Gardening in the Desert: Week 3 - Nurture

Series Title: Gardening in the Desert

Anchor Image:  Gardening in the Desert (get some videos at the Desert botanical Gardens?)

Threads:  Isaiah 58:11

GOD will always guide you,

    giving relief in a sun-scorched land,

    and giving strength to your bones.

    You will be like a well-watered garden,

    like a spring whose waters never fail.

Each week we will explore

1.      the concepts as applied to the physical world

2.      the concepts as applied to my personal spiritual struggles

3.      the concepts as applied to how we are called into the wider world (justice and compassion)

Week 3 – August 19

Frame: Nurturing and Waiting

Matthew 13:24-30

Jesus presented another parable to those gathered: “The kin-dom of heaven is like a farmer who sowed good seed in a field. While everyone was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then made off. When the crop began to mature and yield grain, the weeds became evident as well.

“The farmer’s workers came and asked, ‘Did you not sow good seed in your field? Where are the weeds coming from?’ “The farmer replied, ‘I see an enemy’s hand in this.’ “They in turn asked, ‘Do you want us to go out and pull them up?’ “‘No,’ replied the farmer, ‘if you pull up the weeds, you might take the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until the harvest, then at harvest time I will order the harvesters first to collect the weeds and bundle them up to burn, then to gather the wheat into my barn.

Luke 13:6-9

Jesus told this parable: “there was a fig tree growing in a vineyard. The owner came out looking for fruit on it, but didn’t find any. The owner said to the vine dresser, ‘Look here! For three years now I’ve come out in search of fruit on this fig tree and have found none. Cut it down. Why should it clutter up the ground?’  “In reply, the vine dresser said, ‘Please leave it one more year while I hoe around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine; if not, then let it be cut down.’ ”

                It struck me as significant that in both of these parables of Jesus, the key ingredient of nurturing the growing crops (grain in one, figs in the other) is time. In Matthew, rather than put the crop grain at risk, the farmer says to let them both grow. Time will tell which is grain and which is weeds. In Luke, the vine dresser begs for the time to cultivate and fertilize the poor little fig tree (and just what is a fig tree doing in a vineyard?). The tree seems to have a special place in the vine dresser’s heart. Saving that tree is a special project that the vine dresser takes on.

                When thinking about our spiritual gardens, there are all sorts of fertilizer that we can apply: meditation, prayer, readings, exercise (the physical and the spiritual are closely connected). We can try to control the bugs and grubs. Maybe we can prune back the suckers and volunteers that divert our energy from our core. But one of the elements that Jesus reminds us is essential for grow is time. Time is grace. Time is a gift we give ourselves. It is the grace to grow at our own pace.

                So I suggest we have four stops along the way on Sunday: 1. cultivate, 2. fertilize, 3. prune, and 4. wait.

                1. Cultivate – to break up the soil and make it easier for the roots to spread and grow. In our spiritual gardens we have to break up the ruts and routines we get stuck in. Our ground can become tamped down and hard. We need to break free every now and again in order to grow.

                2. Fertilize – one of the translations of the story in Luke actually says “apply manure” where most choose the more genteel verb “fertilize.” It may not smell great, but it is full of nutrients and good microbes. Sometimes the crap we endure can become the fertilizer to strengthen our hearts and spirits.

                3. Prune – just as the dead wood and volunteer shoots need to be trimmed so the plant can direct its growing energy into the main stem, so we too need to trim up our lives from time to time. What habit or practices are no longer fruitful? What desires or occupations would we be better off without? Simplifying our lives can help us direct more energy toward our health and well-being.

                4. Wait – just as we can’t make the plants grow any faster no matter how impatient we are, so our own growth takes its own pace. Likewise, another person’s growth will not happen at a pace of our choosing. We have to let them grow at their pace, not ours. It takes patience to allow the fruits, vegetables, or flowers to reach maturity. A large part of tending our gardens is the waiting for things to grow. And such patience is a gift.

Gardening in the Desert, Week 2: Planting

Gardening in the Desert – Worship Series for August, 2012

Series Title: Gardening in the Desert

Anchor Image:  Gardening in the Desert (get some videos at the Desert botanical Gardens?)

Threads:  Isaiah 58:11

GOD will always guide you,

    giving relief in a sun-scorched land,

    and giving strength to your bones.

    You will be like a well-watered garden,

    like a spring whose waters never fail.

Each week we will explore

1.      the concepts as applied to the physical world

2.      the concepts as applied to my personal spiritual struggles

3.      the concepts as applied to how we are called into the wider world (justice and compassion)

Week 2 – August 12

Frame: Planting

                Last week we did the work of getting the soil ready. The “ready” is for the seed.  The soil supports and nurtures the seed. It provides an environment that signals the seed that it is time to crack open its hull and start growing. The soil of our spiritual garden provides the same environment for our own growth.

Planting takes an act of volition. We choose what to plant and where. But in an odd oxymoron, planting is also an act of giving up. We give up the seed to the soil and the sun and the elements and hope that it sprouts and grows. We can plant the seed but we can’t make it grow. We can water and fertilize and weed around it but we do not have the power to make it grow.

                Again to talk about our spiritual lives, we can put ourselves in an environment that can nurture and support our growth, but we can’t make ourselves grow. Planting spiritual seeds is an act of surrender to the soil and elements of God’s love.

John 12:24-26

The truth of the matter is,

    unless a grain of wheat

    falls on the ground and dies,

    it remains only a single grain;

    but if it dies,

    it yields a rich harvest.

    If you love your life

    you’ll lose it;

    if you hate your life in this world

    you’ll keep it for eternal life

The obvious action this week is to actually plant some seeds, but we’ve chosen not to do the obvious. So the question becomes how to evoke the feeling and experience of planting? How do we invite both the act of intention (choosing to plant a seed) and the act of surrender (giving the seed to the care of the earth)? We will still have our tub of soil that we can use symbolically, as well as our gardening tools. One idea may be to invite people to help water the soil  (we have ended up with a number of watering cans, and if we ask for plastic ones instead of just the galvanized ones, I imagine we could have quite a few more). This is not the season for planting in the physical world, so even handing out packets of seeds seems a bit out of place.

                A friend of mine is also planting seeds of a different kind. Blair Frank is a Peace gardener. For the last number of years he has worked on creating a Peace Garden on his property in Iowa. Each choice of seed or plant was both a gift to the earth, allowing nature to be nature, but also a gift to his neighbors as the garden becomes a place to come and rest and restore. Blair has written a book about his vision and experience entitled “Waking Up and Getting Ready: About Gardens, Spirituality, and Wellness.” Blair has told me that he would be available for a Skype conversation. I’m not sure about his availability on Sunday mornings, but I believe we can record a skype conversation. He has also said that he has pictures of his garden. One interesting twist in this is that Blair is moving to a new location, so it seems that he is beginning a new Peace Garden, too. The first video is a little long and rather disjointed, but it gives you a look at Blair and his perspective on his garden and the world. The other two are shorter and a more usable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdJp6obn3NY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hho2bjpBmNM&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5-EKL8N2jI&feature=relmfu

Planting is an act of hope. It is an act of vision. We plant for the future harvest. Sy Kahn is a folk singer who wrote a song called “Gone, Gonna Rise Again,” which includes the verse about his grandfather: 

These apple trees on the mountainside

He planted the seeds just before he died

I guess he knew that he'd never see

The red fruit hanging from the tree

But he planted the seeds for his children and me

We plant in the hope of a future harvest, be it food, or health or peace.

Gardening in the Desert - Week 1

Gardening in the Desert – Worship Series for August, 2012

Series Title: Gardening in the Desert

Anchor Image:  Gardening in the Desert (get some videos at the Desert botanical Gardens?)

Threads:  Isaiah 58:11

GOD will always guide you,

    giving relief in a sun-scorched land,

    and will give strength to your bones.

    You will be like a well-watered garden,

    like a spring whose waters never fail.

Each week we will explore

1.      the concepts as applied to the physical world

2.      the concepts as applied to my personal spiritual struggles

3.      the concepts as applied to how we are called into the wider world (justice and compassion)

Week 1 – August 5

Frame: Planning and Preparation

            Preparing the earth is a vital step in gardening. Most of the soil in our area needs a lot of help; much of it is too sandy and dry. One has to plan the garden: what will be raised? local flora? herbs? vegetables? flowers? To raise vegetables or flowers the soil needs a lot of compost and fertilizer. Timing is different here than other parts of the country.

            One of the issues we talked about was how we care for the earth, both the planet and the soil in which the food of the world grows. In fields like in gardens, crops need to be rotated so that the nutrients in the soil do not get depleted. Crops raised with ever increasing demand for higher yields stress the land, chemicals contaminate the soil (and run off, tainting the watershed), and threaten the sustainability of the land. Part of our planning is to insure that our earth can continue to grow food and life for the coming generations.

            Which, as we shift from physical issues to spiritual ones, raises the question as to what in our spiritual gardening are we planning that can survive and grow for the coming generations? What in the garden of our faith is worth planting and growing and giving to others? Like heirloom seeds, we may have to reclaim something of the past even as we decide what has had its flavor or succulence hybridized away.

            More personally, as hectic as daily life can become, if we do not plan our spiritual garden the weeds of obligation will overgrow the land. Even taking time to worship together gets squeezed out by all the other things we want to do. Time for personal growth and reflection becomes almost impossible to come by. We have to plan time to garden, just as much as a plan to garden. The Open Studios are a good example of this. Some of realized the need for us to plan time to create art. We were not taking the time every day, so we planned to take the time and make it happen.

            The gospels show us that Jesus was known to step away from his daily obligations and routine in order to be alone with God. In the terms of our series, I would say that he was tending his garden.  Luke 5:15-16 says “But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray.” Along these lines, the importance of Sabbath time for God’s people is constant throughout the bible. Sabbath is time to rest, restore, and enjoy God’s presence (much like a fallow field is restored by resting).

            So I propose that we begin our series by planning and preparing the soil. We might talk about the kinds of things our spiritual soil needs to be ready to support growth. As we name each need, we can add loam or compost to a tub of sand up front, mixing it all until we have healthy soil. We noted in our brainstorming session that “The feel of your hands in the dirt has a spiritual dimension.” We can invite those who wish to do so to come forward and place their hands in the prepared soil. I think we also need to think about how this soil will eventually get used, even if it is given to a gardener to us in their beds.

            A simple video that speaks about gardening (though not gardening in the desert) is on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dcVpKkt49I&feature=related  I think it can give us some good starting places.

July 29 Prospecting Week 4 Eureka!

July 29, 2012  Week 4 Prospecting

Series: Prospecting for Gold: Finding Treasure in the Bible
Anchor: Prospectors and Miners
Frame: God is full of compassion, and passionate for justice
Thread: Prospectors skits, “God Is Still Speaking” song

Luke 4:16-21

When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

‘The Spirit of God is upon me,

   who has anointed me

     to bring good news to the poor.

and has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

   and recovery of sight to the blind,

     to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of God’s favor.’
And Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

From Marcus Borg:

…God is a God of justice and compassion. The God of the Bible is full of compassion and passionate about justice. God’s passion for justice flows out of the very character of God. God cares about suffering, and the single greatest source of unnecessary human misery is unjust and oppressive cultural systems… (This) God…wills human well-being and rages against all humanly constructed systems that inflict unnecessary wounds.

God’s passion is the ground of a biblical ethic centered in justice and compassion. Both words –“justice” and “compassion” - are needed. Justice without compassion easily sounds like “just politics”; compassion without justice too easily becomes individualized and systemically acquiescent.

            For me, this is one of those hidden veins of ore that digging into the bible exposes: “The God of the Bible is full of compassion and passionate about justice.” The passage from Luke’s Gospel has Jesus announcing what his ministry is going to be all about. Jesus has just endured the temptations in the wilderness and this is the first speech put on his lips. He quotes a passage from Isaiah which proclaims good news for the poor, release for captives, restored sight, and liberation from oppression. The year of God’s favor is understood by most scholars as a reference to the jubilee, when all debts are forgiven and all family lands lost are restored. Jesus specifically chooses this passage to read and then announces that it is “fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke is telling us that this is a laundry list of the things Jesus will be concerned with. And if we understand Jesus as God’s metaphor in human terms, then this is a list of God’s priority’s too.

            And yet we live in a world where injustice all too apparent. Just today a news report came that we are headed for the highest poverty rate in the U.S. since the 1960’s. Religious intolerance is just one example of blindness that continues to be unenlightened. Again in the U.S. we incarcerate more of our own citizens that any other country on earth, and we are building more prisons. There are more definitions of oppression here and around the world than we can count. If we understand Jesus’ announcement that this passage is “fulfilled” meaning that it is accomplished, then things are in a sorry state indeed. It is all too clear that this agenda has not been accomplished. Rather, it is fulfilled because Jesus is the anointed one. The work is just beginning.

            The ore worth mining is the hope that the world can be better than it is. More than that, it is God’s passion and desire that the world transforms into a place where suffering is diminished, and life is worth living. God is full of compassion and passionate about justice. While we each find our own way of doing so, it is our call to be filled with compassion and to become passionate about justice as well.

            Last week we talked about the overburden in the bible: those many passages of violence and inhumanity which make the bible so difficult for us to deal with. But underneath all that rock and rubble lies this ore, the ore of God’s passion and compassion. This is one of the things worth all the digging and toil. This is the treasure we have been seeking (at least in part). It is a real “Eureka!” moment when we discover the character of God.

            Rob suggested that we bring back the talking rock, and I’m all for it especially if we can frame it creatively and appropriately. I have to admit that I can talk about God’s sense of justice and compassion at length, but I am working hard to put it in the frame of our mining metaphor. I think the connection is there, it just isn’t leaping out at me yet. I also think we need to find some examples of God’s compassion and justice breaking through in our world. 

Prospecting Week 3 - Transformation

July 22, 2012  Week 3 Prospecting

Series: Prospecting for Gold: Finding Treasure in the Bible
Anchor: Prospectors and Miners
Frame: The Path of Personal Transformation
Thread: Prospectors skits, “God Is Still Speaking” song

Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon

    we sat and wept, remembering Zion.

    2 On the willows there

    we hung up our harps.

    3 For there our captors taunted us to sing our songs,

    our tormentors demanded songs of joy:

    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

    4 But how could we sing a song of Yhwh

    in a foreign land?

    5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,

    may my right hand forget its skill!

    6 May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth

    if I ever forget you,

    if I ever stop considering Jerusalem

    my greatest joy.

    7 Remember, Yhwh, what the children of Edom did

    the day Jerusalem fell,

    when they said,

    “Tear it down!

    Tear it down to its foundations!”

    8 Brood of Babylon, doomed to destruction,

    a blessing on those who will repay you

    for the evil you have done to us!

    9 A blessing on those who will seize your infants

    and dash them against the rock!

Shirley J reminded me that we have not talked about another kind of mining: strip mining. It is a devastating example of human hubris and greed. We will shear off whole mountains in order to get to the minerals. And it isn’t only mountains. Growing up in North Dakota I saw where they were strip mining for lignite (a soft form of coal). Huge trucks, as big a buildings, scraped off the layers of soil and rock until the lignite was exposed and then huge drag buckets gathered it in. I remember hear that they saved all the soil and upper layers because they were required by law to restore the landscape to “its original contour or better” (emphasis mine). Not only did we humans think that the earth was ours to do with as we pleased, but then we got the idea that we could improve upon it when we were done. Now the requirement to restore the land is not bad. I have seen the remnants of early strips mines which were not constrained by that requirement. Huge piles of dirt in ugly spires and trenches gouged like huge scars still exposed to the sky.

I was reminded that sometimes we strip mine the bible. We shear off and dispose of material that we find distasteful, violent, undecipherable. My fear about this kind of editing is that it leaves us with a bible that simply reinforces the way we live our lives and the way we see the world. Strip mining the bible makes it safe and keeps it from challenging us to engage in any kind of inner transformation. And Borg contends that transformation is what the spiritual path is all about:

“As the path of life, this relationship is the path of personal transformation. It is the path of liberation from existential, psychological, and spiritual bondage to the lords of convention and culture. It involves dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being. It is a life lived in accord with radical monotheism: centering one’s life in God rather than in the rival lords of culture and convention.”

So I wonder if some of those difficult parts of the bible, the parts we don’t like, might be the grist that brings us into transformation. The teachings of Jesus are like that. Jesus did not only heal and feed people. He not only told parables about good Samaritans and spendthrift children welcomed home by prodigal parents. He also said that to follow him one must take up their own cross first. Again Borg points this out: “for John the way or path of Jesus is the path of death and resurrection understood as a metaphor for the religious life. That way—the path of dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being—is the only way to God.” And unless we are suicidal (and I hope we are not) the subject of dying, of our own death is often a difficult one to approach.

I am aware of my mixed metaphors here. Strip mining is a terribly destructive way of transformation. The spiritual life, though, is also about transformation and when we allow ourselves to practice Borg’s “radical monotheism” we give up ourselves as the center of our universe and allow God to be that center. The death of the ego may well feel something like strip mining. It is no mystery that many of us resist transformation until there is no other alternative.

Psalm 137 is an example of a thoroughly strip mined passage. It opens with a beautifully poignant lament about how the Israelites in their exile hung their harps on the willow trees because they could not sing their songs for the amusement of their captors. We have kept and treasured that mournful image. What we have strip mined away is the last half of the psalm. The mood changes from mourning to anger, violent anger. The poet want retribution, wants the Babylonians to feel the kind of pain Israel has felt and more. And then that shockingly naked rage that prays a blessing on those who kill their oppressors’ little children.

Would the psalmist really have rejoiced at such infanticide? I hope not. But by excising that part of the psalm we insulate ourselves from that part of us that sometimes rages nurtures murderous thoughts. What are we to do with such raw emotion? What are we to do with parts of the bible that are this humanly honest? I pray that we allow it to transform us. Maybe by hearing the awful violence of our rage spoken aloud, we can recognize it for the insanity it really is. It may shock us into letting go of our anger instead of acting upon it. That kind of rage is all about our own pain, all about us. To release that anger may be a step toward the transformation allows God to be the focus of our lives and not the pain inflicted upon us by others (no matter how horrific).

I think the gopher I’m chasing here is that real transformation is not at all easy, and our attempts to make it easy in fact can keep us stuck in our sameness. And my point with Psalm 137 is not just to introduce an “R” rated passage from the bible. My hope is that people may experience some reassurance that when life is difficult and painful and rage-filled that we may in fact be in the crucible of transformation. Real life hurts like hell. But we are not created only to suffer. We are created to experience the kind of love that sees us through hell until we are transformed into that life-giving love itself.

Prospecting the Bible, Week 2

July 15, 2012  Week 2 Prospecting

Series: Prospecting for Gold: Finding Treasure in the Bible
Anchor: Prospectors and Miners
Frame: Flakes and Nuggets
Thread: Prospectors skits, “God Is Still Speaking” song

Exodus 17:1-7

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as Yahweh commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarrelled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’ Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested God, saying, ‘Is God among us or not?’

                Last week we talked about moving from nuggets to seeking the vein of ore in the bible. Part of that implies that we open ourselves to larger seams of scripture, and not just a pebble here or a nugget there. Yet nobody wants to come to a Studio where we read scripture aloud for an hour and fifteen minutes! Nonetheless, that is how scripture used to be experienced. After the Exile in Babylon, Ezra the high priest read the entire book of the covenant (possibly Deuteronomy, maybe the whole Torah) to the gathered people on the steps of the Temple. Even the gospels were read aloud to the gatherings, not a piece at a time (chapters and verse were not applied to the bible until the 13^th to the 16^th centuries of the Common Era) but the whole story in one sitting. But how do people like us who are culturally habituated with attention-deficit sensibilities experience the larger swath of scripture?

                I think Borg helps us here. He points out that whole sections of the bible have their own arc or theme. This is true of the Torah. While we often think of the Torah as the books of Jewish Law or as the early history of Israel (and they are in part), these five books tell a broader story. Genesis is the prologue, telling the story of where Israel came from, how they got their start. The story really starts when God makes a promise to Abraham and Sarah: you will be the parents of a great nation and live in the land that I (God) will give to you. The rest of the books tell how that promise is threatened, skewed, forgotten, blocked, and threatened but ultimately how God keeps the promise. The Torah ends with Moses (and the people) poised on the banks of the Jordan looking at the land God has promised them for generations.

                Remember Borg’s 2 questions for reading the bible: Why did the author’s tell this story and what does the story mean to us? The Torah was not written as a straight-forward history (at least as we understand history). While some parts of these books go back before the Exile, it was that historical event that precipitated gathering the Torah together in this form. Their conquest by Babylon had all but destroyed Israel. When they returned from exile, there were under the hand of a new empire, Persia. See their Temple, city, and culture was still just heaps of rubble they set out to restore and reconstruct their faith, culture, and nation. They gathered together the writings of Torah in order to do just that. The meta-story of the Exodus was the story Israel needed to know to continue as a unique people. That meta-story showed them that again and again when it seemed impossible that God could keep the promise, the God of possibility made a way for it to happen. And therefore, this latest impossibility could not keep God from remaining faithful to that promise even in their very uncertain day. God had not abandoned them, and still wanted to be in covenant with them.

                It is not difficult to begin to imagine what this says to us today, we who live in the “God is dead” era. For all of the difficulties in our present day world, it is easy to give up hope – most notably the hope that God cares. But the witness of the story told in the Torah says that God will come through, that God still wants to keep covenant with us. And for us as Christians, that kind of story is what the life of Jesus is all about. Jesus proclaimed that this world could be the best of all Promised Lands: The Kin-dom of God. In fact the Gospel of Matthew can be seen as a retelling of the Exodus with Jesus himself playing the part of a new Moses delivering us from the power of the Pharaohs of this world.

                And that is the crux of this week’s Frame: we are in a covenant with God. Our covenant with God goes far beyond a promise or a legal contract, it is a relationship. God wants to be a part of our reality, our lives. Again, Borg says it this way: “First, there is a deep sense of the reality of the sacred. God is not only real, but knowable. Moreover, the sacred is known not in a set of statements about God, but experientially, as a Mystery beyond all language. This Mystery – God – transcends all of our domestications of reality, including those generated by theology and even the Bible itself. God also transcends empires and emperors, nations and kings. These humans and their creations are not lords; God alone is.” The authors of the Torah wrote their stories because they knew this reality first hand, it was a living experience for them and an experience they were inviting Israel to claim again.

                So maybe the ore we are mining this week is that sacred sense of the reality of God. In our own language, God shows up. When Abraham was old and Sarah was barren, God shows up and keeps the promise. When Jacob was a liar and a cheat, God shows up. When the Hebrews were slaves and in bondage, God shows up with a stuttering prophet. When the path to freedom was blocked by an inland sea, God shows up. When the people are starving to death in the wilderness, God shows up. When they forget who they are and who God is and worship and idol of gold, God shows up. These are our stories, and metaphorically also our own experiences. The covenant we share with God is seen when God shows up.

                One of those Exodus “God shows up” stories tells about the people dying of thirst in the desert. They wonder if Moses led them out into the desert just to let them die. Moses talks to God, who tells him to rap on a rock in the presence of the gathered people. The rock opens and water gushes out. Two thoughts about this story: Though they thought they would die because there was no water, that life-saving water was already present for them. Secondly, a Jewish Midrash (kind of an imaginative commentary on scripture) tells that from that day on that rick followed the Israelites wherever they wandered so that they always had water. God does not call us into covenant just to abandon us. God shows up with what we need most.

                We may not need gold, or silver or copper, but the rocks will provide what we need so our spirits do not die of thirst. This might be a good week for the talking rock to reappear. Our thirsty old prospector might be looking for gold when something entirely different shows up.

Prospecting for Gold: finding Treasure in the Bible Week 1

July 8, Week 1

Series: Prospecting for Gold: Finding Treasure in the Bible
Anchor: Prospectors and Miners
Frame: Flakes and Nuggets
Thread: Prospectors skits, “God Is Still Speaking” song

            I am struggling with the question, “how do we invite people to experience the bible as a treasure?” I know many of us are intimidated by this arcane book and the expectations that religious people have and continue to put upon it. Most people are not particularly excited by the idea of reading the bible. A friend of mine reminded me that the bible for most of its life has been a community experience. It was not read in private by an individual. Private, personal copies of the bible have only existed for a few hundred years. Prior to that, it was always heard in community, read to the gathered crowd. She also reminded me that it was an auditory experience: they heard it. Even when we present scripture in worship but put the words on the screen, it becomes a visual experience: our eyes read the words. Our brains apprehend it in a different way. So I hope we can find ways of using the bible communally in this series.

                I’m now thinking that we begin by looking at the tools we are using. In prospecting and mining the tools are pans, picks and shovels, and (when mining large scale) dynamite and heavy machinery. In approaching the bible, Marcus Borg also gives us some tools. Borg asks two important questions when studying the biblical texts:

1.       What did this text mean in the ancient historical setting in which it was written?

2.       What does this story mean as a story, independent of its historical factuality?

Asking about the historical setting enlivens the texts, informs them, and acts as a safeguard preventing us from projecting any meaning or agenda we want on a text. The second question draws the text out of its ancient crypt and breathes life into it and us. Asking what the story means gives room for God to continuing speaking, for the Spirit to reach out to us in the context of our own day and lives.

                These 2 tools are essential for approaching any biblical text. They are our pans, picks, and sometimes dynamite when our assumptions and agendas get blown apart.

                Which brings me to one other thought from Borg. I was reminded in reading his book that in the context of this series, we are digging for gold. Often we in the liberal camp have found ways to deconstruct the problematic parts of the bible. Some of us are pretty good at defusing the racist, elitist, misogynistic parts of the bible. But too often when we get to the end of that process, we are not too sure what use there is in what we have left. Can the bible really be a treasure for progressive Christians?

                Borg clearly and strongly affirms that the bible is sacred and sacramental. Borg reminds us that the bible is sacred because we make it so. Borg says, “To speak of the Bible as sacred addresses not its origin but its status within a religious community. (RTBAFTFT, p. 29, emphasis mine)” He continues: “For Christians, the status of the Bible as sacred scripture means that it is the most important collection of writings we know. These are the primary writings that define who we are in relation to God and who we are as a community and as individuals. This is the book that has shaped us and will continue to shape us.” Just as the bible was created by human beings and reflects human understandings of God and each other so too human beings have made the bible sacred—not because it came from God but because it is the place we continue to find God.

                Borg also affirms that the humanly created bible is a means of experiencing the presence of God. “The bread and wine of the Christian sacrament of the eucharist are manifestly human products. Somebody made the bread and somebody made the wine. We do not think of the bread and wine as ‘perfect’ (whatever that might mean). Rather, to use a common eucharistic phrase, we affirm that ‘in, with, and under’ these manifestly human products of bread and wine, Christ becomes present to us. So also ‘in, with, and under’ the human words of the Bible, the Spirit of God addresses us.” (p. 32-33)

`               We are prospecting the bible because there is gold worth finding there.

Outline  version 2.0

Gathering - Jazz/Candle lighting

Threshold: Miners’ Chorus – to the tune of Oh, My Darling Clementine” (forthcoming)

Welcome

Song

Series Intro

Meet Greet / Children’s Church

Panning for Gold: Flakes and Nuggets
Prospecting Demo – See if Colin can show how panning is done, there are also lots of videos on youtube

Nugget Scriptures – bits and pieces people carry with them:
                Psalm 23, John 3:16, Mark 12:30-31 (The Greatest commandment)

                Maybe invite people to name their favorite scriptures, and read them aloud

Song?

Digging Deeper

Mining dialog – how mining differs from prospecting – Ray or Mike?

talk about the tools we will need to mine for gold in the bible: time, meditation, resources (commentaries, etc), openness, imagination... (like a miner’s pick, shovel, helmet, light, coat, etc)

Bible Mining tools – a la Borg

Intro to Reading the Bible Again for the First Time

                Testimonials from a couple of folk who have read the book (or at least gotten into it) (I’d prefer not to be the only voice speaking about the book -Doyle)

                1. Why did the ancient authors tell this story?

                2. What does the story mean to us as a story?

                Invite people to a discussion group after the Studio (lunch?)

The Bible as a Community experience

                for most of its existence, the bible has been experienced in community, not individually. We hear it and experience it together.

Telling the Story (Doyle)

1 Kings 17:1-6

Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, ‘As Yahweh the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.’ The word of God came to him, saying, ‘Go from here and turn eastwards, and hide yourself by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the wadi, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.’ So he went and did according to the word of the Lord; he went and lived by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the wadi.

Congregational Dialog (Using our mining tools)

                1. Why did the ancient authors tell this story?

                2. What does the story mean to us as a story?

Historical Context:

                New linguistic work suggests that an alternate reading of the word “ravens” may be “Philistines.” (Kind of like calling them buzzards).The Philistines were the enemies of Israel, who was in rebellion to God (their king was worshipping the false god Baal). Might this alternate reading change how you hear the scripture?

Lection Divina #                1 Kings 17:1-6 (edited) (read twice)

Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, ‘As Yahweh the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.’ The word of God came to him, saying, ‘Go from here and turn eastwards, and hide yourself by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the wadi, and I have commanded the Philistines to feed you there.’ So he went and did according to the word of the Lord; he went and lived by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. The Philistines brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the wadi.

Time to reflect.

Gathering responses: which words or phrases spoke to you? What did you see or hear? What surprised you?

Song

Joys/Concerns, Box, Basket and Connection Card

Seeking the Vein of Gold

Lectio Divina #2

                1 Samuel 3:1-4

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of God was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then God called, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ and he said, ‘Here I am!’

Time to reflect.

Gathering responses: which words or phrases spoke to you? what did you see or hear? What surprised you?

Communion

Our Creator

Blessing

Benediction