3-19-17 Setting Out

Sermon 3-19-2017; ‘Setting Out’

Jeremiah 29:11-13

Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage – Meriweather Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West, Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Pastor Ruthie Tippin, Indianapolis First Friends Meeting

A twenty-seven-year-old man, a neighbor and friend, was asked to serve as a Personal Secretary to his good friend in a high position.  Flattered and affirmed, he took the position.  It would change his life.  Two years later, this Secretary wrote a letter to an acquaintance from their days in military service, asking him if he would be willing to join him in a task put forward by his boss.  The acquaintance had retired from the military seven years earlier, and was now living in Indiana Territory, helping his older brother straighten out his ‘terribly tangled financial affairs.’  Could he get away?  He could, and did.  When Meriweather Lewis and William Clark shook hands October 15th, 1803, the Lewis and Clark Expedition under President Thomas Jefferson began.  They set out from Camp Dubois near St. Louis, on the Missouri River in May of 1804.

The Corps of Discovery explored US lands obtained in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and the Pacific Northwest, fulfilling scientific and commercial goals; creating maps, documenting plants and animals, establishing trade, and identifying natural resources.  They returned to St. Louis in September of 1806, having travelled 8,000 miles or more.

Before I ever heard about the Ohio or Missouri Rivers, I knew about the Columbia and the Snake.  Growing up in Portland, I knew about Lewis and Clark’s Salt Camp at the beach in Seaside, Oregon.  I knew Fort Clatsop where we’d imagine we were a part of their expedition, hunkering down for the winter.  Our children went to Sacajawea Junior High, and Lewis and Clark High School.  My dad designed the electrical circuitry for the Corps of Engineer dams along the Columbia where Lewis and Clark portaged the worst rapids and floated the better of them.  I’ve always known more about the end of Lewis and Clark’s journey than the beginning.   

Friends, we don’t usually get to know the ending of our stories – of anyone’s stories ahead of time.  Instead, we are asked to step out, to move forward, to live in faith, not in fear.  Lewis and Clark had no idea what they would encounter, and many times we don’t either. They had a commission, they had a strategy, they had a general idea of where they were going.  They weren’t certain who they would meet, what they would see, what the weather or terrain would be like, what they would eat, what supplies they would need, and whether their essentials would last.  Neither do we.      

But we, like them, have a choice.  Whether we choose to go, are asked to go, or are forced to go, we still have a choice about how we will move into the future.  Whether President Jefferson, God the Lord, or King Nebuchadnezzar speaks into our lives, we have a choice about how we will move forward. 

Our reading today was used so often a few years ago, that it became trite… you could find it in almost every graduation card.  “I know the plans I have for you…”  What people in the Hallmark stores didn’t understand was the context for God’s word to his people.  They weren’t graduating from high school.  They were being hauled off into exile.  In fact, they were already living far from home in a city belonging to their enemies.  And God gave them a map, a strategy, a way to live into their future, even in that place.  “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.  Take wives and have sons and daughters, take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.  But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare, you will find your welfare.” 

What is God saying?  LIVE!  Live wisely.  Be fully who you are no matter where you are!  Do what you do.  Live the life you know – the life you’ve been given in God.  The Hebrew people?  Communal, farmers, shepherds, people of the land who knew how to make something out of nothing.  Lewis and Clark?  Frontiersmen; Clark was a draftsman – a map maker, each of them had many other gifts beside.  You and me?

Just like Lewis and Clark, our supplies are packed and loaded.  We may not realize it, but we are ready to move out into the future.  God has gifted us all with a ‘backpack’ full of treasures that sustain us.  Our personhood, our character, our preferences, our education or lack thereof, our sophistication or naivete, our strengths, our flaws.  Our interests lead us to those places in our lives where we excel – sometimes without even recognizing it. 

Listen with new ears to what God spoke through Jeremiah: “I know the plans I have for you.  You don’t… but I do.  Plans for wholeness, and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.  Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me, and find me.  When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you.”   

Jefferson knew what Lewis and Clark could do.  God knows what you and I can do.  God sees what we cannot see.  God sees what others don’t see.  God sees us perfectly.  God sees us with more faith in us than we have in ourselves.  God sees us with confidence.  And God asks us for the same thing.  Faith and confidence in God.  Call.  Come.  Pray.  Seek.  Don’t play at this, in a half-hearted effort to face what comes your way.  This is your life.  Give it, give God your whole heart.

God knows what we are capable of.  God will use what we have.  God can use what we have been given, what we have learned, what we have become, what we can become, if we will unzip those things we have and hold – even the things we’ve forgotten or ignored at the very bottom of the bag – and give them over with a whole heart.  Things we thought had only one purpose, God can use in new ways for God’s purposes.

Moses was a murderer, who had escaped to the desert, and became a pretty lousy shepherd.  He ended up freeing his people from an Egyptian Pharaoh who had held them in bondage for hundreds of years.  Mary was an unknown, unwed mother who might have easily been stoned to death, but instead gave birth to Christ – who rescued us all.  Saul was a Roman official who made it his business to persecute and kill anyone who followed Christ’s teachings, until he finally ‘saw the light’ and became one of the greatest proponents of the same.  George Fox was a solitary, depressed, unsettled young man who discovered God speaking – not at him, but to him directly, and it changed the lives of thousands – it changed our lives. 

Moving forward is not easy… it’s much easier to stay put.  It’s much easier to stay in the circumstance you know than to strike out for new territory.  It takes work to pack your belongings, and find another place to belong.  But… Can you imagine the adventures that await?  Can you guess at all you will see?  Can you know just how much you will learn about the world? About God’s capacity to love you?  About God’s capacity to love through you?  About how much love awaits?  Can you imagine how much more you will learn about yourself?  Do you have the courage to open yourself up, and set off into wholeness, into hope, into possibility?

3-12-17 The Risk of Grace

Sermon 3-12-2017 ‘The Risk of Grace’

Romans 4:1-16

Luke 10:25-37; The Parable of the Good Samaritan, Cotton Patch Version

What compels us to care?  To ‘do the right thing’?  What is it that calls us out of ourselves and into others’ lives?  Why do we do the things we do?  Why don’t we do the things we don’t?  Caring costs.  It can cost time, energy, money, sometimes our reputation, our standing in the community, our place in our family.  It means discerning how to care, who to care for, what care is needed.  Here’s a story from Luke 10, taken from Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch Version of the Bible:

One day a teacher of an adult Bible class got up and tested Jesus with this question: “Doctor, what does one do to be saved?” Jesus replied, “What does the Bible say? How do you interpret it?”
The teacher answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your physical strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”
“That is correct,” answered Jesus. “Make a habit of this and you’ll be saved.” But the Sunday school teacher, trying to save face, asked, “But … uh … but … just who is my neighbor?”
Then Jesus laid into him and said, “A man was going from Atlanta to Albany and some gangsters held him up. When they had robbed him of his wallet and brand-new suit, they beat him up and drove off in his car, leaving him unconscious on the shoulder of the highway. Now it just so happened that a white preacher was going down that same highway. When he saw the fellow, he stepped on the gas and went scooting by. Shortly afterwards a white Gospel song leader came down the road, and when he saw what had happened, he too stepped on the gas.
Then a black man traveling that way came upon the fellow, and what he saw moved him to tears. He stopped and bound up his wounds as best he could, drew some water from his water-jug to wipe away the blood and then laid him on the back seat. He drove on into Albany and took him to the hospital and said to the nurse, ‘You all take good care of this white man I found on the highway. Here’s the only two dollars I got, but you all keep account of what he owes, and if he can’t pay it, I’ll settle up with you when I make a pay-day.’
“Now if you had been the man held up by the gangsters, which of these three-the white preacher, the white song leader, or the black man – would you consider to have been your neighbor?”
The teacher of the adult Bible class said, “Why, of course, the nig – I mean, uh … well, uh … the one who treated me kindly.”
Jesus said, “Well, then, you get going and start living like that!”

The first thing caring does is to turn us inside out.  It exposes us.  It shows who we truly are – heart, mind, body, soul.  Not caring does the same thing.  The only reason the ‘plain old every-day Samaritan’ became the ‘good Samaritan’ is because he stopped.  If he had not stopped, the story would not have been told.  There wouldn’t have been anything exceptional about the story.  This was and is a common experience in life.  Persons in trouble are often left to fend for themselves.  Priests, Levites, attorneys – like the one who questioned Jesus, have schedules to keep, court appearances to make, sermons to deliver, business deals to complete…  We all have responsibilities to tend to.  We all have prejudices we hold.  We all have personal agendas.

Jesus means for us to be exposed - learning for ourselves the personal cost of caring – the risk of grace.  Jesus intends for us to care in ways that turn ourselves inside out.  Jesus teaches us that this kind of caring will be seen as radical – reaching out to those no one else might want to have anything to do with.  A Samaritan, a black man, turning inside out to show compassion, did just that.

Paul writes: “Do you think for a minute that this blessing [of trusting God fully] is only pronounced over those of us who keep our religious ways and are circumcised? Or do you think it possible that the blessing could be given to those who never even heard of our ways, who were never brought up in the disciplines of God? We all agree, don’t we, that it was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit for God?”

God’s blessing, God’s love, God’s compassion fills the life of the guy in the ditch just as much as the guy who walks past him.  There is no mark, seal, skin color, sign of any kind that shows outwardly whether God’s blessing has been given to one person or another.  God’s grace - the exercise of love, kindness, compassion, mercy, favor, and the disposition to benefit and serve God’s children flows over all of humankind.  All means all.

How do we decide who we will care for?  Who’s in and who’s out?  Who matters?  Who deserves our attention?  Will the priest only stop for another priest?  Will the Levite only notice another man from his Levitical brotherhood?  Does it matter that someone is Quaker, Catholic, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh?  Does it matter if someone is ‘lost’ or ‘saved’?  Is there a mark, a tattoo, a ‘certain look’ that one has that qualifies them for God’s mercy? For our mercy?  For our care?

Paul, once more: “Now think: Was that declaration [of God’s blessing] made before or after Abraham was marked by the covenant rite of circumcision?  That’s right, before he was marked.  That means that Abraham underwent circumcision as evidence and confirmation of what God had already done, long before to bring him into this acceptable standing with Godself, an act of God Abraham had embraced with his whole life.” 

I think it’s fascinating that circumcision was the mark that God chose to use as the sign of community and then consecration, because no one can see it, except the one who is circumcised. It’s a secret!  No one knows – except the one who is marked.  How do we know that we belong to God, and have received God’s blessing, are set apart to God?

Listen to what Moses told us in Deuteronomy 10:12-22; once he’d read to them the 10 Commandments God had written with his own finger in the second tablets of stone:

“So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. 14Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, 15yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.  16Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. 17For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 18who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. 19You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.20You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. 21He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. “

How do we know we belong to God?  How do we know that that stranger, that person so different from us, that person who is repellent to us, that person who is so hard for us to be patient with, that person who is so unlike us, is loved by God?  Marked by God? Belongs to God?  More than any outward sign we bear, or any outward sign they carry, we know by the brokenness of our own hearts.  By the love and grace of God that has tendered us.  By entering in to what God is doing – not what we want God to do.  By remembering our own captivity in times and places where we had no control, no sense of self, no choices, no advocate. And if nothing else, to remember then that we are not God.  That God loves others just as much as God loves us, and that God’s mercy extends equally to all.

Can we do that? Can I do that?  Can we ‘sit under our Teacher, the Grace of God’, which will bring our salvation from pride, selfishness, prejudice, ego?  Can we risk turning ourselves inside out, and allow the grace of God to move through us, to expose us, to save us, and then use us to bring God’s promise of blessing to others? Can we care by ‘trusting God to set us right, instead of being right on our own?’

2-26-17 Companioning with Christ

Sermon 2-26-2017 ‘Companioning with Christ’

Luke 24:13-35

Sydney Carter’s Obituary by Paul Oestreicher in The Guardian Unlimited (17 March 2004)

This past Monday I took my sister Carol Jean to the airport.  I knew the way, but we got a bit lost, trying to use my car’s GPS.  (Coey likes to fiddle with gadgets!)  Somewhere out there, I drove past two streets: Melody and Harmony.  That’s had me thinking all week long.  When my sister came, I had such fun singing harmony with her!   As wonderful as it was to sing our offering to God last Sunday in Meeting for Worship, the real fun was practicing together on Saturday night.  We goofed around at the piano, singing two or three hymns, until we chose the ones that fit best together, and then we had to decide who would sing what when.  Trading parts back and forth – soprano, alto, tenor high, descant and melody.  You just never know what’s going to happen when Ruth Ann and Carol Jean get together!

And that’s just the way it is when God companions with us.  We just never know what’s going to happen.  But one thing’s for sure – we’re no longer a solo act.  Someone is there to add another line – to give depth and fullness to what we’re trying to express, to what we’re trying to learn, to what we’re trying to be.

Those travelers on the road to Emmaus eventually got home, but they never expected to travel with such a companion as Christ Jesus – God with them.  In fact, they were sure God was dead to them.  What had started as a Passover Party had ended with a Crushing Crucifixion.  They were certain Christ had left them, hopeless.  That there was no companion left.  No spiritual accompaniment to be had.

Sydney Carter was not a Quaker, but it was said at his death, “If any church could come to holding Sydney's allegiance, it was the Society of Friends, with its rejection of dogma, and its reliance on personal experience and social activism, and its affirmation of God's presence in every human being.”  In a survey of schools in the United Kingdom, it was found that ‘One More Step’, ‘Lord of the Dance’, and ‘When I needed a Neighbor’ were the first, fifth, and sixth most sung of songs under copyright used in school assemblies. [The Times [London] (29 August 1996)]  One that our Meeting loves is “The George Fox Song” with its ‘shaggy, shaggy locks’.  Five of Sydney Carter’s songs are included in our Friends Hymnal, and we’ve sung an additional one, One More Step, this morning as our opening song.  During a lecture tour in Perth, Australia, Carter attended a Quaker meeting at which a woman stood up and sang "When I Needed a Neighbour, Were You There?" She was unaware that Carter was present; he was deeply touched and greatly delighted.

The truth is, we need neighbors.  We need companions.  We need sisters and brothers who can sing the songs of Zion with us, hanging our lyres, our lutes, our harps on the willows when we grieve.  Just as those disciples walked those seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus, we need someone to walk with us. 

And not only when we grieve.  It’s just as important to have a fellow traveler with us when we have something joyful to share!  A new job, a child or grandchild born, a funny story, a trip we’ve taken… the list goes on and on.  The picture on the front of the bulletin is an icon from centuries ago.  It represents Christ and a companion.  It was given to me and my fellow pastors as we completed a two-year journey together as “Companions in Ministry”.  Research had shown that pastors stay longer in churches, have fuller relationships, and more productive ministries when and if they companion with other pastors.  I was part of a group of pastors from across the nation who tested that theory.  We were challenged with forming our own ‘companions in ministry group’ gathering on a regular basis for support, encouragement, study, and prayer.  I did in Iowa, and walked with them for three years, before coming to First Friends.  Since then, I’ve traveled with Diane, Chris, Bill, Jim, Tom, and Doug once a month.  They’re all pastors in our neighborhood – our Shalom Zone – and they’ve been my pastoral companions in ministry.

In the song about the neighbor, Carter asks a question: ‘When I needed you, were you there?’  By the end of the fourth verse, the question is answered with an emphatic statement – ‘I’ll be there.’  Christ has already answered that question for each one of us, but continues to ask us the same for our neighbors. Who is walking beside us, grieving and hopeless?  Who is on their way to Coburn Place, battered and afraid for their life, and the lives of their children?  Who is working beside us, stressed by their job and the expectations it makes on their time and responsibilities?  Who needs to know what Christ is doing, how Christ has taught you, what you’ve learned from your experiences in God? Who needs to know that Christ is there?  That it’s Jesus – not the dead Jesus in Jerusalem – but the real, living Christ in us – that’s walking with them?

Remember friends, that we are Friends.  We take seriously – or need to - the understanding that Christ doesn’t only walk beside us, but that Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, inhabits and indwells us.    Christ walks in us.  God sings in us.  God accompanies us, and asks us to accompany the world we live in.  This is no small thing.  It is something I see in you all the time.  It is something I hear about you, as I move through the community.

As I look out at you, all these stories flash in front of me. One that I remember this morning is when I was being picked up to be taken to the airport.  I was talking to the driver, and he found out I was a Quaker, and found out that I worked at First Friends. He said, “You know, my mother lives at this place—it’s a wonderful facility—it’s called The Forum. She gets the best care there. And I think the man that administrates it is a Quaker.” And I said, “Oh yes, that’s our Tim. That’s Tim Yale. He’s an incredible person.” And I got to brag about Tim. And I got to tell him about Suzi Davis, and all the other friends we’ve known who’ve stayed at The Forum. People we know, people we love. He didn’t remember Tim’s name, but he knew he was a Friend. This happens to me all the time.

Whether people first recognize the Lord in you, or as the Lord reveals himself in time, people see God in you.  I know I have.  I know I do!  You have been my good companions in this journey we’ve shared in ministry.  You’ve been good friends.  You’ve been merciful, and helpful to me – in times of sorrow, confusion, loneliness, and boundless joy.  This is what Christ-in-us is for each other.  Christ walks in us.  God sings in us.  God accompanies us, and asks us to accompany the world we live in.  Do we companion with Christ?  Do we walk the long distance until Christ reveals himself in us?  Are we willing to do the same for others?

The Servant Song; Richard Gillard

Will you let me be your servant
Let me be as Christ to you
Pray that I might have the grace
To let me be your servant too.

We are pilgrims on the journey
We are brothers on the road
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load.

I will hold the Christ light for you
In the night time of your fear
I will hold my hand out to you -
Speak the peace you long to hear.

I will weep when you are weeping
When you laugh, I'll laugh with you
I will share your joy and sorrow
Till we've seen this journey through.

When we sing to God in heaven
We shall find such harmony
Born of all we've known together
Of Christ's love and agony.

2-19-17 Christ Has Come to Teach his People Himself

Sermon 2-19-2017;  ‘Christ has come to teach his people himself’

John 1:1-9

Wilmer Cooper, The Gospel According to Friends, Friends United Press

Last Sunday we spoke about being weird… about holding onto the essentials – the real Truth of God, with a capital “T”.  I shared that “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 live into what was said in Olde English, “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.”

A young man named George Fox did this in the 1600’s and his song – his good news of God’s power and love continues to move through us – those of us who call ourselves Quakers – when we allow the Gospel to run freely through our lives.  What is our good news?  What is your good news?  What is your gospel? Your godspell?  Your mystical, prayerful, deep sense of God?  Your understanding of God?

Friend Wilmer Cooper, once the Dean of Earlham School of Religion, helps us discover the basis of our common faith as Friends through the study of George Fox’s Journal writings.  Underlying the message of good news that George Fox held was that ‘Christ had come to teach his people himself.’  No priest, no pastor, no interpreter, no teacher, was necessary in order to communicate with any person what Christ had to give, share, instruct, or teach.  Christ could and does speak directly to each one of us.  This was the heart of the gospel for Fox.  Christ was come to teach his people Himself, by His power and Spirit in their hearts, and to bring people off from all the world's ways and teachers, to His own free teaching, who had bought them, and was the Savior of all them that believed in Him.’ 

How does this understanding of God’s direct ministry in and to our lives affect the Good News – the Gospel – according to Friends?  Cooper has found five distinctives, and I’ve pulled them into an insert for your bulletins today.  Let’s take a look.

1.      Personal Experience: ‘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.’                                                                       George Fox, 1647

Fox ends this passage saying, ‘This I knew experimentally.”  “The Jesus of history and the Christ of faith mean nothing unless they are internalized and known inwardly in the experience of the heart,” says Cooper.  Like a scientist working with a problem to solve, after so many experiments, Fox had experienced and known God’s presence.    Fox had that direct encounter with God, and it set him on his great spiritual pilgrimage.

The next distinctive is incredibly powerful, and continues to sing out through the faith of Friends.  Fox was convinced that this experience of knowing God’s presence was not meant for some, but for all who would respond to the transforming power of God.  There were some who professed Christ, Calvin was one - who would have said that only the elect, the chosen, were acceptable to God.  Fox’s insight ‘that every man was enlightened by the divine Light of Christ’ is taken from today’s reading in the first chapter of John’s gospel… ‘The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.’ [v.9] Friend Robert Barclay, in his ‘Apology’ refers to this as ‘the Quaker text’.  A doctrine of universal grace versus limited grace came as a boon and a blessing to those who had lived under the threat of failing election, or being chosen by God.  Hear what Fox discovered:

2.      Universal Experience: Now the Lord God opened to me by His invisible power that every man was enlightened by the divine Light of Christ, and I saw it shine through all; and that they that believed in it came out of condemnation to the Light of life, and became the children of it; but they that hated it, and did not believe in it were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure openings of the Light without the help of any man; neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures; though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it.                                                                                               George Fox, 1648

Please find Reading #3 in your bulletin insert, and let’s read about Corporate Experience, together.

3.      Corporate Experience: As we went I spied a great high hill called Pendle Hill, and I went on the top of it with much ado, it was so steep; but I was moved of the Lord to go atop of it; and when I came atop of it I saw Lancashire sea; and there atop of the hill I was moved to sound the day of the Lord; and the Lord let me see atop of the hill in what places he had a great people to be gathered… So I opened to the people that the ground and house was no holier than another place, and that the house was not the church but the people of which Christ is the head…                                                                                                                                    George Fox, 1652

Friends, Quakerism was never meant to be a singular religion.  George Fox did not mean for us to spend hours alone, meditating in private, and never with others.  His vision on Pendle Hill, was one of a gathered people, meeting together, bringing that of God in each one of us to the other, collectively.  Gathering in God’s presence, in the power of God’s presence, Fox intended for us to be a people who shared the Good News of our experience of God with each other, and then with the world.  Early Friends met in homes, under trees, in meadows, in meetinghouses, in jails… the people themselves were the gathered church – not the building or place where they met.  Their corporate gatherings gave them strength, as did their own private meditations.  I believe that to be true for us as well, and that’s why gathering for Meeting for Worship is so important.

4.      Holy Obedience: So the keeper of the house of correction was commanded to bring me before the commissioners and soldiers in the market-place, where they offered me that preferment, as they called it, asking me if I would not take up arms for the Commonwealth against Charles Stuart. I told them I knew whence all wars arose, even from the lusts, according to James' doctrine; and that I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars.                                                                                                   George Fox, 1651

Quoting Wilmer Cooper: ‘A fourth great discovery of Fox was that we may not only know experientially the living Christ, but we can obey him.  This means that the power of the living Christ enables us to live in obedience to him as the inward teacher of the heart.  This constitutes a central ethical dimension of Fox’s teaching and led to his doctrine of Christian perfection, or what Friends have called ‘holy obedience.’

Holy Nelly! – What does that mean?!  It does not mean that George Fox was a perfect person.  It meant that he lived in the power and strength of the Lord now, and that we can too.  We can endeavor to live a virtuous life, through the grace and strength of God, and the power of God’s Spirit, and that through this, Fox was able to live as if the Kingdom of God had already come.  He did not have to wait until the Kingdom arrived at some future time or in its fullness before he could begin to live a Christ-like life here and now.

Remember that many people are waiting for Christ’s return, for life with God in heaven.  Fox turned this upside-down.  We can live with God right now, in the kingdom of God at hand, as Christ preached. We can endeavor to live a life that takes away the occasion for all wrong doing – not just war, but prejudice, injustice… all manner of evil.  Fox once said he had passed back through the flaming swords securing the entrance to the Garden of Eden, and was in fellowship with God.  This is the communion that comes in holy obedience. 

Many of us are familiar with George Fox’s lovely image of the ocean of light flowing over the ocean of darkness.  It’s not only lovely – it’s needful.  Fox was writing out of despair, and wasn’t sure how to move forward.  The world was collapsing in on him, as it does and has on so many of us.  How do you explain Hiroshima?  How do you cope with the death of a loved one?  How do you deal with plagues, with civil wars, with betrayal, with beheadings, with loss?  

5.      Message of Hope: And the Lord answered that it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions; and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I 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. And in that also I saw the infinite love of God; and I had great openings.                                                                                                                           George Fox, 1647

If Fox was going to minister to all people, he had to understand the condition of all people.  If the understanding of the Gospel that Fox had been given was to be shared, he had to be fully prepared to share it.  It was not out of despair that Fox saw the ocean of light.  This came out of a sense of love and hope.  And this is what Quakers bring to the world… that despite the darkness of sin and evil, there is something that overcomes it – that literally flows over it – light and love.  And in that is the infinite, immeasurable, endless, unlimited, unbounded, never-ending love, of God.

A Quaker’s faith in God is meant to be experienced personally, universally, corporately, obediently, and hopefully. Our faith is a direct experience with God, with one another, and with the world we live in.  Its unique to each one of us, and its meaning is as deep as is our communion with the one who has come to teach us himself. 

What do these truths, this good news, mean for Quakers today?  For the world today?  For you and me today?  How does this gospel shape our future?

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.