Call, challenge, commission

(Today we used Psalm 62, Nan Merrills version, with a reflection on my silence experience in airport meditation room--see Facebook entry from early January)

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Around church you’ll see all these orange flyers from last week’s SS classes: Jesus is the good news. Well, we could surely use some good news. But in today’s text Jesus isn’t the good news. It’s quite clear-- Jesus PROCLAIMS the good news, which is not a private, individual message saying believe in me and you’ll get into heaven.

The good news is that ‘the kingdom of God is drawing near, coming close’—the good news was a public, political message for an impoverished and oppressed people….a people who knew they needed God to break into their culture and free them.

Now this kingdom of God, or even kin-dom of God, would be a phrase they’d understand. They knew things weren’t right. They wanted God to come and replace the kingdom of Caesar with a new social order, but they imagined it would be simply with a replacement king of their own.

We too know things aren’t right; all around us are the signs that Empire forces, not God forces, are in charge. For us, kingdom language doesn’t really work, so try this. The good news Jesus brings is that the culture of God is coming close, a new social order is possible, but it requires a cultural change.

God’s culture is very different from ours, but unlike the people in Jesus’ day, we quite like ours, we’re quite comfy thanks. So if you’re quite satisfied with things as they are, and don’t really want to hear any more, you can stop listening now. I just ask that you don’t do anything that will prevent someone else from hearing God’s good news.

Moments like that experience in Newark airport, the culture of God is this close….

days when our youth are offering a free lunch in a downtown park, the culture of God is this close….

times when a child in SS ‘gets it’, the culture of God is this close….

when urban gardens transform empty lots and a child sees her first butterfly (from On Being this morning),

the culture of God is this close….

when a stranger offers you a random act of kindness —those are points when we feel the culture of God coming close…almost here….almost tangible, this close.

This is the good news Jesus proclaimed, and we, like those first disciples, are called into it, to embrace it and enlarge it.

When we talked about this cultural change at SLB on Tuesday, someone said it’s spelled LOVE. And wouldn’t that be a major cultural shift! Imagine a social order based on LOVE….imagine a church that actually lived its mission statement to bring God’s LOVE to all the world….hmmm

Follow me, says Jesus. It’s invitational, we have a choice; but it’s not wimpy. It’s actually quite a challenge: if we’re going to say we’re Christ followers this becomes a commanding tone and we need to actually follow (!) through.

We all, at some time, and in some areas, are followers --who do you follow on Twitter or Facebook? Or what teams do you follow, or which political party or candidate?

It is vital that we are discriminating in who and what we follow—look at your political party’s manifesto for example, or your company’s investment policies, or your family’s calendar or your own checkbook, or your church’s mission statement—are they in line with God’s culture? Does your participation in them bring about the culture of God? Who or what are we following?

Follow me means we go where Jesus goes (as opposed to inviting Jesus to come to where we are, which is how we often treat God)

AND learn about Jesus so we can BE like Jesus

AND move out of our cultural mindset into the culture of God.

That movement is the real challenge: disciples left their nets and livelihood for a whole new way of life. Some Christians ARE called to leave behind everything and go off somewhere, but most of us are called to leave behind everything and start out new where we are, with a new identity, Jesus people, a new attitude, following, and a new purpose—gathering people in.

Imagine still doing what you do, but with a God purpose.

Imagine saying what you say, but with an “other” orientation.

Imagine being who you are, but with a Jesus identity.

What would be different? What must be different if the culture of God is to reign in our world? Starting with you, with me, then with our families, then our church, what must be changed? Then our society, our policies, our politics, what must we work at changing?

To follow Jesus is a social action with personal, public and political dimensions.

Fish for people, Jesus said. This is not a call to add one more thing to your already overcommitted lives. No, Jesus calls us to change our inward, self centered mind into an outward, other-centered life, so that we can gather people in to this good news that’s transforming the world.

Good news is exciting! It’s worth sharing. Does this good news get you excited? As excited as the current political hype? As excited as the thrill of the road to the Superbowl?

If we get more excited about a sports event or political process than we do about God’s good news, no wonder nothing changes, no wonder God’s culture is still a ways off. We keep it at a safe distance. Shame on the church, which is supposed to be a movement that brings the God-culture close: visible, tangible, practical.

Get fishing! Share the good news that God’s realm is alive and well here at FUMC;

get involved in the God-culture stuff that’s going on and leave behind the cultural stuff that’s like wet fishing nets, heavy and useless.

And follow Jesus, nothing else. For it is Jesus who’s been there, done that, and can show us the way.

Thanks be to God.

baptism is dangerous

Waterwashed and Spirit-led January 8, 2012 Gen. 1, Ps. 29, Mk 1

Margaret Scott

(streamers of blue crepe paper hang in the sanctuary doorways; the font is front and center with blue waterlike fabric streaming down from it; there was a water fountain bubbling on top of font)

It should be pretty obvious today that things are a bit different; decorations gone from Christmas, new things here—what’s with the streamers and fabric and stuff?

If you’re on our weekly email list, you’ll be somewhat prepared for something that’s not business as usual…I commented in that email that we ‘ve made Christmas much bigger than it is in the bible- Jesus’ baptism is much bigger in scripture. Maybe we should be celebrating baptism anniversaries like birthdays, wedding anniversaries, Christmas. Hmm, but maybe if we did, we’d just tame it, like we have Christmas.

And baptism isn’t tame, no matter how sweet we’ve made it with babies and photos. Baptism is dangerous.

One big clue to that is the combination of scripture readings for today, and the biblical imagery of water…..water shows up in all three texts, and none of it is gently dribbling from a tap, nor is it barely wetting a baby’s head

In genesis, the author imagines waters as the deep chaos before creation begins—everything is dark and formless and empty.

In the psalm, an ancient song sees the massive force of a storm lashing the country, whipping up waters below and driving rain from above while thunder echoes and lightning flashes.

In the gospel, the water imagery is a river, but not just any river, it’s the Jordan: a river that is vitally important historically and deeply symbolic to the people who’re coming to be immersed in its waters to prepare themselves for the one God will be sending to straighten them out…water that was a crossing point to a new life in the people’s history is now a turning point in their present, and a decision point for their future.

Does any of this sound tame?

This past week I was in Scotland, and the country was lashed with violent gales and rain for three days, causing much damage, power down, traffic disrupted, and people told to stay home as it was dangerous….and that got me thinking about how all of these biblical water images are great images for times in our lives:

· Chaotic, out of control times, when we’re waiting for something creative to come out of it, waiting for a voice from God to bring order out of our chaos…times when everything feels dark and empty

· Stormy times, when we are disoriented by life (one of the Brueggemann stages John talked about last week) and we see the trouble we’re going through as somehow God’s fault, if not God’s activity, when God’s voice may seem angry and punishing…..

· Transition times when we are faced with the need to make decisions—confronting the past and turning to the future

No, none of this is tame; today is not business as usual in any way whatsoever. And into this rich water imagery steps Jesus.

The liturgical day called Baptism of our Lord is a day that confronts us with the waters of life, whether we’re in chaos or storm or decision, or even if we walked in here today in business-as-usual safety mode.

Some of its danger and discomfort is that it’s sacramental. It’s God’s work. Oh, yes, we might choose to be baptized or to bring a child for baptism, just as those people came to John. Just as Jesus decided to come too.

But what happens at baptism is God’s work. That’s why we ask you not to take pictures during baptism that distract all of us from the mystical power of water-washed grace that comes upon that child or you through the pastor and water. Joyous it may be, serious it is.

It’s a moment like Mark describes, a tearing apart of the heavens, eliminating the dividing line between heaven and earth, bringing the power of God’s Holy Spirit and indicating a very special relationship with God. Not tame. When the heavens are torn apart, nothing can ever be the same again—this is a permanent rupture. No more barrier between us and God, no more compartmentalizing God into a safe place up there somewhere.

To be sure, God says the affirming and loving words to Jesus, and to each of us: you are my child, I love you and you give me pleasure. But it’s more than a Mr. Rogers’ “It’s you I like” kind of affirmation, important as that is.

It’s a whole new image of God trying to break in on us….imagine a God who pours out grace without your having to do anything, a God who takes pleasure in you yourself, in who you are at your core, even if you’re the worst sinner in the world or can’t believe anyone would love you, let alone the God of the universes. The God whose Spirit hovers over chaos, whose voice thunders in nature….takes pleasure in me?

If/when I really believe that, it’s life-changing. But we’ve tamed the image of God into a sweet, loving, fairly harmless God.

Last week John quoted Brian McLaren, who challenged readers to step outside their small minded judgments into “God’s larger more gracious space”—to be able to see people like God does, “each one precious, each one in need, each one at once beautiful and broken and dangerous and dignified”

To see people that way is not tame; that’s not business as usual. That’s a whole different mindset. But as baptized Christians, that’s our call as beloved children of God; we don’t just receive God’s affirmation—like Jesus we allow it to direct the rest of our lives.

It’s in the torn places where God comes through, whether in our chaos or stormy days or decision making dramas, or in the torn places of our world that other people are experiencing, where Nobodies need to become Somebodies through the love and justice of God.

The call of baptism is a call to much more than the material level of life—ho hum, baptized, went to church, now back home to dinner and business as usual. No! It’s a call that involves all of us, body, mind and spirit.

The call of baptism is for us to move out of the water and on to the wilderness, to change our lives so we can be used by God in the cosmic business of world transformation. Nothing tame about that.

If you hear God’s voice, loving and calling you, and if you’re willing to say yes again to this dangerous mission, then I invite you to come forward as we all sing together Water River Spirit Grace—John and I will hold ordinary water, and you can use it in any way that means something to you (wet hands, touch a wet finger to your forehead or heart, etc).

Those not coming forward are invited to be in a spirit of prayer through the song where you are, and those who come be sensitive to those who are staying in the pew, for this act may not be for everyone.

But for all of us, let us open ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s sweeping over us so God may give us what each of us needs, and God may make of us what the world needs…come to the water…..come.

A Time For...

A Time For…

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-13

January 1, 2012

J.W. McNeill

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
3:1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

3:2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

3:3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

3:4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

3:5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

3:6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away;

3:7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

3:8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

3:9 What gain have the workers from their toil?

3:10 I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with.

3:11 He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

3:12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live;

3:13 moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.

Some of you may recall the version of this text put to music by folksinger Pete Seeger in a song, Turn, Turn, Turn. It had its widest circulation in a recording by the group the Byrds in the late sixties with a memorable 12 string guitar accompaniment.

I was impressed at the time that a song with lyrics from the Bible managed to be so popular, but I also was uncomfortable with the song because of a couple of lines in particular that I could simply not accept. I could not accept that there was a time for war and I could not accept that there could be a time for hate.

Surely that could not be right. Hate is wrong and war is wrong. Case closed. Or at least in my teenage way of looking at things at the time.

The Book of Ecclesiastes is one of several so-called Wisdom books in the Bible. It is traditionally attributed to King Solomon, although Biblical scholars think it unlikely that Solomon wrote it.

To read this book in the context of the rest of the Bible is to notice a piece of writing that is unusual. The tone is often described as cynical or somewhat jaded. In the first chapter, the author says that everything is vanity and a striving after wind. That is: all is meaningless and hopeless.

There have been those who have wanted to remove the book of Ecclesiastes from the Bible because of its apparent pessimistic tone. But I think those who would do this have missed the point.

I think Ecclesiastes is written for a time in our lives when our experience of failure or frustration or even despair is about to overwhelm us. It is a word from a preacher who reaches out to us when  our ideals or our hopes or our dreams have been shattered and we are left confused about our place in the cosmos and God’s connection to it.

The Biblical theologian Walter Brueggeman outlines three stages that we might experience along with the Biblical writers of ancient times:

Orientation: God gives instructions, guidance, judgments, about what is right and good. We learn about justice and peace. We learn about God’s love and power. We hear an encouragement to be God’s people and what that means about how we should act and how we should be a part of virtue and blessing. We learn about God’s goodness and how God is at work in the world and how God has delivered the oppressed and the suffering into security and peace.  These teachings and these stories ORIENT us in the world. They give us a behavioral compass by which to assess or evaluate our own actions or the actions of others.  This stage of orientation is a fundamental part of getting us to understand and act in the world. It sets the stage for our striving and our activity in the world so that we may be energetic partners with God’s creative energy. We are on the path to be God’s people.

Disorientation: But for many of us, we eventually move into a stage of disorientation. We find that our experience of the world sometimes fails to live up to what we imagined were God’s promises. We find that even apparently good and righteous people are not always successful. We find that disappointments are common and frustrations are easy to come by. We discover that the world does not live up to our expectations and we can come to imagine that God has failed us. We can even find that our own actions and attitudes do not live up to the ideals that we have set for ourselves.

There are three basic alternatives when we find ourselves in the stage of disorientation:

1.     Some give up on God.

2.     Some give up on truth and live in denial.

3.     Some begin an argument with God and a kind of struggle that won’t give up until there is a resolution.

This resolution is what Brueggeman calls reorientation. If orientation is coming to understand the ideals that God’s love would embody in creation; and if disorientation is becoming aware of the gap between the ideals we came to expect and the realities we actually experience, then reorientation is coming to a more mature awareness of how God is mysteriously present even when we cannot yet make out God’s hand.

The writer of Ecclesiastes counsels that in this world, from our limited perspective, we are not able to see in all things how God is at work, or what God will be able to make out of the circumstances of our lives or the lives of those dear to us. From our limited perspective we are not even able always to know what is best for ourselves or our loved ones.

And so we are invited by the author of Ecclesiastes to turn our attention to what we do experience in this world: love and hate, war and peace, seeking and losing, gathering and scattering, weeping and laughing. These contrasts are surely a part of our lives and the lives of our love ones.

I don’t think that the author is saying that we are to think that everything is ok and war is as good as peace or hatred is as good as love. Instead, we are offered the perspective to lay aside for a moment our need to judge or evaluate or criticize or even strive to correct what is wrong – because much of the time we can’t fix what we think is wrong. We are sometimes called to simply trust that God is at work in all things and often the best thing we can do is simply appreciate it.

Brian McLaren, a favorite author of mine, has written a book, Naked Spirituality 12 Simple Words. I’ve been reading it slowly. Putting it down and coming back to it. I’m getting toward the end of it. The prayer word I’m reading about now is “Behold.” The stance toward the world that simply takes it in and appreciates God’s glory in the world. Here is one of the exercises McLaren recommends that might come out of an understanding of today’s passage from Ecclesiastes (From page 204):

…you could go to a public place and practice beholding people with God. You'll no doubt hear your chattering, analyzing, critical mind assessing each one in accordance with its own agendas, desires, drives. and neuroses: fat, thin, rich, poor, stylish, frumpish, sexually  attractive, sexually unattractive, my kind of person. not my kind of ­person, Christian. non-Christian, and so on. Instead of living within this cramped space of judgment, observe it-behold it from a distance. "There it goes again." you might say with amusement. My limited human mind is acting as I were God and I were qualified to judge these people." Consciously separate yourself from that small mental courtroom; step outside it and above it into God's larger, more gracious space. Allow the Spirit to help you see these people in God’s light- each one precious, each one in need, each one at once beautiful and broken and dangerous and dignified. Whenever you find yourself shrinking back into the dualist, courtroom mind, simply observe it, name it, and step outside it as you return to a more generous, gracious beholding with God.

This brings me back to my judgment of this passage in the song Turn Turn Turn. In those days my narrow judging vision held me back from appreciating that like it or not there was going to be war and hate. I do not have to lead with my judgment into the world.

I can lead with my wonder. I can lead with my compassion. I can lead with the love God has been trying to offer me. I can lead with the freedom that trusting God’s goodness and not my critique can provide.

Lord’s Supper is free time. Time to behold in ourselves, in those around us, in the meal itself the awesome presence of God.

Behold. Be open to love. God is here.

Thanks be to God.

repeat the sounding joy

“Joy to the world”, the carol goes, and sends us out of here with lifted spirits and momentary warmth, maybe even a renewed hope for a little while. I have to admit, it’s not one of my favourites. But this year one verse in it struck me as I heard it the other day on the radio…that ALL of nature sings: fields, floods, rocks, hills, plains…repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy, repeat, repeat the sounding joy!

What IS the sounding joy? Is there such a thing? I can’t tell you what it is for you; I only know what it is for me, but hang in there with me and we’ll get to that…

And why is it repeated? That’s the easier question; as a mother, and as a pastor, I have often caught myself thinking, if not actually saying: how many times do I have to repeat myself? And last Christmas Eve a young man came to me and complained that it was just the same old story all over again.

Well, duh. It bears repeating because we haven’t really heard it. We don’t GET the message of Christmas that is transformative. And what is it? What is the sounding joy?

Well, for me it’s also contained in this same unfavourite carol, and it’s two fold: 1. The Lord is come and 2. The savior reigns.

The sounding joy worth repeating for me is that God comes. God is not some distant ethereal being that created us and sits back and watches us mess up, intervening now and then. The message of Christmas we still don’t get is that God comes:

God is here, and there, and there and here.

AND that's not all! God is involved

…in all the smells of stable life: God is there

…involved with the lonely, lowlife characters in the fields tending sheep: God is there

…involved and caring about the young uncertain woman facing shame and rejection: God is there

AND that's not all! God is not just here and involved, but this God of the universes chooses humans as partners in the renewal and transformation of the world…

chooses young people like Mary to carry life forward, to be radical thinkers who’ll challenge what’s normal in favour of what’s life-giving…some of us old folk have really messed up the world, and my sounding joy is that there are some young people willing to bring life out of that mess.

chooses fine moral people like Joseph to take on responsibility for nurturing and teaching the next generation, when culture says it’s not worth the aggravation… chooses lowlifes like the shepherds to be witnesses because they’re the ones who’re desperate enough to be open…. chooses angels to sing God’s repeated song so others can learn it and sing along.

God chooses us too. God comes to and chooses YOU who like Mary, need to ponder all this more seriously

YOU like Joseph who are afraid to step up and stand out

YOU who feel discounted and need to be accepted,

YOU who know that somewhere deep inside you is a song you haven’t yet sung.

Repeat the sounding joy: God comes, God gets involved, God chooses us as partners.

The other sounding joy worth repeating is the savior reigns

One big turning point in my life came when I realized that to say Jesus is Lord means I am not. I am not the center of the universe; I am not the ruler of my life. God is.

To say the savior reigns is to admit that nothing else has complete rule of my life, our community, our nation, the world: not me, not politics or government or institutions like the church, not stuff, not consumerism or capitalism, not corporations and companies. The savior reigns.

This is the song I have found deep in my soul worth repeatedly singing—a new song, as different from the culture that surrounds and enslaves us as the angels’ song was to an occupied poverty-stricken land 2000 years ago.

Let ALL their songs employ, the carol goes: don’t leave it up to fields and rocks and all nature, nobody listens to them….YOU sing it. You repeat the sounding joy.

What is YOUR song? It may be close to the surface, or buried deep in your heart’s desire…listen for it: you may have to sort through all sorts of layered noise first, but when the God of the universes sings a song of love to you, and you say YES, like Mary, Joseph, shepherds and angels and 60 year old pastors, it will bubble up, I promise.

Then let it rip, sing it out for all you’re worth: repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy, repeat repeat the sounding joy until others find their own God-song and the world is changed.

Amen.

antipodean christmas

A light dusting of snow. orange sunrise lighting the bare trees, a hint of blue sky..remind me of a poem Brenda shared at our Heart Listening group yesterday; her father in law had written it about what you really need to have to make Christmas Christmas....what would be on or off your list?

Snow scenes aren't on the list-we don't need a white Christmas to have Christmas. We then wondered about the southern hemisphere when Christmas is mid summer, not mid winter.....what's on their Christmas cards?

Point is, Jesus comes again, and again, and again as a vulnerable infant, just so he can come to my vulnerability....how do you put that on a card? You don't, you put it in your soul.

May this Christmas Eve be full of the day's richest blessings, which are there, slightly hidden only by the busyness.

shepherds and other low life folk

As we count down to Christmas, I am aware of the lowliness of all concerned, much more lowly folk than I'm used to being around....Mary, young single pregnant, Joseph, proper but compassionate, shepherds, the dirty low life types who're left out in the cold......
And what strikes me is that God comes to them where they are.
Still true.
Where we are is where God comes; we just need to be watching....

Scottish wisdom

There's a twisting, mountainous road in northern Scotland which had, almost to the top, a steep sharp curve where there was a slight widening of the road. Many years ago, someone put a park bench there, and it forever became known as the Rest and Be Thankful. Its nickname stuck, long after the road was straightened and widened, once the crooked was made straight and the rough places plain. And it entered into our language as a phrase with much deeper meaning.
So today, my sabbath day, the phrase comes to me...rest, and be thankful.

it's coming, ready or not

Am I ready for Christmas? I can't tell you how many times I'm asked this. No, I say, I am never ready for the ludicrous hilarious ironic entering of my life by God! I get all sorts of prepared, with all the dumb trimmings that really have nothing to do with Christmas. But still God surprises me. The stupid humility, the mess of shepherding, the smell of stable....Luke's very concerned to let us know God comes to the most unlikely people, who're probably the most ready, unlike me.

you're invited

John preaches.......
You are favored.
You are invited into a great project.
You will be empowered by the Holy Spirit.
You may submit yourself to all this to be an entry point for hope, peace, joy, and love in this world.

Mary's song, also used yesterday in worship, comes as a response to her welcome from Elizabeth, but it's also her RSVP to God, who has already begun to do transformational things. Whether we say yes or no, God comes, God acts.

So favored women, you are invited to join us for our Women's Advent Communion service tonight at 7pm, when we will welcome and support one another like Mary and Elizabeth, and move forward together as entry points of Love.