living and they trusted each other to put those teachings into practice.

Today's scripture says that those teachings are rock solid. If you build your life on their foundation, it will be strong. It will support you through the storms of life. You can rely on it.

This week I read a new novel by Kristin Hanna, The Women, which tells about the Vietnam war and the experiences of the women who volunteered as nurses there. It's a tough read because that was a terrible war. It mangled bodies and it mangled psyches. It took a long time for our country to honor the people who fought the first war we lost in our history. Reading the novel, I was reminded of those times- my high school and college years.  It was about war and it was about protests at home. Some of those protests against the war were made by those who had fought it. It was tangled up with the civil rights movement and the protests and riots of people standing up for racial justice. It was the beginning of the women's movement as women proved they had important knowledge and skill and wanted to be able to use it.

As I read I wondered about all those movements which had a vision for a better world. What happened to them? I remember when church meetings passed resolutions calling for racial equity and women's gatherings called for peace. I remember when our government worked to increase justice and not roll back rights. It made me nostalgic for that time, and sad that we quit too soon. was tempted to be discouraged.

Then I remembered that the earliest Jesus followers had no illusions that they could change their world. They had no political power. They were just keeping their heads down and trying not to be noticed. And they were doing what they could to live like Jesus.

This week I took one of our refugee friends to Spectra Health for an eye exam. While I was there, several staff people were helping a man who had come in from the street. He needed help with a housing issue. He didn't have an appointment. They called him by name. They adjusted their schedules so he could see the most knowledgeable folks for his situation. They were kind and respectful. They treated him like Jesus would have treated him.

I was still waiting when I got a call from a school social worker about a young man who needed to move out of his home. He couldn't get into an apartment until Monday. Would we pay for a hotel for the weekend? Of course we would! The next day she called to say we wouldn't be needed. One of his friends' families invited him to stay with them. They welcomed him.

I realized about that same time that I was going to be late to take another friend to work. I called my daughter and she stepped up to that plate. I double scheduled the refugee appointments needed for this coming week. One text and someone had taken half of that load.

Wednesday Kids are thinking about ways to help the earth and our community. We have 3 families involved in the program. Every one of them has a parent or a friend who knows how to plant for pollinators, native plants or medicinal herbs. They gave Mary the right website to learn what the kids needed to know. They offered to come next time and share knowledge.

Thinking about all these things in just one week, I realized that public movements may be quiet right now, but there's a lot happening to shape the world by Jesus' vision. People are kind and respectful, willing to help a stranger, acting on strong principles of community.  People are remaking the world on purpose by the way they live.  Surely if we are surrounded by so many examples of good, the vision of Jesus is being made real today.

Third Sunday in Lent

Matthew 7:12

In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Several years ago I led the memorial service for the annual district convention of Rotarians in our area.  The Rotary Four-Way Test (used to make decisions in business and all of life) is this:

1.  Is it the truth?

2. Is it fair to all concerned?

3. Will it build good will and better friendships?

4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

Rotarians pride themselves in living by that standard.  I think you can see how it reflects the guide Jesus gave for living:  do unto others as you would have them to do you.  As part of that service, I did a little research and found a similar saying in virtually every religion.  Not just Christianity, but also Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, the Tao, many Native religions…all tell their followers to treat other people in the way they want to be treated.

Since the whole world thinks this is a good idea, we should give some attention to how that happens and what it looks like.  If you’re in worship to hear this sermon, you’re about to be invited to help write it.  If you’re reading at home, please stop a bit to think about these questions:

• How do you want to be treated?  What does it look and feel like to be treated that way? Respect?  Compassion?  Freedom?  Appreciation?  Like a treasure?

• How do you treat people in the same way?  What are some examples of ways that you’ve extended the same consideration to others that you want for yourselves? In the way you treat your children & grandchildren?  Those who need some help?  Those you work with?  Those of another political party?  Those who are new to our country?  Those whose values or actions are different from you own?

• What about our world would be different if we were all living by this “golden rule?”  In politics?  In the way we spend the government budget?  In the way we teach our children?  In the way we do health care?  In the way we incarcerate prisoners?  In the way we treat addiction?

Many times we talk about the possibilities of the Golden Rule as Impossibilities.  It’s a great idea, but no one can really do it.  I suspect that lets us off the hook before we even try.  If we can’t get it right, no one can blame us for not trying.  It also shifts what we expect of others.  Of course politicians look out for themselves.  Of course teachers or nurses or plumbers are going to be tired and cranky; they have a tough job.  If people aren’t nice to me, I don’t have to be nice in response.  The world is tougher than any sissy idea.  

Maybe this kind, respectful, ennobling idea is tougher than the world.  Maybe if we held ourselves and one another accountable to it, life would be better for everyone.  Maybe trying and messing up isn’t as sad as not trying at all.  Isn’t it the musical South Pacific the place where they sing about being cockeyed optimists?  If every religion in the world believes that people should treat one another well, then that’s a universal call to cockeyed optimism.  If everyone believes it’s important, then maybe it’s time to believe it’s possible.  Or at least to try.

Second Sunday in Lent

Matthew 7:7-11 

 “Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”  What a comforting scripture!  No matter what happens, God will take care of us.   

Let’s talk first about the ways this scripture isn’t true and just get that out of the way… Two sports teams playing each other both pray to win – and one loses. A family facing homelessness prays for a miracle – and doesn’t get one. A little girl praying for a pony – goes without. 

Praying for something we want is no guarantee that God is going to bend the arcs of time and space to give it to us.  I wish I could tell you that God is micromanaging the universe and our lives and nothing bad is ever going to happen.  We all know that’s not true. 

At the same time, we hear about double blind experiments with prayer and healing that demonstrates the people prayed for when they are ill do better than those who are not prayed for, even when they don’t know the prayers are happening.  Every one of us has stories of prayers answered.  My favorite is from 50 years ago when my pastor’s wife prayed for a ham to feed visiting missionaries and received 3 hams in 24 hours from people who dropped them off at her door. So how do we understand why sometimes prayers seem to be answered and other times they don’t?  (Right about now I’m wishing I hadn’t decided to preach this sermon.) 

Let’s talk first about what I don’t think is true: If you pray and get what you want, God likes you better than other people. If you pray and don’t get what you want, God is angry with you or punishing you. 

Too often people think about prayer as a guarantee.  Today’s scripture certainly implies that it is.  So when prayers appear to go unanswered, we wonder what’s wrong with us.  Not enough faith? Not enough sincerity? Not enough good works stored up to earn a reward?  I suppose that blaming ourselves for unanswered prayers is safer than blaming God.  After all, if it’s God’s fault that prayers aren’t answered even when they are heart-felt and important, then maybe God isn’t love or God is petty and pays people back for unintentional slights.  There are so many rabbit holes to fall into when we start thinking about prayer.   

This scripture helps us avoid one of them by clearly saying the bad stuff doesn’t come from God.  A child asking for fish won’t be given a snake.  You may not be healed, but the illness doesn’t come from God.  Your country may not avoid war, but God isn’t the one dropping the bombs.  It’s common for some people to say that disasters are God’s judgment – a hurricane for New Orleans because they like to party.  Let’s just say that isn’t so.  

Then let’s back up a bit.  What if the benefit of prayer isn’t getting what you ask for?  What if God isn’t Santa Claus, delivering toys to everyone all at the same time?  We seem to live with the fact that we don’t always get what we ask for at Christmas time.  We ask for a pony and we get a new basketball, and we’re okay with that.  What are the things about prayer that can be satisfying if not magical? 

One of the hard parts about this scripture is that it’s focused on material things.  In my experience, the best parts of prayer aren’t getting a reward.  The best part of prayer is a feeling of connection – someone to listen and care.  When praying is pouring our hearts out over something hard, it helps to feel like we are heard.  That it actually matters to someone how we feel, how scared we are or how sad.  There have been times in my life that I’ve really felt comforted by prayer – like climbing into a parent’s lap and being held close.  That feeling gets reinforced when flesh and blood people also listen and care.  One author calls that “God with skin on.”  Sometimes people are an answer to prayer. 

When I was working up to this sermon, I saw a quote from Kierkegaard on Facebook: The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. 

In that case prayer functions very much like meditation.  It helps us clarify what it is that’s happening to us.  We get in touch with fear or anger or confusion.  We notice what it is in our lives that’s broken.  A loved one who is ill, a job that isn’t working, a pet that’s missing, a war about to start.  Having named what it is that’s wrong, we are better able to live with the problem.  It becomes less overwhelming when we understand it.  We can put a little space around it and then begin to find ways to manage it.  We can request a second opinion from a doctor.  We can look for a new job.  We can ask for help from a friend who listens well.  The problem doesn’t disappear, but our ability to deal with it shifts a bit.  That too is an answer to prayer. 

I no longer think of prayer as God on speed dial, ready to hear what’s up in my life and fix it for me.  Instead I think of God as the energy that permeates all that is, the vibration of life in every cell and particle of the universe.  That God is always present within and around.  That God connects me to everything that is – all people, all creatures, the earth and all that’s beyond.  I’m convinced that this God energy is, as Jesus told us, Love.  It is benevolent.  It wants everything to be Good – as the creation story tells us.  God said it was good. 

Prayer then becomes connecting with the energy of Love that wants what is best for all life.  Physicists tell us that a scientist can change the results of an experiment by the thought they hold about what will happen.  Expect a particle, see a particle; expect a wave, see a wave.  If that’s true, then surely we can change the reality of our lives by the way that we think about them.  Our positive energy connects across space and time to impact others.  That connection gives us strength and hope.  Two teams about to play a football game each pray to win.  And the energy of the universe helps every player do their best, the teams to work together, to capitalize on opportunities, to use skill.  One team wins and another loses, but the game is a good thing.  Someone we love is ill and we pray for healing.  Doctors and other caregivers do their best.  They use medicines developed to be helpful.  Sometimes our loved one gets better.  Sometimes they don’t because every life ends at some point.  But in the meantime there are good moments, times of connection, words spoken, memories shared, love expressed.  All those connections can be holy.  They speak of a love greater than any one of us and all of us. 

I no longer believe that God fixes the world for us when we pray.  But I do believe that the love that connects us all is activated by our attention.  That it matters when we hold a friend in loving thought when they are struggling.  It matters when we send out a hope for peace.  It matters that we believe the universe is on our side.  It matters that we believe in the power of community to make life better for everyone.  It matters when we answer prayers in our community – a prayer for rent, a prayer for food, a prayer for recognition.  Prayer changes us.  It makes us more kind, more loving, more hopeful.  And kind, loving, hopeful people change the world. 

Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

Matthew 7:1-5

 I want to start today with a few program notes.

• Today is officially Religion and Science Sunday across the country.  We plan to celebrate this year, but our speaker, Tyler Bublitz, who is coming from Bemidji is better able to come next week.  So join us next Sunday for a consideration of Religion, Science and the Common Good.

• This coming Wednesday is both Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday.  Both are important days in the calendar.  We’ve found that attendance at an Ash Wednesday service at Family of God is so small that it’s hard to do a meaningful worship service, so we won’t be having a service here.  But every larger Lutheran and Catholic church in town will be having a service and I encourage you to attend one of those if this is a day which speaks to your heart.

• Folks have been asking me what sermon or study series I’m doing for Lent, which begins on Wednesday.  Most of you know that the traditional understanding of Lent isn’t my favorite.  Lent concentrates on penitence, or being honest about what’s wrong with us, so we can celebrate new life more enthusiastically on Easter.  I’m in favor of being honest about our need to be more aware of the needs of the world and how we contribute to those so we can be more intentional about bringing new life to broken places.  I’m not in favor of setting aside six weeks to focus on what’s wrong with us.  I prefer that we be honest about how both good and bad mingle in everyday life all the time, that we do our best to be more informed and more self-reflective, and that we celebrate how God’s love works in us and through us always, bringing life to the world.

• That said, we ARE in the middle of a learning series.  Last year we learned about the early church and how in a variety of ways Jesus Communities tried to live by his teachings and his example.  Now I’m finding in the Gospels stories that tell us what Jesus said and did so we can think about how they inform our living in this community today.

In today’s scripture, Jesus clearly tells us not to judge others.  He amplifies that by saying not to pay attention to what’s wrong with other people until after you’ve been honest about what’s wrong with you and fixed it.  That’s just simple good advice for living in community.

Every group of people has to be careful not to become a group of complainers.  It’s easy to see what’s wrong.  If we were a church of complainers, we could say that not many people came today, the service didn’t start on time, the Christmas banners are still up in February, we sang the wrong hymns (too old or too new), the sermon was wandering, the coffee was too weak or too strong, the treats were boring, the stuff on the bulletin board was old, the books on the bookshelf hadn’t changed…   Or we can say we saw some of our friends, the musicians did a valiant job of helping us sing, we heard about some interesting projects we helped with, Correen put great pictures on the front of the bulletin, and we got to linger over coffee.  The exact same situation can be annoying or uplifting, depending on how we look at it. 

That reality is true in marriages.  Every couple goes through times when they find each other vastly irritating and times when they have a great time together.  It’s true in families.  The children who fight as teens become best friends in adulthood – or vice versa.  It’s true in neighborhoods, community organizations, and work environments. Whenever people gather, we have a choice to look for the best or point out the worst – because both will be there.

One of the ways Jesus people infect the world for good is by lifting up what’s working rather than what’s not.  The neighbor who runs a noisy leaf blower to clean the driveway every day grows beautiful dahlias.  The club president who can’t run a meeting is great about welcoming new people into the group.  In our own thinking and in conversation we get to choose where we’ll put the focus.  Our choices change how we see the world and also how others see it.

There have been times in my life when I’ve been focused on what’s wrong and not on what’s right. The housemate with an annoying habit. A planning group going off the rails.  Some of those times I’ve been lucky to have a friend who called me on it.  To remind me that I was being unkind and that a lot of what was wrong was my attitude.  Just having someone point out how our focus is running along a negative path can be the trigger to helping us change.  When we realize what we’re doing, we can make the shift.  We’re better for it – and so are those around us.  It’s not easy to be the friend who points out what’s happening, but it’s a great gift to those involved.

Jesus reminds us that when we see a speck in someone’s eye – a little irritant making them see things a bit off – there is probably a log in our own.  When we’re noticing what’s wrong with people or groups is a great time to take a step back and ask, “What part of this is my doing?” 

• Am I offending someone by the things I say or the way I say them?

• Am I being kind and encouraging others?

• Am I irritated by something that doesn’t really matter?  Do I need to let it go?

• Am I angry because not everyone wants to do this my way?

•  Is there something I can do to help another person be more successful?

•  Take minutes, make coffee, say less or more?

•  Is it time for me to move on?

• Groups change, we change – sometimes the kindest thing I’ve done for a group is leave.

Finally, this teaching of Jesus is about group dynamics and interpersonal relationships.  It’s not about public policy, criminal behavior, or major ethical standards.  There are times when we need to judge behavior as wrong.  The Ten Commandments tell us not to murder, lie, or steal.  We make rules about how people behave in order to support the good of the community.  Jesus isn’t telling us not to discern when something is harmful. 

Jesus does tell us that even when we draw a line and prevent some behaviors, we still love the person involved.  That’s hard:  judge the action, not the person.  The person is a beloved child of God and entitled to our love and care.  In our country, we too often confuse the action and the actor.  A person is a murderer, not someone who committed murder.  A person is an addict, not someone with a harmful addiction.  A person is a liberal or a conservative, not someone with particular ideas about how the world works.  It takes practice to separate how we think about an action or a belief and how we feel about the person doing those things.  We have to remind ourselves that they aren’t the same.

Jesus says we aren’t to judge others in ways that break down community, but he doesn’t say we can’t disagree, present alternative possibilities, or even make rules that discourage some behaviors.  We can make ground rules about civility and respect and participation and expect them to be followed.  We can ask our neighbor to mow their weeds and our cousin not to smoke in our house.  We can enforce rules and at the same time work to stay in relationship with the people involved.  It used to be that our government representatives compromised on important matters, found some common understanding and remained friends.  It’s not too much to expect that they begin to do that again.

In some countries in the world people who commit crimes are put into rehabilitation.  They learn what caused the crime – anger, illness, poverty, desperation – and they are given tools to act differently in the future.  The actions have consequences, AND the people are valued.  Those who can learn to do better are empowered to do so.  Those who can’t are cared for in ways that prevent them from harming others.  The actions are judged, the people are loved.  We have a lot to learn from those models, which would make all our lives better.

Changing systems begins with changing people.  Jesus tells us not to judge each other when we don’t have to do so.  To work together to build community in which everyone thrives.  When we practice this every day, it’s a gift to ourselves.  Our lives are easier and more joyful.  And it’s a gift to the world.

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Matthew 6:25-34

Thirty-five years ago Bobby McFerrin was winning awards for his song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”  I remember that I used that song as a sermon illustration, saying something like “This is great music and bad theology.”  My forty-year-old self wanted people to take seriously the way the world was broken and not simply ignore major issues in order to feel good.  How many sermon illustrations happen in almost 50 years of preaching and why would I remember that one?  Maybe because I need to correct the record.  I remember it because I got it wrong.  In today’s scripture, Jesus is reminding me:  Don’t worry, be happy is a good way to live.

Living without worry doesn’t mean that there aren’t things broken in the wider world or in our particular lives.  It doesn’t ignore the need to make things better when we can.  Jesus who said, “Don’t worry about what you will eat” fed people who were hungry. He said, “Don’t worry about what you will drink” and made wine for a wedding. He said, “Don’t worry about what you will wear” and told people who had two robes to share one of them.  The early Jesus communities focused on taking care of people who were feeling the weight of a hard life.  They held common meals so that those who had food could share it.  They sheltered people who were on the road without a place to stay.  They found work for people who had literally lost the farm and needed a new trade. 

Throughout history, Jesus’ followers have taken care of people who were in crisis.  They were innkeepers in medieval monasteries.  They began the first hospitals to care for the ill and spread hospitals throughout the world through the missionary movement.  We claim that heritage when we help people in our community.  This story doesn’t let us off the hook.  It reminds us that we are the hands and heart of Jesus, the love of God, in this time and place for those who need God to intervene and save their lives.

It also reminds us that the world works better when people take care of each other.  Jesus lived in a world where there was a gulf between rich folks and poor, powerful folks and those who did most of the work.  So do we.  He critiqued his world and chastised those who had the power to make it better and chose not to.  So do we.  Jesus told people who had nothing not to worry, God would provide.  Then he taught his followers to do the work of God and provide.  There’s a vast difference of opinion today about whether we as a society are responsible for the wellbeing of all people or not.  American individualism suggests that if people are hungry it’s because they are lazy.  Now that we know some of the folks who are hungry, we know that’s not true.  The root causes of hunger are much deeper.  They include mental illness and addiction and emergency medical conditions and gaps in education and a low minimum wage.  Domestic abuse and the need to flee to safety causes hunger and homelessness.  So does not having a safety net of family members.  We are getting pretty good at feeding people.  We need to get smarter about changing policies so that people can feed themselves.

While we’re waiting for people to come together and make the world an easier place to live, we come back to Jesus’ advice to those whose lives were difficult beyond anything we can imagine:  don’t worry.  Don’t worry doesn’t mean “ignore bad things.”  It means that when life gets hard, do what you can to make it better, but worry isn’t one of those things.  Much has been written about how worry makes hard situations harder and does nothing to make them better. 

Our Buddhist friends are so much better at understanding this than we are.  We’re lucky to have a Buddhist sangha available to us right here on Monday evenings.  We are always welcome to come learn meditation practice and join in their conversations about helpful books.  Our church library is full of books left by Tamar Reed, who collected them over a lifetime.  The Buddha was raised as a child of privilege and sheltered from all the harsh realities of the world.  As a young man he suddenly learned about some of those things he’d never faced:  illness, poverty, hardship.  In compassion, he set out to learn how to alleviate suffering of every kind, taking years to meditate and learn.  A very over-simplified explanation of his discovery is that life is often hard but suffering is optional.  Much of the suffering we experience comes from our own worry about what might happen or how things might turn out.  Scholars see a lot of overlap between the Buddha and Jesus who came centuries later and this might be one of them:  don’t worry.  Neither of these spiritual leaders tell us not to see what’s broken or to ignore what’s wrong.  Both ask us to face reality head on.  Not worrying doesn’t mean pretending there isn’t a problem.  Instead it puts a space around the problem and fills that space with confidence and peace rather than with worry. 

Worry tells stories that make whatever is wrong grow and become less manageable.  When I was first diagnosed with leukemia, I made the mistake of reading an official website that described symptoms and disease progression.  I learned that people with my diagnosis often died within 5 years and there was no medication that was particularly helpful.  I went into a panic.  What was I going to do?  What was I going to miss in life?  I set aside one evening to feel completely sorry for myself.  I cried.  I was miserable.  Then I set that down.  I went to the doctor and did what he told me to do.  I learned about medications and treatments.  I got better.  But over the years that getting better took, I lived life a day at a time.  I focused on living rather than on dying.  I enjoyed the people around me.  I did work I cared about – and some I didn’t. 

I learned to say about life:  it is what it is. I can worry and make up possible scenarios about how bad things are going to be, or I can take one day, even one minute, at a time and deal with what’s real in that moment.  Not every hard reality has an easy escape route.  But the events of our lives are only tragic if we decide they are tragic.  Some are very, very hard.  But we don’t face them alone.  God is on our side.  God’s people are on our side.  We can learn to face facts without worry and in the process, the burden of life gets lighter.  One moment at a time.

Learning not to worry about what’s hard in life sets us free to face life head on.  We do what we can.  We leave what we can’t do.  We set aside despair and anger and fear because each of them is just a story we tell ourselves.  In their place we choose stories of hope and compassion and possibility.  We can’t fix every problem life sends our way, but when we stop worrying and focus instead on what we can do, we make progress.  We may not be able to cure a dying loved one, but we can spend quality time with them.  We can’t keep adult children from making decisions we wouldn’t choose, but we can be there to help if it doesn’t work out and to cheer if it does.  We can’t personally end oppression in the world, but we can welcome New Americans one family at a time. 

Living without worry gives us back our power to live life with courage and hope.  Even if it doesn’t change the circumstances of life, it changes how we deal with them.   It helps us see what is possible and take a step forward with strength.  Don’t worry.  Trust God and the goodness of the universe.  We may find that we are happy.

Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Matthew 6:1-4

Do you know the song, “Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way?”

Our scripture lesson today is about giving, specifically about doing it discreetly.  Jesus tells his followers not to blow trumpets and make a big show when they drop their offering in the Temple box.  I wonder why he felt like he needed to say that since nothing we know about these people indicates that they would ever have much money to give or would be inclined to draw attention to themselves.  Maybe he did it to make them feel good, rather than to caution them against copying those who were getting credit for making big gifts.

What had the disciples given?  They had given their time, giving up their jobs to travel with Jesus, learn from him, and help him with his work.  They were in charge of logistics, crowd control, and catering.  They were learning to heal and to repeat Jesus’ teachings to others.  Some of them paid the bills, bought bread and wine, maybe even paid for lodging on rainy nights or piled lots of folks into their own homes when the group was in the neighborhood.  They were giving up judgment and prejudice against those who were beggars or “sinners” and learning to treat them with compassion.  They were giving their lives and livelihoods to a cause that was bigger than anything they had been a part of before.  And they were doing it under the radar.  They weren’t getting rich or famous.  They didn’t really want to be known.  Because they were human, they sometimes wanted credit, but don’t we all.

I’ve preached a lot of sermons in my time about giving.  I’ve encouraged people to tithe or give 10% of their income.  I’ve encouraged people to be generous and cheerful and hopeful that there would always be enough to meet the need of the moment.  I don’t think I’ve ever preached about what not to do.  For sure I’ve never said, “Don’t blow trumpets when you give your offering.”  

Long ago there was a day when a church was baptizing a Cameroonian baby and all the grad students from Cameroon and their families came.  After the baptism, the mother held an offering plate at the front of the church and the students sang and led a procession to drop offerings into the plate so the mother could give it in the child’s name.  Even some of the stodgy Americans came at the end of the line, singing and dancing and giving.  A few old timers objected, but it seemed like the best offering I ever remember taking.  It’s not such a bad thing to celebrate giving.  We do that a little when we give noisy offering and enjoy the noise it makes.

Family of God knows a lot about giving.  We’ve given away almost $16,000 in the community fund this year.  We’re about to pay off our building loan.  We’ve bought a lot of groceries with our LaGrave account and even more with things we slipped into our own grocery carts.  We’ve given space and time and transportation in amazing ways.  With all that giving, I haven’t heard a single complaint.  I think we’ve figured out how to give what we want to give. We give what makes us happy.  

I’m lucky to be able to be involved in a lot of what we give.  The social workers in town have me on speed dial.  I get to go buy gas cards and phone cards and bus passes.  I get to pay utility bills at Walmart or over the phone.  I took my granddaughter to buy $500 in baby supplies (which didn’t quite overflow the cart).  People thank me, but I always tell them it’s not me, it’s all of you who keep the account full.  

I know Jesus says to keep quiet about what you give, but I’m pretty noisy about what you do. When people ask me why my cart is full, I tell them.  When people ask how we feed so many people, I tell them you are generous.  Some folks who know our story ask to give along with us.  We get checks for the community fund from my book group and from the people who share our building.  We got $5000 for LaGrave from someone who lives in South Dakota and has a friend on the Grand Forks Homes Board.  This summer we got apples and tomatoes and sweet corn because people knew we’d give it away.  Because we are generous, we help other people know the fun of giving too.

I like the way we handle giving from our funds.  We trust the professional social workers in town to know what they are doing.  If they say there’s a need, we believe them.  If someone calls me directly, I send them to one of the helping agencies.  They know if there’s a grant or government program that can help first.  They know how to follow up so that people don’t get in a bind over and over.  They know that when they’ve exhausted all the possibilities, we’re good as a last resort.  We come through for them.

There are other churches in town that help people, but we have the least red tape.  We don’t ask people to make appointments with us or fill out forms.  We don’t lecture people about how they’d feel better about themselves if they got a better job and didn’t need to ask for help.  Most of the time we don’t know who we’re helping and I rarely meet people in person.  I like being in partnership with people who do hard work with compassion and great love.  It makes our gifts that much better because they deliver them so well.

Somewhere years ago I read that people of privilege should give until it hurts.  I’m not thinking that’s very good advice.  It’s possible to give too much and shortchange yourself or your family.  I think it’s better to give until it feels great.  Give what makes you excited to give.  Give what comes easily because it’s so much fun.  Giving like that brings joy to the giver and to the receivers and makes the world a joyful place.  Giving with joy is its own reward.

First Sunday after the Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-12

Today’s scripture is the one we always read for Epiphany.  The Wise Ones traveling far on exotic camels to bring precious gifts to baby Jesus is an image that speaks of Christmas to many of us.  It feels magical and important.  This Sunday, rather than focus on the story we’ve heard so many times, I’d like to unpack the word we’ve attached to it:  Epiphany.  What does it mean?

One dictionary defines Epiphany like this:
a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is very important to you; a powerful religious experience.

Whenever I think about this word, I remember my eighth-grade algebra teacher, who would send us to the blackboard to solve problems.  We would work away looking for the least common denominator, which was the key to a right answer, and when we found it, we were each supposed to call out “Eureka!”  “I’ve found it!”  I know it’s not the same word, but it feels like the same experience to me.  A moment when we see with clarity something we hadn’t seen before and a knotty problem resolves itself, with the whole world falling into place in an orderly way.

I hope you can name at least a few powerful, Epiphany experiences in your lives.  Times when all that is awesome and beyond description was profoundly present to you.  Times when your mind or heart opened and you understood the world differently. For me these have been conversion experiences.  That’s a word often applied to “accepting Jesus in your heart” and becoming a Christian.   In the first church I served, that was the moment children were baptized and joined the church.  I was pretty skeptical when seven- or eight-year-olds were given credit for having a mature faith and being “saved” for life.  For me, conversion has been a process, not a moment.  The faith I held when I was confirmed at 13 became something quite different when I discovered Biblical scholarship at 18 in college, or when I was ordained at 23, or when the Jesus seminar taught me amazing new insights at 35, or when I learned about the missional church movement at 45,  or when I became involved in interfaith work at 50, or when I faced life-threatening illness at 60.  Each of those steps in my faith journey began with an epiphany of some kind, prompted by a book or a person or a community.  Faith that is alive changes as we change.  If you’re lucky, there is always another epiphany around the corner in your life.

The story as Matthew tells it proclaims that Jesus is King, recognized by foreign dignitaries who “saw his star” and drew his astrological chart.  Herod, the Emperor’s representative, tries to kill him before he has a chance to live, but he misses.  Eventually Pilate, another representative of the Emperor, crucifies him, but not before his teaching bring epiphany experiences to many people.  Those people continue to follow him in defiance of the Emperor.  They declare that he is their king and they will live by his rule, in spite of being simultaneously ruled by Rome.  Their affirmation is that Jesus matters.  That’s echoed four centuries later in Islam, which claims Jesus as a prophet second only to Mohammed, the final prophet.  We affirm Jesus’ importance today as we try in our time to follow his teachings and to shape our lives by his vision. 

The primary symbol of Epiphany is light.  It begins with a star brighter than any other.  It repeats in Jesus’ own words: You are the light of the world; let your light shine.  Light is a sign of hope, of vision, of courage in the face of danger.  We’ve taken up this symbol as our own through our light signs.  We are following Jesus by being light in our particular slice of the world and we celebrate that every Sunday.  I hope you celebrate it often through the week and think of all the ways you share love and hope with others as the light of God shining through you.

Another important theme of Epiphany is sharing the light of Jesus with the whole world.  The story features travelers from an exotic, far place.  We think of them arriving in a few days, but it was more likely months or even years.  In Epiphany we remember ways we share light with others near and far.  Over the centuries that motivated the Christian missionary movement, taking the gospel (and western culture) to the far reaches of the globe.  Many good things were done through that effort, particularly hospitals and schools which improved life for those who received the missionaries.  Many bad things were also done through that movement, which aligned with colonialism and white supremacy to exploit those who were visited and their resources.

In this century we can rethink the idea of bringing light to the world.  Rather than bringing a superior religion or culture to those who lack one, or trying to “civilize” people into being like us, we can have an “epiphany” in which we realize that the rich diversity of the world is a gift to us, not a problem for us to solve.  In a time when nationalism is becoming more popular around the world, we can use this theme as an antidote.  Nationalism sees “our” country as better than any other and “our” people as the best people.  That’s true whether we’re talking about American exceptionalism or Russian pride or any other nation.  Of course, we each want to be proud of our nation, but not so proud that we can’t see the good in others.  Jesus brought people together.  He accepted what was good in each one.  In his name, we can do the same.  Technologies of communication and transportation have brought the globe closer together. Maybe it’s time for us to see ourselves as one people.  If Jesus is going to be light to the whole world, then maybe we need to see the world as whole, not divided.  Space travel taught us that national boundaries aren’t visible from high above earth.  Maybe we’re called to make them less visible in the way we live together.  Think of the problems borders are causing:  our southern border is in crisis because we can’t defend it and so we become less welcoming of those who need asylum; Russia has crossed Ukraine’s border because they want to absorb the nation for their own rather than coexisting peacefully and cooperatively; Israel has sealed Gaza’s border and is bombing and starving the people because Israeli Jews and Palestinians see themselves as “other” rather than as brothers.  We are at heart and at DNA all one people.  It’s time we learned to live that way.

Epiphany comes at the beginning of the year and the church year, challenging us to see life in new ways.  It’s themes of light and unity give us something to consider as we begin a new journey around the sun.  Maybe we’ll have some important “epiphanies” together this year.

First Sunday after Christmas

Matthew 2:13-20

There are very few scriptures about Jesus as a child and they often get lost in the time between Christmas a New Year when churches and people are busy with other things.  For the most part these stories tell us little about Jesus’ history and a lot about what was important to his earliest followers.  They believed with all their hearts that Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one, whom the Jews of the first century expected to come from God to transform their situation and restore their fortunes as a nation.  The stories about his childhood connect him with the prophecies about Messiah.  Because of our standards of history, we read them as proof of who Jesus was:  these things happened so he must be the one who was expected.  First century storytelling worked in the opposite direction:  Jesus is to us the Messiah, so we will tell stories that connect him to expectations.  These stories don’t record events so much as they affirm what people believe to be true about Jesus as the one who changes history.

There are two pieces of this story today.  The first I want us to think about is in the middle and is referred to as the slaughter of the innocents.  The Wise Ones had gone to ask Herod about a new king they wanted to visit, but hadn’t gone back to Jerusalem to report if they found him.  Herod waited and when he didn’t hear from them, he sent soldiers to kill every child in Bethlehem who was born in the time frame the Wise Ones suggested.  He was eliminating his competition in a brutal way. There isn’t a record in secular history of this event, so we can’t verify that it happened.  But the violence of the first century makes it plausible.  Certainly thousands of children died of violence, hunger, and disease in Jesus’ time.  Certainly mothers grieved every day for the children they lost.

We live in a time when children continue to die in horrible, wasteful ways.  The good news is that the world is making progress and fewer children die before age 5 of hunger and disease.  We are spreading vaccination and addressing famine in ways that are making a difference.  But the horror of war is exacting a terrible toll on our children.  This week Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, who was once the Moderator of the PCUSA, used his influence to remind churches and pastors that Christians have something to say about the continuing slaughter of innocents in our time.  As followers of Jesus, who promoted nonviolent responses to the violence of his time, we should be publicly denouncing the brutal attack Hamas made on Israeli villages on October 7 and the disproportionate response which has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, since then.  There is no justification for the initial attack AND no reason for the murder of civilians in large numbers in hopes of killing a few leaders of that attack.

Do you remember when our churches stood for peace in the world?  When did we go silent?  We have lived in times when war was a necessary response to aggression in the world, but when did we let it become the only response?  Children are dying in Gaza, in Israel, in Ukraine, in many African countries, in Weiger villages, on the paths leading to our southern border, in schools and shopping malls in America.  In the first century “Rachel weeping for her children” was a sign that God was about to lead the people to a different way.  It’s time for us to be making much more noise and insisting that war end and our children live in peace.

The second part of today’s story is called “the flight to Egypt” and tells that Joseph was warned in a dream that Jesus was in danger and took his family into Egypt for a while, before returning to settle in Nazareth.  Often I hear people saying that this means Jesus was a refugee and therefore we should be helpful to refugees.  I wonder if Jesus hadn’t been a refugee, if it would be okay to ignore them.  It seems to me that we involve ourselves with refugees because of Jesus, but not because he spent some time in exile in Egypt.  Jesus is the one who tells us to love our neighbor, and that our neighbors can be unexpected folks.  Jesus is the one who tells us to feed people who are hungry, to share our clothing, to welcome strangers…not because he might need those things but because life is better when we care about each other.

The crisis at our southern border has been in the news lately because some folks aren’t going to fund wars until we make life harder for those seeking asylum.  How did we get into this mess?  I hear people sharing wisdom about solutions for the migrant crisis – increase workers to process those who come, prepare for housing and feeding those who feel compelled to flee unbearable lives elsewhere, most of all create a multinational effort to change the circumstances leading to migration, including violence and climate change.  Those are big problems needing big solutions which are going to take time – and compassion, which right now is in short supply.

We know something about what it means to be a refugee and to welcome new people who are fleeing for their lives.  I was inspired this week by a Global Friends mailing written by Nell Lindorff and Claudia, whom she helps.  They both wrote eloquently about what it means to come to a new place and new make new friends through Global Friends. This year 77 people in 22 families came to Grand Forks from 8 countries. (There are 17 people already booked for travel to our city in January, 2024.)  It made me think that we have wisdom to share after seven months of being busy with these new folks.  So I’d like us to take some time to talk about what we know now that we didn’t know when we started, and how our lives have been changed in the process.  I’m going to ask Nell to start because she inspired me to do this, and then I hope many of you will join in….

We help refugees because they are people who need us and we can do it.  It is hard work, sometimes frustrating, sometimes overwhelming.  It’s also holy work which is incredibly rewarding.  We have been shaped by the work we’re doing and will continue to be shaped in the coming year.  We have more to learn, problems to solve, and most of all more friendships to celebrate. 

Third Sunday of Advent

Matthew 1 : 18-25

This advent I've chosen three stories from the traditional Christmas scriptures - John the Baptizer, Mary and Elizabeth and their unexpected pregnancies, and today Joseph the unintentional father. Often when we read these stories, they remind us that Jesus' birth was miraculous, and if it weren't for some significant interventions by God on his behalf, it might not have happened at all. I think that people of faith come to these stories as a way to describe God's miraculous intervention in our lives. We like the sense of awe and wonder that Christmas gives us and these stories lie at its heart.

One problem with that is that expecting miracles is a pretty unreliable way of dealing with everyday life, at least if by miracle we mean that God will swoop in and fix anything that's broken. There are great hymns that suggest that. "God will take care of you," comes to mind. Or "His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches you." We want to think that God is on our side and willing and able to make all things right for us.

Then life happens. Our friends and family members become ill and some of them die. Our children and grandchildren make bad choices and no one rescues them from the consequences. Russia invades Ukraine. Hamas attacks Israel who attacks Hamas back. We pour hundreds of meals and thousands of dollars into healing the hurts of our community and there are even more people still hurting. In spite of our conditioning miracles are few and far between. Most people I know have stories about amazing things that have happened which they call miracles, but if we're honest, we also have stories about times we wished for miracles that didn't happen.

This year I've become convinced that Christmas isn't about God doing strange and wonderful things that cause sweeping changes in the world. I wonder if these stories aren't so much about miracles as they are about ordinary life and God being present in the middle of the ordinary. I think that's what we learned about the first century Jesus followers. They believed Jesus changed everything about their lives not because he made the hard things go away and defeated the oppressors, but because in spite of the bad things and the oppressors he hung in there with them. He was present in the thick of ordinary life and because he lived with hope and compassion, ordinary life became bearable.

Our stories are telling us that John criticized the powers that be and people signed on to the movement. That Mary got pregnant and Joseph didn't abandon her. That Jesus was born to peasants far from the seat of power but people noticed. That when the night was dark, starlight made it possible to see a bit of a way forward.

I don't want to promise you that when life gets really hard, God will send a miracle to make it better. I want to tell you that when life gets really hard, God is already here in the thick of it giving you strength and hope. I want you to believe that you are completely filled and totally surrounded by the Love that is God so that you are never alone. You never face anything alone.

The message of Christmas is this: we can do this together.

Sometimes the Love of the Universe sends me messages through Facebook, and this week a message came through a friend of mine who pastors Lincoln's church in Springfield, IL. She copied a post from a group called honestadvent. I wish I knew more so I could give them better credit. I read it and thought, I can't say this any better than they have already said it. I want to share it with you today:

It's assumed that Mary rode on a donkey, but the Bible doesn't say she did. It's assumed there was an innkeeper, but it doesn't mention one anywhere.

It's assumed there were three Magi, but it doesn't give a number of those who showed up. It's assumed there was a star overhead when Jesus was born, but it doesn't say that either.

It's assumed that Jesus was born in a stable, but all it says is that He was laid in a manger - and that could've been any number of places.

Christmas comes with many assumptions-some helpful, some not so much.

Spirituality also comes with many assumptions, and the ones that fail us are the ones we make about what it's supposed to look like, who is worthy for it to happen to, and what kind of outcome it's supposed to have for us. Assumptions like ...

• You should be more than you are now to be pleasing to God. Your weaknesses are in the way of God's plan for your life.

• Your lack of religious excitement disqualifies you from divine participation. You're probably not doing it right.

• Other spiritual people have something you don't have.

Our assumptions hinder our spiritual journey in all kinds of ways, and the antidote to assumption is surprise. The surprise of Christ's incarnation is that it happened in Mary's day as it is happening every day in your lack of resources, your overcrowded lodging, your unlit night sky, your humble surroundings.

• It's a surprise that life can come through barren places.

• It's a surprise that meek nobodies partake in divine plans.

• It's a surprise that messengers are sent all along the hidden journey of life to let you know you are not alone.

• It's a surprise that you will be given everything you need to accomplish what you've been asked to do.

• It's a surprise that nothing can separate you from the love of God.

Nothing can separate you from love. Your assumptions believe there must be something that can ... But surprise! Nothing can.

May you thank God with joyful surprise at how much you have assumed incorrectly.

Second Sunday of Advent

Luke 1:26-56

Today’s scripture is a piece of the story of two women.  One of the amazing things about Judeo-Christian scriptures is that at key moments in history, women play pivotal roles.  That’s interesting to us today.  It was revolutionary in ancient times, times which were patriarchal to the utmost and women had no agency or power.  In the longer tale, first Elizabeth, an old woman without children, and then Mary, an young woman without a husband, become pregnant.  Both pregnancies are attributed to God’s action.  (In Catholic tradition and the Koran, the story is extended to Anna, the mother of Mary, who also conceives on her own.)  Old women, barren women, unmarried women – all these are among the most vulnerable in first century society.  They are economically marginalized and have no one to protect them.  They are not generally the agents of change.  Yet here they are, mothering the men who shift people’s understanding of the world.

We have a complicated relationship with these stories.  They are a part of our heritage.  We’ve been listening to them at this time of year as long as we remember.  They point to a God who intervenes for good in a broken world and give us hope.  They are also problematic because they represent a miracle which is not only unlikely, it’s scientifically impossible.  Human babies don’t happen spontaneously.  They require the DNA of two parents.  Couples we know personally talk about their miracle babies, but none of them is conceived in scientifically impossible terms. 

Some folks are comfortable with saying we have to take this on faith, and that’s a great response.  And some folks aren’t comfortable with that.  Do we really have to believe the impossible to be part of what God is doing in the world?  No.  Believe or don’t believe – both are good answers.  Because these stories were never meant to be about biology.  They were written when the biology of the process was a mystery, and they don’t address it.

These stories are about power and influence and who has it.  In the first centuries every Roman Emperor had a story about how he was conceived by a human woman and a god.  When a man became Emperor – by vote or violence – the story was soon written by those in charge of the story of Empire.  Everyone knew that these men had human fathers, but they also knew the new story of the heavenly father as well.  It wasn’t about biology, it was about destiny.  This man has the blessing and support of the gods, shown by the fact that he defeated his opponents and gained power.  He rules as a god, and the peace and prosperity of his reign is evidence of the gods’ favor.  He is a Son of God.

The stories about John the Baptizer and Jesus being miraculously conceived were written like those of the emperors, after the fact.  They weren’t history recorded by everyone who knew these men.  They appear only in some of the gospels.  They are a statement that like the emperors, John and especially Jesus had power and influence over the world.  The fact that the women involved weren’t rich and famous but were marginalized amplifies the contrast between these founders of the Jesus movement and the Roman Empire.  They are saying, “Jesus had the power to change the world as we know it.”  That part of the story we can believe because that part of the story is still an active part of our story.

Mary’s song recorded as the finale of this story explains the difference people thought Jesus made:

            God lifts up those without power and uses them for change.
            God brings down proud and powerful rulers.
            God fills hungry people with good things.
            God balances economic disparity.
            God comes to the aid of those in distress and remembers those who struggle.

There’s some poetic license in putting these words in Mary’s mouth at the beginning of her pregnancy.  They are a strong expression of what people believed to be true about Jesus after his ministry with them.  They are the hope that early communities of Jesus’ followers lived by.

We don’t hear these words in exactly the same way because we live in very different times.  Indeed, they have meant many things to various moments in history.  But they do shape what we believe and how we live in our moment.  They are a part of the reason we take action to make this world view a reality. 

Those who told these stories in Jesus’ time had no hope of overcoming or even influencing Rome.  There were stark realities in their daily lives that they couldn’t change.  Economic hardship, violence, oppression – these were givens.  But they insisted that there was another vision for life, a God-given vision, which they could live by.  So in spite of their situation, they fed people, housed people, gave people jobs, helped people grieve, found joy.  They created the vision of God’s world hidden in plain sight.

We have significantly more power and influence that our spiritual ancestors held.  We can change the world.  So when we hear these stories, they become for us a call to action.  We feed people.  100 or more of them this week.  We make sure people have electricity.  One family this week.  We drive people to school and work.  Hundreds of miles each week.  We believe that you can create a better world by living like that world exists and being part of it.

These stories also call us to use our power for good.  We call our representatives.  We advocate for policies. We vote.  I suspect we don’t agree on the details of what should happen, but we agree on the vision of what’s possible.  That vision has been shaped over time and isn’t identical to Jesus’ first-century vision.  But its parameters are the same ones voiced by Mary – lifting up those without, ending abusive power, making the world good for everyone. 

We aren’t just the people who celebrate a miraculous physical birth.  We are the inheritors of those who saw Jesus as the challenge to the abuses of Empire and did something about it.  We are the ones of believe the world can change and that something holy and good is possible.  The Christmas story didn’t start out as a pretty miracle.  It began as a radical vision of what could be if people saw things God’s way and worked together to make it so.  It’s a call to hope and a call to action.  And what it becomes is in our hands. 

First Sunday of Advent

Mark 1:1-8

This is the day the church gets to say “Happy New Year!” a month before everyone else.  The first Sunday in Advent is the beginning of a new year in the church cycle.  That month’s difference between one new year and the other is a time of preparation, getting ready for something important to happen.  That’s not a bad way to start a year.

John the Baptist is a good choice for helping us prepare for important things to come because that’s the role he plays in the story of Jesus – getting people ready for big changes in the way they see the world.  In his day people were plenty tired of the way things were and more than ready for something new.  It was unlikely that the “new” would be getting rid of Rome, because everyone who tried that ended up conquered, enslaved, or dead.  But when John (who dressed weird and ate weirder) began preaching about God doing a new thing, people came to see him.

We learned some things about John in our study this summer that might be good to remember here.  John was known as “the bather.”  This was a culture that loved a good bath and built public baths everywhere.  Then they built aqueducts to bring water to the baths.  It was a sign of refinement that people could gather in beautiful structures and take hot or cold baths together.  John, however, had nothing to do with the beautiful Roman baths.  He preferred the Jordan River, claimed by the Jewish people as their own.  By bathing in the river, he was thumbing his nose at Rome and challenging the goodness of their accomplishments and their authority.

Bathing was a public sign of new beginnings.  The Jews bathed to purify themselves.  Romans bathed to celebrate milestones in their lives and invited everyone to join them at the party.  People bathed to show they had turned a corner or begun something new.  They washed off the old and put on a new beginning.  It might be something like a graduation celebration today.  Or a celebration of getting clean and sober.  Or of ending cancer treatment.  Or renewing marriage vows.  A public bathing announced something was going to be different with a person going forward.  John invites everyone who’s tired of Roman occupation and violence to come bathe with him and start something new.  It’s no wonder he was eventually arrested and executed. 

Like Jesus who followed him, John drew crowds.  People came to see the crazy man who was preaching.  They also came because he gave them hope that there was something better than the way the world was working for them.  Both John and Jesus told people they could live by values other than the ones Rome put forward.  They could be different than the world around them. When enough people live differently, the world changes.

Eventually bathing with John became baptism.  A lot of water became a little water.  A declaration of difference became the status quo.  A challenge to the way things are became the way things are.  Baptism has become the safe and expected thing that happens to babies whose families want the best for them.  It’s lost its edge.  It’s no longer countercultural.  Too bad.

Every moment in time has its assumptions about how the world works, how people behave, how things happen to be.  John represents for his moment in time a rejection of assumptions.  He says things can be different; things will be different.  Watch out! Something is about to happen!

I was trying to think of people who might be the “John the Bather” in our moment in history.  There certainly have been some orators who called out for change, although it’s hard to name one right now.  If we could, what would we like them to say?  What challenge would we like to hear?

In a world fighting wars in 33 places, could we declare ourselves on the side of peace?  Could we suggest that all people have a right to a nation, a voice and a future?

The leaders of the world are meeting about climate change right now.  Could we be in favor of valuing Earth and her resources?  Of clean water and air?  Of renewable energy?

What would we like to be better in our world?  Health care? Education? Support for parents?  Food security?  Care for those who are aging?  Affordable housing? Community gardens? End to homelessness?  End to racism?  End to gender discrimination and homophobia?

In my heart Christmas is about hope.  It’s about believing God is fully present in this world empowering us to make it all that is good for every creature.  Advent is about getting ready for big audacious hopefulness.  It’s about throwing off despair and washing away whatever holds us back.  Take a bath; put on new clothes; be ready.  The world can change and we can be a part of making it happen.

Last Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 5:43-48

We are reading the teachings of Jesus, starting with the sermon on the mount, so that we can remember what early Christians remembered about things Jesus said.  Many of us grew up believing in Jesus because of what other people said about him – that he was the Son of God, that he died for our sins, that believing in him was a ticket to heaven.  Those are things that have become very important over the centuries the church has existed.  But they weren’t the reasons first century Jesus communities followed him.  They were attracted by the things Jesus said about how to live with dignity under violent oppression from Rome, about how to have each others’ backs in an unpredictable society, about how to form communities that made life better for everyone.  So we’re reading those teachings so we can remember what the first followers found life-changing about Jesus.

Today we’re reminded to “love our enemies.”  That’s about as counter-cultural as you can get.  In the first century there were plenty of enemies to hate:  Rome, Roman soldiers, landlords, puppet rulers, anyone who would turn you in to the authorities to protect themselves.  Jesus said to love all these folks, and people still came to hear him.  How could that be?  Contemporary politicians tell us that we should hate people not like us – those in the “other” political party, people from other nations who speak languages we don’t know, people out to take our jobs and expand the kinds of food we can buy in grocery stores, people who don’t look like us.  There’s money and popularity to be made in hate.  So why did people come to hear Jesus talk about love?  And why did they think love made life better for everyone?

I’m drawn to teachers today who tell us that the opposite of love isn’t hate – it’s fear.  There was plenty of fear in the first century and there’s plenty of fear in our world today.  Fear of war, of disease, of failure…  I suspect people then and people now are tired of being afraid.  When we discover the ability to love others, particularly those who might threaten us, we discover that love wipes out fear.  It’s smart to be cautious and careful in many situations, but those aren’t exactly the same as being afraid.  Fear takes our power away from us.  Love gives it back.  Fear makes us helpless.  Love gives us the power to decide who we will be and how we will live.  When you love someone who has the power to hurt you physically, you take away their power to kill your spirit.  And sometimes you transform their desire to harm you.

I remember the story of the Jewish couple in Omaha who cared for the white nationalist when he was ill.  They brought him food, gave him rides to the doctor, and befriended him.  In the end, he changed his mind about hating Jews.  Love can do that.

This week Pat and I were confronted by one of the residents at LaGrave who told us our food was terrible.  We didn’t get angry.  We wished her a good day.  The next day she apologized profusely about the way her illness sometimes made her lash out without wanting to.  Love can make a space for healing to happen.

Lots of people are quick to tell us that love doesn’t work in a dangerous world.  We can’t love our neighbor when our neighbor isn’t like us.  Jesus tells us it does work, and then shows us time after time that he’s right.  I wonder what would happen if we believed him.

The author David French writes: The biblical call to Christians to love your enemies, to bless those who curse you, and to exhibit the fruit of the spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – does not represent a set of tactics to be abandoned when times are tough, but rather a set of eternal moral principles to be applied even in the face of extreme adversity.  When it’s hard to love, we’re quick to say it couldn’t work anyway.  But Jesus tells us that God is love and we are love and the only way to be true to ourselves and to God is to keep loving, even when it’s hard.

The poet June Jordan spoke in 1977 to a group of people who cared about children’s literature.  In that speech she suggested that “love is lifeforce…. I see love as the essential nature of all that supports life.”

Jesus tells us “God is love.”  Our religious heritage has taught us to think of God as a being beyond all beings which we relate to as other – beyond ourselves.  In the distant history of humanity when religions sprang into being, it made perfect sense to think of God in that way.  The entire creation was a mystery and the only way to imagine the origin and sustaining of all that is was as mystery.  Surely someone powerful was behind the way the world worked. 

Over the centuries humans have come to understand much more about how creation works.  I’m no scientist, but I’m intrigued by the new science that tells us everything is interrelated.  That the energy which pulses within us as electrons vibrate and molecules multiply and blood circulates is connected to all other energy so that we are not really separate beings but just small parts of a great being-ness.  Whatever happens to you impacts me, whether I know it or not.  In light of this amazing way to understand the world, I’ve come to think of God not as a separate life at all, but as Life itself.  For me God has become the energy that is life and moves through all life.  God is the motion within us and between us.  When Moses met God in the burning bush and asked God’s name, he was told, “I am.”  The very essence of being is God.  Then Jesus tells us, “God is love.”  I picture God as vibrating love which unites all that is, moves in and through all that we know and all that is yet to be discovered.  Across time and space – as tiny as the smallest particle and as big as the whole universe all at once.

Love isn’t something we add to our common life.  It IS our common life.  On Tuesday night at Justice Conversations we were wondering about whether or not it’s possible for humans to create a society that’s just, equitable, compassionate, caring about one another.  Can we act without violence?  Can we share earth’s resources so that everyone thrives?  It’s a bit of a stretch for the imagination.  There’s so much evidence that we can’t do it.  Maybe that’s because we think of love as something we have to learn instead of something we essentially are.

“Love is lifeforce.”  The life which animates us, beats with our hearts, courses through our veins is at the same time God and love.  When we love, we aren’t learning a new way of being, we’re remembering who we are.  We’re remembering that our very life is the presence of God in us and through us.  Long ago Eckhart Tolle shocked the viewers of an Oprah Winfrey special by asserting, “I am god.”  He wasn’t claiming to be an omnipotent being greater than all others.  He was affirming that the very life within him was one and the same with the life of all that is and that “all that is” is holy.  So Eckhart is God and so are you and so am I and so is all that is.  Not one of us God in totality but all of us completely and inextricably woven into the very being of God so that there is no other, no separation.  When we remember that, then we remember that we are one with every other person. 

Jesus who tells us to love our enemies also tells us that we are to love God, love neighbor and love self.  We hear that as three things to do.  But maybe it’s not.  Maybe it’s just one love because God and neighbor and self are all one being.  When we begin to see that those we fear, those we’re tempted to hate or disregard, are connected to us – heart to heart, life to life – then maybe even though we dislike what people do, we can love who they are.  Maybe we can see within each one some small light of God and focus on that until they can see it too.

Long ago people came to listen to Jesus because they wanted to believe him.  They wanted to believe that in a world filled with violence and distrust, warfare and greed, it was possible to love each other.  It’s possible to live each day caring for others, treating people with respect, and seeing within each one the light of God.  They created communities that lived by that hope and found possibility in their life together.  In every generation there have been those who still hoped and who still lived by that light.  This is our time to hold that light until others can see it.  To love in spite of the world until the world remembers they are love. 

Jesus told us to do it.  We should believe him.

Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 5:27-42

Sometimes when you start a project, it takes you places you wouldn't otherwise go. You decide to clean out the garden shed and end up needing to learn how to dispose of hazardous waste.

You clean out a basement cupboard and have to learn how to sell Disney movies on Facebook. Good beginnings can sometimes lead surprising places. We're beginning a project to read again the teachings of Jesus the Gospel writers preserved for us, which brings us to today's scripture. I hardly ever set out to preach about adultery and divorce, but here we are.

Most of us read today's scripture from a 21st Century view. When we think about adultery or divorce, we think of it in the context of chosen relationships, relatively equal gender roles, and no-fault divorce. Jesus' context was arranged marriage, women as property of their fathers until they are passed to their husbands, and divorce as economic disaster for a woman and her children who have no way to support themselves without the generosity of a husband. Adultery is a crime because it steals the property of another man - his wife or daughter. Only men were allowed to request a divorce, and some scholars suggest they did so for frivolous reasons - oversalting the stew or more likely losing youthful beauty. Divorce would not have been a mutual decision about compatibility.

Jesus clearly tells men to keep marriage contracts and act with fidelity toward their wives. Even more, he talks about not just keeping the rules, honoring the contract, but about how you think about marriage. Be faithful, he says. Honor your commitments to each other. Sometimes we hear about some young man with mental health issues taking this scripture literally and blinding himself or amputating his own hand. That's an extreme response. It reminds us that Jesus isn't about rules -in fact he often criticized those who were. He's about relationship. In that context, Jesus would be saddened by the number of divorces in today's society. The truth is, we are saddened too. Even those of us who are divorced regret the breaking of relationships and the complicating of family life for children. Contemporary divorce can be taken too lightly. It can also be essential for the ongoing health of the people involved. Life is complicated and so are human relationships. I've come to believe that Jesus would prefer that people stay married to each other and make things work. I also believe that when that isn't the healthiest option for people, he'd grieve with us and encourage us to begin again. Learn from your mistakes and do better next time. That happens in so many situations that the church does better to encourage healthy decisions rather than enforcing rules that no longer fit our situations.

That can also be true of the passage about swearing. Jesus isn't talking about colorful vocabulary (although I suspect many of us were raised by mothers who were convinced he was). The swearing Jesus refers to was a way of forming contracts in a verbal society. I swear by the hairs on my head that I will sell repay you this loan. I swear to God that I didn't take your prize goat. Jesus is right that if we're honest and truthful, we don't need to swear by something powerful to prove our point. Even calling on God's name won't make up for deceit. Rather, just tell the truth and let it be. Everything comes back to forming strong communities, and being able to trust each other's words makes community stronger.

Finally, Jesus talks about retribution. Torah limited the impact of revenge by saying if someone blinded you in one eye, you could take one of their eyes, but not both. If someone killed your donkey in a raid, you could take their donkey in repayment, but not slaughter their flock of sheep. In the violent first century the peasants in Jesus' audience were often violated by soldiers and people with power. When you live under oppression, you can't take revenge without making your situation worse. On the other hand, people can't take from you what you give freely. If you are struck on one cheek, offer the other. Suddenly you are no longer the victim but become the one who controls the situation. You respond with dignity rather than fear. If you are conscripted to carry a heavy pack for a mile, go two. Your generosity will cause trouble for the soldier who isn't allowed to make you go two miles, only one. Your generosity will put you in control of the situation rather than being its victim.

Jesus was teaching people how to change the world they lived in by changing themselves. The couldn't overthrow the Empire. They couldn't stand up to the local rulers without making things worse. But they could choose how they thought about themselves and how they responded to the world around them. In the face of violence and oppression, they could become kind, generous, centered. They could look out for each other. They could respect their wives. They could be honest with their neighbors. They could create a world within a world that was different.

Sometimes the church tries to create a "godly" world by making more rules. Don't do this; don't think that; you should always... you should never. I think of the folks I've known who wanted to "fix" education by posting the 10 commandments in the school room, or reform criminals by posting them in the courthouse. Then I remember the bit I read recently who suggested Christians should post the words of Jesus instead: blessed are the poor; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the peacemakers. I have relatively limited experience, but it seems to me that difficult situations don't need more rules; they need more love. When we love and respect one another, when we care about what's going on with one another; when we offer our best to the community, the community rises to the occasion and becomes better.

I can't help but wonder what today's passage has to say about the war happening in the middle east. It was started by a horrible act of terrorism, an act which no one suggests should go unpunished. It appears that the punishment is accomplishing just what Hamas hoped for - pushing peace in the area farther away rather than bringing hope for the future. Twenty-one years ago, I got in a lot of trouble on the first anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center by suggesting that war and retribution in response would only prove the terrorists right. That we should do everything we could to prevent another tragedy, but fighting a war would only cost more lives and bring more pain. I humbly suggest, after twenty years of war, that I was right. War didn't make the world better for anyone. War in Israel isn't accomplishing what it's supposed to, either. In a complicated world we have the power to stop some acts of terror, but uncontrolled violence is itself terror. I believe we can find a better way. I wonder who will be brave enough to try. Jesus is asking us to live out of the best impulses of our hearts, and that's a good starting place.

In his book Zen Shorts author Jon Muth retells a story about an old uncle who lived in a simple hut. One day he surprises a robber searching for something to steal (and not finding much). In kindness, the uncle gives the robber his second robe. The robber runs away in confusion.

Later, looking at the beautiful moon rising, the uncle remarks, "Poor man, all I had to give him was my tattered robe. If only I could have given him this wonderful moon." A robber or a friend; an opportunity to cheat or be honest; a victim or a whole person with choices. We get to decide how we will see life and how we will live it. Jesus encourages us to choose wisely.

Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 5:21-26

This summer we learned about life in the first and second centuries and the people who followed Jesus in that time.  More than anything else, those folks wanted to put Jesus’ teachings into action.  He spoke often about how people should live together, and they formed communities to follow his advice.  In the process, they said it was like getting a “new life.”  Near the end of that series, I realized that if we’re going to follow their example, we too need to know what Jesus told us to do.  One way to do that is to read and think about what we know Jesus said, so this fall and winter I suggest we do that, starting with the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew.

Some of today’s teaching is practical advice for people who live under a violent occupation army.  It’s a good idea not to come to the attention of the authorities, so if someone is dragging you to court, if you can settle before you get there, you’re both ahead.  The courts were likely to deal harshly with anyone they saw as a trouble-maker.  The court Jesus is referring to seems to be the one which settles debts owed.  People for centuries were thrown into jail for not being able to pay back loans.  They used prison time to work and pay back creditors, and it was a miserable experience.  In a time of extreme poverty, being in debt was a common reality, as it is for many in our own time.  People listening to Jesus surely identified with the situation he was describing.

And we can all identify with his advice about anger.  I don’t know anyone who isn’t either angry or frustrated with folks at one time or another.  Some years ago we read The Didache, a training manual for first century Christians.  The work is only 18 pages long and 10 of those deal with behaviors, mostly anger management.  First people mastered how to live in community and get along; then they were admitted to full membership.

The admonition to settle arguments with others before coming to worship or communion is in today’s passage and in The Didache.  Remembering that the meals we now celebrate as communion were originally long supper parties, it makes sense for two people having a disagreement to settle up before coming to dinner.  Having an argument drag out over hours of a long meal would be miserable for everyone.  Plus having a deadline for doing the hard work of settling differences helps us buckle down and do it.  

When we hear following Jesus as described as “new life” we are inclined to think of that spiritually. We are “saved” or guaranteed a place in heaven.  “New life” can have a daily explanation as well.  When we develop skills for community living, our lives become easier.  Anger management, clear communication, letting frustrations go, sharing generously with others, being clear about what we need and willing to meet the needs of others - all these make life better for ourselves, our families and the groups we join. The Jesus groups were making their lives new by following Jesus’ instructions about how to live together.

I suspect all of us have the experience of being angry at someone or some situation.  We easily fret over some real or imagined harm done to us, filling up our days with misery and creating heartburn and headaches.  The advice to resolve anger lets that go and sets us free.

There are a number of skills we learn over time to make that possible:

One is to be honest about what’s troubling us, but not in an accusatory way.  We say how we are feeling, not pointing out what the other has done wrong.  I remember practicing “I” statements when I learned mediation.  “When you… I feel… I wish…”  When you eat my ice cream I feel disappointed.  I wish you would ask me before eating something I’ve put in the freezer.”  “When you talk over my talking, I feel discounted and frustrated.  I wish you would wait for me to finish before you talk.”  

Another skill is to ask questions and wait for answers, without assuming what they will be.  “Why did you snap at me?”  “Why did you go to the movies without inviting me?”  “You seem down today.  Would you like to talk about it?”

An important skill is to learn to identify the stories we’re telling ourselves and decide if we want to change them.  We all want to know “the truth” about how things are, but in reality there is no objective truth, only what seems to be true from various perspectives.  Even what we think of as objective science now tells us that experimenters impact their experiments by what they expect to happen.  So that’s even more true in personal relationships.  Consider the person driving too fast and quickly passing you on a city street.  They could be an irresponsible kid showing off.  Or they could be rushing a wife to the hospital to have a baby.  Or they could be a grandma who really has to go to the bathroom.  Or they could be someone who just broke off a relationship and is emotionally distraught.  It takes practice to realize that we don’t know the stories of other people’s lives, and we don’t have to make them up.  “I wonder what that’s about” is a helpful thought rather than being quick to be angry or critical.  

Finally, our meditation friends teach us about not being attached to thoughts or situations.  We can notice:  I’m feeling angry, I’m feeling hurt, I’m feeling frightened or any emotion.  Then we can remind ourselves that emotions happen, they don’t become who we are.  We get to choose whether we’ll identify with them or not.  I’m feeling sad is not exactly the same as I’m sad.  That tiny bit of separation gives us space to notice the feeling, acknowledge it’s real, and then choose how to handle it.  Will we have a conversation with someone who’s hurt us?  Will we tell ourselves a different story about the situation?  Will we find something that makes us joyful to focus on instead?  We can learn to work with emotions rather than letting them take over, even if it takes some time to calm down and be ready to do that.

I realize that this sounds more like psychology and self-help than what we’re used to thinking about as religion.  It’s a good reminder that all the parts of our lives matter to Jesus; our whole selves are loved by God and we can bring all of ourselves into God’s light.  Jesus was teaching people how to live together in a more healthy and loving way.  I’ve said before that the key question is “What would love do?”   It remains the key question when we are angry, frustrated, or in trouble with others.  What is the most loving way to deal with one another, to learn about one another, and to heal relationships with one another?  That is what Jesus asks us to do.  Together, we can learn how to do it.

Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 5:17-20

In Jesus’ day the religious leaders, the scribes and Pharisees, believed that if every Hebrew kept the law perfectly for just one day, the kingdom of heaven would come.  This was an impossible task since they meant not just the 613 laws found in the Torah but the hundreds of rules about what each law actually meant and how to keep each one.  For instance, one of the ten commandments is to “honor the sabbath and keep it holy.”  That’s a command to rest and reflect one day each week.  But that one law devolved into rules about whether or not one could cook on the sabbath (not) or walk on the sabbath (only a few steps).  In our time those who observe Judaism strictly have two kitchens to help them to observe all the rules of kosher cooking, automatic light switches so no one turns on a light on sabbath, and homes near the synagogue so they need walk (not drive) only a short distance to services.

There’s a good side to all these rules when they help people be conscious of the presence of God in their lives. There’s a down side when the focus on rules becomes obsessive.  In Jesus’ time, some of the leaders were excessively focused on the rules, which were expensive to keep.  They took time, which hardworking peasants or slaves didn’t have.  They took extra cooking vessels, which were expensive.  The rules separated religious from non-religious people and they made it impossible for those who were poor to be religious.  Only the rich had the luxury of time and money to keep the rules and thus please God.

We know that Jesus was often critical of the Pharisees, so we’d expect him to say, “The law is a heavy burden.  You don’t have to follow it.”  Instead, he says people must keep every letter of the law.  But there’s a twist…you must be more righteous than the Pharisees – who keep every letter of the law.  Is Jesus contradicting himself?  Is he making it even harder to connect with God than the strict leaders of his day?  Or does he have something else in mind?

There’s a hint for us in Jesus’ statement that we must keep the Law and the Prophets.  The law, before all the rules which expanded on it, was about how people lived with each other as a sign of God’s love:

• Honor your father and your mother.

• Don’t steal.

• Don’t lie about your neighbor in court.

• Welcome the stranger.

• Care for orphans and widows who have no male householder to support them.

• Forgive debt every seven years.

• Every fifty years free all the slaves and give land back to its original owners.

When we read the actual laws at the heart of the Torah, it’s evident that the religious leaders weren’t really interested in following them.  There’s no evidence that property was ever restored in a jubilee year, or that slaves were freed to go home.  In Jesus’ time the world was full of people hungry and desperate and no one was making an attempt to feed or clothe or house them.

The prophets were more than folks who predicted the future, even a dire future of battles lost and nations conquered.  They were the ones who pointed out when people weren’t following the law.  The railed against economic injustice and abuse of power.  They called rich folks and leaders to task when the bulk of the populace was poor and desperate.  Just as the laws which were hard were ignored, the prophets were also discounted.  No one wanted to structure society by God’s law because equality is hard.  Economic justice costs rich folks money.  

Two weeks ago we read the scripture called the beatitudes, which is part of Jesus’ teaching about what’s important.  Blessed are the poor.  Blessed are the meek.  Jesus doesn’t talk about rules which reinforce the advantage of the rich over the peasants.  He tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers” in spite of living in a time when Rome was inflicting violence on every nation and people.  

Jesus isn’t talking about following picky rules about what recipes you use or which plates you serve on.  He was talking about shaping the very fabric of society by God’s vision.  He would have been in favor of forgiving debt, returning land, feeding widows and orphans, welcoming strangers.  Jesus was teaching people to take care of each other, forming communities of equality and dignity and compassion.  In the decades after his death, his followers did just that.  They gathered in small groups and took care of each other.  They had a good time doing it.  Of course they had bumps in the road, but they learned how to manage disagreements and watch each other’s backs.  

On one had there are the religious leaders saying if you keep all the rules perfectly the reign of God will come.  On the other hand Jesus is saying if you keep the spirit of the law and prophets, you’ll discover the reign of God is already among you.  Love one another and figure out how to put love into practice every day.  That’s the spirit of God’s vision for the world.

In our time it’s as tricky to follow the spirit of God’s law as it was in Jesus’ time.  We’re constantly trying to figure out who our neighbor is and how to love them.  Some folks want to tell us we just need more rules to make life work better.  Rules about who can cross a border.  Rules about who owns the land and the oil.  Rules about who gets food and who doesn’t.  Rules about how to fight wars.  There’s no shortage of rules.

Remember how Jesus summed up the law when someone asked him?  Which is most important?  Love God.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  We make rules when love is in short supply.  Rules are meant to protect us from those we fear.  But love breaks down division and fear.  Rules aren’t nearly so important when we really care about each other.  It’s easy to make exceptions to the rules when we know the people involved and what they need.  

We’re in the midst of asking ourselves questions about who we are as a church and how we should live in our world.  It’s possible that only one question matters:  What would love do?  What is the most loving attitude we can hold; the most loving action we can take?  How do we love one another well and love our neighbor too?  

Keeping the law and the prophets isn’t about rules, it’s about love.  If we’re going to heal the world, we’re going to have to love it back to health.  That’s a big task.  So we start small – with each other and our community.  We love the best we can and hope that over time love is contagious.  There’s talk all the time of things going viral.  Let’s commit ourselves to infecting the world with the virus of love and pray that it spreads everywhere.

Reformation Sunday

Matthew 5:13-16

We are a very busy congregation.  “The church that does things!”  I’m proud of the many things we do and the ways we celebrate them.  I tell people that the heart of our worship is Light Signs where we say out loud the ways we are being God’s love in our community.  Sometimes busy can be overwhelming!  This week I put 300 miles on my car – in town! – driving about being busy.  When we are most busy may be the best time to hit “pause,” to stop and reflect for a moment on whether the busy-ness matches our values and our dreams.  Are we busy with the things that matter most to us?  This summer I bought a massive planner, not just for keeping track of busy but for space to put on paper the “why” of what I do.  (So far the calendar is full and the goals are mostly blank, but the possibilities are there waiting for me.)

At the heart of every question about how we use time and resources is a deeper question:  who am I?  Who do I want to be?  Jesus told the people around him, and through the ages he tells us, “You are the salt of the earth.”  “You are the light of the world.”  Because you ARE, life has flavor and zest, life has purpose and hope.  We call our reporting on each week “light signs” because Jesus invites us to be light in this world – a light that shows a way forward, calms fears, brings joy. 

In her book Becoming Wise Krista Tippett relates a story she was told by Rachel Naomi Remen.  Dr. Remen received this story as a present on her fourth birthday from her grandfather who was a rabbi.  She tells it this way:

In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life.  In the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light.  And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke.  The wholeness of the world, the light of the world, was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light.  And they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.

Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident.  We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world.  It’s a very important story for our times.  This task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew.  It’s the restoration of the world.

And this is, of course, a collective task.  It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born.  We are all healers of the world.  That story opens a sense of possibility.  It’s not about healing the world by making a huge difference.  It’s about healing the world that touches you, that’s around you.

Each Sunday when we share our light signs, or when we’re quiet but remember the ways we’ve been light without sharing them aloud, we’re reflecting the ways we are healing the world.  This story isn’t as old as Jesus, but it grew out of the heart of Judaism which was Jesus’ heart.  Jesus was telling the people that even though they couldn’t overthrow the Empire which controlled their lives, they could live each day by the light of God’s love.  The could BE the light of God’s love.  And that light would heal their small piece of the world.  It would make it salty and delicious.  It would create the reign of God, the kingdom of heaven, hidden in plain sight and overthrow the Empire without open rebellion 

Today is Reformation Sunday when we’re asked to remember Martin Luther nailing his 99 proposals to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517, inviting conversation about how things were going in the life of the church.  He wasn’t overthrowing the kingdom of the church.  He was suggesting that it might be time to think and act in new ways.  He was giving power to the people, wanting them to know for themselves the story of faith and God and Jesus and inviting them to see themselves as light in the world.  John Calvin wanted to be part of that conversation and apply its principles to both the church and to emerging autonomous cities, starting with Geneva.  Today when we engage in conversation about how to be the church in our time and place we stand on their shoulders.  We’re not talking about how to change the whole world, but only about how to be faithful stewards of the bit of light God has entrusted to us and let it shine as healing to those bits of the world we touch.  Over time, that proves to be life-changing.

Because we are already doing church in some new ways, we don’t always feel connected to our larger denominations.  We don’t always feel like we fit in with other congregations.  But this is a good Sunday to think about heritage and connections.  When I was thinking ahead about the conversation we’re going to start today, I wanted to know how our denominations answer the questions we’re going to ask:  Who are we?  What do we do? Why?  Their answers are a surprisingly good fit for Family of God.  I’ve put some of them in the bulletin so you have them for now and later. 

• Welcoming all into the fullness of God’s love.

• A world experiencing the difference God’s grace and love in Christ make for all people and creation.

• Activate each of us so more people…discover community, justice and love.

• Nurture safe and healthy spaces…shape an abundant future

• God is still speaking.

• United in Christ’s love, we seek justice for all.

• …serves as a catalyst for God’s love in action.

• Offer God’s extravagant welcome in the world.

We’re going to talk a lot about what we do (and don’t) do.  What we do begins with who we are, and Jesus told us clearly: 

You ARE the light of the world.
You are the light that heals.
You are the light that gives hope.
You are the light that changes everything.

Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 5:1-11

It’s hard to listen to the news these days because it’s full of violence.  My phone tells me there are wars, civil wars, drug wars and more in 33 countries.  We try to pray for people in harm’s way, but frankly, I don’t even know where some of the countries listed fall on the globe.  These 33 don’t count the countries dealing with fires, floods, and earthquakes which are destroying homes and communities and causing rising casualty counts.

For two weeks we’ve been watching Israel’s every move in response to a terrible terrorist attack, and while as I write this they are not yet at war, thousands of people are dying, many more are injured, and humanitarian aid is far from meeting the need in Gaza. 

In the midst of all this anguish, I read a short piece written by a Jewish woman in our country.  Her heart is broken by the attack on Jews in Israel.  She felt powerless to stop the horror of terrorism or war in response. So she made her favorite supper dish and took it next door to her Arab neighbors.  They had coffee and talked.  They laughed and shed a tear.  The next day her neighbors brought her dessert.  They had coffee and talked.  Neighbors from two religions, two ethnic backgrounds, two cultures – sharing what they loved best to eat and sharing their lives.

We’ve been reading about the first century for four months now.  We’ve learned that the violence of those times even exceeded the violence in our own.  People have been hurting each other for the sake of power and wealth forever.  We also read that the folks who followed Jesus gathered together, shared food, and talked.  They talked about how Jesus taught them to live with dignity and compassion in the midst of violence and danger.  They laughed.  They surely cried.  The created a life within the life of their community that resisted violence and oppression.  They found a better way.

I used to think that the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount were about how God was going to fix the world. “Blessings” seemed to me to be God’s business.  Something God passed out as a reward for doing good.  Like when my granddaughter Lily got a chocolate pumpkin candy at the end of her sewing lesson on Friday.  Or when Weight Watchers gives you a charm for losing five pounds. 

These blessings are pronounced not for doing something right, but for just living.  In Jesus’ day almost everyone was poor or grieving, hungry and thirsty.  Matthew cleaned up the list with some spiritual language, but the truth is everyone who came to see Jesus qualified for these blessings just by getting up in the morning and making it through the day.

As the list goes on it shifts a little.  Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers.  What is their reward?  Mercy, holiness, peace. Seems like doing good is its own reward.  If you want the blessings of kindness, generosity, and peace of mind – be kind, generous and focused on what’s good.

Some amazing folks with decades of meditation experience meet every Monday in our fellowship hall as Lotus Meditation Center.  Hanging out with them I’ve learned a few things about Buddhism – only a few.  The purpose of Buddhism and its meditation practice is to help people deal with the suffering of the world.  There’s plenty of suffering, but meditation teaches people how to set it aside and find peace.  I suspect that being a part of a sangha (or meditation group) is something like being a follower of Jesus in the first century.  You hang out together, you talk about things that help you in life, you practice living in a new way.  From these folks I’ve learned that it’s not the ups and downs of life that get you, it’s how you think about the ups and downs of life.  Too often we think life is supposed to be great for everyone and if it’s not, we haven’t received our due.  Generations of history show us that life is often beautiful and sometimes hard and no one is handing out chocolates to us just for being alive.  At the same time, we can learn to be calm in the midst of chaos, happy in the midst of hardship, at peace with what is, even if it’s not what we first hoped it would be. 

Finding peace through meditation and finding peace through the community of Jesus folks are a lot the same.  It starts with being honest about what is – good and bad.  Life is good.  Life is hard.  Life is. Folks get sick and sometimes don’t get better or get better differently than they were before.  Accidents happen.  Companies downsize.  Storms blow through.

We seldom have control over everything that happens to us.   We can choose how we respond to everything that happens to us.  We learn that in community with the support of people who care about us and have our backs.  We learn that although God doesn’t send us only the experiences we want, whatever comes our way with face it witih God.  Over the ages people have affirmed that when their own strength faltered, there is a stronger power at the center of life which keeps them going.  We say, “God is with us.”

Although we have less say than we want in how life unfolds, we have more say than we know in how we live it.  Remember the earliest Jesus followers resisted Empire by living in communities patterned on Jesus’ teachings.  They fed each other, employed each other, protected each other.  They had a good time together and called their efforts “new life.”  Our time isn’t identical to the first century, but we have similar opportunities to create life in Jesus’ way.  Today when I read the beatitudes, I hear Jesus telling us that if we want life to be full of blessing, we live as though those blessings were reality.  We live them into being.

At the recent Conference annual meeting the leaders recommended a book by Margaret Wheatley: Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity.  On the first page Wheatley quotes historian Howard Zinn:

We don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.  The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Jesus tells us that in the midst of everyday challenges, we can be blessed.  “To live now as we think human beings should live” is to create blessing.  Goodness in life isn’t something we wait for God to hand us, it’s something we birth from our hearts and the heart of our community.  It’s taking the light of God within us and letting it shine as we live by the vision Jesus has given us.

Blessed are the merciful, the kind, those who share food and share vision, who make peace.  Blessed are those who make food and take it next door to the neighbors, looking for hope.  Blessed are those who shine the light of God into this present darkness and transform themselves and the world.

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

This last week marked the first anniversary of my mother’s death. 

During this past year we siblings sold the house that she and our dad designed and built.  It has been home for us, my brothers and sister and me for 70 years and a welcoming place for the grandchildren and the great grand children. But it is hardly recognizable anymore, the inside gutted to meet the needs of the new owners.  My sister lives across the street from the house and has permission to wander in and see progress as it goes a long, but all work on the house stopped when the contractor ran off with the new owners money and is now being charged with fraud, again, who knew he had a warrant out, but that’s a different story.  The story I want to tell is how on one of these nostalgic wanderings, my sister became shaken by sadness and loss.  She was literally in the valley of the shadow of death, though not her own.  She stood in what had been our parents’ bedroom and sobbed, great big tears, what we call the ugly cry with red noses and staggered breaths and longed for our mother, cried out for our mother.  Her loneliness and pain were palpable.  And the sight of this 62 year old woman, mother of seven, grandmother of eight, overcome with emotion, surrounded by debris and dust and echoes of the past, and I know she was still in her pajamas for sure, could have been comical, except it wasn’t. 

Now I have to say, that my sister is a little dramatic.  Always has been.  Her daughter says other people are born, but with my sister, God lit a fire.  Honestly, you don’t know my sister, but we know this isn’t drama, but life.  We have all stood in remains of the past and felt deep loss.  If not for a someone, then for a might have been, or a never expected this, or a safe place that disappeared or a safe someone who turned hurtful.  A love.  It is a brokenness that we acknowledge in our saner moments as being human.

This event with my sister pales compared to the stories of horrific atrocities and death, destruction that we see and hear about on the news this past week.  Terrible and terrifying.  Inhuman.  Words cannot express the pain of millions of people at war.  I feel a little guilty about not addressing those issues this Sunday, but, today for just a few minutes let’s think about our pain, In this congregation, the little congregation that does good things and sings about being here for good, we try to live out the message of the good news as best we can, with God’s help, welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, visiting the widows and the orphans of our world in their affliction.  For this moment, let’s think about what God wants for us.  Especially when we are hurting.   Our pain is personal and real and I believe matters to God.  And Psalm 23 says I’m right.  Against all that happens in our lives that brings us to tears, we hold up these words, for comfort and for peace in our hearts.  The Lord is my shepherd.  Note, if you haven’t already, how personal the pronouns are, my I me.  The psalmist makes it all very personal.  And in what he writes, we cannot help but notice that our needs are acknowledged, that we do not have to worthy of healing, that the comfort of the green pasture and the still water are ours, out of God’s goodness alone, a truth, what we often refer to as grace.   

Still, in these few verses of scripture, we are invited to participate in our own recovery, or healing.  It is God’s gift to us, but we still have to decide if we want to receive it or not.  It begins with the declaration, the lord is my shepherd.  Our part is first to acknowledge the relationship we have with God whom we follow, depend upon for protection and comfort.  You might agree, we personally have a western way of controlling and self sufficiency that skips this part until we are in over our heads, until we are standing in our pajamas in a demolition zone, feeling very alone and broken.  We have a little ego that makes this first part of the psalm not easy for us to proclaim.  The Lord is my shepherd, which makes me a part of the flock and so I can be cute and cuddly but opinionated, stubborn, and susceptible to wandering off.  Not a big boost to my self-esteem.  And I repeat, until we are in over our heads.

This is a good psalm.    It is helpful to remember that we use the 23 psalm at funerals not at baptisms or weddings.  It is intended to comfort when we are in trouble.  Not a one size psalm fits all.  It’s more a your heart is heavy with pain, let me carry some of that load for a while.  You rest. 

And that is enough, isn’t it?  I’ll offer you a chance to cry your tears, shout your curses, connect with others, remember better times, rest. 

Lie down in green pastures. 

Be restored.

Sounds real good when you are in over your head.

Scholars tell us the 23rd psalm is actually two psalms put together.  The second one begins with he prepares a meal in the presence of my enemies…

I always thought, as I was growing up, that this was a picnic lunch, since we were already out in the countryside, in green pastures with a little stream running through it.  So we rest and we eat.  We know the healing power of food shared in time of loss, so it made perfect sense to me.

I learned later, of course, that in the time of the psalm was written, eating with your enemies meant that you were not enemies any longer. 

You eat with someone means you agree to let go of the past, you drop all plans for revenge, you may not be friends, but sharing food fixes what was broken between you and your guest/enemy.  So God prepares the meal and if you choose to eat, your relationship with the other is redeemed.  Repaired. Mended.  Open to a new future. 

That makes the 23rd psalm even more perfect for funerals than the comfort of the rest and restore part.  After hundreds of funerals, I have often found that the funeral dinner is more healing than the funeral service.  In-laws, crazy cousins who still call you by your grade school nickname, and neighbor who drinks too much, share a meal in a time of loss and you just never know what will happen.  It’s an opportunity.  Something good could come out of it.  Some history forgiven.  Some new future opened up.

For my sister and for others whose grief is deep and long lived, identifying the enemy may be hard: loneliness, feeling abandoned, needy.  It is complicated.  But if we think of the first part of the psalm as an invitation to let God participate in the pain we carry, then this part could also be an invitation to let go of what is holding us in a past that doesn’t work for us.

You can’t get even with an ex, or a disappointment, or a dream gone missing, and live your life in the fullness God intended.  Best to eat and move ahead.

When we had my mother’s service, we did not use the 23rd psalm.  My brother who is also a retired pastor and I just thought it too much of a cliché to consider and I think, now that was a mistake.  My siblings and children and grandchildren, need the comfort of that pasture and stream and invitation to live in the Lord’s care.  But more than that, they need the good news for the psalmist’s four words, he restores my soul.  It is a reminder that God is invested in wholeness and better said, in our wholeness.  Pain and loss that leaves holes, gaps in our souls are not what God desires for us.    And I invite you, in the business of our congregation and in the privacy of your own lives, to take comfort in the words, the lord is my shepherd….surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.  Even when, or especially when that life overwhelms and tears fall.

You know maybe I don’t need to feel guilty about not addressing the chaos of the world right now. Maybe talking about our own grief over loss is the best way to think about the people of Gaza and Israel and Ukraine and Russia.  And maybe the 23rd psalm is the best prayer for peace at this moment.  In over your head seems like an apt description of much of the world.  You can decide for your self out of your own history with healing and forgiving and having your soul restored, if this is so. 

Thanks be to God for the good news of today.  Amen. 

- Nell Lindorff

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

John 21:20-25

"Better than a New Testament?" After Jesus: Before Christianity (Westar)

 Today we reach the end of our journey through the book After Jesus: Before Christianity by the Westar Institute. It's taken us four months and we've traveled over time and space, back two thousand years to the Roman Empire. As the title implies, there was no Christianity there, but the roots of Christianity as we know it lie deep in the lives of the people who followed Jesus. They organized themselves in many ways and believed a variety of things about Jesus. Virtually all of them believed that the life and teachings of Jesus mattered and in them they found creative and helpful ways to respond to the realities of their own lives. They lived long before creeds were crafted or orthodoxy imagined, but perhaps they would all agree to one core principle: because we know Jesus our lives are better.

Having heard almost every Sunday that what we thought was true of our Christian origins wasn't accurate for the very beginning, I'll bet it won't surprise you when I tell you that these earliest followers didn't have a New Testament. If they had had one, they wouldn't have been able to read it. The majority of people in that time didn't read or write, and being literate wasn't necessary for their success. If they were wealthy, they paid someone (or enslaved someone) to read and write for them. If they were poor, nothing they needed in daily life required written words.

 When the followers of Jesus gathered, their meetings were rich in content. They sang songs, recited poems, told favorite stories over and over. Sometimes a group would receive a letter which one person would read to them. The heart of their meetings was conversation and feasting. They talked about what had happened since they last met.  The discussed and debated how Jesus or the disciples would handle the situations they faced. The worked through what it meant to love your neighbor or to do good to those who persecute you in the flesh and blood world of their village where everyone could name who 'the neighbors and the persecutors were. They ate good food and drank good wine and thanked Jesus as the symbolic host of the banquet they were enjoying.

By the end of the first century letters had been written from mentors to groups and some few of these have survived. Gospels had been composed, not so much to teach people about Jesus but to record what they had already heard and committed to memory. Writing, which later became scripture, wasn't the starting point of their community. They began with talk and action and then wrote down what they already knew, what they had worked out together over time and much conversation. No original manuscripts have survived, but we have copies from 100 years or so later that tel! us what they thought was important enough to write down. It would be several hundred years more before these writings became our Bible.

This doesn't mean that in order to reconnect with our roots we need to set the Bible aside. The Bible contains the stories which have shaped us. It's part of the fabric of our lives and we honor it as we learn from it. It's an important part of how we know Jesus and God, through the stories of those who knew them before us.

If we want to capture some first century vitality, we might want to approach the Bible less as sacred text and more as exciting story, with life and energy. We might also want to acknowledge that life and energy come to us in additional ways.

• Feasting - at the Lord's table and the tables of coffee hour. Both are places where Jesus is present.

• Bathing - It's no longer our custom to meet at the public baths, but we have retained the importance of washing at times of new beginnings at the baptismal font. What does it mean that this font in present with us every time we gather? What new beginnings have been made here, and what new beginnings might we still want to make?  Are we holding each other accountable for saying we want to be made new in Christ?

• Conversation - We've made a start at sharing aloud the stories of faith and life in our "light signs." What if we expanded on that. I don't mean I should talk more, but maybe some of you might. Can we talk about what we've done in the world and also about what we'd like to do? Or don't know what to do about? Or how to make a difference?

• Prayer - which is just an extension of conversation. When we name those things we celebrate or those that worry us, the people we care about and the situations that are troubling, we are inviting God to be present in them and committing ourselves to do something about them.

• Singing - this summer we requested favorite hymns. The words of hymns can express our faith and the music can lift our hearts. What song do you hum when you're happy? Or worried? Or frustrated? Should we expand our repertoire to include what we sing throughout the week?

• Written word - Every week we read from scripture. This summer we've stretched that a bit to include things not in the Bible. I've often wondered about other writings that would be helpful or encouraging, but finding them is hard. What if you brought bits of writing you find especially meaningful? Something from a magazine or a classic book or a poem. When Merie shared her poems, we were all,lifted up.

The Jesus folk of the first two centuries were creating a life together from their core belief: because we know Jesus, our life is better. How are we creating that life in our time? What do we know about Jesus, about God and about life? How do we know it - through scripture, writings, songs, poems... ? What do we do about it? What difference does it make in our attitudes and our actions? How can we help each other live more profoundly and more joyfully?

We have permission from our spiritual ancestors to create the life of Jesus' followers in this time and place. We have permission to be flexible - to try out many things, to allow ideas that appeal to some and not to others, to go with the flow. And we have an invitation to be intentional. To talk through what matters to us and how we'll impact our world. I was reading about a ND legislator this week who wants the legislature to be explicitly Christian. I think he meant that everyone should follow his rules. But now we know that to be intentionally a follower of Jesus is to be creative and kind, extravagantly loving, counter-cultural and peacemaking, accepting and encouraging. By connecting with our past we've learned that the future is wide open to us. What will we make of it?