Communing With The Saints (Mennonite Heritage Sunday) – 11/1/09 – Mark 12:28-34

When Jesus is teaching in the temple in Mark’s gospel, a scribe comes to him with what would have been a common question of the day.  He asks Jesus to weigh in on what he believed to be the centerpiece of the Torah.  “Which commandment is first of all?” he asks.  Jesus begins by saying that the first and greatest is “Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”  Jesus draws from words found in Deuteronomy, known as the Shema, which Jews would have already known by heart, repeating for morning and evening prayers.  

Had Jesus continued quoting this passage from Deuteronomy, it would have gone like this: “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Just a little further in the same chapter, it says, “When your children ask you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your children, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.  The Lord displayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household.  God brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land that God promised on oath to our ancestors.  Then the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our lasting good, so as to keep us alive, as in now the case.” 

There is a recognition here that what has been learned and what has been experienced is to be passed on to future generations – to remember the past, so as to make it present.  When the children ask “Why?” we have a story to tell them.

One of our ways of doing this is by having this Mennonite Heritage Sunday.  It’s a chance to remember some of the stories of the Mennonite experience and to get a little better sense of “Why” we are who we are and how that affects how we live.  This year Mennonite Heritage Sunday also coincides with another church observance, All Saints Day, and those who have designed the worship theme for the day have asked us to consider combining these two ways of remembering.  Heritage, the stories of a people, and saints, those who have lived faithful lives and whose witness continues long after their death.

In the ancient tradition of Celtic Christianity, there are three categories of saints.  The first is the Red Saint – those who have suffered for their faith and witnessed to the love of God with their blood, through martyrdom.  The Anabaptist movement out of which the Mennonites formed is in many ways a martyr tradition, and we have the book of the Martyr’s Mirror which tells many stories of Red Saints.  I’ve talked about the story of Dirk Willems who was fleeing his captor and who escaped over a frozen pond only to look back and realize that the person chasing him had fallen through the ice.  Dirk turned back, rescued his pursuer and saved his life.  The man wanted to let Dirk go free, but his authority had him rearrest Dirk who was tried as an Anabaptist and sentenced to burn at the stake. 

When I was in Paraguay this summer for the Mennonite World Conference I attended a Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) seminar that was reviewing the first 25 years of CPT and someone there suggested that we should think of Tom Fox as a person who should be included in a modern day Martyr’s Mirror.  Tom was one of the four CPT members who was captured in Iraq several years ago and held in captivity several months.  The other three made it out alive but Tom was found dead.  He was a witness to the nonviolent peaceful reign of God and he spent his final days trying to befriend his enemy captors who were caught up in this war on terror that had pitted their people against ours. 

We have many Red Saints to talk about.

The Celtic Christians also consider there to be White Saints.  These were the saints who had crossed the whitecaps, and had gone over the waters to be missionaries beyond their homeland.  In looking at the map of what Mennonite World Conference looks like today it would no doubt be quite a different picture without this type of saint.  One of the stories of the Paraguayan Mennonites is how they were aided in their early days by Bob and Myrtle Unruh.  Bob was from Montana and Myrtle was from Kansas, and they were both raised in rural Mennonite congregations and met and graduated together from Bethel College in Kansas.  They were newly married and began an assignment to travel down to Paraguay to help the Mennonites who were barely making it in the desert-like region called the Chaco.  On the first night they arrived, Myrtle was remembered to have said, “Thank goodness.  There remain just 1,756 days before we can return home.”  But this ended up being a life-long calling for the Unruhs.  They came to help them develop farming practices that would be productive in the Chaco and they soon had a successful experiment with importing Buffelgrass which grew like nothing else in the sandy soil.  The community then decided that they needed better livestock for their better grass.  This is how the story is described in the book Like a Mustard Seed, which is a telling of the Mennonite experience in Paraguay.  “Mennonite farmers in Lancaster, PA, learned about the need for improved livestock (in Paraguay).  They selected some of the best from their cows and pigs and in 1961 chartered a plane that became a kind of flying Noah’s ark.  More followed.  Holstein bulls…were crossed with Zebu cows, more than doubling milk production while retaining the hardiness needed to survive the Chaco.  Bob and Myrtle Unruh closed their first term, which by most standards had been wildly successful, with these words: ‘We persist with a prayer in our hearts that also through our modest efforts the love of Christ may be made visible.’ The Unruhs were more than respected; they were loved and became one with the people.  They became Chaquenos (Chaco dwellers) and devoted most of their adult lives to making the Chaco productive.” (pp. 159-160)  More of their story is told in this book along with many other stories of the Mennonites in Paraguay. 

Red saints and white saints are probably the easiest to idealize, and they make for excellent stories which are good to tell, but Celtic Christians, and hopefully also Mennonite Christians, also recognize Green Saints.  For the Celts, Green Saints were those who stayed in Ireland and committed their lives to God’s work right there on the Emerald Isle. 

I think that last week Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove helped us think some about green saints.  He told some stories about his small community there in Durham, North Carolian that has committed to the wellbeing of their neighborhood and how their neighborhood is becoming a place where people care for each other.  And he quoted Mother Teresa who said we can do no great things, but only small things with great love.  I think he quoted her on Sunday…. 

And so we also remember those who have found this area, this land where we live, to be the place where they have been called to love God with all their heart and soul and mind.

One of the stories of Mennonite Green Saints are those who served in alternative service during World War II through CPS, Civilian Public Service.  Many Mennonite young people wanted to serve their country but couldn’t reconcile taking another life with their baptismal vows of being Christians, so they entered into CPS as conscientious objectors and served in different positions all over the country.  Service in CPS had the effect of taking many Mennonites off of their farms and more isolated communities and putting them in touch with many of the social problems of the nation.  One of the places where Mennonite young people served was in the nation’s mental hospitals.  Here are some brief anecdotes of that work that comes out of the book Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties: Mennonite Pacifism in America by Perry Bush who teaches at Bluffton University:

  “Young objectors faced innumerable challenges to their convictions in mental hospital work.  There rough supervisors often informed the Cos by word and example to handle the patients overly firmly, to ‘whip them, or they will whip you.’  Usually Cos learned how to deal with potentially violent situations with their convictions intact.  At one hospital for the violently insane, orderlies had sequestered a crazed inmate in a padded cell, but he still waved a razor blade.  They called two Cos to ‘take care of him.’  The two went into the cell, carrying a mattress for protection in from of them, and calmed the inmate down.  Another CO found himself confronted by a huge inmate (nicknamed ‘Evil’ by the orderlies) towering above him and holding aloft a heavy oaken chair.  Although the usual response from an orderly thus threatened would have been to deliver a swift kick in the groin, this CO asked the inmate, ‘How do you expect to sit down on that when you hold it up like that?’  The inmate merely laughed, put it down, and walked away.” (pp. 109-110)

During the war and especially after the war Mennonites had a significant influence on reforming the way that mental health care happens in our country and they have helped to humanize the system in many ways.  So these are some of our Green Saints.     

I want to talk specifically to our youth and young people now and mention that we hope you have a chance to see a lot of the world and get a big picture of what all is going on around the globe, and also what is going on right here in the US.  And so as you think about being a Mennonite Christian in your young adulthood that is coming to you so quickly, we want to encourage you to consider this heritage of service and mission that we have not just around the world, but also here at home.  We want to encourage you to consider giving several years of your life to Voluntary Service (VS), or serving with MCC.  These will be important years that will help shape how you incorporate service and mission into all the rest of your life.  And you may end up being in a situation like Myrtle Unruh where she thought she was just serving a place for a limited term and in the process discovered that this was really what her life was going to be all about.  We want you to look seriously into all the different service opportunities that are out there, and we’ll encourage you as you step out and do that.    

When the scribe came to Jesus and asked him about the greatest Commandment, Jesus quoted to him the words of the Shema from Deuteronomy as the first commandment and then he said that the second is very much like it, that we should love our neighbor as ourself.  This was the core of all the Law and all the Prophets, better than all burnt offerings and sacrifices, which were happening all around them as they had this conversation in the temple. 

One of the things about loving God and loving our neighbor is that we don’t need to go anywhere special to do this or have anything dramatic happen to us in order to carry it out.  Anywhere we plant ourselves, there will be God and there will be neighbors.

When the Apostle Paul wrote to his little congregations that he had helped start around the Roman Empire he would often call them the saints.  The first words to the Ephesians: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.”  The first words to the Philippians: “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi..grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

And so in the last words of this sermon, as we prepare to move into Communion I invite you, the saints who are in Cincinnati, who are working and serving throughout our home area and who have decided to seek the welfare of this place where we live, I invite you to continue in this story in which we have been joined.  To tell it to our children, to tell it to our neighbors who may be looking for a faith community to join.  When I look at you, I see a congregation of green saints — which maybe in our time can have a dual meaning.  A Celtic meaning and a simple living meaning of trying to green our own lives these days.     

We prepare now for the table.

Whenever we gather around this table, we do so as a part of the communion of saints.  This is how we remember.  This is how the past becomes present.  Christ comes to us in the form of bread, an open table of invitation and grace.  In joining together in communion we join in the communion of saints living and dead who all look to the great feast that has been prepared for us, as we inherit the kingdom of God.

 

Rachel Smith sermon – 6/14/09

*This sermon was written and presented by Rachel Smith at Cincinnati Mennonite Fellowship on June 14, 2009.  Thanks Rachel for these wonderful stories and reflections.

Mark 4:31-35

 

31How can we picture God’s kingdom?  It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. 32Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”

33With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. 34He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything

 

“Sweetie, you cut it like this see. Real thin so you can almost see through the skin.  My great-grandmother held up an apple peel that was nearly as clear as tissue paper.  I went back to widdling my peel away taking most of the apple’s fruit with me.   This exercise is one of the first and most vivid memories I have of who my great grandmother was.  At her table, I was stuck somewhere between wanting to please her and at the same time wondering why it mattered if my peel was thin or not.  Looking back I now marvel at her patience with me. For what I now know about her is that she almost never wasted. Waste pained her.  I laugh now at the amount of black bananas I had on cereal at her house, or the times I would catch her going through the garbage to re-use tea bags that she was sure had just one last cup in them.  So in remembering the peeling skills of a six-year-old, I am sure letting me help her with the apples was an exercise in love indeed. 

 

It was this stewardship. Her unending desire to get the most and the best out of what was that kept me quietly intrigued with this wrinkly ancient woman throughout my childhood.  And as a teenager, when I began to seek out my own identity, I felt very strongly that this woman, this anomaly could help me.  And so, I sought her out. 

 

Once I got my driver’s license I began driving once a month to my great uncle’s home to visit with her. Mostly, the time was spent sitting on the couch looking at photo albums or talking about old family memories. I didn’t exactly know what the significance was then, however, it seemed important, so I kept doing it.

 

  Eventually she became increasingly frail.  She moved into my grandmother’s home with my grandmother and great aunt, who were able to care for her full time. My hour drive to visit grandma became a ten-minute trip. In some way I considered this change an answer to prayer.

 

What I had realized on these ventures out to see her was that I had an expectation. One that that this great steward would help me become a steward of myself.  And so I kept visiting. And we had a good time. Sometimes we sat on the swing, sometimes I pretended to read her the Bible and made up my own verses “ about walking through the valley of the shadow of incontinence, yeah I will fear no catheter.”  We called it the Queen Rachel version of the Bible.  And while this was a good time, a cherished time, I didn’t have any mind-boggling revelations. 

 

   And time went on.  And a part of me resigned. I thought to myself, well, you’re on your own kid, no bedside wisdom, no midnight hour confessions, no prophetic treasure maps pointing the way to self-discovery.   I guess there’s no trick. You just live.

 

2 Corinthians 5:6-10

6Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7We live by faith, not by sight. 8We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 10For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

 

 

So that’s what I did. I lived.  I just figured everyone was supposed to do what he or she had to in order to figure “it” out… whatever it was.  And what I chose to do was become a social worker. I started in foster care, “living” through the eyes of the abandoned child.   Did I mention “living” could get very confusing.  Many formative stories and experiences were made during this time. One experience in particular stuck out to me.  It was the story of Daniel. 

 

 Daniel was 8.  He had a sad story like most of the other kids. He came into foster care after burning his own house down at the age of four. He had been left alone for days and started a fire as a means of escape.

 

  He and I had spent the last two years figuring each other out and trying to get him in a safe, stable home where he could stay.  And on a sunny day in July it seemed as if all of our laboring had worked.  Daniel was getting ready to be adopted by the family he was living with. I came by to visit and he gladly showed me his last quarter’s report card filled with straight A’s.   “Miss Rachel” he said.  “Can we celebrate this by going out to eat…. Just you and me?”  “Sure Daniel sounds good,” I said. 

 

Now if you know anything about children who have had to scrounge for food. The one place they love to eat is the Golden Coral.  It is a neglected child’s utopia.   So there we sat in the Golden Coral.

 

Even though Daniel was supposedly the one with food issues, I was the one who started stuffing my face first.

 

“Miss Rachel” he said. “Aren’t you going to pray?”  “ Well I suppose I should. Would you like me to?”   “Yes,” he said.  We took hands and I sat across the table somewhat embarrassed by my oversight. I started to pray. “Dear God I said. Please protect Daniel. Help him to become a man.  Amen.”  That was it, a nine word prayer that seemed like a good place to start in the midst of a very confused little life.

 

The next day I was driving through the community and saw there had been a horrific car accident. I felt unusually curious about the sight, but it didn’t appear to be a car I recognized, so I stopped rubber necking and went to my office. When I walked in the door the phone was ringing.  I answered and amidst screams I learned that Daniel was in that crash and so far there had been at least one fatality.

 

On my way to the hospital I drove in the valley of the shadow of a life flight helicopter. I was a scared. And what I had in those horrifying moments were the thoughts of my Golden Coral prayer. It was an accidental anointing.  I had prayed an acknowledgement that Daniel was to become a man.

 

And Daniel is becoming a man. I saw him last month.  He is nearly 6 feet. The family friend who was driving the car saved him. In the accident her body landed on his absorbing the impact. She died. He walked away physically unscathed but had another break in his heart.  Daniel was the first place I had a taste of anointing, though I didn’t recognize as such then. 

 

Some years went by and I moved farther away, but this story along with the stories of hundreds of other confusing little lives, did not leave me. And so, sometimes in the midst of confusion it’s a good time to pack up and visit home.  There I can reconcile myself with the world. 

 

2 Corinthians 5:11-17

 

The Ministry of Reconciliation

11Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. 12We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. 13If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

 

Well the truth be told “the old had come” on this trip home. My first night back an elderly aunt of mine died.  My mother and I spent the first day of my visit making funeral arrangements.  That evening I found myself in the car treading back to my Promised Land… Grandma’s, the place where patience and understanding abound.

 

  By this point I was tired from a busy and mournful day. And also tired from knowing that soon I would not be making this trip anymore. By now my great-grandmother was totally bed ridden and often had difficulty sustaining the energy to even talk.  In a wave of pre-emptive grief, I began crying as I pulled up to the house. I walked straight in and fell crying into the lap of my secret prophet. My grandmother and her sister were there. Nobody said a word.  To my embarrassment I was frozen there in her lap crying…more helpless than that little girl who couldn’t figure out how to just cut off the peel. It was time to say goodbye.

 

It was time to say goodbye and all my hopes for clarity and direction had gone unanswered. In fact, life was getting more confusing every day.   What I had from her was love, and memories, and jokes, but not the blessing or instruction I was looking for.  And in some ways I think that is what many of my tears were about. I knew we were at the end and I wanted my anointing.

 

And just then as if she knew what I came for, my great-grandmother called over her daughters, put my face in her hands and said: “This is our daughter.”

 

And there it was, in four words, the unknown “it” I needed from her.

 

She died two months later. And this will remain my sweetest memory of her. “This is our daughter.” I didn’t know what it meant. But I knew it was my anointing. 

 

 

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

 

Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king.”

2 But Samuel said, “How can I go? Saul will hear about it and kill me.”
The LORD said, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.’ 3 Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what to do. You are to anoint for me the one I indicate.”

4 Samuel did what the LORD said. When he arrived at Bethlehem, the elders of the town trembled when they met him. They asked, “Do you come in peace?”

5 Samuel replied, “Yes, in peace; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD. Consecrate yourselves and come to the sacrifice with me.” Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

6 When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed stands here before the LORD.”

7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

8 Then Jesse called Abinadab and had him pass in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, “The LORD has not chosen this one either.” 9 Jesse then had Shammah pass by, but Samuel said, “Nor has the LORD chosen this one.” 10 Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The LORD has not chosen these.” 11 So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”
“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered, “but he is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down [a] until he arrives.”

12 So he sent and had him brought in. He was ruddy, with a fine appearance and handsome features.
Then the LORD said, “Rise and anoint him; he is the one.”

13 So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the LORD came upon David in power. Samuel then went to Ramah.

 

Since the couch with my great grandmother and the Golden Coral I have started to see the seed which Mark chapter four remarks.  Things have become less confusing and much clearer as I feel this verse enter my own life.  For what I feel growing in me is recognition of the space that knows I am anointed and also at times an anointer. That not only do I carry seeds of faith with me, and a horn of oil ready to recognize the work of God happening in someone else. But I also fall on the couch of a frail woman and grieve, desperate to be anointed.  It is with this revelation in mind I will close with one last story. 

 

Steven entered my office last year.  The first thing I noticed about him was missing fingers. Ones who were wrapped so tightly by an abusive parent they had to be amputated as a toddler. And now at the age of six Steven came to see me because he was in foster care and that’s what the grown ups said he was supposed to do.  He didn’t like talking about too much of anything the therapist handbook would say was “relevant.”  In fact if a painful topic came up he would often remark “Miss Rachel, I ain’t here to talk about all that… I just want to have a good time!” 

 

We did have some good times, and some bad ones over the year. And like all kids that I get to work with for any amount of time a little piece of them feels like they belong to me. They become my little flock, the little people that I have some responsibility for.  And so it was a great honor to hold Steven’s stories in my heart, to laugh with him, and to hold his hand while he proudly tried to overcome the terror of walking across the playground’s balance beam… amongst other terrors. 

 

And one day it was Steven’s time to move on.  He found what he called his “forever family”.  Only his forever family lived half way across the country.  So on our last day, Steven and I walked that balance beam together one last time.  “Miss Rachel,” he said. “Do you believe in God?” “Yup.” I said.  “And Steven if you don’t mind I think I liked to talk to him before you have to go.  Do you mind?”  “Nope.” He said. 

 

And so we stood there looking at the sky with the sun in our eyes.  “God” I said. Give us the courage to work through new things and the courage to miss the things we have lost.  Please protect Steven and his family and the families he loves and is leaving behind. And help him grow into a man.” 

 

Only this time I stood there as an anointed one, anointing another.  Steven a new son, and I a new daughter. My heart resounding with the words we say so often to one another. “ Now go in peace”

 

In Jesus’ Name – 5/3/09 – Acts 4:5-12, 1 John 3:16-24

About a month ago the Mennonite Weekly Review carried an essay by a pastor in Kansas named Bruce Bradshaw about his participation in the recent efforts of Mennonite Central Committee called “New Wine, New Wineskins.”  (March 30^th, 2009 edition) This process is designed to get feedback from MCC’s constituents about the future ministry of the organization.  The issue that the essay highlights is MCC’s use of the phrase “In the name of Christ” that accompanies their ministry work.  Labels that are placed on canned turkey that MCC ships all over the world, for example, include the words “In the name of Christ.” 

Here are some of the comments in the essay: “In an assignment to tell what excited us about the work of MCC, the people at my table cited ministering “In the name of Christ,” which they believed was a non-negotiable aspect of MCC’s ministry.  Their commitment reminded me of Shakespeare’s Juliet, who asked Romeo:  “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Would MCC’s ministry, without mentioning the name, be any different?

I fully support ministering in the name of Christ. However, the name needs interpretation. Otherwise, it will be misunderstood and become meaningless.  When I pasted labels on cans of turkey for MCC’s meat canning ministry, someone commented that the turkey would taste the same with or without Christ.  The taste might be the same, but the meaning will change.

Serving people in the name of Christ makes a difference, but we have to interpret the difference.”

This essay came to mind when I read through the passages from Acts and 1 John in this week’s lectionary.  Acts seems to be full of different instances when the disciples are acting in Jesus’ name.  Jesus had told them “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  In the case of Acts 4, Peter and John had come upon a man born lame from birth who was being carried in to the temple during the hour of prayer to beg for alms.  The rush hour traffic was probably a good time for this, not to mention he would have been catching people at a time when they were feeling the most pious, since there does seem to be dissonance between going to pray and then immediately walking by a person asking for change.  After walking up to him, on their way to prayer, in a moment of inspiration, Peter had looked at him, and said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”  And the lame man gets up, and walks, and dances around, much to people’s astonishment.  Later, Peter and John are arrested for being the source of all the commotion that this caused.  They are questioned, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” to which Peter answers “this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth….there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

In this story and other of the apostles, it is the name of Jesus that takes center state.  Those who use the name, or witness to the name, seem to carry the extraordinary power to do the same things Jesus himself did.

If you read the email on Friday then you have had a little warning about what I would like to try and do with the sermon.  I think the Menno Weekly Review article does a good job of raising some good questions, important questions, and I think those questions are best addressed when we are able to hear from different people’s experiences.  How do we use the name of Jesus, or Christ, or Christianity?  What difference does it make, if any?  What does it mean to us to be witnesses of Jesus?  To bear that name and somehow represent what all that means.

So what I get to do, rather than making a definitive statement and saying Amen and being done with it, is to stir the pot a little bit and see what rises to the top for you all.  I’ll ask us to consider different aspects of the naming process, especially as it relates to faith, and what the name of Jesus means to us. 

Listen not only to consider these things, but consider how you may share some response that could address any angle of this.  Feel free to jot notes, flip through your Bibles, think of stories that relate.  And we’ll see what happens.  And just so you’re clear as to what to anticipate, the format will be similar to regular sharing time.  I’ll open the floor and you can feel free to share.  And if we have some time of extended silence together……that’s OK too. 

Consider the different paths taken by Christian ministers during the inauguration celebration of President Obama.  The opening inaugural event on Sunday of that week began with a prayer by Episcopal priest Eugene Robinson.  In the hearing of the diverse crowd, from all walks of life, gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, Eugene Robinson began his prayer with the words, “O God of our many understandings.”  He went on to ask that God bless us all at this time with tears, with anger, with discomfort, with patience, with humility, and with compassion and generosity.  Two days later, this time to begin the official swearing in part of the inauguration, Evangelical Pastor Rick Warren stood before an equally diverse crowd, and gave a prayer.  Throughout the prayer , Rick Warren made references to the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  As part of the conclusion of his prayer he offered, “I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life, Yeshua, Isa, Jesus [Spanish pronunciation], Jesus.” 

Praying to the God of our many understandings.  Praying in the name of Jesus.

If you were asked to pray for such an event, how would you address and name God?  Or maybe you would decline!  How universal and how particular would you allow your language of faith to be?  Or, perhaps, more concretely, when you do pray, whether in public or in private or with your household, do you ever use the words, “in Jesus’ name?”  If so, why?  What do they mean to you? 

Consider the humility and caution that scripture speaks of in the human attempt to name God.  A time when God ventures to reveal the divine name occurs in the burning bush incident with Moses.  God tells Moses that God will deliver the children of Israel from the bondage of slavery, and Moses will lead the way.  Moses asks this burning-plant-with-a-voice, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?’  God said to Moses, “I am who I am”  “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “I am” has sent me to you.’”  This isn’t much of an answer to Moses’ question.  Not much of a definitive name.  “I am who I am” could just as easily be translated “I will be who I will be.”  In other words, I can’t be easily named or contained within your fragile frameworks of understanding.  As soon as you try and name me, you’re already in error.  If you need a name for me, call me “I will be” and then watch me be that which I am.  You’ll know me by what I do, and what I’m about to do is deliver you from bondage.  This is God’s name. 

When Jacob wrestles with the angel of God, or God’s own self, he wins a blessing, and gets a new name.  Israel.  God-wrestler.  But then Jacob asks to know the name of the one with whom he has struggled all night.  The answer he receives is “why do you ask my name?”  In our walk with God, or our wrestle with God, is it we who get to name God, or is it God who names us?

Consider how fundamental it is to our humanity to give and receive names.  The creation account of Genesis 2 imagines that one of the first acts of the human creature who has been formed from the dust, is to name all of the other dust creatures.  “So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the human to see what he would call them;  and whatever the human called every living creature, that was its name.”  This is surely much more intimate than something like branding cattle, or an assembly line of smacking a UPC label on an object for strictly identification purposes.  Our naming of our environment, of each other, is a way of connecting ourselves with that person, or animal.  A bond of relationship.

Expectant parents sit down together and go through lists of names, looking for just the right one that their child will carry with them the rest of their lives.  The final name has to sit right with both partners.  The name may be that of a relative, connecting the child in some way to the family story.  It may come from a beloved Bible character, or a valued person in history.  It could come from pop culture, or be a direct product of the sheer creativity of the parents who would like their child to have a name like no other.  Even if the story behind our name is that it’s just a name our parents liked, then we have already been given a sign of love that we carry with us and that we answer to.  Someone calls our name.  We pause, we pay attention.  We have been named, and we will give names to others, to animals, to places, to our faith, because we’re human, and that’s what we do.

Consider Jesus’ own teachings that relate to the use of his name.  There are some teachings that indicate that acting in the name of Jesus is a continuation of the life of Jesus.  The name of Jesus stands for everything that Jesus stood for.  Acting in the name of Jesus is an extension of all that Jesus was.  “Whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name, welcomes me.”  (Matthew 18:5).  For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”  (Matthew 18:20).  The extension of Jesus self through the life of the disciple who bears that name can also lead to a similar counter-cultural stance.  “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19:29).  “Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name.”  Matthew 24:9  Followers of Jesus are forever linked to his name, and that directly influences how we live.

But then there are instances when Jesus downplays and even seems to shun the use of his name.  Also in Matthew, “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’” (Matthew 7:22-23).  Apparently it is possible to use the name of Jesus, but still be doing evil.  It is the doing, not the using of the name, that is what is of value.  And remember Matthew 25, where Jesus teaches that those who have compassion on the least of these, even if there was no knowledge at the time that they were acting in Jesus’ name, they will inherit the kingdom of God.  It would seem that one can act in Jesus’ name without ever saying a word.

Consider how names, traditions, identities, come to take on certain freight, certain connotations over time.  Whatever something meant originally, it becomes altered and re-formed, for better or for worse, by how it has been represented through history.  Several years ago Nelson Kraybill, President of AMBS seminary wrote an essay that elicited a lot of conversation about how the future of the Mennonite Church was evangelical.  One of the points of his argument was that since evangelical means oriented toward good news that we should fully claim that title.  Those who felt this was a bad idea argued that there are certain elements of the current evangelical community they don’t want to be identified with.  One argument was from the basis of what a name should mean, while one was from what it has come to mean over time.  However one feels about that, we who bear the name of Christ are in the same boat.  We have to acknowledge that the name of Jesus does not only point back to what we like to think of as the pure form of Christ, but also bears the weight of the good and the bad that has been done in the name of Christ throughout history.  How do we represent Christ given this reality?

A final thing to consider, before you may want to offer plenty of other things to consider: Consider the way 1 John holds all this tension together.  3:18, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”  On one hand words and speech and names matter little.  Our love acts itself out in truth, and that truth can be true no matter how we name it or leave it unnamed.  But then 4 verses later: “And this is God’s commandment: that we should believe in the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as we have been commanded.”  There’s still something about that name to hold on to.

I think that’s plenty to consider for now, for starters.  I wonder what kinds of thoughts this has brought up for you.  Or what kinds of experiences you’ve had that relate with this that you’d like to share.  You may want to speak to one of the questions I raised, or ask your own question.  Or tell about a time when you feel like you represented Christ and whether or not the name of Christ came up during that time.  Or if you feel like you are often on the defensive for feeling like the form of Christianity you believe in is not the one that most people think of when they think of Christianity.  What does it mean to live “in Jesus’ name?”  Or to pray “in Jesus’ name?”  Or to give a cup of cold water, or a can of turkey in Jesus’ name?

 

“…but they look like trees,walking” – 3/08/09 – Genesis 17:1-8,15-16, Mark 8:22-9:1

I am going to take a little bit of artistic license here in how we enter in to the scripture passages and the theme of the morning.  The creators of our Lenten worship materials have structured the six weeks of the season around six very simple images, with each image reflecting the theme of that particular week.  Last week was the bow from the flood story, the sign of the first covenant in Scripture that God makes with all of creation.  Future weeks will include a beehive, a snake, water, and a palm branch.  Each of these images are included in this wonderful wall hanging that Connie Briggs has made, which sort of acts as a beautiful outline of the worship themes of this season.  And as is there in the wall hanging, and as is there on the bulletin and was just in the children’s story, today’s image is the tree.

The original idea of this tree was that it represent the family tree of our spiritual ancestors Abraham and Sara – out of them blossom and grow not only the Jewish and the Christian tradition, but also, through Abraham and Hagar, the Islamic tradition — the three great monotheistic religions.  Approximately half of humanity today find themselves on some branch of this great, ancient tree.     As Genesis tells the story, it’s a tree that almost never made it out of the ground.  Only in their old age, well beyond the expected time of blooming does this tree start to grow. 

I’m going to stick with the tree image, and eventually come back to Abraham, but want to start in a place that I’m almost certain the Lent planners didn’t plan.  The other reading of the day comes from Mark chapter 8, where Jesus teaches about saving one’s life by giving it up while having a confrontational exchange with Peter about the meaning of Jesus being the Messiah.  And just a little bit before this, there is another tree that shows up that I think gets right at the heart of what’s going on in both the Genesis and the Mark stories. 

I’ll be reading that passage, and if you’d like the follow along and hold it in front of you, you’re welcome to open your Bibles to Mark chapter 8, verses 22-26.

“They (Jesus and the disciples) came to Bethsaida.  Some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him.  He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ‘Can you see anything?’  And the man looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.”  Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.  Then he sent him away to his home, saying, ‘Do not even go into the village.’”   

If for no other reason, this would be a great story just because Jesus puts his saliva on this guy’s eyes.  The NRSV sanitizes this a little bit, it’s not quite clear how the saliva is applied, but what the language really says is that Jesus spits on the dude’s eyes.  In folk healing of the time, saliva was thought to have certain powers from the healer, and here Jesus serves up a direct delivery from the pharmacy to the patient.  Very nice.

But what I’m really interested in is the way that the trees show up in the story.  Jesus spits on the man’s eyes and touches them, asks him if he can see anything, and the man looks up, adjusts to the light starting to pour into his body, stands there for however long, and then says, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.”  The man is not completely healed on the first touch.  His vision is still in the process of coming into focus, still hard to differentiate between the trees planted in the ground and what look like those trees that are walking around. 

It takes two touches from Jesus, first touch, second touch, before Mark notes that this person “saw everything clearly.” 

Like the other gospel writers, Mark has artistic control over the material that he working with.  He is like the creator of a patchwork quilt, having all these different patches of story in front of him – Jesus going to this village, Jesus telling this parable, Jesus healing this person, eating this meal, the disciples responding to this teaching –each with its own unique set of intricate details, and he is able to patch these together in a way that forms an overall story.  Each patch takes on a certain quality and character depending on where it is placed in relation to other patches, shaping the overall pattern of the work.  Each gospel writer has their own way of arranging these stories in a way that makes for a unique creation and a unique perspective on the good news being communicated through Jesus.   

The center of Mark’s gospel is a crucial piece to his overall message.  To use another metaphor, this center section, beginning perhaps with the encounter with the Syrophoenician woman in chapter seven, continuing through the feeding of the four thousand, a second feeding story, and including this story of the healing of the blind man,  Jesus’ question of ‘who do you say that I am’ and the confrontation with Peter that results from that, up to Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain – this center section is a great hinge between the first half and the second half of Mark’s gospel.  A pivotal point that sets Jesus on the course toward Jerusalem, much to the perplexity of the disciples.

And this story of this blind man, and more specifically, this picture of him after the first touch believing that he is seeing trees walking around, is the place where the disciples, and anyone who is part way into the story, find themselves.

For us this morning, this tree image represents half-sight; partial vision, fuzzy and blurred; real, but incomplete perception of that on which we are gazing.  At this point in our journey we are like this person with light streaming into our infant eyes, looking up, trying to make sense of the world we see, being only somewhat successful.   

One of the things we are learning about perception and sight is that we see according to what we have already seen.  The way that we know is by comparing what is new with what is familiar.  We have frameworks and structures that we create in our minds and we tend to filter what we see through those frameworks, through a particular set of glasses that we wear.  We file our experiences in these compartments which help us make sense of the world.  The blind man knows about trees, so people to him are trees, walking.

I think I’ve told the story before about the first time Dad and Mom brought us to the ballpark to see a Reds game.  We were farm kids, used to listening to the Reds on the radio, with the game of baseball fully mediated into our imaginations through the voices of the announcers Marty and Joe.  So when we got to the ball park the thing my older sister Rachel was most excited about seeing was the bullpen.  For a farmgirl used to being in the barn with the cows, I can only imagine what kinds of daring and suspense-thrilled action she was looking forward to seeing when the Reds pitchers would be warming up in the bullpen.     

We interpret according to what we already know.  One of my questions in moving to Cincinnati was how the neighborhood Over-the-Rhine got its name.  Apparently, and some of you probably know this story, the early German immigrants who settled there would often walk over the bridges over the Miami and Erie canal that separated their neighborhood from downtown.   The water of the canal reminded them of the river of their homeland.  The place where the canal was is now Central Parkway, but Over-the-Rhine has stuck as the name for the neighborhood.     

When ninety-nine year old Abram gets word that he and his wife with whom he has no children will become a multitude of nations, he has no prior framework for grasping this.  What kind of world is it where those who are old are giving gifts to the world that will last for generations to come?  Abram’s response is to fall on his face.  Sara’s response is a little more graceful.  She laughs out loud.   

In Mark 8, not so coincidentally right after Jesus has sort of and then completely healed the blind man, he asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”  Not surprisingly, the disciples report that the people are interpreting Jesus according to that which they already know.  Jesus is John the Baptist come back to life, he’s the new Elijah, he’s one of the prophets, like the Isaiah or Jeremiah of their time.   

What follows is often interpreted as Peter’s confession of faith.  Jesus asks, “But who do you say that I am?” and Peter answers, You are the Messiah, the Christ.”  It’s a great answer, the right answer according to Christian faith, but Peter has no idea what he’s talking about.  Messiah and Christ are  another set of terms onto which people have already loaded all sorts of their own frameworks – maybe a superhuman figure, maybe a warrior type, or a solver of all our problems.  When Peter sees Jesus, he sees a Messiah, the Messiah, but what does it mean?  Jesus knows that Peter doesn’t know, can only see according to what he has already seen, and tells him to be quiet.  Jesus is not all that interested in titles, especially ones that have so much baggage with them.  Peter’s confession of faith tells of just as much unknowing as it does knowing.

Annie Dillard has a chapter on seeing in her book “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.”  Here is a piece of what she says, “I used to be able to see flying insects in the air.  I’d look ahead and see, not the row of hemlocks across the road, but the air in front of it.  My eyes would focus along that column of air, picking out flying insects.  But I lost interest, I guess, for I dropped the habit.  Now I can see birds.  Probably some people can look at the grass at their feet and discover all the crawling creatures.  I would like to know grasses and sedges – and care.  Then my least journey into the world would be a field trip, a series of happy recognitions…But I don’t see what the specialist sees, and so I cut myself off, not only from the total picture, but from the various forms of happiness.” (pp. 16,17)

Jesus’ invitation to the discipleship community – to Peter and to all who follow after him, is an invitation into a way of seeing.  A new, Spirit infused form of imagination that sees the world, perhaps for the first time, with unblurred eyes, or at least, unblurring eyes.  A series of happy recognitions in which we are beginning to see life through a renewed set of eyes.  We who have been socialized into a particular form of blindness are welcomed into a new framework of knowing that Jesus calls, throughout his ministry, the kingdom of God.    

When Jesus silences Peter, Peter has experienced the first touch of Jesus.  Jesus’ second touch, a medicine for healing, this time with no spit involved, comes in the form of an invitation to walk alongside him.  For Jesus, a new way of seeing can’t come about simply by thinking our way into it, or by saying the right words.  It involves placing ourselves, our bodies, along the path of Jesus.  Walking as he walks.  Viewing the world from his perspective.  It involves allowing our daily patterns to be reshaped by the gospel way.  Jesus says, “If you want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel will save it.  For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and yet forfeit their life?”

This pattern of being is not introduced as easy.  But it is introduced as life-giving.  If you want to save your life, let it go.  The Messiah is offering that we gain our soul.  Our true humanity.  That our lives be reoriented around the abundant life of God.   

Abraham fell on his face, Sara laughed.  The blind man looked out on the strange new world.  Peter is silenced and then invited down a new path.  For Lent may we look anew at the baffling reality in front of our eyes.  Life grows out of barrenness.  The cross is the way to wholeness.

 

Lent Begins: Flood and Baptism – 3/01/09 – Genesis 9:8-17, Mark 1:9-15

Too much water and we call it a flood.  Too little water and we call it a drought.  Just enough and we call it a drink, or a good swim, or a bath, or a baptism.

At the same time that Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, breaking the levee, and causing a whole city to evacuate and leave homes and businesses to the destructive forces of the waters, the nation of Kenya was further descending into a period of extended drought, causing nomadic farmers to search and dig for water, threatening the lives of animals and livestock, and then the people who depend on these creatures for their food and livelihood.  When it comes to water, we are all dependent on the Goldilocks phenomenon.  For life to go well, we need not too much of one extreme, or too much of the other extreme, but an amount that is just right.

October, 2007 — a group of us from Cincinnati Mennonite caravanned up to Ottawa Ohio, near Bluffton, and volunteered a Saturday through a partner organization of Mennonite Disaster Service.  Over a month before, the area had received several days of heavy rainfall, including ten inches within a two hour window, causing the local Blanchard River to crest seven feet above flood level.  Streets and homes were filled with several feet of water.  Pictures and video of the weeks following the flood show the streets lined with ruined appliances, carpet, furniture, and drywall.  We got there after the worse scenes had already been taken care of.  But there was still plenty of work to be done.  We donned haz-mat suits and sprayed bleach on mold growing in crawlspaces, tore out damaged duct work that was still damp, and replaced drywall and trim.   

In the ancient Babylonian flood myth the man Utnapishtim is warned by the gods to build a large boat to avoid the great flood that the god Enlil was bringing on the earth to punish humanity.  Utnapishtim builds the boat, seals it with pitch, and takes on board his wife, beasts and animals of the field, many craftsmen, and plenty of food reserves.  They enter the boat, shut the door, and it rains for six days and nights, after which the boat is lodged on a mountain and Utnapishtim sends out different birds, including a dove and a raven, to investigate whether any land has appeared.  When the final bird does not return, he exits the boat and makes a sacrifice to the gods.  The gods smell the sacrifice and swarm around it like flies.  The goddess Beletili comes and creates a rainbow in the sky out of her necklace.  The god Enlil is initially enraged that any humans have survived the flood, but soon grants Utnapishtim and his wife the status of eternal life like the gods, and he is sent to live in a faraway land.    

There are over 500 flood legends worldwide, spanning from China, to India, Russia, the Americas, and Hawaii.  A legend from the country of India tells of a man named Manu who lived a long time ago.  One day while he was washing himself Manu saved a small fish from the jaws of a larger fish.  The small fish tells Manu that if he cares for him he will one day save his life.  Manu cares for the fish which eventually becomes quite large and warns Manu to build a large ship to survive a great flood that was coming soon.  Manu builds the ship and ties it to the tail of the fish who leads him and his boat safely through the waters to the top of a high mountain.  In a more local story, the Delaware Indians — the world once lived at peace, but an evil spirit caused the earth to be flooded.  A few humans survived by holding onto the back of a turtle that was floating in the water.  Eventually a loon flew over the turtle with a clump of earth in its bill and guided the turtle and the people to dry ground. 

In the Bible, Manu, Utnapishtim, is Noah, and he and his family and animals of all kinds are the ones to survive the flood.  After the waters subside and Noah builds the altar and makes a sacrifice, God has a moment of speaking to Godself, striking a tone that borders on repentance: “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.  As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”  Noah is not granted eternal life or sent to a faraway land, but God does make an eternal covenant with all of creation – human descendants, every living creature, the birds, and every domestic and wild animal, that never again will all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, the first covenant in the Bible.  The bow in the sky serves as the reminder of this covenant.  We call it a rainbow, but here it is just a bow, a common instrument of war.  Ancient art depicted a deity armed with a bow as a weapon.  In this picture after the flood, God has unstrung God’s war bow, and pointed it away from the world.  God hangs up the war bow and re-asserts that God is for humanity and all creation, not against it.  The Psalmist echoes a similar thought: “God makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.  God breaks the bow, and shatters the spear, and burns the shields with fire.” (Psalm 46:10.)  The Genesis flood also contains another important reminder.    It is the only other place in the Hebrew scriptures besides the creation account where we are told that humans are created in the image of God.  Even though our hearts are inclined toward evil, we remain bearers of the image of God and therefore life is precious.  Last week Keith mentioned that the Elijah story on the mountain, experiencing God as the sound of sheer silence, was a way of differentiating the God of the Hebrews from the Canaanite storm god Baal who was thought to show up in the thunder and lightning and earthquakes.   This is another case of scripture being in conversation with the traditions of its time.  It’s extremely interesting how the Noah story overlaps and is similar to the older Babylonian flood story, but it’s just as important to pay attention to the differences.  The Bible adopts the ancient flood myth and gives it a spin toward the biblical themes of covenant, non-violence, and the sacredness of life.  And it leaves us with the strange notion that we’re not quite sure what to do with of God repenting.  First God repents for having made humanity in the first place and so brings on the flood, and then God repents of having brought on the flood and says it will never happen again. 

This past month marked the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.  Darwin’s Origin of the Species and the theory of how life has evolved through natural selection over the course of millions of years was initially met with skepticism and outright rejection by much of the religious community.  His proposal challenged the long-held notion that we are all created separately and distinctly and that we are forever set in our unchanging identity.  It told a story of slow change over time, and where floods are merely one of many large natural events that have shaped the course of evolution.  Glaciers, meteors, earthquakes, and the slow shifting of the continents have also influenced how life has come to be the way that it is today. 

It’s a theory whose overwhelming evidence has led to its broad acceptance.  Not all religious people are able to accept it at this point, but for those who have, it has caused us to rethink where this leaves us in regards to the life of the Spirit.  It’s difficult work to integrate what appears to be the harsh indifference of the story of evolution with the story of the God of compassion, justice, and mercy in whom we have come to believe.  If the earth is a solitary rock spinning around an expiring blaze of hydrogen, a place covered by the never ending pattern of life consuming itself to make more life in which only the strongest survive and the weakest are buried beneath layers of blood and sediment, where does that leave us?  What of beauty, or purpose, or sacred identity, or God the Creator and Sustainer and Redeemer?  What of our scriptures that speak of covenant and the Holy Presence filling all of creation? 

The earth does endure, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, and we’re trying to get our footing beneath us so we can be more than just along for the ride.  We’re relieved to consider that floods and tornadoes are a part of the natural cycling of the earth, not a punishment of the gods.  Meanwhile we look for ways that we are created to do more than just blindly participate in the cycle – how we might be partners with God toward some goal, some aim in our lives.  If we humans are, as some theologians have said, “evolution become conscious of itself,” then we look to the ways that we may help shape creation toward to desires of God — created in the image of God in order to create with God a world that is more just, that is more caring, where the weak are given special dignity, and the strong are called to humility.     

When the flood came to Ottawa, the burning question was not why has God punished these people, but rather how may we be agents of God’s care in helping to rebuild in a small way?  During the day God’s presence was seen in the hands joining together to do the work that needed to be done and we all received a blessing.  One of the families whose home we worked on owned a restaurant, and they returned thanks for the help by giving us a free dinner at the end of the day.  The day began with work, but ended with table fellowship with each other and new acquaintances who were sharing their gifts with us.    

In Mark, Jesus begins his ministry by going through the waters of baptism.  Jesus enters the flood, willingly and purposefully walks right into it, goes under its flow and is raised up in the power of the Spirit.  The same water that covers the earth, creating life, destroying life, the same water out of which life crawled however many millions or billions years ago, becomes, for Jesus, a holy river of baptism.  Jesus sees the dove, hears the voice of the Creator, telling him who he is.  His given identity.  “You are my Beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.”  He is there, by the river, body dripping with water, toes sunk in the mud of creation, hearing that he is a beloved child of the one who formed us out of mud and gives us the breath of life.     

From the flood, Jesus walks into the drought, forty days and forty nights in the wilderness.  Mark says he was with the wild beasts, tempted by Satan, and that angels attended him.  Luke and Matthew add that he ate nothing during this period.  It’s a wonder he made it out alive.  Humans can’t live much longer than that without food.  Can’t even go a few days without water.  Jesus’ body is weakened, but his Spirit is tested and strengthened.  He emerges with a message that will re-echo throughout his ministry and throughout the life of the church.  “The time is fulfilled, and the reign of God has come near, is at hand, is now; repent and believe in the good news.”     

And so the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, and the season of Lent cycles around again…  Here, now, we confront all the ways that our lives have become separated from the Creator God, from the beloved path of love and peace that Jesus walked.  We pause for these forty days and open our spirits to testing, to listening, to watching for angels who minister to us.  We repent of our sins.  We recognize that the words of Genesis still ring true – the inclination of our hearts can lead us astray.  We must be vigilant.  We must be intentional.  We must stop walking aimlessly and ask where we are going. 

In Lent, we repent of our misconceptions of God.  We have forgotten that God’s bow is forever hung in the sky and that it is not a weapon pointed at us.  God has repented.  God is for us.  God is for creation.  God has created us, in the divine image.  Life is holy. 

We quiet ourselves to become better aware of this frail life that we are given, on this planet, this small cocoon of divine hospitality in a massive universe, spinning around in space, giving us the seasons of life.  This opportunity to help creation continue to grow into the image of its creator.  For us to slowly steer a course where not only the fittest survive, but also the weak, the outcast, the forgotten. 

We remember flood, and we pass through the wilderness, and when we emerge from the wilderness, we trust that we will know in a deeper way that we are God’s beloved children.  The water is given as a gift to all of life.  It is for drinking, for bathing, for baptism.

 

 

Ordination Response – 2/1/09

Recently I was talking with someone about this being my ordination Sunday and they asked me what I was going to say for my inaugural address.  To which I replied that first of all, while expecting a number of out of town guests, we weren’t expecting that many out of town guests, and also that I wasn’t the main speaker for the day but would have a chance to respond briefly to what has been offered.

We have this notion in the Anabaptist tradition that the voice of God is made known through the discerning community, and I feel very blessed to have been given many forms of community that have helped guide me along the way toward pastoral ministry.  My community begins with my family and the love and nurture of Mom and Dad and brother and sisters and extended family.  It has included different congregations where that nurture has been furthered — the chance to preach a sermon as an elementary school student in the congregation where I grew up.  The affirmations from people in St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship during a time when I was considering what I wanted to do after Voluntary Service and whether seminary would be that path.  The welcome and the grace of Cincinnati Mennonite, which has always been, from its early days, a place where beginning pastors are given the space and the support and encouragement they need to do well.  I have been blessed with good mentors.  Marion Bontrager, Duane Beck and Nina Lanctot, Arthur Paul Boers, John Kampen, Steve Goering.  Each of these and many more have helped call out of me good things I didn’t yet know I had – doing this mainly by already possessing those good things themselves.    

 

If you’ve been in the living room of our house you know that around the archway leading into the dining room we have hanging different images of spiritual heroes, people who are so far out in front of us in their love of God that we get to simply try and walk along the path they have already cleared.  The community of saints, the living faith of the dead, has also informed my desire to be a pastor.  Most importantly, beyond all these other wonderful things, I have been given a home base in Abbie who keeps me grounded in the every day small acts of kindness and forgiveness, and who never lets me take myself too seriously. 

The other way that I have sensed the call toward pastoral ministry has been through something pretty much the opposite of community — what scripture speaks of as the wilderness.  The wilderness is that broad category of experiences where we are stripped of all the accessories of life and left with nothing but…not much.  Ever since my last couple years of high school, different trips to the spiritual wilderness, mostly without my own planning, have been an important part of what has shaped me.  It has involved times of solitude, silence, and often loneliness and the feeling of being disoriented with life.  I have journalled off and on during these years and some of those journal entries are not exactly pleasant to read over again.  

The narrative of scripture indicates that the wilderness is an opportunity for discovering God in new ways.  The gospels, as they are written, essentially report that Jesus has nothing to say until he has traveled through the wilderness, facing down his own demons, confronting the conflicting voices within him and around him. 

My wilderness experiences have also involved confrontations.  At times I have had a struggle for meaning.  At other times facing a sense of isolation and being cut off from the world.  At some point along the way having to confront my own cynicism toward God and the church and the desire to leave the whole package behind.      

An important message for me came from reading James Cone, the father of black liberation theology.  He has said that theology must begin with our own deepest pain. 

These wilderness experiences have been times when I have discovered these, my deepest wounds, and at the same time, better discovered how my life intersects with the divine life.  And this has helped serve as a grounding for thinking and doing authentic theology.  Moving beyond cynicism toward a spirituality of hopefulness.  Affirming the connectedness of all being.  The treasure of joy.  The gift of meaning that comes through our relationships in the ever present call to love God with all our self, and to love our neighbor as ourself, and in the process learn how to love ourself.  

That is introduction to what I would like my personal response to really be here, which is to share a song written by Leonard Cohen that expresses what I feel in regards to being ordained.  Leonard Cohen is a Jew, who has spent five years in a Buddhist monastery, and is given to frequent references to Christ in his music.  He is a folk singer who is more comfortable in a smoky bar than a well-kept sanctuary.  I have found that his words speak to me, and sometimes speak for me, and also imagine they carry a universal appeal to them.  This song, If It Be Your Will, has allusions to the experience of the wilderness and of community.  This is my ordination prayer.

   If it be your will

  That I speak no more

  And my voice be still

  As it was before

  I will speak no more

  I shall abide until

  I am spoken for

  If it be your will

 

  If it be your will

  That a voice be true

  From this broken hill

  I will sing to you

  From this broken hill

  All your praises they shall ring

  If it be your will

  To let me sing

 

  If it be your will

  If there is a choice

  Let the rivers fill

  Let the hills rejoice

  Let your mercy spill

  On all these burning hearts in hell

  If it be your will

  To make us well

 

  And draw us near

  And bind us tight

  All your children here

  In their rags of light

  In our rags of light

  All dressed to kill

  And end this night

  If it be your will

  If it be your will.

By Leonard Cohen

 

Mary AND Martha, Sisters in the Same House – 7/06/08 – Luke 10:38-42

An early significant work experience for me happened when I was living in Atlanta with some friends from Hesston College, taking a year off of school after graduating from two years at Hesston before completing my last two years of college.  One of my goals for the year was to learn something about construction and home building, which I knew next to nothing about.  Atlanta was and I think still is a great place to find work in construction because of all the growth the area has been experiencing.  I was able to get a job right away and my entry level position was as a laborer on a site where there were 15-20 new townhomes going up, in various stages of construction.  An average day for me in those first couple months involved picking up trash, moving things out of the way for other people to do their jobs, sweeping floors, being a helper for carpenters doing odd jobs on the different houses, and carrying boards, concrete bags, ceramic tile, shingles, paint buckets, from point A to point B.  The first few weeks I shot right out of the gate ready to take on any assignment, enjoying the physical labor, and learning from different contractors about the work that they were doing.  But it didn’t take real long before the work that I was doing became monotonous and dull.  There was the occasional chance to learn something about a new skill, but most of the day was the basic work of cleaning up and carrying. 

After getting into the rut of this routine, I realized something that I found troubling about what my mind was doing in order to cope.  And this was it: when I was working, I would think about being off of work – relaxing and sleeping, and when I was off of work, relaxing and trying to rest, I would think about work.  It occurred to me at that point that there was something not right with this picture.  I had a life at work and a life outside of work, but I didn’t feel like I was fully living either one.  It’s kind of hard to live fully when one’s mind and body aren’t at the same place at the same time.  Mine had developed this odd relationship where as soon as one was in one place, my body at work, my mind would check out, head for home and hang out there until my body came home and then my mind would take the commute to work and punch the time clock until my body came back the next morning.  It was a new experience for me, or at least the first time I had been conscious of it being that polarized.  And it didn’t feel spiritually or physically healthy.  Somewhere in that Atlanta year my 20 year old self discovered that making work healthy and meaningful and life giving and a part of worship and love of God and neighbor is a great challenge.  That holding together worship and work is the hardest work of all.   

In many ways worship and work live in different worlds.  They don’t speak the same language, rarely cross over into each other’s neighborhoods.  To worship is to clean one’s heart.  To work is to dirty one’s hands.  Worship is about stained glass.  Work, at least on a construction site, is about stained clothes.  It’s the pew and the cubicle.  Steeples and staples.  Work is about action and doing.  Worship is about contemplation and being.

The story of Martha and Mary carries with it this very tension.  Even though it’s called the story of Martha and Mary, it is usually read as a story where we need to choose between Martha or Mary.  The woman of action or the woman of contemplation.  Just like we hold within the same self the need for good work and the need for good worship, Martha and Mary live in the same house, at times caught up in the same polarizations that we get stuck in, feeling as if we have to choose between one or the other.  As the story begins, Jesus is on the move, going from village to village, and a woman by the name of Martha welcomes him into her home.  Previously Jesus had warned his disciples that there would be villages where they would not be welcomed, where there would be no one who would accept their message and offer them hospitality, so for Martha to be a willing host is a positive signal that she welcomes the mission of Jesus.  The tension enters when we are introduced to Martha’s sister, Mary.  Martha welcomes Jesus and goes about the many tasks of hosting, while Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.”  Hmmm.  I can feel the conflict starting to brew.  Martha is not impressed with Mary’s choice of how to spend her time.  She comes to Jesus and asks the slightly leading question, “Master, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?”  Just in case Jesus doesn’t get her drift, she adds, “Tell her to help me.”     

Greta isn’t here this morning, but has written a poem that goes really well here.  It’s called “Dishes,” but could also be called “Ode to Martha.”

Dishes don’t get done.
You clean them up, and they’re there
   scattered all over the kitchen.
You work, marry, fight with your spouse,
Make up, have a child, start a business,
   lose it, laugh and cry,
You hate the world,
Save the world.
And the dishes are always there, every night,
Dirty, caked, icky,
   demanding that you put your hands
       in the filth
   and keep your feet
       on the ground.

(Greta Holt, 2006)

Martha knows all this well.  She lives with her feet on the ground.  I’m guessing she was the older sister!  She knows that the dishes don’t get done.  And part of the reason they don’t get done is because those who could be helping aren’t doing what they should be doing to help out.    

It’s helpful to remember here that both Mary and Martha would have had fairly strictly defined social roles as women.  Theirs was the responsibility of domestic upkeep.  The cooking and keeping order in the house.  The luxury of study and learning was reserved almost exclusively for men.  By mentioning that Mary sat at Jesus feet, Luke is using a common phrase of the day to note that she was taking the position of a student and a disciple.  Earlier Luke tells of a demoniac who lived in isolation as an outcast of the local town.  Through his encounter with Jesus he experiences healing and the crowds find him “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”  A new student of the master – something that the crowds can’t accept because of his outcast role.  Jesus is also treating Mary as a student when he enters her house. 

There is a line from rabbinic lore that says, “Let thy house be a meeting-house for the Sages and sit amid the dust of their feet and drink in their words with thirst…(but) talk not much with womankind.”  (M. ‘Abot 1.4-5, quoted in The New Interpreters Bible Commentary Vol. 9, p. 231)  So there’s much more going on here than Mary simply not helping out with the dishes.  She’s also stepping outside of a clear social boundary, apparently with Jesus’ full approval.                

So the tension in the story isn’t just between the action of Martha and the contemplation of Mary, work and worship, but also about getting stuck in certain roles that limit one’s ability to learn from Jesus.  Martha and Mary have welcomed Jesus into their home, but Jesus would like to treat them as more than hosts.  He would like to offer his wisdom to them.  Even though it is expected that they would do only work, and Martha is distracted to the point of only being in work mode, he would like to open their worlds up to more than work.  To work he would like to add the element of listening for the Word of God, worship.  One need not choose between being just a person of action or just contemplation.     

The place that Luke chooses to locate this story in his gospel gives a sign that this is a false choice.  Directly before Jesus meets Martha and Mary he is telling a parable of the ultimate act of service, the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The Samaritan is a doer, willing to do the messy work of giving aid to another person in need.  Jesus ends the teaching by saying “Go and do likewise.”  Do it, get to work.  Directly after the story of Martha and Mary Jesus is praying with his disciples and one of them asks him to teach them how to pray.  Jesus replies by teaching them the prayer that the Christian community has continued to pray through the centuries: “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  The doing, working of Martha, and the contemplation and listening of Mary are both presented in a positive light before and after we meet them.  So the question we could ask isn’t so much “which one is more faithful, Martha or Mary,” but “how can Martha and Mary learn from each other and how can our work and worship come together?”

There is a Buddhist saying that goes like this: “Before I was enlightened, I chopped wood and carried water.  After I was enlightened, I chopped wood and carried water.”  Part of what I take from this is that the path of spiritual growth doesn’t always have to be a radical change on the outside, although sometimes it certainly will look that way, but that it always involves a conversion of spirit.  We might add to this by saying “before I sat at Jesus’ feet I went to the office and did my work.  After I sat at Jesus’ feet I went to the office and did my work.”  Or to add another level to it, After I sat at Jesus feet I learned that I could go to the office and do my work and still be sitting at his feet, still learning and worshiping God through my work.”    

So the place where all of this gets worked out is back at the construction site in Atlanta.  Back to the office.  Back to raising the kids.  Back to doing the practical and necessary things of life with the hands in the dirty dishwater.  As much as we may have a tendency to draw boundaries around our work being over here and our worship being over here, Jesus is in the business of crossing those boundaries and breaking down those barriers.  Letting him in the house means that the Word of God is going to show up right in the middle of our work, perhaps when we’re most distracted or most involved in our duties.  When he instructed us to pray that “your kingdom come on earth as in heaven” the earth includes the whole earth, which means that the kingdom is pressing in and coming in our places of work, as distant as it may seem.         

Is it possible to sit at Jesus’ feet while working?  Can Martha learn from Mary and accept that discipleship can happen while on the job?  Can Mary come alongside Martha so that learning from Jesus doesn’t always have to involve taking a time out from the necessary tasks of life?  To say Yes to any of these questions is to take on difficult work — to bring together our worlds of worship and work and let them live as sisters under the same roof.

 

 

Signs of the Spirit – Pentecost – 5/11/08 – Acts 2:1-21

Being the season of testing and final exams and comps, here’s a question for you: What does it look like when the Holy Spirit comes to rest on you? Does it (A.) feel like a thunderstorm with strong winds and fire, filling one with passion and charisma and special spiritual gifts? Does it (B.) compel one to speak openly and confidently about the good news that one has experienced as true? Does it (C.) cause one to be silent, still, contemplating mystery, breathing deeply in wordless and humble gratitude? Does the Holy Spirit (D.) lead one to do works of justice, advocacy, protest, reconciliation, and peacemaking? Or Does it (E.) inspire one to look inward, into one’s own heart, to seek personal holiness and virtue in thought and speech and action. Or, is it potentially choice (F.), ll of the above? Being an open book exam, please cite examples to support your answer.

Should we ever be asked this question, we might first think of the Acts 2 passage in which the Jesus-followers, all gathered in one room – experienced “a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” We also consider our charismatic and Pentecostal brothers and sisters around the world whose style of worship includes these kind of high energy experiences often accompanied by the special ability to speak in tongues and interpret the unknown words. Choice (A.) appears to have some validity.

We might then think of the way that the Hebrew prophets allowed themselves to be mouth pieces for the Word of the Spirit. And how Jeremiah said that “If I try not to speak the words of God, then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9) We also see the evangelical emphasis on vocalizing to others that which we have experienced as good news. Choice (B.) is legit.

And then there’s the words of the Psalmist, “Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) and also the repeated phrase, “For God alone my soul waits in silence, from God comes my salvation.” “For God alone, my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from God.” (Psalm 62). And we remember the ancient monastic tradition, and present day contemplative movements like the Taize community in France where hundreds of thousands of people from around the world, mostly youth and young adults, have come to worship together through liturgy, meditative prayer, and chanting, sung and spoken in many languages to represent the diversity of the global church. Choice (C.) is a sign of the Spirit.

And we can’t leave out the words of Isaiah 61, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisons” – a statement so important that Jesus adopts it as the mission statement of his own ministry when he preaches in his hometown synagogue of Nazareth in Luke 4. It affirms what the Torah proclaims in Deuteronomy: “Justice, and only justice, shall you pursue, so that you may live.” (Deut 16:20) And we call to mind the abolition movement, the civil rights movement, the ONE movement to end poverty. I don’t think I have to convince this group that the coming of the Spirit looks like choice (D.)

And finally, there’s (E.), personal virtue, holiness, uprightness. We recall the words of Jesus, warning that we have it all wrong if we’re looking to correct someone else without first taking a good look at ourselves, like trying to pluck a tiny splinter out of another’s eye while we have a 2×4 sticking out of our own. The words of David also come to mind: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” Think of AA, psychotherapy, small group Bible studies and sharing, personal devotions and prayer, all agents of the Spirit’s work on our internal word.

This diversity of the Spirit also shows up in other religious traditions – the ecstatic, charismatic experiences of the Sufi mystics of Islam, meditation in Buddhist monasteries and Hindu ashrams, and the nonviolent soul-force movement that Gandhi led in India to help the nation gain independence from the British empire.

What does it look like when the Spirit comes to rest on you? Given all this, it looks like the best option would be to get out your #2 pencil and fill in All of the the Above, Choice (F.)

A friend of mine at seminary once joked that his entire college education could be summed up as learning to think in terms of both/and rather than either/or.

This is certainly the case when it comes to the ways that we experience the Holy Spirit and what that looks like in how we worship and live.

Jesus told the disciples that they would be witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, like a series of concentric circles that keep rippling out wider and wider. Becoming known through more languages, being seen in more cultures, leading to more forms of expression and demonstration of the divine creative restorative energy, more leaders for the Israelites in the desert along with Moses. Peter cites the prophet Joel to demonstrate that these ripples do not miss anyone on account of gender, age, or class. “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young and your old shall see visions. Even upon the slave, the lowly class, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit.” With the Spirit it is always and – All of the above. This and this. These people and these people and these people. This form of worship and this act of generosity and this way of prayer and this act of compassion, and, and, and.

Last Sunday Jean pointed out that this month is CMF’s 10^th birthday in this building, with the original dedication being May of ’98. And thanks to some hard work, we’re having quite a party. Pentecost marks the birthday of entire church of which we are a small part. The upper room of Acts 2 is the labor and delivery room for the infant church – the birth of a Spirited community called to embody all of these multi-dimensional signs of the Spirit.

One of the ways that we celebrate our participation in this local and global community is through the annual signing of our covenant. It’s a way for us to say Yes to the work of the Spirit among us and a way for us to remember the particular gifts that we bring to the broader church – some of the signs, dimensions of the Spirit that are especially strong in the life of this congregation that we commit to living out together. This, and this, and this, and much more.

As a way of affirming our covenant, let’s read it through together:

Jesus Christ is Lord. We choose to follow the way of the gospel and be members of Christ’s church.

This time and this place are God’s gifts to us, and we are called to be God’s active presence to all those around us.

As a Christian community rooted in Anabaptist principles, we worship God as we:

• Experience the power, grace and love of God;
• Discern and share our gifts and resources
• Prepare and equip each other to live Christ-like lives;
• Nurture all who are present in our community;
• Participate actively in the life of the congregation and the denomination; and
• Reach out to others in service and invitation to faith.

As Mennonites we are committed to bringing peace, justice, reconciliation and the Good News to each other and to the world around us.

Declaration of Membership

We declare ourselves members of Cincinnati Mennonite Fellowship. We affirm the covenant and commit ourselves to participate in our congregational life as followers of Christ.

Signs of the Spirit Part II

After noting the broad, wide, even-widening work of the Spirit, let’s bring this back down to a narrow focus. One particular way that we as a faith community living in the United States of America in the spring of 2008, may be a sign of the Holy Spirit in the next couple of months.

As we keep hearing, almost as a daily mantra, our national economy is not doing well and people are struggling to keep up with rising costs of food and gas and health care while wages stay flat. Internationally food prices have soared and people are struggling to have what they need to survive. A recent article in the Mennonite Weekly Review about Mennonite Central Committee’s work with the international food crisis says that “In the last month, food riots have taken place in 10 countries where MCC offers programs relating to food security.” (MWR, May 5, 2008) Some of these nations include Haiti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and Indonesia.

In the midst of this, our government has decided to stimulate our economy by offering tax rebate checks to 130 million US recipients totaling over $168 billion dollars. The theory behind this is that people know better than the government how the money should be spent and that putting money in the hands of the people will be empowering and positive for families and the nation. The assumption is that people will use the money to purchase consumer goods, the effect of which will be a jumpstart to the stalled economic engine.

As a community living under the reign of Christ and the influence of the Holy Spirit, it is worthwhile to take a step back and ponder what we’re being presented with here. We’re being told that the money is best utilized through how we would choose to use it. Whether we agree with the policy or not, the money is on its way. Perhaps some of you have already received a direct deposit into your checking accounts. So now that we are being empowered to choose how we will use this extra, above budget, money, how is it best utilized?

I have been encouraged over the last couple of months to see that one thing all this has stimulated in our denomination has been creative thinking on how we might turn this into a sign of the Spirit and the work of the Kingdom of God. Denominational leaders, our Ohio Conference Minister Tom Kauffman, and other pastoral and lay leaders are asking us to approach this with a fresh, counter-cultural perspective. In the same MWR as the MCC article, there’s an essay by professor and pastor Tim Neufeld of Fresno, California telling of why he is giving all of his $1800 rebate away to different charites. He notes that he tells his 9-year-old son that there are three things you can do with money: spend, save, and share. And we are always having to decide the percentage we use for each of those three. Through all that’s been written recently I would say that we have added our own Holy Spirit spin to this situation and that we could re-think of this as a generosity stimulus package.

What we’re being challenged to consider, and what I challenge each of us to consider, is that this is a great opportunity to demonstrate our values and our commitment to kingdom stewardship. Just as the needs of many are rising, so our resources to provide for some of those needs are being increased. We’re being given above budget funds to use however we see fit. It’s interesting that in the book of Acts, a direct result of the Pentecost experience is a redistribution of funds on the part of the disciples. In the same chapter as the coming of the Holy Spirit, chapter two, Luke also reports that “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” (Acts 2:44-45) An economics of sharing. Investing in those who were in need and seeing the whole community benefit. What might it look like now if all disciples in this country participated in another kind of redistribution of funds?

This spring and summer, starting next week and running through the end of July, during the time that these checks are being sent out, we at Cincinnati Mennonite are going to be experimenting with a form of this economics of sharing. For these two months we’ll have a special offering where we will give whatever portion we choose to give out of our generosity stimulus package. The standard, long standing figure for the tithe is 10% of income. For those doing well financially, for whom this is all above and beyond budget, you may want to consider a reverse tithe – keeping 10% for yourself and giving away 90%. Maybe this is too much but you’d like to do a 50-50 split. You could also decide to give a double tithe, 20% of these funds, keeping what you need to pay down debt, save, or make a special purchase. If you’ve already designated all the money for certain purposes you may wish to still give a small gift. We’ll collect these funds together, potentially thousands of dollars, and then give all of them away, half to our local Oakley community to address poverty and hunger near us and half to the international work that MCC is doing with the global food crisis. We’ll have details on these two different areas where we’ll give next week when we start the offering.

We’re fairly private with our finances, and I do find myself hesitating slightly to make this kind of a challenge to all of us. But maybe this is the very kind of challenging and accountability and generosity stimulus that we should be all about as a Spirit filled community. The Spirit is a free gift but it also asks something of us. Covenant asks something of us. It asks that we always be open to another and of the Spirit – influencing our thought and speech and actions, and prayer, and financial generosity, and, and, and. Perhaps this is another way that we are being nudged to be a sign of the ever widening and expanding influence of the Spirit and a witness to our culture that an economics of sharing is possible and that it is an important long term investment in the health of our community and planet.

This Pentecost Sunday may we receive the Spirit of calm and charisma, speech and silence, justice and peace and personal virtue. And may we always be ready for another and to be added to our lives.

 

Gazing and Witnessing – 5/04/08 – Acts 1:6-14

“It is not for you to know…” – the first words that come out of Jesus’ mouth in this passage from the books of Acts.  These aren’t words that I typically like to hear.  If there’s something I don’t know and want to know I’m used to being able to ask someone who might have a better idea than me about the matter.  What’s the right way to stain and finish wood?  What’s the tax code say about the child tax credit for a pastor’s salary and housing allowance?  Will it work to plant hostas next to daffodils and how much should they be watered?  All recent questions that different people have helped me have more knowledge about.  If there’s nobody who seems to know, there’s always the internet.  The collective brain of our species is a wonderful thing when it comes to such things.  A few minutes spent with our friends Google, Wikipedia, and Mapquest usually helps answer just about anything we’d like to know.  Sitting in front of a computer that’s online I’m moments away from knowing how many miles it is from Cincinnati to Washington DC, how to renew a US passport, and what the forecast is for the morning of the Flying Pig marathon. (Congratulations to William Brenneman, Abbie Miller, and Ryan Krebiehl for each taking part in a marathon relay on Sunday!)    

Statistics, data, advice, and facts are plentiful and accessible in our information age.  Yet, in some of his final words to his followers, Jesus inaugurates these friends of his into a lasting reality of un-knowing.  A condition of being without knowledge about particular matters that they wanted to know more about.  As much as they would like to be as informed as possible about the important matters of final redemption and salvation, Jesus offers them these words to keep with them: “It is not for you to know.” 

The book of Acts is a companion volume to the gospel of Luke, written by the same author as a follow up account of what happened after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Good News Part II.  It’s a narrative of how the Kingdom of God movement started by Jesus in Galilee and Judea, a remote corner of the Roman empire, spread out from Jerusalem in all four directions, reaching even into the heart of the empire itself, the city of Rome.  The opening paragraphs of the first chapter tell of the final handoff from Jesus to his followers who will continue his mission.  The only words that the disciples manage to get in are through a question that doesn’t get answered.  Jesus tells them that they don’t need to know the answer, don’t need to have a complete grasp on everything, but that they will be witnesses to what they have come to know.  That, through a spiritual power that they will receive, they will begin to embody the same kind of healing, nonviolent, truth-telling, life of servanthood and love of neighbor that Jesus taught and lived. 

Jesus then makes his exit in what has come to be called the Ascension.  As Luke describes it: “When (Jesus) had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.  While he was going they were gazing up toward heaven…”                 

A primary image that stands out in this passage, that for me represents the full weight of what is going on here, is a freeze frame of the disciples gazing up toward heaven after Jesus had ascended up and out of sight.  Consider this image.  Jesus, the master and guide is gone.  The disciples are left with an unanswered question and a vague impression about what may be happening next.  It’s beginning to dawn on them that they are indeed now on their own and that they have some part in this continuing project that Jesus invited them into.  But for the time being they’re stuck staring into the heavens.  Maybe baffled, maybe amazed, probably having very little idea what all this might mean for them and caught somewhere in between knowing and not knowing what it is they’re even looking at or looking for in their gaze.

Keeping this scene in mind, it’s helpful to take a step back and recall that the worldview of the biblical writers was that of a three tiered universe.  With the earth and the dome of the sky being the abode of humans and living creatures; below the earth, Sheol, being the shadowy place of the dead; and above the dome being the heavens, the place of the divine beings.  We still have remnants of this worldview psychologically, but it no longer makes sense to speak in these terms geographically, considering that if you go down far enough below us you actually start going up on the other side of the earth.  But this is the view that Luke and the other New Testament writers are speaking out of.  So when Luke tells of Jesus being lifted up and taken away on a cloud, he’s not so much concerned about trying to convince us of a levitating Messiah as he is making a statement about what all parts of reality are affected by the way of Christ.   Jesus has not only lived the way to earth, the middle tier, but his way is also the way of the heavens.  In biblical language, the Lord of heaven and earth.  His way is also God’s way.  Perhaps we could say within our worldview that the creative energy behind our evolving universe is that of the agape love of Christ which holds and bonds all things together, whether seen or unseen. 

So when these disciples are there staring into the heavens, there’s a sense that they’re not only gazing up at clouds and sky, but also that they’re engaged in a theological type of gazing.  Beginning to know something about the importance of this Christ, but frozen in a stare that is only able to take in a fraction of the light that is shining down on them.   

There’s a poem written by my brother, who also happens to be named Luke, that goes well with this.   He didn’t write it with this passage in mind, but it does speak about a similar kind of scenario.  He titled the short poem The Pillars of the Earth:

The ants speckling the roots of the straight cedar look up,
and wonder – why the sky is green.
Looking down over the forest, a bird flies
in the blaze of the unshadowed sun;
it tumbles through the trees on splinters of light.

I love the way this casts the disciples and us in our gazing for knowledge.  Gathering like ants in the forest looking up and wondering why the sky is green.  Small, limited in our vision.  Getting these splinters of light coming through from somewhere beyond the little canopy that we can’t see beyond, but being without the kind of view of the bird that flies overhead.    

But those splinters of light are enough.  We know what we are to do.  We know that we have been witnesses and that we will be witnesses to the healing, nonviolent, truth-telling, life of servanthood and love of neighbor that Jesus taught and lived — the unshadowed sun that makes itself known through the shards and splinters that make their way through to us.  The disciples don’t stay gazing forever.  They’ve seen enough to know that they must go back to Jerusalem.  Back to the place where they’ve been staying together and start to work out living in the Jesus way, through the power of the Spirit that comes at Pentecost.  

Next week is Pentecost and we’ll all be invited to sign our annual covenant together.  Within the covenant are six different bullet points of what we are committing to as a faith community.  I take it that these points are the way that Cincinnati Mennonite Fellowship sees itself as continuing in the Jesus way.  Being witnesses to good news.  Being good news.  There is plenty that we don’t know, but we do know enough to know that this is who we are called to be as a congregation.  Let me go ahead and read those as a way of bringing this to a close.  “As a Christian community, rooted in Anabaptist principles, we worship God as we: Experience the power, grace, and love of God; Discern and share our gifts and resources; Prepare and equip each other to live Christ-like lives; Nurture all who are present in our community; Participate actively in the life of the congregation and the denomination; and Reach out to others in service and invitation to faith.

The question of how we live the good news together as a community, especially in our spiritual life, is something that a small group of us called the Spiritual Leadership Team has been looking at over the last number of months.  I am going to hand off to Matt Bye who is a member of that group and he’s going to speak more about what the group has been up to and ask for some feedback from everyone about where the group may focus in the months to come.

 

Where’s the fire? – 12/16/07 – Matthew 11:2-19

Where’s the fire?

For the last few months I’ve enjoyed being able to be a part of the Adult Connect class.  We’ve been working through the same material that the children are looking at and discussing it from the perspective of parents relating with our children over the issues that the scriptures bring up.  One of the things that Suzanne Marie has us doing is to read the scripture passage out loud together.  Over the last number of weeks different ones of us have gotten to be Moses, Joshua, narrator, the people, God; and, more recently, Isaiah and John the Baptist.  Last week Keith was John the Baptist, reading from the words spoken by the Jordan River where John was baptizing.  As Keith settled into the part, his voice transformed from the kind, mild-mannered Keith that we all know, into the…brazen, abrupt, shall we say, harsh, prophetic cry of the Baptizer.  John was preaching for a complete renewal of his people who, he says, are like trees who have forgotten how to bear any fruit, falling far short of their calling to be a light to the nations.  John’s marketing strategy for his mission is not to softly persuade people of the error of their ways, but to sharply critique the spiritual and ethical failings of his people.  In a style that may be the equivalent of 1^st century Palestine trash talk, John calls to the Pharisees who were coming to be baptized: “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”  John’s tone continues to intensify as he talks about the One coming after him more powerful than he who baptizes with Holy Spirit and fire.  As Keith read the part his voice carried the intensity through to the final confident crescendo.  “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  The appropriately intense reading of this passage gave us all a little pause, including, I believe Keith, and led into our discussion of trying to work through some of what might have been going on here and how John’s message does or doesn’t line up with our Advent expectations of the One who is to Come.

After such words, John the Baptizer is then off stage for eight chapters in Matthew.  And the next time we hear from him, in chapter 11, there is a completely different tone to his character.  John is in prison.  He’d gone a little too far in his strong speech for the likes of Herod, who he had spoken out against.  We don’t know how long John was in prison but we do know several chapters later that he will not make it out alive.  Herod has him executed.  A prison cell was the final stop for John, and we hear from him out of this struggle. 

To get a sense of the thoughts John might have been experiencing in prison, I think of the letters and poetry that were written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer while he was imprisoned by the Nazis during WWII.  Bonhoeffer had been a leader of the Confessing Church in Germany, the church body that was actively resisting Hitler’s leadership.  After the seminary where he taught was shut down by the authorities in 1937, the church went underground and Bonhoeffer continued to pastor and teach, emphasizing a life of discipleship to Jesus that reflected the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.  He was arrested in April of 1943 under the charges of subverting the armed forces – discouraging his students from participating in military service.  He was in prison for two years, and he, like John, did not make it out alive.  He was executed in April, 1945, only days before allied forces took the prison from the Nazis.  While he was in prison, he wrote.  This book, Voices in the Night, is a collection of his prison poetry.  Here are some lines from his poem, “Voices in the Night:” 

“Stretched out upon my prison bed, I stare at the empty wall. 

Outside, summer evening, regardless of me, goes singing into the country. 

Softly ebbs the tide of day on the eternal shore.  Sleep awhile! 

Refresh body and soul, head and hand! 

Outside, people, houses; hearts and spirits are aflame…

In the stillness of the night, I listen. 

Only footsteps and shouts of the guards,

a loving couple in the distance, stifled laughter. 

Can you hear nothing else, you slugglish sleeper? 

I hear my own soul totter and tremble. 

Nothing else? 

I hear, I hear, like voices, like shouts, like cries for help, the waking dreams of fellow-sufferers, dumb thoughts in the night. 

I hear the restless creaking of the beds, I hear chains. 

Night and silence.  Only footsteps and shouts of guards. 

Do you not hear it in this silenced house, shaking, breaking, collapsing, as hundreds kindle the glowing ember of their hearts?”       

I’d invite you to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 11 as we’ll be digging into the passage some together.

Matthew 11:2-3 says, “When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’”  The confident, brazen Baptizer is undergoing a trembling and tottering of the soul.  He had spoken of Jesus as the One to come, more powerful than he, baptizing with Spirit and Fire…and now he wonders if what he is hearing about Jesus is really all to expect of him.  In response to the question Jesus, in his indirect yet very direct manner, tells the disciples to report to John what is happening through him – the blind receive sight, the lame are walking, lepers and cleansed, the dead are raised, and good new is preached to the poor.  This may sound like an impressive, even miraculous list of activities to us.  Jesus is doing a lot of important things.  Things that come right out of Isaiah’s vision of what God’s Spirit would be doing in the world.  But for John, imprisoned and facing death, this is an incomplete list.  Embedded in his question to Jesus ‘Are you the one to come, or are we to wait for another?’ is another question.  “Where’s the fire?”  “Where’s the power?”  It’s fine to do these local acts of kindness, but where’s the judgment against evil?  Where’s the separation of the wheat from the chaff, the just from the unjust, and the baptism of fire that will finally put an end to all this madness?  When are you going to do that Jesus? 

These kinds of Messianic expectations are why Jesus follows up his statement about what he’s all about with the words from verse 6: “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”  The Greek word used here that gets translated “takes no offense” is scandalidzo.  Blessed is anyone who is not scandalized by me.  The word is also translated “stumbling block” in other parts of the gospel.  Like another Beattitude, Blessed is the one who is not scandalized, who does not stumble, who does not get tripped up by the kind of power that I bring and the kind of power that I don’t bring.  The lack of fire power of this Messiah was proving to be a scandal to the Baptizer, now facing the death dealing power of the political establishment.                      

We begin to see here the kind of vulnerability of this One who comes to us.  The fragility of a Messiah who offers himself to the world in the way that Jesus does.  It’s not the kind of power we are taught to believe is real power.  Abiding, steadfast, unconditional healing love.   This is often seen as soft and flimsly.  Able to make us feel a little better about life, maybe, but surely not powerful, like real power.  It’s so easy to reject.  So easy to beat down.  Too easily silenced, imprisoned, and crucified.  Hard to see how this is a power that saves us. 

We are used to the image of the vulnerable infant Messiah of the nativity scene, but may not think of this vulnerability as also being present throughout the ministry of the adult Messiah.    Jesus, as God’s Messiah, comes with a strange kind of fire and power that caused even John to question.  Jesus invites the disciples to see the presence of God in these small loving acts of liberation happening around them. 

It’s easy to sympathize with the struggle of John.  It’s a similar struggle of anyone imprisoned by whatever forces that may be acting on them.  We want a Messiah who puts a definitive end to our struggles.  Who forcefully breaks down the prison walls, sets us free, and destroys the powers that put us there in the first place.  We can become scandalized by God’s apparent weakness.  Has gospel really come our way, or should we be waiting for something else?  Is God even on the scene yet, or should we be looking somewhere else for salvation?  Jesus’ mission feels incomplete to us.  The broken pieces of our lives are not yet picked up and placed all back together.    

It’s interesting to see where this passage leads.  On this Sunday with extra music that the choir is singing, we end with a music metaphor from Jesus.  For Jesus, the real danger isn’t the great struggle of faith that John was undergoing.   Jesus is not down on John and does not condemn him in any way.  In fact, he calls John the greatest human being born yet, in v. 11.  John’s ministry of giving people a good kick in the pants, and his response to his imprisonment through wrestling with the meaning of the Messiah’s mission are vital.  The real danger comes, Jesus teaches in verses 16-19, from being nonresponsive to the sorrows and joys of the world.  From adopting a middle of the road kind of numbness where we aren’t in touch with pain or beauty.  This is what Jesus accuses his generation of falling into.  John had come to them fasting and talking about the sins of society, preaching repentance, playing a slow, mournful ballad, and the people had refused to weep.  Jesus came feasting and talking about the good new of Gods love, welcoming in outcasts and sinners to God’s big party, playing an upbeat song, and the people refused to dance.  Refused, or perhaps, lost their ability to weep or dance through becoming accustomed to not feeling those things that cause sorrow or joy.  A safe path through life that keeps a distance from either of these responses.  We don’t want to go into the darkness of the prison cell with that person behind the bars, and we also don’t want to enter into the ecstasy of other’s delights.   

                Maybe, in these statements to the people, Jesus is asking of them the same question that John had asked of him.  Where’s the fire?  Where’s the passion?  Where’s the awakeness of your souls, in touch with the aliveness of God who both mourns and rejoices over creation?

                One of the ways that God’s fire and power are most revealed through the gift of the Christ that we look to during Advent is when there is mourning with those who mourn, and rejoicing with those who rejoice.  This is not weakness, but a great strength.  Through this God continues to pick up broken pieces of lives and put us back together.  Through this God heals those who are sick and releases those who are in prison. The power of being present and singing the same ballad as those who are struggling, and being present and dancing the same dance as those who are rejoicing is the fire of God that burns among us.  This fits well with the imagery of the final line of Bonhoeffer’s poem that was mentioned before.  In looking around at his fellows in prison, he sees “hundreds kindle the glowing ember of their hearts.”  Jesus comes as one whose heart burns brightly alongside those hundreds, and hundreds others tending the flame of their own hearts.  It is our privilege as those who call Jesus our Messiah to be this continuing presence of Christ in the world.  Through our joining together in songs of pain and joy, the power of God’s love is being revealed to all creation.