September 6, 2015

Sermon September 6, 2015 ‘Creation’ - Worship in the Woods

Genesis 1:1 – 2:4 Jerusalem Bible

Elaine Pryce, A Quietness Within: The Quiet Way as Faith and Spirituality, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #434, Pendle Hill Publications, 2015, pps. 7-10.

James Weldon Johnson, God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, Penguin Books, 1927.

Explanation of poem ‘The Creation’; http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/johnson/creation.htm

Pastor Ruthie Tippin, Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

 Ask people to read portions of the scripture reading for the day, one person per ‘day’.

 We have begun worship today in stillness… but it was not silent.  Instead, it was filled with a cacophony of sounds all around us.  Gathering in the woods today, we hear faint sounds of humankind, but we also are much more aware than usual of birdsong, wind rush, cracking twigs, leaves dancing.

 Scripture as we know it begins with the mystery of a formless void shrouded in darkness called ‘the heavens and the earth’. But the void, or space, was not empty… it was filled with God’s presence and power... ‘God’s spirit hovered over the water’, as scripture describes it… ‘a bird hanging in the air, watching over its nest full of young.’ [Deuteronomy 32]

This is seen in the creation story – God fills the silence and void with Godself – first showing who God is with light, then sea and dry land, vegetation – filled with life bearing fruit and seeds hidden inside, sun and moon creating times and seasons, creatures for sea, sky and land, and finally… man and woman.  God saw Godself in all of creation… light that lives with but is never overcome by darkness; powerful, fluid movement and strong, firm foundation; life that recreates life and holds life within itself; times and seasons unending; sustenance for heart, soul, mind, strength; and best of all – companionship.  Presence.  Just as Eve was present to Adam and Adam was to Eve, so God was to them, for them, in them.  God revealed.  They revealed God to one another.  Made in God’s image, they showed each other what God was like. God present in humankind.  ‘God saw all that God had made, and indeed it was very good.’

 How often are you and I willing to start in emptiness, and allow God to create – to recreate – Godself in us?  How many times have you or I allowed God’s Spirit to hover over us, like an eagle over its nest full of young dependent offspring, waiting for God to fill us?  How often have we hauled our own vegetation, our own water supply, our own calendar of times and seasons with us into our relationships with others, without waiting to see what God has to reveal to us?  If we, as Quakers, as Friends, truly acknowledge the power of God’s presence; if we understand God as one who speaks directly to us without need for any intercessor;  if we acknowledge God as having spoken the world into creation; why do we not allow more stillness, more openness in our lives, for the experience of recreation?  It’s a mystery.

Elaine Pryce is a Friend in the United Kingdom, and has recently been published in a Pendle Hill Pamphlet entitled “A Quietness Within: The Quiet Way as Faith and Spirituality”.  I want to share a bit of what Elaine has to say about mystery with you this morning: ‘Mystery itself is what we know we don’t know.  Sometimes, mystery is what we can’t know, given the limitations of this human plane. “Can you fathom the mysteries of God?” Job asks in the Bible, “Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens. What can you do? They are deeper than the depths of the grave. What can you know?” [Job 11:7-9]  For the quietist, this not knowing expresses a quality of the sacred.  Its hiddenness, its mystery lives ever present, like a seed within the earth… waiting for optimal conditions to germinate, to be revealed.

Mystery in its sacred sense, also suggests another kind of not knowing – an attentive, conscious unknowing.  Mystery is a letting go of everything we think we know about God.  Whatever we perceive God to be, whatever meaning we invest in the word “God”, conscious unknowing means releasing our hold on our perceptions and images of God in order to let God be who God is.  This is equivalent to a voluntary step into the transforming dark in order to make our faith more real.

 A Kenyan friend, studying African creation myths, told me of a myth describing this transition from imaging the divine to a more authentic experience.  At the beginning of time, God created the earth, its creatures, and humankind.  However, humans would not let God be.  They made constant requests, petitions, and complaints.  Finally one night when they were sleeping, a wearied God decided to leave.  When the people awoke and discovered God’s absence they ran about in panic, calling for God to return.  But after a while, they realized something had changed.  Everything around them, the earth, the night sky, the creatures of the earth, even themselves, had acquired a sublime beauty.  God had gone, yet only to be present in a different way than they had envisaged.

 Previously, God had been created by the people in the image of utility, shaped to fit the stockpile of their own needs.  As if peering down the wrong end of a telescope, they had missed the more expansive, more paradoxically truthful view they came to realize later.  God in absence is yet present as God truly is.  God, spirit, the eternal, is Presence itself.  Moreover, in this Presence, in God-being, they were enabled to be present to each other as human-being reflecting God-being.  As Quakers say, “There is that of God in everyone.” Or to put it another way, there is that of everyone in God.  The American writer Annie Dillard, after an experience of mystical insight, aptly describes this process of conceptual transfiguration: “It was as if God had said, ‘I am here, but not as you have known me.”

The early Quaker George Fox recorded a similar life-changing shift in onsciousness.  The realignment of consciousness was so profound and life changing for him that he was never the same angst-filled, desperate-for-answers, pacing-about-the-countryside, Leicestershire lad again.  Following the torment and struggle of letting go of one kind of God – the God of the intellect – he found another.  He was astounded by the encounter.  For him, this was the Christ within, the very one, he said who could “speak to my condition”.  “My heart did leap for joy,” he wrote in his journal.  The heart for Fox became a metaphor for a centered inwardly focused faith – that is, a consciousness-changing faith.  Soon after his initial transformation experience, he was to write in 1653 of the “mystery’ of the second birth.  By this he meant a spiritual rebirth, a new realization in the individual which accesses knowledge of God, who exists both beyond and before the advent of time.  This mystery he connected to silence and to a God who is accessible through the way of stillness and peace.  He later defined ‘the stillness and quietness in the pure spirit of God” as a condition which allows the mystery – the “veiled” and “hidden” things of God – to be revealed in a new kind of spiritual consciousness.”

Creation then, is not a matter of six or seven 24 hour periods, of getting the order correct in reciting the first account in Genesis, or of knowing science or scripture well, for that matter.  It is really unknowing, and allowing God to fill the void in your heart and mine… in your spirit and mine… with Godself.  With what God has of Godself to do and to be.  With what God wants us to experience in recreating ourselves time and time again, in a transformative relationship with One who is present.

 “…we can only really know God by experience – that is, by experiencing the fundamental being and character of God, which is pure love and Presence itself.  As George Fox wrote in his letters to Quaker groups, God is accessible only through experiencing, and this occurs in the silence, when all words – all definitions, all thoughts, all rational intricacies – have ceased.  We need to enter a new world of being, he wrote, a world of silence before God; to die to our own natural wisdom, reasonings, and understandings, so that we can experience the life of God within.” [Elaine Pryce]

Reading: ‘The Creation’; James Weldon Johnson, 1922(scroll down for poem)

The Creation

 And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely--
I'll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That's good!

Then God himself stepped down--
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas--
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed--
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled--
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again, 
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That's good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun, 
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I'm lonely still.

Then God sat down--
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky, 
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

August 16,2015

Sermon 8-16-2015;‘Worshipping, Caring, and Witnessing’

Psalm 96 and 100                                           

The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, Stephen W. Angell, Pink Dandelion, editors;

Oxford University Press, 2013.

Wilmer Cooper, The Nature of the Friends Meeting, No Time But This Present, FWCC, 1965.

Pastor Ruthie Tippin, Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

What is it that makes Friends meetings matter?  What is the new song that we sing to the Lord that stands out from the songs of other faith communities? How do we declare God’s glory differently than others?  What do people find here that they haven’t found in any other place?  What is it that holds people in Quaker faith, rather than moving on to other practices of faith?  It would be fascinating to hold a forum discussion with all of you about this, if we had time this morning.  Perhaps we need to make time for this soon!  

Quaker institutions mattered to Wilmer Cooper.  He was one of the founders, and the first Dean of Earlham School of Religion, the Friends Seminary in Richmond, IN.  He served with Friends Committee on National Legislation.  He served Quakers in many, many ways.  But the most important place in Quakerism to him was the local Friends Meeting… a place just like First Friends Meeting.  He considered local meetings to be the seedbed, where Quakerism must be tended if Friends are to continue to bear fruit. 

In a paper he wrote in preparation for the 4th World Conference of Friends in 1967, Cooper wrote “If the Society of Friends is to experience renewal and growth in our day it must begin with the rekindling of the local meeting… It is the business of such a fellowship to nurture a caring community of loving concern for one another, to listen to what God has to say and to respond in obedience to him, and to proclaim a message of hope to a world which is characterized by estrangement and alienation.  Such should be the nature and purpose of a Friends meeting.”

To listen and respond in obedience to God, to nurture loving concern for one another, and to proclaim a message of hope to the world.  These are the things Cooper advances for our Meetings.  I daresay they’re a great rubric for any faith group, and I’d like to explore what they look like especially for us – for First Friends.

In earlier times, when scriptures were not available to those other than the clergy (and most persons were not able to read), Bible stories were told in stained glass.  Windows were openings to God… heroes of the Old and New Testaments surrounded us as we gathered to learn of God’s power, love, and intention.  By the time Quakers were formed in the 1650’s, the King James Bible had been printed in the language of its people, and most persons knew it well.  Professor Stephen Angell writes: “George Fox knew the Bible thoroughly and used it lavishly – its words, phrases, images, and stories flood Fox’s speaking and writing.  Those who knew Fox well mused that if all the copies of the Bible were lost, the whole of its text could be recovered from Fox’s memory.” 

Friends no longer needed stained glass to speak of God’s stories… they knew God’s stories well.  They read them, heard them, told them to each other.  And… they listened to Christ teach them, Himself.  Their meetinghouses were spare – their windows clear – their hearts open and expectant, as they waited silently, listening for Christ to speak, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Wilmer Cooper writes: “Early Friends made little use of the word worship.  There was no lack of a sense of the presence of God in their midst, and a corresponding sense of adoration and praise; but their main preoccupation was with “waiting upon the Lord” in high expectation that he would not only lead them into a deep firsthand experience of his presence, but that in the moment of expectancy he would speak a living word to them.  This kind of worship goes deeper than meditation; it rises to the level of prayer in which man humbly abandons himself to God and becomes teachable before him.”  Early Friends were not waiting for God – they knew God was with them always.  They were waiting on God… waiting until God would speak. They expected God to speak. And they acted on God’s leadings, regardless of the cost.

We celebrate this now, each day in our individual encounters with God’s Spirit.  We experience God each Sunday, each Wednesday evening, each Monday noontime at First Friends when groups gather in worship.  We don’t talk about God. We don’t wait for God.  We talk with, and wait on God. This encounter is what everyone wants... not the description, but the actual experience.  We saw this last Sunday with the illustration of an orange... you can’t really understand an orange, unless you taste it.  The same is true of God… “O taste and see that the Lord is good…” the Psalmist said.  The experience tells you what you need to know of God. To consume God is to commune with God.

The experience of God strengthens and renews us.  It delights us.  Worship reunites us with our love for God, God’s love for us, and our need to follow God.  We are called into loving concern for one another.  Catherine Griffith spoke eloquently two weeks ago about our need to extend hospitality – to always be ready to love, no matter the cost. Dan Moseley spent an entire weekend with us sharing about the work and joy of hospitality.  Wilmer Cooper writes: “One of the most glaring needs of people in our time is to belong to a redemptive and caring fellowship… the burdens of life are too great to be borne alone.  They need to be shared with others who can enter into a redemptive relationship with them, and in so doing bring them into a redemptive relationship with God and man.  The disappointments and tragedies of life are unbearable apart from such a community of those who care deeply.”  If anything, we all need a caring, redemptive place to belong, more than ever.  

“A caring community is both a joyous and a suffering community.  If the members are really knit together in a fellowship of the concerned, they are ready to share the joys of those bound together with them, as well as enter into a suffering relationship with them when they are victims of sadness, adversity, sickness, and death.  It is only as members of the fellowship have genuine empathy for the needs of others and share their lives at a deep level that the reality of New Testament koinonia – fellowship - comes alive.”  [Cooper] For this, I am thankful for each one of you, and the compassion you share with those in our Meeting and beyond, when they are faced with personal and professional struggle.  It is stunning to see what happens among us.  I’m also inspired by our Circle of Care committee, and the kindly work they do to ensure that Friends’ needs are met – whether they are homebound, just discharged from the hospital, grieving the loss of a loved one, needing help around the house… whatever their needs may be.

Culture has scattered us, individualized us, and set us apart – both inside and outside of the Church.  Race.  Immigration.  Abortion.  Sexual Slavery.  Graft.  Sexuality.  War. Violence. These are nothing new.  What happens in the world has, and should have a direct effect on what happens in the church.  The church needs to be ready to respond – just as Jesus did.  The Society of Friends has a greater purpose now than ever before.  We need to remember and rely on the seasoned testimonies of our faith as Friends, honed in Spirit, scripture, and experience: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship.  What a unique and exceptional guiding force for God’s goodness to be make known in our world!  How do we bring hope to the world?  This is just one of the practical ways we do it.  I’m grateful – we all are – for the devotion of our Witness and Service committee toward making change happen in ways that are consistent with Friends testimonies.

Underlying all of this is our understanding of God’s great love and mercy for each person.  That all lives matter… black, brown, white… gay, straight, transgenered… working, out-of-work… old, young… disabled, fully able… Friends understand that ‘that of God’ resides in each person.  God’s redemptive love inhabits every one.  We all swim through the ocean of darkness, and it’s a very scary place… but there is “an ocean of Light which overcomes the ocean of darkness”, and “the power of the Lord” can enable us to overcome meaningless frustration and despair in life.’ These are things Friends have to tell everyone around us.  These are things people will find at First Friends. 

 In a time when Friends meetings are closing for lack of members; when Friends meetings are being cast out because they are too hospitable to people others find unacceptable; in a time when new meetings are being started by those hungry for what Friends have to offer… we have good seeds planted at First Friends.  We have fertile ground to tend.  We have young trees to prune.  We have great oaks to provide us shade.  It is our continuing work to matter to God, to each other, and to the world… to listen and respond in obedience to God, to nurture loving concern for one another, and to proclaim a message of hope to the world. 

August 9,2015

This past Sunday, our Meeting for Worship was full of celebration!  Overman Scholarships were awarded to two fine students: Sam Wilson and Tyler Rodino, both studying at Indiana University.  Our Quaker Affirmation Youth shared about their experiences traveling to Philadelphia, enjoying each others' company, seeing many sites important to Friends history, American history, and worshipping among Friends there.  

Ruthie's abbreviated message focused on the expectant, experiential understanding of worship that is known among Friends... worship is not waiting for God... it is waiting on God to speak into us, and it is ours to take in to ourselves.  God's light, love and peace around us always was affirmed in a liturgical dance, and deep and meaningful waiting worship followed. 

Be blessed, and come join us whenever it is possible.  We would love to share in the gifts of worship you would bring us.

August 2,2015

What can we learn from Sodom and Gomorrah? 

Genesis 19

Catherine Griffith

August 2, 2015

First Friends Indianapolis 

A few weeks ago, during worship, I was sitting over there in what I think of as my spot.  I was enjoying the presentation on recycling and employing people who’ve been in prison, and I was also thinking about what message I might bring today. 

It’s not easy to decide what message to bring.  For one thing, I was a pastor at Valley Mills Friends, off State Road 67 in the southwest corner of Marion County, for 12 years.   I gave a message most weeks, which means close to 600 messages.   Might one of those be appropriate for today? 

Besides those 600 or so messages I’ve already given, I have taught whole semester courses on

·        Christian ethics, Christian sexual ethics (my specialty), Christian environmental ethics, business ethics, bioethics;

·        religious responses to war and violence, world religions, women in religion, religion in America;

·        introduction to the Bible, the New Testament, the Old Testament, and

·        Quakerism.

As I sat there a few weeks ago, I wondered what 15- or 20-minute bit you might want or need to hear.  What might God want me to say to you this morning?  And as I sat there, Genesis 19 popped into my head.  As I pondered that possibility, it seemed to be a leading.  And since then, the message has become clear, so I’m bringing a message this morning on Genesis 19, known as the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. 

As I launch into this message, though, I have to say that Genesis 19 tells kind of a weird story.  I even asked Ruthie, when she emailed me about the scripture passage and title, whether the bulletin ought to contain a warning – that this scripture passage might not be suitable for younger audiences.   It contains sex and violence and sexual violence.   Ready?  J

Before I talk in some detail about the story itself, though, I want to give a bit of context.  (That’s what you get when you ask a teacher to bring a message.)   

Genesis 19 is in, duh, the book of Genesis.  Genesis is the first book of the Bible, and it talks about the very beginning of things.  The first eleven chapters of Genesis is what some call “the Primeval Prologue,” with stories about the creation of the earth, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Noah and the ark, the tower of Babel, along with some genealogies to tie the stories together.  The last part of Genesis 11 is a genealogy of Seth, one of the sons of Noah; and it traces the line from Seth to Abram.  (Part way through the next section, Abram’s name changes to Abraham, and from here on out, I’m going to call him Abraham.)   

The genealogy of Genesis 11 includes a few bits of information that are important for what comes next. 

·        One thing it tells us is that Abraham’s family lived in Ur of the Chaldees, an area near the southeast end of the Fertile Crescent, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, not very far from the present-day city of Baghdad, near the Persian Gulf.

·        The genealogy of Genesis 11 also tells us that Abraham’s father decided to move away from Ur of the Chaldees, and he took with him Abraham, Abraham’s wife (Sarai, who becomes known as Sarah), and Abraham’s nephew Lot.  The original idea was to take the family to the land of Canaan, what is now Israel/Palestine, toward the southwest side of the Fertile Crescent.  That’s where they were headed, but they didn’t get there.  When they got to the top of the crescent, they decided to stay there, in Haran.   [Do an air-map.]

·        And the genealogy tells us another important bit:  Sarah “was barren; she had no child” (Gen. 11:20, NRSV). 

So, at the end of the Primeval Prologue, Abraham and Sarah and Lot are living in Haran. 

Then, so to speak, Genesis turns the page, and Abraham’s story begins.  God spoke to Abraham and said, “Go” (Gen. 12:1).  So Abraham went. 

Genesis 12:5 says, “Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan” (NRSV).

The rest of Genesis, then, is the “Ancestral Story,” the back-story or prehistory of Israel.   The Ancestral Story is organized around the sagas of three major figures:  Abraham, his grandson Jacob, and Jacob’s son Joseph.  Abraham’s saga is told from the end of Genesis 11 into Genesis 25, which puts our story, Genesis 19, pretty close to the middle of Abraham’s story.

One of the central ideas in Abraham’s story is that, from the beginning, God promised Abraham, many descendants:  “I will make of you a great nation” (Gen. 12:3).  “You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations” (Gen. 17:4).  

And the big complicating factor in Abraham’s story is that he was getting old, and his wife was getting old, and they hadn’t had any children.   

The part we’re interested in this morning, though, is tangential to that main story.  The part we’re interested in has to do with Abraham’s nephew Lot. 

We already know Lot was part of the family group that left Ur of the Chaldees, got as far as Haran, and then went on to Canaan.    We also already know that the family wasn’t traveling light – they had lots of stuff, and they had lots of people. 

Genesis 13 tells us that, once they got to Canaan, Lot and Abraham split up.  How come?  Well, livestock was involved.   Abraham had some.  Lot had some.  They had so many “flocks and herds and tents,” says Genesis 13 (vs. 5-6), “that the land could not support both of them living together.”  Besides the problem of the land, Lot’s herders weren’t getting along with Abraham’s herders, so something had to give.  Abraham and Lot talked about the problem, and Abraham said, “Look.  Here’s all this good land.  You go this way, and I’ll go that way.  Or you go that way, and I’ll go this way.  You choose.”    So, says Genesis 13:10, “Lot looked about him, and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord” (NRSV).  So that’s what he chose – Lot went that way, and Abraham went the other way.  “… Lot settled among the cities of the Plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom” (Gen. 13:12). 

About now, you might imagine music signaling danger rising in the background.   That’s because, despite the well-watered plain, things weren’t all coming up roses in Sodom.   It was kind of like one of those planets on Star Trek where it looks like the Garden of Eden, but something is terribly wrong.  Genesis 13:13 says, “Now the people of Sodom were wicked.”  Hear that music?  J

Abraham’s story moves along, with that big problem – a promise of lots of descendents but no children. 

·        Maybe we should adopt?  Nope.  (Gen. 15:1-6)

·        Let’s try surrogate motherhood.  Not such a good idea.  (Gen. 16) 

God finally told Abraham, “Look.  You’re going to have a kid with your wife, Sarah.  The kid’s name will be Isaac, and he will be born within the year.  Everything is going to be cool” (Gen. 17:15-22).

One afternoon, not long after that, Genesis 18 says, Abraham was hanging out in the shade near the opening of his tent, when he had a visitor.  The text sometimes says God visited. Sometimes it says three men visited, or maybe they were three angels.  The text isn’t clear. 

Abraham’s response to the visitors is clear though.  He went out to meet them, bowed, offered to bring water to wash their feet, and offered them some food. 

“Sounds good,” said the visitors.  So Abraham hurried off, and told Sarah to whip up some biscuits, while he went to some meat and have someone cook it.  Over the meal, the men (or God or angels) predict that Sarah will have a son.  Soon. 

After the meal, the men (or God or angels) head toward Sodom, and Abraham goes part of the way with them.   

Genesis 19 begins, “The two angels came to Sodom.”   

Lot went to meet the visitors, and, like his Uncle Abraham, offered them hospitality. 

They said, “That’s OK, we’ll just spend the night in the town square.” 

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Lot said.  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea at all.” 

The visitors got the message and accepted Lot’s offer of dinner and a place to sleep at his house. 

After dinner but before bedtime (danger music rising), the men of Sodom banged on Lot’s door.  “Hey, Lot!  We want your visitors.” 

Lot went out, closing the door behind him.  “That’s no way to treat visitors.  Hey, I’ve got an idea.  How about my two daughters?  I’ll bring them out, and you can have your way with them.”   I know!  

The men of Sodom were having none of it.  “Who does this Lot think he is, moving into town, telling us how to live?  We’ll teach him!”  Then they surged forward so ferociously that they almost broke the door down. 

The visitors inside quickly opened the door, grabbed Lot, pulled him into the house, slammed the door shut, and struck the men of Sodom blind.  Inside, the visitors told Lot to get out of town because they were going to destroy the city.  “You have anyone you want to take with you? “  Maybe….  Lot checked.  Nope, no one wanted to go. 

In the morning, things were set, ready to go, but Lot dawdled.  “Get going!” the men/angels urged.  And finally, Lot left with his wife and daughters.

Sulfur and fire destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.  Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt.  Lot and his daughters went on and lived in a cave in the hills.  Then, as one scholar put it, “Mistakenly assuming that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was so total that there is no one else on earth by whom to have children [and so secure for them a future], Lot’s daughters get their father drunk so that he will conceive with them” (NOAB, 39n).   

That’s the story.   What lessons can we learn from such a story?   [Pause a moment.] 

Some people say that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah gives scriptural support for condemnation of homosexuality.  One denominational document says, “There can be no doubt of the moral judgment made [in Genesis 19] against homosexual relations” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” 5).

But is that what’s going on here?   I say no, it isn’t.   

For one thing, it would be hard to believe that every single man in Sodom was gay.

For another thing, what the men in the city of Sodom had in mind wasn’t same-sex marriage.  What they had in mind was gang rape.   

For yet another thing, if we take this story to condemn same-sex relationships, then does the story say it’s OK to give one’s daughters over to a mob for gang rape?  Really?  And incest is OK too?  Really?

So if that’s not the lesson, what lesson might we learn from this story?   

Here is one possibility.

About 1200 years after the time of Abraham and Lot, the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel talked in explicit terms about what was wrong in Sodom.  Ezekiel was writing in a time when the whole nation of Israel had been destroyed, and he was explaining what had gone wrong.  Ezekiel’s message from God to the people of Jerusalem was that they were worse than Sodom.  How so?  Ezekiel 16:49 says, “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom:  she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” 

Pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease with no compassion for those in need.  According to Ezekiel, the lesson we should learn from Genesis 19 is that we ought to walk humbly and practice mercy. 

Here’s another possibility.

The Gospel of Luke mentions Sodom in chapter 10.  There, Luke describes Jesus sending out pairs of his followers in traveling ministry.  Jesus told the pairs not to provide for their journey:  “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals” (Luke 10:4). 

Instead, they were to depend on the hospitality offered them:  “Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you’” (Luke 10:8-9).  If no one in a town offered hospitality, they were to walk away.  And, Jesus says, “I tell you, on that day [that is, when God holds people accountable], it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.” 

The suggestion in the Gospel of Luke, then, is that the sin of Sodom has to do with their lack of hospitality to the visitors.  The men of Sodom should have offered food and lodging rather than abuse. 

According to Jesus in Luke’s account, then, the lesson we should learn from Genesis 19 is that we are to offer hospitality rather than, as someone put it, “callous disregard for human dignity” (Grippo, “The Vatican Can Slight Scripture for Its Purpose” in The Vatican and Homosexuality, 34).   

Even if we were to take Genesis 19 fairly literally, it doesn’t condemn same-sex relationships.  And our insistence that it does, as one Christian ethicist suggests, “has obscured the witness of the passage against sexual violence” (Patricia Jung, “The Promise of Postmodern Hermeneutics,” in Sexual Diversity and Catholicism, 81).    

So that’s another lesson we could learn from Genesis 19:  we ought not practice or condone sexual violence. 

One book, which came out in the late 1970s, is titled, Is the Homosexual my Neighbor?  The authors assert with some conviction, “… the Sodom story says nothing at all about the homosexual condition” (62).  Rather, it applies to all of us, suggesting that we “should show hospitality to strangers, should deal justly with the poor and vulnerable, and should not force … sexual attentions upon those unwilling to receive them” (ibid.).  

If we assume Genesis 19 is about same-sex relationships, we miss these other lessons.  And, by the way, the answer to the question is, yes.  LBGTQ people are our neighbors, sometimes literally.  And what do we owe our neighbors?  Love.  “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

I want to say somewhat firmly that being a Christian does not require us to take a moral stand against same-sex relationships.  Being a Christian does require us to love our neighbors (maybe even to those who take a moral stand against same-sex relationships, just sayin’), to show hospitality to strangers, to deal justly with the poor and vulnerable, and to treat people with respect.

Besides these lessons, I have to say something about Lot’s daughters.  In this story, when Lot offers his daughters to the men of Sodom, he is treating them like property, not as persons deserving of respect.   To be clear, such attitudes toward daughters and toward women are part of our tradition – not so much the Quaker tradition, but definitely part of the Christian tradition. 

And, as President Obama said recently, “Treating women as second-class citizens is a bad tradition. … There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence." —President Obama in Kenya: http://go.wh.gov/Ko3xvP 

Yes, the way those daughters treated Lot wasn’t good either.   I tend to give them some slack because, in that culture and their situation, they believed they didn’t have any other options.  To a great extent, they were right.  The only way they had to provide themselves a future was to have children.  That’s part of what happens when we treat women as second-class citizens – we take away options that would otherwise be available for full human flourishing. 

Daughters matter.  Women matter.  LBGTQ people matter.  

What can we learn from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah?  We need to love our neighbors, show hospitality to strangers, deal justly and mercifully with the poor and vulnerable, and treat people with respect.

In the spirit of John Woolman, let us examine our hearts and lives, and try whether the seeds of oppression have nourishment in us (allusion to BYM, 23.16).

July 26,2015

Sermon 7-26-2015; ‘Today, Tomorrow’

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/6753/7227

Elise Boulding, The Joy That is Set Before Us, William Penn Lecture 1956, www.quaker.org

http://www.indianahistory.org/our-collections/reference/early-black-settlements/washington-county#.VbRIiFVViko

Ruthie Tippin, Pastor, Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

 Weep - Laugh.  Mourn - Dance.  Keep - Toss.  Love - Hate.  The writer of Ecclesiastes charms us, and disarms us with this long list of couplets.  There’s a lot of space in our lives between mourning and dancing.  There’s a lot of work in our lives between keeping and throwing away.  There’s a lot of distance in our lives between love and hate.  There’s a lot of time in our lives between birth and death.  What do we do with that space?  That work?  That distance?  That time?

 The Jerusalem Bible reads this writing as, “I know there is no happiness for man except in pleasure and enjoyment while he lives.  And when man eats and drinks and finds happiness in his work, this is a gift from God.”  This person sees life now… a present act.  Not the past or the future, but life in the present, and understands the present as a gift. It doesn’t work to say, “I will be happy tomorrow.”  There is pleasure to be found in today… in the basic necessities of life – what he eats, what he drinks.  Thanks be to God.  His work?  He must find happiness, even in his work, and when he does, he discovers God’s gift of presence. 

 The very fact that he has to search for happiness tells us that it isn’t always there! What a relief!  I might have thought the writer was named “Pollyanna” and not “The Preacher”.  No one is happy always, or happy about all things. 

 Elise Boulding was a Quaker sociologist and author, and she wrote this:  ‘In our world the average Christian contents himself with a more temporal happiness. For the real difference between happiness and joy is that one is grounded in this world, the other in eternity.’ The Preacher in Ecclesiastes would agree… we are grounded in this world. “All that man does is appropriate for its time, but though God has permitted us to consider time in its wholeness, we cannot comprehend the work of God from beginning to end.”  

Boulding, again: ‘Happiness cannot encompass suffering and evil. Joy can. Happiness depends on the present. Joy leaps into the future and triumphantly creates a new present out of it.’

 Present – Future.  Mourning – Dancing.  Death – Life.  Washington County, Indiana was founded two hundred years ago.  Quakers arrived in 1808 and founded Blue River Friends Meeting.  Others had been pouring in – part of the territorial expansion of the time.  We are not certain how many people of color arrived in the county, but we know that many came and lived in at least half of the townships there.  Among them was John Williams.  John was a freed slave who lived on a tract of one hundred sixty acres that he purchased from John Reyman, Sr.  Mr. Reyman held a mortgage on the farm for a time but John paid it off rapidly. He cleared fields, built a cabin and raised sufficient grain to fatten many hogs and cattle each year until the time of his death. By any standard of the day – John Williams became wealthy.  Perhaps it was his wealth.  Perhaps it was the color of his skin.  No one knows for sure, but it’s likely that both things put John’s life at risk.  He was murdered in 1863, and no one was ever convicted of the crime.

What did John do with the space of his life?  The time, cut short?  The distance he traveled?  The work he did – as a slave, and as a freed man?  He lived in the now, for the future.  He worked in the now, for the future.  Even though he could not know his ending, he considered his time in its wholeness.  He considered his present, a gift.

John wrote a will, with the help of his Quaker friend, Mr. Lindley, who agreed to serve as the executor and trustee of John’s estate… at the time of his death it was worth $6000.00  (Today, that would be nearly $150,000.00)  John Williams directed his monies to be used for the education of young black children.  Soon after his death, in 1870, the Home for Friendless Colored Children was opened in Indianapolis by Quakers at 319 West 21st Street at the crossroad with Senate Street.  ‘When it opened, it was the only orphanage in the state of Indiana to care for African American children.  At the end of the home’s first year, it had housed 18 children.  By 1922, it had sheltered more than 3000.  Although most of the children came from the Indianapolis area, the orphanage accepted children from all over Indiana.  In 1922, the management of the orphanage changed hands.’ The closing balance became the basis of the Friends Educational Fund – a scholarship fund for black college students – administered by First Friends Meeting.  Today, we will honor 24 recipients of the Scholarships for 2015. 

 John Williams never married.  He never had children of his own.  But, by living his life both in the present, and in the future, he has given countless children a home, an education, a future.  Living his life as a gift, made his life a gift to many, many others. The happiness of his present life could not anticipate its evil end.  But John made way for joy to leap forward into the future, in triumph!  For 145 years, young black children have been educated.

Do you think it would have benefitted John Williams to know the ending of his life?  Do you think John needed to know all that God did about beginnings and endings?  Perhaps it’s enough to have a sense of the past and the future, and live in the promise of things to come… to live a life of faith in things not yet seen.  To live in the space between the present we have and the gift not yet received.  Let us trust that God has made everything suitable for its time… that Presence between the present and the gift.

 Now, we enter that time of communion after the manner of Friends, when we continue to feast on the Word of Life that is Christ.  ‘There is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.’  I ask you to honor it…please wait in silence for a time of centering before anyone speaks.  If God brings you a message meant for you alone, hold it, and use it to move you closer to God, our Inward Teacher.  If God brings you a message for the Meeting, be obedient to share it, carefully and tenderly.

July 5, 2015

Sermon 6-5-2015; ‘Bound for Freedom’

2 Corinthians 3:7-17, Jeremiah 31:31-34

Ruthie Tippin, Pastor, Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

This weekend, we as Americans celebrate our independence – we declare our independence once again from all powers that would bind us to themselves.  We are an independent nation, secured by liberty, blood, brilliance, and the courage of many who have and still work to maintain our freedom.  We need to remember to be thankful, always, for the gift of freedom.  Many people in the world today do not enjoy the freedoms we have.  Which we why we have so many people, the ‘tired, the poor – the hungry masses yearning to breathe free’ – wanting to come to America.  It is also why we need to remember that it is only through God’s grace that we are here, and not in some other country around the world.

Many of us, living in a free society, are still bound.  Bound by things our legislatures, our courts, our government cannot change.  Bound by internal chains our Creator never intended us to wear.

The scripture reading this morning is full of opposites – the ministry of death and the ministry of spirit; Moses’s glory and God’s glory, veiled and unveiled faces, things set aside and things permanent.  These things lead us to freedom – within and without.  

What was chiseled in those stone tablets, anyway? Commandments, laws, rules for making and holding together a community of people who had been freed from slavery; people used to being ruled, not used to self-determination. This covenant, this binding promise came from God, out of love for God’s people, to Moses, who saw God in God’s glory.  Once Moses saw God, his face shone with the glory of God’s presence.  He had to cover his face, because God’s people were so amazed at his appearance… they couldn’t concentrate on what he had to say.

A revolution has happened.  Just as the American Revolution brought freedom from the rule of England, the advent of Christ has brought freedom from the ministry of death and condemnation.  King George had given security and nurture in the very early days of the Colonies as they learned to govern themselves.  The commandments and rules for the priesthood and God’s people did the same. Once, they and we, were condemned by the law – by what we did and did not do.  Now, through Christ, they and we, are made just, affirmed, validated – not by what we did or did not do, but by what Christ did and did not do.

God’s radiance - the glory, presence, and power that was great in the time of Moses is much greater now in the time of Christ.  The old covenant – the commandments, laws, rules have been set aside, now fulfilled by Christ. 

Whenever the books of the law – the Torah – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are read, they are made clear to us. They are not veiled in misunderstanding.  We are not overwhelmed by God’s glory shining forth from Moses’ face.  Why?  Because we ourselves participate in God’s wonderful glory!  We know what it is like to be in God’s holy presence just as Moses did… to speak to God directly, to spend time with God, to listen, to write, to sing, to breathe, to wonder, to walk. 

‘When one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.’  It’s in the turning that understanding comes.  Turning from the old to the new.  Turning away from old ways of thinking and being, to new ways of seeing and believing.  Turning from Moses to Jesus – from law to love.

When my husband Jon was in medical school we lived on “Pill Hill”… a high hill in Portland, Oregon near the school’s hospital complex, in a tiny old house, that leaked air like an old balloon.  I remember the corrugated plastic door that closed off Jon’s study from the rest of the house - it would blow in and out with the wind…  Those were the days!  We had a cat named Boots that had gotten hit by a car.  He was never the same again.  If Boots needed to turn left, he would turn to the right and go all the way around until he was headed left.  He couldn’t turn left without turning right.

Some of us are stuck trying to turn.  We can’t figure out how to make that work.  It’s not that we’ve been hit by a car… we’ve been hit by a covenant.  Moses chiseled the commands of God – what Paul called the ministry of death – into stone.  And that stone is killing us.  At least, it’s causing us to be bound to one place; one way of seeing, one way of knowing, one way of experiencing life, faith, hope, love, the future.   We are so used to being ruled by rules, so used to desert dwelling, that we can only see God’s glory reflected in others’ faces, and not our own.’

The prophet Jeremiah spoke this wonderful promise into the world, long ago:

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”  Jeremiah 31:31-34

God calls himself the husband… not the master, not the leader, but puts himself in a relationship of intimacy with his people.  And where does he write the law?  Not in stone, but in their hearts.  It’s a law of love… love made flesh.  Law meant to be lived in love.  And how did he do this?  Through the life and example of Christ.  

Jesus invited us to love each other, but some of us forget that he also asked us to love ourselves.  To remember that God loves us, and forgives us, and we are freed to forgive ourselves.  That God transforms us, and sees us as transformed, and that when God sees us, God sees God’s love in us.  This is why Quakers believe that there is ‘that of God’ in each person… we have found it true in our own, individual lives.  If it is true in me, it is true in you.  And if it is true in you and me, it is true in each and every person. But you don’t see this, unless you turn…

‘Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces (because we have turned to the Lord) seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.’  When we look in a mirror, we no longer see ourselves… we see transformation.  We see law turned into love.  We see God’s glory.  We see God’s Spirit.  We see one another being transformed into the image of God’s glory.  ‘Oh say, can you see?’

June 28th 2015

Affirmation Sunday

June 28th, 2015

Beth Henricks

Christian Education and Family Ministries Director

From the Introduction to Quaker Affirmation A Course of Study for Young Friends

“Through the combined efforts of many within Indianapolis First Friends Meeting, the Quaker Affirmation class was created to inspire our young people, help them explore their spirituality, and connect them to being a Quaker. To be able to affirm that something is true in your life, you have to test it.  To affirm your faith, you have to challenge yourself.  To affirm your faith as a Friend, you need to know what Quakers are all about….or at least, know as much as you can at this point in your life.  This Affirmation Class was offered this past year to our Middle School and High School Youth.  We have provided many different ways of learning about faith as a Friend, and lots of experiences where they have tested their faith.  Over the past ten months, students have explored Quaker history, the testimonies of Friends, the different ways Quakers use to discern God’s voice, Quaker theology, Quaker artists and changemakers, how Quakerism compares to other religions, and their own beliefs and spirituality.  This has been a significant journey for all involved, and our prayer has been that we will all have grown in ways that will change the world and deepen our relationship with God.”

This Affirmation journey began 2 and a half years ago when I had just stepped into the interim position of Christian Education Director.  The Center for Congregations (which is a Lily foundation supported organization that supports faith congregations throughout Indiana) sent an email to the Meeting identifying a grant opportunity for new youth iniatives in congregations in central Indiana.  I walked into Ruthie’s office and said what do you think about this and she began to outline the Quaker Affirmation program that she had been thinking about and developing in her mind for years.  This idea seemed to fit the criteria for the grant and we began developing plans to apply for the grant.

This began the first instance of a large number of volunteers from the Meeting supporting this project.  We had a project team to help develop the Affirmation idea and respond to the grant application.  This team consisted of Jed Kay, Carol Donahue, Barbara and David Blackford, Heather and Ellie Arle, and Ruthie.  With the input of this group, we fleshed out the Affirmation program and submitted the application including a projected budget.

We were approved for the grant in May 2014 for $14,468.  This grant required the congregation to match the Center’s contribution and put a limit on grant funds available for a capital project like renovating our basement (part of our grant application).  We knew that we would need to raise $17,813 from our Meeting.

We created a project team to guide our process to create the Affirmation program, renovate the basement, recruit young people, raise funding and provide support.  This group consisted of Vicki Wertz, Jim Kartholl, Amanda Cordray, Heather and Ellie Arle and Ruthie and we met numerous times over a period of months.

After interviewing several people to hire to develop our curriculum, we selected Vicki Wertz to write the lesson plans for the ten months of the program with both a teacher manual and student manual.  Vicki has done an amazing job in creating this curriculum allowing for a fun icebreaker each lesson, altering learning styles including PowerPoint, group study, interactive discussion, review and reflection time.  She researched many sources of information in many places to bring this together. 

We worked with our team to come up with the outside activities that would complement the lessons of study each month.  We put a fundraising plan in place that included a car wash, working at the Dairy Bar, a Quaker hoedown lunch, sales from coffee and chocolate, a request to our Trustees to help with the renovation of the basement and a direct appeal to the individuals of the Meeting to support this.  The response was overwhelming and we had raised all of our funds before we started the program in September 2014.

Leslie Kartholl led the renovation of our basement into our “youth space”.  The space has really been transformed and I think we all consider it our youth and Affirmation home.

We started with a group of 13 young people between 5th – 10th grades.  Our average attendance during our time together was 10 young people.  We are affirming 11 young people today and this represents a real commitment by our young people and their parents to participate in Affirmation.  Deb Hejl taught 3 lessons, Ruthie taught 3 lessons and I taught 3 lessons.

We spent 2 months studying our Quaker history.  We had a scavenger hunt in the Meeting House (we learned a lot about our Meeting) and traveled to Richmond to visit the Levi Coffin house and had a guided tour of the home and heard the story of this amazing family, how many slaves they saved and how they exhibited the Quaker testimonies in their life. 

We studied the Quaker testimonies and went to Connor Prairie and experienced their program of Follow the North Star where we became slaves and were treated as slaves for an hour until we met a Quaker couple that helped us escape.  This was a ery powerful experience of the testimony of equality.

We examined Quaker theology and had a panel of Jon Tippin, Linda Lineback, Eric Tinsley and Mary Blackburn answer a bunch of tough questions from the kids about the Bible, Jesus, Heaven, Hell etc.  The exchange and thoughtful responses were inspiring.

We studied different forms of Quaker worship and attended North Meadow Circle of Friends unprogrammed Meeting.  We examined Quaker discernment and Meeting for Worship and the young people attended a Meeting for business and presented a new item for business – a youth pastor to build on the connections made through Affirmation and create a youth group in the fall that has been approved and we are working on.

 We studied other religions and how Quakers fit.  We had a number of young people from Daud’s Muslim community join us and invited us to share in their worship.  This was a beautiful and mystical time together as the kids organically sat together over lunch and talked and share.  We asked each other questions about our faith and the kids provided the answers.  We also visited Beth El Zedeck for their Friday evening service and spent quite a bit of time with the Rabbi and Religious Education Director learning about the Jewish faith and traditions.

Leslie Kartholl helped us create our own painting of Pendle Hill as we studied how Quakers express themselves in music, art and writing.

We shared a time with Noah Baker Merrill as we examined what Quakers are doing in the world today and envisioned what we would keep and discard about our Meeting if the kids were in charge.

In 2 weeks we will be traveling to Philadelphia to see Quaker and historical sites and stay at Pendle Hill.  We are excited to share this time together – 9 young people and 6 adults will be making this journey.

Throughout our Affirmation program we have had several visitors join our class including Helen Davenport, Barbara Oberreich, Bill Heitman, David and Barbara Blackford, Duffy Fankboner, Bob Davis and a few others.  Parents provided our lunches and our Christian Education Committee has supported us throughout this adventure.

We are most thankful for the care, encouragement and support of the entire Meeting.  This has been a meaningful experience for all involved. 

I have heard from many different Quaker Meetings and Yearly Meetings interested in this curriculum to offer their young people.  Vicki is working on “generalizing” the curriculum so we can offer it for free as a download to other Quakers. 

Our plan is to offer this again in 2 years.  Thank you all for being part of this incredible journey.  We have all learned much more about what it means to be a Quaker, to examine our faith and beliefs and to experience the presence of God in our lives.

We are now going to ask our Affirmation youth to come forward and share their final projects with the Meeting.  Each young person was asked to create an essay, collage, poem, website etc that expressed what was most meaningful to them during our Affirmation program.

Message from June 14th, 2015

Sermon 6-14-2015 ‘Telephone’

Proverbs 2:1-10

(Listening to One Another)

http://www.articlesforeducators.com/article.asp?aid=4#.VXnbsPlViko; Listening Games And Activities, Copyright 2002 by Carole Elkeles

American Heritage College Dictionary, Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Ruthie Tippin, Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

Proverbs 2:1-10; The Message Bible

1-5 Good friend, take to heart what I’m telling you;
    collect my counsels and guard them with your life.
Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom;
    set your heart on a life of Understanding.
That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
    and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
    like an adventurer on a treasure hunt,
Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;
    you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.

6-8 And here’s why: God gives out Wisdom free,
    is plainspoken in Knowledge and Understanding.
He’s a rich mine of Common Sense for those who live well,
    a personal bodyguard to the candid and sincere.
He keeps his eye on all who live honestly,
    and pays special attention to his loyally committed ones.

9-15 So now you can pick out what’s true and fair,
    find all the good trails!
Lady Wisdom will be your close friend,
    and Brother Knowledge your pleasant companion.

Wow... I hope you heard what was just read.  I hope you heard the richness of that passage.  Scripture tells us of the rich reward of listening.  Not just listening but paying atteniton – listening deeply and well to God’s voice,  that speaks directly into us and through one another.  If you do these things, then God blesses.  If you listen deeply and well, you will discover treasure… treasure enough to share.

"Hey mom; I think I'm going to drop out of school!"
"Ok hon. Just don't forget that dinner is at seven tonight."

‘Doesn't this sound familiar to you? Don't we all do this at one time or another? We hear! We hear the voice! We hear the sound! But are we really listening?’  Carole Elkeles is a retired educator and school principal from Buenos Aires, Argentina and she poses this question in a post for educators… and we all can learn something from her.

The children’s game ‘Telephone’ is a whole lot of fun… but it’s tricky.  It seems simple, but it’s not.  Have you ever played it?  Two cans and a piece of string tied between… One person whispers into a can and the other person listens.  The sound waves of the speaker’s voice travels down the string and you can hear it!!  But what do you hear?  Do you hear everything that’s said, or just part of the message?  Do you hear clearly, or is it garbled and difficult to understand?  It takes a couple of tries for this to work, but when it does, you’re hooked! 

Not just hearing what a person says, but listening carefully and well is important when it comes to making decisions.  Last week, I began a series of messages that will move throughout this summer about decision-making – discernment.  And listening is the first step in discernment.  According to the dictionary, discernment means “the act or process of exhibiting keen insight and good judgment.’  According to the ‘Dictionary of Friends [Quaker] Terms’, discernment is ‘wisdom, to see clearly; to differentiate the truth from other impressions.’  We discovered last Sunday that discernment is the capacity to see… to see clearly the works of God in the midst of human situations.  Insight, judgment, clarity, truth, wisdom, seeing God.  Seeing and listening – understanding clearly.  Why is this important?  So we can align ourselves with God, be where God is, participate with God, experience God, follow God… fully.

Listening to God is the very first step in decision making for Friends, and for First Friends Meeting.  Listening to one another is one of the ways we hear God… and it’s very important that we do it well.  Two cans and a string work… but only when the string is tight. Without tension, the sound waves can’t move clearly through the string.  It’s strange to think of tension as a good thing, but it absolutely is.  Without tension, no sound moves – nothing moves forward.

Our Meeting makes decisions all the time – some with ease, and some with a great amount of tension.    And we have a very good process by which we make decisions.  It’s as old as our Quaker faith, and unlike any other faith community I know.  The entire Meeting is invited – not a Board of Directors, or a small group of Elders – to make decisions together… every month.  But it takes practice – just like playing ‘telephone’ – to make certain the string is tight – that voices are heard, that the tension is helpful, that we are hearing one another properly, making wise decisions well. 

There are three times when a great number of people come to Monthly Meeting for Worship to Conduct Business….

1.      When there’s to be a pastoral change

2.      When there’s a great deal of concern about money

3.      When anything controversial is to be discussed

These three things remind me a lot of when my dad was dying… we lived in Spokane, WA.  Daddy lived in Portland, OR. My sister lived next door to him and was his principal caregiver.  My two brothers lived south in Medford.  Here I come, bustling into town,., “Lets take care of Daddy! I know what to do… let’s do it!  Have you done this?  Let’s be sure to get that done!”  I had all kinds of advice and instructions for the rest of the family about what should be done. Frankly, I wasn’t well practiced in listening to those persons who had been tending my Dad all that time.

Part of being a Quaker is practicing our faith… participating fully in the life of our Meeting – in worship, fellowship, study, stewardship, work and witness, and decision-making.  I looked through eight months of minutes from this past year, and found that on average, 24 persons attend Monthly Meeting each month.  That means that approximately 40 people make most of the decisions for First Friends Meeting.  They are the ones who show up.

Shall we hire a Youth Pastor?  How much should they be paid, and what should be required of them?  Shall we use our building to house a PreSchool Co-Op, and what should we expect from this investment in ministry? Shall we retain the Pastor, or is it time for her to go?  Shall we send monies to support our Quaker witness in Washington DC, and do we trust that our interests as a Meeting are being represented?  Shall we support mission efforts of Friends United Meeting to spread Christ’s message of love to Palestine, Africa, Cuba, Belize, and other Friends ministries around the world? 

Approximately 40 people in our Meeting wrestle with these questions, and listen for God’s voice together at Monthly Meeting. 40 persons know how to play ‘Telephone’.  They have practiced listening together.  They know how to listen to God through each other.  Is there tension?  Yes.  But it’s been finely tuned.  They know how to adjust it, so it resonates well.  They know how to hear God’s voice.

Why don’t more people come?  First of all, you may not feel welcome.  I will say it again, anyone is welcome to come to Monthly Meeting for Worship to Conduct Business – member or attender.  The Clerk of our Meeting serves on Facing Bench that day, and invites you to come every month.  Come and worship.  Come and experience it.  Come and learn how to listen together as we discern what God is saying to us, as a Meeting. I know people who showed up too late for worship, arriving just in time for Monthly Meeting, and that drew them in to Friends.  They wanted to be a Quaker after seeing how we do business.

Some may be afraid of conflict, or just not want to attend any kind of meeting that has to do with business. You place your trust in others, and it is noted and highly respected.

Some may not have time to come, and that is certainly understood.  If you can’t come, but want to participate, remember to speak to the Clerk, to members of Ministry and Counsel, to the clerk of any particular committee that your concern sits in, or to me.  We would be happy to fold your concern in with our own.  If you’re not sure who is whom, check our website or the back pages of your directory... we’re all listed there.

First Friends is currently considering the concern of marriage equality, among many other things, in our Meeting. Any number of you may decide to come to Monthly Meeting, and you are welcome.  But remember… it takes practice to listen together well, and some of you are out of practice.  Be patient with yourselves and with others as we meet.  Those of you who are always there, be gracious and attentive to those who are learning what it means to discern with others – to hear God speaking with you.  The goal of any decision made is that it honors God, and brings us closer to God’s presence and purpose.  What I want, or what you want is not what really matters.  What God wants for our Meeting is what we seek together.

Last Sunday I spoke to you about the “Hokey Pokey”.  Putting our whole selves in.. body, soul, mind and spirit to whatever it is God is calling us to – in both simple and difficult things.  Remember that we have to turn ourselves around in humility and repentance, always paying attention to God’s direction and leading.

Some are burdened about this decision.  Some are really scared about it.  I’m… concerned.  But more than being concerned, I’m excited.  I’m excited to see what God is going to do.  I’m an expectant Quaker.  I’m expecting God to show up, because God always does.  I trust God.  And I trust our Meeting.

You will find an insert in your bulletin describing what it means to participate in Monthly Meeting… we are less formal in some ways than the document describes.  One of the guidelines I appreciate a great deal is the sixth:  ‘When a person speaks in Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business, receive the words as you receive vocal ministry in Meeting for Worship – with an open heart and calm mind.  If you have a strong reaction to something someone has said, sit with it until way is clear for you to speak with patience and compassion.’  I challenge you to review these guidelines, and participate in Monthly Meeting as often as possible.  We meet next Sunday, after worship.  You are most welcome to practice discernment with us.

Please join me in reflection and expectancy as we enter our time of communion after the manner of Friends.  If the Holy Spirit speaks to you with a message meant for you alone, hold it and receive it well.  If God brings a message meant for others, be obedient and share it with us all.  Let us worship now with an open heart and calm mind.

Message from June 7th, 2015

Sermon 6-7-15 “The Hokey Pokey”

Acts 2:42-47

Ruth Haley Barton, Pursuing God’s Will Together – a Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups, Intervarsity Press, 2012.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/decisions-decisions-6430448/

Pastor Ruthie Tippin, Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

‘They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.   Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.’ [Acts 2:42-47]

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There’s an old joke about the psychiatrist who asks his patient if he has trouble making decisions… the patient says, "Well, doctor, yes and no." 

Making a decision is not easy… some people have a hard time making decisions for themselves, let alone for their family.  It’s just that much harder to make decisions in a large group of people.  Each person has their own way of thinking, doing, being…  This is true in any community – whether at work, in our homes, and even in our faith communities. 

Quakers make decisions.  We are good decision makers, and in fact, we’re known for our way of reaching an agreement with one another.  We’re also known for not doing it very consistently, or very well sometimes.  Nobody’s perfect… and no group of people get it right all the time. 

Perhaps we can learn something from the first faith community that formed as a result of Jesus’ ministry among them. As we break open the book of Acts, we find that Jesus’ earthly life has ended.  The author begins his story with Jesus’ ascension into heaven. The people he has worked with and walked with are left, asking ‘Now what?’  This book – ‘The Acts of the Apostles’ tells that story… just what happened next.

First things first… Judas had died, and the disciples needed to find someone to join them.  A decision had to be made!  Criteria?  The person had to have been with them ‘the whole time Jesus went in and out among us’ – from his baptism to his ascension.  They needed someone who could witness with them of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.  Joseph or Matthias – which one would it be?  They decided by drawing lots – and Matthias was chosen.

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was given, with wind, fire, and languages they had not known before.  Peter spoke to the gathered crowd, assuring them that the disciples were not drunk, but instead, were filled with the pouring out of God’s spirit.  Peter shared familiar scriptures with them – Joel’s prophecy that this would happen, and David’s song recounting God’s promised presence.  Peter affirmed that Jesus, the man just crucified, was Lord and Christ, the Messiah.  More than 3000 persons were added to the great number of believers that day.  Now… how would they live?

‘All who believed were together and had all things in common…’  They lived together, in community.  We are told that they were devoted to the apostle’s teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.  They lived God.  They loved God.  They lived as Jesus had taught them, “Love the Lord your God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength… emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, physically.  Emotionally, in fellowship.  Spiritually, in prayer.  Intellectually, in teaching and study.  Physically, in the breaking of bread.  They were given over fully, to God.  And to each other - they loved each other in the same way - caring for each other’s needs, even at personal cost.

Were they exactly like each other?  No.  Did they each have the same gifts and tasks?  No.  Did they think exactly alike?  No.  But they lived in community.  They bought and sold and shared together.  They ate together.  They listened and studied together.  They prayed and worshiped together.  They praised God, and held their life in communion with each other.  They gave it everything they had.

Two weeks ago, a friend of mine – a pastor of one of the six churches we are in communion with in the “Shalom Zone” asked me to read a book, and join in conversation with him about decision making.  His church is moving through a transition, and are looking for transformation.  Perhaps I could help?  The book is “Pursuing God’s Will Together” by Ruth Haley Barton.  First of all, I love this pastor and his church.  Secondly, I’m crazy about Ruth Haley Barton.  I joined one of her Retreats during a time of sabbatical in my first pastorate…. she is full of life, love, and teaching gifts – especially for pastors and spiritual leaders.  And guess what she uses throughout the book to help people learn to discern God’s will in community?  Quaker process.

Where does decision making begin?  Where does Quaker process begin?  In communion… in the giving over of oneself fully, to the voice of God who speaks directly into our communion – into our concern.  ‘Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and best known for developing a set of spiritual exercises intended to hone people’s capacity to see and respond to God in all of life, defined the aim of discernment as ‘finding God in all things in order that we might love and serve God in all.’  Discernment is an ever-increasing capacity to ‘see’ or discern the works of God in the midst of the human situation so that we can align ourselves with whatever it is that God is doing.’ [Barton, p.20]  How can we know what God is doing in any situation unless we seek God, unless we give ourselves over, stop speaking our own truths, and listen for what God is revealing?  Do we want to know what God is doing?  Do we care what God wants?  What God has for us?  I say ‘yes.’  I want to know. And I want us all to know.

If we are to live in community – in a Quaker community, we need to remember our common understanding of God – that God is present in us –in each and every person; that God speaks directly to us, and continues to speak, even as we seek; that we are a gathered people – singular and corporal, and our Society was formed as a group of persons, hungry to hear God’s voice. 

The first believers had all things in common.  Not just one thing, or five things, but all things.  There was no holding back… ‘I will offer this, but not this.’ Ananias and Sapphira tried that, were deceitful about their selfishness, and lost their life in community.  In fact, they lost their lives.  Too many times in our history, Friends have not listened well to each other, have followed their own voice, and the Society has suffered.   

There’s a great children’s game that I used to teach my elementary music kids, and many of you would know it… the Hokey Pokey!  It’s a ring dance, with everyone standing in a circle, facing each other.  It’s lots of fun, with a great song, great movement, a bit of noisy clapping, and a chance to be free within the confines of the song structure…

“You put your right hand in, your right hand out,

your right hand in and you shake it all about. 

You do the ‘hokey pokey’ and you turn yourself around…

that’s what it’s all about.”

The game is great for teaching right and left, for including everyone – even those who can’t dance, and for giving each person a chance to express themselves… one person’s ‘Hokey Pokey’ may look quite different from another’s.  The game goes on until the last verse… and listen to what it says:

“You put your whole self in, you put your whole self out,

You put your whole self in and you shake it all about. 

You do the ‘hokey pokey’ and you turn yourself around…

that’s what it’s all about.”

Everything – all of you – your whole self – is in the dance.  Nothing is held back.  You put it there.  You are willing to participate fully in the exercise of community with one another. This is not one of those games where some sit on the bench or lean against a wall, waiting for their turn to play.  Everyone is in this game together – and moving actively all the time.  And no one is ever counted out… everyone takes part in the game until the dance is done.

Did you notice what happens just after everyone does the ‘hokey pokey’?  Just after everyone expresses themselves freely, each person turns themselves around.  Scripture has a word for turning around… it’s called repentance. Metanoeo – the Greek word meaning to turn or change direction; to change one’s mind and purpose, as the result of knowledge…  This verb, with (3) the cognate noun metanoia, is used of true repentance, a change of mind and purpose and life, to which remission of sin is promised. A choice to change direction, to turn ‘round right’, to use what you’ve heard to help you see differently.  Richard Rohr says ‘Most people do not see things as they are; rather, they see things as they are.’  What a wonder, to turn around fully, viewing things in the Light of God’s truth and love… to see our positions, our stubbornness, our willfulness, our opinions and preferences, our individual lives as one of many… and to use what we’ve seen and learned to build community; to live our one incredible life in common with others – giving it all we’ve got - with humility, trust, and love.  That’s what it’s all about.   

Making decisions, for Friends, begins with listening for God’s voice, and listening with others.  It means staying hungry for more of God’s direction and purpose for our lives – as individuals, and as a Meeting.  As a family.  As a Society. 

Let us enter into the feast of communion after the manner of Friends, hungry for what God has to teach us about Godself, about ourselves, and about one another in community.  Let us be ready to turn – to change direction, as God calls us to, to actively seek God, and align ourselves with what God is doing.

Message from May 31, 2015

This past Sunday - May 31, 2015 – we celebrated our annual ‘Worship in the Woods’.  Ruthie Tippin shared this wonderful well-known Quaker story, outlining the meaning of both sound and silence, and the importance of listening and responding to God’s leadings.

THE SERMON IN THE WILDERNESS
From the ‘Children’s Story Garden’
COLLECTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE PHILADELPHIA YEARLY MEETING OF FRIENDS
ANNA PETTIT BROOMELL, CHAIRMAN; ILLUSTRATED BY KATHARINE RICHARDSON WIREMAN, EUGENIE M. WIREMAN
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON, J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, 1920
http://www.strecorsoc.org/storygarden/63210_tsitw.html

"MY friend, I have explained that I must have the horse, and that I will deposit with thee his full value until his safe return within a week's time."
The tall man spoke a trifle wearily, as though he had had almost enough of the argument. It was a hot day on the edge of the great Pennsylvania forest. The dust in front of the Rockville tavern still hung in a cloud where the coach, on its weekly arrival from the distant city, had stirred it a-fresh. The group of farmers, waiting for mail and news of the outside world, had watched with curious eyes this stranger descend from the high seat beside the driver. They had noted the broad-brimmed hat, white stock, carpet bag and closely fitting "store" clothes that marked him as city-bred, and the foreign way he used his hands when he talked. Their natural distrust had melted, however, before the radiant smile of more than ordinary good-will that lighted up the blue eyes and wrinkled the lean face as he strode briskly toward them crying, "The peace of God be with you, my friends! From which of you may I obtain a horse for a journey into the wilderness?"
Several minutes of parley followed between the innkeeper and the stranger, not a word being lost by the eager group of listeners. This man insisted that he must travel for three days straight into the heart of the forest "along a way that would be opened" to him. The innkeeper objected that there was only one trail a horse could travel, and this exceedingly dangerous, with treacherous fords and rocky pitfalls. Did the stranger know that the three-days' trail led only to a lumber camp, and that honest men who valued their lives or their purses did well to avoid this place? Adventurous explorers had been known to enter the dark forest, never to return. "Was the gentleman's business so imperative that he would risk his life?
"It is my Father's business, and the most imperative in the world," answered the stranger calmly. "Should a hundred men beset my path, I should go on unharmed. I have received my instructions from Above and go without fear, for the Spirit upholds me. So, if I may hire a horse of thee ——"
At length a wiry little mare was brought out and a dozen hands helped saddle her. The stranger, though urged to remain over night, refused courteously, explaining that he carried food and was accustomed to sleep in the open. As he paid for the mare and was about to ride away, the innkeeper inquired, "What is your name, stranger?"
"Stephen Grellet, of New York, and I go to carry the message of God to those who will listen."
As the little mare and the man climbed the rough path and disappeared into the birches that edged the dark pines, one man remarked, "A Quaker, I know by his speech, and a godly man. But he cannot melt the hearts of those men with his soft tongue."
Stephen Grellet found a single trail winding now along the slippery banks of a rushing stream, now over treacherous moss-covered rocks, skirting steep cliffs, and twice plunging through the river where the mare was forced to swim. During the first afternoon he passed several clearings with little cabins, where children ran out to wave and call to him; but after this he saw no work of human hands except the logs left by receding spring floods along the banks. Though no sounds except those of the forest came to his ears, he moved with a radiance in his eyes and with a smile upon his lips, as though he were listening to the cheery words of a dear companion.
Early in the afternoon of the third day — a breathless day, when even the birds were voiceless and the low, pulsing drone of insects made the silence seem only more profound—Stephen Grellet found the trail widened into a corduroy road where horses had evidently been used to drag the logs down to the river bank. He noticed a pile of rusty cans and a piece of chain hanging on a branch. Then rounding a huge rock, Stephen suddenly found himself on the edge of a space from which all trees and underbrush had been cleared. Facing him on the far side stood a large three-sided log shed; to the left and right of this shed were several rough, closed cabins, the bark from their slab sides hanging in tatters. A pile of black embers in the center of the space added a last touch of desolation.
Stephen Grellet reined in his mare in great perplexity. The message that had come to him had been very clear, and as was the habit of his life, he had followed the leading of the Spirit in perfect faith. He knew that he was to come to this spot in the heart of the wilderness where a gang of woodcutters, far-famed for their lawlessness, had been operating, and here he was to preach the simple and holy truth of God's presence in the forest. It had not once occurred to him that, as evidently was the case, the lumbermen might have moved on deeper into the forest. He knew without question, however, that this was the place where he must preach. Alighting, he tied his mare to a sapling, leaving her to browse the long wood grass, and made his way to the central cabin where rough tables stood on a slightly raised floor. Mounting this platform, he faced the forest, a strange inner light making his face glow. During his long life he had travelled to the far corners of the earth, defying dangers and discomforts in order to carry the simple assurance of God's love to all people; yet never had he felt more completely the Divine Presence flooding through and around his whole being than when now he stood alone in the deserted camp, surrounded by the mystery of the forest. The afternoon sun, slanting between the brown tree pillars, fell upon a gold-green mass of ferns at his feet, and the fronds quivered, stirred by some tiny wood beast scampering through the stems.
"Oh, God—thou art here—here" he cried, stretching wide his arms. As if in answer, a low murmur breathed in the tree-tops, swelling nearer, moving the pine needles softly. Then a loud rustle, perhaps of a startled animal behind the cabin, gave Stephen Grellet the sense that all around him were the invisible eyes and ears of the forest folk. To them and to God he spoke aloud, his words, blending the faith and joy of his own soul with the dignity of the pines, the grace of the fern fronds, the vitality of the little scurrying beasts, and over all the softly moving Presence in the wind-stirred branches.
At last, silent, with head bowed, he heard far off the leisurely, bell-like notes of the thrush thrilling through the forest spaces. With infinite peace in his heart he mounted the little mare and rode away, back to Rockville and the world.
Six years later Stephen Grellet was in London. He had gone there, as he had gone into the forests of Pennsylvania, guided only by the Spirit. He had gone down into the narrow, filthy streets, where men and women seemed too sodden to understand when he told them of the love of the Father, and he had preached in dark prisons where men looked at him dully when he spoke of the Divine Light. Yet whenever he ceased speaking there were always some who crowded nearer, seeking to know more of this Being who had sent him to show them the way out of their wretchedness.
Late one afternoon, smothered by the stagnant air of the slums, he walked on London Bridge as the setting sun was throwing a broken red path on the oily water of the Thames. He was very tired, for he threw all his strength into the struggle to show to others the Light that burned in his own soul. As he stood looking at the spires of the vast city against the glow of the evening sky, he prayed for faith and peace. Suddenly the roar of London died in his ears and he heard again the gentle sighing of the pines in the Pennsylvania forest and the clear notes of the thrush. Just as truly God was with him here —
The revery of Stephen Grellet was shattered by someone seizing him roughly by the elbow. He turned quickly to face a broad, muscular man, with rugged face and eyes of piercing eagerness, who cried, in great excitement, as he peered into Stephen Grellet's face, "I have got you at last! I have got you at last!"
Stephen returned the gaze calmly, but could see nothing familiar about the man except that he was certainly an American.
"Friend," he replied, "I think thou art mistaken."
"But I am not — I cannot be! I have carried every line of your face in my memory for six years. How I have longed to see it again!"
"Who, then, art thou, and where dost thou think we have met?'? inquired Stephen.
"Did you not preach in the great forest of Pennsylvania, three days' trip from the village of Rockville, six years ago last midsummer?"
"I did, but I saw no one there to listen."
The man held out his hands to Stephen Grellet — strong hands that had known hard toil. "I was there," he replied, his voice full of awe as the memory rose again before him. "I was the head of the woodmen who had deserted those shanties. We had moved on into the forest and were putting up more cabins to live in, when I discovered that I had left my lever at the old settlement. So, leaving my men at work, 1 went back alone for my tool. •As I approached the old place I heard a voice. Trembling and agitated, I drew near, and saw you through the chinks in the timber walls of our dining shanty. I listened to you, and something in your face or in your words, or both, stirred me as I had never been stirred before. I went back to my men. I was miserable for weeks;
I had no Bible, no book of any kind, no one to speak to about divine things.
"At last I found the strength I needed. I obtained a Bible;
I told my men the blessed news that God was near us, and we learned together to ask forgiveness and to lead better lives. Three of us became missionaries and went forth to tell thousands of others of the joy and faith you brought into the forest."