Dress Like a Christian

Sermon preached  August 23, 2015

Texts: Ephesians 6:10-20

            “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” Bob Dylan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9H4Xul6m-Q

            We just got back from vacation on Thursday, late in the day.  It was an interesting vacation to pack for.  Saturday, August 16 we attended a wedding – the son of one of Julie’s cousins.  I officiated at the wedding so I had to pack appropriate clothing for that.  On our way out to Montana, where the wedding was held, we encountered days that were near 100 degrees.  The morning of the wedding we went for a mountain hike.  The temperatures were in the 50s and I had a t-shirt and shorts on.  I stayed warm enough, but barely.  Tuesday morning we woke to temperatures in the 30s near Yellowstone Park and during our day there the temperatures never got out of the 50s.  Driving out of Yellowstone, on the Beartooth Pass Highway, we encountered some snow.  We packed as best we could and managed well-enough.

            Paul, or the author of Ephesians writing in the name of Paul – a common first-century practice, uses imagery of clothing, particularly of dressing for battle, to talk about the journey with Jesus.  This is not necessarily my favorite set of images, and perhaps even less so after listening on our vacation to a reading of Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth with its scenes of bloody sword fighting and rapacious knights.

            Other translations don’t help much either.  The Message: And that about wraps it up. God is strong, and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials. And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way. This is no afternoon athletic contest that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels.  Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You’ll need them throughout your life. God’s Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare.

            I am helped some by this note in The Discipleship Study Bible.  These verses do not condone human warfare, but depict the Christian life as part of the cosmic struggle between God and the forces of fallen creation.  The war against the forces that seek to dominate and destroy God’s creation is fought not with the traditional tools of battle, which destroy life, but with weapons that build community and nurture reconciled relationships.

            That helps, and it also helps to acknowledge that life has its battles, its struggles.  When we baptize, we ask a challenging question, “Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness?”  Tough question, but there is meaning in it.  When I think of “spiritual forces of wickedness, I think of things like slavery and the racism which has followed and continues to plague us as a nation.  Human decisions created the institutions of slavery, but the racism that followed pulls people in beyond conscious decisions.  I think of the Holocaust, where a virulent anti-Semitism was let loose in Europe, and people got caught up in it beyond conscious choice.  That such forces exist does not absolve people from responsibility, but to use this language helps us understand the persistence of some of our human problems.

            Those are large spiritual forces of wickedness, but there are smaller ones.  Many of you have heard that former president Jimmy Carter’s cancer has spread into his brain.  I never voted for Jimmy Carter.  I was too young to vote in 1976. In 1980, I voted for a third party candidate.  Jimmy Carter may never be ranked among our best presidents, but he may be ranked among our strongest former presidents.  I don’t always agree with President Carter, but I believe him to be a person of deep intelligence and an even deeper conscience.

            So how did some greet the news of the spread of Carter’s cancer?  Here are a couple of posts from the Fox News Facebook page.  “That’s karma Jimmy, it will get you.  You said Homosexuality was OK and you claim to be a Christian?  And a Baptist preacher?  And Now you have cancer?  Karma Buddy.”  "The only thing I am appreciative of peanut Jimmy is that his incompetence made it that much easier for Ronald Reagan to win. Good riddance peanut Jimmy." "I'm so sorry he has cancer, but he needs to keep his mouth shut, because he is a complete idiot."  How coarse. How demeaning.  This lack of compassion, this mean-spiritedness, is a kind of spiritual force of wickedness, certainly not on par with slavery or the Holocaust, not even close, but a certain kind of wickedness nonetheless – people getting caught up in trying to outdo one another in insensitivity masking behind the relative anonymity of social media.

            So what can we do, as followers of Jesus to resist spiritual forces of wickedness great and small?  What can we do as followers of Jesus to live better?  Dress like a Christian, not on the outside, as in the internet suggestions in the call to worship, but in our hearts, minds, and souls.  Let me discuss some of the elements of this inner wardrobe as described in Ephesians.

            The writer recommends the belt of truth.  Let me suggest that truth is not a simple idea.  We often think it is – something is true or not true.  For a certain class of ideas and events, this is an adequate understanding of truth, but it is an inadequate understanding of truth when we think about the complexity and nuance of human existence. Listen to this discussion of “truth” from a Church of England theologian named Andrew Shanks.  Opinions are either correct or incorrect….  But the truth that belongs to the poetry of faith is not exactly a matter of correctness.  Far rather, it is the truth of a true challenge: to imagine more, to feel more, to think more – in short, to love more.  And so to be inwardly changed.  Changed in the sense of saved. (What is Truth?, 5) There is truth here, in the idea that truth is complicated.  I also appreciate Parker Palmer’s working definition of truth.  Truth is an eternal conversation about things that matter, conducted with passion and discipline (A Hidden Wholeness, 127).  When asking about the truth of deep statements about human existence, I have learned to ask not simply “Is it true?” but rather “In what way might this be true?” or “How does this illumine my life?”

            The writer encourages wearing the breastplate of righteousness.  Righteousness is a challenging word. It is not one we use in our everyday speech.  I think it has everything to do with right relationships – to God, to others, to ourselves.  When our relationships are in relatively good order, our hearts are guarded, our souls protected. 

            For shoes, the writer tells us to wear “whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.”  The good news of God’s love as known in Jesus is meant to be a word of peace – peace with God, peace with others, peace within, peace in the world, peace with creation.  It is good and joyful news that we can live differently - imagine more, feel more, think more, love more, and so be inwardly changed, changed in the sense of saved.  This is news too good to be kept to ourselves and so we want to share it, share it, perhaps by sharing its joy.  The shoes are dancing shoes.

            And for a shield, the writer tells us, we have faith.  Faith is less a matter of belief, less a cognitive/head matter, than a matter of trust.  The religious philosopher Donald Evans argues that “the most crucial personal struggle in religion, morality, and life is between trust and distrust” (Struggle and Fulfillment, 2).  Evans argues that it is a struggle between basic trust and basic distrust, where basic trust is “an initial openness to whatever is life-affirming and other people and oneself” (2).  Faith is that kind of basic trust.  I appreciate the way Andrew Shanks links faith, trust and truth.  Faith… is a community-building or community-transformative appropriation of the very deepest poetic truth (What is Truth, 5).  This is trust in the meaningfulness of life and the meaningfulness of the struggles for growth and change.  That kind of faith is a shield, protecting us against paralyzing cynicism and despair.

            What’s a good wardrobe without a hat – the helmet of salvation.  Salvation is another one of those words like “righteousness” that is often hard to understand.  “Are you saved?” some ask out of the blue.  Salvation is not simply something that takes care of us after we die, though from many understandings of Christianity, that seems to be about it. Salvation has something to do with overall well-being.  It has to do with the process of being transformed, with the process of growing into all that God desires for us to be.

            The writer ends his discussion of dressing like a Christian with carrying a sword – “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”  When we hear that, we are often directed to think of the Bible – the Bible as a sword.  Many use it just like that, wielding it with a certain sense of their own rightness.  To view the Bible as a weapon is not terribly fitting, however.  For one thing, there was no “Bible” in our sense when this letter was written.  There were the sacred Scriptures of the Hebrew people, of the Jewish community, but for the emerging Jesus movement, there was a sense that God was up to something new in Jesus, who was seen as an embodied word.  “The word of God” here has a more dynamic sense.  It has to do with paying attention to the active Spirit of God, which requires openness and listening.  The church has come to teach that we hear the Spirit of God in a unique way in the Bible, in an important and authoritative way, but it is not the only place where the Spirit speaks.

            So how might all of this fit together?  Let me share how they fit together for me.  This wardrobe of the “well-dressed Christian” encourages me to try and find some balance, some centering when life feels a little like a battle, even if it is not necessarily a battle with spiritual forces of wickedness.

            I arrived back from vacation Thursday evening.  Friday I met with two families about upcoming funerals – one was yesterday, one is tomorrow.  I also found out about another death, and that funeral will be September 4.  Saturday I visited Jon Dallman at Solvay Hospice House.  Just before worship, I found out he died this morning.  We are gearing up for our Capital Campaign, and for the fall program year.  The campaign and programs are good things.  That we are here for others in times of death, is a good thing and I take that ministry very seriously.  And it all can be wearing, wearying.  What keeps me from sliding into weariness is finding some time for conversations about truth, even if some of those conversations are with authors I am reading.  I try and make time to listen to the Spirit.  I try to tend to relationships, though sometimes my balance here is not always so good.  Most of all, I am trusting in God for my well-being, my salvation.  I trust God that the struggles are worth it, that being there for others matters, that the energy expended in ministry makes a difference even when that might be difficult to see.  And I put on my dancing shoes to share joyfully that God’s love and grace are there for us all, including for me.  That’s dressing like a Christian.  Amen.

Baseball and Faith

Sermon preached at the annual communion service we offer to our normally shut-in members at First United Methodist Church, August 11, 2015

            Paul sometimes used athletic images and metaphors to discuss the life of faith, the journey of faith.  In I Corinthians, Paul uses images of a runner running for a prize or a boxer in the ring, not just shadowboxing, to talk about living the life of faith.  These are images of engagement and endurance.  He uses the runner and boxer images again in II Timothy 4, but this time to talk about how he feels like he has run the good race and fought the good fight.  Paul is writing about the later innings of his life.

            Later innings, there is another sports image – innings coming from what may be my favorite game, baseball.  While Paul used images from running and boxing, I think baseball images also help us understand the life of faith, the journey of faith.  I agree with the President of New York University, John Sexton, who writes, “Baseball evokes in the life of its faithful features we associate with the spiritual life….  For some, baseball really is a road to God.” (Baseball as a Road to God, 7)

            So inspired by Paul’s use of sports images, I want to share with you how I think baseball speaks to us about our journey with Jesus, our relationship with God in Jesus.

            Baseball, at its best, teaches us to, in the words of John Sexton, “live slow and notice” (217).  Baseball is a slower game than basketball or football or hockey.  When baseball was very young the poet Walt Whitman wrote about it: It’s our game…  America’s game: has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere.  Well, compared to these other games, baseball seems to have a lot less snap, go, and fling.  It has lost popularity because it is not as action packed as some of these other games.  Yet because of that, it can teach us something about going more slowly and paying attention.  The pitcher needs to focus on where she or he will throw the ball.  The batter must concentrate on the ball being thrown.  Fielders must be thinking about what they will do if the ball comes to them.  Those of us watching have time to think and ponder while the game is happening.  We can let our minds wander a bit, yet also pay attention to what is happening.  Baseball is one of the few team sports not controlled by a clock.

            As followers of Jesus, we benefit from slowing down and noticing.  Prayer is a form of slowing down.  When we pay attention to the world around us, we cannot help but see some of its wonder and beauty, even if we also see some of its difficulties and tragedies.

            Baseball teaches that it isn’t over until it’s over.  Baseball is one of those games where there is no clock.  The team that is behind still gets to bat through all nine innings and the game doesn’t end until the last out is made.  Some of the most exciting baseball games are those games where the home team is behind in the ninth inning and during their last at bat, bring in enough runs to win the game.  If you are a Minnesota Twins fan, that has not been happening enough for them lately.

            It isn’t over until it’s over.  Paul wanted to think about finishing his race, but he was also determined to keep on until the very end.  It is hard sometimes, especially when we don’t feel as energetic as we once did, or when some of our capacities are not what they once were.  God always has something for us to do – pray, give a kind word, talk to a friend in need.  Some of us may be in the later innings of life, but it isn’t over until it’s over.

            In baseball, we have to get used to some disappointment.  The season is long, and there will be hitting slumps and losing streaks.  The best hitters in baseball get a hit about once every three times at bat.  Sometimes life disappoints us, too, but with the Spirit of God and the love of Jesus, we can come back.  We can get a hit the next time.

            In baseball, sacrificing for the team matters.  Sometimes the job of the hitter is to get an out that advances the base runner into scoring position.  It doesn’t do the hitter’s batting average much good, but it helps the team.  Sometimes life asks of us some sacrifice, a willingness to give for others.  Jesus is the prime example, the giving of a life so others could live differently.  Thankfully few of us are called to sacrifice our very lives, but there can be a richness to life when we know a measure of giving of ourselves for others.

            Baseball does a good job of helping us see that even with faith in Jesus, life has tragic moments.  We will all know loss of different kinds if we live long enough.  One of the things I really like about baseball is how much wonderful writing has been done about the game.  Here is one of my favorite passages, words that speak about tragic moments in life, too.

            It breaks your heart.  It is designed to break your heart.  The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.  You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. (A. Bartlett Giamatti, “The Green Fields of the Mind”)

            As followers of Jesus, we know that we never face the fall alone, but we also know that being a follower of Jesus does not make us immune to tragedy.  It just helps us keep it in some perspective, and gives us the courage to live on.  Fall leads into winter, but winter into spring again – a new season.

            Finally, baseball is about home.  In the companion book to the PBS television series on baseball, Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns write: It is a haunted game in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before.  Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope – and coming home.

            Our faith is about home, about the kind of place we can make together as followers of Jesus in the church, about the kind of welcome we can give others in the name and spirit of Jesus, and finally about finding our home in God in this life and in the life to come.

            Thanks for letting me share my faith and my love of baseball with you.  I am so glad you are here, that you are home.  We are together part of the home team here at First United Methodist Church.  Thanks be to God.

Death By Bread Alone

Sermon preached August 9, 2015

Texts: John 6:35-41-51

            “Dazed and Confused,” Led Zeppelin.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehwSEVbBZl4

            This is a good “Blues Fest” song.  Do you think people ever felt dazed and confused when Jesus was speaking, particularly in the way he speaks in the Gospel of John?

            Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, whoever believes in me will never be thirsty….  I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.  Even the first listeners were a little dazed and confused.

            Even looking at more contemporary renderings of the passage does not make it that much easier. 

            Jesus said to them, “I, I am the loaf of life.  The one who takes my route will never go hungry, and the one who bases his life on mine will never stay thirsty….  I am indeed the live loaf that came down from on high.  If one eats from this loaf, he’ll be alive in the new age.  Now the loaf that I’ll give for the life of the world is my own flesh. (Cotton Patch Version).

            So let’s do a little reflecting and then ask what all this might mean for our lives.  First of all it is really important for us to remember again that part of the context for John’s Gospel is a family fight among Jews who were followers of Jesus and those who were not.  In verse 41 where it reads, “then the Jews began to complain,” we should remember that this was not all the Jewish people, for the followers of Jesus were also Jewish.  The sad history of Christian anti-Semitism does not allow us simply to let these words stand without some comment.

            Verses 47-48: Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.  I am the bread of life.  We tend to think of the word “believe” as giving cognitive assent.  It is something to do with our thinking.  “Yes, I think Jesus is the bread of life.”  The Greek word is much richer than that and has much more to do with trust.  Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowen Williams, in his book on basic Christian faith, entitled Tokens of Trust, makes this point well, comparing Christian “belief” with belief in UFOs or the Loch Ness monster.  Hence the radical difference from ‘believing’ in UFOs or the Loch Ness monster.  To believe in these doesn’t make that much difference to how I feel about myself and the world in general….  [Christian belief is] about where I find the anchorage of my life, where I find solid ground, home. (5-6)

            Finding anchorage in trusting Jesus leads to new life, not just life beyond this life, but a new quality of life here.  Here are a couple of other renderings of verse 47.  “I truly tell you that he who lives his faith has spiritual life” (Cotton Patch).  “I’m telling you the most solemn and sober truth now: Whoever believes in me has real life, eternal life” (The Message).

            Finally, we should remind ourselves that the language here is poetic language, the language of metaphor, symbol and parable.  Jesus isn’t literally bread, isn’t literally a loaf of bread.  The words of Jesus here are introduced by a feeding story, where a crowd is gathered and in need of food, Jesus takes five loaves and two fish, blesses and distributes them, and there is enough.  If Jesus were literally bread, why any need for the five loaves?  People are fed, but Jesus thinks there may be deeper hungers, and the language shifts to metaphor and symbol.

            So what?  We’ve done some good background work on this passage, but so what?  What might this say to us?  I want to get at that through a series of observations and questions.

            All that happens here seems to imply that human hunger is not just hunger for food, for daily bread.  There are hungers/for a nameless bread poet Carl Sandburg wrote (“Timesweep” in Collected Poems, 758). Poets can be helpful in trying to figure out the meaning of the poetics of Scripture.  The poet William Carlos Williams, on one of his poems (“Asphodel: That Greeny Flower”) wrote:

It is difficult

to get the news from poems

                        yet men die miserably every day

                                                for lack

of what is found there.

We have hungers of the heart and soul. We hunger for meaning. We hunger for aliveness.  We hunger for connection. We hunger for joy.  We hunger to discover our gifts. We hunger to use our gifts for the good of the world. We hunger for love.  We hunger for God.  The words of Jesus here are intended to open us up to these other hungers.

            If we have so many hungers, how can we make sense of them, how can we deal with them?  First let’s admit we are privileged in that hunger for our daily bread does not consume us.  Most of us are privileged to be able to ask, “What should we have for dinner?  Should we go out, or cook at home?” rather than having to ask, “When will I next eat?  Where will my next meal come from?”  The church that proclaims Jesus as the bread of life, acknowledging the full range of human hungers must not ignore that fact that the basic hunger for bread goes unanswered too often in our world.  In John 6, Jesus feeds the people before moving to this other conversation about the bread of life.

            Yet there is hunger for a nameless bread and such a thing as “death by bread alone.”  I purloined my sermon title from the title of a book by the late German theologian Dorothee Soelle.

            “One does not live by bread alone.”  In fact, bread alone kills us.  To live by bread alone is to die a slow and dreadful death in which all human relationships are mutilated and strangled.  Of course, such a death by bread alone does not mean that we cease to exist.  Our bodies still function.  We still go about the chores and routines of life; we accomplish things; we breathe; we produce and consume and excrete; we come, go, and speak.  Yet we do not really live….  This is what the Bible means when it speaks of death.  Death is what takes place within us when we look upon others not as gift, blessing, or stimulus, but as threat, danger, and competition….  The death of which the Bible speaks lays hold of us in the very midst of life.  It is the boredom and emptiness of going through all the motions of living while being totally drained of all humanity and reduced to the level of an old work horse. (3, 4, 5)

            In these dramatic words, Soelle is trying to tell us that we can misuse and mis-order our hungers.  We may spend too much time, energy and attention entertaining ourselves rather than being engaged in life.  We may spend too much time, energy and attention on accumulating rather than on creating or relating.

            I recall here the words of the theologian James Gustafson about the Christian life.  The question for us, Gustafson thinks is “What is God enabling and requiring us to be and to do?”  the general response is we are to relate ourselves and all things in a manner appropriate to their relations to God (Ethics From a Theocentric Perspective, Volume One, 327).  This is a way of saying that we need to pay attention to how we order our hungers, how we feed our hungers.

            So what might someone coming to this planet say about the ordering of our hungers in this society at this time?  Say someone just dropped in and wanted to find out about how we use our time, our energy and our attention?  They might find that we spend a lot of time, energy and attention on spiritually empty calories, things that may contribute to death by bread alone.  We pay a lot of attention to celebrities.  We may know more about the Kardashians than about our cousins.  We are deeply loyal to athletic teams.  We wrap our identity around them.  They call forth some of our best energy.  We gather to celebrate their successes and mourn their defeats.  The team becomes us.  We have “political” debates but spend much time before them analyzing who got in to the debate rather than discussing the issues that might be debated, then we spend a lot of time afterwards figuring out who “won” rather than discussing the policy proposals.  Apparently after the earlier debate on Thursday, a lot of people wanted to know how old and how tall Carly Fiorina is.

            There is nothing inherently wrong about keeping up with the Kardashians, or following the Twins, the Vikings, the Packers or whomever.  It is o.k to ask about debate processes, and Carly Fiorina is 60 and 5’8,” though you have to wonder why no one is asking how old or how tall Mike Huckabee is.  The concern we should have is how much time, attention and energy we give to things which may be the equivalent of empty calories – they taste good, and are o.k. in perspective, but not highly nutritious.

            So we want to order our hungers, attend to how we use our time, energy and attention.  But it is not a matter of cultivating “the spiritual” over “the material.”  A Jesus spirituality is not an ethereal spirituality that is only concerned about worship, prayer and the next life.  Body and soul are intertwined.  Jesus fed the people before he got into this metaphoric discussion about other hungers.  It was this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother were known, who was also the bread of life, the loaf that came from on high.  It is in this life that we make our relationship to God real.  We worship to connect more deeply with God and to seek grace and wisdom for ordering our lives, here and now.  We pray to help us reflect on how we will use our time, energy and attention, here and now.

            If Jesus is our bread, if we trust that, how do we live?  We acknowledge our hungers and their variety.  We order our hungers and how we meet them.  We give time, energy and attention to what matters most – kindness, generosity, growth, helping others grow, welcoming others into the love of God, doing justice, fostering reconciliation.  There will be time for entertainment and a few empty calories, but too many is death by bread alone.  And to find in Jesus our bread of life is to understand that eternal life is something that happens now.

            A story.  Yesterday we had a celebration of life service here for Floyd Mott.  You may or may not recall Floyd by name, but if you were here in worship on July 19, you will never forget it.  At that point in time, Floyd (65) knew he was dying.  He had also never been baptized, and it was something he wanted.  Why?  I can’t give you all the reasons, but somehow in recent months our church had given him a place where he could meet Jesus as the bread of life.  We offered hospitality, welcome, worship that connected, that help him discover a deep hunger and helped feed that hunger.  So Floyd chose to be baptized, and so, too, did his granddaughters Kaitlyn and Macie on that same morning.  Then Saturday, we offered Floyd’s family and friends a place to gather to celebrate his life and offer his life back to God.

            Our lives are not perfect lives.  Our church is not a perfect church, whatever that means.  When we order our lives so that we are paying attention and using our time and energy to be a place of welcome, hospitality, kindness, caring, connection remarkable things happen.  Jesus, the bread of life becomes more a part of us, and is more real for others.  Let’s keep at it.  Amen.

Reflections

Sermon preached August 2, 2015

Texts: II Samuel 11:16-12:13a

            “Reflections of My Life,” The Marmalade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79NiN7ISW7E

            I was ten when that song was released, but I’ve heard it often enough over the years.  I like its tunefulness and the name of the group – “The Marmalade.”

            Reflections.  In Mark 7, Jesus tells the disciples that it is within, within the human heart, that come the things that mess us up, that defile us.  It is in the human heart that we can find “evil intentions.”  Of course, other things are also found there.  Paul encourages the Philippian Christians, to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).  He invited Roman followers of Jesus to “be transformed by the renewing of your minds” and to “let love be genuine” (Romans 12: 2, 9).  From within the heart can come beauty and goodness, compassion and love.

            Attending to the heart and mind and soul – self-reflection seems an important spiritual discipline.  The late-thirteenth and early fourteenth century German Christian mystic Meister Eckhart wrote: To get at the core of God at God’s greatest, one must first get into their own core… for no one can know God who has not first known himself or herself (The Choice is Always Ours, 105).  St. Ignatius, an important influence on John Wesley, encouraged prayer-filled mindfulness and self-reflection in what has come to be known as the Daily Examen.  It involves reflecting on the presence of God in your life, on reviewing life with gratitude, on paying attention to one’s emotional experience.

            A degree of self-reflection seems important to develop in our faith, to deepen our journey with Jesus.  For instance, if all we ever ask when we read the Bible are questions about history or theology and never about our own lives, we are missing something vitally important.  I love the intellectual questions, but I can keep them theoretical, at arm’s length.  I also need to ask about what’s going on in my heart, mind, soul, life.

            Like most spiritual practices, this one can be misused.  We do not want to become the Christian spiritual equivalents of Narcissus, so enamored with looking within that we never engage others and the important tasks that are a part of the life of faith.  I also think, as with most spiritual practices, temperament plays a role, so that some of us need more self-reflective time than others for a healthy spirituality.  None of us can avoid it all together, though.

            II Samuel 11:26-12:13a is a powerful example of the need to engage our faith thoughtfully, personally and with self-reflection.  David is told a story by Nathan that outrages him.  A powerful man has acted unjustly and should re-pay the damage he has done.  In one of the most dramatic moments in the Scriptures, Nathan turns the story in on David – “You are the man!”

            There is a lot of pain and hurt and injustice in the world.  As followers of Jesus, that is of concern to us.  We want to engage in reconciliation where there has been oppression and racism.  We want to see the hungry fed, the homeless housed.  We want to take good care of the planet and pass it on to our children and grandchildren.  We care about poverty.  We are outraged by abuse.  This is all to the good.  There is also the more difficult task of looking within to see where we have been influenced by racism, sexism, heterosexism, where we act in ways that perhaps don’t contribute to the common good.  This is not meant to be an exercise in guilt, but an opportunity for growth – though it can be difficult and uncomfortable.

            Once upon a time there was a king who offered half his kingdom and his daughter in marriage to anyone who could steal something without anyone finding out about it.  The offer was widely broadcast in the kingdom and soon young men began showing up proclaiming their cleverness.  “I stole this beautiful necklace, and no one knows about it.”  “I stole this magnificent horse, and no one is the wiser.”  To each young man, the king would simply say, “No, forget it.”  It was quite confusing.  One day a young man arrived in the court of the king with nothing.  “I have nothing at all, your Majesty.”  “Why not?” questioned the king.  The man replied, “It is not possible to steal something with absolutely nobody knowing about it, because I myself would always know.”  This was what the king was looking for, someone with wisdom and conscience, not cleverness. (Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness, 175).

            When we make time for self-reflection we will find in our hearts, minds, souls, and lives beauty, goodness, love, wounds, scars, and sins.  Self-reflection is a humanizing activity.  We find elements of shared humanity in knowing our own joys, sorrows, triumphs, foibles, wrongdoing, and goodness.  Self-reflection will have its uncomfortable moments.  Just imagine David’s moment.  In the turn of a screw, David goes from outraged champion of justice, compassionate king, to someone who has to come to grips with his own deepest betrayals and treachery.

            The Noble Prize for Literature in 1996 was awarded to a Polish poet named Wislawa Szymborska.  She died in 2012.  I had never heard of her until that award, but what I remember when she received it was an interview with American poets who had translated some of her work.  This was on the PBS Newshour.  I have never forgotten one of Szymborska’s poems read during that interview.  It is entitled, “In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself” https://docs.google.com/document/d/14ROzpO8dSdJjm6_dgW-xBPndYqNRSKozlhIMRZtSjUo/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

The buzzard never says it is to blame.

The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean.

When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.

If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn’t understand remorse.

Lions and lice don’t waver in their course.

Why should they, when they know they’re right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a toon,

in every other respect they’re light.

On this third planet of the sun

among the signs of bestiality

a clear conscience is number one.

(Symborska, Map: collected and last poems, 227)

            Self-reflection is a vitally important spiritual practice and discipline, and that includes those moments when conscience reminds us of where we have fallen short.  But God does not intend for us to stay mired in our disturbed conscience.  God puts away David’s sin, it says in II Samuel.  The consequences will remain and ripple, but forgiveness is there for David in God’s love and grace.  Forgiveness is always there for us in God’s love and grace.

            Forgiveness – not cheap, not easy, but always a possibility in the grace and love of God.  If self-reflection is a vitally important spiritual practice, so, too is accepting forgiveness.  I have spoken of forgiveness often, but don’t think I’ve ever quite emphasized our need to accept forgiveness as a spiritual practice.  I believe it is, and just as with offering forgiveness, it is a process.  It is a vitally important process, though, because we don’t want to get stuck every time we do something wrong in a cycle of self-recrimination and self-abuse.

            In another place, Meister Eckhart writes, “God does not work in all hearts alike but according to the preparation and sensitivity God finds in each” (The Choice is Always Ours, 383).  Essential to our heart work are the practices of self-reflection and accepting forgiveness.  May God grant us the grace and courage to engage in these practices in ways that help transform us by the renewing of our minds, in ways that help construct the mind of Christ within us, in ways that help us grow in genuine love.  Amen.

Some Material May Not Be Suitable

Sermon preached  July 26, 2015

Texts: II Samuel 11:1-15

            Baptisms are often such emotionally warm occasions.  There are parents, often younger.  Most often there are children, cute children dressed so nicely, often infants who bring smiles of joy to our faces and our hearts.  Just last Sunday we experienced together a profoundly moving baptism of a grandfather and his two granddaughters.  Many of our eyes moistened.  Our hearts were moved.

            In the midst of this warm emotional stew comes a stark question, seemingly out of place: Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?  The language is forceful.  The words are hard – evil, injustice, oppression.  The question brings home to us part of the important reality of baptism, of the church, of Christian faith.  The world is not the world we would like it to be.  Again this week we are mourning shooting deaths in our county.  An ugly form of Islam continues to wreak havoc in the world – ISIS, Boko Haram.  We are still trying to figure out how we can live together as human beings and how we can overcome legacies of racism, injustice and oppression.

            In Jesus Christ God calls us to work for a newer world, more loving, more compassionate, more just.  The church is a community of people who have been touched by God’s grace and love in Jesus Christ and who are seeking to live in such a way, individually and together, that they grow in love of God and others, and witness to the grace of God in Jesus (my definition).  We are here in response to God’s love to work with God and each other on God’s dream for a newer world.  In baptism we say “yes” to the God who has already said “yes” to us.  In baptism we feel the warmth of God’s love in the waters.  In baptism, we pledge a new direction for our lives.  Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? 

            This baptismal question is a central question in this morning’s Scripture reading.  The reading would certainly garner a PG-13 rating for sexual references, disturbing plot, and violence.  It could easily be rated R depending on how much detail one wanted to show.  The story could come with a warning – “some material may not be suitable.”  The July 22 issue of The Christian Century reprinted a painting of Bathsheba by Rembrandt.  It is not an image I could project this morning.  Through it all, questions of the use of freedom and power are pointedly raised.

            David has all kinds of power.  He is the king, afterall.  The biblical prophet and judge, Samuel had warned the people of the power of a king.  He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.  He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.  He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers.  He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and courtier.  He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys and put them to his work.  He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you will be his slaves. (I Samuel 8:11-17)

            David is king, with all kinds of power, and the text alludes to that rather lightly.  “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle…”  The text recognizes that’s just what kings do.  They have enormous freedom and power.  But this year David does not go.  The reader is being set up for something, for a misuse of freedom and power.  Rather than joining his troops, David hangs back.  Walking on his roof he spies a beautiful woman bathing.  He sends for her.  That is within his power.  They spend time together and she becomes pregnant.  David conceives a plot to cover up his misuse of freedom and power.  He calls her husband Uriah back from the war, hoping that he will be with his wife, Bathsheba, and then he will think he is the father of the child.  Uriah, however, uses some of his freedom and power and does not go into his wife.  That plot failed, David conceives a more dastardly one.  He will put Uriah in the most dangerous part of the battle where he is likely to be killed, and that’s what happens.

            The story is old, but it gets replayed throughout history.  Those with significant freedom and power misuse and abuse it.  History is littered with examples of power and freedom misused – beheadings in ISIS controlled territory, the Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, the gulags of the Soviet Union, the disappeared in Argentina, the missing in Chile, the African slave trade here in the United States, the shipping of native children to boarding schools.  There are certainly differences in degree here, but it does not take long to come up with examples.  They can be found almost daily in the news.  The powerful are often tempted to misuse their power, and often succumb to the temptation.

            In the story, Bathsheba is relatively powerless.  At the very least, her power pales in comparison to David’s.  The question of her power is difficult to ascertain, but at least in the story as it is told here, she may have had some power.  Could she have said “no” somewhere along the way?  Was there a degree of consent on her part to this relationship?  We should exercise caution here because of the history of males using their relatively greater positions of power against women.  Raising the question, however, moves us to consider the possibility that even the less powerful may have some power and some freedom.

            The story is of a misuse of power and freedom, a giving in to lust that damages.  It is not an anti-sex story, and it is important to say that.  Michael Eigen, in his book Lust, a book I never read out in public, Eigen writes: Lust enlarges, enriches, makes life taste good.  Lust damages and grows from damage….  Selfish lust stops cold at the wall of the other….  The other as fantasy, as pleasure, part of my will. (1, 103).  Desire, even intense desire, is not bad, it is what we do with it.  Sharon Salzberg: All too often, people will sacrifice love, family life, career, or friendship to satisfy sexual craving.  Abiding happiness is given up for temporary pleasure, and a great deal of suffering ensues when we are willing to cause pain to satisfy our desires. (Lovingkindness, 175-176).  The problem here is not that David notices Bathsheba’s beauty, or feels some stirring, some energy.  It is the misdirection of his energy, the abuse of power, the misuse of freedom.  The problem is even more acute when he abuses his power to set up the death of Uriah.

            Uriah is a study in contrast in the story, a model of using freedom and power well.  He is faithful in his duties as a soldier.  He is unwilling to enjoy the company of his wife while his fellow soldiers are engaged in battle, a direct contrast to David.  It is interesting that the foreigner, Uriah the Hittite, comes across better than the Jewish King David in this story.

            So, do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?  We are not kings or queens.  We do not have that kind of freedom or that kind of power, but we have some freedom and some power, even if limited.  I recently read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with the interfaith book group I lead, and I could read that one in public.  There is this wonderful line in the story, not found in the movie.  When the Lion sees the Wizard for his courage, the Wizard takes a square, green bottle from a shelf and pours its contents into a green-gold dish.  He tells the Lion to drink.  The Lion asks what it is, to which the Wizard replies: Well, if it were inside of you, it would be courage.  You know, of course, that courage is always inside one; so that this really cannot be called courage until you have swallowed it. (L. Frank, Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 162)

            You have freedom and power inside of you.  It is not unlimited, but it exists.  The question always before each of us is will we use our freedom and power well – to resist evil, injustice and oppression, to do good, to create beauty, to do justice, to create peace, to care, to love?  David’s story goes on, and we will explore the next chapter next Sunday.  For today, the question about using our freedom and power well is enough, and I want to end with a poem that encourages us to do that. http://poetry-fromthehart.blogspot.com/2013/01/sometimes-sheenagh-pugh.html

“Sometimes”   Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse.  Some years, muscadel

faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,

sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;

elect an honest man, decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen:  may it happen for you.

            And sometimes we are part of making the good happen as we use our freedom and power well.  May we, by the grace of God, make that happen and happen often.  By the grace and power of God – from sometimes to often.   Amen.

I've Got Rhythm

Sermon preached July 19, 2015

Texts: Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-44, 53-56

            “I Got Rhythm” Ethel Waters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n85lS6l7adg

Awhile ago someone told me they overheard a someone telling a visitor that I play old songs.  Most of those “old songs” are from my youth, but I guess I am not as young as I once was, but this is really an older song, Ethel Waters recorded in 1931. Apologies to George and Ira for getting the name of their song wrong.

            Rhythm.  The reading from the Gospel of Mark for this morning is, in part, about rhythm.  Earlier in chapter 6, Jesus had sent the disciples out to teach and heal.  They now are gathering back together, sharing the stories of their adventures and work, and Jesus invites them: “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”  They had all been busy.  People were coming and going and they were all finding it difficult, sometime, even to eat.  So they get on a boat together to find a quiet place.

            However, they could not get away from the crowds.  They were met on the shore by many, and Jesus had compassion on them.  Jesus and the disciples are called into action – teaching, healing, feeding.

            Life with Jesus, life in the Spirit is a rhythmic life.  I love the words Eugene Peterson uses to translate part of Matthew 11.  Jesus, he write, invites us to “learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”  Life with Jesus, life in the Spirit is about learning the rhythms of grace.

            There are a number of rhythms that are part of the rhythm of grace.  There is a rhythm between the inner and the outer.  Ephesians chapter 2 talks about how God in Jesus is about the creation of a new humanity, a human community of peace where dividing walls have been broken down and where we become the dwelling place of God.  There are inner and outer dimensions to this.  I appreciate the words of therapist Michael Eigen, whose works continue to help me think and grow.  You can’t just work on institutional injustices without the actual people who are involved working on themselves, and you can’t just work on yourself without working on the injustices in society….  Without work in the trenches of our nature, we may wreck what we try to create. (Michael Eigen, Faith, 96, 7).  Inner/outer – inner peace/outer peace.

            A related rhythm is a rhythm between action and contemplation.  Another writer who continues to help me along my journey with Jesus, Parker Palmer, describes this rhythm well.  Rightly understood, contemplation and action are standard features of ordinary, everyday life….  Whatever our action, it can express and help shape our souls and our world.  Whatever our contemplation, it can help us see the reality behind the veils.  Contemplation and action are not high skills or specialties for the virtuoso few.  They are the warp and weft of human life, the interwoven threads that form the fabric of who we are and who we are becoming. (Parker Palmer, The Active Life, 18-19).  Breaking down divisions requires inner work of contemplation and outer activity of creating change.  In Mark, the disciples and Jesus seek places of quiet and calm for contemplation, but feeding people requires action.  These are rhythms of grace, and we don’t all dance to exactly the same rhythm.  Some of us are more energized by action, some by contemplation and inner work.  All of us need some measure of both.

            But for the remainder of this morning I want to focus on another rhythm of the Christian spiritual life, the adventure with Jesus, life in the Spirit and that is attending to the rhythms of nature.  There are multiple connections to the Gospel reading, and connections to the recent encyclical from Pope Francis.  There will be more of the Pope here than we tend to hear in a Protestant Church, but his recent social teaching deserves a hearing in the broad Christian community.  The Pope rightly reminds us that Christian spirituality includes care for “our common home” – the subtitle of his letter.  The Pope argues that the creation stories in Genesis suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself.  (#66).  He goes on to write: Christian spirituality proposes an alternative understanding of the quality of life, and encourages a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption. (#222).

            Attending to the rhythms of nature in our journey with Jesus involves developing a three step rhythm which includes celebration of and appreciation for the created world, wise use of the resources of the earth, and tender care for our common home.

            Part of the rhythm of Christian spirituality, of our journey with Jesus in relation to creation is a simply joyous celebration of and appreciation for the created world, for the beauty and wonder of nature and its creatures.  In the Gospel of Mark’s story of the feeding of the five thousand there is the small note about how folks sat down in groups “on green grass” (v. 39).  Eugene Peterson expands the image.  “They looked like a patchwork quilt of wildflowers spread out on the green grass!”  Jesus paid attention to the flowers of the field and the birds of the air.  The Psalmist wondered at the expanse of sky.  In the very earliest part of the Bible, God sees all that has been created and calls it good.

            Take time to appreciate, wonder at, celebrate the beauty, mystery, embrace of the created world and its creatures.  I think here of the wonderful poem of Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171140)

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

            We also need to acknowledge that as humans we depend upon nature, its gifts, its creatures, its resources.  From the natural world comes food, materials for clothing, materials from which we make our shelters, the materials which keep us connected, informed, entertained.  Our appreciation for the goodness of creation should not lead us to denigrate the human and human use of nature.  Rather, we should be more thoughtful in our use of the resources of the world.  Here, again, Pope Francis offers some helpful words.  Any approach to an integral ecology, which by definition does not exclude human beings, needs to take account of the value of labour…. According to the biblical account of creation, God placed man and woman in the garden he had created (cf. Gen 2:15) not only to preserve it (“keep”) but also to make it fruitful (“till”). Labourers and craftsmen thus “maintain the fabric of the world” (Sir 38:34). Developing the created world in a prudent way is the best way of caring for it, as this means that we ourselves become the instrument used by God to bring out the potential which he himself inscribed in things: “The Lord created medicines out of the earth, and a sensible man will not despise them” (Sir 38:4). (#124)  In the feeding story in the Gospel, the people are fed with food that is the joint effort of the natural world and of human persons.  Bread has been baked.  Fish have been caught.  Hungry people are fed.

            Wise use of the natural world must include tender care for the earth, its creatures, and its resources.   This is a vitally important part of the rhythm of a spirituality as an adventure with Jesus.  The compassion Jesus feels and displays to the hungry is a compassion that extends to the whole world.  We need to think about what tender care for the earth might mean, what compassion for the earth might entail.  Pope Francis invites conversation.  I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all. (#14).  He also invites an acknowledgement of the importance of the earth as a common good, climate as a common good.  The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all…. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat… warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it. (#18)

            Developing this part of our life with Jesus, developing a rhythm of our relationship with nature that includes deep appreciate and celebration, wise use and tender care does not provide us easy answers for some of the difficult environmental challenges of our day.  We must grapple with the meaning of celebration, wise use and tender care for climate change, oil pipelines, mining and a host of other issues.  Pope Francis: On many concrete questions, the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion; she knows that honest debate must be encouraged among experts, while respecting divergent views. But we need only take a frank look at the facts to see that our common home is falling into serious disrepair. (#61)  We face hard questions, and we are not, if we take our faith seriously, allowed to simply turn away.

            Yet we are not people without hope.  The very story we read that invited us to think about rhythms of faith is a story of hope.  Faced with the daunting task of feeding such a large crowd, the disciples were flummoxed.  “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?”  Jesus asks what they have – five loaves and two fish.  Jesus blesses, breaks and shares, and there is enough.  There is more than enough.

            When we get in rhythm with the God of Jesus Christ, when we are more attuned to the rhythms of grace, the rhythms of the Spirit, and in that bless and break and share, healing can happen.  There will be enough.  There will be more than enough.  Praise be!  Amen.

Our Hometown

Sermon preached July 5, 2015

Texts: Mark 6:1-13

            Bruce Springsteen, “My Hometown” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77gKSp8WoRg

            So let me just say I find today’s Scripture reading incredibly awkward.  Jesus returns to his hometown synagogue and teaches there.  The response is incredulous.  “Where did this man get all this?  What is this wisdom that has been given to him?  What deeds of power are being done by his hand!  Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”  And they took offense at him.

            Jesus’ response is not exactly understanding.  “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”… He was amazed at their unbelief.

            The result is that “he could do no deed of power there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”

            A prophet has little honor in his hometown, among his relatives, on the streets he played in as a child – to use the words from The Message.  Awkward.  This is my hometown.  I have relatives here.  These are the streets I played on as a child.  Yet I have been treated with respect and love.  I have been deeply touched by the kind wishes received on my birthday and tenth anniversary here as your pastor. This has been a wonderful place to be, and will continue to be so.

            I don’t think the passage is meant as a blanket slam against hometowns. So what else is going on here and what might it have to do with us?

            Part of what is going on here is that we can be lulled to sleep by the familiar, fail to see what is really wonderful and magical about the everyday and ordinary.  I have long loved the lines from Walt Whitman: /and later: /.  Some half a century later, in a very different kind of work, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead would write about the potential narrowness of philosophy, and how a good philosophy needed to take into account all the data of the world.  Philosophy may not neglect the multifariousness of the world – the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross (Process and Reality, 513)  Now the term “fairies” has come to mean many things, but Whitehead was using it in the older English poetic sense as a reference to what is glorious and magical in the world.

            Whitman and Whitehead are echoing an even more ancient thought.  Psalm 8: When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them. Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.

            When the familiar becomes too familiar, we miss the miracles, the magic, the wonder that is there.  We can take the blessings of liberty for granted.

            There is another message for us about the everyday and ordinary.  We are invited, challenged, called to live our faith and share our faith in the everyday and ordinary.  We are invited, challenged, called to make our faith more real in our everyday, ordinary life – our sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life, and in our hometowns.

            There are challenges here to be sure.  Faith talk often evokes fear of negative judgment.  Faith talk is liable to evoke a “who are you?” response in your hometown.  We become so familiar to those around us that they may forget that faith is an important part of who we are and why we are.  Part of our response is simply to hang in there with people with genuineness and humility, listening to their hurts, questions, wounds, not presupposing that faith gives us all the answers to their questions, but rather that faith helps us be there with and for others.

            There are challenges to living our faith and sharing our faith, to making our faith more real in our everyday lives, in our hometowns, but we cannot simply avoid the invitation and call to try and do this.  We are invited and called, in the words of the wedding benediction I use, “to so bear witness to the love of God in this world so that those to whom love is a stranger will find in us generous friends.”

            So what does making our faith real in our everyday, ordinary lives, in our hometowns, look like?  Over the years here, I have come to focus on eight words that help me capture what it means to make faith more real in my life, and I hope they resonate with you.  When we are changed, and live out that change, we bear witness to the power of God’s love.  What does that positive transformation in the Spirit look like?  When God’s grace and Spirit are at work in my life, in my everyday life, in my hometown life, my faith is thoughtful, passionate, and compassionate and joy, genuineness, gentleness, generosity and concern for justice mark me.

            Thoughtful – God’s Spirit deepens our thinking and helps us think more imaginatively.  God’s Spirit invites us to consider the multifarious world where fairies dance and Christ is nailed to the cross.  During our vacation, I started a thick book called The Fellowship.  It is a joint biography of friends J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams.  One line in the book reminds me of the kind of deep thinking the Spirit continues to form.  “Crude scientism is a failure of perspective and imagination” (258).  The battles often fought between science and religion are more often than not battles between a crude scientism and an unimaginative reading of the Bible.

            Passionate – We Northern European Protestants are often considered some of God’s frozen chosen.  We are suspicious of heart and emotion in our faith, and for some good reasons.  But our stream of Christian tradition was born with a John Wesley who knew what it was like to have his heart strangely warmed.  Our lives are richer with passion, and the Spirit inspires passion in us – a thoughtful passion and a passionate thoughtfulness.

            Compassionate – If we are not compassionate, if God’s love for us does not enlarge our hearts in compassion and love for others, then something is deeply amiss.  The disciples are sent out two by two to bring healing and freedom.  That remains our work.

            Joy – Here I am not talking about giddiness.  There are days when joy comes easily and days when joy seems rather distant, but when God’s Spirit is at work, it is never beyond the horizon.  In joy we can enjoy the simple beauties of life, laugh often, trust in the final goodness of life because we know the deep goodness of God.

            Genuineness – The work of the Spirit helps us be honest with ourselves.  When we know that we are fully known and fully loved by God, we are free to be our more authentic selves.

            Gentleness – Gentleness is not weakness, but the strength to be caring and tender, and the confidence to live with humility.  A few years ago when some of us read through the New Testament together, I was struck by how often gentleness was mentioned as a work of the Spirit in our lives.

            Generosity – Generosity has to do not only with giving of our resources, but with a generous spirit, a spirit which looks for the best in others, not naively, but with a sense that others are created in the image of God.

            Justice – Compassion and justice go together.  Justice is a concern for right relationships, and often asks broad systemic questions not just about helping the hurting but about why people are hurting and what may be done about that.

            When the Spirit is at work in our lives, these are the kinds of qualities that emerge and grow.  This is the direction of transformation in our lives.  That transformation can happen and needs to happen in our everyday, ordinary lives, in our hometown lives.

            And what if part of our hometown is the country whose existence we celebrate this weekend.  Some think we are abandoning our “Judeo-Christian traditions” with the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.  I disagree.  I think the bigger issues we face in making faith more real in our national life are issues like mass incarceration, continuing racial divide, not taking environmental issues as seriously as we once did, the fact that poverty rarely appears in our public conversations about the common good, the fact that our public conversations are often more strident than thoughtful.  We can make our faith more real in hometown USA, too.

            So what if we were to continue to grow in these eight qualities by the grace of God and the power of God’s Spirit in Jesus?  What kind of healing might be possible in our lives, in our hometowns?  Might we be even better at bearing witness to the love of God in this world so that those to whom love is a stranger might find in us generous friends?  I think so.  Amen.