11-6-16 Emptied, to be Filled

Sermon 11-6-2016“Emptied, to be Filled”

Psalm 63

http://www.scross.co.za/2013/01/empty-yourself-for-god/

http://www.millhillmissionaries.co.uk/index.php?news=557

Begin with breath prayers…  breathe in God’s grace, breathe out what gets in its way…

In just a few short weeks, the people of our country will celebrate Thanksgiving.  If we remember, we’ll think about the Pilgrims and the Indians, the turkey, venison, pheasant, and other foods dug and harvested from the hardscrabble earth that first feast day, and we, like them, will give thanks for all that we have been blessed with.  And we, like them, will arrive at the table, hungry.  It would make no sense to come to a feast, already full. 

But how many of us do?  How many of us come to the provisions God has for us, already full?  Full of our own sense of satisfaction, our own preoccupations, our own insecurities, our own concerns.  There is no space in our lives for what God has to offer, because we have already filled them up.

Father Anthony Ndichia, a Catholic priest from Cameroon who ministers to those who have emerged from apartheid in South Africa has written a wonderful treatise about emptying ourselves for God:

“Emptiness is part of human experience. Sometimes it can be seen as pain, yet it can be treated as a gift. I need emptiness in me: that space for something new; to be opened to wonder and surprises from God.  Just as our bodies breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, so too do our spirits need to take in what is life-giving and empty out what is not helpful for us. A pot which is full cannot receive…

When our minds are filled up, there is no room for the otherness, no room for the new and unexpected, and no room for surprises of God. Openness to God could be one of the brave steps to empty anything that might be blocking our spiritual growth and freedom. There is a space within us that is waiting to be filled with the radiance of God.”

The psalmist sings of this so beautifully – and he sings with confidence. Read it again, he sings with confidence. This is a well-trained voice, these are lyrics he knows deeply.  ‘O God, you ARE my God.’   God is his provider.   Whether thirsty or hungry, within sanctuary and safety or without, asleep or awake, God satisfies his needs.  He is open to all that God has for him.  The psalmist is expectant that God will care for him, uphold him, satisfy him. 

Father Ndichia: ‘I empty my dustbin and after a few days it’s filled with scrap papers. I clear my table, arrange it well, and next week it will be even messier. There is something always waiting to be sorted and discarded.

This is also true of our spiritual life. There are many things we can discard: resentment, anxiety, harsh judgments, self-pity, mistrust, breaking a vow, an addiction, and so on.

Negative thoughts, useless fears, worries, old wounding messages, and so on, also take up a lot of space.  These leave no room for God’s agenda of growth, knowledge, love, beauty or pleasure.’

Take a moment just now and turn and look at those beautiful scenes we see through our own stained-glass windows. Fill your heart with that today. Fill your soul with that, fill your mind with that beauty. Take that moment.

‘Moses prepared himself to receive revelations from God: “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:1-6). What shoes do we need to remove in order to embrace the grace of God? What deep breaths do we need to take in as we move through our day.

If my life is clouded, cluttered with many thoughts and feelings, I may easily miss what God wants me to hear. Listening is key for our spiritual growth. To do this we need to open our minds and hearts, empty what blocks our way, create space and await God’s voice in our lives. God needs openings in our lives to get through to us, to communicate with us, to stretch us to greater growth, to nourish us, to revitalize and renew us with love.’

‘When we pray,’ Father Ndichia says, ‘how often do we say, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening?” You know that story from Samuel. Often we rather say: “Listen, Lord, your servant is speaking.” If my life is clouded, cluttered with many thoughts and feelings, I may easily miss what God wants me to hear. Listening is key for our spiritual growth. To do this we need to open our minds and hearts, empty what blocks our way, create space and await God’s voice in our lives.’

A beautiful story about the power of emptiness was written by a child in Germany, fed by the efforts of Quakers in the American Friends Service Committee during World War 1.  An empty pot – The Quaker’s Pot.  Empty stomachs – young German girls.  One willing to be filled.  The others needing to be filled. 

[abridged]  The bright, shining moon came upon a school, her light beaming into its basement, revealing a round cardboard box next to a tall, black soup pot sitting on a large table, surrounded with small benches.  The old moon spoke to the pot, wanting to know its purpose.  “I am the Quaker’s Pot,” was the reply, and the pot went on to explain itself.  

This is a story told by one of the children.

“You shouldn’t think that I’m always here.  No, I’m only brought here every other day.  Early tomorrow, two men will carry me into a car and take me to a room where I’ll be washed and left to dry overnight.  And in the morning, I’ll be grabbed again and filled with steaming, good tasting soup.  Then the men will bring me back here around 9:00 am and put me back on the table.  For company, I have my friend, the grey cardboard box, who holds marvelously aromatic little rolls.  And so we sit here and wait, looking forward to what’s to come.  A powerful quiet reigns in the whole house, leaving a sense of nervousness. 

Suddenly, a bell rings through the wide hallways, and it won’t be long now until I’ll be lively.  We listen excitedly – now it must come.  The sound of children’s feet skipping, of laughing, clattering voices, and of rattling bowls becomes louder, coming closer and closer, and then the door flies open and a stream of blonde and brown haired girls flows into the room.  “Oh, how nice - today it smells like cocoa!” one of them says, or another one asks in an excited little voice, ‘Is there enough rice this time?’  The kids have beautifully formed a line, since they’re used to order, but they can’t stand still; they hop from one leg onto the other and look forward to the warm morning’s soup.

Many dim, short stories, which cause nagging hunger to disappear for a moment are heard under the clamor; the poor are usually deathly thin and meager, but now a large, warm jowl glows from all the kids.  And again the door opens and four adults walk in hastily.  Two of them adventurously carry soup ladles and drape them, next to me; the third grabs the carboard box, and the fourth goes through the list of the names of the served children.  Then the lid flies off, both ladles dive forcefully into the soup, and the story can continue.  A big, round bowl hangs suddenly over my head, and a serious voice asks, “Filled to the very top, right, young lady?” Now, it won’t be entirely full; the small stomach wouldn’t be able to handle that much, and there are many others who also want their portion.  But the first one contentedly goes to her place.  The next comes, and the third, and the fourth, and almost every one of them says, ‘Oh please, please, as much as you can give, it really tastes good, and we have such strong hunger!’  And soon the wooden benches are fully occupied by radiant young girls enjoying the meal.  Oh, what good, warm soup and crisp, aromatic bread can do!  You can see how it tastes on their beaming faces, and the little ones always go and refill their bowls.  And it halts for a moment! A curly-haired kid bends over my brim.  ‘Oh, it's all already gone!’ she says sadly into my ear.  And everyone comes up to me one last time; each one wants ‘just a teeny tiny bit more’, but there’s only enough for a few.  “Now children, we’re done for today,” the supervising teacher says.  “There’ll be more tomorrow.”  And the children obediently pack their bowls together, toss one last affectionate glance to their beloved old soup-pot, and go on to their classes.  But I listen to their skipping little feet until everything is dead silent again. 

Then I happily say to my friend, the now-empty (like me) cardboard box, “It does the heart [good], being able to help make the hungry feel full for once, and seeing how their small, pale faces gradually begin to smile!”  Because they have such bitter need and deprivation before the children come to me, many of them have never experienced the feeling of fullness.  “And now, you see, old moon, that I can at least feed a few of the many thousands who are starving; that is the work [of] noble men, of Quakers.  So now you know why I call myself the Quaker’s Pot.”  “Ah,” the moon says, “That was quite a long story you told… But I enjoyed hearing it, and from it I see there are still good people on the Earth.  And when I [shine] over America again, my light will tell them thanks for their work.” Translation provided by Nate R.; German student at Hamilton Southeastern H.S.

God knows, far more than we, what we truly need.  And God, loving us far more than we love ourselves, knows how to fill our need, and has all we need to fill us. And thank God, he calls us to feed others. Emptying and filling.  Emptying and filling.

Some of you may have known this kind of physical hunger. Men and women who have served in war or have been victims of war have been in situations exactly like these children, where they were either held captive or were forced into physical hunger.  There are certainly citizens of the world today who are physically hungry and thirsty.  I thank God for the American Friends Service Committee and all other persons and agencies who work to interrupt that hunger with food and drink and physical care.

But what I would dare say is that there are many, many others who hunger deeply - for God. Who hunger deeply for the satisfaction that God brings. For the fullness that God has for each one of us. And God has this in full supply. Feeling the clearness, the cleanness, the rawness of our hunger - physically, spiritually - and then the readiness to be filled is sometimes a good thing. Soup bowls in hand, we make our way to the table. Empty. Ready to be filled with those things that God has provided for each one of us. What are those things that you hunger for? That I hunger for? They are not the same things. But God knows what each of us needs. God knows and has for each of us, what will satisfy.

“Thank you Lord, for these thy gifts which we are about to receive…’  Please join me now in expectant worship after the manner of Friends.

The Quaker’s Pot (full copy)

One bright, shining moon had put on her felt shoes and treading lightly, took her nightly path, hurrying in the dark sky. She sailed over the houses of the large, sleeping town, until she came to a halt over a large building.  She was familiar with it and knew it was a big school at the edge of town, because she stood over it every night.  Today though, something fell upon her that she had never noticed.  Her light beamed down into a basement window, revealing a large room with white-washed walls and small wood benches around a large table.  And on the table, next to a round carboard box, stood a strange thing. It was tall and black and seemed to be made of iron, appearing to be half-chimney, half-kettle.  It looked like it was sleeping.  The old moon with a shake of her head, peered down [into] the new discovery, for she wanted to know it’s purpose.  So, she shined her brightest and brought the object out of the shadows. 

“Hey, you!” she said.  “Tell me, old friend, who are you, anyway?”  The called-upon shook itself out of its sleep, saw the bright moon, and with a rusty voice replied, “I am the Quaker’s Pot.”  “What are you?” the moon asked in astonishment.  She’d never heard of such a thing before.  “The Quaker’s Pot,” the other repeated, and I’d like to explain it to you, since it looks like you don’t know that much about me, and because you interrupted my sleep.  I can definitely chat as well.”

“I’m an important personality, but truly a friendly fellow.  You shouldn’t think that I’m always here.  No, I’m only brought here every other day.  Early tomorrow, two men will carry me into a car and take me to a room where I’ll be washed and left to dry overnight.  And in the morning, I’ll be grabbed again and filled with steaming, good tasting soup.  Then the men bring me back here around 9:00 am and put me back on the table.  For company, I have my friend, the grey cardboard box, who holds marvelously aromatic little rolls.  And so we sit here and wait, looking forward to what’s to come.  A powerful quiet reigns in the whole house, leaving a sense of nervousness. 

Suddenly, a bell rings through the wide hallways, and it won’t be long now until I’ll be lively.  We listen excitedly – now it must come.  The sound of children’s feet skipping, of laughing, clattering voices, and of rattling bowls becomes louder, coming closer and closer, and then the door flies open and a stream of blonde and brown haired girls flows into the room.  “Oh, how nice - today it smells like cocoa!” one of them says, or another one asks in an excited little voice, ‘Is there enough rice this time?’  The kids have beautifully formed a line, since they’re used to order, but they can’t stand still; they hop from one leg onto the other and look forward to the warm morning’s soup.

Many dim, short stories, which cause nagging hunger to disappear for a moment are heard under the clamor; the poor are usually deathly thin and meager, but now a large, warm jowl glows from all the kids.  And again the door opens and four adults walk in hastily.  Two of them adventurously carry soup ladles and drape them, next to me; the third grabs the carboard box, and the fourth goes through the list of the names of the served children.  Then the lid flies off, both ladles dive forcefully into the soup, and the story can continue.  A big, round bowl hangs suddenly over my head, and a serious voice askes “Filled to the very top, right, young lady?” Now, it won’t be entirely full; the small stomach wouldn’t be able to hand that much, and there are many others who also want their portion.  But the first one contentedly goes to her place.  The next comes, and the third, and the fourth, and almost every one of them says, ‘Oh please, please, as much as you can give, it really tastes good, and we have such strong hunger!’  And soon the wooden benches are fully occupied by radiant young girls enjoying the meal.  Oh, what good, warm soup and crisp, aromatic bread can do!  You can see how it tastes on their beaming faces, and the little ones always go and refill their bowls.  And it halts for a moment! A curly-haired kid bends over my brim.  ‘Oh, it's all already gone!’ she says sadly into my ear.  And everyone comes up to me one last time; each one wants ‘just a teeny tiny bit more’, but there’s only enough for a few.  “Now children, we’re done for today,” the supervising teacher say.  “There’ll be more tomorrow.”  And the children obediently pack their bowls together, toss one last affectionate glance to their beloved old soup-pot, and go on to their classes.  But I listen to their skipping little feet until everything is dead silent again. 

Then I happily say to my friend, the now-empty (like me) cardboard box, “It does the heart [good], being able to help make the hungry feel full for once, and seeing how their small, pale faces gradually begin to smile!”  Because they have such bitter need and deprivation before the children come to me, many of them have never experienced the feeling of fullness.  “And now, you see, old moon, that I can at least feed a few of the many thousands who are starving; that is the work [of] noble men, of Quakers.  So now you know why I call myself the Quaker’s Pot.”  “Ah,” the moon says, “That was quite a long story you told, and you were really chatty about it!  But I enjoyed hearing it, and from it I see there are still good people on the Earth.  And when I [shine] over America again, my light will tell them thanks for their work.”

Translation provided by Nate R.; German student at Hamilton Southeastern High School

Taken from “Giving Voices to Ghosts” exhibit at Marian University, Indianapolis.

10-19-16 The Sacrament of Incarnation

Sermon October 14, 2016; ‘Streams of Faith – The Sacrament of Incarnation’

Luke 13:10-17

Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water – Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith, HarperCollins, 1998. 

James Bryan Smith, Spiritual Formation Workbook, Harper, 1991.

Pastor Ruthie Tippin; First Friends Meeting Indianapolis

When I was in 7^th and 8^th grade I took summer school music lessons – violin – at Wilson High School in Portland, Oregon.  Mom dropped me off in the morning, but it took me 45 minutes to walk home, and it was always hot.  I used to love to stop at Burlingame Market and get a Carnation Ice Cream Sandwich.  I’ll never forget what those ice cream sandwiches tasted like.  And you might say, for the sake of our conversation together today, that once I ate one, I’d become ‘in-Carnationed’!!!   The ice cream had become a part of me.  Once wrapped tightly in its foil enclosure, it was now opened and consumed.  It became a molecular part of me – a tangible yet invisible, and indivisible, part of who I was. 

To be incarnate is to be integral… to have such a thin expression of yourself that you cannot tell what is carnal and what is spiritual… what is of earth and what is of heaven… what is actual and what is ephemeral. The sacred is expressed in the mundane.  The mundane is expressed in the sacred.  And this is the life Christ calls us to.  This is the life of integrity and purpose we are called to as Friends.

In his book, ‘Streams of Living Water’, Richard Foster says this: ‘The Incarnational Stream of Christian life and faith focuses upon making present and visible the realm of the invisible spirit.  This sacramental way of living addresses the crying need to experience God as truly manifest and notoriously active in daily life.”  God – notoriously active!  Not God bumbling along, but purposely, intentionally making God known in each one of us, and in the world.  God means to be God – in and through us! 

Sacrament: an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual divine grace…  what does the integration of God in us look like?  What is ‘God made visible’ in our lives?  Do we, must we, carry around a foil wrapper, showing everyone what of God we hold?  Not if we live a sacramental life – a life of faith so well integrated that the secular and sacred merge.

Dag Hammarskjold lived a life like that, weaving his spiritual and secular life together.  When he died in a mysterious plane crash in 1961, the Secretary-General of the United Nations was lost to his family, and to the world.  His personal papers and effects were taken to Sweden, and given to a long-time friend.  Among the papers was a diary of sorts, titled “Vagmarken” – Markings.  These pages have become a spiritual classic.  It is said that “Hammarskjold does not make a single direct reference to his distinguished career as an international civil servant, neither does he mention the many presidents, kings, and prime ministers with whom he had dealings, or the dramatic historical events in which he played so central a role.   Instead, with merciless scrutiny and absolute honesty, he plots the intricate and sometimes tortured path of ‘God’s marriage to the soul’…  His vocation became the supreme place for living out his deepest spiritual convictions.  In so doing, he bridged the chasm between the world of devotion and the world of work…  His political work was sacramental living of the deepest sort.”

How successful are we at weaving God into the fabric of our lives?  At weaving the invisible into the visible.  Faith and work.  Sacred and secular.  I’ve been studying the incarnation of God in our lives, reading the Book of Jeremiah, and listening to the news – it’s hard not to.  Regardless of our political stance, our sacramental posture as a nation is in peril.  The margins are very clear.  The distance between sacred and secular is obvious.  The Democrats and Republicans sound an awful lot like the nations of Israel and Judah… the seed of the same nation, divided.  Jeremiah told the nation of Judah then, the same thing we are seeing now… we cannot have it both ways.

“Thus says the Lord; Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed.  And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.  For if you will indeed obey this word, then there shall enter the gates of this house kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their servants and their people.  But if you will not obey these words, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation.”  Jeremiah 22:3-5

According to Jeremiah, the sacred nurtures the secular, and the secular exercises the sacred.  They’re meant to work together!  Societies, individuals have a sacred responsibility toward one another, and God has a sacramental relationship with us – God’s children, God’s creation. 

Jeremiah grieves for God’s people, and then promises this: “Behold, the days are coming declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.  In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely.  And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”  Jeremiah 23:5-6The Lord is our righteousness.  Thank God for that gift. 

That same righteous Branch appears centuries later in the Gospel reading we heard today. Right in the middle of political and religious tension, we find Christ living out the incarnation of God in humankind, God in us, God made visible.  James Bryan Smith: “We see no division between sacred and secular in the words and deeds of Jesus.  In this Gospel passage, who Jesus was at the core of his being, flowed out in an act of mercy as he observed the sacraments of his Jewish faith, shattering the fragile wall separating faith and work, sacred and secular.    

We forget.  Or we’ve never learned.  In the rush of life, in the hurry of a debate, or a rushed phone conversation.  In the craziness of life, we forget who we are, or we’ve never considered it.  We get so focused on attention that we forget intention.  We act, think and speak out of the raw, rather than the reverent.  We have not learned the importance of an integrated life in God.  We, like those in the synagogue that day, like the nations of Judah or Israel, like Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, have not been careful to center ourselves, our lives, our spirits in the righteousness – the rightness – of God, the Divine.  How different would our neighborhoods, our nation, our world be, if we would all live integrated lives, with no difference between our spiritual and secular lives?  If they were one and the same?

Our lives can reflect that of God in each of us… Friends are some of the first to understand the indwelling of God’s spirit in all of humankind.  How do we cooperate with, rather than resist the Spirit?  One first step is to imagine no boundaries between faith and work, soul and body, spirit and matter.  Open your day with a prayer, a conversation with God, acknowledging God in all things – your body, your life, your rest the night before, the work of the day ahead, the things you dread and those things you look forward to.  Invite God in.  Extend yourself out.  And watch for God.  All the time, everywhere.  Before Jesus ministered on a hillside, he did so in a carpenter’s shop.  Imagine him (this is not sacrilegious) walking through sawdust, a pencil over his ear, laughing and talking with his Dad’s friends.  “Measure twice – cut once.” So you, in your office, at the kitchen sink, driving your truck, walking through your world, are Christ, for others, too. 

If you need a foil wrapper to remind you that you’ve been ‘incarnational’…   if you have to put on coveralls that have a name badge sewn on them to tell you who you are, you’re in trouble.  God doesn’t want us to ‘dress up and play the part’.  God wants us to strip down, and live a real, natural, true, honest, seamless, life of integrity.  Micah told us what that would look like: doing justice, loving mercy, walking in humility with God.  Jesus showed us what it looked like.  And we have the pure pleasure of learning, day by day, hour by hour, what that feels like. 

“… let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”  Matthew 5:16

‘With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.’  Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address:  SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1865

10-9-16 Evangelism

Sermon 10-9-2016; ‘Evangelism—The Living, Written, Spoken Word’

Luke 4:14-21, 42-44

Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water – Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith, HarperCollins, 1998. 

Pastor Ruthie Tippin; First Friends Meeting Indianapolis

John’s Gospel, the Gospel according to Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of Mark… Four Gospels that open up the New Testament. Gospel, a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, meaning “God’s spell” or “good spell”, good news. And what was that good news? That Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, had come into the world. The first persons to share that good news were Evangelists. Those bearing good tidings. And they didn’t stop at sharing the story of Christ’s coming, but also told of His teachings, His revealing of God, to everyone who would listen.

The incredible thing about the passage we heard from before this morning is that Christ Himself, the Living Word, read the written word of sacred scripture, as the spoken word. Christ became the first Evangelist, sharing good news as good news Himself. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. To let the oppressed go free.” Jim Wallace of Soujourner says “The root of the Greek verb Jesus uses in Luke 4 for “good news” is evangel, from which we get the words ‘evangelize’ and ‘evangelical.’ It’s a theological term, not a political one. It means that Jesus’ movement was to be based on proclaiming the good news, and without a doubt, Jesus’ gospel was always to be good news for the poor and oppressed.”

Who, but the poorest among us, the most oppressed, need good news the most?  When you think about all those stories in the Gospels, it wasn’t the rich who came out to the hillsides to hear this Good Shepherd.  It wasn’t the healthy who came to seek out the Great Physician.  It wasn’t those with the clear eye of the Spirit who came to be given sight.  It was those of us who needed wholeness, who longed for freedom, who were seeking something beyond ourselves, who were searching for a promise made long ago. 

That was Christ Jesus.  The embodied Gospel.  The Good News who spoke, read, and lived out the Word.  In John’s Gospel, in the very first verse, we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  James Bryan Smith writes, “Jesus reveals to us a God who creates, who loves, who heals, who understands, who blesses.  God became one of us to show himself to us and to bring us back into his family.  When we look into the face of Jesus, we see God.  We see eyes that radiate compassion and lips that say “God loves you.” We see God, because Jesus is God.” And that is the good news of the Gospels – that God became like us – because God loves us.

I was raised as an Evangelical Quaker.  The worst part about that was that we heard less about Quakerism and more about Jesus.  The best part about that was that we heard less about Quakerism and more about Jesus.  I wish I had learned more, from the time I was a little girl, about the heroes of the Quaker faith – the Valiant Sixty – who loved God, and understood their faith as Friends so much that they were willing to evangelize the whole of England – and thus the world.  But what I did see, was the modern day Valiant Sixty going to Bolivia and Peru (as Norma and Terry shared with us just a short while ago), evangelizing the people of those South American countries.  I just wish I had understood more explicitly about them going out as Quakers, and not only as Christians.  They probably assumed I understood this, but how clearly were they making it known?  How carefully were they enfolding their modern day work in the lineage of our faith as Friends?  These things matter – at least to me.  Now, as an adult, I love Quaker history, I love Quaker stories, and it matters that my children, that our children, and that you, understand the context for what we believe, and why we believe it. 

You know, from stories I’ve shared, that I’ve had a lot of help upgrading our Children’s Library. One of the reasons for that is my own grandchildren. It’s kind of selfish on my part, to be frank and honest. I have two beautiful grandchildren in Wyoming. There are no Quaker meetings in Wyoming. So I’ve begun sending them a book about Quakers every month. Every month they receive a book, just like the books that are in our library. I want them to know their Quaker heritage. It matters. It matters about what we believe and why we believe it. It matters that Quakers suffered for this God-spell – this good news, that Christ himself suffered for. 

It bothers me that so many people have stolen the power of the Gospel.  There are many evangelicals who love God and want to share the good news of God’s love.  It wounds me that others, whom I name as ‘fundamentalists’ and who use the Gospel message to force people into their own way of thinking are named among those of us who want what Christ wanted – to share the love and life of God with all people – to teach and make disciples of all people – to tell all people that God’s kingdom is at hand – within reach, within us… that our waiting for God is over.  God is with us. 

The picture on the front of our bulletin today is my grandfather.  He emigrated to the United States in 1910, and the scrawl you see there is a part of the “List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States of America”.  Line 13:  Cowley, John Thomas, 29 years, 6 months. Male. Single.  Calling or Occupation:  Evangelist.  Grandpa Cowley had been sent to Liverpool from the Isle of Man to live with relatives when he was orphaned as a young boy.  He became a traveling evangelist, along with a companion, and the two of them traveled throughout England, singing and preaching in various churches, staying with families as they went.  I would have loved to have heard what he had to say… and sing.  I know from the few writings that I have of his that it wasn’t full of fear, but of love.  That the goodness of the gospel was what motivated Grandpa to travel all those miles, and to tell that good story with so many.

What is your good story?  What is authentic to you?  What do you know of God in you?  What has God taught you?  What do you have yet to learn?  How do you claim God in your life?  How do you speak of God?  How do you share God?  How do others see God in you?  Read the Gospels.  Read the Good News.  Jesus didn’t march up to people with a Bible in hand… there were no Bibles then.  Jesus didn’t walk up to people with the four spiritual laws… he had two commandments – and they were both about love.  Jesus often began by listening, and then asking questions about someone’s condition.  He most often began reaching out to someone by being a Friend. 

10-2-16 Social Justice

Sermon 10-2-2016; ‘Social Justice’

Matthew 25:31-46

Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water – Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith, HarperCollins, 1998. 

Pastor Ruthie Tippin; First Friends Meeting Indianapolis

On Friday, May 30th, I went to court in the Chambers of Judge Marshelle Broadwell.  I sat in the jury box – not with a jury – but with ‘friends of the court’ – there to monitor the needs of those serving the judge, attorneys, and defendants.  A railing separated us from four men in shackles and orange jumpsuits, waiting for their case to come before the court.  As their names were called, a bailiff would come, release them from their handcuffs and the shackles that held them to one another, and then lead them to the table where their court appointed attorney waited for them.  Other defendants, not in custody, were waiting in the courtroom gallery for their case to come forward. 

Everyone was guilty.  That had already been decided.  These persons were there because they had broken the rules of their probation.  Some had ‘forgotten’ to check in with their probation officers.  Some had missed court appointments.  Some had committed crimes while on probation.  One had tragically lost his son to death just a day before he was supposed to appear in court the month before, and was too grieved to come.  One man was determined to be too drunk to understand court procedure, and was scheduled to return at a later date. 

Time and again, throughout that morning I saw mercy and compassion meted out with justice.  Judge Broadwell, our Marshelle Broadwell, could see what they often could not.  She and her assistants could look through computer files, discovering records about each of these persons who sat before her.  Their attorneys had their files.  Nothing was hidden.  As they addressed the judge, it was clear that decisions were being made based on any number of factors discovered in the past history of these defendants.  If a person’s sentencing would be better served coming out of a second court appearance on a separate matter, he or she was sent on.  If Marshelle wanted to deal with it that day, it was done.  Incredible. 

Criminal justice was social justice was Godly justice.  When everyone left the courtroom, Marshelle introduced me, and I told the small group of attorneys and Marshelle what an amazing experience this had been for me, and how much it reminded me of God at work… each person being represented with an Advocate – Christ or the Holy Spirit, and the Judge, God, being so aware of the person’s life struggles and victories, and meting out justice in a loving way that preserved their personhood with respect and care.  They didn’t know it, but for me, it had been a divine experience. 

Jon and I went to hear David Brooks and Tavis Smiley at Butler University this past Thursday.  A number of you were there, too.  It was a great evening, and we learned a lot.  To hear them speak about poverty, justice, truth… it was heartbreaking and eye opening all at once.  At times, I felt like I was listening to two old Quakers… Friends from old times, and yet very contemporary time.

“Everybody is worthy just because.  Everybody is somebody’s child.”  Tavis Smiley

I kept hearing George Fox say, ‘There is that of God in everyone.”

“We must speak the truth, or the suffering are rendered invisible.”  Tavis Smiley

           That sounded like John Woolman or Lucretia Mott, or Bayard Rustin to me. 

“The best thing we can give to anyone is the gift of no social distance.”  David Brooks

He spoke of full humanity, where relationships with love at the center, begin to matter again.  Society has become so socially isolated that we, as Christ talked about, have become strangers to ourselves.  We no longer recognize our neighbors, but live as strangers all too often.  The poorest among us economically are overlooked just as easily as those who are poor in spirit.

When do we see Jesus, and not even know it?  When do we walk past Jesus without realizing it?  The suffering Christ is pretty obvious in a hospital emergency room, or a doorway downtown, or on a park bench.  But often, Christ is invisible.   Or at least, we keep him where we think he would be, or should be.  But he often surprises us.  He surprised the people in the story we heard today.

The Shepherd King divides the nations right and left, and gives the inheritance of his kingdom to those who have cared for the needs of the hungry, thirsty, alienated, naked, sick, or imprisoned… and they’re stunned.  “Lord, why should we inherit your kingdom?”  “I was one of these, and just as you’ve done this for one of the least of these – members of my family – you have done it for me.”  Those remaining cry out “Lord, we never saw you hungry, thirsty, alienated, naked, sick, or imprisoned… “  They not only lost their inheritance, but were sent to eternal punishment rather than eternal life.   

The picture on the front of our bulletin today is a bit obscure.  If you look closely, you can see the figure of Christ on the left, a person offering bread on the right, and another person bent low in suffering in the center…  It’s an image taken by my cell phone, from the exhibit at Marian University of art pieces drawn by German children, and sent to the American Friends Service Committee as thank you notes for the food given them during WW I and 2.  Drawn by a student, it’s an illustration of our scripture reading today… Matthew 25: 34-36

“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink.”

Among the notes was one from young girl named Erna Deetz: “Quaker food is still quite warm! In warmer love, offered.  Received with warmer gratitude.”   Another child wrote, March 10, 1921: “Dear Friend in America:  During the World War our childhood suffered very much.  We were all weak.  During that time, we were unable to do anything.  We mostly just slept.  We slept just as much in our gym lesson… One day came the joyful news that our friends in America would be sending gifts to Copernick.  They were to go to the poorest children.  I was one of them.  It was what we needed most: milk.  Everyone go the powder for a quarter of a year or longer, until we were back to our old state.  I give you my heartfelt thanks.  I hope that you’ll continue to help us.  I will keep you in my heart as a lasting memory.  With great sincerity a school boy from the IG School in Class 3.0a   Georg Schadow”

Those children saw Jesus in the generosity and kindness – the 684 calories per day they were given to eat that sustained them – by Quakers so long ago.  People they did not know, in countries far, far away, cared for the hungry, the sick, the thirsty…

What we see makes a difference in what we do.  How we see affects how we act.  Peanut butter can look like part of a sandwich, or it can look like love, offered to a hungry child.  When Christ was asked how to live, how to order one’s life he gave a two-part response:  ‘Love God, and love your neighbor.’  What if he’d switched that around?  ‘Love your neighbor, and love God.’   How much power do you have to love your neighbor without God’s love?  How selfless are you?  Matthew 22:37-38Jesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  Christ enumerated these commandments.  He meant them to be understood in order.  Love God first.  Love neighbor, out of your love for God. 

Elizabeth Fry saw God, loved God, cared for God’s people in Newcastle Prison.  Mother Teresa did the same in the slums of Calcutta.  Rosa Parks found him in a bus – up toward the front.  John Woolman found him in slave quarters. Albert Schweitzer saw God, loved God and God’s people, first in a converted chicken coop, and then a hospital in the jungles of Africa.

We don’t have to be Florence Nightingale, or Dorothy Day.  God doesn’t ask us to be William Wilberforce or Martin Luther King Jr.  But God does ask us to be us.  To live out God in us.  To see God in every one.  To understand that God lives in every person, and that every person has the same needs, the same hopes that we do.  The priest and the prostitute are each God’s children – even if they don’t realize it.  The lawyer and the liar are each God’s children – even if they don’t understand it.  We are all capable of holding the light of Christ within us. 

The cold water of injustice stings.  The water is sometimes so deep that we can’t touch bottom. This stream of life is a tough one to navigate. But Quakers, born into injustice as rebels to the Church of the Crown, are used to it.  When you begin your faith journey questioning everything about the established church, it’s not a big stretch to question the authority of those who demand that you bow and scrape.  And when you see others forced to do the same, you can more easily come along side.  Let us be certain that we come out of love for God, leaning on God, filled with the centered goal of living out God’s love for others, so that they like us, might see, feel, and recognize God within themselves.   

Luke 4:17-19

…the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”…

9-25-16 The Charismatic Spirit Empowered Life

Sermon 9-25-2016Streams of Faith, ‘The Charismatic, Spirit Empowered Life’

John 14:15-17, 25-26; 15:26-27; 16:7-15

Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water – Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith, HarperCollins, 1998. 

The Power of the Lord is Over All, T Canby Jones, editor, Friends United Press, Epistle #388, 1989. 

http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=50

The Last Runaway, Tracy Chevalier, Harper, 2013.

Have you enjoyed wading in the waters of the streams of Christian faith these past three weeks?  We have come exactly halfway down the river of faith today, and have gotten our mucklucks wet, as we have explored the tributaries of spiritual life and tradition in the Christian church.  Every stream of faith has its tributaries – Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, all do.  Christianity was born in the person of Christ - his ministry and teachings - as many other religions have begun, following a great teacher or a great idea.  But Christianity was different because when this teacher died, as many other teachers have, he didn’t stay dead.  He came to life again in the power of God’s Spirit, and then gave that same spirit to all who would listen, seek, attend, respond.  Again today, we will speak of those people.  We will speak especially of the Spirit-Empowered people of God.

The birth of the Christ-ian or Christian Church in the first century, led to the Early Desert Fathers and Mothers establishing monasteries and cloisters beginning in the fourth century emphasizing solitude, meditation and prayer.  The contemplative stream of faith.

Contemplatives are not relegated to that place in time, but are found to be the still waters that continue to run deep in our lives of faith, holding us to the importance of knowing God in silence, and thoughtful meditation.

The stream of holiness calls us to a decision in the midst of the swirl of life, to make a choice for wholeness – a life that is so full of virtue, goodness, God-ness, that there is no room for those things that would fling us out of what Thomas Kelly called ‘the Divine Center’.  We are lifted out of the muck by reframing old commandments into new demands to love God and neighbor with all and everything we are.

As we travel downriver, another stream branches off - a stream filled with great power.  This is the charismatic stream of faith where, if we haven’t met it yet, we will feel the strength of the Holy Spirit.  Hildegard did at a very young age, where her parents had sent her to a Benedictine convent.  Eventually she entered the order, and at thirty-two was ‘persuaded to write down the visions of God that she’d experienced from the age of three on.’  A classic of medieval mysticism, Hildegard of Bingen’s ‘Scivias’ and her letters, live on today.  St. Francis of Assisi, living under the power of the Holy Spirit, gave up all his wealth and status in order to care for outcasts, to practice poverty, to tend the earth and its creatures, and to work for peace.  Hearing God ask him to ‘build His church’ he set about to use brick and mortar, but that was not what God had in mind.  Eventually, Francis understood that God meant a spiritual renewal of his church, and the Franciscan order eventually came to be.  Years later, a young Englishman set out to discover who God was for himself.  His parents, teachers, pastors, friends could not give him an answer that would satisfy.  After three years of travel and searching, George Fox heard a voice speaking saying, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.” That God in Christ could speak – had spoken – directly to him, to anyone, and to the condition of their life and heart, was revolutionary to Fox.  This was the power of the Holy Spirit made real.  Just as Hildegard and Francis had known it, George Fox would experience the power of God.  And from this, came the revelation of this experience for many others.  We know it as our community of faith – the Religious Society of Friends.

It is always a radical thing – a revolutionary thing – to take Christ at his word.  In our readings today, we heard Christ’s promises to his followers.  He would ask God to send another Advocate for us, even as he had been, who would live in us, and never leave us; who would not speak on his own, but declare Christ’s teachings.  This same Spirit of Truth would guide us into all truth. 

That is what gave Fox the confidence to say that ‘all with the Spirit of God might know God and the things of God, and serve and worship him in his Spirit and Truth, that he has given them…’    Epistle #388, 1683

Do spirit empowered people not know the importance of contemplation?  Of course we do.  Do we not know the beauty of holiness and the worth of virtue and integrity?  Of course we do.  Just as rivers flow together in their confluence, so do the streams of faith, sharing the strengths of their understanding of who God is and how God moves in our lives.  But there are some who pay more attention, who are more present to the power of God’s Spirit in their lives.  Who, like Brother Lawrence, practice the presence of God in their lives whether working or waiting.  They want nothing more than to hear God’s voice, and to center their lives in the leadings of God’s Spirit…  who are, and have been dissatisfied with the voices of others telling them what to think about God, how to define God, how to explain God when what they want is exactly what George Fox found – a God who would gladly explain Godself. 

Are we tired of paddling around in circles?  Are we weary of the heat of the day?  Perhaps it’s time to jump in to the stream of charism that woos us to God.  The call of God’s spirit asks us to trust the bringer of truth.  To believe that we too, can not only hear God within us, but feel God’s presence in real ways.  Christ said that we would do even greater things than he was able to, because we would be filled with his spirit… this same Holy Spirit.  [John 14]

Dan Rains recently shared with me a book called “The Last Runaway” by Tracy Chevalier.  It’s the story of young English Quaker woman, Honor Bright, who moves to Ohio in 1850, and her experiences there.  Here’s an excerpt of her experience in Meeting for Worship:

‘Honor had been looking forward to Meeting, for she had not attended one since Philadelphia and craved the sense of peace it normally brought.  It always took some time for a Meeting to grow still and quiet, like a room where dust had been stirred up and must settle.  People shifted in their seats to find comfortable positions, rustled and coughed, their physical restlessness reflecting their minds, still active with daily concerns.  One by one, thought, they set aside thoughts about business, or crops, or meals, or grievances, to focus on the Inner Light they knew to be the manifestation of God within.  Though a Meeting started out quiet, the quality of the silence gradually changed so that there came a moment when the air itself seemed to gather and thicken.  Though there was no outer sign of it, it became clear that collectively the Meeting was beginning to concentrate on something much deeper and more powerful.  It was then that Honor sank down insider herself.  When she found the place she sought, she could remain there for a long time, and see it too in the open faces of surrounding Friends.’

Our closing hymn today sings about ‘feeling’ the Spirit.  The composer put that word on a syncopated beat – purposely. 

Ev’ry time I feel the Spirit, Movin’ in my heart I will pray…

Feel. Move.

The Holy Spirit is the active part of our faith, and calls us to listen, seek, attend, respond, move, feel.   To come to life again.  To take our own journey, as George Fox did without giving up, asking God to speak, and waiting until we recognize God in us.  Until we can hear God’s voice.  Until we can shut everyone else’s voices out, and listen simply to what Christ has to say.  And Christ has something to say.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ has something to say.  What has Christ said to you?  What is Christ saying now?  What is that deeper and more powerful thing that the Spirit of God has for you and me?

9-18-16 Holiness

Sermon 9-18-2016Streams of Living Water; Holiness

James 3:11-18

http://mdcoastdispatch.com/2016/04/21/fatherhood-adventures-april-22-2016/, Steven Green, The Dispatch, Ocean City, MD.

Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion – Holy Obedience, Harper & Row.

“Parenting is a humbling experience… I have always thought two of my virtues were patience and organization.  Without question, parenting has tested both and there are days now when I feel like the most impatient person on the planet as well as the most disorganized.  First up comes patience. I can take a lot of nonsense and keep on ticking without losing my cool. I try to bring a balanced and reasoned approach to just about everything in life. Most of the time I’m successful with it, but there are times when I get rattled and lose it.

Nothing gets under my skin more and sometimes causes me to do or say things out of character than when my children act in a way that’s inconsistent with the values we work so hard to try and instill in them. It makes me feel like a failure and leads to frustration because I get impatient over the bad behavior. It’s one thing to have a slipup and a case of poor judgment, but it’s another thing altogether when it’s a repetitive misbehavior and involves signs of disrespect.  My kids have been guilty of these sorts of things on several occasions. The low points are when they [all] have bad days. The good news is they are young and are works in progress...”

That’s just part of an article written by Steven Green, a reporter for The Dispatch in Ocean City, Maryland.  The article, “Patient, Organized Virtues being put to the test Daily”, speaks of very familiar phenomena.  Real life.  Choosing best practices, good choices, proper alternatives – whether you’re that parent or the child, for that matter.

Good behavior – a virtuous life – a holy, healthy life – doesn’t come out of a rule book.  It doesn’t come off a chart.  It doesn’t even come from stone tablets.  A life of holiness or wholeness (these words originate from the same root) comes from a choice to live a whole, full, and devoted life – a life that you understand and long for. 

When I began teaching again after an 11-year hiatus, one of the first things I did was to put up my list of classroom rules.  Rule #1: ‘Be kind to others.’  What I didn’t know, in this inner-city school, was that the kids had no idea what kindness was.  They didn’t live in a kind world.  The playground was a battlefield.  Their homes were barracks – often empty.  It took about a week, until Rule #1 became ‘Eyes Front Please’.  And we didn’t just read the rule – we practiced it.   

The teacher before me had managed the class by bribing them.  Cans of soda pop were handed out to the winners of good behavior – my kids got one sticker for the whole class’s success together, and eventually earned music parties where they could choose what they wanted to play or sing.  Following the rules held an intrinsic value, and led to honoring each other, and the experience of working and learning together.

When God gave the children of Israel the 10 Commandments, they were meant for life and security – not for restraint and oppression.  When you’ve told your child, “Don’t run into the street,” it’s not said with cruelty.  When God says “Thou shalt not…,” God is not speaking out of cruelty, but out of love.  It just doesn’t sound like it!  But if you’re wandering in a desert, having just escaped after hundreds of years of slavery, with cruel masters telling you what to do every moment of the day, you do not know how to govern yourselves, and you need someone who loves you, to clearly guide you in words that you can understand.  The first four commandments, about putting God first, no idols, God’s name – “Thou shalt nots” – were later summed up by Jesus when he reiterated them by saying, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.’  The last six commandments, about killing, stealing, lying, cheating – “Thou shalt nots” - became ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ when Jesus spoke them.

If you understand God’s rules, if you live into the value of their virtues, they bring life.  And that life is clearly seen and known by everyone around you.  This is what is so unique and wonderful about living life as a Quaker – as a Friend.  We don’t profess our faith – we possess it.  We don’t carry around a rule book – even our Faith and Practice.  We refer to it, we use it… in England they have multiple copies spread around their Meeting Rooms – particularly the section of Advices and Queries.  At our best, we live a life centered in our experience of God’s presence, our continued seeking and the precious revelations we discover each day through God’s Holy Spirit, through sacred scripture, through our encounters with God’s children and creation…  we are blessed and surrounded with an understanding given by Godself to us of who God is.  And, most importantly, we are afforded the privilege of sharing that in Meeting, where our whole and holy lives can be tested, nurtured, corrected, shaped, challenged, freed by one another!

This is a gift, Friends!  There are many houses of worship who worship themselves, their beliefs, their traditions, their buildings, their music… the intention of attention to God and the Spirit was lost, long ago.  The words are there, but they are not spiritually centered.  Care and concern for the health and wholeness of their worship is gone.

All of this is a choice!  We don’t have to think.  We don’t have to listen.  We don’t have to engage.  We, like so many pundits these days, can allow others to tell us what to think.  We can let others evaluate virtue.  We, as James declares can decide if olives are growing from fig trees, or figs from grapevines.  “Who is wise and understanding among you?  Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.”  Think about our candidates for the presidency… is their wisdom first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruit, without a trace of hypocrisy?  Lord, help us!  But then, we must ask, is OUR wisdom first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruit, without a trace of hypocrisy?  We cannot expect from others what we do not expect in ourselves! 

God calls us to a virtuous life – a whole and holy life.  But we must choose it.  And what exactly, does that mean?  For that, I turn to my good friend, Thomas Kelly and excerpts from his essay, ‘Holy Obedience’: “Meister Eckhart wrote: "There are plenty to follow our Lord half-way, but not the other half. They will give up possessions, friends and honors, but it touches them too closely to disown themselves. It is just this astonishing life which is willing to follow Him the other half, sincerely to disown itself, this life which intends complete obedience, without any reservations, that I would propose to you in all humility, in all boldness, in all seriousness. I mean this literally, utterly, completely, and I mean it for you and for me—commit your lives in unreserved obedience to Him…

This is something wholly different from mild, conventional religion which, with respectable skirts held back by dainty fingers, anxiously tries to fish the world out of the mudhole of its own selfishness. Our churches, our meeting houses are full of such respectable and amiable people. We have plenty of Quakers to follow God the first half of the way. Many of us have become as mildly and as conventionally religious as were the church folk of three centuries ago, against whose mildness and mediocrity and passionlessness George Fox and his followers flung themselves with all the passion of a glorious and a new discovery and with all the energy of dedicated lives. In some, says William James, religion exists as a dull habit, in others as an acute fever. Religion as a dull habit is not that for which Christ lived and died…”

How do we move to this kind of passion?  To this ‘holy obedience’ Kelly talks about?  Meditation, reading journals and biographies of persons of faith who’ve gone before are some ideas, and being present to openings of the Spirit that will come.  Another thing – start where we are.  Obey now.  He says, ‘Use what little obedience you are capable of!”  I love that! And then – if we slip up and forget God and ‘assert our old proud selves’, we’re not to spend too much time in regret, but just begin again.  Obey now.

Do we want to live virtuous lives?  Do we want to live in wholeness – in holiness?  Do we ‘follow the rules’, or do we live out the profession of our lives centered in God?  Let us consider these queries, as we enter into silent waiting worship this morning. 

9-11-16 Contemplation

Sermon 9-11-2016; Streams of Living Water – ‘Contemplation’

Mark 14:32-36

Hebrews 11:38

Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water – Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith, HarperCollins, 1998. 

John Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert – The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, World Wisdom, 2008.

Where do you go when you want to ‘get away from it all’ – even for a few minutes?  When you need peace and quiet, rest and relaxation, a place to connect with your deepest self, or with God?  It might be as close as your front porch.  It might be your favorite fishing hole.  It might be a good book.  It might be a walk around your neighborhood, or a hike in the mountains.  Each one of us, if we think about it for a while, could name a place that gives us a sense of peace… whether it’s a mountaintop or a river valley, a place nearby or far away.

For Antony, it was the desert.  But he did not go there just to escape.  He went to the desert intentionally, focused on devotion to God.  He’d heard a scripture reading in worship, “Go, sell all you have and give to the poor and you will have treasures in heaven.  Then come, follow me.” [Matt 19:21] Settling the estate of his dead parents and arranging for care of his younger sister, Antony moved to the desert.  He was not to return for twenty years, and then – only for a brief while.  Hebrews 11 speaks of those who ‘wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground… and were commended for their faith…’ Antony was one of those, and has become known as the first of the Desert Fathers.

His solitary lifestyle drew people to him, yearning to know more about Christ, and the discipline of contemplation.  ‘Adherents to this faith were considered outcasts and ostracized by the very fact of their conversion.’ [Chryssavgis] The irony of chosen ostracism, when so many Christians were already ostracized for their faith, made this intention far more significant.  That Antony would choose to spend time alone with God spoke deeply.  Antony was not running from life, but running to the life-giver.  He was not running to avoid, but running to fill the void.  He was not running from God and all that God asked of him, but running to God for sustenance and strength, companionship and compassion, in order to live fully a ‘with-God-life.’ 

In his book, “Streams of Living Water – Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith”, Richard Foster tells of the strengths of the Contemplative Tradition:

It constantly calls us back to our ‘first love’ – loving God with all that we have; heart, soul, mind, and strength and to be vigilant in that love

It forces us past profession to possession, as Fox would say… interaction rather than intellect; Thomas Merton writes “The contemplative is… he who has risked his mind in the desert beyond language and ideas where God is encountered in the nakedness of pure trust… in the surrender of our own poverty and incompleteness…”

Contemplation brings an emphasis on silence and unceasing prayer; Brother Lawrence called it ‘abiding in his holy presence… a wordless and secret conversation between the soul and God which no longer ends’

A recognition of our responsibility for developing a personal history, our own story, with God

One of the great perils of the Contemplative Tradition is the thought that a contemplative, prayerful life must be separated from our everyday life.  That we, like Antony, need to move out to the desert, to the mountains, to our favorite fishing hole, in order to have a ‘close encounter’ with God.  That is just not true.  It might be easier, but it just isn’t practical.  And one who has shown us the way, is The Way… Christ Jesus.

In our reading this morning, Christ is stuck.  There is no way he can get away from life – or death.  At the fullness of his work and ministry, Christ is also at the height of suspicion with those who govern the synagogue, and manage the status quo.  Something has to change.  He has met with his closest followers and told them that he will soon be betrayed to the authorities.  They all go to a place called Gethsemane… an olive yard or garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives.  Jesus tells his disciples to stay – to sit and wait for him - and he goes deeper into the garden to pray.  He moves in… to the garden, to God, to contemplation.  Right then, smack dab in the middle of life, Christ moves away from it all, and moves toward God.  Not for a quick chat, but for deep conversation.  To a place of first love, of deep surrender, of silence, and persistent, unceasing prayer. 

We are in tight places in our lives, more often than we’d like to be.  Where do we go to ‘get away from it all?’  Where is our desert?  Our Gethsemane?  Quiet, inner solitude… still and centered places filled with God’s spirit, contemplative places of remembrance of God’s love for us, and our love of God.  Places where we try on God’s love, if we’ve never felt it before.  Places that prepare us for the stark realities that we face.  Places where we enjoy the pleasure of God’s company.  Places where we honestly tell God how we feel – just like Jesus did.  Places where we find gratitude for God’s presence and faithfulness.  Places where we are glad to be able to go!

In the study portion for today’s sermon series, suggestions are given to help us become more prayerful, more contemplative.  Here are some of them…

Set aside five or ten minutes for silence each day.

Set aside five or ten minutes for prayer each day.

Write a prayer or a letter to God; tell God about when you feel God’s presence most profoundly and when you don’t feel it at all.

Pray a short prayer many times throughout the day, such as “Be still and know that I am God.”

Learn to appreciate God through creation – stop to notice the beauty around you – the power of storms, the light of the sun, the depth of the darkness, and thank God for God’s presence.

Set aside fifteen minutes at the end of the day to say thank you.  Name as many things as you can think of to be thankful.

You may already use some of these practices in your own life.    Perhaps it would be helpful to try something different… to go to another place for a while.  Or perhaps it would help you to reaffirm your need for contemplation – for a quiet place in the midst of your life.  And for those of you whose lives are too quiet… let your contemplation be filled with sound!  Pray out loud!  Sing out loud!  Listen to all the sounds you hear when you take a walk, or sit by your window.  Let your contemplation be filled with the voice of God’s spirit, speaking into your life. 

Please join me now, as we enter into our own time of contemplation after the manner of Friends.  If God speaks into your heart, listen and hold it in silence.  If God speaks for everyone through you, please be obedient, stand, and share it with the Meeting.  Join me in singing this meditative prayer as we move into contemplation…

Be still and know that I am God…

8-28-16 Labor and Delivery

Sermon 8-28-2016; ‘Labor and Delivery’

Matthew 6:6-13 KJV [Lord’s Prayer]; danced by Amy Perry, recorded by Kate Smith

Matthew 6:6-13 paraphrase; written by Bethanne Kashette, Baltimore Yearly Meeting: http://patapsco.bym-rsf.net/files/2012/05/heron200404.pdf

I Chronicles 29:11

Paul Buckley, Owning the Lord’s Prayer, Friends Journal Vol. 51, No. 2, February 2005, Friends Publishing Corporation, p 11.

Mary Sue Rosenberger, The Lord’s Prayer, Covenant Bible Studies, Brethren Press, 1989.

Have you ever found yourself in a very dark place, with no sense of direction, and absolutely no control over yourself, or your surroundings?  It can be very frightening. 

We’ve all been there, at one time or another.  We’ve all been there at least once - in our mothers’ wombs…  natural motion brings us into light, through the surging energy and power of muscle and sinew, forcing us into life in completely new surroundings. The work we’ve done so naturally to grow and develop from one cell to so many more, from egg and sperm to fingers and toes, heart and lungs, brain and being, is just the start of our work yet to do.  New challenges await. 

Job wished he had never been born.  “Let the day perish on which I was born and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’ Let that day be darkness… That night – let thick darkness seize it!”  Job cursed the day he was born, but he never cursed God.  He moved through each day, listening to Bildad, to Eliphaz, to Zophar... (“miserable comforters are you all!”)  Job’s challenges, his trials, his testing was too much for him…  he wanted deliverance, rescue, release.

“Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”  These are the things Christ asked us to pray for in the Lord’s Prayer.  The way we learned it as children, the way Kate Smith sang it in the recording we heard today, the way it will be repeated time and again in churches this morning, is based on ‘the King’s English’… King James I.  A lovely benediction was added, ‘for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen.’, taken from a prayer of David in I Chronicles.  Later scholars, using source manuscripts not available to King James’ translators, realized that Christ was not speaking of God tempting us, with a desire to do something wrong or unwise, but rather bringing us to times of testing or trial.  In more modern translations of the same scripture, we find this verse written as, “Do not put us to the test, but save us from the evil one.” [New Jerusalem Bible]  “Do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.” [NRSV]    “Do not bring us to the test, but save us from the evil one.’  [New English Bible]

Christ knew we would want and need this prayer.  Didn’t he pray this prayer himself? In the garden?  ‘Lord, let this cup pass from me’…  ‘Do not put me to the test.  Do not bring me to the time of trial.’  There are many struggles we do not want to move through.  There are many tests we don’t want to take.  Like Job, there are many experiences we do not think we can endure.  Elton Trueblood writes: “The request is that hard-pressed [people] may be saved from tests which are too difficult for them, just as they may be saved from debilitating hunger.  What Christ emphasizes is that hard tests will come.  The gospel inevitably involves suffering and all must learn to bear the cross daily.”  This is why Christ gives us this prayer.  We need this prayer.

But we need testing, too.  If we’re never tested, how do we measure our capacity?  How do we know what we know?  Paul Buckley writes, “I am the father of three adult children.  All their lives, I have wanted nothing but the best for them.  In a lot of ways, my ultimate goal has always been that they grow into strong, honorable, independent adults.  Long ago I realized that if whenever something went wrong I had stepped in to spare them unhappiness, or if I had taken on any burdens they might have to bear, or if I had protected them from the consequences of their own choices, they would have remained children – no matter how old they grew to be.  Each time they faced up to a new test, they grew up a little bit – whether they passed it or not, and whether or not I could have done things better.  Often, to be a good parent, I had to let them do things all by themselves… there were times when I could see trouble coming and had to let it happen.

God is our good parent.  For us to grow spiritually, God must let us face our times of trial.  Sometimes, we will fail, but we can come to know ourselves better in that failure.  For each of us, there are times when we overestimate our spiritual maturity.  For our own good, God may need to guide us into a time of trial.  When those times come, we can ask God if it is possible to postpone the test or to escape it entirely.  But when we are faithful, like Jesus at Gethsemane, we will end our plea with, “Not what I will, but what you will.””  

The prayer Christ teaches allows us four requests:

Bread for each day.

Forgiveness, for ourselves and for others.

Help in tests and trials.

Rescue from evil; from the evil one.

Sometimes our tests and trials are against evil itself.  Pogo once said, looking out over his polluted ‘forest primevil’, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  It’s one thing to be born into this world… it’s another thing to live in it.  We get ourselves into a lot of trouble, following our own self-destructive ways.  In our choice to know good and evil, we made the decision to bite off much more than we could chew.  Why would anyone want to know evil?  Now, we find it everywhere.  And we often need to be rescued.  But God reminds us that good, that God, is everywhere too, and we often hear stories of just that – of God’s goodness rescuing us from evil.  Mary Sue Rosenberger tells this story:

“After the German occupation of Denmark, one of the first edicts passed by the Nazi-controlled government was that all persons of Jewish ancestry must wear a yellow star of David at all times.  Such a technique carried out in other occupied countries had marked Jews for discrimination and later persecution.  In Denmark, however, the morning the edict went into effect, every Danish citizen, from the king to the humblest peasant, appeared on the streets wearing a yellow Star of David!  Deliverance from evil does not always mean removal from evil.  Sometimes it means faithfulness in its midst.”  

Benediction:

Listen to what Job said, having endured his suffering:

23 Oh that my words were written!  Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.”                                                                                                                                             [Job 19:19-26]

Giver of Life, who is in and beyond the universe, we would speak your name with thoughtfulness. May we follow the laws of peace and understanding here on earth as the stars obey the laws of heaven. May there be food for all so that none may go hungry. When we have been unfair, unkind or thoughtless, give us the courage to say we are sorry and help us to be forgiving when others hurt us. Give us the strength to do what we feel is right and to turn away from whatever hurts ourselves or others. For the wonder, the beauty, and the goodness all around us, we give grace and thanks. Amen.                                

Paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer; Bethanne Kashkette

8-21-16 Giving and Forgiving

Sermon; 8-21-2016‘Giving and Forgiving’

Matthew 6:9-14 NRSV

Dennis, Matthew & Sheila Fabricant Linn, Sleeping with Bread, Paulist Press, 1995.

Paul Buckley, Owning the Lord’s Prayer, Friends Journal Vol. 51, No. 2, February 2005, Friends Publishing Corporation, pps. 6-13.

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/merchant/quotes.html

‘Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.’

“During the bombing raids of WWII, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve.  The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care.  But many of these children could not sleep at night, fearing waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food.  Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime.  Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace.  All through the night the bread reminded them, ‘Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.’”  Sleeping with Bread, p. 1

Sleeping with bread, fulfilling the need for daily nourishment, the sense of safety and security… that we will wake up in abundance, rather than want.  This is our prayer, when we ask God to ‘give us this day our daily bread.’ 

Paul Buckley, in his article ‘Owning the Lord’s Prayer’ writes, ‘In considering this petition, I have learned not to be too literal – in both Greek and Hebrew the word for bread can mean any kind of food.  More than that, I have come to read it as a metaphor for all the things a person needs to live.  Looked at in this way, the phrase can be read as, “Give us what we need today.” Why specify ‘this day’ or include the word ‘daily’? Both seem unnecessary.  God provides what we need today and every day.’

Do you remember the story told in Exodus [Chapter 16] about the Israelites need for food – for ‘daily bread’, and God’s provision of manna and quail in the desert?  Every day, enough for each day. People had to trust God for what they needed, each day, and no more.  Daily bread – daily trust.   

‘Give us this – give us that… give us what is needed…’  The Israelites always wanted more, and so do we. They and we, become bored and dissatisfied with what we have.  How many ways can you cook, bake, fry, or roast, quail and manna?  God gave and continues to give daily bread… what we need for this day, and asks us to trust God absolutely.  Jesus teaches us to ask God for our needs, not selfishly, not with greed, but with trust that God cares and provides for us each and every day. 

Christ took this a step further when he taught us this lesson: ‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged.  Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you.  A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.  For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Luke 6:37-38If God gives us all we need, then we, without judgement or condemnation, are called to incarnate God for others... we are commanded to give as God has given to us.  Can you imagine the reward those refugee workers in Europe felt when the children were able to sleep; when their fears were calmed; when they knew they were cared for?  Giving is receiving, both for God and for us. 

Giving is also forgiving.  Forgiving is for giving…  not just a daily practice or need, but an everlasting, enduring gift we offer to ourselves first, and then to others.  When we forgive someone, we first have come to a place of forgiveness in ourselves – that we are flawed, that we aren’t perfect, that we make mistakes, that we don’t always succeed or accomplish what we had hoped to.  The list goes on and on. 

Once we have realized this about ourselves, we begin to see these same things about the other – the other person, the other nation, the other organization, the other family.  And then… we are made ready to forgive. 

The gift of forgiveness is not neatly wrapped.  It may look more like an arrow flying through the air, rather than a pretty package tied up with a bow.  The arc of forgiveness may take a long time to meet its mark, but the important thing is that the arrow has been released and that it flies with purpose.  I am ready.  I have found it right to pull the arrow from the quiver, and send it flying.  I forgive.  I forgive.  I forgive... 

It takes strength and agility to shoot an arrow.  You must be able to pull the string back.  You must be certain of your target, with clear eye and full intention.  You must be steady, so as not to miss the mark.  You must be prepared.  Practice.  Think.  Set your feet.  Wait.  Deep breath… let it fly. 

Are you unsure of yourself?  Here’s some advice from ‘raisedhunting.com’: “Looking for a simple solution? Start your bow practice now so you can have enough time to truly get proficient again without sacrificing your health or form. Regular archery practice builds muscle memory, so that shooting a bow becomes second nature to you. When the moment of truth comes, you can simply focus on the [target] instead of all the micro-decisions about your form and where to aim the pin. As you’ve heard before, only perfect practice makes perfect.” 

Forgiveness is something that comes more easily to us when we’re in good shape, when we’ve practiced shooting short distances, and then steadily increased the strength and precision of our intention.  And more than anything, we are empowered when we remember that we weren’t the first to shoot the arrow of forgiveness… that we have received mercy, that we ourselves, were the mark for that arrow.  How can we not forgive another, when we ourselves have been forgiven?  How can we withhold mercy, when God has been so merciful to us?  

The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I; William Shakespeare, 1564 – 1616

The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown:

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway;

It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That, in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

‘Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.’   Amen. 

8-14-16 Thy Kingdom, Come

Sermon 8-14-2016; “Thy Kingdom, Come”

Matthew 6:1-13 Cotton Patch Gospels, Armchair Mystic, St. Anthony Messenger Press, Cincinnati, 1989

Mark Thibodeaux, S.J.,

Psalm 139:7 (God is Everywhere!)

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Mark Thibodeaux, a Jesuit Priest, wrote a book, Armchair Mystic, about Contemplative Prayer, and takes a look at The Lord’s Prayer.  Studying phrase by phrase as we are this month, Thibodeaux asks us to look at the words carefully…  Who is God in this phrase?  The king.  What kind of king is he?  What would it be like if his kingdom came?  Or has it already come?  If so, how?  How has it not? Why has it not?

Who am I in this phrase?  I am God’s subject.  What does my King expect of me? What do I expect of the King? How far will I go in service to God, my King? How loyal am I?  How loyal do I want to be?

Friend Elton Trueblood once wrote: “We are told to pray for the Kingdom, which is defined as that situation in which God’s will is made manifest on earth.  Our prayer is that that which is potential may become actual, here and now.  We are keenly aware of how far from such a situation we, in fact, are.  God’s will is not now perfectly done, perhaps not anywhere.  If it were, there would be no point in praying for it!” 

But Christ taught his disciples – and us - to pray that God’s kingdom would come, that God’s will would be done, that earth and heaven would be one.  Why did he want us to ask for such an incredible thing?  I think it’s because Christ knew it could happen – if we put ourselves in the phrase.  If we each meant the prayer we prayed.  “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…” If humankind, if Christ’s followers, if those who counted God as king, would live in a way that invited the kingdom of God into the world, it would come.  If we would live in God’s will, we would see it ‘made manifest’.  If we would live as those who know God is present in our lives, and the lives of all humankind, God would be made visible – not just in heaven, but on earth.  God and God’s kingdom would be made known.

Friends believe that there is no reason to wait for death to be with God… to live in God’s

kingdom.  We believe we do, now.  That God’s presence is real, and made known in our lives.    And that changes the way we see, and live in, the world.  We are not meant to abandon the world for the hope of heaven.  We are meant to live in the world, experiencing the same Presence of God with us now that heaven holds. 

Friends believe, as Jesus taught, that the kingdom of God surrounds us.  So many times, Jesus shared stories, explaining God’s kingdom…  “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, like buried treasure in a field, like a farmer sowing seeds, like a leaven for bread, like a fisherman’s net.  Jesus showed us how real, how ordinary yet extraordinary, how palpable the kingdom of God is.  It is not just a place with pearly gates and streets of gold.  On the contrary, it is very much an everyday reality that we must choose to live out.  Christ is teaching us to see this in our earthly lives, and make God’s kingdom real for everyone.

Jesus lived a very ordinary life.  He got up in the morning, dressed for the day, ate breakfast, and headed to his dad’s shop.  He worked sawing and shaping wood.  He sanded, he sawed, he fastened, he did all that his dad had showed him how to do.  He supported the family business.  For thirty years, he lived his life.  The sacrament of life.  The one incredible, ordinary life he was given – just as you and I are.  The astonishing, beautiful thing called life.

He made something out of nothing.  A block of wood became a table leg, a vase, a bowl… something useful and beautiful.  He saw what others did not see.  This is a lesson about the kingdom of God.  It is the way we see the world in every person.  There is something there – as George Fox said, ‘there is that of God in every person’.  We are called, just as Christ was, out of the sweetness of the carpenter’s shop and into the world around us, seeing in others what they do not see.

Christ did it.  Christ showed up.  Christ showed up to his own life.  No matter what, no matter where… Christ showed up. And God asks us – expects us - to do the same.   To make the kingdom of God real.  This is God’s will… to see God’s kingdom on earth, even as it is in heaven.

I spent all day yesterday at a Leadership Conference at Earlham School of Religion, about holy experiences and risk taking.  The plenary speaker was Samir Selmanovic, who grew up a in a culturally Muslim family in Croatia, converted to Christianity as a soldier in the then-Yugoslavian army, and went on to become a Christian pastor in Manhattan and in Southern California.

This is a poem that Samir shared with us yesterday at the Conference:

Self Portrait by — David Whyte
from Fire in the Earth, Many Rivers Press, 1992

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter

unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

He told a story about a woman, out in the cold on morning in New York City, forced into Samir’s church by the weather.  She would never have come in, except for the cold.  She was a practicing witch… a good witch!... but a witch, part of a Wiccan congregation.  A church was absolutely the last place she wanted to be.  Samir spoke to her, befriended her, and eventually, Sue became a part of the life of his family.  He and his wife hired her as their babysitter. Samir reminded us that “we know enough to judge, but not enough to relate to other people.  The ‘others’ – the ‘outsiders’. Are we willing to help people see what we see?   

Samir invited people to share their stories of failure, to see God in failure.  And he asked Sue, by then a regular part of the congregation, if she would pray.  They had to agree on a name for God, and finally she chose ‘holy spirit’.  Here is Sue’s prayer: 

Dear Holy Spirit,

I am not a Christian.  My son and I may one day be.  But we belong to this community.  What would the world be like without them?  Without these pastors?  Without their love?

Thy kingdom, come.  Do we invite God’s kingdom to come?  Are we willing to show up, and make God real in the world?  It would be easy to stay in the carpenter’s shop, shut the door, focus on the work at hand, and despair about the condition of the world beyond us.  Samir challenged us, saying that the kingdom of God is deeper outside the church than in… Too many times we stay in our Meetings, in our churches, doing good work we’ve been trained to do, only to discover Jesus standing at the window, waving his arms, and calling us out into the consequence of God’s love, into struggle, into despair, into loneliness, and into the risk of sure defeat.  That’s where Jesus went.  And he invites us to come.  It would be great if we could remain in our own little heavenly homes, and ‘let the rest of the world go by’.  But Christ insists that we ask for God’s kingdom to come into our own lives… into our ordinary work and routines; that we show up to our own lives, that we make God’s kingdom as real on earth as it is in heaven.

Why did you come to Meeting this morning?  What did you want?  What did you need? What did you hope to find?  There are so many people who need and want the same things… who crave silence, who hunger for presence, who need friendship and companionship, who want to know God is real.  Rather than thinking of this as a problem, consider it a possibility!  Is it possible that they would find those things where you have found them?  Is it possible that they have been standing outside churches or meetinghouses, waiting for the weather to change, to push them forward in their lives?  Hoping for an invitation into the warmth of God’s embrace?

How can we see what is not there?  How can I invite God’s kingdom into my life?  How can I show up to my own life, to God in me, and especially, to God in others? Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven…