August 4 - Wrestling at the River: Transformation & Grief Week 5: Acceptance

Wrestling at the River: Transformation & Grief
Week 5: Acceptance

While I might quibble with the name of any of the stages of grief, I really think “acceptance” is inadequate. The graphic I’ve been using on one slide says by acceptance “return to a meaningful life.” To me this sounds as if everything gets back to normal. Except that in my experience whatever normal was before the grief-inducing event can never be re-attained. Going through the stages of grief do not return us to anything, certainly not back to where we were. Going through grief and change is a transformative process and at the end of us (hopefully) we are ready embrace the new being we are becoming. So instead of acceptance per se, it is a new orientation, a new perspective. It may be normal but it is a new normal that we walk into.

When the sun rose and Jacob was through with his wracking and wrestling, he crossed the river into a new day and a new life. He even had a new name. Now I recognize that this new reality was not all peaches and cream. His new name, Israel, not only reflects that through the night he had wrestled with God but it states in present-tense that he strives with God. Life is not guaranteed to be easy, just new. The rest of the book of Genesis shows that Jacob and his descendants continue to strive with God, make mistakes, and occasionally live up to the blessing that God has given them.

Henri Nouwen said that "Forgiving does not mean forgetting. When we forgive a person, the memory of the wound might stay with us for a long time, even throughout our lives. Sometimes we carry the memory in our bodies as a visible sign. But forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. When we forgive our parents for their divorce, our children for their lack of attention, our friends for their unfaithfulness in crisis, our doctors for their ill advice, we no longer have to experience ourselves as the victims of events we had no control over.

Forgiveness allows us to claim our own power and not let these events destroy us; it enables them to become events that deepen the wisdom of our hearts. Forgiveness indeed heals memories."

Nouwen’s definition of forgiveness seems to me as good a description of acceptance as I’ve seen. The process of grieving turns the curse into a blessing, even if it is a hard won one at that.  It is like the sunrise. It does not erase all the days gone before but it offers the freedom of a brand new day. Are we at SCUCC ready to walk into the new day with a blessing and the promise of a new future?

This may be a day when we can provide an experience of crossing the river like Jacob/Israel crossed the Jabbok. It might be a symbol of being done with what is behind us and walking into whatever it is that God holds before us. 

July 28 - Wrestling at the River: Transformation & Grief Week 4: Depression

Wrestling at the River: Transformation & Grief
Week 4: Depression

One of the aspects that we need to focus on this week is that these are stages of grief.  It is normal and healthy that one moves through these stages when one grieves. It becomes unhealthy and even destructive when one gets stuck in any of the stages. And probably the most destructive phase to get stuck in is depression. Let me be clear. There is a marked difference between the sadness and even feelings of hopelessness associated with grief and the medical condition of depression. They are different, though related. Hopefully, the experience of this stage of grief can help us sympathize and understand those for whom depression is an illness and a lifelong struggle. As we explore the stages of grief and seek a vision forward, it is in solidarity and shared experience that strengthen us.

My theological guess is that Jacob’s whole story about wrestling at the river is a description of his depression. He had lost all reason to hope that Esau would reconcile with him. All Jacob’s tricks wouldn’t get him out of the next day’s interaction.  The long, dark night. The self-imposed isolation.  The wrestling and fighting. The wounding. These are all descriptions of what one might feel in the midst of depression.

Those feeling are also described quite articulately by Kevin Breel in a TEDx talk on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3yqXeLJ0Kg This is clearly an explication of the experience of depression as an illness. Yet he opens a window on its depth, its stigma, and the power of truth and acceptance. He also proclaims that it is in standing together that we gain the strength to overcome. It is my intent to run his entire talk in the Gathering.

And this reminded me that we have persons in our family that deal with this quite intentionally. Kim and Anita Brown have trained for L.O.S.S. (Loving Outreach to Survivors of Suicide). Their training has prepared them to meet with those at risk of suicide, offering understanding and most importantly (says Anita) hugs. Kim has already gone out on such a call. They have agreed to dialog with me on Sunday about what they do, and more importantly, why they decided to do this.

So, the heart of Sunday’s Gathering is that we all experience bits of depression. Some of us experience it in grief. Some of us wrestle with it our whole lives. Yet whether in grief or life, when we stand together and support each other, the sun rises and we get blessed and we have a new life to live.

So I see a fairly simple outline for Sunday:
                Our beginning pieces
                Scripture reading: Genesis 32:22-30
                Reflection on the scene as depression
                Kevin Breen’s video
                Song
                Dialog with Anita and Kim
                Community Prayers
                Communion
                Song
                Blessing and Sending

Wrestling at the River: Change & Grief – Week 3: Bargaining

Wrestling at the River: Change & Grief – Week 3: Bargaining

Last week we supposed that one of the sources of anger is loss of control. This week’s phase I believe is a response to that loss of control. Bargaining is an attempt to regain control over the given situation. Bargaining may take place with God, with other people, even with one’s self. But it is always “I’ll give you this if you’ll give me that. “I’ll go to seminary if you’ll let Mom survive this stroke.”  “If Obamacare passes, I’m moving to Canada!” “I’ll let you go if you will bless me.” There is a wonderful little clip from the movie “The Descendants” with George Clooney where his character is begging his wife to wake up from her coma. IT is classic and poignant bargaining. “I’m ready to listen,” he says, “if you will just wake up.”

The complement of bargaining is releasing. Bargaining is us trying to wrest control from an obviously uncontrollable situation. The exit ramp on the bargaining highway is to give up control. As a people of faith, our assurance is that the control is in the hands of a benevolent God. It takes great courage to give up control in the midst of a whirlwind of change. And yet what we call giving up control is just admission that we never truly had control to begin with.

Jacob’s bargaining is not done from a position of power. He had lost the fight, except that he will not let go. He desperately wants a positive result to come from the night’s ordeal (and maybe even from his entire life up to that point?). And it is interesting to note that Jacob’s name change to Israel is not the blessing. His opponent offers the blessing after that exchange, and we don’t have a record of what that blessing was. Dictionary.com says a blessing is the act of invoking divine protection or aid; it seems to me it is something more than that. And it seems to me that God is not stingy about blessing us. I know that is not the impression that the Old Testament gives. Yet when we are in the chaotic grip of change it seems like God’s blessing is hard to find indeed.

So, like Jacob and the angel, what are we desperately holding on to? Despite the pain that the fight causes us, regardless of the wounds that we will carry with us, we hold on hoping to extract some kind of blessing from the situation. Bargaining is holding on. Grace is letting go.

I think our experience this Sunday is in that movement from grasping to releasing. What are we grasping, holding on to that is not really ours to control? How do we find the trust to release?

Wrestling at the River: Week 2 Anger

Wrestling at the River: Week 2 - Anger

Genesis 32:22-31

In the course of the night, Jacob arose, took the entire caravan, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok River. After Jacob had crossed with all his possessions, he returned to the camp, and he was completely alone. And there, someone wrestled with Jacob until the first light of dawn. Seeing that Jacob could not be overpowered, the other struck Jacob at the socket of the hip, and the hip was dislocated as they wrestled. Then Jacob’s contender said, “Let me go, for day is breaking.” Jacob answered, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”  “What is your name?” the other asked. “Jacob,” he answered. The other said, “Your name will no longer be called ‘Jacob,’ or ‘Heel-Grabber,’ but ‘Israel’—‘Strives with God’—because you have wrestled with both God and mortals, and you have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked “Now tell me your name, I beg you.” The other said, “Why do you ask me my name?”—and blessed Jacob there. Jacob named the place Peniel—”Face of God”—”because I have seen God face to face, yet my life was spared.” At sunrise, Jacob left Penuel, limping along from the injured hip.

As usual, the English translation of the text seems to let the intensity of the scene drain out.  One might almost miss the reality that this is a fight scene. It is violent and intense and should be scary. Israel nee Jacob is fighting for his life! He is fighting to give up the old life and name and claim a new life and name. But that it is a fight sometimes gets almost lost. He walks away forever wounded from it.

Many of us walk around with the wounds from our life’s struggles, too. Too many of us know firsthand that life isn’t fair, that the world is unpredictable, and that too many times it seems that God fights dirty. The Christian PR departments love to paint pictures of Jesus sitting with quiet, clean children sitting serenely on his lap. Or Jesus leading the obedient sheep. Or scenes of the first line of the 23^rd Psalm, carefully editing out all the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” part.

Being attentive to the Spirit, following God, or giving your life to Jesus do not guarantee that life will be pleasant, or that your business will be successful, or that your marriage will last 57 years. In fact, one of the bottom lines truths about life on earth is that there are no guarantees. And sometimes, to use the appropriate theological word, that sucks. And to be absolutely human, it likely makes us angry.

I was told once that anger is a response to pain. And like many people I was taught in one way or another that getting angry is sinful. And if the pain of life provokes an existential anger, what does it mean to be angry with God?

I know a lot of people who are angry with God: angry that their father died when they were 13, angry that their spouse has cancer, angry that their life just turned out different from the way they thought it should. Even those of us who have adopted a theology that says God does not micro-manage the events of our lives sometimes experience a hot flash of anger at God, because if we can’t blame someone on earth for our pain who else is there? Moses got angry with God, and so did Job, and Jacob fought tooth and nail and knee-to-the-groin with God. I wonder if reading a little anger into Jesus’ gethsemane prayer doesn’t make sound a little more human.

So, can we get angry with God? Is it all right to do so? My initial reaction is, “Yes, of course, God can take it!” It is better to get angry and express that anger rather than to stuff those emotions and injure our psyches and bodies by repression. On the other hand, I’ve had a couple of recent conversations with people who have said that they experienced the very physical consequences of getting angry with God. So I realize that the question is not an open and shut one.

One of the pieces I want to use this Sunday is a clip from the West Wing where President Jeb Bartlett is alone in National Cathedral confronting God about the death of his long-time secretary, friend, and conscience Mrs. Landingham. In his rant, Bartlett calls God a “feckless thug.” In his anger and despair, Bartlett almost decides to give up the hope of a second term as president.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYcMk3AJKLk) I will edit the language to make it appropriate, but even planning on that I know this is a challenging clip.

So as we think about what we may experience in worship, what in life makes us angry? What makes us angry at God? What makes us mad enough to fight? To pummel at our parents even as they try to hug us and love us?

Maybe the symbol for this Sunday is a bruise: a recognition that life has bruised us.  Like Jacob or Israel, we walk away limping. Few of us get through our process of grieving without at least a lay0over at anger. Maybe we have to throw our anger out there into the universe in spite of the consequences because to carry it with us wounds us further.

A Safe and Sacred Community - Series Overview for June

Anchor: A Safe and Sacred Community (I’m still search for a good image or symbol) Keys? for unlicking and keeping things safe

Frames: Creating Community

                Fasting/Feasting

                Vulnerability

                Marking Time

                Pilgrimage

Thread: Song “Welcome”?

Welcome (Let’s Walk Together)

Laurie Zelman/Mark A. Miller

Verse 1

Let’s walk together for a while and ask where we begin

To build a world where love can grow and hope can enter in,

To be the hands of healing and to plant the seeds of peace,

Chorus 1

Singing welcome, welcome to this place.

You’re invited to come and know God’s grace.

All are welcome the love of God to share

‘cause all of us are welcome here;

all are welcome in this place.

Verse 2

Let’s talk together of a time when we will share a feast,

Where pride and power kneel to serve the lonely and the least,

And joy will set the table as we join our hands to pray,

Chorus 2

Singing welcome,…

Verse 3

Let’s dream together of the day when earth and heaven are one,

A city built of love and light, the new Jerusalem,

Where our mourning turns to dancing, ev’ry creature lifts its voice!

Chorus 3

Crying welcome!...

A Safe and Sacred Community

                The heart of the Urban Abbey is a safe and sacred community. Safe in all its facets: physically safe, safe from abuse, safe from judgment, safe to grow and explore and experiment. Sacred is both simple and impossible. Sacred community allows us to experience the Holy, the Mystery, directly and immediately, even in the most mundane and/or profane of moments. This series will explore the nexus of safe and sacred.

                There are a number of practices that are being rediscovered as valuable in both the safe and sacred aspects of developing community. Some of these spiritual practices help attune our physical beings to the presence of the Mystery, others help us to mark our time and place with intervals of intention. Fasting/feasting celebrates our physicality and focus on both our need for food and the great joy of being fed. Prayer (especially the kind of prayer that calls us to stop during the day, formally called the daily Office) and Sabbath taking offer a way of regulating our time and orienting toward more than ourselves. Finally, pilgrim invites us to get out of our comfort zones, to travel to sacred space and be changed by the journey. Whether or not we physically travel to Jerusalem or Iona, or make a virtual journey, pilgrimage takes us to holy ground.

                How do we create a safe community? Do we agree on the meaning of safe? How do we create a sacred community? How do we know when we have touched the sacred?

June 2 – Creating a Community

Luke 6:12-16

Common English Bible (CEB)

During that time, Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night long. At daybreak, he called together his disciples. He chose twelve of them whom he called apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter; his brother Andrew; James; John; Philip; Bartholomew; Matthew; Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus; Simon, who was called a zealot; Judas the son of James; and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

                As soon as Jesus’ ministry begins, people start to gather around him. But at this particular point, Jesus names a group of 12 apostles. Most often we see this as the great Teacher choosing the dozen with the most potential to begin an intensive course of discipling.  I think something else is going on. Certainly there was teaching and instruction to come. But I believe that Jesus took the step to form a community, a community bent on God’s kin-dom. It was a community because Jesus needed people, too. It was not just that Jesus was laying the foundation to start the Church (I don’t think he was). It wasn’t simply a Master-pupil relationship. It was a community. Jesus needed people to be with, to confide in, to be a part of.

                I have a sense that in this isolated, threatening world it is community that people are hungry for. We know we are hungry, but we don’t know how to solve the problem. We live in a society that excels in quick fixes, disposables, and fast food. None of that allows the time, the safety, the permission to develop deep relationships. The community that Jesus created, and the community that Christ offers to us, is highly counter-cultural in our society’s context.

                How will we support and invite each other to be a part of a deep and transformative community?

               

June 9 – Fasting/Feasting

Mark 6:32-43

They departed in a boat by themselves for a deserted place. Many people saw them leaving and recognized them, so they ran ahead from all the cities and arrived before them. When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Then he began to teach them many things. Late in the day, his disciples came to him and said, “This is an isolated place, and it’s already late in the day. Send them away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy something to eat for themselves.” He replied, “You give them something to eat.” But they said to him, “Should we go off and buy bread worth almost eight months’ pay and give it to them to eat?” He said to them, “How much bread do you have? Take a look.” After checking, they said, “Five loaves of bread and two fish.” He directed the disciples to seat all the people in groups as though they were having a banquet on the green grass. They sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. He took the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them, broke the loaves into pieces, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. Everyone ate until they were full. They filled twelve baskets with the leftover pieces of bread and fish.

                I know this story focuses on feasting side of the equation and that few of us give much truck to the fasting part. But both parts remind us that our Christianity is an intensely incarnational expression.  That means that the beginning point of spirituality is our bodies. Fasting reminds us that we are never truly self-sufficient. Fasting cleans us out and opens in us the possibility, the room for something else and most often those who practice fasting find that room is opened up for God or the Holy or the Mystery.

                Feasting helps us celebrate our bodiliness as well. Food satisfies us and gives us pleasure. In the context of Jesus’ day and society, sharing food together was an act akin to making the diners family.  It was an act of love and community. But we also live in times hallmarked by obesity, fat-food, and heart disease. We have taken feasting to its dark extreme.

                How do we shape a community that celebrates the Divine found in our bodies that is safe to be in despite all our diseases, proclivities, and weaknesses? What kind of fasting might make us more ready for God? What kind of feasting?

June 16 – Vulnerability

John 4:4-29

Jesus had to go through Samaria. He came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, which was near the land Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus was tired from his journey, so he sat down at the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.” His disciples had gone into the city to buy him some food. The Samaritan woman asked, “Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate with each other.) Jesus responded, “If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water? You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!” Jesus said to her, “Go, get your husband, and come back here. The woman replied, “I don’t have a husband.” “You are right to say, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus answered. “You’ve had five husbands, and the man you are with now isn’t your husband. You’ve spoken the truth.” The woman said, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you and your people say that it is necessary to worship in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you and your people will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You and your people worship what you don’t know; we worship what we know because salvation is from the Jews. But the time is coming—and is here!—when true worshippers will worship in spirit and truth. The Father looks for those who worship him this way. God is spirit, and it is necessary to worship God in spirit and truth.” The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will teach everything to us.”

Jesus said to her, “I Am—the one who speaks with you.” Just then, Jesus’ disciples arrived and were shocked that he was talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” The woman put down her water jar and went into the city. She said to the  people, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve done! Could this man be the Christ?”

One of the characteristics of deep community is a great respect for and honoring of vulnerability. When one has the bravery to expose their true and deepest self, that vulnerability is rewarded with a welcome and cherishing of the gift. Too much of our culture is characterized by parry and riposte. We learn early to hide who we really are and bury the questions we long to ask. Real community, a community graced by Christ, creates an environment that allows us to practice exposing our true selves, and to learn to trust that this exposure will not be the cause of injury or peril. The Kin-dom of God treasures who we really are.

                When Jesus had this unusual conversation with the Samaritan woman, there were multiple reasons why she should never have made herself vulnerable to him: they were from cultures that did not associate, they were unrelated female and male, they worshipped God differently, and the subtext of the story seems to indicate that she was a woman with a problematic past. Nonetheless, somehow Jesus created an atmosphere that allowed the two of them to connect on a very real and transformative level. Jesus did not judge, but accepted her true self.

                In a very compelling TED talk, Brene Brown talks about the power of and the essential necessity for vulnerability: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o. How do we transform ourselves from a social club with spiritual trappings to a place that honors and cultivates true vulnerability> How do we make ourselves  a deeply safe and sacred community?

June 23 – Marking Time

Exodus 34:29-35

Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two covenant tablets in his hand, Moses didn’t realize that the skin of his face shone brightly because he had been talking with God. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw the skin of Moses’ face shining brightly, they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called them closer. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and Moses spoke with them. After that, all the Israelites came near as well, and Moses commanded them everything that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. When Moses finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. Whenever Moses went into the Lord’s presence to speak with him, Moses would take the veil off until he came out again. When Moses came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see that the skin of Moses’ face was shining brightly. So Moses would put the veil on his face again until the next time he went in to speak with the Lord.

                Spending time in the presence of the Mystery changes and transforms us. No, I don’t think that any of us will ever glow in the dark. But as a metaphor, I have known those people who have seemed almost to glow with holiness as they have spent regular time in prayer and meditation. Not a physical light, but a glow of love, wisdom, or compassion. A safe and sacred community makes time to spend in prayer, reflection, and meditation. It makes time for the Mystery.

                The Daily Office is an ancient practice where every three hours the practitioner stops whatever they are doing and directs their thoughts and hearts toward the Holy. It is a way of marking the hours of the day and being sure to spend time with God. An ancient practice it may be, but there are even smartphone apps for the Daily Office now! What are significant ways that we might include God in our daily lives?

                Another important time demarcation is the practice of Sabbath-keeping. This practice is memorialized in the first Creation story in Genesis when it is said that God rested on the seventh day. That established the practice of taking one day in seven as a day of rest and reverence. Sabbath-keeping is a way of remembering to whom the world belongs. It is healthy to rest and connect. How will a safe and sacred community take time for the practice of Sabbath?

June 30 – Journey toward Mystery (Pilgrimage)

Genesis 28:10-22

Jacob left Beer-sheba and set out for Haran. He reached a certain place and spent the night there. When the sun had set, he took one of the stones at that place and put it near his head. Then he lay down there. He dreamed and saw a raised staircase, its foundation on earth and its top touching the sky, and God’s messengers were ascending and descending on it. Suddenly the Lord was standing on it and saying, “I am YWHW, the God of your ancestors Abraham and Sarah;  and the God of Isaac and Rebekah. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will become like the dust of the earth; you will spread out to the west, east, north, and south. Every family of earth will be blessed because of you and your descendants. I am with you now, I will protect you everywhere you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done everything that I have promised you.” When Jacob woke from his sleep, he thought to himself, The Lord is definitely in this place, but I didn’t know it. He was terrified and thought, “This sacred place is awesome. It’s none other than God’s house and the entrance to heaven.” After Jacob got up early in the morning, he took the stone that he had put near his head, set it up as a sacred pillar, and poured oil on the top of it. He named that sacred place Bethel, though Luz was the city’s original name.

                There is an odd paradox to holy ground. Sometimes we discover that ground is holy when we are found there by God, such as in this story of Jacob. Sometimes we make ground holy by the associations we attach to it: the place where we met our great love, where a child is buried, a church camp where we first discovered ourselves. But however ground gets holy, it holds for us a power of attraction that sets it apart from what we perceive of as ordinary ground. And because it attracts us, we long to go back there, to feel again the powerful presence of the Mystery.

                Pilgrimage is an important part of many spiritual traditions: for Islam it is one of the five pillars of faith, to travel to Mecca; for Christians in the Middle Ages the height of faith was to journey to Jerusalem and today Holy Land tours are still immensely popular. There is something quite spiritual about traveling the geography to sacred land. Some say the practice of praying the labyrinth and the Stations of the Cross became substitute pilgrimages for the faithful who could ot physically make the journey.

                I think the essence of the thing is the willingness to leave behind the known for the promise of the unknown. It is a giving up of control and a surrender to God’s providence. It has certainly been a practice of relying upon the hospitality of strangers all along the way. Pilgrimage allows us to see the world and our place in it differently.

                Jacob was running from and for his life. He stopped in the middle of nowhere because he was exhausted. His dream told him that the middle of nowhere was really the middle of everywhere, that it had a direct link to wherever God really was. When he awoke, Jacob erected a stele from the stone on which he slept and anointed it with oil. The anointing itself was an act of imparting significance to the place and the events that happened there.

                We are constantly on pilgrimage, and we suffer when we image that the hallmark of the spiritual life is arriving and staying at any given place. How might we prepare our community for a living sense of pilgrimage?

Creation Care, week 2: Hope is a seed.

Hope is a seed.

It seems that once again the weeds of the world have sprouted. The violent actions at the Boston Marathon are the blossoms of seeds of violence. And like weeds gone to seed, that violence has spread anger, fear, and suspicion around the world. On the other hand, we have the opportunity to choose what seeds we will scatter in the wake of this event: fear and anger or hope and peace.

Mark 4:1-8
Jesus began to teach beside the lake again. Such a large crowd gathered that he climbed into a boat there on the lake. He sat in the boat while the whole crowd was nearby on the shore. He said many things to them in parables. While teaching them, he said, “Listen to this! A farmer went out to scatter seed.  As he was scattering seed, some fell on the path; and the birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where the soil was shallow. They sprouted immediately because the soil wasn’t deep. When the sun came up, it scorched the plants; and they dried up because they had no roots. Other seed fell among thorny plants. The thorny plants grew and choked the seeds, and they produced nothing. Other seed fell into good soil and bore fruit. Upon growing and increasing, the seed produced in one case a yield of thirty to one, in another case a yield of sixty to one, and in another case a yield of one hundred to one.”

I believe that the seeds of our violence toward each other find their root in the compartmentalization of the human and the natural worlds. It is a hierarchy that sees the plants and animals as commodities for our use, and then when we dehumanize others we can see them as items for our use as well. We have the power of life and death over them, and too many times it is easier and more gratifying (seemingly) to choose death. Maybe, just maybe, if we learn to love Creation as equals instead of hierarchically we can begin to build a world where violence is a last resort instead of solution. And maybe planting a seed really can be an act of hope.

Jesus’ parable uses a sower as the protagonist. My guess is that the hearers of this story thought this particular farmer must have been a bit of an idiot. Seed was not an unlimited commodity and I’m sure that even when hand-scattered (the original meaning of “broadcast” by the way) it was done judiciously. But Jesus’ farmer throws the seed willy-nilly all over the place: on the good soil, on the path, in the rocks and thistles and thorns and everywhere. In the ensuing explanation of the parable, Jesus says that the seed is the word. In Luke and Matthew the explanation says, “word of the Kin-dom” or “word of God.” The gist of the parable seems to be that we are not to be concerned with where we scatter the seed, our job is to scatter it like idiots everywhere. Some will eventually find its good soil.

What is asked of us, I believe, is to figure out what kind of seed we are casting about. Diana Butler Bass has coined a phrase for the denigrating, fear-mongering stuff on the 24-hour news casts: disaster porn. I believe Jesus thought that we, as his followers, had better stuff to broadcast. Jesus wanted particular kinds of plants to grow in the Kin-dom: peace, justice (NOT revenge), love, equality, compassion, and more.  In science fiction they speak of terraforming: recreating a hostile planet to be more earthlike. Maybe by planting the seeds of Jesus’ teaching we are doing a different kind of terraforming. We are reclaiming the Creation of love that we were meant to be.

Easter - March 31

Easter 2013

What is there to say about Easter? It’s a celebration of life over death that Christians see in the resurrection of Christ. That celebration is overlaid on top of the Spring and fertility rituals of other cultures, and in fact the name “Easter” itself is not of Christian origin. I smile knowing that the highest Christian holiday is named for the goddess of the dawn, Eostre (of Anglo-Saxon origin) or Ostara. Some rather xenophobic Christians say that this is reason enough to stop celebrating Easter altogether. They can quit if they want to, but I kind of like Easter and its life-affirming position so I think I’ll keep it.

                A few observations about Easter, or the resurrection of Jesus, if you will: it is not depicted in any of the four canonical gospels. All we are shown is the empty tomb. We do not get to see the actual event itself. Beyond that, the 4 gospels begin to diverge in some significant ways: In Mark (the earliest gospel), it is the 3 women who find the empty tomb and hear the announcement that Jesus is risen from a youth, who tells them that Jesus will meet them on the road back to Galilee. In Luke, we now have two people (the Greek noun says men) in bright clothing who tell the women not to look for the living among the dead. In Matthew, the earth quakes when an angel rolls the stone back, causing the guard to faint dead away (Mark mentions neither angels nor guards). Again the message is given that Jesus will meet them back in Galilee.  John (the newest of the 4 gospels) tells us that Mary Magdalene is alone when she encounters the empty tomb, but she runs and gets Peter and the guys who run to the tomb and check it out for themselves.

                What I take from these various attempts to describe what happened is this: none of us ever witnesses resurrection itself. What follows in all four gospels are widely divergent accounts of people experiencing the risen Christ in their lives and in their midst. And, I believe, it is this ongoing experience that has fueled the best of the church ever since. People continue to experience the living Christ’s presence in widely divergent and mostly unexplainable ways but it is those experiences that sparked the early believers to continue on the Way, and do so for us as well.

                Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has written specifically about this ineffable experience when he tries to enter into the mystery of the resurrection: http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2001/04/The-Easter-Moment-Drawing-Conclusions.aspx
Maybe for those of us who look at things through a progressive lens this should be added as a fifth account.

                But it brings me to what I think Easter should be: us telling each other our resurrection stories, times and places where we caught a glimpse of something Christ-like on the road ahead of us or a healing presence when part of us was dying, or the love that beckons us to rise when all we thought we wanted to do was die. If Easter, or Christianity itself, is to make any sense in this hurting, crazy world of ours, then we have to tell our stories. Not to prove to disprove anyone else’s experience, just to say this is what I know, what I see, what I feel. Did Jesus bodily rise from death and walk or fly out of the tomb? To me, the answer to that question is irrelevant. What I can answer is how I sense the life of Christ in my own life.

                I’m still looking for music that we can use in worship that gathers all this together, and will probably be looking for a long time. Here’s a couple that I have found. The first is an old Melissa Etheridge song, “Heal Me.” Not a great video, but really good lyrics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB5p_Vi4HXg
The other is by Christopher Grundy (the “More Light” guy): Every Step of the way https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Wj0cHXzAGTI
Not directly speaking to Easter, but easy to sing and talks about being on the Way.

I’m also wrestling with re-writing Christ the Lord is Risen today, but as usual the Spirit is waiting three days for resurrection to happen.

                How have you experienced resurrection? How can we offer a worship experience that invites people to the possibility of their own experience?