The Lord’s Supper: The Gospel In Miniature – 1/18/09 – Isaiah 25:6-10a

At one of our recent worship committee meetings we started off by reflecting on communion.  Matt Bye gave each of us a number of slips of paper and asked us to write down a word or a phrase that we associate with communion.  After a few minutes we went around and shared what we had written and then used that as a basis for talking about the Lord’s Supper as a practice of the church.

I’ve had those slips of paper sitting on my desk ever since that meeting.  They’ve managed to survive several desktop-purging efforts on my part.  As a way of beginning our reflection on communion, and as a way of recycling these papers before they actually get recycled, I want to share some of what was written.  Different words or phrases that we associate with communion.  As you hear them you may think about how they do or don’t reflect your own experience:

Fellowship, Grace, A COMMON loaf and cup, Recommit, Cleansing/Soul-Searching, Forgiveness, Re-Member, Joyful, Non-denominational, Collective Unconscious, Making things right, Emptying/Filling, Historical, Give thanks, Marvel, Servant, Joyful rite, Union in spirit, Fellowship, Life and death, Life, Ordinary becoming holy, Relationship w/God AND your faith community, Our identity.

Seeing all these words and ideas out in front of us as a group was a way of recognizing how much is contained within this act of the church that has been known as Communion, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist.

There is good reason for all of these associations.  Not only is there a rich history behind the practice of Communion in the church, but the symbolic field of scripture out of which the Lord’s Supper emerges, the narrative and the poetry and the lived experience of the people of Israel, is itself rich and full in meaning.  Consider some of these connections:

The Lord’s Supper is connected to the Passover meal of ancient Jewish practice, celebrating Israel’s liberation from being slaves in Egypt, observed in the first century as a hope for Israel’s liberation from the Roman Empire, and continued today as a hopeful celebration of the liberation of all creation from all forms of bondage. 

It is connected to the prophet Isaiah’s vision of what will happen in the days to come.  Many people throughout time have had visions of what might take place at an apocalyptic date yet to be determined — of who might win the final world war, if anyone, and what all might be destroyed in the process.  In giving his vision of the future, Isaiah imagines…a great banquet.  A feast of rich food and the best wines, where God is the host and all peoples are invited.  Isaiah pictures this lavish party being a time when the glaze over our eyes will be removed, and we can see for the first time.  The ways of death and destruction get booted out the door with the large angelic bouncers never letting them back inside.  God wipes away the tears from all faces, then hands people back their napkins and serves up another round of wine and multi-cultural cuisine.  After describing this festive scene, Isaiah says, “It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God…this is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in God’s salvation.”  This is what we have waited for, what we long for. 

This image of salvation as a great banquet of all peoples no doubt had a powerful influence on the way Jesus went about his ministry.  He connected himself to the tradition of Isaiah, and so another connection that we have for the Lord’s Supper is in Jesus’ regular practice of having table fellowship with those who were considered outcasts and sinners, the unclean people who would not find a welcome at a proper meal.  We see Jesus literally and figuratively removing the glaze from blind eyes, and living out this celebration of the great banquet in the homes and streets of first century Palestine.  He felt that heaven was too good to wait for, so we might as well live so that the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Communion is also connected to Jesus’ feeding people.  More than just welcoming the unclean, we have stories of Jesus teaching that there is enough food for everyone, with plenty left over.  The gospel of John especially shows Jesus’ feeding of the 5000 as a Eucharistic act.  With the stark images coming out of Gaza these last couple weeks and the high quantities of food aid being brought in, we are reminded again of the connection between daily bread and justice for the poor, and Jesus’ act of sharing with those who had nothing.  When hungry people are being fed, Christ is there among them.              

Communion is connected to Jesus’ last supper that he shared with his friends and followers, the night when one would betray him, the others would abandon him, and he would be arrested, tried through the night, and then crucified the next day. 

It is connected to the blood that Jesus shed in his suffering and his body that was crucified. 

It is connected to the remembering of Jesus’ death, and also the celebration of his resurrection.  The walkers to Emmaus recognize Jesus as risen when one who was a stranger to them breaks bread and gives it to them to eat.

It is connected to the common meal that the early church shared as they gathered for worship and fellowship and teaching.

All these things make up the web of meaning that is the Lord’s Supper that add to our already full list of associations that we carry with the meal. 

It’s no wonder that in the third and fourth century it came to known as a sacrament, meaning “holy mystery.”  How else do you describe what’s going on here?  The point of what I’m saying so far here is just that.  It is a holy mystery.  This is not a light meal.  It is a full course that we gather around and feast on.  What we’re dealing with here is the gospel in miniature.  It’s all in there.  First point.

Here’s the second point:  Being a holy mystery, with all this meaning and rich narrative behind it, I think it’s fair to acknowledge, admit, that we don’t always experience every aspect of its meaning.  Sometimes we’re doing well to enter just one part of the mystery.  This is the bread, this is the cup.  Liberation and justice.  The bread and the cup, Celebration.  The bread and the cup.  Gratitude, forgiveness.  Bread and cup.  Grace.  In a way similar to baptism, as a ritual that represents more than we can ever take in at any one time, the Lord’s Supper is an opportunity to keep expanding our experience of Gospel.  The hope is that over the course of our Communions, we are able to take in different dimensions of the holy mystery that is held out to us.  Here’s some stories of how that’s happened:    

Marlene Kropf is a minister of worship and she shares about how much of a difference just a small change of language made for her in experiencing communion.  She had been accustomed to hearing, “On the night he was betrayed, Jesus to took the bread and broke it….” And so on.  Communion for her had always been a solemn occasion reflecting of the Lord’s death.  But one time the person leading the service began by saying, “Among friends, gathered around a table, Jesus took bread and broke it…”  She writes, “I couldn’t believe what a difference the change of a few words made.  The image of Jesus gathering around a table with his friends brought immediately to mind Jesus’ intimate fellowship with his disciples, the many meals he shared with followers such as Mary and Martha, the table fellowship at Emmaus and even the Messianic banquet of the future.  Instead of feeling burdened, I approached the Communion table with anticipation and joy.” (The Mennonite magazine, Sept 4, 2007, p. 9)

I had my own kind of startling experience with communion when Abbie and I were in Mennonite Voluntary Service.  Every year all of the MVSers around the country get together for a retreat.  There’s workshops and discussion and plenty of time for recreation, but also times of worship.  At the last worship session we were led in communion and asked to form in small groups so that we could serve each other the bread and the juice.  And as we served each other, we were asked to say to the person beside us, “In offering this bread and this cup, I offer my life to you.”  When the leader invited us to do this, I was a little stunned at what I was being asked to do.  It was the first time I had ever considered myself as the one in communion being willing to sacrifice for another.  Was I willing to offer my life for this person beside me who I’d just met a couple days ago but who I knew shared a common commitment to serving God?  As I fearfully shared these words along with the bread and cup with the person beside me I was aware in a deeper way than ever what was being asked of all of us, and how powerful it is when a community commits to each other’s wellbeing.

In talking with Abbie this week about communion she also had an experience ready to share that made communion take on a new level of meaning.  It was during a time at seminary when I was interning at a church that met on Sunday evenings and she was attending Southside Fellowship that met in the mornings.  As she walked into worship she noticed that the worship table was covered with mounds and mounds of cookies.  The service was a service of celebration and eventually got to the point where the pastor invited the congregation to join in the celebration feast.  Communion was served as cookies and milk, with everyone able to have as many cookies as they could stomach before lunch to taste the sweetness of God’s gift to us.

In the same essay that Marlene described her own experience with communion, she also told of a congregation that regularly carries bread and juice to the front of the sanctuary during worship, along with a grocery cart full of canned goods.  During the service all the food is blessed, the congregation partakes of the Lord’s Supper, and the food is taken to their local food pantry.      

What needs to happen in order to continue to enter into the depth of the meaning of this practice?  Do we need to vary the words, sometimes emphasizing Christ’s death, sometimes emphasizing intimate fellowship?  Do we need to be flexible with the format?  Sometimes being served, and sometimes serving each other as brother and sisters committed to serving each other?  If we spread a full table and mix up the elements every once in a while will we get a sense of the surprising celebration that we’re invited into?  How can we connect our sharing of Lord’s supper with our mission in our community – with our support of the Oakley Food Pantry? with our work with Community Meal? 

There is a trend in the Mennonite church, an encouraging nudge from our worship ministers, to deepen our experience of communion in our congregation.  To have it more often.  To practice it in different ways, so that we are reminded of the fullness of its meaning.  To welcome it as a steady part of our worship diet, perhaps on a monthly basis.  Worship committee is looking at these things and considering  if this may be a direction we want to move.  Today we will use our regular format, but you are encouraged to make a connection between our sharing in communion and the Moment for Mission that Elaine and Kevin will lead regarding Community Meal.

Point one – Communion is a miniature version of the gospel itself, a multi-faceted practice.  Point two, different parts of this will speak to us at different times in our life, and different ways of having communion affect how we experience it.

A brief point three. 

One of the significant areas of contention in different Christian traditions has been around how to understand the cup and the bread.  A major argument around the Reformation was with the teaching of trans-substantiation, a belief that the elements are transformed into the body and blood of Christ as they are consecrated.  Jesus becomes physically present in the bread and cup.  Maybe this is true in some cosmic, mystical way. 

What we prefer to emphasize, however, is slightly different.  Rather than focusing on whether or not the bread and the cup become the real presence of Christ, we have preferred to ask, What kind of transformation is happening to us, the people gathered around the table, who share together in the meal of the Lord’s Supper?  What are we becoming?  To which we believe the answer to be, in some holy mysterious way, that we are becoming the body of Christ together, the physical presence of the continuing life of Christ.  The Communion that we take here is a sign of the gospel we seek to live in all parts of our life.  

So as you come, anyone clean or unclean or somewhere in between, anyone who hungers for God, come in celebration.  Come in repentance.  Come with confidence.  Come with humility.  Come to receive and be prepared to be asked to give.  Come expecting to encounter Christ.  Come willing to be transformed. 

 

Isaiah 61 Remix – 12/14/08 – Isaiah 61:1-4

In Isaiah 61, the prophet claims his personal vocation.  “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me, God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted.”  When Jesus was beginning his ministry, speaking in his hometown of Nazareth, in the synagogue where he grew up, he uses the same words to speak of his own vocation.  Out of all the words he could have used, he chooses to quote those words of Isaiah as describing what he was to be about in his life.  “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, To bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Having a strong sense of vocation is something that is a constant search for us.  From those early days of youth when we start thinking about what we want to do when we grow up, to our last days, we ask ourselves the vocational question.  Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing?  We long to have a sense that our lives are intersecting with the Divine life.  That we are using our gifts and our energy in a way that is meaningful and will have some kind of lasting impact in the world.  When we don’t feel any sense of calling, we stumble and struggle.  When we feel that our life is aligned, even in some small way, with the leading of the Spirit, we are filled with a sense of purpose and gratitude. 

Although I know that some who speak and teach about looking for one’s life calling would disagree with me, I’m not convinced that there’s a single plan for our life that God has established and it’s just up to us to figure that out.  I see our vocation as a partnership, with God giving us great freedom in how we use and develop our gifts, but with us having the responsibility to be listening to the way the Spirit is speaking, nudging, directing us to live out our vocation in a way that represents God’s dreams of justice, peace, reconciliation, and healing for the world.  Fredrick Buechner and Parker Palmer both have similar phrases they use for helping us discover our vocation – “listen to your life,” and “let your life speak.”  We not only live life, but we listen to it, and somewhere in there, we hear God’s voice acting as a small rudder that steers us along our course.

I like what Bruce Epperly has to say: “Our callings and vocations in life are grounded in our environment, DNA, family of origin, religious upbringing, past choices, and many other factors, including God’s emerging vision for our lives, but our callings and vocations always aim toward the future. Whether or not we are aware of it at the time, our growth as persons and communities is shaped by future visions and dreams, both short and long term.  In (this way), each moment has a vocation; each day, many callings; and each lifetime, many pathways, in the context of God’s Holy Adventure.”

One of the great gifts we can be given by someone is when they listen well to our life.  I remember some time when I was a teenager and my Mom told me something that has stayed with me and helped shape my sense of calling.  It was a simple observation that she passed along to me, but I have since taken it as an example of the voice of God speaking to me.  She said, “Joel, your brother and your sisters always bring home stray animals, but you bring home stray people.”  That wasn’t a point where I all of a sudden knew what I wanted to do with my life, but it did help me realize that whatever it was I was going to be doing, that I would be involved in people’s lives who are on the margins.  Every once in a while we get these little pieces that help give us a picture of who we are called to be.     

One of the things to be listening for during the season of Advent is the way that the birth of Christ speaks to our own vocation.  Christ’s birth reaches the full range of vocational settings.  It is first celebrated by those doing the undesirable and dirty work of shepherding, as well as the intellectual elites, the magi from the east.  How does the coming of a Savior who saves through love, a king who rules through servanthood and humility, a teacher who teaches by telling his students to “come, follow me” affect how we view our calling?  

There are as many vocations as there are people, but as ones who believe the birth of Christ to be of great significance for our world and for us, there is a general vocation that we share.  It’s a vocation that we share with the prophet Isaiah, that we share with Jesus, and that we share with each other.  As a way of exploring our general vocation, I would like to offer what we could call an Isaiah 61 Remix, giving some amplification and application to these first four verses of this passage to remind us that they are addressed to us.   I’ll be following straight through the text, so you’re welcome to open up to Isaiah chapter 61 and follow along if you wish.  This is one of those words that gives us a piece of the picture of who we are called to be.   

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, says Isaiah.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me says Jesus.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me? Is upon you.  And you and you, young and old, and us.  Is upon Cincinnati Mennonite Fellowship, upon Mennonite Church USA, upon all in this city, around this globe, who are willing to receive it.  The Spirit of the Lord, the energy of the Lord.  The Holy Wind that hovered over the chaos of the world at the dawn of creation, The breath that entered the clay and made the human creature a living being. The Divine spark that the Quakers speak of, the Holy Wildfire that was present at Pentecost, the gift giving, fruit producing Spirit of the Lord is upon us.

Because the Lord has anointed me.  Anointed us like priests, like Aaron, like Samuel.  Anointed us like kings.  Like David, like Solomon, like Josiah.  Anointed us like prophets, Amos, Jeremiah, Daniel.  Anointed us like Mary chosen to bear the Christ child in her womb – “for the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”  Anointed like Jesus at the Jordan River hearing the voice “you are my beloved son,”.  Anointed.  Oil flowing down our heads, our faces, covering us, baptizing us, marking us for life.  Spirit flowing through our bodies, enlivening us, enlightening us.  Overshadowing us, for life.

God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed.  We are sent out.  Sent with a mission.  Sent in all directions.  Sent into the streets and into the high rises.  Into the city, into the suburbs, and into the countryside.  Sent into the school rooms, sent into the marketplace, sent into our own homes, and the homes of those who welcome us in.  Sent with something invaluable to carry with us.  Something needed.  Something precious.  Sent with Good news.  The Good News is not quite like the morning news, not the evening news, not the news that flutters from one crisis to the next.  It’s not the news where they report and you decide, but the Good News.  The news that rises above all the news that’s fit to print, and, all things considered, remains Good news to the oppressed.  Those who are in trouble will experience this as good news.  Those who are beat down will rejoice when they learn what you have to say.  It is Good news.

To bind up the brokenhearted, Prepare your hands for a gentleness of touch, tender contact, as if each encounter with another is a chance to cradle the Christ child.  We are living among the broken, among the disappointed, among the walking wounded.  Small actions can have large impacts.  A careless word can strike deep and cause offense.  A careful word or a kind gesture can strike deep and help to heal, help to bind up the brokenhearted.

To proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.    Find a prisoner somewhere, pull them close to yourself, and whisper in their ear that they are free.  That you’ve heard the orders from the top, and the year of favor has arrived.  Tell them you’ve heard rumors that the slaves came through the Red Sea out of Egypt, that blacks and whites can now eat at the same lunch counter, that the wall has fallen in Berlin, that a baby has been born in Bethlehem, and that liberation is on the march.  Proclaim to captives behind cinder blocks and captives who live on your own block.  Captives on death row, skid row, and the row house next door.  Captives whose chains aren’t visible to the naked eye.  People trapped in fear, in regret.  Prisoners locked up in addiction, serving an undetermined length of term with no parole in sight.  Proclaim that the time has arrived.  The year is here.  The year of the Lord’s favor is at hand.  Jubilee for the captives, forgiveness for the debtors, a dawning of a new day for those who can remember nothing but the night.  Christ is born.  Proclaim the year of favor.       

And (proclaim)the day of vengeance of our God.  Uh-oh.  The day of vengeance is at hand.  But not in the tit for tat vengeance of the law, not in the seven fold vengeance of Cain.  But vengeance Jesus style.  The seventy seven times vengeance of forgiveness.  Fighting the battle that is not against flesh and blood but against all the principalities and powers of darkness in the spiritual realm.  The kind of vengeance that refuses to become the evil which it opposes.  Which takes a different tack, sets a different course.  The kind of reverse revenge that happens in turning the other cheek, in going the extra mile, in loving one’s enemy until the enemy is defeated by no longer being one’s enemy.  Turning up the thermostat of love so high that it is like heaping burning coals on their heads.  Vengeance as reconciliation.  Resurrection vengeance by which the crucified victim appears to those who have abandoned him in his hour of need and says “Peace be with you.”  God’s day of vengeance is at hand.

To comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion — to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.  We are the ‘instead of’ people.  Instead of mourning, the oil of gladness.  Instead of isolation, community.  Instead of building walls, building bridges.  Instead of fear, love.  Instead of accepting the status quo as it is handed to us, asking questions, probing below the surface.  Instead of chronic activity, Sabbath.  Handing out hope instead of despair.  Living with enough instead of never having enough.  Choosing to stay awake and alert and watchful instead of falling asleep to our hope for Emmanuel, God with us.

They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display God’s glory.  You will be called names.  People will talk about you when you aren’t around.  You’ll be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord.  You will be called a tree of justice.  A pillar of truth.  A fortress of faithfulness.  A garden, a refuge.  You will be talked about.  People will say “she’s a blessing.”  “He’s a servant.”  “He’s trustworthy.”  “She is a wonderful human being.”  You will get a reputation.  “They truly care for one another.”  “They are peaceful people.”  “They are welcoming.”  “They don’t care about your status, they treat everyone with respect.”  “See how they love each other.”  Even if you can’t see it in yourself, people will see God’s presence in you.  You will display God’s goodness.  You’ll be exhibit number one for the radiant glory of God shining in the world.               

They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.  What all this amounts to is that we are building something together.  You are all gifted craftsmen and skilled craftswomen for a grand construction project.  You’ve been enlisted, given full employment in renovating lives, remodeling hearts, pouring fresh foundations for crumbling families, a barn-raising for restoring what has been lost.

The essence of a remix is that it uses old, familiar words and themes and applies them to a new beat – a new melody to fit the new context of instruments and rhythms and voices.  I can’t think of a much better way of thinking of our vocation.  We are called to take these ancient familiar themes of compassion and justice, and be a walking, breathing remix, adapting the rhythms of God’s grace into the beat that pulses around us each moment and each day and year that we are given to live.   

 

 

“The Beginning of the Good News…” – 12/07/08 – Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-8

One of the things I like to notice when I read a book is the opening lines of the story.  I’m interested in how a writer chooses to introduce what they have to say and what effect that has on me as a reader.  How does it set up the rest of the story that will be told?  How does it draw me in and make me an active part of what follows?  What clues does it give about what I’m about to read and what does it choose to withhold, to be discovered later should I choose to continue reading?

A book that I’m starting to read now again is one that I’ve been picking up and putting down for the last year, starting over several different times.  I’ve done this not because it’s so bad that I can’t get through it, but because it’s so good and dense that I can only handle it in small portions and even then feel like I have to go back and recover some of what I missed in the previous reading.  It’s by Annie Dillard and it’s called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  It starts this way:  “I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest.  I’d half awaken.  He’d stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking of urine and blood.  Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for milk.  And some mornings I’d wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I’d been painted with roses.  It was hot, so hot the mirror felt warm.  I washed before the mirror in a daze, my twisted summer sleep still hung about me like sea kelp.  What blood was this, and what roses?  It could have been the rose of union, the blood of murder, or the rose of beauty bare and the blood of some unspeakable sacrifice or birth.  This sign on my body could have been an emblem or a stain, the keys to the kingdom or the mark of Cain.  I never knew.  I never knew as I washed, and the blood streaked, faded, and finally disappeared, whether I’d purified myself or ruined the blood sign of the Passover.  We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence…”   (pp. 1,2)  Annie Dillard then goes on to write about her experiences and observations of the natural world around her house by Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia’s Blue Ridge.  I’m only on page 25, but so far she’s talking about the act of seeing, about what we do notice and what we don’t notice.  What we let come through our open window, so to speak.  She sees in her surroundings untamed beauty, as well as devastating violence.  She feels an awareness of “something powerful playing over me,” all the while being baffled by its elusive presence.  In other words, her opening description of the tom cat and the blood that found its way on her body serves as a metaphor for the rest of what she has to say.   

A book that I finished recently is one I’ve alluded to before — Gilead, by Marilynn Robinson.  This is written as a reflection of an aging Midwestern pastor, writing to his young son.  It begins this way: “I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old.  And you put your hand in my hand you said, You aren’t very old, as if that settled it.  I told you you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you’ve had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life.  And you said, Mama already told me that.  And then you said, Don’t laugh! Because you thought I was laughing at you.  You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother’s.  It’s a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern.  I’m always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I’ve suffered one of those looks.  I will miss them.” (p. 3)  The rest of the book is a monologue of this elderly Reverend John Ames telling stories from his life and passing on his thoughts to his son.  But the way the book opens reminds the reader that this is more like a dialogue, with the son always present, listening, as if he were still sitting on his father’s lap, reacting to different statements, affecting the way his father chooses to communicate what he has to say.     

Both of these books drew me in from the very beginning, with their opening setting the tone for what was to come, helping define just what kind of story this was going to be.

Today’s scriptures in this second Sunday of Advent are also beginnings.

You can’t tell it at first glance, but Isaiah chapter 40 is the start of a new story, opening words for a new narrative that is taking shape.  In its finished form, Isaiah comes to us as one book, but contains within it multiple books from multiple Isaiahs.  Scholars believe that there are three distinct voices in the book of Isaiah, each speaking from a different time period, a different location, into a different set of circumstances.  Rather than a single person, Isaiah is more like a prophetic tradition, a school of multiple generations of prophets.  We could think of the final product of Isaiah as something like a trilogy, packaged together in one box set, so one can watch the whole thing unfold from beginning to end– a trilogy that was around long before the writing of the adventures of Frodo and Sam leaving the shire and walking the ground of Middle Earth. 

After chapter 39 of Isaiah, when first Isaiah has said all he has to say, there is a long pause.  150 years of silence.  During this silence the nation of Judah is destroyed, invaded and conquered by the Babylonians.  Many of its people are exiled, into Babylon — living as disoriented, displaced persons — grieving over what has been destroyed, longing for God to work salvation for them.  Out of this silence, the Second Isaiah speaks, in exile, from Babylon.  Book two begins, and it’s opening words set the course for where the story is headed.  “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.  A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.  Then the Presence of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’”

‘Comfort, comfort my people’ begins this story.  Comfort plus comfort.  Comfort times two.  Extra fortified double strength comfort to meet the need of the double strength devastation the people have experienced.  I imagine that these were welcome words for the exiles.  They had fallen onto the hard, inflexible, unforgiving solidity of forces greater than themselves.  The aspirations of an invading empire, points of spears leading them away from their homes, forging a new life in a foreign land — the harsh realities of the world that many people continue to experience who are displaced by violence.  And now they are hearing words of comfort.  “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.”  Words of tender speech.  Like a parent comforting a child.  Like life partners speaking gently to each other.  The hard edges are softened.  The inhuman situation suddenly has a swatch of humanity.  The prophet speaks words of assurance and consolation.  A way is being made for them.  They’re not stuck where they are.  There is a way being prepared that they will be able to walk.  They haven’t been forgotten here or abandoned in exile.  This is how this story begins. 

There are times when I have experienced words of comfort as having the power to open up a whole new path.  There is a sense that I/we can get trapped in our worries and fears and self-doubts, as if we are surrounded by mountains and valleys that we can’t see around or climb over.  And then words of comfort or assurance come to us, and we experience what Isaiah describes.  “Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill be made low, the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.”  And we see a way where before there was no way.            

As Handel was writing The Messiah, he chose these first words of Second Isaiah to be the first that are sung.  Comfort, comfort.  What unfolds in Isaiah and what unfolds through that music is a story about the offer of comfort, which changes the whole landscape of our world.    

When Mark begins his gospel, he cites this passage from Isaiah as having to do with what he calls “the beginning of the good news.”

I’ve been working with the youth in catechism class this fall and we spent one of the class times looking at the first chapter of each of the four gospels.  My challenge to them was to notice how each gospel writer chose to introduce the story of Jesus.  Each of the writers do it in a different way and how they introduce Jesus in the opening chapter affects how they tell the rest of the story.  The youth were not all that pleased to realize that Mark has no birth story for Jesus.  I think I may have permanently demoted the standing of Mark for them when I mentioned that if Mark was the only gospel we had that we wouldn’t have a Christmas story!  Mark is one of the gospels who tell of the beginning in another way.

Mark’s first words are, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”  In the next few verses Mark goes on to tell of John the Baptizer proclaiming a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins, and of Jesus who is fully grown when we meet him and who hits the ground running with a quick baptism, wilderness trial, and is very soon proclaiming his message that the kingdom of God has come near.          

Mark calls his story “good news,” and its beginnings are rooted in this ancient longing for a way to be opened up for us that makes our crooked paths straight.  The womb that gives this good news birth, is the voice of God that spoke through the prophets, was speaking again through John the Baptizer, and continues to speak.  Prepare a path for the Lord.

Mark’s gospel does not begin as one of pure comfort.  Right from the get go he uses contentious language that sets the stage for later conflicts in the story.  He calls his writing “gospel”, “good news” which was a term associated with the Roman propaganda machine as decrees of gospel would be sent out to the far corners of the empire to announce a military victory or the coming to power of a new emperor.  But this that he is decreeing, Mark claims, is real gospel.  In referring to Jesus as the “Son of God,” Mark is challenging the emperor who also carried this title, and making a claim about what it really means to be a representative of God on earth.  The first character on the scene, John the Baptist, also carries this sense of struggle.  Aside from being someone who lived in the wild, wore clothes made out of camel’s hair, and ate bugs, his message also had an abrasive edge to it.  He fits more in the category of the prophets who both comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.  He was a whistle blower on people’s sins, calling them to turn around 180 degrees and walk in the other direction.  Very soon we learn that John is arrested for his message, a signal that not everyone found his message comforting.

But his message was one of hope.  He was cutting a path through obstacles of people’s lives and clearing a way for a fresh start.  He made the remarkable claim that people’s sins could be forgiven.  That all those mountains of mistakes that had accumulated in people’s lives and all those valleys of despair that people carried with them could be made level.  It’s comforting to hear that no matter how deeply worn in our habits are there’s a possibility of a fresh start.  A fresh start with God, and a fresh start in a community of baptized people who live under the order of forgiveness.  John also said “One who is more powerful than I is coming.”  I’m guessing that he found this personally comforting.  That he recognized that he didn’t have to hold everything together on his own, but that one more powerful than he would come along and build on his words and his mission.

This is how the story begins.  This is how the Second Isaiah and Mark introduce what they have to share.   And like the beginning of any good story, it sets the tone for what we can expect to come next. 

 

Life After Birth – 1/06/08 – Matthew 2:1-12, Ephesians 3:1-12

This past Thursday’s Enquirer carried a cartoon by Jim Borgman that might well capture the spirit of the week.  The picture is of a man, labeled “Politics” trudging through the snow back to his Iowa farmhouse after having discarded his Christmas tree at the end of his lane.  The tree is in the foreground, looking ready for the compost.  Still hanging onto the tree but also lying pathetically in the snow are a couple banners that read “Good Will Toward All” and “Peace.”  The figure who just tossed the tree and its banners is walking away, dusting off his hands, and muttering to himself, “Enough of that.” (Thursday, Jan 3^rd, Local Section, B6)

The image implies that the message of the Christmas season is a pleasant, but short lasting, ideal that must give way to the more pressing realities of life.  After a brief change of decorations and rhetoric, we are officially back to the hardnosed real world, with Peace on Earth already a fairly distant memory.

In the middle of the 20^th century the poet WH Auden wrote a long piece called “For the Time Being,” which goes through the different aspects of the Christmas story.  He ends the poem by saying what many of us might be experiencing emotionally and spiritually after having come through this season.  These are some of his words:

Well, so that is that.  Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes –

Some have got broken — and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

And the children got ready for school.  There are enough

Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week –

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully –

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers.  Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility…

But, for the time being, here we all are,

Back in the moderate… city…where Euclid’s geometry

And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,

And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.

It seems to have shrunk during the holidays.  The streets

Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten

The office was as depressing as this. 

To those who have seen

The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all…

(WH Auden, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio)

 

We in the church might appear a little out of step with things since we’ve still got these candles up front – and we’ve even added a few more to note the light of Epiphany; we’re still reading scriptures about Jesus’ birth, and still talking about this as an event that somehow changes us and the world.  We’re not quite able to chuck this whole thing out like a dry tree that’s losing all its needles.  Advent is over, the child has been born, so what business do we have not moving on like everyone else?  What’s left to look at in this birth scene now that the election season is in full gear, and we’re back to work, back to school, and back to a more normal routine, life in The Time Being?

The story of the magi from the East is one that speaks to what happens after the birth of Christ.  We’re not told how long after Jesus’ birth this all happened.  The only reference to time we get from Matthew is that it was in the time of King Herod.  It might have been a little while since Matthew gives no indication of a manger scene and mentions that they visit Jesus in a house.

When the magi meet Herod in Jerusalem, during their search for the child, we are confronted with the two directions this story can go.  Is this birth an ending, a flash in the pan, short lived event, or is it a beginning, something that will take on a life of its own and grow in significance?  From Herod’s perspective, this is all best ended as soon as possible.  The magi tell Herod they have come to pay homage to the one born King of the Jews.  As one with an agenda to hold on to the status quo, hang on to people’s allegiances, and maintain a grip on power, Herod sets out on a campaign to put this potential rival king as far out of memory as possible. 

His first tactic is to lie.  To use language not to  express truth, but to manipulate other’s thoughts and actions for his own purposes.  He tells the magi to “go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”  However much the magi or we would like to believe it, Herod doesn’t want to pay homage to Christ.  Not the Christ born in the backwoods town of Bethlehem.  Not the Christ who will teach people to love their enemies and pray for their persecutors.  Not the Christ who will give equal dignity to rich and poor, not the Christ who will lower himself to the position of a servant and wash the feet of his friends.  This is an affront to kind of order that Herod seeks to maintain.  He would like to put an end to this and put these kinds of thoughts far in the back of people’s minds.     

Because his lying doesn’t work, Herod goes to a more extreme measure.  Like Pharoah, Herod is willing to take the lives of infants and children.  All done in the name of national security, no doubt.  He orders that all children two years old or under who live around Bethlehem be killed.    

The magi have the chance to collaborate with Herod, but their experience of this birth is the other direction that the story can go.  Their homage goes not to Herod, but to Christ, and to them this birth event marks not an ending, but a beginning.  They offer, of course, their gold and frankincense, and myrrh to Jesus, but the real riches are flowing back toward them.  In Christian tradition the magi are representative not only of the people from the East, but all Gentiles who are drawn to the light of Christ.  Through them the God of the Israelites was being revealed as the God of all peoples.  The God of slaves, the God of exiles, the God of the oppressed, was being made known as the God not just of the Hebrew slaves, but all slaves.  Not just of the Jewish exiles, but all people in exile – immigrants and refugees.  And so the words of Isaiah are finding fulfillment.  “Arise, shine, for you light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” 

Rather than letting the birth of Christ dwindle away in its significance, these Scriptures treat it as if it is like a dawning of a new day in history.  Herod’s lies and his killing can no longer be seen as the only option that we have for where we give our allegiance.  There is a making known that is happening that extends from Christ’s birth on into the present moment.      

But I guess the question still remains in my mind:  that when we put away our manger scenes, our nativity calendars, our candles, and our other reminders of the announcement of “Peace on Earth,” what is it that we have left?  What kind of concrete reality is there in this period we may call The Time Being?

The apostle Paul makes a statement to the church in Ephesus that I find fairly remarkable.  He says in Ephesians 3:10 that “now, through the church, the wisdom of God in its rich variety might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”  Now, through the church.  What we have left, Paul would like us to believe, is church.  The “church” that Paul is speaking of is not any particular denomination, but “church” in its primal form.  The word used is ekklesia, which simply means “gathering,” or “assembly.”  The concrete reality that we continue to live with is the assembly of those who continue to follow the ways of Christ over the ways of Herod.  It is inherently relational.  Church happens when we gather together for worship on Sunday mornings, but church also happens whenever there is any kind of relationship defined by the peace of Christ.  Jesus said he is present even when two or three are together.  In other words, the relationships that we have with others, no matter where those are happening, can be ways that the wisdom of God is being made known.  Someone has called a marriage ‘little church,’ as it meets the minimum requirement of two, gathered in relationship.  Church happens on the street corner, in the coffee shop, or in the local tavern, in the car, and at the workplace.

So somehow what we are doing here together as church is part of the way that God is being revealed to the world.  Earlier Paul spoke of the church as the body of Christ.  Our gathering and our relationships are a part of the visible, concrete way that Christ is alive. 

One of the advantages of having a long car ride for vacations is the chance to listen books on CD.  Abbie and I had never heard or read any of the Harry Potter series, so we checked out the first two audio books from the library and listened to them on the trip to Kansas and back.  In the first book Harry receives as a gift a magic invisibility cloak, which he uses in certain cases to move around undetected.  Underneath the cloak, his body disappears to anyone who might be looking his direction.  One of the things going on in the birth of Christ, and the birth of the church, is something even more mysterious.  Jesus is sort of the equivalent of God’s visibility cloak.  Making known instead of making hidden.  A body that God puts on to move around detected.  The apostle Paul believes that this cloak is now in the possession of the church, us, the gathering of those who continue to embody God’s presence.     

I wonder how we are being a part of this making known through our formal and informal gatherings in our worship and in our daily relationships.  I wonder what sorts of new ways of being church will evolve among us during the year 2008.  I wonder what sort of unexpected ways we will experience peace in our lives through our times together.  I wonder who all might be drawn toward the light of our community and how we can welcome them into our gathering.  I look forward to what’s ahead for us and to how we can continue to be instruments of Christ’s peace.             

 

God Is With THAT? – 12/23/07 – Matthew 1:18-25

Pregnant. Unmarried. Teenager. Rarely something received as good news. More likely received as troubling news. Troubling for the family whose honor and reputation are now threatened. Troubling for the young woman who faces both the uncertainties of being a mother and of social isolation. Stigma. Rumors floating around about who the father is. The expectant mother could be altogether disowned by her family. More than just troubling, this is dangerous news for a first century young Jewish woman. The law taught, in Deuteronomy 22, that a woman like her could be stoned. Although Mary was barely even a woman. It’s very likely she was in her early teens, as it was common for girls to be promised for marriage at that age. Maybe around 14 years old or so. She would have been right among peers in the CMF youth Sunday school class. Probably not even the oldest member.

Even in the 21^st century, Mary would have had a rough ride. There are still places in the world where it is considered the duty of the men in the family to kill a daughter or sister or niece who is no longer ‘sexually pure’ before marriage, even in cases of rape or incest. These are called ‘honor killings’ because the family honor, held by the males, is seen to be threatened by this kind of bodily violation. During my time of studying in the country of Jordan we visited an organization that works to protect women facing these kinds of threats on their life.

In our more tolerant, less patriarchal culture, Mary and the child Jesus would not have escaped difficulty. Stigma and rumors aren’t just for before the birth, but can follow you around through school and into adulthood. This was certainly the case for mother and child in the first century. Mark, the most raw and earthy of all the gospels, does not have a birth narrative, but does record an encounter of Jesus early in his ministry that gives some indication of what he must have gone through most of his life. In Mark 6, when Jesus is visiting his hometown of Nazareth and teaching in the synagogue, sort of like going back to your home church where you grew up and giving the sermon, the leaders are surprised and also offended. They respond, “What is this wisdom that has been given to him? Is not this the son of Mary?” In a culture where you were always referred to as the son of your father, this is a dirty insult. Our culture has its own dirty equivalents for insulting children with unknown fathers. Mark then says ‘and they took offense at him,’ which uses the same Greek word, scandalidzo, that we heard Jesus say last week in Matthew 11 when he said, “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense, or who is not scandalized by me.”

The gospel writer Matthew knows that in the back, or in the front, of his reader’s minds, is a struggle to accept a social outcast as a Savior. In his attempt to tell his story of Jesus’ life he knows he might lose people on page one who can’t quite swallow the idea that a person with this kind of shady origin could have anything to do with “Immanuel,” “God with us.” And so in the first pages of the first gospel, the very beginning of our New Testament, we see this confrontation with scandal. To communicate how something that appears sinful to us is actually a work of the creative divine Spirit in our midst that will forever shift our experience of God.

You’re welcome to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 1 to explore how this is being communicated.

Before speaking of the birth of Jesus the Messiah through Mary in verse 18 of chapter 1, the passage that was read before children’s story, Matthew sets the stage. At first glance, the opening 17 verses of Matthew are a simple genealogy of Jesus. Sort of giving a quick tour of the ole’ family tree before we hear about this baby. Looking through the list, we see familiar names that show Jesus being of some pretty good stock. Of course he comes from Abraham, like all Jews, and then Isaac and Jacob, we have Boaz in there who was considered a righteous man. King David and Solomon begin a list of kings that demonstrates a royal heritage. The list of kings ends at the time of the Babylonian deportation, and we begin a list of mostly unfamiliar names, but given what came before, we can assume that these are good men. Soon we are up to great grandpa Matthan, grandpa Jacob, and then father Joseph and then son Jesus.

A quick glance, however, will not suffice to understand what Matthew is doing here. First of all Joseph is not the father of Jesus. He does become married to Mary, Jesus mother, but the story is clear that Jesus has no biological connection with Joseph. Matthew has just given a whole list of ancestors, only to say that Jesus’ connection to them is through his step father. We don’t know what kind of lineage Jesus has because we don’t know Mary’s family tree. This prepares the way for the gospel message which challenges just what it means to be a child of Abraham and a child of David. John the Baptist will soon tell the religious leaders not to assume they can rest easy because they can trace their lineage back to Abraham, because “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” Jesus will teach that the meaning of being blessed has to do with being poor in spirit, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being a peacemaker, and being merciful. Jesus will call his family those who do the will of God and will use Samaritan half-breeds and even some of the Roman occupying soldiers as examples of those who do this. Jesus is indeed a true child of Abraham and David, and it will be his mission to open up a global adoption program for everyone who would like to be his brother or sister regardless of biological ancestry. A family defined by an acceptance of God’s fatherly and motherly love for each sibling, and a family maintained through forgiveness of one another. The disconnect between Matthew’s genealogy and Jesus’ biological genesis sets up the entire New Testament’s good news which shall be for all people.

There is another feature of Matthew’s genealogy that is more to the point leading into the birth narrative. Within this list of A was the father of B was the father of C was the father of D… Matthew strategically inserts five mothers. We already know about Mary. The other four women have a couple features in common. They’re all Gentiles, not from the line of Abraham and Sara, and they’re all known for questionable sexual unions. The first, Tamar, disguised herself as a shrine prostitute to seduce her father-in-law Judah and get back at him for withholding his youngest son from her in marriage. Her sexual politicking leads Judah to admit that he has been wrong all along to not carry out the law and give his son to her. Rahab is the next woman mentioned, in v. 5. She is known in the book of Joshua as the prostitute who sheltered the Israelite spies when they were scoping out Jericho. In Israelite memory she is held as a righteous person, despite her occupation. Ruth comes soon after Rahab. Whenever she is mentioned in the book of Ruth, she is always named as Ruth the Moabitess. Despite her foreignness, being from Moab, the story portrays her as loyal to God. The Hebrew text also gives indications that she was an unusually sexually assertive woman during a particular night encounter with Boaz. The last of these four mentioned is in v. 6, “the wife of Uriah,” otherwise known as Bathsheba, the eventual wife of David. In the words of Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah”: “you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.” Despite her being already married to Uriah, David can’t resist, and takes her into his bed. Through him she became the mother of King Solomon.

Why does Matthew include these women, of all people, in his genealogy of Jesus? He could easily have also mentioned Sara, Rebekah, and other women. Could it be that he is intending to show the reader that the story of God’s people includes righteous acts by those who don’t easily fit into our categories of what it means to be righteous? In case we weren’t paying attention, Matthew would like to remind us that God has always been working through people of questionable moral status. So that when we do get to Mary and Joseph and Jesus, we’re better prepared to accept that something miraculous might be taking place here. If this is how the story has gone so far, then maybe this is how the story continues. Could it be that Mary, as the fifth woman named in this family tree, is also an important part of God’s story, despite the scandalous nature of her pregnancy?

After laying this groundwork, Matthew then only uses one verse to talk about Mary. “When Jesus’ mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” In Luke we get a window into the internal world of this young mother who ponders all these things in her heart. We hear her encounter with an angel who asks her to bear a child for God. After accepting, we see her visit to also-pregnant cousin Elizabeth and we hear her strong poem “My soul magnifies the Lord” that is paraphrased in the song we’ve been singing each Sunday. Mary rejoices in the weak being made strong, the poor being filled, and the mighty being brought down from their perch. The world turning around because of Jesus’ birth through her. But that’s Luke’s telling.

In Matthew, after one verse of Mary, we go directly to Joseph and stick with him to the end. The father who isn’t the father. In other words, Matthew does not end up focusing on Mary, but on the response to Mary bearing Jesus. How should one respond to this, to someone “found to be with child from Holy Spirit?” Joseph is the closest of anyone to this situation and the most easily scandalized. It is his honor that is at stake. It’s his reputation being threatened and it’s his right to completely cut himself off from Mary and this child of hers.

Joseph is merciful. Not only does he not pursue the penalty of death by stoning, but he also doesn’t want to have Mary publicly disgraced. He’ll dismiss her quietly – they’ll each go their way with as little public fanfare as possible. This is a merciful response, and the text calls Joseph righteous for considering this path. But Joseph is soon visited by a messenger. The angel sneaks up on him when his defenses are completely down, while he’s sleeping. During REM dream time, when his neurons are shuffling and sorting through all the chaotic information of life, there is a voice present within him that can only be interpreted as an angel of the Lord. “Don’t be afraid, take Mary as your wife, her child is from the Holy Spirit. The child will be named Jesus, and he’ll save people from their sins.” Maybe also firing through his brain, stored in some remote memory pathway, is an echo of the words of Isaiah. “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.” Which means “God is with us.” God. With. Us. That’s what makes all the difference. That’s the good news that trumps the troubling news. “Immanuel” means that after Joseph wakes up from sleep, the world is a different place. Because God is with us, we don’t have to save ourselves by preserving our honor at all costs. Things that appear sinful to us can be infused with Holy Spirit. We allow ourselves to participate in miracle, the unexpected presence of God in things deemed holy and unholy. Things aren’t as they appear to be on the surface because of Immanuel. We experience the tired old pathways of sin in our minds to be rerouted, reprogrammed by the Presence of the Saving One.

Going back on his initial, perhaps more rational and better calculated plans, Joseph decides to take Mary as his wife and be a step father for Jesus. And through Jesus, the one who causes scandal to those trying to preserve the old order of things, the world is made new. Embodied love is unleashed on creation and finds its way into our bodies, animating our hands for serving, our mouths for speaking truth, our minds for being amazed with the wonder of “God with us”. We find shards of this saving love everywhere we dare look. Even in the dysfunction of our own family histories. God is at work redeeming our sins and saving us through the love of Christ. From here on out, it is always Emmanuel, God With Us.

 

Seeing Stumps and Snakes with Advent Eyes – 12/09/07 – Isaiah 11:1-10, Matthew 3:1-12

Isaiah 11:3 says, “The One to come shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear.” 

Advent is a season when we expect that our eyes will see familiar sites.  Maybe too familiar are the holiday decorations in the stores that seem to creep in a little earlier each year.  By now we expect to see full parking lots and long lines at stores.  On Tuesday I also witnessed longer than usual lines at the Oakley food pantry.  This past week Abbie and I had the chance to make our home look its part for the season.  We have a couple different nativity sets that are up in the living room.  One carries special meaning because we got it three summers ago while we were in Bethlehem.  Seeing it makes me feel a little more connected to that part of the world past and present.

On Thursday we took another step toward becoming cultured Cincinnatians by going to see the Festival of Lights at the Zoo.  Lily slept all the way through her first trip to the zoo, but Eve enjoyed the lights and the animals that were out.                  

There are familiar traditions that each of us have for this season, many having to do with what we see.

But the spiritual journey through Advent has just as much to do with what we don’t see as what we do see.  The One to come that Isaiah speaks of does not judge by what his eyes see.  The One to come, the One who is at the center of our Advent longings, whom Isaiah says has the spirit of wisdom and understanding, whose delight is in the Lord – this One comes into the troubled scenery of our lives and helps us see things we didn’t know were even there.  Not only do we see things differently, but the scenery itself is changed by this Presence.  

The troubled scenery, as Isaiah describes it, looks to us like stumps and snakes, neither of which sound like they have much potential for anything having to do with good news.   

Isaiah 11:1  “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”

On the surface a stump is not all that hopeful of an image.  It is, rather the opposite.  If we were to judge a stump by what we see we would consider it on its way to decay, or removal.  A stump calls to mind something that used to be living and thriving and is now all but gone.  When I think of stumps I think of the yard around the farm house where my Grandpa and Grandma Lehman lived while I was growing up.  For most of those years the house and yard and big garden were shaded by a number of trees.  These trees served as places for climbing and the lower branches and trunk area were hiding places for the annual Easter egg hunt.  But several of the trees were diseased and needed to be removed.  Losing the trees felt like the personality of the yard had been completely altered, almost like losing a member of the family.  It’s amazing how much space a single tree can fill and how much activity can be influenced by its presence.  The stumps were sad reminders of what used to be there.  I also think of the pear tree that used to grow right behind our Bellefontaine house.  It was a similar situation with disease and had to be cut down.  The stump was a pretty pathetic replacement for the spring blossoms and the pears that we could pick and eat every year.  You might have your own stump stories and I would imagine there is a sense of loss that goes along with them.  Stumps are almost an ominous symbol now given the rate of deforestation going on around the world and its impact on ecology.  One more stump is one less tree to help cool the air, provide a habitat for birds and other animals, and convert carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Isaiah speaks about a stump not because the people of Israel were chopping down trees in their yards and countryside, but because the people of Israel were themselves the stump.  This thriving nation had been clear cut by a conquering Assyrian empire which had no interest in sustainable logging practices.  Many of the people were lopped off from their home land and transplanted to other regions of the empire, including near the capital city of Nineveh.  This was a time of national crisis.  And what was left of the former nation of Israel looked pretty much like a stump.

One of the most difficult experiences we can go through is the feeling of being cut off.  Cut off from a past life of good health, cut off emotionally from others; in the case of the poor, cut off from access to much needed resources.  Paradoxically, in this season of ‘joy to the world,’ this is also a time when people can feel most cut off from the flow of life.  Or, put in Isaiah’s terms, we come to realize that we are the stump.      

But look again, Isaiah says, there is life beneath the surface of things.  “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  The Spirit of the Lord, will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.  His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.  He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”

From this almost-dead hunk of wood comes a shoot of life.  What we see is loss and devastation, but what we don’t see might be the very roots that are keeping us alive.  The early church saw this lively shoot best illustrated through the life of Jesus.  Jesus emerged from a barely alive population under foreign occupation and decided with equity for the meek of the earth.  Jesus did not judge by what his eyes saw but used righteousness and justice as a standard for relating with the poor.  Jesus embodied the spirit of wisdom and understanding.  Jesus is a sign to us that the Spirit of God is about the work of causing life to shoot up from things we consider as good as dead. 

If we have difficulty seeing good news in a stump, it is all the harder to see it in a snake.    

Isa. 11:8 “The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.”

As someone with a nursing child and a weaned child, my first reaction to this statement is a definite — Not In My Backyard.  I read this verse to Abbie this week and she agreed.  Parenting is not an exact science and there are a lot of ambiguities about the kinds of boundaries to set for children.  But here is something we can be sure about.  There will be no playing near, with, or over the hole of poisonous snakes. 

The verses around this verse show that this is only the most extreme case of a bizarre, seemingly unnatural order of things.  “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”  Cows and bears and their young hang out together, lions eat straw with the ox instead of straw and the ox.”  If Isaiah were to open up a zoo, his Festival of Lights would have potential to take a serious turn for the worse and be not so family friendly an event.          

But just as the stump served as a metaphor for the Israelite family, these animals who are usually at each others’ throats serve as a metaphor for the human family.  It is a picture of enemies living side by side in cooperation.  And all this because of the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord has come to rest.  This scene flows out of his being and is a result of his Presence. 

If this includes poisonous snakes and children sharing a common playground, then maybe we can think of the work of the Spirit of God as that of detoxifying creation, so that the most vulnerable are able to play.  That’s the picture being painted here.  It’s a reversal of the direction we may feel things are moving with there being fewer and fewer safe places where we would like our children to play.  Not that school, not in that neighborhood, don’t eat that, don’t watch that.  For now, safety exists within a small well supervised circle.  The Vision we are looking at is an expanding of that circle, an opening up of creation so there can be lots of space for everyone’s playtime.           

The path toward stumps sending up fresh shoots and creation being detoxified goes through the baptismal waters of John.  The Vision that Isaiah spoke of is not one that gets imposed from above, but one that starts from the inside and works its way out.  John’s baptism was one of repentence, forgiveness, and a change of life.  It’s hard to tell how much he has Isaiah 11 in mind when he says his words, but he does use some similar imagery.  He refers to the religious leaders coming out to see him as vipers.  His offering of baptism is like a voluntary defanging of these snakes.  He also uses the tree imagery as he speaks of the need to bare fruit.  The options were to live like a stump that the ax had just chopped into, or to shoot up like a fruit tree and be full of life.  John taught that heaven is too good to wait until you die.  The kingdom of heaven is coming near.  He said.  Baptism was his way, and it became the Christian way, of choosing to live now within the kind of vision that Isaiah was speaking of.     

  The act of baptism is a key identity marker in our Anabaptist heritage.  Our baptisms are a public witness that we have joined the movement of the Spirit in the detoxification of creation.  We confess the poison that we carry around with us, we receive forgiveness, and we go under the water and come back up again as one who is now a part of this expanding circle of creation being remade. 

At our Spiritual Leadership Team meeting on Wednesday we opened by reflecting on the readings for this week.  The comment was made that we often go through our days with our focus just on the things at hand, trying to keep up with the day’s work.  And that Advent is a time when we step back and allow ourselves to see this bigger picture of what God wants to do with us.  This resonated with me as an important part of what we’re doing together during these days.  And one of the messages of these Scriptures is that, when we do step back and look around, there is more going on than what we can judge with our eyes.  As our baptisms symbolize for us, God takes stumps and causes shoots to grow up.  God takes poisonous snakes and teaches them to learn how to play safely with children.

Hear again these words from Isaiah: “The One to come shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear…they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” 

 

A Time to Stay Awake – 12/02/07 – Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 24:36-44

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year.  We’re still a month out from the ball dropping, the confetti flying, the big college football bowl games, and the changing of our calendars to 2008, but in the cycle of the church year, this is day one.  We begin, again, with Advent.  We begin with birth.  We begin actually before birth.  We begin expecting birth.  We start the year in a state of anticipation, watchfulness, alertness, hopefulness.   We are just enough out of sync with our other way of keeping time that it challenges us to clarify just what we mean by starting the new year of Advent today. 

Since my parents are here I can’t let them get through the service without telling a story about them.  On the farm in Bellefontaine, for the last number of years, there has been developed another unique way of keeping time.  Probably every household has to decide for themselves how they choose to set their clocks.  Do you set them to the actual time, or do you set them slightly ahead so you can get away with leaving the house 8:03, drive for 15 minutes, and still arrive at your destination at exactly quarter after eight?  The Miller family selected this latter strategy, only, in my way of seeing things, went well overboard. The main authority on time in the house, a clock that hangs on the wall in the kitchen, was often set 10, 15, sometimes even 20 minutes faster than the time that the rest of the world operated on.  The intention was to help us be on time to events, be relaxed about having more time than what first meets the eye, but what it actually did was cause more confusion than clarity.  For one, you had to remember how far ahead the clock was set, so you could do the math in your head to figure out how much free time you still had before you really had to leave.  Also, whenever someone in the house would call out and ask what time it was, they’d always get an answer from someone around a clock, but then have to ask a second question as to whether that person was using our time or the real time.  Since we had sort of established our own little time zone, we affectionately started calling it Miller time.  In Miller time you can walk out of the house and arrive at your destination earlier than when you started.   

So being out of step with normal time is something that feels quite normal to me – although Abbie and I have firmly decided to end the practice of Miller time in our own house. 

But all of us are in this together when it comes to our church clock.  We’re starting a new year well before the other new year is here.  We’re in our own time zone, moving to a unique sort of rhythm, taking our cues about what time it is from the sacred schedule of liturgical time.     

The first voice we hear to help get us oriented comes from the great Hebrew prophet Isaiah.

He says: “In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains…and all nations shall stream to it.  Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.  God shall arbitrate, for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.”

This is where it all starts for us.  This vision is spoken at a time of great national turmoil in Israel.  They were threatened with moral failures within the nation and military invasion from without.  Things seem to be coming to an end.  But this word breaks through the darkness and serves as a new beginning by offering an alternative ending to the story.  Instead of a scattered and fractured humanity, there is a common center that we share, the mountain of the Lord, which acts like a magnet as it draws people from all nations to learn the ways of peace.  And then everybody becomes a peace evangelist, recruiting others to go with them.  “Come on, let’s go up to the mountain of the Lord.”  It’s a place where arbitration is happening.  Grievances are being heard and reconciled.   

The culmination of this vision involves instruments of war being converted into instruments of peace and creativity.  Isaiah imagines collecting up all the bloodied swords that were used in battles, putting on our blacksmith clothes, and pounding away until the metal is reshaped into plowshares, tools for farmers to use to bring in the harvest.  This is like driving all the tanks back to the foundry, melting down the steel, and recasting it in the form of garden rakes and hoes and tillers.  Nations shall not learn war anymore.  A time when we close down the war academies and retrofit the buildings to be schools for music and philosophy and literature and medical research.    

This prophecy is our starting place.  And this is much more than political idealism, or naïve hopes for a future of tranquility and prosperity.  This is God’s dream for the world and the ever present ache within us for that dream to be realized.  It’s not as much a prediction of what’s certain to happen one hundred years from now as it is an expression of the deepest longing of our humanity.  It’s not all that concerned about what’s practical, or even possible.  This is an impossible vision that encompasses all of creation.  It is a vision that can come about only through the God of impossibilities.   

We start with an ache and without this ache there is no new beginning, just more of the same with no end in sight.  Our first act of the new year is to express a longing deep within our gut that we believe originates in the very Creative Spirit who is the Master of the Universe.  We start with the impossible belief that in days to come all nations will learn instruction on how to live together in peace.

What time is it?  It’s time to see this word breaking through our own darkness and shaping our own hopes and desires and actions.        

The ache of Isaiah helps gives us our bearings as we enter into the apocalyptic words of Jesus from Matthew 24.  “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.  For as in the days before the flood they were eating, and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.  Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.  Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.  Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”  A quick reading of the context around these words of Jesus shows that the unknown day he is referring to is not one of universal peace like Isaiah’s, but one of near universal collapse.  And near universal collapse is exactly what Matthew’s original audience was experiencing.  Jewish nationalists had taken the temple out of the control of the Romans and their puppet priests, only to see the Romans retaliate by laying siege on Jerusalem and destroy the temple.  The entire world of these early Christians was left with literally no stone left on top of another.  It was like somebody had dropped the bomb on them and they were living right in the middle of apocalypse.

But Jesus’ words here are not words of doom, but words of hope.  His whole message is that even though everything seems to be falling apart, that’s not the end of the world.  Even though God seems invisible, the Son of Man, the Human One is still coming into the world.  Even though it looks like we’ve lost our humanity, the One who teaches us how to be Human is still on his way in.

The task for us who live in apocalyptic and fearful times is to pay attention.  To be watchful.  To keep doing the things that the master has asked us to do.  To keep ourselves from becoming numb and to continue feeling the ache of Isaiah.  The key phrase that gets used for this and is used in the parables that follow, is to “keep awake.”  Don’t fall asleep to God’s presence in the world.  Don’t let the violence and suffering around you lull you into some kind of trance where your eyes are too heavy to notice Jesus all around you.  Keep living like a human being so that you can stay sane in an insane world.  If you fall asleep, you get swept away in it all.   

Jesus uses the days of Noah as an example of how to stay awake.  Noah and his crew were paying attention, and nobody else was.  Everybody else got swept away and only Noah and his family were left behind.  Despite popular belief to the contrary, it’s good to be left behind.  You don’t want to get swept away by the floods of popular opinion and general hopelessness.  You want to stay grounded in God’s ache for peace that Isaiah spoke so clearly.  That’s what keeps our feet rooted in firm soil, so to speak.  The ones who are sleeping and have nothing of substance to hold them down are the ones who “get took” and the one’s who keep awake are the ones who are left.

So two people could be working side by side out in the field, or in side by side cubicles in the office, or two people will be teaching in the same school, or two mothers will be caring for their families in a time of war — one is getting swept up and carried away by worries and fears and the other stays grounded in God’s daily presence that is always coming into the world.

What time is it?  Time to stop sleep walking through life and allow ourselves to get prodded awake by the Human One who even now is coming into our world.

In our off kilter calendar, it is the season of expectation.  God comes to us at an unknown hour.  This Advent, and this year we will be visited by the Christ.  Christ will show up at work.  Christ will come into our homes.  Christ will speak through an encounter with a stranger on the street.  Christ will be present in something we see that strikes us as utterly beautiful.  When will these things happen?  No one knows, only God.  One thing is for sure.  The Christ is coming.  It’s up to us to ache for that coming, and to be awake enough to notice when and where Christ arrives each day.          

 

Something New (Easter) – 4,08,07

Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed!It’s good to see everyone here this morning.  I wanted to mention a thank you to Jerry Sears for his artwork that we have on the bulletin cover today.  This is beautiful.  We’ve got tree of life, cross, resurrection, spring, all sorts of things in this one image.  If you don’t get anything out of the sermon today at least take this bulletin home with you and let it speak to you.  Thanks Jerry for sharing this.  Being the father of a 15 month old and the expectant father of a 4 ½ month in the womb year old, I feel like I’m always on the lookout for the new things that are happening developmentally.  Abbie has been pretty consistently making little notes on a calendar about what Eve is up to each day.  Here are a couple from the last month or so:  March 6, “Eve will now give Joel kisses even though his beard is scratchy.  Eve will occasionally stand on her own for a few seconds.”  March 15, “Everything is a phone – keys, thermometer, food, juicebox.  She has a realistic intonation for questions and will raise her eyebrows.”  March 26^th, “Trying to say uh-oh.  Plays with dishes and pretends to eat.”  And this baby on the way is starting to get more active.  This past week I could feel some definite kicking around going on.  Of course Abbie’s been able to feel the kicking a little longer than I have.          At those stages of life, new things are coming along at a fast pace.  I’ve pretty much come to expect something new on a weekly basis and it’s kind of energizing and inspiring to be around a little person who is always discovering new things about themselves and the world around them.I’m still in the young adult phase of life, but have gotten plenty of glimpses of how life is not always about rapid growth and development.  Both of my parents are still quite healthy, but different aches for them make life a little less enjoyable.  They don’t sleep as well as they used to.  Mom’s arthritis makes outdoor work a little more difficult.   Personally I’ve already entered the low maintenance phase of hair care for my life.  This doesn’t bother me too much, but looking at pictures of high school and college I’m reminded that a certain part of me is in the past and isn’t coming back.  I like to stay active with running and other sports, but realize I won’t always be able to do these things.  Different spiritual writers talk about the little deaths that we die in life and the little ways that we release these losses to God.      As we are just barely emerging from the shadow of Good Friday and the reality of death, the words from Ash Wednesday are still ringing in our ears a bit here:  “Remember that you are from the dust, and to dust you will return.”     For children the world is a brand new place.  But things get worn out.  People get tired and our bodies expire.Isaiah is writing at a time when his people are experiencing something like the latter stages of life.  Their hopes for liberation are getting worn out.  They had been captured by Babylon and released back to their own land, but are still living under foreign rule and there is not peace.  The poor are still getting run down by those in power and injustice shows no signs of ending anytime soon.  People are worn out and tired.  Tired of hoping against all hope, tired of struggling.  To a people who believe they may be about to reach their expiration date, Isaiah speaks these words: “For I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth (says the Lord); the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people a delight…no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of the distressed.”I suppose something can’t take place until someone imagines that it is a possibility, and imprinted within Isaiah’s imagination is the belief that God is able to create something new out of the old.  That things are not simply spiraling toward death.      About a week and a half ago I was able to attend the Community Intergroup Seder at the Plum Street Temple downtown.  Being new in town this was a first time experience for me, but this interfaith gathering has been happening for the last 14 years in Cincinnati and is a way of the Jewish community to reach out to the city and share its tradition with others.  We sat at round tables that had been set with the typical foods of the seder meal — the matza, the bitter herbs, the wine, and Rabbi Gary Zola led us through the different stages of the meal.  Toward the end he said that now is the time when we always say “next year in Jerusalem.”  And he explained to us what this meant to him and his congregation.  He said we always say “next year in Jerusalem” not because we want to pack up and move to Jerusalem before next year, but because of the prophet’s vision for the kind of city Jerusalem is to be.  He said even Jews who live in Jerusalem say “next year in Jerusalem” because it is an expression of hope that God will liberate all peoples to live in the kind of freedom that the Jewish people experienced in coming out of slavery in Egypt.  So Rabbi Zola invited everybody to say “next year in Jerusalem” because this specifically Jewish hope rooted in the Jewish story of liberation, also related to the hope of all humanity.  So Rabbi Zola would say that when Isaiah is claiming that God will create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight, he is referring to the renewing of the entire human family with Jerusalem as the symbolic center of our world.  I found this to be a moving experience and appreciated this model of how this congregation was sharing its traditions and its faith with people of other traditions.  We share with them in this belief that the creator spirit is moving in the world and through us, to renew the earth.            Something New, Isaiah says.  New heavens, new earth, a new city of Jerusalem            Unique to the Jewish faith is their story of liberation from Egypt, and in sharing their story with others they are teaching us all to live under the God of liberation – a new creation not under the rules of empire but the justice of the God of Israel.  Unique to the Christian faith is our story of resurrection, and the apostles experience of seeing the risen Christ.  Again, Something new.  Where we may able to see only the sure spiraling toward death, God creates something new.  Something for all humanity.                   It is not without intention that John places his account of the discovery of the resurrection in a garden.  Just before the passage read today, he had mentioned that Jesus was buried in a garden area, and then he reminds us that this scene takes place in a garden when Mary mistakes the risen Christ for a gardener.  In highlighting this setting, John is tapping into the symbolic world of his readers and all that is associated with the garden — The birthplace of humanity, as the Hebrews had imagined it — A peaceful garden where the human creature tended the earth and felt no shame in nakedness.  The garden also being the place where the human creature broke relationship with the creator spirit.  And as the writers of Genesis had told the story, there was something severed there that was not readily recovered.  Something lost.  The fabric of the world had become torn.  Things became distorted and twisted out of shape.  The next act of the human creatures was an act of murder – one brother killing another brother, and so the story continues that the human family grows throughout the earth and sisters and brothers keep causing each other injury.  And so creation keeps getting all twisted up, out of shape from the purposes of the creator spirit.  And worn down, tired out.  For John, this garden scene is the birthplace of something new.  Something renewing.  The flow of creation that was plugged up from the beginning is able to flow again out of this garden.  The cycles of murder and injury that had defined human societies and twisted us out of the image of God we were created in have been overcome in this new garden.  This is the beginning of a new creation, and a new people who live in the image of a God who is a God of life.  Something new for the human creatures.  A new fabric of life that God is weaving.  We’re not just cycling endlessly toward death.  Somehow the creator spirit has begun a new thing and is choosing to include us in on tending this new garden.It is a bit humorous that Mary mistakes Jesus for a gardener.  She was right, of course, that he was a gardener in his garden, but she wasn’t able to make the connection between this gardener standing in front of her and the Jesus she had known before his death.  She doesn’t make the connection until Jesus calls her by name.  “Mary.”  This deeply personal experience of Christ is for her an awakening to resurrection.  Honestly, there’s a lot about resurrection I don’t understand.  I don’t know what exactly these New Testament writers are talking about all the time.  Resurrection is what is most unique to our Christian faith and its central mystery.  But no matter where we are at in our thoughts or experiences of resurrection, I think this scripture gives us all a way to proceed.  The next thing Jesus says to Mary after he calls her by name, is to say, “Do not hold on to me.”  Don’t cling to me, don’t grasp onto me.  Mary is still is that state of disbelief and is holding on for dear life.  She wants the flesh and blood living Jesus right beside her to teach her every step of the way.  This is what she has grown dependent on.  The familiar world that she understands.  Jesus says, “I’m leaving Mary, don’t cling on to me.  Let me go.”    I see here a way to proceed in good faith.  Faith is not being able to grasp on to something that we think we know for sure, but being willing to let go and trust that the Spirit is at work.  Don’t cling on to the old.  God may just be creating something new.  Open hands make us open to something new.  With resurrection, maybe, just maybe, there is a whole world of God’s presence that we are only beginning to discover.  Maybe our thinking we know everything about how things really work is about as accurate as Eve saying she knows all there is to know about the world.  Maybe when we say “Christ is risen” it means that God is acting in a way that is new and we have the adventure of discovering just what it’s all about.  The worst thing we could do would be to cling on to the familiar and refuse to let God do something new.Whatever it was, the resurrection did energize the apostles.  They went from being fearful ones who abandoned Christ so they could stay out of trouble, to being a spirited community of troublemakers for Christ.  Everything was new to them.  They saw the world in a completely different way.  They often spoke of being born all over again.  Like little Sophie and Eve and Greta and these other kids of ours for whom the world is a brand new place and everything needs to be explored.    Words fall short in capturing this mystery of resurrection.  But we can use this phrase that Christians have been using for centuries.  “Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed.”    

 

Experiencing God’s Calling – 2,04,07

Perhaps you’ve been asked this question before:  “What is your calling?”  Maybe you often ask yourself about your calling and wonder how you can best serve God with what you’ve been given in life.  I imagine most of us have thought about our calling at some point in our lives.      

 

Both of today’s Scriptures deal with experiencing the calling of God.  The prophet Isaiah is in the temple one day and has a mystical vision of a God so big that even the hem of God’s robe fills the entire temple.  This isn’t so much a vision of what kind of clothing God likes to wear, as it is of a God who is larger than the mind can fathom.  Isaiah hears voices calling out “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.  The whole earth is full of God’s glory.”  And in his vision Isaiah senses that this larger than life God who fills the whole earth is asking him, Isaiah, to be a representative of the divine voice to his people.  And there is this dialogue that happens between God and prophet: The Lord says “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” and Isaiah says, “Here am I; send me.”       

 

In the gospel reading we have the calling of four of the disciples.  It starts out being a story about fish, but ends up being a story about whether these fishermen are willing to follow Jesus and start catching people.  The last line of the passage reads this way: “When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed Jesus.” 

 

Instead of going more in depth on these particular callings from Scripture I would like to use them as a backdrop for some other stories.  I was interested to hear how some of you have experienced God’s calling in your lives, if you have experienced God’s calling, what you think about the whole idea of calling.  So I wrote several of you and you were kind enough to reply back with some thoughtful reflections. 

So I would like to share with you some of the ways that fellow CMFers have experienced the call of God in their lives and then do a bit of reflecting after that on what these experiences might mean for us.  I’ll read all of these in the first person, as they were written. 

Here’s one:

For me, calling seems to be connected to the community of faith that I am a part of. As a teen and young adult, I know that my sense of call was shaped by the conservative community of Anabaptists of which I was a part. But as I made choices to become a part of a different community of faith, the “call” looked different than it had when I was in the earlier community. Either my “call” took me to that new community or the “call” was shaped by the community and I suspect it must be some combination of the two.   I guess in saying this I sense that for me call has not come as a bolt of lightening with “GOD here” written all over it, but a much more subtle thing which seems hard to differentiate from intuitions, interests, and passions which tend to be shaped and expressed within community. But I am OK with this because I believe in the goodness and divinity which comes through our intuitions, interests, and passions. In fact, this is probably the only “call” that I really feel safe with – one in which the divine works through the person I have been created to be and through the community of faith.

 

These stories don’t fit into any neat categories, but there are a few different themes that are woven throughout.  This next story is quite different, but both what I just read and this next one remind me of a quote from writer and minister Fredrick Bueckner.  This is the quote: “The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”   

 

Next story:

It was around 5 o’clock on an August evening before my senior year of college.  As with most of my decisions, I was having trouble feeling good about my choice of majoring in music.  Standing in a grand piano practice room, a vision came to my mind of a room in which the left side was filled with light & the right side with darkness.  Contained within the light was a grand piano.  Then I knew I was not pursuing a calling that was too frivolous.  The call was to find freedom to explore life — freedom not to be held by what I thought God & others expected, but to be assured that in the midst of confusion, God does not fail to consider my deepest desires & wants.

 

“The place God calls us to is where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

 

Our notions of calling and what we look for in calling can change over the course of our lives.  Here’s a story where that is the case:

 

I’ve always struggled with the notion of discerning God’s calling for my life or as we more often called it “God’s will.” I used to wish for a clear direct voice telling me in no uncertain terms what I should do with my life but that notion was left behind with my youth. I moved to the belief that God gave us a general guidebook and some fellow christians to help us in our decision making. I had too often seen things that others would do in the name of God’s calling and figured that they either read another guidebook or did not check out the calling with their fellow believers. The Anabaptist emphasis on discernment of believers rang true for me since I know how delusional the lone believer can become about God’s calling for them. I have found that gifts you have been given and circumstances you find yourself in also are used by God as guidance. It must have been God’s calling that got me to Ohio since I distinctly remember thinking in earlier days that I would never want to live in Ohio! 

 

I’m struck with how this next experience of calling has had ripple effects for each of us here.  If it wasn’t for this calling that a number of people experienced a little over 30 years ago, CMF wouldn’t be here.

 

While I have never felt or heard a calling from God to be or do one thing or another, I have felt that in general, God calls us to do what we can.  When I was first married we were living here in the city, and we wanted to be a part of the fledgling Mennonite presence in the city. We wanted to be supporters of what we saw as the possibility of a modern Peace church with outreach to young Mennonite persons and to people who had an interest in the way of peace. We wanted to be a part of this church's birth and growth.  What we realized that we were giving up was the chance to live close to extended family and for our kids to experience a large and active Mennonite Youth Fellowship program and the experiences that go with that. I do think that our kids experienced love and

community in their growing up in this church despite not having an active youth

group here for them.

 

These last two reflections contain a sense of how the person has wrestled and is wrestling with the meaning of calling.  They both also reveal that out of this questioning and searching God can bring a sense of peace. 

 

I believe God does call  –  I have heard too many amazing stories to believe otherwise.  A life spent in search of wealth often yields an amazing sensitivity to money –  an ability to hear callings and see “opportunities” that pass the rest of the world by.  Likewise, I have seen the results of lives dedicated to security, power, and pleasure.  In each case, individuals demonstrate the uncanny ability to “hear” the calling of their desires.  My problem is in discerning the calls’ sources.

I do not have great stories of calling in my life.  Maybe in a couple ways, but all the rest of my major decision-making has been the results of the lesser calls, the sensitivities that spring from my own priorities.  I do want to be clear – I am frustrated by a lack of supernatural, clear, awe-inspiring presence in my life callings, but I am not disappointed by the tremendous ways in which God has appeared as I live.Marriage and parenthood have been the closest to the exciting, supernatural “calling” experience that I’ve had, and I don’t understand them at all.  My sense of calling, then, is not so clear as I might wish.  Maybe God is more of a parent than I assume.  Maybe God is literally calling me closer in relationship and all the other things about which I seek advice are truly to the side.  This is certainly true with my daughter…I would never consider calling her to a career or a lifestyle – but I will unabashedly and always call her to a relationship with me.   

The first time I thought about a “calling” was in high school when our youth group studied about listening to God’s call.  The discussions were so abstract that I still remember the feelings of frustration about whether I was doing God’s will or not.  This continued into college where a professor shared that he had also struggled with ”hearing God’s call” and said that he found comfort in Jeremiah 29:11. “ For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  This took some pressure off of me having to find my life plan and helped me realize that God was with me, no matter what life’s journey brought.  Since then I have sensed God’s call or leading in various ways.   When I was in graduate school, I was wondering if I should be doing something more related to ministry. During that time I read a book where the author proclaimed – “Wherever you are, be all there!”.  That to me was God’s leading, telling me to focus on the present and not to worry about the future.  Later in my life, I faced a difficult decision when I had several different, but equally good options for employment.  After making the decision, a sense of peace came over me.  That peace felt like it came from God.

 

Here is a brief summary of what I see in these reflections on people’s experience of call.  God does call, but often subtley, but sometimes not so subtley.  There are other things in life calling us besides God, many of them harmful.  Calling comes through Scripture, sometimes people misuse Scripture.  The call happens in the faith community, comes from the community, is tested in the community, for the purpose of building up the community.  Sometimes the call involves some sacrifices on our part, but God provides.  The call speaks to our deepest longings, which are good longings.  We are called to be ourselves.  We often want a more clear sense of calling, but many times we can be at peace simply with being in relationship with a gracious God. 

           

In the church, every week we read from the Bible and hear teaching from our Scriptures.  The gift of the biblical story is that it provides the backdrop against which we understand our own calling.  In many ways, our calling has already been laid out for us.  Like Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Mary, and the disciples, we are a part of a people who have been called to be in relationship with God and to be a blessing to all peoples; a beloved community that is working out what it means to listen to Jesus when he calls out “Come, follow me.”  The key isn’t trying to hear something new, but allowing ourselves to listen closely and become a part of something very ancient that is continually renewed throughout history.  The freedom here is that it’s not so much a matter of what we do, but that whatever we do, we do it in a way that puts us in partnership with this God whose glory fills the whole earth. 

           

Aside from this broad story of healing and salvation we are invited to join, it appears there are no set rules for how calling works in our lives.  Given the diversity of our experiences of call, it would be wise of us to remain open to all the ways that God speaks:  through the scriptures, through mystical visions, through the mouths of friends and family, through community.  Through listening to our inner selves and discovering where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.  Our first call is to listen.  Listen.  Listen.  God is calling.       

 

Martin Luther King Jr.: Prophet of America – 1,14,07

After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, the prominent Jewish philosopher and activist Abraham Joshua Heschel said this of him: “Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America. God has sent him to us…his mission is sacred…I call upon every Jew to hearken to his voice, to share his vision, to follow in his way. The whole future of America will depend upon the influence of Dr. King.”One of Heschel’s most popular writings is simply called “The Prophets.”  In this work he says that A prophet is someone who can feel the feelings of God and the feelings of humanity.In Martin Luther King Jr. we have certainly seen a modern day prophet.  He felt deeply God’s pain and God’s joy as well as the pain and joy of his people.  And he came to see “his people” as eventually including all people.  His witness remains as powerful and relevant today as it was 40 and 50 years ago.  It remains to be seen how his influence will shape the future of America. 

A prophet has a deep sense of calling.  A sense that their life purpose and what they have to offer the world is coming from a power far beyond themselves.  Given that prophets are speaking against the grain of society, this calling provides an internal sense of rootedness in solid ground in the midst of storms of criticism and resistance and hatred.     

 

The prophet Jeremiah is said to have received this calling at a young age.  It is described this way in Jeremiah 1:4-10. 

 “Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’ Then I said, ‘Ah Lord God!  Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’  But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say, I am only a boy: for you shall speak whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.’  Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth: and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth.  See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.’” 

The calling of Jeremiah — one who would be a voice for justice and hope through one of the most difficult periods of Israel’s history, the capture of Jerusalem and exile of the people into Babylon. 

 

Martin Luther King experienced a calling early on in his ministry.  Like Jeremiah he was quite young when he became a public figure.  At the age of 26, Dr. King was fresh out of graduate school, beginning as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama, and was asked to be president of the organization spearheading the bus boycott in town.  Rosa Parks had already taken the symbolic action of refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger and as the movement gained momentum there was a backlash from some members of the white community.  King received a number of threatening phone calls to his house, telling him to leave town or else.  One night, he received a particularly hate-filled call and couldn’t go back to sleep.  This is how he describes that night: 

 “I hung up but I could not sleep . . . I got out of bed and began to walk the floor.  I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing to be a coward.  In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had almost gone, I determined to take my problem to God.  My head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud:  ‘I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right.  But now I am afraid.  The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter.  I am at the end of my powers.  I have nothing left. . .I can’t face it alone.’  

“At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never before experienced God.  It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: ‘Stand up for righteousness; stand up for truth.  God will be at your side forever.’  Almost at once my fears began to pass from me.  My uncertainty disappeared.  I was ready to face anything.  The outer situation remained the same, but God had given me inner calm.  Three nights later, our home was bombed.” 

(Written on kitchen wall of display in Civil Right Museum, Atlanta, GA) – Do not read

 

Fortunately King and his family were out of the home at the time and no one was physically harmed.  This kitchen experience of calling, ‘stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth,’ these simple words, felt deeply, sustained King in the years ahead, much like Jeremiah’s calling sustained him throughout his life.

 

A prophet feels a sense of calling from the Lord, but is often critical of how God’s name gets misused and how religion often serves to uphold the status quo, rather than challenge it.  Prophets speak out against religion that fosters apathy.  Maybe it’s too focused on getting into the right spot in the afterlife.  Maybe it’s just lost touch with the real needs of the world and keeps it’s members in a kind of stupor, comforted enough to keep on living, but dulled enough to remain separate from the pain of others.  The prophets remind us that true religion is not about going through the motions of ceremony, but about being propelled to daily go through the motions of compassion. 

The prophet Amos lived in Israel during a time when some members of society were experiencing extreme abundance at the expense of those in poverty who had little power.  He took time out from his day job of herding sheep to speak against this kind of dangerous religion.  Amos 5:21-24 says this:

 

“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.  Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.  But let justice role down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

 

King often quoted this last line from Amos.  He lamented a church that had become complacent with the world as it was.  In the spring of 1963, King sat in solitary confinement in a jail in Birmingham, Alabama, arrested for marching in a demonstration that local courts had deemed illegal.  The goal of the marchers was to desegregate the business sector of the city.  King and others were criticized by local moderate white clergy who felt that the demonstration was asking for too much too fast.  King wrote back to these clergy in what has come to be called Letter From Birmingham Jail.  In part of the letter, King laments the lack of support of the white church as they “remain (ed) silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.”  He goes on to write this:

 

“In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church.  But be assured that my tears have been tears of love.  There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.  Yes, I love the church.  How could I otherwise?  I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of preachers.  Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ.  But oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.  There was a time when the church was very powerful – in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed.  In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”

 

Like the prophet Amos, Martin Luther King Jr. called on religion to be a mighty flowing stream of righteousness instead of a stagnant pool of numbness.

 

A prophet feels a deep sense of calling, laments the unfaithfulness of religion and society to be what God desires it to be, but also provides a vision for how the world could be, for what God wills in the world.  Throughout the book of the prophet Isaiah, a number of such visions are given.  Isaiah sees nations beating their swords into plowshares: instruments of war being turned into instruments of harvest and abundance.  He also sees all of the skies and the earth being renewed.  From Isaiah chapter 65:

 

“For I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating: for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight…no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.  The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox…They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.”   

 

King is probably most famous for his dream of racial harmony that he shared with the American people during the March on Washington in 1963.  He also spoke often of the Beloved Community, a global vision where racism, poverty and militarism were no longer tolerated and people lived together in respectful relationships.  On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his death, he gave an address in Riverside Church in NY City against the war in Vietnam.  In that address he also spoke of a positive vision for the world:

 

“This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all humanity…  When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response.  I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life…”  

 It is fairly easy to praise King.  He was a remarkable man.  But it would be a disservice to what he stood for to merely marvel at his profound words or be in awe of his witness.  Unfortunately, this is in large part what our nation has done with him.  As a way of bringing this reflection to a focus, I would like to read the poem printed on the back of your bulletins, by Carl Wendell Hines: Now that he is safely dead
Let us praise him
build monuments to his glory
sing hosannas to his name.
Dead men make
such convenient heroes: They
cannot rise
to challenge the images
we would fashion from their lives.
And besides,
it is easier to build monuments
than to make a better world.Carl Wendell HinesFor us to be true to the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., we must see ourselves as somehow a continuation of his witness.  Which means we must believe ourselves to be a living thread in the prophetic witness going all the way back to the Hebrew prophets and up through our time.  We must be witnesses to the reality that everyone in the world is our neighbor, that extreme poverty will not be tolerated, that we live lives of stewardship that do not destroy our fragile earth.  After the service today we will be looking over the proposal for a new CMF covenant.  And in closing I would just highlight here one of the lines in the covenant: “As Mennonites we are committed to bringing peace, justice, and reconciliation and the Good News to each other and to the world around us.”  I believe this provides an excellent summary of what it means for us to be a prophetic community.  To be faithful to this prophetic calling, we must learn all the more to feel the feelings of God.  God’s joy and God’s pain.  And we must learn all the more to feel the feelings of humanity with its joy and pain.    Please join me now in reading this response printed in your bulletin and please stand.Congregational ResponseLeader: In the small, nearly invisible things that we do, may we join with the prophets in compassion for all of life.People: In the large, public things that we do, may we join with the prophets in a desire for righteousness.Leader: Like Jeremiah, may we hear God’s call.People: Like Amos, may we strive for a religion of justice and peace.Leader: Like Isaiah, may we see new possibilities emerging out of the old.All: Like Martin Luther King Jr. and the prophets of our day, may we be so filled with the Holy Spirit that our words and deeds become a living witness to the all-embracing love of God.Response Song “Lift every voice and sing”