Sunday, December 26, 2010

Top Ten

Matthew 2:13-23
December 26th, 2010

This passage always, always, always makes me stop and ask the question: Why is it again that I think the bible is such a great book? Just to review this story: Jesus birth, that wonderful moment we all just celebrated with candle light service, time with family and friends, gifts and wonderful, warm, comfort food, is the direct cause of the slaughter of innocent children in the town of Bethlehem. It’s not the ending to the Christmas story we want. Herod hears that this child is born and is called King of the Jews – and that’s Herod’s title. Herod was not the sort to take kindly to such challenges. So, lacking complete information on Jesus’ whereabouts – and apparently lacking the patience to collect complete information – he just has all the children under age 2 in Bethlehem killed.

Jesus escapes, which might seem like a redeeming aspect to the story, but Jesus is saved because God is protecting Jesus. Joseph receives divine guidance and gets Jesus out of there to Egypt where he remains until the threat – namely, Herod – is gone. Which is all well and good, but there’s no way to not wonder why God wouldn’t save all the other innocent children. Surely their deaths cannot be a part of God’s plan, or even a plot thickener in the story of God-with-us.

And of course, this passage is only the tip of a disconcerting scriptural iceberg. We have God acting in all sorts of unsettling ways in our scriptures. Punishing people by sending in foreign armies to kill them and take their homeland; throwing people into the outer darkness and unquenchable fire; cutting people out of the kingdom of God; hardening people’s hearts so they can’t change their ways even if they want to; and the list goes on and on. It’s all there in the bible. And I ask myself (and maybe you even ask yourself) does the bible deserve such an exalted place in our lives?


So, in the spirit of all the top 10 lists done at the close of every year, this morning I offer my top 10 reasons that reading the bible is still a good idea.

# 10: The bible is a book for outsiders. History is generally written by the winners for the winners. Society rewards those who fit in and play by the rules and punishes those who are different. There are plenty of good things going on for people who already have much – who already fit in. This is a book that offers good news for the poor, the outcast, the weighed down and heavy burdened. Even though I am not always a part of this group, I cherish the fact that our scriptures are not written solely for the winners.

#9: When I realize that I am often the insider, I get to laugh at myself. Even though the bible is written for outsiders, all is not lost for those of us on the inside. We are given, at every turn, a chance to get on board, join the parade and follow Jesus. And along the way, through the stories, we get to look honestly at ourselves and laugh because we so often get things wrong. So many times the disciples think they’ve got it all figured out only to find out they are missing the point. Jokes are made at their expense all through the gospels, and as we laugh at them, we get to laugh at ourselves.

#8: Even though I’m created in the image of the divine…there are times I’m an ego-centric, self-delusional, self-centered, rationalizing fool.

When these difficult passages come up in the lectionary, my first impulse is to ignore them, avoid them, rationalize them, or move on to something more palatable. But, when I claim this whole book as my scripture, I am claiming something outside of myself, outside of my own agenda and ego, as an authority for my life. That is a good thing. We Americans seem to value being our own authority – being independent and having the right to do anything we want as long as it doesn’t impinge on other people’s rights. But I think there is great value in submitting to an authority other than ourselves.

Obviously this is only a good thing if we are submitting to a credible, transcendent authority – not an earthly one who will be, at times, an ego-centric, self-delusional- self-centered, rationalizing fool. It really matters who or what you choose, and we have chosen to trust God, as known through the life of Jesus, as attested to in the scriptures. The scriptures aren’t perfect – they are not the ultimate authority, but they help get us outside ourselves, they help point us to a credible authority that transcends our agendas – to God. Because I believe this, I have decided to give the scriptures the benefit of the doubt, to grant them some credibility and authority even when they rub me the wrong way or challenge deeply held beliefs. And as a sometimes ego-centric, self-delusional, self-centered, rationalizing fool, if I’m going to grow in my faith and understanding I need something outside myself guiding me from time to time.

#7: The scandal of the incarnation
One of the most compelling things to me about the Christmas story is the concept of incarnation: God becoming evident, even present, in human beings: taking on our flesh and blood, our strength and frailty. And the incarnation includes being present in the rest of creation as well. It’s God here, pulling us, shaping us and creation toward the realm of God. This not only matches what I know of my own experience of the divine, it informs how I see the world. When I connect with that divine presence in me and all around and in others and in nature, it affects how I act, what I do. And when I participate in the divine movement, I find in those moments great fulfillment. At the center of our scared story is the incarnation and that is a beautiful thing.

#6: The bible is a story of unrelenting hope: In one of the most famous Monty Python scenes, in the movie, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” King Arthur comes across a knight who refuses to let him pass a bridge. A duel ensues and with every blow Arthur levies against the knight, the knight never acknowledges defeat. After one arm is cut off, he claims it is but a scratch. When the second arm comes off he says it’s just a flesh wound and wonders why King Arthur thinks he has prevailed. In the end, after losing all his limbs and with King Arthur securely on the bridge, the knight suggests they should call it a draw. The humor is found, of course, in the irrational, ridiculous, over-confidence of the knight.

There is a strand of unrelenting hope and confidence in the story of the Hebrew people and the Christians that followed even though at times it seems almost irrational. But rather than inviting mockery or being humorous, it is downright inspiring. This is because the confidence is not in themselves, but in God. This little kingdom of Judah is defeated time and time again, the Jewish people lose their homeland never to get it back, the early Christians are persecuted , yet our scriptures are full of declarations of hope and confidence in God’s love, grace and promise of new life.

My friend often reminds me that the arc of history is bending toward justice. The people in the bible remind us that the hope found in the big picture: it’s not about just them, it’s not about just us, it’s about the possibilities God offers, even in those most difficult moments. Maybe not possibilities we will see, but possibilities in the larger story of human kind. And that story unrelentingly bends toward God’s justice and grace.

5: The bible gives us a common language and story with other Christians. Even though we might disagree on meaning, it is the starting place for Christians all over the world. Engaging the bible makes us a part of a community. We are in conversation with the bible, and so we join a conversation going on among Christians everywhere.

I am not one to claim that everyone should be Christian. I do not believe in converting people of other faiths to mine. But the only time I get a little evangelical is in thinking there is great value to being a part of some major religion. There is value, I believe, in sharing a story with others and walking together on the journey of life as we dialogue with our shared story and each other. Maybe that sacred story for some is the provable, scientific truths they know and discover – and that is what they are constantly in conversation with because surely even the scientific conversation is not over…the questions are not all answered. The same is true for us, for Muslims, for Jews, Buddhists, and on and on. We go back to our sacred texts time and time again because the conversation is not over. And sharing a common story, a common language enriches that conversation in immeasurable ways.

#4: This text has the ability to challenge power and seemingly intractable systems that distort and destroy creation and human beings. Throughout history, the scriptures have been the inspiration for people to challenge and upset major power system – and it has worked! This story about underdogs and outsiders has been the basis for major social change and the inspiration for people that look like they have little power standing up and speaking truth to power and even changing the hearts and minds of those in power.

#3: The bible has inexhaustible insight, and it’s relevant for all stages of faith/maturity as well as at all times in history. Somehow the bible speaks to us at different times of our lives in different ways. We say these scriptures live, that the Holy Spirit is at work bringing them to life today – in all contexts. This means we will never stop learning because our world will never stop changing. As we age, our ability to understand expands, and with that so does our understanding of the bible. We read the passages over and over and we see things we didn’t see before; our faith grows deeper and deeper as we continue to engage the bible throughout our lives.

#2: It’s radical! I am someone who tends toward the conventional. What I love about the bible is that it pushes me to be more radical. It pushes me to live more for others than for my own comfort. It pushes me to see things in new, startling ways, and in the end I am always happy about that – in the end, it always draws me closer to God.

#1: The bible is a witness to how human beings tried to make meaning of the world around them – just as humans have done throughout history – just as we do today. Which takes us back to our passage today. There is enough supporting evidence outside the bible to hypothesize that this passage about the slaughtering of innocent children was based on a real, live event. And surely that event seemed meaningless in the moment. And so Matthew adds things to the story in order to make sense of it, in order to tell people what he thinks God is up to even in the midst of horrific events. And he thinks it would make sense if everything that happened fulfilled prophesies he knew from his own faith tradition. Three times he tells us that what happened – the killing of all the babies and the survival of Jesus – was to fulfill all the prophets said. We may or may not agree with how Matthew makes sense of this, but it’s inspiring to me that humans seek meaning and seek God even in the midst of life’s most terrible events.

We seem built to seek meaning – to seek transcendence. And the bible is a mirror for us of what it means to be human and searching for meaning and for God. Sometimes it shows the best of human beings as they do this, and sometimes the not-so-great parts of human beings. But as a mirror, it provides us both insight into who we are, and a guide that many times helps us stumble onto meaning in our own day and age.

I admit there have been times in my life when I was ready to give up completely on the bible. But that never lasts too long. There is just too much about this book, too much about this sacred story, that has spoken to me over the years…resonated with me and my experience…transformed me and deepened my understanding of God…changed me to be more oriented to the world and the need for justice and grace…there’s just too much to give up completely. I take it all, the clear, the complex, the good, the bad and the ugly. In fact, because that’s all there, that’s what makes it sacred. Amen.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Immanuel

Isaiah 7:10-17
Fourth Sunday of Advent: December 19, 2010


Here’s the simple sermon:
Each week in Advent we have heard one of Isaiah’s visions for what the world will look like when God comes to rule among us. And they are beautiful visions. Swords will be beaten into plowshares, wolves and lambs together without enmity, and waters bursting forth in the wilderness while the blind see and the lame leap for joy. And now this week we have arrived: we have the famous passage where Isaiah says, “a woman is with child and shall bear a son and his name shall be Immanuel.” This is it: this child is the promise that it will all come true. And of course we know this child is Jesus: Immanuel. And so it is: Jesus is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s visions and dreams. As we celebrate Christmas, we believe again that we can see waters in the desert and peace on earth. Jesus is Immanuel – God-with-us – and so all is possible. It is the good news of great joy!

But, I don’t think that simple sermon is quite fair to Isaiah – and truly, in the end, I don’t think it’s fair to us either. You see, this one line – the one we hear in our minds when arrange our nativity sets on the mantle every year – that a woman is with child and shall bear a son and his name will be Immanuel – this line has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. At least, it had nothing to do with Jesus as far as Isaiah was concerned.

Some bible translations feed our insistence on always reading this as being about Jesus and Jesus alone. They say, “a woman will conceive and bear a son.” – using future tense. Some even say, “a virgin shall conceive…”. But that’s not really what the Hebrew says. It says that a woman – not a virgin – is already with child. This is a passage that was – at least at the beginning – firmly planted in a specific historical moment. There was a king, there was a prophet who spoke to the king, and there was a woman – alive at that time – who was with child. Later this passage would be used for more general purposes – purposes outside of that specific situation. But I think it’s good to remind ourselves that it does have its origins in a specific situation, because it helps us understand what later authors and believers were saying when they used it to talk about Jesus.

After all - it’s still Advent – we’re still waiting…Christmas is not here. So I’m going to ask you to reach up, take off your Christian ears, and listen to this passage again. This time, put on your King Ahaz ears. That’s who Isaiah is talking to, so it’s a better pair of ears to start with. Now, even though you probably don’t need it, just in case, I’m going to do a brief reminder of who Ahaz was and what was going on at the time so we can make sure our ears are tuned correctly.

Ahaz was the infamous king of Judah in the 8th century BCE: a king judged to be unequivocally bad by the authors of our scriptures. Now in Ahaz’s defense, this was a pretty rough time to be king of Judah. You didn’t get much time to just sit back in your throne and eat grapes. There were many threats from many directions, and he was faced with difficult decisions. First, he had Assyria...a threat to all in the region. Assyria was strong, well soldiered, and on the move. Then he had Syria and Israel to the north. They were joining forces to try and take Jerusalem. Together, these two countries reasoned, they were strong enough to prevail against the tiny little kingdom of Judah. In short, the people of Judah – with Ahaz as their king – were sitting ducks.

Ahaz had to figure out what to do – and he saw a couple of choices. One, he could throw his hat into the ball game with Syria and Israel – give up land in order to join forces with them against Assyria and hopefully not lose everything. The other choice was to appeal to the king of Assyria, asking for mercy and help against Syria and Israel. Well, appeal is probably too nice a word. It was more like Ahaz could bribe the king with riches and allegiance.

Faced with these two options, Isaiah comes to talk to Ahaz. Isaiah begins by reminding Ahaz that his is a ruler of God’s people and therefore the only one to whom Ahaz should listen for counsel is Yahweh. Just prior to our passage, we hear what the prophet tells Ahaz Yahweh is saying – and basically it’s to choose neither option number 1 nor option number 2. Specifically, Isaiah tells Ahaz: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these threats. Instead, stand firm in your faith to Yahweh.” Isaiah tells him not to capitulate to the north and not to bribe Assyria. Instead, he tells him to have faith – which surely did not feel like a legitimate choice for a head of state at the time. Doing nothing was like inviting any and all would-be conquerors to have their way with Judah.

So Ahaz hears this, and thinks probably what any one of us would think in the same situation: “Thanks for the great advice, buddy, now get out of my way so I can figure out what I’m actually going to do.” And that’s where we pick up the story. That’s where our passage begins, and now with our nicely tuned Ahaz ears, we can listen to it in its original context.

God says to Ahaz, “you don’t believe me? You don’t believe this is a legitimate option – to do nothing except have faith in me? Go ahead, then, ask for a sign. Ask me to give you a sign that what I say is really true and possible.” But Ahaz is not interested in signs. He says he refuses to put God to the test, but in the same way we might say, “Oh, I don’t want to bother you,” to our meddling friend who wants to come and decorate our house for Christmas. Ahaz is not interested in any proof that the right thing to do is nothing.

God sees through Ahaz’s demure response and gets, well, pretty mad. God is determined to show a sign; but this is not a sign in a good, warm, touchy feely sense – at least not as far as Ahaz is concerned. In fact, the strong, negative tone of this passage leading up to this point prepares us for a threatening sign. Read at Christmas time, when we’re surrounded by mangers and Christmas lights, the sign of a woman with child sounds so nice, familiar and comforting. But that is not how it sounded to Ahaz. So, if we’ve still got our Ahaz ears on, it’s not how it should sound to us.

God says I will show you a sign: A woman is with child and shall bear a son and name him Immanuel – and we know Immanuel means God-with-us. God says, here I come and I’m coming in the form of a baby. And if you trust me, turn to me, before that baby grows up, your enemies will disappear. A baby? When God comes we want God to come as strength – as something we can rely on, lean on. But Ahaz is supposed to see God as a baby – vulnerable, weak, dependent on others for care, and then trust that God. That’s the answer? Not when you’re being threatened by other nation states and need to make a decision. Trusting vulnerability and weakness is not compelling.

But, for Isaiah, the prophet with all the beautiful visions of what happens when God is with us, that is the answer. God is found in vulnerability – not the same old efforts and displays of power and strength. No swords, no relying on the power you have over others, no domination of creation for your own purposes. That will not get us everlasting peace, reconciliation with enemies, or streams of life in the desert. Power, domination, cunning strategy: that is the way of Ahaz.

So, that’s what this sounds like with our Ahaz ears. We are reminded that if we only hear this passage and picture families sitting around Christmas trees singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” we have missed the power of this passage in Isaiah. And, we will miss it again when it is used in Matthew to announce the birth of Jesus. This is about God coming into the world and the very difficult decisions that implies for humankind. It forces us to really think about what it means to have faith in God. Ahaz would go on to dismiss this sign – dismiss the God of vulnerability and peace and instead bribe the king of Assyria. And lo and behold, Ahaz would just end up continuing the established systems and cycles of violence and domination, and the people would continue to suffer. Nothing would change: no plows, no wolves and lambs; no streams in the desert.

But of course, we know that while this passage started out about something and someone very specific, it wasn’t long before it was used as a motif in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: The motif of God coming as baby or child. It was a passage – as so many scripture passages were – that went from specific to universal truth about who God is and how God comes to us. Obviously this is not an exclusive image for God – there are many images of how God comes: wind, fire, rock, mother, father. But this time of year we think about what it means that so many of our biblical writers, Jewish and Christian, imagine God coming into the midst of an anxiety-ridden world as a little child.

With the specifics of Ahaz and Isaiah’s world still in mind, now we can ask, “What does Immanuel mean today, in our world?” God brings alternatives to the way things are done, but are they alternatives we want? Vulnerability instead of strength and power. Exalting the weak and caring for the poor instead of veneration of the high and mighty. Choosing implements of peace over weapons of war when faced with real, live threats. Do we really think transformation comes through God-as-baby?

We get so excited about the birth of Jesus, but do we really want to know that God chooses for us the way of vulnerability? Do we really want that sign?

One of my favorite poems is an Advent poem I heard long ago. Sadly, my failed memory has long since been separated from the author or the context in which I heard it. But, I still want to read it for you this morning, because I think it is an example of how the Isaiah passage is retold today:
“When God wants an important thing done in this world, or a wrong righted, God goes about it in a very singular way. God doesn’t release thunderbolts, or stir up earthquakes, God simply has a tiny baby born, perhaps of a very humble home, perhaps of a very humble mother. And puts the idea or purpose into the mother’s heart. And she puts it into the baby’s mind, and then - God waits.
The great events of this world are not battles and elections and earthquakes and thunderbolts. The great events are babies for each child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity but is still expecting good will to become Incarnate in each human life.”

Swords into plowshares, wolves and lambs together in peace, waters in the desert: they seem like child-like fantasies. But, Isaiah believes a world of peace and harmony is possible…and there’s nothing magical about it. The path requires choosing to trust a God that does not operate according to the rules of power and domination that govern our world. The path of God is not one we easily choose, yet it is the path of Immanuel…the path of Jesus…the path of God-with-us as vulnerability. This is the path that requires us to respond to threat with openness and love. This is the path that requires us to see our fate as linked to that of the least among us. This is the path that requires trusting that violence and war can never secure peace. This path requires waiting, and patience. But it is the path we choose as those who follow Immanuel – as those who see the sign of a child as the sign of faith and hope. It is the path for those of us who sing, from the depths of our hearts, “O Come, O Come, Immanuel.” Amen.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Immanuel: Waters in the Desert

Isaiah 35:1-10
Third Sunday of Advent: December 12, 2010


We’re waiting…we’re waiting for what’s hoped for, what we deeply long for for this world. We read the visions of the prophets, and we all probably have our own visions – our own ways of expressing what must lie out there somewhere as a possibility. And we wait for it – long for it. At the same time last week we talked about how it is an active waiting…there is much to do while we wait. There are some swords we can beat into plowshares. There are some ways we can recognize our power over others and find a way to disabuse ourselves of the power so we can be reconciled to those we hurt. There are some ways we can, even in our vulnerability, take risks so we can be reconciled to the perceived enemies in our lives.

This week we read in Isaiah a vision of what it would look like if we were reconciled with creation…with our environment. This is a beautiful poem about what he and the people longed for creation: that the desert would blossom abundantly, it would rejoice with joy and singing, burning sands would become pools of water, water would spring in the dry wilderness. It is another vision for which we – right along with our faith ancestors living in the time of Isaiah – wait. Actively wait – but still – it hadn’t happened then, and it hasn’t happened yet. We wait.

The third week into Advent I can’t help but ask, Can we really wait? Can we live with ourselves, figuratively and literally, in the meantime. In some ways, each day, the answer to the literal question is “no, we can’t live with ourselves.” People are dying because of war, people are dying because of powerful systems that produce and maintain poverty, and people are dying because of the many ways we have destroyed the environment so far.

I also think the figurative answer to that question might be “no”. I wonder if any of us can be spiritually whole if the natural world around us is hurting so much. We are not able to live with ourselves without feeling broken, guilty, responsible…all of those things that wear us down over time. We may be alive, but we are spiritually deadened in some way when we watch what’s happening to our planet.

It was not completely different 3000 years ago. They weren’t using terms like ozone holes, bio-diversity and eco-justice, but they understood creation was not whole. The vision of Isaiah Janet just read is a response to what was really happening at the time. The destruction of the land and the environment was laid out just a few chapters before ours.
“The earth dries up and withers…The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt.”

They knew a reality that we know – even if the pollutants are different and we disagree about the causes and science of nature. We have a very different understanding from Isaiah of why we are where we are today environmentally. Most of us don’t see it as a direct infliction of destruction by God as punishment for the peoples’ failures – we see it scientifically, logically. It is the obvious outcome of human actions over time – not divine punishment. But even though our understandings are different in this regard, I think in the end we can relate to the sadness in Isaiah’s description of the earth. I think the people were dying literally and figuratively because all was not well with creation. I suspect waiting for things to get better also felt frustrating to them, to put it mildly.

I’ve heard many of you lament with Isaiah-like passion the state of our environment and the effects our actions as people and countries are having on our surroundings. There is much sadness about global warming, and the waning of species, and environmental toxins. There is fear and urgency – there is, at times, hopelessness. And at times, even for the most practical, scientific folks, it feels like nothing short of a direct divine intervention – a miracle – will turn it all around. We can relate to the sadness people felt over the natural world because it is our sadness today.

But just as we can relate to the sadness of ecological breakdown without sharing the worldview of the people in Isaiah’s time, I think we can share the hope he offers in our passage this morning as well, even though our understanding of how creation works is a far cry from Isaiah’s. The Hebrew worldview, and that of Christianity until the scientific revolution for that matter, assumed that nature is alive, filled with soul or spirit. They believed humans interact with this spirit in nature, and nature is responsive to God as a community of living creatures who relate to God in their own right.

There are many examples in the bible where God is seen as taking profound pleasure in the work of creation, and creation in turn responds to God with praise. God rejoices in the world that God creates, and the planets, mountains, brooks, animals and plants return this rejoicing in their relations to God.

By the same token, the people believed this relationship between God and nature, between God and creatures, is not in isolation from humankind. In fact humankind is just one part of the larger creation. When there is healing among people there is healing in all of creation, and vice versa. Conversely when creation is destroyed in some way, humankind is a part of that by definition. When the land is dry, people suffer. When the air is polluted, people suffer. When humans are careless with resources, people suffer.

For Isaiah and other authors of our scriptures, injustice to people equals injustice to the earth. These connections were a given. If you want the earth to flourish, seek justice for your neighbors. If you want your neighbors to flourish, seek healing and restoration for nature. He makes that connection explicit in today’s passage: He says that the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will leap like deer, and the tongue of the speechless will sing for joy…because waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. He links them – because nature is restored, people will flourish.

Most of us don’t see nature and the environment as having a relationship to the divine in the same way humans do. We don’t imagine songs being sung to God by the hills or roaring seas. We don’t think of trees clapping in exultation of their creator God. We also often pit human flourishing against environmental flourishing. Robert Pollin is one author who articulates this unfortunate reality. He wrote in an article in The Nation:
“[T]he aims of environmental sustainability and social justice are seen as equally worthy, yet painfully and unavoidably in conflict. Tree huggers and spotted owls are pitted against loggers and hard hats. Fighting global warming is seen to inevitably worsen global poverty and vice versa.”

But the worldview of Isaiah might be a way to see things differently today – seeing creation as having a relationship with the divine much as we see our own relationship to God may help us past our need to treat creation as the means to our ends. Humans and nature are not diametrically opposed – we are interconnected in every way. The earth ceases to rejoice when people are driven from their land into refugee camps which are over populated and under served. The global atmosphere of competition over cooperation means the earth’s resources are hoarded or used indiscriminately. Water is stolen from Mexico to water lawns in Arizona. Energy is used to further production without counting the cost of environmental degradation.

Prophetic thought knits together the injustice of humans toward one another and the devastation of the earth. It also lays out a vision of redemptive hope in which a human conversion to justice renews the earth and restores harmony between humans, nature, and God. Isaiah calls this the Holy Way that will appear in the midst of our torn and broken world.

For Jews, the Holy way is the Torah – the covenant – the way to shalom/restoration. They see God breaking in to the world time and time again to remind them of their covenant – of their promises in response to God’s. For us, we see in Jesus an embodiment of that covenantal way. What we share is the belief that the road to shalom is a return to the way of the covenant – and at the heart of that covenant is living in such a way that all of creation flourishes. All: not just humans and not just non-humans.

From the biblical point of view, when humans break their covenant with God and with one another by social injustice and war, the covenant between God, humanity, and nature is broken. War and violence in society and the polluted, barren, hostile face of nature are both expressions of this violation of the covenant.

But this is not the end of the prophetic vision. When humanity mends its ways with God, the covenant of creation is restored and renewed. Restoration of just relations between peoples restores peace to society and also heals nature. Just, peaceful societies, where people are not enslaved and where violence has been overcome also blossom forth in a peaceful, harmonious, and fruitful land.

But this still brings us back to the nagging Advent question: Can we wait? Isaiah says the Holy Way will appear in the wilderness, but we don’t always see it – or even if we see it, it seems the rest of the world is hell-bent on destruction – on silencing the joyous songs of the waters and hills. Isaiah paints a nice picture, but in the meantime it feels like we are retreating from, not advancing toward, that picture. Many people these days think we are past the point of no return. That the waiting should have been over years ago; we should have acted in much more dramatic ways then we have up to this point, and now, the doomsday sayers tell us, we are waiting, but only for our own inevitable, complete destruction.

I don’t believe all is lost…that’s my faith. It’s not blind or naïve. I, like Isaiah, see the world for what it is and mourn over the brokenness, and will likely do so all my life in some ways. But we type “A” folks, people used to being able to affect our own futures and people who like to take control sometimes see Advent waiting as waiting for perfection and short of that, nothing is okay. I’m not sure that’s what Isaiah’s visions were about – perfection. They were about glimpses of what’s possible here and now…that’s what made them hopeful.

Perfection wasn’t what Jesus’ life was about either. He healed and taught and brought people into his ministry in the middle of a world that was likely as far from perfect as ours. And his life didn’t make everything perfect, even though he was the one the early Christians believed they were waiting for. But his ministry did cause the lame people he met to leap with joy – it made the fruits of the earth produce more wine than anyone thought possible. His ministry brought the realm of God near for all those he met, even as much of the world stayed the same.

The beauty – the joy – is that when we choose the Holy Way, even if it doesn’t bring perfection, we get to hear God singing in creation, we get to see moments of water in the desert, people healed, weak becoming strong. What we wait for actually comes all the time around us, just as Jesus entered a broken world and made God’s realm – Isaiah’s visions – real all around him. Of course we want perfection, of course we long for a world where none suffer and creation is completely restored to its original beauty – we would be crazy not to want this. But we can’t wait for such a world any more than we can wait for complete destruction without living faithfully in the meantime.

Faithful living does pull the Realm of God closer, it does lift the veil on a world where creation bursts forth in song and provides for humans as humans provide for it. And faithful living means seeking justice for both humankind and the creation in which we reside. When we ensure the rivers of our world continue to sing, the people who live near them will rejoice in their abundance of health and good food. When we give people enough to eat, the land around them will praise God for freedom from exploitation. “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy – because waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.” Amen.

Immanuel: Wolve and Lambs

Isaiah 11:1-10
Second Sunday of Advent: December 5, 2010


Last week I talked about the theological theme of Advent – that Advent is a time of two-fold waiting: waiting to celebrate the incarnation, the birth of Jesus, and waiting for the world we know Jesus longed for and worked for in his lifetime. In focusing on Isaiah this Advent, we’re focusing on the 2nd waiting – the waiting for the world to be as all the great prophets – including Jesus – imagined it would be when God’s realm would come in full. So that’s the theme of Advent: waiting. But what does this waiting look like?

We know there are different kinds of waiting. There are times when we’re waiting for something and there isn’t much to do in the meantime – like standing on a corner waiting for a bus. If we’re particularly industrious, we might make a call or read the newspaper, but for the most part all we can do is wait. But the more common kind of waiting is an active waiting. We are waiting for something – like visiting family to arrive, for example – but the time spent between now and their arrival is full of preparation and action. We ready the house, maybe prepare some food, get toys out for grandkids, not to mention go about our daily lives. Their expected arrival impacts what we choose to do, but it doesn’t render us passive in our waiting. If they’re not coming for hours or days, we don’t just sit home on the couch staring at the door until they arrive.

Advent summons us to this latter kind of waiting. We don’t just sit back and wait for this arrival of a new world – God’s realm. Knowing it’s coming impacts what we do in the meantime, but we do act in the meantim. We prepare and ready things. We have in mind what things will be like when the day arrives – what things can be like – and in the meantime we do what we can to help create that reality.

Unfortunately, there are a number of ways to read Isaiah that invites us to a passive waiting. First, we can read it as prediction of the future, rather than the vision for which we strive – as if it’s set in stone and there’s nothing we can or should do in the meantime. Predictions are immutable; visions are shapeable, malleable, shifting and changing with our imaginations. When we read the prophets as predictors, all we will see is a one dimensional picture of both the future and the present. It’s deterministic and determinism invites passivity. Everything is already decided, so all we can do is sit back and wait for it to happen.

Second, we can read passages like the one today and dismiss them because they are utopian and we are savvy enough to know utopia is not achievable. We might long for a world that reflects Isaiah’s visions, but we might not feel like there’s any purpose or intention for us to actively seek what we are waiting for because it’s a fool’s errand. Look at today’s passage: It’s like a child’s scene, isn’t it? All these animals and children together, happily hanging out…it reminds me of how the stuffed animals are arranged in Lydia’s room: horses and bears next to each other; bunnies and snakes; lions with baby dolls. One of the most famous paintings based on this passage, “Endless peace,” by Edward Hicks, looks like a children’s book illustration. The animals border on cartoon-like, their eyes are purposely big and innocent. It calls to mind the naïve question: “can’t we all just get along?” And because, as any adult knows, the answer to that is “no”, and for very legitimate reasons, it’s tempting to treat this image in Isaiah as we would a children’s book – as a fantasy not a possible future.

But it’s not a children’s image. Isaiah knows it’s not as easy as all of us just getting along. These are real reasons why all of God’s creatures don’t live in stuffed animal-like peace with each other. The predators need to eat and stay alive, there is a natural order that depends on enmity between some species, and humans have legitimate, serious differences that can’t be settled with a smile and a hug. Isaiah’s image is, of course, a metaphor – it’s not a prediction and not a literal idea of what the world can look like. We are waiting for the world that reflects this metaphor because it’s what we long for – but it’s not a determined future or a child’s utopia – it’s an idea about how we should be in relationship to one another as God’s children. And that idea – that ideal – impacts us in the present. It suggests things we can be doing in meantime.

This metaphor of predators and prey is about how power affects relationships and what power should look like in God’s realm. Remember that Isaiah is prophesying to kings. This passage is about how Yahweh expects those in power to act. While not everyone agrees on exactly when this passage from Isaiah was written, there is agreement that the cut-down stump of Jesse refers in some way to the failure of the royal leaders. They have not lived up to their covenant with God as leaders of God’s people. They have become like wolves preying on the lambs. The leaders of Jesse’s lineage, David’s descendents, were to possess qualities like wisdom and understanding, but instead power had corrupted kings and queens and the people were suffering.

This passage challenges those leaders, acknowledges how broken the system is and how hurtful the relationships are, and then offers a possibility/a hope: a new shoot is growing out of the stump. It is hope for those in power and for those suffering under the current system. The hope we see in the wolves and lamb, children and asps, calves and lions, is for reconciliation. But this is not reconciliation in the sense of making up with someone you are angry with or at odds with. This is reconciliation between enemies, between people and groups suffering from power imbalances – between predators and prey, the oppressors and the oppressed, the mighty and the weak. Reconciliation is envisioned by Isaiah as righteousness – right relationships of justice and equality. Relationships in which the powerless lead and the powerful abdicate their thrones of oppression.

We are not royalty, nor are we Hebrew peasants living under the thumb of the crown. But we can still place ourselves in this metaphor. This is about reconciliation between the powerful and the vulnerable, and we all know there are times we are the powerful ones and times we are the vulnerable ones in systems of injustice and oppression – times we are the wolf and times we are the lamb.

For those of us comfortably in the middle or upper class, we can easily hear Isaiah’s words for the king as words directed at us. In a world – a country – where resources are not distributed evenly, most of us have choices about what to do with our wealth. Many of us, by virtue of our jobs, have choices about how to structure organizations and institutions. We have choices about who to include, who to help, who to turn away, who to hold over the fire, and who to set free. In all of those choices, we can display the traits Isaiah lists for the hoped-for ruler: righteousness, justice, wisdom, understanding and fear of God. Or we can be predators – seeking out and consuming the week in order to meet our needs and desires. In each of our lives, in many ways, we are a part of the powerful class in a world that is often unjust. Isaiah is talking to us.

This metaphor invites the powerful to give up their power when the system in which they operate is hurting or destroying creatures in God’s creation. When we are in those places of power in systems that oppress, we need to be the ones to change first in order for reconciliation to happen – in order for right relationships to be restored. The wolf has to deny his own instinct to prey on the lamb, or the lamb will never be safe.

I often wonder what it would be like to be a Muslim in Grinnell. We probably don’t even notice as we go about our day to day business that this is a Christian town – not always explicitly Christian, mind you, but Christianity is undoubtedly the dominant culture here. We, in the Christian churches, are comfortable being who we are because we fit in pretty well. It is not odd to be Christian. But, what would it be like to be Muslim? What would it be like to be Jewish or an atheist?

I remember vividly the first day I walked to work at the church here five years ago. When I got about halfway, bells began to ring loud enough to be heard throughout the downtown area at least. At first I wasn’t really bothered. But then came the Christian hymns. Christian hymns which, I would learn soon, ring out over the town three times a day. I’m guessing most of us don’t think twice about it – and if I had not just moved from Northern California where majorities and minorities look very different, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. But imagine moving to Grinnell and you are a Muslim and you hear Christian hymns playing out all over the town three times a day. Imagine you have been hurt by the church in the past. Imagine you are Jewish. Or any other religious minority. Some folks may not be bothered at all, but I suspect many are. Three times a day there is a blatant reminder that you are a lamb in a wolves’ town.

And it would be hard for someone who is offended or hurt by this to speak up. They would be challenging the dominant culture without knowing how such a challenge would be met. They would run the risk of being hurt further by the response of those who value being a part of the dominant culture and value the affirmation something like the hymns gives them that they are in power. It needs to be Christians who challenge these things because we come from the position of power on this one.

Christians should be the ones to challenge things like Christian activities in the schools that make others feel uncomfortable or left out. We may not be ready to do this. We may not agree on the need for this every time. But if the ones who are being hurt speak up they are more vulnerable and run the risk of being ostracized further. If we come from our place of power and challenge the system, we make it safer to be reconciled to those who are in the minority.

So sometimes we are the wolves – the powerful ones. But there are also times we are like the child or the lamb or calf – times when it would be foolish to put ourselves in proximity to those who could or would hurt us. In this world that is still broken, there are still wolves that seek to destroy the lambs and snakes that would poison the unsuspecting. We don’t have Isaiah’s world yet, so we protect ourselves from those who have the power to hurt us. Some of us have been wounded by a predator – an abusive spouse or parent – some of us have been beaten down by the system. Some of us are poor – living on the edge, dependent on the kindness and generosity of others to stay afloat.

Unfortunately, sometimes our coping mechanisms, our ways of seeking protection, are not as helpful as we might think. Sometimes we retreat not just from the wolf but from the other lambs as well. Sometimes we become afraid of everything, sure that pain and suffering are just around the corner until wholeness and healing become impossible goals. In each of our lives, there are times we are vulnerable and powerless in relationships that are hurting us and those around us. Isaiah’s vision is for us at those times as well – a picture of hope and a path forward. It is the antidote to our unhelpful, sometimes hurtful, coping mechanisms.

Isaiah believed there were people who could be like the wolf in his metaphor – people who look like the powerful ones that hurt, but are instead kind and gentle. True: when our vulnerabilities are exposed, we have to be skilled at discerning the sheep in wolves’ clothing from the wolves’ in sheep’s clothing. But at some point, the lamb in Isaiah’s word picture had to let the wolf get close enough to see if it had, in fact, given up its role as predator.

I think of people who have been abused as children – maybe sexually abused by a father or neighbor. The natural response is to fear men…to fear intimacy…or to not believe intimacy can come without violence. This response is protective at first. This is the lamb running away from approaching wolves and it’s what we expect, it’s what any of us would do; it’s necessary. But Isaiah’s vision calls the abuse victim to ponder whether all men are really predators, even though they look like the wolf. At some point, for reconciliation, wholeness and right relationship to be even a possibility for this person, they have to dare to trust that there is good in others who may at first look dangerous. This is not without risk. This requires some men who set aside their power to intimidate, and slowly approach the lamb with belly exposed, waiting patiently until the lamb comes up to them. It requires courage beyond belief. But, it is possible.

Even while the world is still broken – even while abuse still exists, even while dominant cultures stifle and oppress minorities almost out of habit on a regular basis – Isaiah’s metaphor gives us both something to wait for and to work for. It’s a beautiful image that shows us what is possible, but it’s also a metaphor that gives us the model, the path for creating those possibilities in small ways in the meantime.

Reconciliation happens only when both sides trust each other not to hurt them and not to betray them. In those places where we have power, it can be scary to take steps to be less threatening to others because it usually involves giving something up. But it’s incumbent on us to shed those things that give us power over others so that we are approachable and safe. But in those places and times we are the meek and oppressed, it’s also incumbent on us to take a chance and risk trust with those who look like the predatory wolves.

We are waiting, we are longing for a time when neither our power nor our vulnerability makes us enemies with others. We are waiting for the day when, as Isaiah writes, no one hurts or destroys on God’s holy mountain. In the meantime, may we work to be the wolves and sheep who live together without bloodshed, without pain or domination, without power imbalance. Maybe we be reconciled to one another and so create God’s holy mountain here and now. Amen.

Immanuel: Swords Into Plowshares

Isaiah 2:1-5
First Sunday of Advent: November 28, 2010


I suspect for many, Advent is a difficult season in the church to understand. It’s hard to know what the “theme” is, and if there’s anything in particular we should be “doing” during Advent. Should we be giving something up, spending more time in reflection, listening for some particular point or story, ignoring all together?

Add to that the fact that when we’re not in curch everything around us tells us we are smack dab in the middle of the Christmas season: music, decorations, social events. There are no cultural concessions for Advent. And to top it all off, the theological theme of Advent seems complicated: We say we are waiting for two things. First, of course, is Jesus’ birth – or rather we are waiting to celebrate Jesus’ birth on Christmas Eve. But there’s a second kind of waiting we acknowledge in Advent; we are not just waiting to celebrate a past event. We are waiting for a future event as well.

Many of the New Testament passages during Advent are what we call apocalyptic. They are about a dramatic, sometimes violent, future event that will mean the end of things as we know it and the beginning of a new world where God reigns and God’s realm is our reality…completely. The people who wrote the New Testament believed they were living in an “in between” time – in between the birth of Jesus and the time when Jesus would come again and change everything. And so, during Advent, the idea is for us to remember that we are still “in between” these two things. We both look back to the beginning of the story of Christ – the birth of Jesus – and we look forward to the end – the new heaven and new earth.

Understanding ourselves to be in this “in between” place is what I think many people find difficult. The birth of Jesus we “get” – hence the reason we often ignore Advent and slip so easily into the Christmas season right after Thanksgiving. But we just don’t relate to the idea that we are waiting for the future event as well. Many of us don’t connect with the language of apocalypse and second coming, and so we don’t connect with that longing for the end of what is and the beginning of a new world in the same way we connect with the beauty and joy of the Christmas story.

But here’s the thing: The Bible is full of this longing for the future event. In some ways it underlies everything written in our scriptures: all of them, from Genesis to Revelation. For the authors of the Hebrew Bible, the future event is the coming of the Messiah; they are longing for it. They know that when the Messiah comes, everything will change. A new world will be instituted and the pain and suffering that has been around since Adam and Eve shared the world’s first fruit salad will end. The same can be said for the Jews through history up until the modern day: They long for the day when the Messiah comes, and everything will change. In fact, you can see where people are coming from when they don’t see Jesus as the Messiah – everything hasn’t changed. Suffering still exists in the same way it always has.

For the authors of the New Testament, even though it seemed the waiting was over when Jesus was born, the story didn’t simply end with the coming of the Messiah. There were Jews that believed Jesus was the Messiah, but we see in the bible that his birth, death and resurrection didn’t end the waiting for them. There was to be more. They knew this because of that uncomfortable truth that things didn’t really change much in the world around them just because Jesus came to earth. For the authors of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament alike, in everything they write lies the assumption that something is going to happen in the future, and at that time the visions of the prophets and Jesus will come true.


Even if we don’t always feel like it, we are in the same boat. The waiting is not over just because Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem. We too have to admit that although we believe something changed because God took on human form, much of the world around us still pales in comparison to the visions of God’s Realm that the prophets described and Jesus showed us with his life. When we acknowledge that truth, we can connect with the longing found throughout our scriptures. I think we can compare the visions of God’s realm that we find in the Bible with the reality in which we live, and when we do that, when we look honestly at the world and how far it falls short of what Jesus envisioned, it’s hard not to long for God’s. realm. We want the suffering to end. We know there is still so much that needs to change.

I promise, we will, of course, celebrate the birth of Jesus this Christmas Eve. But during Advent we are going to acknowledge our reality is in many ways the same as those who were and still are waiting for the Messiah. We’re only going to be reading passages from the prophet Isaiah each week. We are going to wait in the same way Isaiah was waiting: both for the Messiah and the realm of God in fullness.

Isaiah was a prophet who knew how to speak to people in the waiting period. And he did this by painting pictures of the future for which they longed and for which they must work as the people of God. This is what prophets do. They don’t predict the future in the sense of telling someone the way, day and time they will die. They use their exceptional imaginations to paint images of what they believe is possible because of their encounter with the Divine, with Yahweh.

The picture we get this week is of swords being beaten into plowshares, and spears becoming pruning hooks – it is the picture of permanent peace. And permanent peace was as far from the world in which Isaiah lived as possible. The people had lived in a state of permanent war for as long as they could remember. Swords and spears were necessary tools of survival as well as, tragically, the instruments of their slaughter. There was no way to imagine a world without war – a world where people weren’t trying to take their land and topple their government, or where they didn’t at least try to defend themselves from those who sought to destroy them. War was a necessary evil because it was the only chance they had to survive and protect their way of life.

It’s essentially the same for us. Permanent peace is a distant fairy tale. We cannot seem to shed the need to use force and violence in order to protect ourselves, maintain what we have, and to protect others around the world. It’s true that when something goes wrong – when rogue nations and leaders act up and threaten us – we try everything else we have first – every other tool we posses to get them to change their ways: diplomacy, sanctions, shame, strengthening their opposition. But if those don’t work, we think we have no choice but to use our swords, use our spears. It’s the last resort, we say, a terrible thing, but a necessary evil to fight the evil in the world.

I’m reading a book called “Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.” The author, Andrew Bacevich, lays out two components of our foreign policy that fuel war: First we have what he calls the American Credo, which in its simplest form “summons the United States – and the United States alone – to lead, save, liberate and ultimately transform the world.” And second we believe that “the exercise of global leadership as prescribed by the credo obliges the United States to maintain military capabilities in excess of those required for self-defense.”

These together, he says, will inevitably fuel a constant state of war. And that state has become permanent because we have not taken the time to step back and evaluate these two components; in fact there is, among the powerful – the ones making the decisions – an intractable collection of assumptions that make questioning these basic components of foreign policy virtually impossible and so we are guaranteed a state of permanent war. We will always be using violence somewhere in the world at any given time to accomplish our goals.

One of the reasons Bacevich says we can’t seriously challenge these intractable assumptions is because of a severe lack of imagination. We don’t take time to entertain other possibilities or learn from past mistakes. We don’t have the collective imagination to think of something better. Or maybe another way to say this is that we don’t have enough image makers in our country; enough painters of a possible future without the need for war. We have not had enough Isaiah’s offering the images that stir our hearts to new possibilities. Or if we do, their voices are suppressed, ignored, discredited, dismissed.

But that lack of imagination and visionaries makes sense. Isaiah’s images seem outlandish, impossible. The path from where we are now to permanent peace is not only hard to see, we get tired just thinking about thinking about it. So what good does it do to talk as if it were even possible? Don’t we just end up looking like naïve fools? Wasn’t Isaiah, in the final analysis, proved foolish and unsuccessful? Even if they had an impact at the time, certainly Isaiah’s words didn’t change things permanently. We are still waiting today just as he and the people were thousands of years ago. What difference does it make to offer visions and images of what we wish for when we know it will never come true?

This week I was talking to one of my friends. She asked me what I was going to be preaching on. She is not particularly familiar with the bible, so I quoted for her the vision of Isaiah: That the day would come when swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. That nation would not lift up swords against nations and neither will they learn war anymore.” Then I confessed to her that though I think it’s a wonderful passage, it is also difficult because it feels like things haven’t changed much since then, and just saying the words doesn’t make a difference to our reality. She nodded slowly at first, but then she said, “I don’t know if this helps at all, but I can tell you that that image from Isaiah warmed my heart when I heard it.”

It is important – to offer the image. Somewhere inside my friend she believed a world of peace was possible and Isaiah’s image reminded her of that deeply held belief. It stirred the hope inside her and set her sights again on the possibility of such a world. Those experiences – those heart-warming experiences – change us. Whenever we are reminded of what’s possible and we are connected to that part of ourselves that believes things don’t have to always be the same, we become more and more able to envision such a future. We become more skilled at painting images for others. Those images change us over time and bit by bit we become peacemakers in our own way.

We need image makers – we need imagination. What are our swords and plowshares today? Maybe the swords are drone missals, and the metal we need to reshape and refashion is the technology for targeting people to kill. Instead, that technology can be used to target disease and create ways to alleviate suffering. Maybe our swords are fighter jets equipped with all the latest instruments of war and the plowshares are jets loaded with food, money and resources going all over the world to feed and empower the impoverished. What images today would warm people’s hearts? Each of us, because of our own encounters with the divine are called to be imaginative – to paint images for people that will stir their hearts and set us all on a new course to permanent peace.

This Advent we are pausing to remember that the world for which we wait – the world for which we long – is both distant and possible. And we are going to let Isaiah’s images touch our imaginations – spark that place in us that believes the impossible is possible – so that we become image makers today. “In days to come, they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” May it be so. Amen.

Thanks for the Call

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Philippians 4:4-9
Harvest Sunday: November 21, 2010

Thanksgiving is a big deal in my family. It’s the must attend holiday. And it’s not just my folks, my siblings and their families; it’s in-laws, and in-laws of in-laws, cousins, friends, usually a few college students, and anyone who happens to be “hanging around.” This year, I even convinced my housemates, Emily and Jordan, that they should come, and Emily is bringing her parents and aunt. We pack my sister’s house like clowns in a Volkswagen and, like so many other thanks-givers, we eat ourselves silly. It’s loud, happy, lots of kids running around, and many words of thanks. I absolutely love Thanksgiving. I love it.

But this morning, this Harvest Sunday…this pledge Sunday, I want to ask the question: “Is Christian thanksgiving in any way distinct from the cultural practices of thanksgiving at this time of year?” On Thursday, families across the country will sit around tables and have people say what they are thankful for, and we can pretty well guess that some of the top vote getters will be: family, health, security, freedom, pets, and of course the bounty of food at the table.

But when you read the scriptures, thanksgiving in the Judeo-Christian tradition is much more that just making lists of the good things in our lives. That’s the starting point – something that we are most blessedly called to do. Shouts, songs, poems, prayers of thanksgiving fill our scriptures from beginning to end. But both Paul and the authors of Deuteronomy tie thanksgiving to something else: God’s call to create just communities.

Deuteronomy is the foundational text in our tradition for stewardship. It’s the “tithing” text. Of course for some “tithing” is a word that hangs over us like unwanted mistletoe. It sets a standard we feel compelled to live up to and a little guilty when we don’t. But the concept of tithing, or offering, in this text is not primarily tied to rules and obligation. It’s tied to joyous occasions. The authors of Deuteronomy talk of tithing by telling the story of coming into the promised land – one of the most joyful times in of Jewish history. It goes on to remind readers of God’s love of Abrahams and the Exodus from slavery. Tithing begins in joy and thanksgiving. But it doesn’t stop there, anymore than the story of the Jewish people stopped when they reached Canaan.

To understand how the Israelites thought about tithing, we have to remember that the authors of this text were living long after their ancestors came to the promised land, and some things had changed dramatically. One author I read this week points out that it was social inequalities that gave rise to the instruction in Deuteronomy to tithe. During the early days of settling into the new promised land, all Israelites enjoyed approximately the same standard of living. Wealth and income came from the land, and the land had been divided between the families equitably. One inherited family property from one’s father. The idea was for each one to live off their own land.

Then, the rise of the monarchy brought significant changes. The king’s officials formed a kind of caste detached from, and sometimes opposed to, the interests of the masses. The new economic life with its business deals, land acquisition and sales, and steep taxes destroyed equality between families. Some became rich while others sank into poverty.

From this context the authors of Deuteronomy say to first give thanks to God for all God has done and then to bring the first fruits of the land as an offering. The first thing we should notice is that the text is only addressing land owners – those who “have”, not those who don’t. Then we learn the offering was to be used in two ways. First, it was to be used as a sign of their thankfulness – a tangible way of saying thanks to God. But the second way Deuteronomy says the offering should be used is for charitable purposes. It is to be distributed to the Levite, the sojourner, the orphan, and the widow— in other words, those without land on which to produce crops for themselves. “Remember what God has done for you, give thanks, and then remember how you are called to give to others so all have enough.”

Paul makes a similar connection – “Rejoice!” he says – “give thanks!”. And then he goes on to write, “whatever is true, honorable, just…keep on doing these things.” For Paul, living out our call faithfully is the natural response to the joy we feel because of who or what God is. We give of our lives and resources because we feel joy and a genuine desire to live in communities of compassion and justice. The possibility is exciting to us, compelling, motivating, it makes us rejoice to think of such a thing.

As much as I love thanksgiving, I also think it can be a bit awkward. We give thanks for all God has given us, yet it appears all is not given and distributed equally. My family gives thanks for the bounty of food on the table, yet some starve. It’s awkward and maybe uncomfortable. But it’s not so awkward when we remember it’s not just counting blessings. We can also feel pure joy because we are, through our generosity and gifts, moving the community in the direction of being just and equitable – and that’s something to rejoice about. Thanksgiving is a celebration both of the blessings in our lives and the ways we bless others lives as well.

Each of us has a call – a call to live fully out of our God-given gifts to serve others – and what that looks like is different for each person. In the same way communities have a “call”, and both of our passages are dealing with the community’s call. Both are written to communities of people that claim allegiance to Yahweh. The community is to rejoice both in what God has done for them and in what their lives of generosity and justice do for others.

We claim allegiance to the same God. Our call is the same: to rejoice and seek to create just communities. Paul and the authors of Deuteronomy knew what they were doing. Thanksgiving and call go together. Yet in practice – now, as well as, I suspect, then – call is often separated from thanksgiving, and that leads to all sorts of problems – spiritual and practical problems. God’s call is heard as demands and weighty obligations. Call becomes un-joyous.

It’s easy to get discouraged about living out our call when we forget why we are doing what we are doing. Living out our call, it turns out, is not always – probably not often – glamorous. Often it is mundane and certainly at times it requires things of us we’d rather not do. I was grabbed this week by a phrase in Paul’s words to the Philippians: ‘Keep on doing what you are doing’, Paul says. It’s actually kind of an odd juxtaposition with his shouts of “Rejoice! Rejoice!” Dramatic joyfulness combined with mundane repetition. I don’t know exactly what was going on in the Philippian church, but I think one possibility, given what Paul says, is that they were getting tired and maybe discouraged. It’s why Paul reminds them to rejoice and then assures them that they are on the right track.

Sometimes our work as a community of faithful people feels mundane – even demoralizing at times. We wonder what difference it makes. We don’t feel as thankful for our “call” as we do for family, friends, food and health. But the truth is call is largely about doing the same things faithfully over and over again, sometimes without immediate or big effects. And without joy, this can be hard to sustain.

The people in Deuteronomy were asked to bring first fruits yearly, just as we bring our pledges every year. Paul says “keep on keeping on…” just as we do what we do over and over. Keep giving quarters to Heifer, keep giving gas vouchers to people who come to our church for help, keep packaging for kids against hunger, keep visiting and caring for one another, even though the results aren’t always clear or immediate.

Elaborate stewardship campaigns often strike me as odd. It seems like the idea is to prove how this year is special – how because of some brochure, or narrative budget, or visit by a church member, you are suddenly going to realize that there is really something important going on and so you will increase your pledge by 10% or whatever. I think stewardship comes from thanksgiving, not obligation, not from a good marketing campaign.

Stewardship is about thanksgiving first and foremost. Rejoicing in what God has given us, and then rejoicing in the fact that we get to participate in God’s work of creating just communities. Tithing, offering, pledging: it’s that crazy juxtaposition of unbridled rejoicing and thanksgiving, and the mundane act of bringing forward our little cards every year and placing money in the offering plate each week or month. We do it not because we’ve just become convinced of something, or because there’s a particular thing going on that needs money, or because we like the pastor, or whatever. We do it because it’s part of what we do over and over when we live in gratitude. It’s what we do because we are both thankful for all we have and aware that life is not equitable. It’s what we do because we’re Christian, because we are descendents of those first Israelites, who were taught that offering is an act of remembering what God has done for us and what we are to do for others.

Abraham Heschel famously said once, “if you can pray no other prayer, “Thank you,” is enough.” And, carrying this a step further, Karl Barth once wrote, “Radically and basically all sin is simply ingratitude.” The importance of the foundation being grateful cannot be overstated for these two wise people of faith. Neither can, as Barth points out, the relationship between gratitude and how we live our lives.

This year, as we sit around the table, let’s be thankful for God’s call to us as First Presbyterian Church. Let’s be thankful for the possibilities of a just community. Give thanks to God for the opportunity to create communities that reflect what God intends – communities where all can rejoice together for the blessings we have received.

And now, as we bring forward our pledges during the next hymn, with the early communities of our faith ancestors, let us rejoice and remember the words of Deuteronomy as we dedicate them:
“So now we bring the first fruit of the ground that God has given us. We will set it down before Yahweh, and then together with each other and all those who wander through our doors, let’s celebrate with all the bounty that Yahweh has given to us!” Amen.

Monday, November 15, 2010

New Songs of Celebration Render

Psalm 98
November 14, 2010


“O sing a new song to Yahweh, who has done marvelous things.”

This is not just instruction for us to sing; it is a claim about what happens when we see the goodness, the beauty, the bounty of creation. We become caught up in song –the song of creation, and we become a part of the larger song. Broadly defined, that means the movement, rhythms and melodies of our lives. It means the dances we do in our relationships with friends, family partners, spouses to music that can only be called love. It means the stunning music made by people who have a “gift”. It means the joyful lilt in someone’s voice when they share good news. This Psalm reminds us – because sometimes we need reminding – we are in a beautiful song called life and we can join the chorus. Psalms in general remind us that from the beginning of time, hymns have been sung in response to all of life.

The countless hymns of praise, from the song of Miriam and Moses at the Exodus to the hallelujah chorus at the end of the Book of Revelation, arise out of the structure of faith in the dialogue with God. Wherever the movement of God is discerned in the accomplishment of some palpable grace- whether the birth of a child, the restoration of a broken relationship, or the realization of peace in the midst of hostility-human beings respond. They respond in a mode of speech: the hymn of praise and thanksgiving.

I want to share a prayer with you written by Walter Brueggemann. He captures the reality of many of our lives – an often song-less, mostly one-dimensional life that is dominated by monotonous, monotone tasks. He knows we do, much of the time, have to live in the tasks. But the Psalms must be allowed through on a regular basis – new songs, new energy, new dimensions to life and faith. And as Brueggemann points out, in our tradition, we find those songs in the scriptures – in the poetry, in the parables, & the music whispering through the words of the Psalmists. We find them in our hymnals and choral pieces. We find song in the organ and piano and chants and familiar refrains. Part of our ritual of church, part of the reason we worship is to be immersed in song – singing, playing, listening, melodic praying. And in that immersion we are taken from the secular and profane to the sacred and transcendent.

Brueggemann writes,

Here we are, practitioners of memos:
We send e-mail and we receive it,
We copy it and forward it and save it and delete it.
We write to move the data, and
organize the program,
and keep people informed –
and know and control and manage.

We write and receive one-dimensional memos,
that are clear and unambiguous.
And then – in breathtaking ways – you summon us to song.
You, by your very presence, call us to lyrical voice;
You, by your book, give us cadences of praise
that we sing and say, “allelu, allelu.”
You, by your hymnal, give us many voices
toward thanks and gratitude and amazement.
You, by your betraying absence,
call us to lament and protest and complaint.
All our songs are toward you
in praise, in thanks and in need.

We sing figure and image and parallel and metaphor.
We sing thickness according to our coded community.
We sing and draw close to each other, and to you.
We sing. Things become fresh. But then the moment breaks
and we sink back into memo.
We are hopelessly memo kinds of people.
So we pray, by the power of your spirit,
give us some song-infused days,
deliver us from memo-dominated nights.
Give us a different rhythm,
of dismay and promise,
of candor and hope,
of trusting and obeying.

Give us the courage to withstand the world of memo
and to draw near to your craft of life
given in the wind.

God’s presence, God’s book, God’s hymnal, even God’s absence evoke song if we immerse ourselves in all of these things. We sing and things become fresh, new, hopeful. In the face of an insistent pattern in life that always leads us to work to accomplish things, to achieve goals, to live useful lives, and to carry on an unceasing array of programs to justify our existence, the sound of sacred song frees us to do nothing but give thanks to God.

Many of us have a love/hate relationship with the Psalms. Familiar verses strike a chord in us: I lift up my eyes to the hills; you have searched me and know me; yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. These verses accompany us through the ups and downs of life, providing comfort and assurance of God’s presence with us. But we also read the Psalms and at times cringe. The authors celebrate a vindictive God, believe God deserts and betrays, and they ask God to smite enemies.

But even in those cringing moments, maybe we can see that the message is that all of life can be sung – because song is built into everything. The people are “singing” all of their life…even their theology. Now we might disagree with some of their theology, but what if we agreed that all of life is suitable to be sung. What would that means for us. How can we sing our theology? We obviously do this with our hymns. But we also do this when our lives move in harmony with what we believe. We do this in our silence, listening for what creation has to sing to us, or just because a measure of rest is exactly what the song needs at times. We sing our theology when we joyfully live for others and when we have relationships of poetry.

Making music is essential. Experiencing music is essential. And not just any music…there is a lot of music out there that’s great to listen to. And a lot of music can lift our spirits and make us happy or allow us to feel our melancholy and grief. But not all music draws us out of secular space into sacred, transcendent space. The music and song the psalmist is talking about is extremely specific: It is song that praises God – that gives testament to who God is and our gratitude for who God is. It’s sacred music: that isn’t confined to “church” music – and some church music fails to be sacred, but sacred because it points us and others to God.

Studies show that one big reason people come to church is because they get to sing with a group. That may seem trivial or shallow and I may wish it was to hear the sermon, but think about it: While some people have opportunities to make music outside of church, most of us do not. And if we don’t have opportunities to connect with sacred song, our lives risk becoming flat and one dimensional. The “noise”, rather than the song of life will fill our ears. We will hear the whirl of cars engines rather than the roar of the sea; we will hear the impatience in people’s voices rather than the percussion of a rain storm; we will hear the anxious musings in our head instead of the prayers of the wind. For most, each week this is when we can break loose in song; this is where we can clear our ears of noise and fill them with Psalms. And the compelling thing is that it is not about professional music where I need to be good at singing or worried about who will hear me and how I will be judged. It is sacred music where I am a part of lots of voices and instruments that are merely participating in the larger song of creation.

The fact that singing draws so many of us to church tells me that the importance of that cannot be overstated. It’s visceral – it’s how we’re built…to make song, to love song. Just like the seas were created to roar and the hills are made to clap their hands.

I remember when I was on parental leave after adopting Lydia; I was with my parents up in Cedar Falls and I went to church with them. It was 2007, years into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I had just finished writing curriculum on faith and torture. For years I had struggled with the silence of the church on these issues, as if our faith had nothing to say.

I honestly don’t remember what was said that day in the sermon – please don’t tell the minister…I’m sure it was because I was distracted by my new baby. But I can remember that we sang, “The Church’s One Foundation.” Now, in general, when I just read the words of this hymn, some of it is hard for me theologically, and it doesn’t really make sense anymore in our current context. But it is, of course, a very familiar tune to this life-time church-goer. For this reason I imagine as we sang it was connecting me to something deep before I really noticed what was happening.

But, when we got to the third verse, I was swept away in the song – becoming fully aware and transformed by both the music and the words:
“Though with a scornful wonder we see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed, yet saints their watch are keeping; their cry goes up ‘how long?’”

With the cry of the saints, “how long?” the tears welled up in my eyes. I’m not sure I really understood why. This was about churches splitting over doctrine in the 1860s. That doesn’t really capture me now. But like I said I had been thinking about the failure of church and the persistence of war and torture. The hymn was breaking free of its historical box and becoming a new song in that moment; asking a question deeply planted in my soul. And then the hymn went on:
“Mid toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war, she waits the consummation of peace forevermore;”

And now the tears were streaming down my face. The truth is, my life had become very small when I adopted Lydia. It was about bottles and vomit and doctor appointments and lack of sleep. This was my version of memos and emails. But God’s song broke in and took me to a different place. The song was old, but it was my new song in that place. I had no connection to the historical setting that gave rise to the hymn, just as I really lack connection to the historical setting of the Psalms. But it was sacred song.

And I wasn’t just crying because I thought it was all hopeless. There is lament in this hymn: The cry goes up “how long?” But there is hope and trust in God in the very next phrase: “And soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.” The morn of song. It will be a new song to God! The tears came both from sadness and from a hope that God would answer, “not much longer…in the meantime, keep singing, keep acting, keep seeking .” I felt hope because singing that song in the church, where we claim a different foundation than politics, nationalism, ethnic identity or power, it gives me hope…it calls me back to the world and to what I can do to respond. It is in church that I find my foundation – Christ – to keep me trying to be faithful even in the face of intractable problems. “Soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.”

Sacred song celebrates human impossibilities that become God's possibilities. One of the most frequent themes of the psalms of praise is the celebration of God's reversal of the way things are: lifting up the lowly and putting down the mighty, feeding the hungry and giving sight to the blind. All human definitions of the way things have to be in this world are challenged and overturned. The melody of creation is always singing of possibility, and when we sing, when we write Psalms and make music, we too proclaim the impossible to be possible.

The beauty of Psalms is that we simultaneously sing them, and they grab us and pull us into sacred space. Even though we often feel stuck in a world without music, God will, in Brueggemann’s words, summon us to song in breathtaking ways. Hymns in church, wind in corn fields, clapping in thunder, Psalms in scripture. Breathtaking. Every week, this is a summons to song –worship is a call to give thanks for God’s goodness and bounty. The music is our lament, our gratitude, our hope, our joy, our declaration of faith, and our commitment to live as faithful people. So, sing a new song to Yahweh: Because God has done marvelous, marvelous things! Amen.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Sad to be a Sadducee

Haggai 1:15b-2:9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38
November 7, 2010

I have to admit something – this week I had a case of the inspiration blues. Generally, when I read the biblical texts early in the week, something strikes me – grabs my attention. I like to think this is inspiration, or the Holy Spirit. Depending on the week, you might think it is not at all inspired and certainly not by the Holy Spirit; but whatever it is, it at least gets me started down the path of sermon writing for the week.

This week, the days were coming and going and – nothing. I put the bulletin together not knowing where I would go with all this. You’ll notice there’s no title. We’re reading all three texts this morning in part because I kept thinking it would increase my odds of being inspired if I kept reading all of them …you know, keeping my options open. But, in the end, no great burst of inspiration.

So, assuming the Holy Spirit doesn’t take weeks off, I struggled to figure out what might be hindering her presence. By Friday, I was finally able to admit to myself that I actually figured it out early on, and then spent the rest of the week in denial about it. The reason I was not feeling inspired is that I am one of those Sadducees.

Now, I am usually pretty willing to be challenged by a text; I can relate more to the Pharisee in a story at least as often as I relate to the disciples. Of course Pharisees are not all bad: Jesus was from the Pharisaic tradition. Most of them were really trying to be good, religious folks. According to the authors of our gospels, while they were sometimes used as the foil, they weren’t always wrong, or evil, and some, of course, were big followers and fans of Jesus. It’s just that the Pharisees sometimes got lost in the religiosity and missed the spirituality. So, I can be challenged by that – I know I do the same from time to time.

But Sadducees are a whole other level – at least for the author of the Gospel of Luke. Whether or not his portrayal of the Sadducees is historically accurate or fair, he is certainly making a point about some people he knew. He has an impression of some fellow Jews that is, to put it mildly, less than sweet.

In Luke the Sadducees play the role not just of the “misguided, hard-headed, elite”, but of the “really bad folks.” The bottom line for Luke was that they were against Jesus in every way. To begin with, they did not believe the same things Jesus – and the Pharisees for that matter – believed. For example, they, unlike the Pharisees, did not believe in the resurrection; in this passage they are making fun of that belief. But they couldn’t just agree to disagree; it was extremely important to them to find a way to discredit Jesus in front of his followers because his movement – his followers – were becoming a problem for the Sadducees.

Sadducees were literalists…they believed you followed every word of the Torah down to the dots and tittles. More than that, they believed that their enforcement of those laws – which were often heavy handed – kept order in the temple and among the Jewish Community. And as an added benefit, the rules and the enforcement kept them right where they were; in power.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed in an oral tradition as well as the written Torah, and that oral tradition kept reinterpreting the scriptures for the current time and place. The Sadducees rejected this completely because it threatened the ordered system. Then, Jesus went many steps further; not only was he always reinterpreting the scriptures, bringing them to new life in new ways, applying them in ways that upset the system instead of codifying it, he also did things like predict the destruction of the temple: the locus of power for the Sadducees; he called for complete release of captives (the breakers of the law the Sadducees sought to enforce); called for nothing short of a complete reversal of how things were being done! The Sadducees were sensing a movement, led by Jesus, that would bring chaos in the highest degree, and their complete demise in the end.

Finally, what we need to remember about the Sadducees, at least as Luke saw it, is that, when they were unsuccessful at discrediting Jesus, they decided to kill him outright, and in Luke’s story, they played a large role in his execution.

All of that’s to say, it’s no fun to realize you might be a modern day Sadducee. I did not find it inspiring. But, Sunday comes week after week regardless of my inspiration, so I forged ahead.

I realized that it’s actually pretty easy to be a Sadducee for most of us. It pretty much entails doing nothing. It’s pretty much going along happy with how things are because how things are works pretty well for us. For me it’s not about being a literalist, but it is about supporting systems and institutions that keep me firmly planted in my comfortable life. For me it means denying the more radical messages of Jesus that would require of me radical change, and holding fast to the ones that make me feel good about being Christian. It means suppressing anything of Jesus that would require an overhaul of my life and the way things are, even if that means a metaphorical killing of Jesus.

And I’m pretty good at this: I suppress those more radical parts through rationalization, denial, ignorance, and distance. I explain away his more enigmatic and challenging teachings by saying he lived in a different time and place, that the authors had a different understanding of the world and science, and he probably didn’t do and say everything the authors say he did. Whenever I come up against a passage that really seems to be calling me to a different way of life, I tell myself, “I’m no Jesus. I can’t be perfect like him. I’m doing the best I can.” When it’s convenient, I distance myself from Jesus’ humanity, seeing him more as a kind of superhero in a cartoon than as a human, subject to all the limitations and temptations as I am. That way I don’t have to admit that I have the same capacity Jesus did. And if all else fails, I just ignore passages I don’t like. It’s the metaphorical equivalent of discrediting and killing Jesus – all to avoid upsetting the apple cart of my life and the world.

I know what the Sadducees knew: Jesus’ message and way of life is threatening to the status quo – and I benefit from the status quo. So, discrediting, softening, twisting the message are a way of life for me – and if those don’t work, I do what I can to kill the message altogether. It’s a bummer to realize you’re a Sadducee.

But, that realization is just the starting place. What we have in the story of Jesus, in the scriptures, and in the movement of the Holy Spirit is a way to move out of the role of the Sadducee and into the role of disciple. The bible is story after story calling us to a faithful way of life; and these stories recognize that such a life is difficult. The authors too knew what it’s like to be afraid of change, to resist the counter-intuitive ways of God and to struggle with prioritizing serving others over self-interest. “Take courage,” the author of Haggai says. “Take courage,” he says three times! The way of faith is not always easy. It requires courage.

But where does courage come from? Or better, what motivates us to make difficult choices that might disrupt our lives. What compels us to give of our time, resources, energy and image in order to serve others, seek peace and champion the least among us?

Haggai is a prophet who lived during the time the Jewish people were returning to Jerusalem after living in exile in Babylon. When they got to Jerusalem, they were trying to make everything like it was before. They had been demoralized by the experience of exile and now they wanted their old life back, beginning with the temple that had been destroyed by the Babylonians. But as they started to rebuild, Haggai knew the answer didn’t lie in going back – that would of course lead to the same results…corrupt kings, oppressive systems, widespread misery and the ultimate crumbling of the community. Haggai knew they needed a new way of being, one they didn’t know and weren’t comfortable with. Faith for them meant they had to go forward into an unknown future. For this they needed courage, and for Haggai that courage is found in God’s presence.

But when Haggai talks about God’s presence, it’s not just God being with them in the present, but in the future as well. It is this presence of God in the future that is compelling. The prophets spend a lot of time painting a picture of the future: a time when there’s no more weeping, no more wars, no more hunger or slave labor. In this case, Haggai gives them a picture of a future temple – more glorious than the past one. It’s more glorious, of course, not because it is a more beautiful building adorned with great wealth, but because it will be a part of God’s realm. It’s a vision of a world ruled by a God of grace and mercy, justice and equality and a promise that surely such a thing exists in the future.

These visions and the belief that God’s promises of such a world were sure and sound were compelling to the prophets – and presumably the people who listened. After Jesus died, this got translated into a vision of a time when Jesus would come again and institute God’s realm in full among us. Belief that such a thing would happen, literally and likely even in their lifetime, was compelling to the early Christians. It motivated them to take risks, to join in a movement that left the established world behind. It gave them courage.

But, I don’t believe that – at least not in the same way it seems the early Christians did – the author of Luke did. I don’t have the same beliefs of Haggai about temples and God wiping clean the face of the earth in order to make something better. I certainly don’t see God as a director in the sky, sending in the rain and sun on cue, and holding back the main character, Jesus Christ, until just the right moment. Maybe belief is the wrong word. I just don’t find it compelling. The idea of a second coming instills no courage in me. It’s not enough to get me to give up comfort and security in order to live as a radical disciple of Jesus. And that made me feel like a Sadducee this week.

But there is something underlying these beliefs and something in what Jesus said to the Sadducees, that connects for me. The common thread is that the prophets, the authors of the gospels, Paul and his students were painting pictures where life replaced the dead and desecrated things around them. For some this was the second coming, for some this was a picture of almost a second paradise, and for some this was a new temple in place of the one that was destroyed. For all of them, it was new life. Jesus says, “God is the God of the living, not the dead.” He says it in response to the Sadducee’s question about resurrection, but Jesus knew that question was not sincere – it was meant to discredit him.

So his answer is not a defense of the doctrine the of the resurrection. What he is really saying is that when we do the same, when we are tempted to discredit, rationalize, twist and soften in order to avoid the radical message his life brings, we should remember that we are created to be drawn into life, not perpetuate systems of death.

I’m really not the Sadducee. The Sadducee isn’t a real person – it’s a caricature in Luke. I can identify with the temptations and the inclinations of the caricature, and at times my life is driven by those temptations and inclinations. But at my core – at your core – because we are made in the image of the God of the living, we are all drawn to participate in a world that is life-giving to everyone. The barriers and challenges to that are many. Comfort is one of the biggest barriers at times. Denial is one of the biggest barriers at times. But take courage: Take courage in the fact that when we follow that pull toward life, we will find more life, more joy, more freedom than we have now. Probably not more comfort or security or social acceptance. But those are not life-producing on their own, not in the sense of life that Jesus talks about.

I think it’s our very nature. We are drawn to life – we are drawn to God as the life-force. It’s actually a movement built into creation itself, and I think we all have moments of feeling a part of this. I think this is what keeps us connected to church – those moments when we realize we are part of something larger than ourselves…maybe even a part of building a future we can only imagine in prophetic terms and will never see. I don’t think we come to learn what to believe about resurrection, or the second coming, or creeds and doctrines. I think we come because we do see the dead and desecrated places in our world and that we know there is a way to bring life to these places.

It can be easier to talk about the doctrine – to discredit outmoded, archaic ways of thinking, but I think we want to change our lives and so we seek a God not of dead doctrines but of living waters. I think we know there is something more to life than just being comfortable, or even being happy, because we know deep down how connected we are with all of creation, and that our true life is found when all flourish. There’s nothing compelling in getting the religion test right….naming all of the books of the bible or reciting the Nicene creed or having proper progressive theology.

What’s compelling is to be with people who seek ways to foster life in the world, who seek a God that moves and loves and years for the wholeness of creation, to participate with a Divine presence that wants more than what the world can give…I think that’s compelling. I think that can break through any tendencies we have to be the Sadducee. And we have that here – not perfectly, not all the time, but this is a place of the living. This is a place where people’s faiths are alive and so God is moving in our worship and our ministries and our lives. And that’s inspiring. Thanks be to God. Amen.