Being the Church – 8/02/09 – Ephesians 4:1-16

I need to start on a personal note here.  As I was looking through the calendar this week and doing some planning for the months ahead I realized that as of right about now Abbie and I have been in Cincinnati for three years.  It was the beginning of August, 2006 when we rolled into town, with our moving van, and our seven month old Eve.  We were met with a crew ready to move our items into the house and also bash out the walls of our bathroom, which we did quite thoroughly.  I distinctly remember the feeling that Abbie and I had after that first day.  All of our possessions were piled up around the house that we had just purchased, our only bathroom in the house was fully dismembered, and we had signed the contract to pastor at Cincinnati Mennonite.  The feeling was something like – Well, there’s definitely no going back now.        

More than just an anniversary, the three year mark carries special significance, which I noted in looking at worship and sermon preparation work for the month of August – because we have this thing called the lectionary which we follow.  The lectionary provides, every week, readings from scripture – a gospel, an epistle reading, a psalm, and OT reading – that we draw from in worship.  The lectionary is divided into years A, B, and C, and when you get to the end of C, you go back to A.  A three year cycle.  Which means that after three years of ministry together and all that’s occurred over that time period, we’re right back where we started.   

This is indeed an interesting place to be.  That August of ’06 we were using a worship theme that was taken from the gospel readings from John 6 where Jesus talks about being the bread of life, the true bread who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.  You may remember that series – it was called “Becoming Bread” and I believe every week for about 5-6 weeks we had different forms of bread as a part of the service.  It was a good series.  I still have it and the sermons on the file. Hmmmm.

Well, even though we’re focusing on the Ephesians texts rather than the John texts this time around, it’s caught my attention that it’s worth noting the direction that worship takes us.  If one is going to stick with this Christian worship thing throughout life, we’re going to keep looping back to these same texts, these same stories.  In a linear way of movement we’re not really going anywhere.  Jesus says “I am the bread of life” and we get to chew on that the rest of our lives. 

During the youth-adult joint worship service in Columbus Ted Swartz offered a memorable and rather funny monologue likening faith to cows in a meadow, ruminant creatures that they are, eating grass and chewing on it, and swallowing it, and bringing it back up, and putting it through another chamber in the stomach, and doing that for a while until it’s ready to be moved on through.  Which really just serves to fertilize more grass that eventually will be undergo the same digestive process.  The faith cycle and the cycle of worship.  His final line was something like, “faith – chew on it, and pass it on.”  Rather than being a linear progression, worship could be something more like those words that Rachel spoke to last week in the book of Ephesians – “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”  This makes it sound like we are moving, perhaps expanding, every direction at the same time.  Better knowing the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ.

So that could be point one, which already hints at point two, the main point.  Point one, we’re not going anywhere and the ground we’re on now is old, but fertile, terrain.  Point two, we are going somewhere, there is movement happening in all directions, and Ephesians has some things to say about the vehicle that is supposed to be carrying us along.   

Alongside the John 6 Bread of Life readings are also readings from the book of Ephesians, which is a letter that speaks to what it means to be the church.  What is it?  What does it look like?  This summer has held a number of different gatherings of the church meeting together and worshiping and reflecting on its own life, so it feels fitting to follow through with a number of weeks on “Being the church,” which will be our August theme.  We are many generations removed from Paul and Ephesians, but the questions persist: What is church?  What does it look like?.  Keith’s sermon a couple weeks ago and the youth and Rachel’s reflections last week I feel did a great job of getting us started on this path.

Before we turn to the Ephesians passage I want to tell about some of my first encounters in Asuncion, Paraguay, after getting off the airplane for the Mennonite World Conference.  After getting my visa checked and passport stamped, and needing to use bits of my broken Spanish to get by, I was relieved to see people holding up signs that read Mennonite World Conference.  I walked toward the sign and was asked to stand in a group that was waiting for a bus to take us to our hotels.  I then began what would be an entire week of meeting the church.  In that group was Luke Gascho, director of the Merry Lea Center that works with issues of environmental sustainability in conjuction with Goshen College.  One of their buildings at Merry Lea was one of the first 50 LEED certified buildings in the nation, platinum level, for sustainable construction.  I met a group that seemed mostly to be from Canada that would be part of a group doing presentations on indigenous spirituality.  I also talked briefly with a seminary librarian, Brent Koehn, and a writer, Gordon Houser, whose name you will see often if you subscribe to The Mennonite magazine.  Helping all of us get where we needed to go were youth from the church in Paraguay who were bilingual and well-informed about the logistics of the day.  On the ride to the hotel I met a man who had worked most of his life helping lead new churches in New York City.  He was accompanied by his teenage granddaughter from rural Georgia.  These were some of the people with whom I could speak.  There were others in those first hours that I heard speaking other languages and being instructed where to go in their native tongue.

That we come into this with difference and diversity is a given.  The first half of Ephesians takes on one of the key differences that the early church worked with – that between Jew and Gentile.  Irreconcilable differences it would seem, as irreconcilable as whether to play Rook High or Rook Low, those who do it the right way and those who do it the wrong way.  I didn’t grow up playing Rook, so I don’t have an emotional attachment to either one, but Keith’s metaphorical haiku-ing still rings true to me.  How in the world are we going to work all this out?  How is this coming together going to happen?  Different cultures, different languages, different convictions and senses of what is true….Ephesians’ answer – through Christ Jesus, we are all members of the same body.  And then the verse that never fails to floor me – in Ephesians 3:9-10 “to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”  The mystery is the coming together of Jew and Gentile, insider and outsider, the rich variety of God’s creations, and the place where this happens, the vehicle for this journey with cosmic significance is, surprise, the church.    

The difficulty of this work is what sets the tone for Ephesians 4.  What Paul has to say now, he says in the form of a beg.  “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father/Mother of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

Being one church is a miraculous event and it takes some Spirit given ingredients to even be possible.   “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the body of peace.”  Those words humility, gentleness, patience, love, peace sound to me like the same stuff as the fruits of the Spirit that Paul mentions in Galatians 5 – “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  “making every effort.”  Christ has done the groundwork, but it still takes every effort of our own to remember that we are all a part of one baptism.

Historically, the church has done a pretty lousy job at this.  One of the things I’m fascinated with is to see how different groups interpret different events differently.  Two of the major church ruptures in the last 2000 years have been the splitting of the Eastern Church and the Western church – the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic church in the 11^th century, 1054 is usually the date that gets assigned to that – and also the breaking apart of the western Roman Catholic church in the 16^th century through the Protestant Reformation, of which we are heirs.  There are a couple different pictures I’ve come across to illustrate the view of this that I find pretty fascinating. 

The first one is this that I’ll pass around.  I have this from seminary days and it comes from the perspective of the Eastern Orthodox.  It wouldn’t speak for all Orthodox, but it would be one picture of their own self-understanding.  It’s a picture of a tree, with Jesus and the cross symbolically in the middle, and this tree is called the “tree of life” and it is the true church, which is the Eastern Orthodox Church which is the continuation of the church of the apostles.  At the bottom of this tree there are some little branches which have fallen off which would be the early heresies of the church, but the major thing going on here is this strike of lightning that has broken off a large branch.  This branch is labeled the “Roman Catholic Church” and the lightning is the great schism of 1054.  So this branch is no longer a part of the true church of Christ.  And then, you’ll notice, this branch that has broken off has leaves on the end of it which are falling off of it.  This is labeled “The Protestant Reformation, 1517.”  One of the leaves is Lutheran, one of them Anglican, Reformed, Baptist, etc.  Mennonites don’t have their label – maybe the closest to us is Brethren – so we might be one of those anonymous leaves that are mounting up on this large leaf pile underneath the broken branch in the West.  This is a picture where the unity of the Spirit has certainly been severed – a certain perspective.

Another image that has been used for the church, from early times, has been one of a boat.  The church is like a boat, something like Noah’s ark, that sails across the storms of the world with the survivors safely inside.  I wasn’t able to find this picture, so I’ll describe how I remember it and hope that I don’t completely screw it up by remembering it wrong.  This painting would have been done in the years after the Protestant Reformation and it shows a large boat on the sea, with the pope and other faithful inside, and then there are several people who are trying to escape on life boats.  The life boat people are labeled Luther and Calvin and Zwingli.  What I can’t remember is whether this grand ship is sailing just fine and these people in the lifeboats are leaving the mother ship, in which case it would be the perspective of the Roman Catholic church.  Or whether this large boat is actually starting to sink, and the leaders in the life boats and the one’s who are saving the church to stay afloat, in which case this would be the perspective of the Reformers.  What I do remember, is that there are also several church leaders who are floundering around in the water without any boat and that Menno Simons is one of those leaders.  So, whatever perspective this painting was from, we are definitely still sunk.   

These pictures have some humor in them for us, but they are also pictures of deep pain….

More recently the ecumenical movement has tried to pull together some of the scattered pieces – the leaves and the branches and the tree, or the little independent life boats and those of us who are close to drowning — and bring out some of the commonalities that we continue to hold. 

I’m encouraged by this direction and thinks it takes us in a more healthy way of thinking about the church of Jesus Christ.  Where the ecumenical movement has headed, and where this passage from Ephesians heads is what I’d like to emphasize.  And this is it.  Rather than treating difference as a threat or as an automatic sign of unfaithfulness – we are asked to accept difference as a gift.  Oneness of Spirit in the bond of peace does not mean uniformity, it means a wide collection of giftedness held together by the love of Christ. 

So after mentioning one Spirit, one body, one hope, Paul moves on to say that we have each been given a different grace, a different gift.  And the purpose of all these gifts is for the building up of the body of Christ that we might all come to a maturity in our growth. 

Ecumenically, a book that reflects this is this Introduction to Ecclesiology by guy whose name I probably won’t pronounce right: Veli-Matti Karkeinen.  His chapters talk about the different perspectives on the church that each tradition brings, their ecclesiology, and how we can learn from one another.  So the chapters titles are  The Church as an icon of the Trinity: Easter Orthodox ecclesiology; The church as the People of God: Roman Catholic Ecclesiology; The Church as Just and Sinful: Lutheran; The Church as Covenant: Reformed; The Church as the Fellowship of Believers; Free church ecclesiology – that’s us: and The Church in the Power of the Spirit: Pentecostal/Charismatic ecclesiologies.

In the church, with a big “C,” every person, every community, every tradition, carries with it a difference that contains giftedness.      

I’ve tossed out a lot of metaphors and without really sticking to any particular one – faith and worship in the church being cyclical like a cow chewing grass in a meadow, the church as a vehicle that takes us somewhere even if that isn’t a linear path, the church as the body of Christ, as a tree with many branches (and leaves), a boat on the sea.  So as a closing, I’ll mention one more metaphor.  One that sums up what I believe this passage is saying and also carries a flavor we at Cincinnati Mennonite can identify with.  The unity of Spirit to which we are being called, if it were a song, is not a melody.  We are not all asked to sing the same notes, at the same time, in unison.  We can think of it more as a harmony – many parts sung together, each adding its own texture, it’s own pattern, giving the song more richness, nuance, and beauty.  The one who makes all this possible is the Creator who is the composer, the conductor, one of the singers, and, who is, mysteriously, the song itself.

 

Action/Reflection – 7/12/09 – Mark 6

A couple weeks ago I sent out a Musing about the first half of this summer looking something like a series of concentric circles with all these gatherings that are taking place.  It started with the annual meeting of our area conference, Central District Conference meeting up in Sugar Creek Ohio around the theme of how to live faithfully in the context of empire. 

Right after this followed the national Convention in Columbus with the theme of “Breathe and Be Filled” with Mennonites of all ages from around the country coming together for worship, workshops, delegate work, and all of the late night entertainment that is planned at those events.  There were over 8000 in attendance and a number of people probably had the same experience that Matthew Brenneman had when he walked into Nationwide Arena for a worship service and looked around.  He said: “I didn’t know this many Mennonites existed.”  It’s a rare experience, but every once in a while we get a taste of what it means to be the majority culture.  By my count there were over 50 people from this congregation who were at some part of the Convention, with most of those being there the whole week, which is really quite phenomenal.     

And then the final, largest circle that is soon to occur is the Mennonite World Conference, which meets in Asuncion, Paraguay this week, with Anabaptist related groups from around the world.  Ed Diller flew out yesterday and I think is still in route as we speak, and I’ll be flying out this afternoon and be there for a week and a half.  This is a gathering that happens every six years and allows for Anabaptist groups to hear each other’s stories and build relationships that span the temporary borders of our nation-states through this multinational, multi-lingual, global family that is the church.

So this block of time from the end of June to the end of July is a perfect storm of gatherings.  These circles are perhaps in some small way a picture of the concentric circles the angel spoke about at the beginning of the book of Acts, telling those first disciples that they would be Jesus’ witnesses in Jerusalem, the local area, in all Judea and Samaria, the national territories, and to the ends of the earth.   

Part of the nature of these gatherings, and this is just sort of inevitable, is that they are extremely intense while they are happening, quite dense in their content and activity, and then they’re over and people return home to wherever home is.  And there’s this odd combination of things being different, because of this experience, and things being very much the same as they were when one left.  And, if there’s not a chance to process through some of the event or to tell stories or to hear other people’s stories, there can be a sense of a disconnect between these two worlds.

So I’d like to do a couple things in the next bit.  The first is to position this experience, intensity followed by a return to normal, in a story in the gospels in which some similar things are going on, which happens to be right at the lectionary reading for the week.  It’s always nice when lectionary and life and so closely aligned.  This is the time when Jesus has sent the 12 disciples out on their own for the first time to preach in the villages, and they do all this great stuff like traveling the countryside and staying in host homes and preaching good news and casting out demons and healing the sick, and then they return back to Jesus to tell him all about it.  And Jesus’ response it to initiate a debriefing session in which they are to get away and process this experience. 

The second thing is to actually give some time and space here for processing some of the stories from the Columbus Convention.  For those who were able to be there we’ll have some time to share briefly a thought or an insight or a challenge that you received while at Convention.  So as we’re looking through this scripture you may want to be thinking about some piece you’d like to share when that time comes up.  I recognize that not everyone was able to attend, so this is a chance to start to be brought in on this.  My hope is that through starting to share about this that this will become a congregational experience that gets integrated into how we keep learning and growing together.   

The lectionary has us in Mark chapter six right now.  Leading up to this, the disciples have been called out of their professions – fishermen, tax collectors, whatever else – and have been following Jesus around the region of Galilee – mainly observing and listening.  Seeing the unclean be treated as if they are already clean and then becoming clean, seeing healings, hearing parables, witnessing Jesus get confronted by angry leaders, and witnessing him get a cold reception when he returns to his hometown of Nazareth.  And then, at some point, these followers are asked to pair up and to go out themselves, just like Jesus has been doing, only without Jesus with them this time, and do the same kinds of things they’ve been observing.  This is the next step of their apprenticeship program.  There’s no way they’re completely prepared for all they’re going to face, but they go out for this learn-as-you go unsupervised internship in the kingdom of God.  And they’re actually quite successful.  They preach boldly, they cast out evil spirits, and they anoint sick people with oil who actually get healed.  So this is an intense, immersion experience for them, and when it’s done they have a lot to tell each other and Jesus. 

So we get to verses 30-32 which is the part I’d like to focus on.  The disciples have gone out and done their thing in all the villages of the area, and then these verses read: “The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.  He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’  For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.  And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.”  Whether Jesus is impressed with their success or not it doesn’t say, but his response is – Hey, come away a while.  Let’s pause and consider all this together.  Jesus had begun his ministry in the deserted place of the wilderness and he invites them back to such a place for some debriefing.

In doing this, Jesus establishes a pattern that can help to define the Christian vocation.  The disciples are sent out, and then they gather together and reflect.  This pattern can be identified as one of action/reflection.  The way that we learn, the way that we grow, and are formed as human beings, as spiritual beings, is through this pattern of action/reflection. 

Liberation theologians have picked up on this pattern and speak of it as one complete whole, each piece completed by the other.  They also emphasize the order in which these happen.  Concerned especially for the poor and the oppressed, liberation theologians like Juan Sobrino and James Cone have taught that the Christian vocation of seeking the liberation of all peoples must begin with action.  If we are too oriented toward thinking our way into action, rationalizing what we should do before doing it, we can get stuck in certain mindsets and blindness that make us miss out on the calling.  But if we begin with action – if we are willing to place ourselves alongside the poor, or, as the disciples did, to travel around to these different villages with just enough instruction to know how to make it through and what to be looking for, then we begin to see the world from this completely different perspective.  Our thoughts become shaped by this action.  We act our way into thinking and not just think our way into action. 

Jesus is careful not to sit the disciples down for too long in a classroom and teach them about the kingdom of God.  He sends them out to do the work, and then he pulls them aside for a time of reflection and learning.  This is his pedagogy.  Action/Reflection.  With all action there would be no opportunity to actually learn what one is learning — to step back, to ponder, to reevaluate and consider ways that one is being converted.  With all reflection there would be no engagement.  Just good ideas and interesting thoughts that actually start to become rather stale and boring after a while.

Now in this case, the disciples and Jesus end up having an interrupted retreat.  They try and go away to this deserted place and all these people follow them and we have the leading into the story of the feeding of the 5000.  The disciples want to have their time of debriefing and tell Jesus to send the people away, but Jesus has compassion on the people and makes another pedagogical move in teaching about the abundance of God’s providence.  It’s only after that event that the disciples get to have some time to themselves in a boat, and Jesus does his own reflection that he does throughout all the gospels as it says in verse 46.  “After saying farewell to them, (Jesus) went up on the mountain to pray.”  Action, reflection.  The Christian vocation involves this pattern which itself becomes a form of prayer.  When we are reflecting on our actions and acting on our reflections, then all of it is becoming a form of prayer, a channel through which we are opening ourselves up to the movement of the Spirit.  And Jesus is always making this explicit by getting away and spending this time in focused prayer.   

So I’m suggesting that the Convention experience has some similarities to an intense action.  Not exactly the kind of action of going out on mission like the disciples, but still a time of encountering new things, ideas, challenges, sort of drinking from the fire hydrant of collective Mennonite wisdom that is out there through all these talks and workshops and sessions.  My hope is that this has stirred new thoughts, or affirmed previous ideas that needed some more affirmation.  And it can be worthwhile and beneficial for us to move into some reflection, even as other demands come pressing in. 

One of the experiences at Convention that actually highlighted the call for this action/reflection pattern came on the last full day, Saturday, which ended up being one of the most intense days for me emotionally.  I wasn’t able to listen in on many of the delegate sessions, but I had time Saturday afternoon and most of that time was focused on discussion around a resolution on human sexuality.  The resolution itself was a combination of two different resolutions presented by groups with quite different perspectives.  One group wanted the church to affirm previous statements upholding the definition of traditional marriage and the other group wanted the church to take a step back from disciplining congregations who are deciding to openly welcome and affirm the gays and gay couples.  The single resolution took pieces from each one and tried to hold them into one statement.  So you can imagine that the conversation around this during the open mic time was fairly intense.   

As the evening worship approached I was still feeling the intensity of the afternoon and didn’t quite know how this would play out during worship.  Jim Wallis of Sojourners was the speaker for the evening and we all had a chance to talk some before the worship service and we mentioned that it had been an intense day and that he might want to just be aware of that context that he was speaking into.  And so, when it was time for him to speak, he adlibbed the first five minutes or so and spoke pretty directly to us in a pastoral way.  He basically said – I know it’s been a high energy day for you all, a day with some conflict, but since you have this theme of “Breathe and be Filled” I’m going to give you some friendly advice.  Just breathe.  It’s OK to feel differently about these things, just don’t forget to breathe and leave some room for the Spirit.  I don’t know how others heard this, but I took it to be a call for this kind of pattern that Jesus modeled to his disciples.  After the action, enter reflection.  Act, then breathe.  Speak, then step back.  Learn.  Pray.  Trust that God is at work.         

 This is one of the things that happened at Convention and the next couple weeks will offer some more opportunities for reflection.  Next week Keith will be preaching and I believe he’ll be giving some thoughts on the week.  The week after that the youth will have a time of sharing about some of their experiences.  And Violet is compiling the next newsletter to include some stories from Convention.  But for now I’d like to open up for a time of people sharing brief remarks about something about the week that has continued to linger with you.  How did the Spirit speak to you at Convention?  Is there a line or phrase from a speech that you found to be particularly pointed?  Or, in what ways were you challenged or do you feel our congregation could be challenged through something you learned?  Let’s take a little time now to hear a few reflections just as a way to get this conversation started among us.

 

The Pinnacle of Success – 6/21/09 – 1 Samuel 17,18

A couple weeks ago Abbie and I watched a video online of a speech given by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the recent bestseller Eat, Pray, Love.  The subtitle of the book is “One woman’s search for everything across Italy, India, and Indonesian,”  with each country corresponding with one of these at times transcendent experiences of Eat, Pray, Love.  This is a book that Abbie has read and greatly enjoyed and one of the many on my ever-lengthening to-read list.

The surprising thing about the speech was that it was not about the book, per se, not retelling any of her stories or going more in depth with other things she experienced in her travels that didn’t make it into the book.  The speech was about her reflections on the possibility of this book, this best selling book with rave reviews, being the high point of her creative career, and some of her own fears and thoughts about what that might mean for the rest of her life.  As soon as the book became popular, she said, friends told her she was doomed.  Now, whenever she would write, she would be expected to come up with something just as, if not more brilliant.  She would always be in the shadow of this towering success, the person who wrote that Eat, Pray, Love book.  Which, she confessed, was a significant fear that she had.  She spoke briefly about writers and artists of the 20^th century and how some of the most insightful and praised artists were those who also had psychological struggles, some taking their own life, and she raised the question as to whether the rigors and expectations for creative output were connected with this.  And so, in a very honest, straightforward, and at times humorous way, she laid out some of her own thoughts on this.  What if, as a person only in her late 30’s, she has already accomplished her greatest life work?  Could she be at peace with this?  Where does that leave her now, especially as she is getting ready to release her “much anticipated” next book?

(To see the video of this speech, click HERE)

As I was reading and studying the David and Goliath story this week, I couldn’t help but make some connections between that speech and this event in the life of the young David.  Surely, by any variety of standards one could use, this story, this feat of David, would have to be considered one of if not the high point of David’s legacy.  The story itself has all the elements of a classic.  There is the perfect villain, the unlikely child hero who also happens to be a poor peasant shepherd, suspense, the promise of the king’s daughter in marriage, the battle scene, and the triumph of good over evil.        

Gauging from how the story has endured over time, it has truly been successful.  If Jay Leno were to do his Jay-walking and ask people on the street to name a story about the life of David in the Bible, along with the no-doubt bizarre and ill-informed answers he would receive would also most likely be the common answer of David and Goliath.  This is a story whose influence has become firmly embedded in our culture.  We love to cheer for the underdog, the David, and when a sports contest features a dominant team highly favored to win over a less powerful team, sports commentators commonly refer to it as a match of David versus Goliath.  

One recent example of a public embrace of a David type figure was the rise of Susan Boyle, the small-town, middle aged, plain looking woman who entered the Britain’s Got Talent contest.  As she came out on stage, the audience and judges acted more out of the impulse of the Roman Gladiator scenario, with the judges rolling their eyes in mockery of her desire to be a successful singer and the audience smirking in anticipation of her getting tossed to the lions as soon as she would start to sing.  When she did sing, “I dreamed a dream” from the musical Les Miserable, suddenly the scenario shifted to something like David and Goliath.  The audience, and the judges, after one beautiful line of music from her mouth, almost instantly, began cheering in amazement for this newly found David who was conquering the Goliaths of ageism and judge-a-book-by-its-coverism.  Susan Boyle quickly became a You-Tube sensation and the hero of just about everybody who has heard her sing.  And, by the way, if you haven’t seen the YouTube video, it’s very much worth watching, to hear her great performance and also to reflect on this massive shift of spirit that took place when people recognized they were in the presence of beauty.  We love David.  We love Susan Boyle.  We love the underdog.  The whole scenario has captured our cultural imagination.  

  (To watch this video, click HERE)

Internal to the story itself, this is presented as a high point of success.  Things are looking very good for David after he defeats the menacing Goliath and he goes from an unknown small town nobody to a national hero.  Instantly he has the attention and the praise of the King himself, Saul, and Abner, the commander of the army.  David’s charisma proves to be magnetic and he gains a soul mate.  Right after speaking with the king after the battle in 1 Samuel 17, chapter 18 begins this way: “When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan, the King’s son, was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.  Saul took David that day (into his service) and would not let him return to his father’s house.  Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul.  Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.  David went out and was successful wherever Saul sent him.” 

David’s celebrity status makes it difficult for him now to go through towns without being praised and drawing the attention of everyone.  Songs and poems are written about him.  When he would go through a town with the king and his army, the women would come out and sing “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands.”  Saul had been the first king of Israel, chosen in part because he was a head taller than all the other men, a Goliath in his own right, but this event is part of his fall from power and David’s rise.  Chapter 18 ends by telling how one of the king’s daughter loved David and was given to him as a wife.  It then concludes by noting that in all the battles “David had more success than all the servants of Saul, so that his fame became very great.”  In the course of a short time, as a result of defeating Goliath the Philistine, David gains a soul-mate, is the subject of poetry and pop music praising his strength, is rising toward the throne of Israel, becomes married to a woman who loves him, and becomes famous.  

Can it get any better for David?  Has he reached the pinnacle of success?  Or, maybe more important of a question for us, is this how we are supposed to remember David?  Is this his main legacy?  Is this what is most important about his life that we are to admire or even seek to imitate?  Elizabeth Gilbert was that person who wrote that Eat, Pray, Love book.  Susan Boyle was the woman who wowed the UK and online world when she sang “I dreamed a dream,” and David was the unlikely hero who defeated Goliath.  

One of the remarkable aspects of the Bible is that it keeps telling the story.  Our culture may decide to drop Elizabeth Gilbert and Susan Boyle as ‘so 2009,’ but the biblical memory extends beyond this moment of fame.  Which is to say, it holds up as valuable, as important, as worth remembering, other aspects of David’s life. 

And this is important in a couple different ways.  For one, what we learn of David is not always pretty.  Murderer, adulterer, liar, disobedient to God.  There is no attempt to maintain a clean image of this supposed hero, or promote any kind of hero-worship. 

But there is another part of this that I find interesting.  By continuing to tell the story, by giving us these other events in David’s life, it allows us to ask the question of what really is important from this life of David.  What kind of legacy does he give us in our tradition?  How does our memory of him inform our understanding of a faithful life?

David and Goliath is a story of the weak being lifted up and the strong being humbled, a central feature of the God the Bible portrays, and a good value for any culture to have, but it’s also a story of great violence.  This is, after all, a battle scene, a story about killing, and a little more than just killing.  After David strikes the Philistine in the forehead with one of his stones out of his sling, we are told, “Then David ran and stood over the Philistine, he grasped his sword, drew it out of its sheath, and killed him; then he cut off his head with it.”  A little later we learn that David takes the head with him back to Jerusalem, a lovely trophy of war.  We could spiritualize the story and say it’s about defeating the giants of our life and overcoming the odds stacked against us, a fair interpretation in many ways, but the fact remains that this story, as it is told, is dripping with blood.  The severed head of one’s enemies is being held up as a triumphal sign of victory.  Is this is the high point of David’s life?

What I’d like to suggest is – maybe not.  There are other stories that we can hold up that offer us a different picture of success. 

One example happens not too long after this.  King Saul has become jealous of David’s fame and success and has already made a few attempts at David’s life. David has become a fugitive, with Saul and a large cohort of men pursuing him.  At one point, David is hiding out in the back of a cave, and Saul who is hot on his trail, chooses this particular cave to take a pit stop from the pursuits and relieve himself.  So there’s this pretty funny and ironic picture of David the fugitive in the back of the cave, looking out seeing his sworn enemy in a rather compromised position at the front of the cave.  What to do?  He could have believed that this was a case when God has delivering his enemy into his hands.  He doesn’t even need a sling and five stones.  All he has to do is come up and put a sword through the king.  Saul will never know what hit him and David will be the new king.  It would be David and Goliath, the sequel.  Instead, while Saul is there doing his thing, David sneaks up quietly and cuts off a piece of Saul’s garment that he’s placed to the side.  Saul gets done with his business, gets dressed, and leaves the cave.  And this is what happens told in 1 Samuel 24 – “Afterwards David also rose up and went out of the cave and called after Saul, ‘My lord the king!’  When Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance.  David said to Saul, ‘Why do you listen to the words of those who say, ‘David seeks to do you harm.’  This very day your eyes have seen how the Lord gave you into my hand in the cave; and some urged me to kill you, but I spared you.  See, my father, see the corner of your cloak in my hand; for by the fact that I cut off the corner of your cloak and did not kill you, you may know for certain that there is no wrong or treason in my hands.  I have not sinned against you, though you are hunting me to take my life.”  And then Saul responds.  “You are more righteous than I; for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil.  For who has ever found an enemy, and sent the enemy safely away?” 

Whether David knew it or not, this could be a more important legacy than his defeat of Goliath.  Not a public act, but something done in the isolation of a cave.  It was in his power to take life, but instead he had mercy.  He becomes a peacemaker and uses his power for reconciliation rather than destruction. 

Unfortunately, this story of David’s life is not as well known.  It’s not even a part of our lectionary readings, which contain a wide swath of scripture that are read in a three year cycle.  Which means, that if one were just to stick to the script each week, we’d never hear this story in a worship setting.  I wonder what difference it would make if we started remembering this story.  If, when people now were asked to name a story from the life of David, they would first name the story of David and the Cave, or David’s act of reconciliation, or whatever it would come to be called.   

The New Testament doesn’t mention the story of David and Goliath.  As far as I can tell, Jesus recalls just one story from David’s life, when he draws from this same period when David was a fugitive on the run.  Being out of food, David stops in on a local priest, and asks for bread for him and his men.  The priest has nothing but the holy bread that was to be offered to God and was only for the priest to eat, but gives David this bread to eat.  Jesus tells this story to those who accuse him of wrongfully healing on the Sabbath, showing that the purpose of the holy things of life – the Sabbath, sacred bread, whatever, are for giving and restoring life, not withholding it.  So, according to Jesus, perhaps this was the pinnacle of David’s success.  An obscure instance when his companions are hungry, and he and a priest cross over the sacred boundaries of the culture in order to give food where it is needed.  In this way, Jesus does fit the title of Son of David, that so many called him.

Elizabeth Gilbert ends her talk by noting that as much as we would like to believe otherwise, we are not completely in control of the creative process that flows through us.  At certain points in our lives we get caught up, filled, moved into a writing or a project that wants to find fulfillment through us.  It’s impossible to know when such a movement will happen.  The best we can do is to remain open to it, and, as she says, to keep showing up everyday.  Judging by scripture’s standards of success, I’m not even sure that we will know in our lifetime what has been our greatest accomplishment, or if it even matters to try and keep track.  We show up everyday for the work we’ve been given, remain open to the Spirit, and see the ways we may be instruments of God’s peace in ways we do and don’t yet recognize.

 

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”

 

The Corinthian Plan: An Opportunity For Mutual Aid – 6/07/09 – 2 Corinthians 8:1-15

This past week the New York Times Magazine ran an extensive article on the health care agenda that will soon be taking center stage in Washington.  Its focus was on how this administration is positioned politically to try and carry out the major reform that it is hoping for – comparing it to past attempts, especially that of President Clinton’s first term.  The article highlighted key players who will be leading the debate.  It spoke some about the influence of the health care industry in shaping the outcome.  It also mentioned, briefly, some of those staggering statistics that reveal the sorry state of health care in our country.  Health care spending has doubled since the mid-90’s, now the highest percentage of GDP that it has ever been, over 16%.  46 million people without health insurance in the US.  This is a debate that we’ll soon be hearing much more about.

Two years ago Mennonite Church USA delegates gathering in San Jose were asked to look closely at health care issues.  It was acknowledged that we need national health care reform, but it was also proposed that we as a denomination can do something about one small part of this puzzle.  We can come up with a health care plan that would guarantee health care coverage for all of the pastors of our congregations.  At the time it was estimated 80-100 US Mennonite pastors were without health insurance.  In San Jose delegates voted for such a plan to be researched and organized, and since that time a plan has been proposed, called the Corinthian Plan, that will be voted on in our meetings in Columbus one month from now.  If 80% or more of MC USA congregations vote to participate in the plan, it will take effect January 1, 2010.     

The message today will be focused on the values and some of the details of this health care plan.  And the messenger is going to look something like a three headed monster, although we’re pretty sure it will be a nonviolent Mennonite monster, nothing to be feared.  Myself, Ed Diller, and Steve Hitt will each share about some aspect of this plan.  Ed will go more in depth with the denominational process in creating this health care plan and speak to some of the vision behind it.  Steve will talk about what this may mean for us as a congregation, look at how we may think about it in terms on our financial reality and how that connects with some of our ideas about stewardship and mission.  And in the remaining time that I have I’m going to be leading some Bible study. 

One of the key practices behind such a health care plan is the concept of mutual aid.  Mennonites and Amish and other Anabaptist groups have a rich history of practicing mutual aid, which basically means that when one member is in trouble or has a loss, that the resources of the community are made available for coming to the aid of that person.  Historically, this is community as insurance.  An iconic image of this would be the barn raising event.  If someone’s barn burns down or is damaged through a storm, the entire community comes and rebuilds the barn for the family.  This is made more complex in our modern world of larger assets, more privatized and less communal living, and extremely high health care costs, but that value of mutual aid remains a part of who we are.

One of the passages of scripture that speaks of the practice of mutual aid is 2 Corinthians 8.  And this is the Bible study part.  If you could please open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 8, we’re going to walk through this briefly to get a small window into some of what was going on with the communities that the Apostle Paul was forming in the first century Roman world.  This 2 Corinthian passage is why this health care plan has been called The Corinthian Plan. 

So Paul is writing this letter to these Jesus followers in the city of Corinth, which is a little southwest of Athens, and he begins this part of the letter by saying “we want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia.”  This area of Macedonia would have been their neighbors to the north, two of the cities, Philippi, and Thesalonica, you may recognize because these were also cities to which Paul has written letters which we have in our New Testament – Philippians, 1,2 Thesalonians.  In verses three and four Paul is sort of bragging about them, or holding them up as an example saying, “For as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints.”  And then he goes on in verse seven to name some things that are a part of their life of faith – “Now as you excel in everything – in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you (or some manuscripts read “your love for us”) – so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.”  This ‘voluntary giving, according to their means,’ was something Paul was asking that they see as a part of their life as a community along with these other things.”

Now it should be noted that what Paul refers to as “sharing in this ministry to the saints,” is a specific designation.  The ministry to the saints refers to the poor believers in Jerusalem.  There are other parts of his letters where that designation is spelled out more clearly, but what Paul was asking of those churches in Macedonia, who gave generously, and what he was asking of the Corinthian church, was to give some of their wealth to go back to the poor who were associating with the mother church, the place where it all started, the Jewish believers in Jerusalem. 

Paul’s mission is ambitious, to say the least.  Imagine all of these different ethnic groups, each with their own religious history and gods and myths, spread out over the Roman Empire, all in the mix together in these cosmopolitan urban centers, and then imagine Paul and other apostles coming through and teaching to whoever would care to listen that in Christ all of these groups can be reconciled to each other – Jew and Gentile, and Gentile to other Gentile.  It would be one thing for these little communities to form within these urban centers with people of all types and start worshiping and learning together, but then it would be another thing to be told that your little eclectic community here in Philippi, or Corinth, or whatever, was connected to all of these other communities popping up around the Roman world.  You are all “In Christ.”  The well-being of one community should effect the well-being of all communities.   At one point Paul describes this by saying, You who were not a people, have now become a people.  At another point in his writing to the Corinthians Paul tries to give an image to this in developing what might be called body theology.  You are all a part of the same body, different parts, different locations, all working as one whole.  “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” (1 Cor. 12:26)

Part of what this looks like, Paul is now writing to the Corinthians, is the practice of mutual aid.  If there are poor Christ followers in Jerusalem, then well-off, or even not so well-off Christ followers in Macedonia and Corinth should feel the sting.  Paul clarifies what he means in verses 13 and 15 of 2 Corinthians 8.  “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance.  As it is written, ‘The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little,’” a reference to the manna in the desert – enough for everyone. 

That’s a very quick glimpse of where some of this Corinthian Plan is coming from.

One of the main questions and critiques behind this plan has been not that this is a bad idea, but that it’s not enough.  If we value mutual aid so much, why are we creating a plan that only covers pastors and not making it available for others in the congregation to buy into?  It’s a fair question and one that has been addressed in some writing in our publications.  Being a pastor, I don’t feel like I personally want to try and justify why this is just for pastors, so perhaps this is something that Ed can speak to a little more.    

I’ll end my part by simply adding a personal note and saying that this is a year when our family is especially thankful for having health insurance.  This plan feels like a small way of seeing that more people are covered, in the spirit of mutual aid.  Along with this, it is our hope that our country can address this head on in a way that gives everyone access to quality affordable health care.

 

Still Birth and Live Birth: The Gift of Holy Spirit (Pentecost)- 5/31/09 – Acts 2:1-13, John 20:19-22

INTRODUCTION

I’m in the kind of work where the line between the personal and the professional is not always clearly defined and sometimes disappears altogether.  I have the privilege and the challenge of telling stories, speaking out of my own journey — recognizing that what I have to say is filtered through my own particular experience of life and how I have sensed God’s presence around me.   Often this appears more in anecdotal form — a childhood story, a book I have read, a conversation I have had.  It’s important not to confuse one’s own story with The Story, of which we are always and only a small part.  But every once in a while there is a personal experience that feels so embedded in the imagery and themes of the Grand Narrative, that its telling and the telling of that larger story become interchangeable, mixed, merged.  In this celebration of Pentecost, and in this season of our grief, this has become the case for me.  What I have to say personally, as a father and husband and friend, and what I have to say professionally, as a pastor, is the same thing.

As the people of Cincinnati Mennonite well know, and as our pilgrim visitors and other guests among us may or may not know, ten days ago Abbie and I and our family underwent a great loss.  Abbie was pregnant with our third daughter, and, due to complications, delivered early, at 22 weeks gestation, before our baby was able to survive outside of the womb.  This has been a time of grief and also a time of reflection and contemplation, trying to be in the moment and recognize it for all that it will mean in our lives.  We have had time to rest and time to be with family, wonderfully supported with meals and child care help from you our friends.

Part of the way I have always processed significant events is to write.  In the days following the delivery of our beautiful little Belle Ruthann, I have cherished the different times I have had to sit down and put into words that which seems almost ineffable.  As important as it was for me to write this, I know that I am not yet able to speak it.  A number of you have offered and provided help over the last number of days, and, in this case, I knew this was another area where we would need another’s gifts to hold us up.  So I have asked Keith if he would be my voice today and he has agreed to do this.

………………………………..

Holy Spirit

In a speech given at a conference focused on how it is we talk about Spirit, James Alison makes the observation that the writers of the New Testament regularly leave out part of the phrase that has become commonplace for us in the church: “The Holy Spirit.”  (http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng47.html)  The various authors of the gospels and letters, those with the task of putting into words what it may mean to be accompanied by God through Christ, just as often speak of “Holy Spirit.”  Mary is not told that she will be with child because the Holy Spirit will overshadow her, but because she will be overshadowed by Holy Spirit.  John the Baptist does not promise that Jesus will baptize people with the Holy Spirit, but with Holy Spirit.  It’s a subtle difference, but part of Alison’s point is that we too often are betrayed by our own grammar, allowing it to limit our perception of that to which it is pointing.  In speaking of The Holy Spirit, we may be tempted to think of God as an object, another item, albeit a large and powerful item, that shows up on the scene.  Here, but not here.  There yesterday, but not today.  Alison hopes to direct us toward a fuller comprehension of God’s Being, and for this, suggests that the use of Holy Spirit can at times be appropriate.  Holy Spirit is not an object in our field of experience but rather, is the Presence which undergirds, surrounds, and illuminates our experience, enriching and enlivening.

Ever since learning that we were expecting our third child, our lives have certainly been enriched and enlivened, undergirded by a sense of Holy Spirit.  Imagine my surprise when, the evening before my ordination, Abbie walked down the stairs, turned to me as I was walking by, and said, “I’m pregnant.”  Just as I was preparing to have my life path affirmed and more firmly established, this little one stepped in and offered her presence as a reminder that one’s life path is anything but predictable.  Surrounded by what was already a holy weekend, we began imagining life as a family of five.

Anticipating her arrival meant more than just preparing to unpack the infant clothes.  This meant big changes.  Our current house was too small.  We would need a larger vehicle.  Plans for the next few years would have to be rethought.  OK, One thing at a time.  Thrilled to find a larger house on the same block, aided by a gracious, and efficient, church moving crew, we began settling into a new place, preparing the space for the life to come.

When Abbie began bleeding a couple months into the pregnancy; when we were soon told, and believed, for a duration of about five minutes, that we had had a miscarriage, only to discover a healthy baby with a booming heartbeat show up on the ultrasound monitor, we were even more mindful of the wonder of this child.  We felt like Mary might have felt, overshadowed by Holy Spirit.  “What child is this?”  Whoever she is, she has already changed our lives, caused quite a commotion, rocked our world.  As Abbie’s complications continued, even as the baby continued to develop in a healthy way, we held on tenderly to this one coming into being in the midst of a gathering storm.

…………………….

Breath, or, Home

In Acts chapter two, the coming of Holy Spirit shows up in the form of a sound:  like the rush of a violent wind, filling the entire house where the friends are gathered.  Divided tongues, like fire, appear, swirl through the room, and rest on each one.  Loud shouts of praise burst out of their mouths in a multi-lingual barrage of hallelujahs.

John tells a different story of the giving of Holy Spirit.  If the Acts event is primarily aural, a soundtrack of Holy Spirit presence, John’s is primarily visual.  It could be told with no sound at all, a mime of blessing.  Look at the locked doors, the effort made for safe solitude.  Observe the huddling, perhaps even trembling disciples.  Witness Jesus appearing, somehow, among them, stretching out his arms with a greeting that says, “Peace be with you.”  See him showing them his hands and his side, pierced and broken, signs of death contained within life.  And watch, lean forward, and take in the staggering scene, of Jesus…breathing…on the disciples.  “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”

Breath is a remarkable thing.  Even more remarkable when it is the breath of Jesus.  Something so foundational for life, so given, that we barely give it a second thought.  The earth is our home because it is a place where breath is available. No human can survive without the in-and-out, out-and-in rhythm of breath.  No human, that is, who has emerged from our original home, the womb.  Inside the womb, in the pre-breath stage of life, mother and child have their own way of sustaining and nurturing life.  In the place where we are conceived and formed, water and blood, chord and membrane, provide their own rhythm.  Here, Holy Spirit broods and floats and flows.  Life surrounding life.  Life surrounded by life.

In our home, mother and child have had their months of huddling together; yes, trembling; yes, fear;  hearts pulsing next to each other.  Facing an uncertain future.  Speaking to one another with words only they can hear.  Prayers for breath.  Prayers of blessing: “Peace be with you.”

……………………

Upper Room

The Acts passage is commonly referred to as the birth of the church, the bringing forth of a new creation, whose life will be for the purpose of witnessing to the life of Christ and bringing glory to God.  Luke doesn’t tell us exactly where it takes place in Jerusalem, only that they, the small remnant of Jesus’ friends and allies, were all together in one place, in a house.  Earlier in chapter one, we are told there was a room, upstairs, where the remaining 11 disciples along with certain women and others were staying while in the city.  In the weeks after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, these believers, numbering about 120, were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.  And so this event of Acts 2 has come to be associated with this upper room.  In this small cavity of space in a relatively unimportant region of a vast empire, the church is born.

In our upper room of the maternity ward, windows facing east, overlooking a flat roof of an adjacent building and, beyond that, a small forest of trees, blocking the sprawl of the city, the sun rises on the day that has become the arrival of our storm.  For a few brief seconds I stare at the sun directly, if only to be reminded of the impossibility of the act.  The earth continues its steady path, circling and spinning; and the rays trickle, then pour into the humble space that we currently occupy.  The world is illuminated, and I avert my gaze from its source so as not to be overwhelmed, or blinded by its intensity.   A few feet from me Abbie has begun laboring.  What will be brought forth from this difficult work will soon be made known.

……………………..

Universe

“Now there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem…Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes.”

When Holy Spirit arrives, suddenly it’s as if the entire world is present in the room.  All language, all praise that can be formed on the tongue, all thanksgiving, all expression of awe and wonder.  Grown men become like fools, reduced to babbling.  Women act is if they are children, dancing, unable to contain this energy that has entered them.  All comprehending in their native way.  The air is dense.  The entire universe shows up, and presents itself as fire and wind.

Or, as perfect stillness…no movement.  Silence…no speech, no words.  There is no deeper universal language.

Our beautiful Belle Ruthann is here.  The mouth closed and the body calmly, resolutely, motionless.  Such a small vessel of perfection.  No tongue able to capture what is at hand.  Tears and lamentation.  Sadness and grief.  Swelling, burning like flame, swirling.  This too is the fullness of the cosmos, now cradled in your arms.

All who witness it are bewildered, amazed and astonished.  “What does this mean?”  This drunkenness with exaltation.  This intoxication with sorrow.

……………….

Church

Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”  His words draw from the ancient Israelite law code teaching that a case in court is established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.  For a testimony to be credible in the eyes of the law, for it to be true, it must have two or three who have seen the same thing.  The presence of Jesus, Holy Spirit, becomes true, becomes tangible and known, when two or three come together in this way.

I like that.  Two or three.  Three is good.  Three is desirable.  But if not three, then two.  That way if, for whatever reason, the third isn’t able to show up, there is still a quorum for Holy Spirit.  If the third happens to get stuck in traffic, had a last minute change of plans, is having a bad hair day and doesn’t want to come out of the house, loses track of time, or doesn’t make it out alive from the war zone, or the womb, the two who remain still get visited by Jesus.  Are still able to bear witness to the holy presence among them.

And where two are gathered, or three, or many more – a family, a group of friends, a congregation – Jesus is surely there in the midst of them.  Holy Spirit becomes tangible, true, embodied, incarnated through these relationships.  And this is, in essence, the church.  The assembly.  The gathering.

In the church we are entrusted with matters of the Spirit and of the flesh.  Jesus left his followers with the promise of the Holy Spirit, and he also left them with the practice of sharing a meal together around the table.  “As often as you do this, do so in remembrance of me.”  Our life together can at times touch on the ethereal, the ecstatic, the transcendent, but most of the time we are carrying out the most ordinary of work, the most common of activities.  The symbol of our life is here in front of us in the bread and the cup.  In this our bodies, and our souls, find what they need for sustenance.

Our hunger is a hunger for real food.  Food we can touch, food we can smell and taste.  Food we can put our fingers on and feel the warmth.  An invitation to the Communion table.  A meal at the family table.  A chance, during the times when we must ourselves focus on other matters, besides buying and preparing the food, to have the meals brought to us, one after the other.  Our longing is for real flesh.  Flesh we can hold and cradle.  Flesh that shows up with an embrace of comfort.

In our caring in this way, we bear witness to Christ present in the bread and the cup; to the One who hears out laments, bears our suffering, burns with love for creation, sustains us even in our sorrow.

In the bread, feeding.  In the body, gathered.  This is where Holy Spirit has its home.  Eternally.  Undergirding, comforting, birthing, enriching, haunting.  Now fire, now calm.  Now wind and words.  Now silence.  Always “Peace be with you.”  “Peace be with you.”

 

“But I Have Called You Friends” – 5/17/09 – John 15:9-17

This past week I received one of those rare treasures that seem to be getting rarer these days.  A letter, in the mail, from a friend, on paper, from Mike.  I met Mike in Elkhart when we were both students at seminary.  Over the course of the couple years there together we connected on a love for talking theology and a common conviction that playing ultimate Frisbee is indeed a spiritual experience.  During our final year there Mike lived next door to us.  We would often have our doors open and wander into each other’s apartments to study, chat, or share something that had just come out of the oven.  Mike introduced me to some writers and thinkers who have been very influential for me.  When Eve was born he was our primary babysitter.  Since graduating we have made it a point to keep in touch with each other.  Mike started a blog and was the original inspiration behind thewholepeace blog that I keep up.  For the last year and a half he’s been living with his wife at a study center in the Oregon wilderness, a half hour drive away from being online.  So, we write letters.  Not a lot of letters, but we keep up with each other’s thoughts, activities, and desires.  I look forward to receiving these letters.  Mike is someone I consider a close friend and one of those people that I hope to maintain ties with for the rest of my life, even if we never again live in close proximity to each other. 

In the gospel reading from John, the reality of friendship is front and center.  In some of his parting words to his closest allies, as they are gathered in an intimate setting, Jesus says “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”  These words occur in a block of John’s gospel known as the farewell discourses.  In a rather remarkable proportioning of content, John gives five chapters, nearly a quarter of his gospel, to a single evening of Jesus speaking with his disciples before he will be betrayed, tried, and crucified.  This Last Supper, uniquely begins by Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, a role reserved for the servant class.  After doing this, Jesus says, “Do you know what I have done for you?  You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am.  So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”  This role reversal puts into question certain understandings of power and honor, and elevates the position of servant, something no one would choose to be, as a roll worthy of imitation.  But then, further along in the discourse, later into the evening of this highly significant event the disciples are undergoing, Jesus again presents a shift in how the group is to think of themselves, something even higher than being a servant.  “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends.”

I have to admit that at first blush I’m not too sure what to think of what it means to be called a friend in this way and whether that’s a primary way I want to think of Jesus, or our relationship with each other in the church.  Some of the connotations that have come alongside being a friend don’t feel like they jive very well here.  Friendship can be experienced as a casual relationship.  Those with whom we can just hang out, crack a few jokes where no one will get offended, and let down our guard.  Buddies.  Relax, you’re among friends.  The image of Jesus as a buddy gets played up in the movie Dogma, a satire on the current state of the church.  Part of the story involves the Cardinal Ignatius Glick, played by George Carlin, who starts a campaign to put new energy and excitement into the Catholic church.  The campaign is called “Catholicism Wow.”  Rather than keeping the crucifix as the central icon of the church, which the Cardinal deems as “wholly depressing,” he creates a more upbeat image of Jesus called Buddy Christ.  Buddy Christ has a big smile, and is winking as he points with one hand and keeps a thumb up with the other hand.  Buddy Christ is a kinder, gentler savior for today’s competitive marketplace of religion.  Relax, Jesus is your friend.  No need to change anything about your life.  It’s all good.

Friend, as we sometimes refer to it, can also be a demotion in relational status.  Let’s just be friends.  Let’s not get too involved in each other’s lives.  Let’s keep some distance, give each other some space.  Just friends, please.  

One of the things I think is actually reshaping our experience of friendship is coming through the Facebook phenomenon.  Facebook friends have access to each other’s profiles, journals, and pictures.  They can write notes on each other’s walls, and get a live feed on all of their friends status updates.  Friends also have access to each other’s lists of friends.  If a friend is a friend with someone I know but am not yet a friend, I can invite that person to be my friend.  If they accept, we’ve become friends.  It sounds sort of third grade, but it’s actually quite sophisticated!  Facebook friendship can involve the frivolous — this week I learned that a friend had a funny experience with her cashier in a Wal-Mart, I learned that another friend just got home from the office in time to watch Lost; the useful – one friend posted a link to downloading a free live Coldplay album.  Another posted instructions on how to make a rain barrel;  the substantive – Last week a friend from high school I’ve seen only a couple times in ten years wrote, typed, me a brief note and we ended up setting up a phone conversation that lasted over an hour about her sense of calling into ministry.  A while ago Facebook was how I learned of the unexpected death of Ron Blough, a pastor and the father of a recent CMF member, Bethany Blough Simpson who now lives in Denver.  Personally, I have found Facebook to be a great way to keep in touch with friends I otherwise would not be crossing paths with, and to interact in new ways with those I do cross paths with.  It opens up a new world of connectivity that is not dependent on geography.  But, of course, it does have its limitations.  It can be very wide, but not very deep.   It will be interesting to see how the experience of friendship continues to develop as web-based connectivity continues to expand, and how that gets balanced with face to face relationships. 

The one place in the gospels where Jesus refers to a specific person as a friend occurs just four chapters before his naming the group of disciples as friends.  When Jesus finds out from Martha and Mary that their brother Lazarus has died Jesus says to his followers, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”  When Jesus goes and finds Lazarus dead, we are told of a short but profound response.  Jesus wept.  Those around him comment, “see how he loved him.”  Jesus is deeply moved by the loss of his friend, and miraculously asks Lazarus to come out of the tomb, resuscitated back to life.  In the other three gospels, the event that triggers the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus is his demonstration in the temple, overturning the tables of the money changers.  John shapes his gospel such that the trigger event is this one here, the resurrection of Lazarus, the beloved friend of Jesus.  It scares the authorities into believing that because of this act everyone will flock to Jesus.  They say, “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” (11:48)  Jesus’ love and affinity for his friend is a deep, abiding, committed love of friendship, one that will cost him his life.  So when Jesus later says “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” he is helping clarify just how much substance and solidity there is behind what he means by friendship. 

If we have allowed our experience or notion of friendship to stray too far from this depth, then we are missing something.

This past Monday I caught part of a program on NPR’s The Story, part of a series that NPR did this week on what they called the New American Dream – what values and aspirations Americans are holding to these days amidst economic struggle.  This episode was a conversation with Theresa Phillips who a number of years back had moved to a trailer park in Battle Creek, Michigan to escape an abusive relationship.  She also wanted to escape just about all relationships and live as privately as she could, but she got to know a woman at her work who insisted on being her friend, even as Theresa tried to push her away.  The other woman was persistent and convinced Theresa that they needed each other for support and deliverance from loneliness.  At one point the women were wondering if there were other women like them who were trying to be free of an unhealthy cycle of abusive relationships, feeling isolated, so they put out word to the trailer park for anyone interested to meet them at a certain time and place.  A larger than expected group turned up and from that developed what is called the Woman’s Co-op.  The Woman’s Co-op is a model of a community based on committed friendship where the women have worked out ways for them to grow as independent, healing, people.  They have received complaints and even threats from former boyfriends and husbands who believe the women should not be spending their time in this way. They have a child-care co-op that better enables the women to work, a food co-op, support services for escaping abuse, and many other ways of being a strong community network.  Directing the co-op is now Theresa’s full time job.  The focus of the show characterized this story as being indicative of the new American dream that is emerging in these difficult economic times.  Rather than the white picket fence, people are seeking security in relationships.  Safety, dependable friendships, camaraderie.  Maybe it’s the new American dream, maybe it’s the oldest of all human dreams.

David Wood is someone who has put a lot of thought into friendship.  He’s run seminars and is currently writing a book on the topic.  I met him during our Engaging Pastors Colloquy events that happened over the last year.  Two of his essays that we read were titled, “Towards the Recovery of Friendship as a Form of Christian Love,” and “The Promise of Friendship and the Practice of Ministry.”  His argument is that friendship is a profound form of love in our lives, and that it shapes our character, develops virtue, and should be recovered for its deep roots in the Christian calling.  He feels that one of our primary words we use for our relationships in the church, “fellowship,” too often ends up being a soft form of general tolerance, “a vague and comfortable term, usually too remote to have any real effect.”  He goes all the way back to Aristotle’s classical writing on the virtue of friendship, tracks friendship love in Scripture, and holds up the possibility of renewing it’s place in our thinking and practice.

As a way of drawing this to a close and circling back to John 15, consider the way that being Friends serves as a central metaphor for who we are in relation to each other and relation to Christ in our sister Peace Church tradition, the Quakers, also called The Religious Society of Friends.  I was interested to know how the Friends tell their own story of how they came to have this name and this week I had a phone conversation with someone who is becoming a friend of ours, Patrick Nugent, a Quaker and faculty member in Xavier University’s theology department.  Patrick said that the precise origin of this name is actually something that no one really knows, but that at some point, the group that came to be the Friends, started calling themselves friends, friends of truth, and friends of the light.  Quaker was a pejorative term, given them by others, but their name for themselves was Friends.  Their inspiration for this name was precisely from Jesus’ words to his comrades in John 15.  “I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”  The early Quaker George Fox stated that “Christ has come to teach His people Himself.”  And so the Friends believed, as we also can believe, this wonderful idea that they had, in some way, been invited in to this circle of knowing.  That what they needed to know, and how they needed to live, could be known.  That it wasn’t hidden, but that they had been befriended by Christ.  This is revealed in the life of Jesus, and also in the continuing work of the Holy Spirit.  And so their meetings of silence and listening to the Spirit carry the strong belief that in their collective silence, the will of Christ will be revealed to them.

God is about the work of making friends in the world, and making of us friends of one another.  Despite our weakened notions of friendship, and despite the continued marketing of Buddy Christ, we are being called into a deep, substantive, virtue-forming, character enhancing friendship that mirrors the relationship Jesus expressed toward his friends.  A committing of our life toward one another, and an assurance that what we need to know has been opened up to us.  And that, my friends, is good news indeed.

 

Love Is The Point – 5/10/09 – 1 John 4:7-21

It’s been said on good authority, by multiple authorities, that a preacher really only has three or four or maybe five sermons that they ever preach.  Every sermon, even if it is one of hundreds or thousands given in a lifetime, is just some version, a different take, on one of those basic, stock sermons.  I hate to give away some of the tricks of the trade, but from my experience, that’s probably about right.  It may even be right to say that there is just one sermon, that comes in unlimited varieties.  Hopefully there is variety.  There are these basic themes that keep getting repeated and revisited, looked at from every angle, told through different stories, spun with different metaphor, ordered with different points, that really all come back to several, or just one point. 

So if you think you’ve heard this one before, you’re right.  You have.  Many times.  You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it, and it is our lot in life, if we stick around the church, to hear it all the rest of our days.  And even after that it will be echoed over us, to those gathered around us, when we are put to rest. 

So you know what’s coming.  Hopefully you always will.  It’s no surprise.

The whole thing is summed up nicely in the words of 1 John 4:7,8, sort of a Cliff notes version of one of these sermons that keeps getting preached.   So here it is: “Dear ones, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God for God is love.”  That’s it.  There you have it.

Another trick of the trade in giving sermons is that you rarely give your main point up front.  You try and introduce something and work up to a point and bring people along with you in finding that point themselves.  It’s a great strategy, but, unfortunately, it has already been shot.  The point is already out there, in full, glorious, display.  It was shining brightly when we ended the day yesterday, and it was patiently waiting for us when we woke up this morning.  It has pre-empted, pre-ceded anything that has happened here and anything that will happen tomorrow.  It is not it that needs to be introduced to us, but us that need to be introduced to it, reminded again and again, having our eyes opened again to this truth.  “God is love.”  “Let us love one another.”

That we keep showing up for life, or for worship, or for whatever it is we show up for, would seem to indicate that we anticipate being further introduced to this reality.  We may not know what is the aim of our desire, but we know that we do desire, we desire to know more intimately, to live more fully, to feel more deeply.  Where do these desires come from?  To what are they ultimately directed?  The mystics and spiritual masters and scriptures would have us believe that they come from and are directed to God.  And what this looks like is us, loving one another. 

Since the point has already been stated, it’s possible the rest of the sermon might not have a point, so we’ll go forward knowing that we’ve already been introduced to all we need to know, and now we just get to walk around it a few laps to better familiarize ourselves with what we’re looking at.   

In my office/study there are a number of bookshelves.  I try to keep them somewhat organized, with different shelves for different subjects.  Ministry and pastoral care has its own area, theology has several shelves.  Ethics and peacemaking are grouped together.  Spirituality and prayer have their own sections.  Behind my desk there are several shelves of Bible commentaries, starting with Genesis and running through Revelation.  The least organized shelf is the one right behind my desk, right underneath the Bible commentaries.  This is the one where I keep those books that I need to have readily accessible.  The ones I am currently trying to work through or ones that I flip through often.  Several books have permanent residence on that shelf and may never be given a rightful place of rest in their proper category.  I grab them too often to want to get up every time and find them on shelves on the opposite wall.  One of those is a book called Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and the West (Daniel Ladinsky, translator).  This is a translation of poetry written by different spiritual masters, those for whom the love of God and the ability to put it into writing coincide in beautiful ways.  It’s hard for me to get very far in pondering the love of God without considering some of their words, their love poems. 

If everything we need to know has already been stated in 1 John 4:7-8, what else might John have to say?  How about a statement of the obvious followed by a statement of the impossible?  That’s 1 John 4:12.  Here’s what it says: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.” 

Obvious: “No one has ever seen God.”  Rabia, an Islamic holy woman from the 8^th century would tend to agree: “Since no one really knows anything about God, those who think they do are just troublemakers.”  (p. 27) Hafiz writing in Persia 600 years later, adds this: “Power is safest in a poet’s hands, thus for the artist God will pose.”   (p. 162)  No one has ever seen God, but for all of us who do not yet know we are artists, God is posing.

Impossible: “God’s love is perfected in us.”  Perfect is not a word I would readily associate with love.  Love is too messy, too unpredictable, too mired in details and failures in communication, too frail, to be anywhere near perfect.  Meister Eckhart, Catholic monk and scholar wrote, “What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?  I think it is the hope of loving, of being loved.  I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey to find its source, and how the moon wept without her lover’s warm gaze.  We weep when light does not reach our hearts.  We wither like fields if someone close does not rain their kindness upon us.” (p. 109)  But John must think he’s on to something with this “love being perfected in us” thing because he soon brings it back up.  God’s love is perfected in us.  Or, another way of saying it, God’s love is being made complete in us.

One thing that seems to be consistently present in the experience of love, and the words of those who try and write about it, is that love takes us beyond the incompleteness of ourselves.  Or, better yet, it expands our selves and makes us more of a self.  Including more within our self.  Love inherently cracks through the hard shell that forms around us, such that it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish between where we end and another begins.  Love is being made complete in us.

It’s in John’s gospel that Jesus say, “I and the Father are one.”  You can’t get much more of a statement of love than that.  Jesus lived life such that the boundary between him and God, the place where he ended and God began, became common space, occupied by both.  So when Jesus says “I” in John’s gospel – “I am the good shepherd,” “I am the vine,” “I am the bread of life,” “I am the way,” the I that is speaking is an I that includes union with God.  It is not the I of the ego.  It is the I of incarnation.  The I of God becoming more of itself through those who embody this love.  Genesis speaks of the marriage union in a similar way: “the two shall become one flesh.”  Over the life of such a partnership, there is a spilling over of selfhood, a sharing of identity, in which the border between partners, becomes opened up.  The more we take our partner into account in our decisions, the more we learn the art of compromise, the art of co-operation, the art of having all things in common – in our imperfect relationships, love is being perfected.  Hafiz has his own twist on what love’s perfection might look like.  He says, “God and I have become like two giant fat people living in a tiny boat.  We keep bumping into each other and laughing.” P. 171.

Sandwiched between the obvious and the impossible – the practical.  1 John 4:12.  “No one has ever seen God.  If we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is made complete in us.”

God’s love in us looks like us loving one another.  This is working itself out in practical, relational ways every day.  John feels strongly about this and would like for us to get this straight.  Vv. 20-21 “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.  The commandment we have is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” 

Thomas Aquinas was a great theologian of the 13^th century, influencing much of western thought.  He wrote a massive systematic theology.  It must not have been enough to say all he wanted to say.  He also wrote poetry about the practical.

  I said to God, “Let me love you.”

And God replied, “Which part?”

“All of you, all of you,” I said.

“Dear,” God spoke, “you are as a mouse wanting to impregnate a tiger who is not even in heat.  It is a feat way beyond your courage and strength.  You would run from me if I removed me mask.”

I said to God again, “Beloved I need to love you – every aspect, every pore.”

And this time God said, “There is a hideous blemish on my body, though it is such an infinitesimal part of my Being – could you kiss that if it were revealed?”

“I will try, Lord, I will try.”

And then God said, “That blemish is all the hatred and cruelty in this world.” (p. 136)

 

St. Teresa of Avila was in love with God, and she also wrote about this being very practical:

“God’s hands can shape through ours.  And our sounds can somehow echo what God has never said,

For the Divine is really speechless, it is too in love to chat.

The Holy Wind ruffled our hair and caused a lot of commotion:

We think God made some rules

But how can that be true when our souls are really the governor of all.

God’s mind can shape through ours.

Our bodies – and the earth – are as clay.  Is that not so, my dear.

I have a lovely habit: at night in my prayers I touch everyone I have seen that day. 

I shape my heart like theirs and theirs like mine.  (p.283)

 

Another trick of the trade for giving a sermon: how to end.  This one I haven’t quite figured out yet.  How do you end a sermon so as to not give the impression that it’s actually done?  Try not to state something as if it’s the final word, but as if it’s suggestive of all of the other many words that could be said, that will be said, that will be heard as the Spirit continues to speak in each life. 

Possibly review several key images, presenting them in the form of a benediction.  May you know, dear beloved artists, that for you, God will pose.  Go and see if you can be like a giant fat person in a tiny boat with God.  Kiss cruelty and hatred as if it were a tiny blemish on God’s beautiful body.

Possibly restate your point, if you have a point, which in this case we do: “Brothers and sisters, let us love one another, for God is love.”

Or, possibly, when the time feels appropriate, simply back away from the pulpit, trusting that the Holy Spirit will take it from here.

 

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?

 

Things To Keep Open: Doors, Scriptures, Minds – 4/26/09 – Luke 24:36b-48

In the soil around our house we’ve been hoping recently for thousands of little openings to happen.  If anyone saw our backyard around the time that we moved in you know that it needed some love and attention.  A large tree blew down last September during the windstorms of Hurricane Ike, and there were still some branches and cut up limbs in the back half of the yard.  A family who lived there before us had a large playset about equivalent in size to a McDonalds play land that took up a good portion of the front half of the yard and shaded out any possibility of grass growing there.  The playset was gone, but a large bare spot remained.  After doing some general cleaning of the area we used a rototiller, courtesy of Ron Headings, to loosen up the dirt throughout the whole yard.  We spread grass seed, threw out some straw covering, and welcomed the rain that soon came.  Moisture, warmth, some light, and reasonably decent soil is all that’s needed to help open up all these small seeds.  If all goes well they’ll shoot down into the ground with some roots and up into the air to provide a turf for playing for years to come.  Being an amateur at this I’ll be pretty amazed if the whole yard actually comes up with no bare spots, but we’re hoping for something that’s a slight improvement over what was there before.

From Easter to Pentecost, the season we are in right now, a similar kind of opening is happening for the disciples.  The risen Jesus has this limited time to open up his followers to the reality of the life of the Spirit, to crack the shell of their disbelief, and put them in a position where they can take firm root and thrive and grow.  The process of being cracked open is not an easy one for the disciples to undergo.  It is met with fear, doubt, and unknowing.     

In the story from Luke, Jesus’ appearance to the disciples the evening of the resurrection, we can note three different openings taking place.  Let’s consider each of these:          

Open Doors. 

Luke doesn’t emphasize this as much as John, but if we take John’s witness into account we are told that the disciples’ initial encounter with the risen Christ happens behind closed doors, or, locked doors to be more precise.  They had found themselves a relatively safe place to huddle together so they wouldn’t be found out as members of the Jesus movement.  But then, at some point in their huddling, Jesus came and stood among them.  Luke and John do agree on Jesus’ initial words to them.  “Peace be with you.”  They also agree on the theme of Jesus’ parting message to them – The Spirit of God will come to you, and you’re going to open wide these doors and start doing my work everywhere you happen to be, even in the far corners of the world.  It’s quite a shift.  Quite a change in how to approach life. 

Living with the doors open means the disciples will encounter people and situations they couldn’t anticipate or plan for.  Like Peter and John who cross paths with the man lame from birth on their way to the temple.  Or Phillip who had a run-in with the treasury secretary of Ethiopia, the eunuch who was on his way to Jerusalem to worship.  Or later when Peter starts walking through the doors of Gentile homes, and discovering that the Holy Spirit shows up in all sorts of off the map kinds of places.  In the power of the Spirit the disciples go from being closers and lockers of doors, to being door openers.

There are a number of practices that we think of as being spiritual disciplines: prayer, bible study, journaling, fasting.  One to add to this list could be the discipline of keeping the door open.  A practice that helps form and shape us.     

Most of our days are most likely spent behind closed doors.  Doors at home, doors at work, and doors on the cars that transport us from home to work.  We could even include the doors of the church.  Our job, our mission is to find ways to make all those doors be open doors through which people are welcome to walk.  When we welcome people into our home, or into our office, there is a sense in which we are welcoming Christ.  All who pass through the door make the place holy ground.  We break bread together, we share thoughts and stories.  We collaborate on projects.  We welcome in those we love and those who are difficult to love, and those we barely know.  The book of Hebrews picks up on this theme.  It says, “Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”  The experience of the risen Jesus, and the gift of the Holy Spirit had the effect of enabling the disciples to recognize that everyone who crossed their path was in some way a piece God.  Open doors enable Christ to wander in and find welcome.    

It’s not such a good idea to drive with the door open, but one possibility of opening the door in our act of getting from one place to another is to walk or bike whenever possible.  My commute is such that it would actually take longer for me to get in the car, start it up, stop at the stop sign, park, get out, lock up, and go around to the sidewalk.  Even though it has doubled since our move, it’s still a short walk, and I’m amazed at the little encounters that happen on it.  I find that there are open doors of relationship that wouldn’t be there if I were to drive past them.  I encounter neighbors to talk with, flowers to observe, and trash to pick up.  Anytime there is a chance to remove a door between us and our environment it opens us up to these relationships.  One less barrier.       

Keeping the door open gives us less control over who or what may come across our paths.  But each encounter offers the possibility of the same kind of exchange that happened between Jesus and the disciples:  “Peace be with you” we say to whoever we encounter.  Peace be with you, we here echoed back. 

Open Scriptures

Luke 24:45 says “Then Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures.”  In this case, scriptures, of course, means the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament.  The Law, the prophets, and the Psalms and Writings.  Something recorded by previous generations about their encounter with God that the disciples and others of the time had available to them.  Tellling about creation, covenants, teachings, sayings of wisdom, praising and lamenting.  Expressing longings for justice.  Telling the story of the people of Israel who move from slavery to wilderness to promised land, through judges and kings and wars and prophets and exile.   

All of this, Jesus opens up to them.  They already know what it says.  Have heard the stories from their youth.  Perhaps memorized whole chunks of passages as was more common in oral cultures.  They already were plenty familiar with these scriptures.  But with Jesus in the room, this time, they see scripture as if for the first time. 

What is going on here is just as instructive for us as it was for the disciples.  What is being offered is a particular way of reading history.  Of reading scripture.  For the disciples, at this time, or over however long of a period of time it took to sink in, the suffering Christ, the one who identified with the least of these, the dying and rising Jesus for whom death was not the end, becomes the primary narrative of every narrative.  The life of Jesus becomes the primary way of reading every other life, every part of scripture.  In other words, we read everything from now on as if Jesus is in the room.  The New Testament reads everything as if he had always been in the room.  He was in the room at creation, the word that was to become flesh, as John’s gospel says.  He was in the room when Abraham was promised that his offspring would become a blessing to all nations.  He was in the room when Jeremiah spoke about a new covenant that God would write on the people’s hearts.  He was in the room when Isaiah spoke about the servant of the Lord who was anointed to preach good news to the poor.  And his presence then and now effects how we see things.  About who turns out to be the hero and who turns out to be the ones who are off target, on the fringe.  The lowly and weak of each story turn out to have much more in common with Christ than the mighty and powerful.  Certain codes and laws that served to separate the righteous from the unrighteous turn out to be less important and certain acts of kindness and compassion turn out to be signs of good news, even if they happen outside of the boundaries of Israel or the certain religious expressions that came to be accepted as the norm.         

We have come to call this a Christo-centric reading of Scripture.  Christ becomes the organizing principle through which all teachings are interpreted.

And so if it remains that Jesus is in the room, then it affects how we interpret our culture.  How we read the events going on around us.  When you read the daily paper, or listen to the news on NPR, how do you hear it differently knowing that Jesus is in the room? 

Open Minds

In some ways, talking about open minds is a little redundant after talking about open doors and open scriptures.  Luke does pair open minds and open scriptures together when he says that “Jesus opened their minds to understand the scripture.”  It might be something like the proverbial chicken and the egg question – which comes first?  The open door or the open mind?  The open mind or the open scriptures? 

It could be the case that the open mind comes first, and leads us toward open doors and open scriptures.  Having an open mind is a fairly common phrase that we toss around these days.  And a lot of people seem to agree that it’s a good kind of mind to have.  Open-mindedness may be enough of a catch-all term that we don’t put a lot of thought into what it actually requires to have an open mind.  Does open minded just mean liberal?  Can one be an open-minded conservative?  I was challenged this week to think more deeply about what it means to have an open mind, and I’m thinking that it means something beyond these things.  Beyond ideology.  Beyond where we come down on any particular political or theological issue.

Having an open mind could be another way of saying that we are listening.  We are listening, and we’re willing to take in new ideas, old ideas, those who differ from us and those who agree.  There’s room to allow all those things inside of us.  We can hold that tension.  The boundary between where I end, and not-I begins is an open boundary.  We keep a particular identity, but we recognize that identity to be fluid.  To be incomplete.  To be needing more.  An open mind receives the Spirit of God.        

It could also be the case that open doors and open scriptures come first, and only then can the mind really open.  I like the way this works because it puts us in the place of our actions shaping our thoughts.  Rather than thinking our way to right action, we act our way to right thinking.  We keep our doors open, we allow Christ to open the scriptures to us, and this shapes our thinking.  The people we encounter, the ways we discover Christ present around us, open up new ways of thinking and new ways of seeing the world.  We have to deal with unexpected relationships, unanticipated conversations.  Our minds must adapt, be flexible. 

In this season of spring and Easter resurrection we look for the ways that we are being opened up.  Cracked open, growing, receiving the Spirit of God.