2-12-17 What's Next?

Sermon 2-12-2017; ‘What’s Next?”

Acts 2:43-47

http://www.christianpost.com/news/texas-megachurch-to-give-out-cars-tvs-at-easter-services-44579/

Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, Harper and Brothers, 1941.

Yesterday I was invited to come to Fairfield Friends Meeting and speak in a retreat setting about the future of the church. I had a wonderful time with their Ministry & Counsel and out of that I have some words to share with us today.

What’s next? What’s next? …The church in the future. What’s next?

Well, I have three points to share with you. The first one is, we need to be weird. The second one is that we need to be community. And the third is that we need to be willing. Be weird. Be community. Be willing. 

In this time of feel-good, fake news, we need to hang onto real news, good news. We need to hang onto the Gospel. And that’s weird. We need to hang onto Godspell. 

Godspell is early English for “Gospel.” Good news. I think most of you have heard of the musical ‘Godspell’. (Sing a bit…) “I can see a swath of sinners sitting yonder and they're acting like a pack of fools.” Godspell. I like to think of the Gospel as ‘God’s spell’, that mystical thing that happens when God’s power, the power of the Holy Spirit, overtakes the world… when we allow the Gospel, the good news of God to run freely, unfettered, through our lives. The good news! When we allow God to sing through us. When we allow God to sing the truth, to speak the truth, through us, through our meeting, through our churches, through our lives.

That centered, simple, deep, real truth. Not empty promises. Not get rich quick, feel good religion. But the experience, the true experience of the goodness of God, the power of God, the love of God. The real, actual presence of God. People need this sense of truth. It’s really interesting to me as you look through the early Quaker writings, Fox and others always spelled truth with a capital ‘T’. Truth mattered. Truth was embodied in Christ. Truth was embodied in Christ’s presence. There’s nothing phony or artificial about God’s presence. It was the real thing. And in these days, when we are unsure of the future, when we are unsure of what’s going to happen next, when predictions are worthless, it’s really really important that we look for the constancy of God’s presence. The reliability of God’s presence. The truth and reality of God in us. And that’s weird.

Nobody, or I should say, very few people, know and understand and rely on the truth of God. We, Friends, need to live into our weirdness. One of the really great things about Quakers is that we’re already pretty weird! When you come into our meetinghouses, there is a sense of yearning for God speaking into us. A sense of waiting for God in silence. A sense of knowing and expecting God to come, of expecting God to speak in and through us.  And that’s just not true in every place of worship.

If you look at the front of your bulletin, the picture you’ll see is not just the God of the future at all. Instead, this is the God of the present.  There are many, many churches now that have all kinds of wonderful ways of bringing God in. Hopefully, by bringing you in. I just recently read a website this last week about a church in Texas last Easter that gave away free cars. They were speaking about God’s gift to mankind, and so they thought, the way to show God’s gift is to gift.  ‘Let’s give away a free car!’ And then it went from one car to five cars and then—‘let’s give away fifteen cars!’ They gave away gift baskets worth $300 a piece. We see churches marketing God. Marketing their services in such ways that are artificial.  The church of the future is actually the church of the past.  The original, marked by God’s presence alone. A sense of belonging and longing for God to speak. For God’s realness, for the reality of God’s presence—not the pastiche, not the phony, not the artificial, but for the reality of who God is - expecting God to speak.

How are we called friends?  “You are my friends, if you do what I command.” This comes from a large challenge that Christ gives to those who have chosen to follow Him. He’s not speaking to a random crowd on a hillside, Jesus is speaking to his disciples, his students, his followers, to his devoted ones. And this is what he says: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. There’s no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you love each other like that.” Just as My Father has loved me, I have loved you. I have obeyed My Father’s commands and I’ve lived in his love.” I’m not asking you to do anything more than what I’ve done and what I’ve required of myself. Life selflessly. Love selflessly. Be community.

When you love like that, you’re living in community. You’re living as a society of friends. You’re choosing to live in such a way that your self-interests are acknowledged, but weighed carefully in consideration alongside those with whom you work, live, worship, and walk the world. When you love like that, you will extend forgiveness. You will advocate for justice. You will act in mercy. You will seek reconciliation. You will require not only tolerance, but respect for others.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber once said, “We expect a theophany”—the appearance of God—“of which we know nothing but the place, and the place is called community.” Hear what Patricia Barber, a member of Goose Creek Meeting in Lincoln Virginia asks in a recent issue of Quaker Life: “How do we, flawed as we are, live in a time and a place that surely conspires against wholeness, and holiness? How do we go about creating a spiritual community where it’s safe to stumble forward in obedience, to the voice that rises up from our soul’s depths—how do we do that? Where in a culture that glorifies strength and individualism, can we completely disarm ourselves so that we can achieve humility and radical openness necessary to enter into God’s presence? How do we do that?” Every day something changes. Every day we’re hit with stuff in our own lives, yes? Stuff on CNN, yes? Stuff in our own Meeting, yes? How do we do this?

Acts 2:43-47:  ‘They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers. Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done by their teachers, the apostles, all who believed were together and had all things in common. They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute them to them all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread from house to house, ate food with glad and sincere hearts, praised God, having the goodwill of all the people.’

The early church was a learning community. They didn’t say, ‘Oh, we’ve got it all figured out now folks, we’re done.’ No, they were a learning community.  They ate together, they prayed, they saw miracles, they recognized miracles that happened… signs, little bitty things, and miracles, big billboards! They distributed their funds as needs were made known, they took care of each other, they attended meeting (Temple) regularly, they had meals in private homes, in more intimate settings. They were joyful, they praised God, they didn’t forget to celebrate. And they were well-respected. They enjoyed the favor of those around them. People are, people have, people will, always look for this kind of community. This weird circle where God’s presence is ultimate. Ultimate. Where love and care matter. Where truth, with a capital T, matters. Where humility, a word we don’t hear enough about - not in our own meeting, and certainly not in the world - where humility and radical openness are intentionally practiced. And where the inward Teacher’s voice is welcome. Where that voice sings now. Where it sang a year ago, where it sang sixty years ago, where it will sing 200 years from now, where it sings now and always.

Thomas Kelly wrote this in ‘A Testament of Devotion’ in his essay, The Eternal Now: “A new song is put into our mouths. No old song has ever caught the glory and the gladness of this Now; no former Now can be drawn upon to give perfect voice to this Now. The well-springs of Life are bubbling up anew each moment. When the angel is troubling the waters”—remember that Bible story about how the lame man was laying by the pool and the bubbles were coming up in the pool and he had no one to carry him over there? “When the angel is troubling the waters it is no time to stand on the bank and recite past wonders. But the main point not that a new song is put into our mouths; the point is that a new song is put into our mouths.” Did you get that? The point is not that a NEW SONG is put into our mouths, the point is that a new song IS PUT INTO our mouths—what a gift!

“We sing, yet not we, but the Eternal sings in us. It seems to me, in the experience of plateau living in the Divine Presence, that the Everlasting is the Singer, and not we ourselves, that the joy we know in the Presence is not our little private subjective joy, pocketed away from other men, a private gift from a benevolent and gracious God. It is the joy and peace and serenity which is in the Divine Life itself, and we are given to share in that joy which is eternally within all Nows. The song is put into our mouths, for the Singer of all songs is singing within us. It is not we that sing; it is the Eternal Song of the Other, who sings in us, who sings unto us, and through us into the world.”

Let us be willing to open our mouths and let the Singer sing… 

Over my head I hear music in the air.
Over my head I hear music in the air.
Over my head I hear music in the air;
There must be a God somewhere!

And when the world is silent, I hear music in the air…

And when I’m feeling lonely, I hear music in the air…

And when I think on Jesus, I hear music in the air…

There must be a God somewhere!

2-5-17 Attachments - How They Keep us from God's Power

Our Attachments – How they keep us from God’s Power

Beth Henricks Message

February 5th 2017

Scripture Reading – Luke 4:1-13

Resources Utilized – Testament of Devotion by Thomas Kelly, The Active Life by Parker Palmer and Carrie Newcomer

This past Wednesday our circle of care group met as we do each month   Each time we gather together we always start by doing a check in and sharing our joys and concerns.  Usually we have lots to share joyfully in our lives, but this past Wednesday there was a heaviness to our sharing. Every one of us felt a sense of sadness, a sense of anxiety and some sense of dread.  We all have been grappling with various challenges, changes and losses in our lives for some time but last Wednesday felt different.  We all were trying to figure out why we had such a heavy feeling.  Maybe the weather and lack of sunshine, maybe all the dramatic changes going on in our country every day, maybe the lack of control over so many things in our lives and the world. 

I think a lot of people are feeling this sense of sadness.  Maybe it has to do with how we have defined ourselves and how that definition keeps changing and shifting and begins to threaten our very foundations.  Is my sense of self coming from those things this world tells me are important and what this world values?  And as things change and losses occur, how does this impact my sense of self and my esteem? 

I have been thinking quite a bit this week about attachments.  What are those things that I cling to, that I am devoted to, that define my sense of self-worth?   What are my attachments that stop me from experiencing the fullness of God’s love and power?    We all begin our life attached to our mothers as we grow and develop in her womb, receiving all our nourishment through that umbilical cord.  We remain attached until the moment of our birth.  This is our first moment of detaching and becoming a separate and distinct being.  Our life journey begins   and as we grow and develop we become less and less dependent on our family of origin.  But as time goes on we attach to other things:  our possessions, our status, our relationships.  We need to control certain things to be the person that we want the world to see and have some sense of power.  For some this means a sense of wealth and prosperity, for others it is a job that the world will respect, for some it is relationships, others it is degrees and education to display a perceived sense of knowledge.  The list goes on and on and is different for each one of us, but it is the desires of our ego that we hold onto and don’t want to let go of because we need to say to the world that we matter.

I have appreciated learning about the life of the Quaker writer Thomas Kelley and how his life experience teaches us to reflect on our own desires and attachments.  Kelly was driven by the strong desire of his ego to be recognized and respected as a great scholar and it controlled him for much of his life and caused great pain and physical illness.  He wanted desperately to be working at a prestigious college (Earlham did not cut it for him in this category and he did two stints there) and he went back to get a second PHD from Harvard to give him more credibility and hopefully an invitation from an east coast school.  During this time, he experienced significant health issues in both body and mind.  He finally was asked to join the faculty of Haverford College in 1936 as he was completing his second doctorate at Harvard.  During his oral exams at Harvard, he experienced a panic attack and could not respond to the professor’s questions.  He was not granted the degree and this plunged him into a deep depression.  His wife thought he might take his own life.  His attachment to prestige and recognition as a scholar likely shortened his life.    But it was at this darkest time that he wrote an essay entitled The Eternal Now that described how he was “shaken by the experience of Presence – something that he did not seek, but that sought him”.  He felt God’s gentle, loving but awesome power that was taking hold of him and he saw God at work in the world.  He began to see that his attachments were keeping him from experiencing the full power of God’s presence and reality in his life.  He began to write a few essays that spoke to this release of his attachments and the mystical experience of the integration of God’s spirit and love in his life.  He died at 47 years old from a heart attack on the day he found out that a collection of his essays was going to be considered for a book.  That book A Testament of Devotion has become a Quaker classic and a classic book for many on the spiritual path.  All his desire to become recognized and respected never occurred when he held onto it so tightly.  Yet he received this recognition and respect after he let go of it and not within his lifetime. 

I want us to consider the story of Jesus temptation in the desert that Brenda read to us a few minutes ago and what that has to say about our attachments.   The story is very dramatic and it seems like a pivotal moment in Jesus ministry.  Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert to face his demons.   While the encounters with the Devil seem to happen quickly, I think this period of testing lasted a long time.   The number 40 is used in other places in the Bible to describe extended time such as the Israelites wandering for 40 years and the great flood lasting for 40 days.  And while some might feel repelled by the word Devil since we don’t use the word that often today, we can certainly substitute other words like ambition, selfishness, power, those forces within all of us that can lead us into darkness. 

In the story, The Spirit has brought Jesus into the desert to face his attachments to the world.   The Devil is saying to Jesus prove to us your identity.  John the Baptist has declared you the Chosen One – so show us that you are the Chosen One.   Turn the stones into bread, do something spectacular like throwing yourself down to the Temple and if you are the Chosen One the angels will save you. Envision a world of earthly glory and power for you.  These temptations were a portal that Jesus had to walk through to come to a place of surrender and letting go.  He came to a place of being willing to forfeit an external confirmation of who he was.   It was truly by letting go of all the earthly attachments, the things that the world values, that Jesus came into his calling, his ministry and the fullness of God’s love.  

The last line in this story says that when the devil had finished every test, the devil departed until an opportune time.  We do not one day wake up and have declared victory over our attachments.   Our desire of our attachments keeps coming at us again and again during our life.  We are on a journey to come back to our center, our Light, God’s love within us. 

The passage says that when Jesus left the desert, he came with the power of the Spirit in him.   As Thomas Kelly discovered, “there is a last rock for your souls, a resting place of absolute peace and joy and power and radiance and security.  There is a Divine Center into which your life can slip, a new and absolute orientation in God, a Center where you live with God and out of which you see all of life, through new and radiant vision, tinged with sorrow, pangs, new joys unspeakable and full of glory.”

As we enter our time of waiting worship and listening for God’s voice may we hold in our heart any message from God that is meant for us.  And may we be obedient if this message from God is one that others need to hear and will share this. 

Here are some words from Carrie Newcomer to  consider as we enter this time of worship:

I've traveled through my history,
From certainty to mystery
God speaks in rhyme in paradox
This I know is true

And finally when life is through,
I'm what I am not what I do
It comes down to you and your next breath,
And this I know is true

Leaves don't drop they just let go,
And make a place for seeds to grow
Every season brings a change,
A seed is what a tree contains,
To die and live is life's refrain

1-29-17

Dear Friends,

This past Sunday, we gathered in Meeting for Worship, considering the idea of transition and change.  I have been facing this myself as I look toward retirement - moving, leaving a job and people that I love, and anticipating a new future for Jon and me.  The Meeting is certainly in transition as we look toward a new future with new pastoral leadership and change that will come.  Our nation is facing daily changes under a new President and new executive leadership. Let’s face it… each day brings something new!  Change is one constant we can all count on!  We used our time together in Meeting for Worship to consider this query together… How have we been aware of God’s presence in these times of transition and change?

Deep sharing ensued out of the silence, with various messages; know who you are, never give up hope, listen intentionally, celebrate with abandon, acknowledge changes deeply.  God bless us all as we attempt to move through each day, each experience, each struggle, each joy, from a Centered place, surrounded and beloved by God’s Holy Spirit.

‘Be strong and of good courage; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’  Joshua 1:9

Blessings,

Ruthie

1-22-17 Light Has Dawned

Sermon 1-22-2017 ‘Light Has Dawned’

Matthew 4:12-17

Brian Drayton, On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry, Quaker Press of Friends General Conference, 2006.

Thomas R. Kelly, The Eternal Promise, Harper and Row, 1966.

When Jesus was inaugurated into ministry, there were no parades, no speeches, no dinners and dancing.  He left home, his parents, his friends, his synagogue, the carpenter shop, and walked about 40 miles to a fishing village – Capernaum on the north coast of the Sea of Galilee.  Nothing special happened, except – the Son/Sun came up.  Morning.  The sun rose – for a people whom Isaiah had spoken of who had no expectation that it ever would.  Hundreds of years before, with the Assyrian army invading, God’s people were fearful of annihilation, but lived with the promise of ultimate survival.  People who had once only known thick darkness, would see and experience Light. 

Did the sun come up for you this morning?  Of course it did – but you and I, just like many others may not have noticed.  We may have taken it for granted.  Well, we’ve been waking up lately.  I woke up Friday and went to worship with a Catholic Priest, a Muslim Imam, and a Jewish Rabbi.  And - a whole lot of other people.  We heard sacred scriptures read.  We sang.  And we prayed.  I came home, and watched what we had all prayed for – the seamless, peaceful transition of power. 

This last Friday, there were parades, speeches, dinners and dancing, just as there are every four years on Inauguration Day.  This last Friday, some people finally felt they’d been noticed – paid attention to.  Others felt they’d been abandoned.  As the Wisdom writer in Ecclesiastes said, ‘There is nothing new under the sun’. [Ecc. 1:9] Not too much later, the same writer says this:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: 
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up; 
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away; 
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.  [Ecc. 3]

As I re-read this passage, I saw all the opposites – weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing.  I removed the commas between and realized that just as in my own life, there are times when we all – our families, our Meeting, our communities, our nation -  mourn and dance, weep and laugh.  

Rabbi Krichiver brought this to our attention at the Multi-Faith Prayer Service on Friday… What do we do in these seasons of our lives?  What do we do with these times God has given us?  His challenge to us was to act.  Mourn fully.  Dance freely.  Embrace lovingly.  Refrain intentionally.  Weep in a cleansing way.  Laugh until it hurts… 

Friday evening, Jon and I went to hear the Prague Symphony Orchestra play at the Palladium.  A young violinist, Sarah Chang performed a Dvorak violin concerto.  She didn’t just play it… she PLAYED  it!  She knew what it was to play that fully. To embrace it completely. Normally a violinist, at least any other violinist I’ve seen play a concerto, will stand and when it’s time to play.  She’ll stand and play through that part of the concerto and then release the violin down. Not this girl. She would toss her head around, whip her foot out, lift the bow and play furiously, or sometimes very gently… but then,  fling the bow up high! She knew what it was to participate fully in that moment, in that season of her life.

This is what wisdom teaches us. There is a time and season for every purpose. Act. Do. Participate. Fill that time and season with purpose.

George Fox, in the early days of his ministry, “saw, also, that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness.”  It was fascinating to me this morning when Beth gave this picture to the children of this beautiful place, “ The House of the Sun”, in Hawaii...  a high place where hundreds of people go every day to watch the sun rise. Some of the children held it like this with the light on top. And some held it like this, with darkness above. This is the way some people are feeling in our country today. Some people are feeling that the future looks like this, and some people are feeling that it looks like this. What makes the difference? It’s not Republican or Democrat, it’s not Independent or ‘Who Cares’? For those of us that understand light, and know light, it is light. We are called as ‘Children of Light’.  George Fox said that he saw not just the ocean of darkness and light, but the “infinite love of God” and he “had great openings.”  He understood the darkness the Hebrew children had suffered – much of it brought on by their own pride and disobedience.  But he also knew and experienced the power and promise of Christ’s light – already come.  The Society of Friends began in a time of deep darkness, both politically and spiritually, but they always knew their orientation.  It was to the Light.  They had to find their way through all kinds of challenges - and the way they did it was to use the Light.

Brian Drayton is a Friend from Weare, NH Monthly Meeting, and will soon be speaking at a Ministry Conference at ESR that I’ll be attending “On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry”.  He writes: “The preaching of early Friends had power not because of its sociology, not because of its politics, but because they knew themselves as part of the drama of salvation, their story was the latest chapter in the story that began with Adam and moved through Noah, Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles.  They were seeing in their own time the dawning of the gospel day, and the fresh action of God inviting them to freedom from the bondage of sin, and the overcoming of darkness with light.  Sometimes the story was told so as to embrace the great movements of history, sometimes it was made as simple and particular as admonitions to honesty in business, avoidance of war taxes, living gently on the earth.  In each of these themes, large or small, cosmic or intimate, the great story is seen unfolding…

           Quoting Will Taber, he writes: “Over and over again, through an infinite variety of messages each of which they believed was specifically given by the Spirit for that specific occasion, [the ministers] called people out of the darkness surrounding ordinary human nature, into the light which can transform that human nature through spiritual communion with the Living Christ…”

Look at the front of your bulletin… What does it say, under that picture? It says, “I have called you Friends.” “Each one here - Ministers.” Dan Rains is the Presiding Clerk, I’m the Pastor, but each of you, each one of us, is a minister. And God has called us as ministers, to bring people out of darkness, out of their ordinary human nature, into the light which can transform that human nature through spiritual communion with Christ--the Light.

And now, from The Eternal Promise, by Thomas Kelly: “The Quaker discovery and message has always been that God still lives and moves, works and guides, in vivid immediacy, within the hearts of men and women.  For revelation is not static and complete, like a book, but dynamic and enlarging, as springing form a Life and Soul of all things.  This Light and Life is in all people, ready to sweep us into its floods, illumine us with its blinding, or with its gentle guiding radiance, send us tendered but strong into the world of need and pain and blindness.  Surrender of self to that indwelling Life is entrance upon an astounding, an almost miraculous Life.  It is to have that mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus.  “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”  In the silence of your hearts hear Him knock.  Outward teachers can only lead us to the threshold.  But “God himself has come to lead his people.”  Such men and women must be raised up, heaven-led souls who are not “seekers” alone, but “finders” who have been found by the Father of all the world’s prodigals…

It is given to us to be message bearers of the day that can dawn in apostolic powers if we be wholly committed to the Light.  Radiant in that radiance, we may confidently expect the kindling of the Light in all people until all of our footsteps are lighted by that Light, which is within them. 

Our fellowship groups are small, but they can be glorious colonies of heaven, cities set on a hill.  It is a great message which is given to us – good news indeed – that the Light overcomes the darkness.  But to give the message we must also be the message.”

God bless us, as we minister to others from our own experience of the dawning of the Light. 

1-15-17 The Beloved Community

Sermon 1-15-2017 – ‘The Beloved Community’

Isaiah 11:1-9

http://www.thekingcenter.org/about-dr-king

http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/desegregation.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

Lois Hackney, Freedom School, The Advocate, November/December 2016, United Society of Friends Women, Belvidere, NC.

Parker Palmer Essay: www.couragerenewal.org/PDFs/PJP-WeavingsArticle-Broken-OpenHeart.pdf

Ruthie Tippin, Pastor – Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

Today, January 15th, means an awful lot to Jon and me.  It’s the day we became parents.  The day someone would eventually call us ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’.  It’s amazing how much difference a child can make in your life. It’s amazing how much difference one person’s life can make.

I’m sure Alberta and Martin felt the same way when Christine was born, and then again, on January 15th when Martin Jr. came into the world.  It’s amazing how much difference a child can make in your life. It’s amazing how much difference one person’s life can make.

Matthew Brooke Tippin turns 38 years old today.  He is a Senior Business Analysis Manager for T-Mobile in Bellevue, WA; a husband, a new father, a brother, an uncle, a friend, a Washington State Cougar, a model railroader, a very sweet kid, and a young man with great integrity.  It’s amazing how much difference one person’s life can make.

Martin Luther King Jr. would be 88 years old today.  From The King Center website: ‘During the less than 13 years of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the modern American Civil Rights Movement, from December, 1955 until April 4, 1968, African Americans achieved more genuine progress toward racial equality in America than the previous 350 years had produced. Dr. King is widely regarded as America’s pre-eminent advocate of nonviolence and one of the greatest nonviolent leaders in world history.

Drawing inspiration from both his Christian faith and the peaceful teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King led a nonviolent movement in the late 1950’s and ‘60s to achieve legal equality for African-Americans in the United States. While others were advocating for freedom by “any means necessary,” including violence, Martin Luther King, Jr. used the power of words and acts of nonviolent resistance, such as protests, grassroots organizing, and civil disobedience to achieve seemingly-impossible goals. He went on to lead similar campaigns against poverty and international conflict, always maintaining fidelity to his principles that men and women everywhere, regardless of color or creed, are equal members of the human family.’  It’s amazing how much difference one person’s life can make.

When Edward Hicks considered the scripture reading today from Isaiah, he didn’t just read it.  He painted it 62 times, and he named each painting the same thing every time – ‘The Peaceable Kingdom’.   Hicks was an American folk painter and distinguished religious minister of the Society of Friends.  His cousin Elias was a more controversial figure among Quakers, and the Hicksite branch of Friends is named for him.  Edward became a Quaker icon because of his paintings.

Although it’s not considered a religious image, Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom exemplifies Quaker ideals.  The animals and children are taken from Isaiah 11:6.  ‘The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.’ 

Isaiah’s prophecy speaks of a child – a young shoot coming from the stump of Jesse’s lineage.   Jesse was King David’s father.  David, the King chosen by God to lead the Hebrew people.  David – the ‘man after God’s own heart’. [Acts 13:22]  Now, this young shoot, this child would come – a new descendant from this same Davidic line, full of God’s spirit, wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge… and would lead creation into peace.  It’s amazing how much difference a child can make in our lives. It’s amazing how much difference one person’s life can make.

Hicks' portrayal was influenced by the Quaker belief in the Inner Light.  George Fox and other founding Quakers had established and preached the Inner Light doctrine, yielding one's self-will to the divine power of Christ and "Christ within" – the Inner Light.  Hicks depicted humans and animals to represent the Inner Light's idea of breaking physical barriers (of difference between two individuals) to working and living together in peace.  The lion and the lamb were now brought into peace by the Child.  The Christ.  The Light.

This peaceable kingdom is discovered again and again in our own lives, often set in the midst of turmoil and hatred.  In a recent run of the United Society of Friends Women’s journal, there is a story of a beloved community formed, in a community torn apart by disagreement and distrust.

Lois Hackney writes: ‘In 1956, we might have thought that the desegregation of public schools was only an issue in the South.  There was quite the fight going on north of the Mason/Dixon Line, too.”  A new school building had been built in Hillsboro, Ohio but the school board decided it wasn’t big enough to house the entire school population.  The kids who had attended Lincoln – the all black school – would have to return there until other arrangements would be made.  When school began that fall, the Lincoln School parents made a choice – they would home school their children.  “Every morning they marched with their children to the new school carrying signs.  One example was: “OUR CHILDREN PLAY TOGETHER.  WHY CAN’T THEY LEARN TOGETHER?”

The principal met them at the door saying ‘nothing has changed’.  The mothers returned to their homes.  The students were separated by grade levels, and they met around kitchen tables in different homes.  The parents tried teaching their children but soon saw they needed help.  They needed guidance from experienced teachers.  They came to Wilmington College for help.  The parents spoke to Ralph Rose, director of FWCC on campus, and active in Wilmington Yearly Meeting, who took the issue to their Race Relations Committee.  Four men.  All married to state certified teachers, who due to family circumstances, were not teaching at the time.  These four Quaker women agreed to travel to Hillsboro, OH every Monday and conduct a class.  Freedom School began. 

Years before, in 1754 and 1762 respectively, Friend John Woolman published the first and second parts of Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, in which he argued for the connection between Christianity and freedom. The idea that men and women are created equal in the image of God leads directly to "an idea of general brotherhood and a disposition easy to be touched with a feeling of each other's afflictions."

Each Monday morning, the four ladies met and carpooled to Hillsboro.  The children were divided into four groups, and still met around kitchen tables in homes.  There were no snow days.  When the weather was bad, they would use the heaviest car they had, as it wouldn’t slide off the road as quickly.  They went each week, and each had a volunteer aide from the group of mothers.  They left detailed lesson plans for the aides to use for the remaining four days. 

At the end of the school year, the administration of the Hillsboro Schools said the children from Freedom School, would need to take an achievement test.  Research has shown that across-the-board testing was not done in Ohio in 1956.  The school administration wanted to show objectivity, so the tests were ordered from Chicago.  Employees from the state Department of Education supervised the test.  This upset the Quaker teachers, as they felt the children would do better if they were being supervised by teachers they knew.  In spite of this, the children performed well.  In 1957, the US Supreme Court ruled that all schools must be integrated, ending school segregation in Ohio.  It’s amazing what a small group of parents, teachers and children can do. 

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”  If a beloved community, one where a wolf and lamb, a lion and a fatling – an animal who’s been fattened for slaughter - a cow with a bear, natural enemies who prey on one another, is to live together in peace, King teaches us that the quality of our souls must change AND the quantity – the wholeness – of our lives must also change.  Like these women in Ohio in the 1950’s, we will need to sacrifice our Monday’s for a year.  Like the early Quaker slave-holders in the 1700’s, we will need to allow the Light of Christ to burn within our souls and challenge our holding of persons as property, giving them their freedom.  What is it today that you and I are asked to sacrifice in the quality of our souls and the quantity of our lives for the sake of our beloved community?  Of this beloved community?  Of any of the many beloved communities we hold dear?  It’s amazing how much difference one person’s life can make.

Forging a beloved community takes time.  It is hard work – often heart-breaking work.  Friend Parker Palmer says: “… the great traditions [of the Church] at their best, aim at helping us hold tensions and the suffering it brings in ways that enhance spiritual creativity and build the beloved community.  They do so by focusing on the inevitable experience of heartbreak.  There is no way to be human without having one’s heart broken.”  What shall we do with the heartbreak around us?  With the fear, anxiety, hatred, bitterness, confusion?  Parker Palmer teaches that the heart either breaks apart into wounded and wounding shards, or breaks open into a ‘greater capacity to hold one’s own and the world’s pain and joy.’   

How is it with your heart today?  Are you in a place that is quiet enough to notice the wolves and lambs around you, the cows and bears, the lions and the fatlings?  The blacks and whites, the Muslims and the Jews, the gays and straights, the poor and the rich, the conservatives and liberals, the grieving and the joyful?  Do you see the Child together among them?  The Light?  The very small, the very tender, the very strong beam of light there, in the midst of then all?  There, where heart and soul come together… do you see it? 

The Light of Christ, the Inner Light does not lead us to separation or differences.  Instead, it calls us to openness, to oneness, to break ourselves open to each other in care and concern and action that will restore each one of us individually and corporately, that will build and bless life together, and bring about the blessed community of hope this world needs so desperately. 

We need not pray for each other, as much as we need to pray with each other.  Let us consider how God is speaking to our condition this morning, individually and corporately in the silence of waiting worship.  How, and to what purpose, is the Light of God’s loving spirit leading us today? 

12-11-16 Seeking the Christ Child... with Joy

Sermon 12-11-2016; Seeking the Christ Child, with Joy

Isaiah 9:2-7 & Luke 2:8-11

Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew; Harper, 1997, pp. 42-45

Pastor Ruthie Tippin – Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

Have you ever heard the angels sing?  We certainly have heard them this morning, thanks to the wonderful Royal Sensation choir.   I know this is one Sunday that many of you look forward to… the sound of these voices is incredible.  But seriously, in your own experience – have you ever felt God’s presence surrounding you as Luke describes in his Gospel?  “Do not be afraid.  I bring you good tidings of great joy… and suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest.”

How tender of the angel to dispel fear when it first appeared.  Shepherds in a field, travelers on a journey, housewives at their laundry, doctors with their patients, ranchers in their corrals, engineers at their building sites… people moving through their daily lives and tasks are not used to angels appearing.  We are not used to good tidings of great joy.  Can you remember when you have ever heard the angels sing?  When you have heard good tidings of great joy?

I was trying to remember this myself.  I know I’ve heard God’s angels many times, but one time in particular came immediately to mind.  I was in the Student Union Building – the SUB – at George Fox College, eating dinner.  Kay Ridinger came up to me and said, “I have something to tell you.  Meet me in Edwards Hall right after dinner.  It’s about Jon Tippin.”  What Kay knew, and what you might not, is that I was in the winter of my junior year in college.  I had loved Jon Tippin since I met him a year and a half earlier.   

I met Kay immediately after dinner at the dorm, and she told me that Jon had asked if I was dating anyone… ‘Do you think she’d be interested in going out with me?’  If Kay was the angel, that was when the multitude of heavenly hosts started singing!

God doesn’t need Kay Ridinger or any other person, to speak ‘good news of great joy’ into our lives – we know God speaks directly to us – through our heart, our soul, our mind, and even through our bodies.  But sometimes, God uses us as God’s angels to speak into another person’s life.  That day, I experienced the gift of joy.

Marcus Borg writes about this in “The God We Never Knew”, and we discussed this last week – the cognitive, intellectual understanding of God.  Loving God with all our mind is what God wants from us… loves from us.  The inquisitive, curious questioning about God, about faith, about our relationship with God, and then, with the world - and Quakers, of all faith communities, are brilliant at this.  Our faith continues to challenge us to seek, to question, as we use queries to examine our own lives, and our lives as a Meeting.

Borg moves from the cognitive aspects of sacred experience to the affective (“feeling”) aspect of these experiences and their effects.  “They are commonly marked by joy, bliss, and peace.  Moreover, they frequently lead to a transformed and loving perception of people and the world.”  Borg goes on to give us examples:

Imagine the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, at a Starbuck’s coffee shop.  It’s not stretching too far… He was sitting one day in a London coffee shop, and describes it in part four of his poem “Vacillation”.  The first five lines describe the setting – the last four the experience:

My fiftieth year had come and gone,

I sat, a solitary man, in a crowded London shop,

An open book and an empty cup

On the marble table top.

While on the shop and street I gazed,

My body of a sudden blazed;

And twenty minutes more or less

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessed and could bless.

Borg writes:

Joy is central to an ecstatic experience that the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal had over three hundred years ago:

‘In the year of grace 1654, Monday 23 November… from about half-past ten in the evening till about half an hour after midnight:

FIRE

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob.  Not of philosophers and the learned.  Certitude.  Certitude.  Emotion.  Joy… Joy! Joy1 Joy! Tears of joy… My God… let me not be separated from thee for ever.’

Borg: Another example of ecstatic joy and transformed perception comes from Billy Bray in the nineteenth century, whom William James describes as “an excellent little illiterate English evangelist”:

‘In an instant the Lord made me so happy that I cannot express what I felt.  I shouted for joy.  I praised God with my whole heart… Everything looked new to me, the people, the fields, the cattle, the trees.  I was like a new man in a new world.  I can’t help praising the Lord.  As I go along the street, I lift up one foot, and it seems to say “Glory”; and I lift up the other, and it seems to say “Amen”; and so they keep up like that all the time I am walking.’  “Glory”.  “Amen”.  “Glory”.  “Amen”.  “Glory”.  “Amen”…

Bray’s response to God’s presence reminds me of something George Fox experienced… do you know what I’m thinking of?  Fox records this in his Journal, in1648: “Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword, into the paradise of God. All things were new; and all the creation gave unto me another smell than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness; being renewed into the image of God by Christ Jesus, to the state of Adam, which he was in before he fell. The creation was opened to me…”

When have you heard the angels sing?  When have your experienced the presence of God?  For some of us, it comes as a blazing inner sensation in a crowded coffee shop that no one else would suspect.  For others, it has come among many on a hillside, with sheep scattered nearby.   For some, angels sing in the last hours of evening.   For others, they come in bright daylight, giving us a new sense of the creation that surrounds us. 

So what does joy – the experience of deepest hopes satisfied, the challenge of curiosity accepted, the ecstacy of presence – what do these mean for us this Christmas, and always?  As Borg would say, as the shepherds, kings and angels would report, as I can tell you myself… no one can prove God to you or to anyone, but God alone.  These joy-filled, ecstatic experiences – whether quiet fires or loud choruses – must be taken seriously as the reality of the sacred.  As Borg says: “The varieties of religious experience suggest that the sacred – God – is an element of experience, not simply an article of faith to be believed in.”

Friends, we don’t believe in God because of a creed we’ve been taught as children.  We don’t believe in God because of a Christmas carol, or even a passage in sacred scripture.  We don’t believe in God because of something we’ve seen or have not seen, or because someone tells us to.  We believe in God because we have experienced God – perhaps brought to us in those ‘angelic’ ways. We believe because we dare to hope.  Because we remain curious.  Because in humility, we have allowed way to open to experience God.  No other persons’ experience will be yours – just as was true for the kings and the shepherds.

Leslie Weatherhead describes his encounter with the presence of God made real in his life – on a train: 

‘For a few seconds only, I suppose, the whole compartment was filled with light.  This is the only way I know in which to describe the moment, for there was nothing to see at all.  I felt caught up into some tremendous sense of being within a loving, triumphant and shining purpose.  I never felt more humble.  I never felt more exalted.  A most curious, but overwhelming sense possessed me and filled me with ecstacy… All men were shining and glorious beings who in the end would enter incredible joy… An indescribable joy possessed me.  All this happened over fifty years ago but even now I can see myself in the corner of that dingy third-class compartment with the feeble lights of inverted gas mantles over head and the Vauxhall Station platform outside with milk cans standing there.  In a few moments the glory departed – all but one curious, lingering feeling.  I loved everybody in that compartment.  It sounds silly now, and indeed I blush to write it, but at that moment I think I would have died for any one of the people in that compartment.’

‘There will be no more gloom for those who were in distress… The people walking in darkness have seen a great light… a light has dawned.  You have… increased their joy.

                                                                                                            Isaiah 9

‘Joy to the world – the Lord is come.’

Amen.

12-4-16 Seeking the Christ Child... with Wonder

Sermon 12-4-2016; Seeking the Christ Child, with Wonder

Micah 5:2-5 and Matthew 2:1-12

Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew; Harper, 1997, p 45.

Pastor Ruthie Tippin – Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

Do we leave space in our lives for curiosity?  For seeking out new things? for finding answers to curious questions? Do we leave way open for mystery? For wonder? 

Years ago, learned Gentile priests worked at solving curious questions.  They had read the accounts from sacred writings of a ruler, an anointed one, who would come to restore peace and rule justly over the people of Judah.  When and how would this happen?  They joined others who for hundreds of years had struggled with this same mystery.  The magi wanted to solve it.  King Herod was afraid not to solve it, first.  He had too much to lose.  An incredible story… ending with three magi, a child king in a manger, and gifts brought forward – riches, incense, and balm. The wise men left the True King in Bethlehem, not returning to the Vassal King, but instead going home by a different road.

How many times have we left ourselves open to discover Truth?  To allow answers to come?  To wonder about things?  To let life prove life itself?  How many times do we begin an intellectual argument, only to discover a mystical response?  Does all of life have to be two dimensional?  Must we live in ‘Pleasantville’, with the false emptiness of rules and regulations, or can our faith take the risk of trust in living color?  Can we not leave way open for God’s Spirit?  Do we have to solve everything?  Do we straightjacket God?  Or do we allow God to wear a billowing cape, leap tall buildings, and fly through our lives with the energy and power of the Spirit?

For Marcus Borg, the intellectual understanding of God was important.  Without it, he could not sustain faith.  “For my own religious journey, the resolution of the intellectual problem was indispensable; without it, I would still be on the outside of the Christian life looking in.”  God totally gets this… Why else would he tell us that we must love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength?  We are created with emotion, spirit, intellect, and physicality.  God wants all of that - requires all of that – in our relationship.  I believe God expects and is concerned for our emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical well-being.  God asks and answers us intellectually, and challenges us to think, to question, to wonder.  God does not expect us to be ignorant. 

What is the first question a child usually asks?  Why?  And it’s the first question we always ask God, isn’t it?  ‘Why?’  We always want to know.  To think that God is not an intellectual is to underestimate God.  To think that God cannot handle intellectual debate is to totally miss the mark.  To think that God cares about your intellect is to be absolutely accurate. 

So how did Marcus Borg come to resolution with this?  Flatland – a late nineteenth century book by Edwin A. Abbott.  Quoting Borg: “Flatland is a two-dimensional universe having only length and width, a plane inhabited by two dimensional creatures – squares, triangles, rectangles, etc… Abbott invites us to imagine Flatland being intersected by a sphere and what the Flatlanders would experience as the sphere passed through it… What kind of explanations might the Flatlanders have for what had happened?  They would have no chance at all of understanding what really happened so long as they tried to do so within the framework of a two-dimensional understanding of reality.”

For Marcus, the modern worldview of the Enlightenment – a materialistic and mechanistic image of reality, where what is real is the visible material world of our ordinary experience, was intersected, interrupted, by the experience of the sacred…

“Experiences of the sacred shatter Flatland.  Visions happen, enlightenment experiences happen… These experiences suggest that reality is far more mysterious than any and all of our domestications – whether scientific or religious - make it out to be.  They suggest that reality is much, much more than modernity has imagined.”

Another man discovered much the same thing in 1656: “But as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition"; and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let [hinder] it? and this I knew experimentally [through experience].”  [George Fox]

We don’t have to experience God.  We don’t have to travel through the English countryside.  We don’t have to travel to Bethlehem.  We don’t even have to go outside and watch the sky for signs and stars.  We can sit at our screens.  We can hold to what we already know.  We can be consumed with our own understanding of ourselves and of life.  We can remain informed and uninformed, all at the same time.  We can remain ignorant and educated, all at once.  What the wise men did was to move out of their studies into experience, and they saw a star.  The Flatlanders triangles and squares were interrupted by a sphere.  George Fox moved out of his cloistered life at home into an experience – a way that opened for himself, and for many of us.

For some, the man Jonah spit out of the belly of a whale is just a story.  For others, it’s resurrection.  For some, a vision of a sheet filled with ‘clean and unclean’ animals is just a story.  For others, it’s genuine acceptance and blessing of all people.  For some, a dry sea bed, crashing full of water is just a story.  For others, it’s the absolute denial of anyone’s right to own any other person.  For some, a baby in a manger is just a story.  For others, it’s the birth of a revolution.  

Thomas Merton: “Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or fable, it is true.  This is something we are not able to see; but if we abandon ourselves to Him, forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently, that God manifests Himself everywhere, in everything: in people, and in things, and in nature, and in events; so that it becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him.”

I dare you to think - intellectually.  I dare you to think – experientially.  I dare you to remain curious.  To search for the Christ.  To think and read and seek critically.  To try to figure out the mystery of faith.  To work at your own salvation.  But I also ask you to remain humble and teachable.  To walk and work and study in companionship with the Spirit, as all wise men and women do.  To continue seeking.  To continue in the way of wonder.  To perhaps, find yourself in Bethlehem.   Amen.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky

When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, 'cause he was the King

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky

11-27-16 Seeking the Christ Child.... with Hope

Sermon 11-27-2016; ‘Seeking the Christ Child, With Hope’

Isaiah 11:1-5 & Luke 2:13-15

Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew; Harper, 1997.

‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’, Coots and Gillespie, 1934.

‘An American Tail’, James Horner, Don Bluth, 1986.

Pastor Ruthie Tippin – Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

Phillips Brooks was a native Bostonian of Puritan stock.  He became an Episcopalian minister in both Philadelphia and Boston, and at one time, visited the Holy Land.  When standing at the site of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, hearing carols being sung hour after hour, he said “it seemed as if I could hear voices I knew well, telling each other of the Wonderful Night of the Savior’s Birth.  Three years later he needed a song for the children’s Christmas program, and wrote the words to the carol we know so well… “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”  I so love the imagery Brooks uses to set the carol in place… the stillness of the town, the deep, dark night, the light that breaks through that darkness, and the realization that both hope and fear are answered in that one place, in that one evening. 

Hope and Fear.  Hope and Despair. Both travel together.  The ‘hopes and fears of all the years were met’ in Bethlehem that night.  Years of waiting, hoping, giving up, trying again, becoming discouraged, bucking up…  Isaiah had promised the community of faith that One would come who would make the world right – right and righteous.  Rooted in their own understanding of themselves – in their own kind, he would come – shoot and branch – naturally, organically.  Powerful enough to slay the wicked, but gentle enough to be concerned for the poor and meek.  Filled with wisdom, understanding, delighting in the Lord….  Did they dare hope for such a One as this?

What do you hope for?  What do you dare to hope for?  What do you limit your hopes to?  Many of us – myself included – hope only for those things that are possible.  The outcome of an election.  The offer of a job.  The safe arrival of a newborn baby.  The good result from a series of radiation treatments.  All these things are possible.  Do we dare to hope for the impossible?  When fear and despair surrounds us, and the possible seems impossible, do we yet dare to hope?  Will we hope for something beyond ourselves?

Isaiah’s prophecy tells that the One who will come ‘will not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear.’  Instead, he will use righteousness and equity to make decisions.  He will use all of who he is to turn the world round right.  How many of us, in looking to the future, consider only what our eyes can see and our ears can hear?  Do we use all of who we are – all of who God is in us?  Do we judge the future, making room for God to work in us?  Do we allow for God’s righteousness and equity?  For God’s power and faithfulness? 

Christmas tells us who we are.  Think about it for a moment.  In his great tale of humankind, Charles Dickens asks us to decide: are we Scrooge or are we Crachitt?  Are we hopeful?  Or despairing?  Do we work for the good of humankind, or for the most we can take from them?  ‘A Christmas Carol’ challenges us to consider who we are.  The Christmas Carol, sung by the angels to the shepherds that evening just outside of Bethlehem, asked the same question… ‘Who are you?’ Are you those who live in hope?  Do you live into hope?  Do you dare to act on hope?  Do you want to hope enough that you will seek out the reason for your hope?

Marcus Borg in his book ‘The God We Never Knew’ speaks of different ways of looking at God - and how we look at God, is how we look at Christmas.  It’s how we look for the Christmas Child – for Jesus – or if we look at all.  Marcus speaks of his childhood and then maturing in faith, and his different experiences of the Sacred.  One of the earliest was Pastor Thorsen – the finger-shaker… ‘he actually shook his finger at us as he preached’.  God, for young Marcus, was the ‘big eye in the sky’ who knew everything:

He sees you when you’re sleeping, He knows when you’re awake,

He knows if you’ve been bad or good, So be good for goodness sake.

‘The All-knowing, lawgiver and judge who knew everything we thought or did.  But we could be saved by being Christian – that was the requirement.’ (Pastor Thorsen’s finger shaking).

So many people today have this same experience of God.  It was their childhood understanding of God, and it remains today.  God is “out there”, transcendent, who judges all they do.  God chooses to love, but… does God love them?  They sing with Fievel, the mouse:

‘Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight,

Someone’s thinking of me, and loving me tonight…’

Through seminary, through the work of his life, Marcus Borg discovered both God’s transcendence and God’s immanence – that God is other and more, but God is also present and in.  God is not only ‘out there’, or only ‘just here’.  God is not either/or, but God is both/and.  As Borg puts it, ‘God is more than everything, even as God is present everywhere.  God is all around us and within us, and we are within God. 

Friends, this is revolutionary… as Borg states it, ‘it is biblical, and certain kinds of religious experience points to this way of thinking about God… some [Christians] welcome it enthusiastically because it makes sense and fits their own experience.’  Intimate, direct experience of knowing God.  This is what early Friends were arrested for preaching about.   This is what we know to be true.  This is what people are hungry for.

This is why we can hope…

We do not hope, based on our own will or way.  We do not simply wish, or cross our fingers, or say simple prayers and hope we ‘get lucky’.  We hope with the knowing that we are filled with God – that God is in us.  That God knows us.  And that God is with us.  That we are companioned in our hope by Godself.  We live into hope, knowing we live with God, in God’s presence.   

Shepherds…  going about their business – believed God’s messengers for something beyond themselves.  They sought God out with hope.  They had no reason to expect anything, except that angels had come – first one, and then multitudes of angels.  And they sang of promise – of hope fulfilled.  What do you suppose those shepherds were thinking as they moved toward Bethlehem?  Had they heard the prophecies?  Did they know what to hope for?  Did they carry hope, along with their sheep and lambs?

Do you seek the promise of the Christmas Child?  Do you know the gift of Emmanuel – that God is with us?  Do you hold on to hope – regardless of time?  Regardless of circumstance?  Do you remember to remember all of who you are, and all of who God is in you, around you, below you, above you, beside you, as you carry your hopes and fears to Bethlehem?    

11-20-16 Right Sharing of World Resources & Jackie Stillwell

Happy Thanksgiving Friends!

We’ve just enjoyed spending Thanksgiving Sunday together, singing favorite hymns – ‘We Gather Together’ and ‘Come, Ye Thankful People Come’ – and considering the many blessings we have received.  We heard from Jackie Stillwell, General Secretary of Right Sharing ofWorld Resources, a Quaker organization concerned with receiving blessings and multiplying them again and again through income-generating projects in developing countries.  It was a blessing to see how far a small amount of money could go.

We were blessed to share in a ‘World Meal’ of beans and rice – far different than the turkey and stuffing we will most likely eat around our Thanksgiving tables this Thursday.  Friends raised $400 in donations for RSWR.  We were reminded that 20% of the world’s population consumes 80% of the world’s resources. What part do we play in sharing the riches of God’s blessings with those less fortunate?

A simple way to share is to save our stamps!  Over $70,000 has been raised for RSWR through the donation of cancelled stamps.  Save all your Christmas Card Stamps, and donate them!  

Here’s how:

Follow these simple instructions: 

Stamps should be cut from envelopes with 1/8” to 1/4” of paper around the stamp. For foreign mail include the envelope as well. There are many dealers who collect foreign envelopes. Save the envelopes of domestic mail postmarked prior to 1946 too.

Send your stamps to:
Earl Walker/Quaker Missions West
650 Harrison Ave.
Claremont, CA 91711

-Ruthie Tippin

11-13-16 A Harvest of Blessings

Sermon 11-13-2016; ‘A Harvest of Blessings’

Galatians 6:1-10

Wired Word:  https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/1584f2ea8415436d

The New Interpreter’s Study Bible; Galatians 6, pps. 331-340

Farmers plant fields hoping, assuming, that the crops will grow.  They plant with hope for a bountiful harvest.  But it is not the farmers who make the crops grow.  They do all they can to see that the fields are made ready, the seeds are of the highest quality, the fertilizer is not too weak or too strong, the crop is right for the conditions of the soil… but they cannot make the crop grow.  They can only hope.  And wait.  And, if they’re people of faith (and what farmer isn’t) pray.

We love the years where we celebrate bumper crops… we get all we’d hoped for and more.  But how do we accept the lean years – the poor harvest we’re given?  Or worse yet – what if the crop fails?  What if our assumptions fail?  How do we deal with that kind of harvest? 

Think of all the times you have planted something in faith, and when it came time for harvest, it surprised you.  Sometimes it was far more bountiful that you could have imagined.  Sometimes it was a great disappointment.  What did you do? 

This past Wednesday morning we woke up with the harvest of the electorate – Donald Trump will be our next President.  Some people saw this as an incredible bounty – just what they had hoped for.  Others saw it as a great loss.  While some were cheering in banquet halls and reception galas, others were marching in the streets – and still are.  How do we deal with that kind of harvest?  One that causes joy for some, and sorrow for others? 

In our “Wired Word’ curriculum for today, the lesson shared this: “During this election week, many churches around the country offered prayer services, some including open communion, aimed at starting a healing process among a fractured electorate following the ugliest presidential race in the memory of anyone alive today. Other congregations opened their sanctuaries for prayer during voting hours. Still other churches, in their services this weekend, will be praying for healing of the national divide.  For example, on election day eve in Seattle, Washington, Saint Mark's Episcopal Cathedral hosted a nonpartisan, interfaith vigil where Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders led prayers "for those in elective office, for those with whom we disagree, and for healing in our nation," according to Saint Mark's website. 

So Friends, how do we respond?  As citizens, as Christians, as Quakers?  With humility or with anger?  With purpose or with protest?  My hope is that Paul, in his letter to the people in Galatia can help us. The letter is all about a two party system – Paul’s Disciples, and Jewish Christian Missionaries, and their disagreement about how to live together.  You’re either in, or you’re out.  They all believe in Christ, but Jewish Missionaries have come to town, convincing these non-Jewish people that they have to be circumcised or they can’t belong.  They’re out!  Paul writes, reminding them all of his earlier teaching, and the meaning of a community who lives and walks together by the Spirit.  What does that take, and what does it mean for us today?

Mutual correction.  Self-examination.  Financial support of their teachers.  And finally, doing good, both to everyone they meet, and especially to others within their community.  Four things. Four things that are needed, whether after an election, during a conflict, or just in living everyday life.  Four things that lead to a whole and healthy community.

First, the importance of understanding our responsibility for one another.  Paul speaks to those who have received the Spirit, and he does not mean the Ministry and Counsel, or the Clerks, or the Pastor.  Paul is talking to everyone in the community, and Quakers believe it means each person – that all persons have God’s Spirit within them.  Here Paul is speaking especially to those within the church.  We are all responsible to and for each other.  And it matters to Paul just how we care for and correct others.  With gentleness, with patience, with the intent to restore someone into community… that’s what mutual correction means.  It’s not meant to separate, but to gather in.  To bring in a healthy and whole harvest of community.

If we do this, it means we will bear each others’ burdens – we’ll deal with each others’ stuff.  And this isn’t easy.  It’s a choice we make to follow the law of Christ.  For Paul, it all turns on the word “fulfill”.  Earlier in his letter, Paul wrote “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.” [Gal. 5:14-15]  The law of Christ is love – loving your neighbor.  And Christ, more than anyone, fulfilled that law by giving up himself - his life – for his neighbor – for everyone.  “To fulfill the law of Christ, then, is to play out, over and over again in the life of the community, the pattern of self-sacrificial love that he revealed in his death.”  Every day, in each simple thing we choose to do, in every selfless act to care for one another, and for our community, we are fulfilling the law of Christ – the law of love.  

When we begin to acknowledge God’s Spirit in us, we begin to see our lives shaped by the Spirit.  Paul reminds us that we are responsible for ourselves, our own work, our own choices, our own actions.  We are held accountable for who we are, individually, as well as in community.  We must be mindful of who we are, and to whom we belong – not just to ourselves, but to God and to the world.

Each one of us – each faith community – has an incredible impact on those around us.  How we respond to each other, and how we respond to the world just now really matters.  Do we act in faith, or in fear?  “You reap whatever you sow.  If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption.  If you sow to the Spirit you will reap eternal life…”  The Missionaries would only accept these Galatian Christians if they looked like, acted like, and followed certain rituals of the Jewish faith – including circumcision.  Without that rubric, their faith was worthless.  Paul is warning them, and warning us all, that faith, and a community of faith, must be made known through more than external laws.  It must be more than following the letter of the law… it must be the intention of the heart – faith and the Spirit.  “In Paul’s view, the Spirit-powered community was given the task of doing good and offering the message of reconciliation to the whole world, but that reconciling work had to begin at home within the community of believers.’ [NISB]

The Quaker testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, and equality are needed now more than ever before.  If they’re to be genuine, they need to be lived out first in our community of faith, here in our own Meeting.  Are we careful to go to one another with concerns, to gently correct and counsel one another, with the intention of holding them in community?  Do we practice what it means to be a a spiritual community?  Do we remember who we are, and to whom we each belong – taking stock of our own lives, and living in humility and with purpose?  Do we seek out good teachers, and support the ministry of teaching?  Is learning more than we know already important to us?  Are we curious about the things of God, or are we satisfied with our own opinions, or own past knowledge… are we stuck intellectually in our depth of understanding?  Are we willing to do the hard work of doing good – even with those we disagree with?  Are we willing to sacrifice ourselves, in order to show others the work of God’s spirit, the reconciliation that can come?

It’s a rare farmer who walks through a field of damaged corn and throws a tantrum.  If he does, it doesn’t last long.  Or, he doesn’t.  Most farmers head back to the shed, grab their tractor, and dig it under, waiting for planting season.  This friends, is planting season.  With all the ground that’s been stirred up, what is it that we will plant? 

In our Wired Word Sunday School Class today, Jeff Rasley shared his stream of consciousness, once the election results were announced:  shock to dismay to grief to anger.  And then he decided he didn’t want to be angry.  Jeff chose to become hopeful, and now hopefulness is turning into… curiosity.  A harvest of shock and dismay has become hopefulness and curiosity.  Friends, there is so much opportunity here for the voice of peace and reconciliation, and Quakers need to be some of the first to speak.  We need to be the first to voice our strong concerns, but they need to come from a place of healing, of reconciliation, of blessing.   

In another letter Paul wrote, he makes this plea: “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” [Ephesians 4:1-3]

Turn to your neighbor just now, and instead of speaking of division – of those things of the flesh that mark us – speak to one another of the blessings of the Spirit.  What is the harvest of blessing you have felt, seen, appreciated – not just this past week, but during this past year?  As you have planted, tended, and harvested the crop of your life, what blessings have come?  What have you planted in faith?  How have you responded to its harvest?

Amen.