My inner response to this scripture is best described by the word “disruptive.”  It’s troublesome, unruly, unsettling, disturbing.  We move from fortune telling slave girls, to demons being caste out, dark prisons of Philippi, Paul and Silas incongruently singing in chains, earthquakes, it all makes me feel like I’m watching an episode of Xena Warrior Princess or some other ancient fantasy.  I think Acts of the Apostles may be patterned on Homer’s Odyssey, the epic journey tale of a soldier coming home from battle.  This is the early Christian version of the epic spread of the word about Jesus.

The passage starts with disrupting injustice.  What happens to this woman, who only gets mentioned as a “slave girl?”  I hate it when a character enters the story for a few sentences, her already difficult life is turned upside down, and the scene moves on without knowing what happened to her, let alone her name.  She is literary collateral damage.

Just when scriptures are giving women a fair shake in the story, by extolling a woman named Lydia, who is the first documented Christian convert on the European continent.  Lydia was a merchant dealing in purple cloth, a wealthy women who hospitality, influence and generous spirit created a home base for Paul and Silas in Greece.  She stands on her own in the story, without drawing her status from a husband.  Then we have this contrasting story of the fortune telling slave girl, who seems to be an annoyance to Paul.  Paul castes a demon out of her, which may have given her some temporary relief, but her value is diminished to her masters.  We are left to imagine what becomes of her.

Our imaginations can be quite fertile this week, as we have been bombarded by the story of a Cleveland man holding women in captivity for years, in a quiet suburban neighborhood.  NPR interviewed neighbors and they were all astonished that such a thing could happen right there, by a man they all knew.  This wasn’t a far off land, but right by their home and their world view was shaken.

The slave’s disappearance from the story disturbs me because of watching so many people briefly emerge from homeless or addiction at Hillcrest House in Poughkeepsie and then disappear from the scene, so many that I cannot remember their names.  They came from jail, rehabs, psychiatric hospitalization, fleeing domestic violence, their stories a cascade of overlapping oppressions.  Just as we would caste out one demon, another would possess them and carry them back into the hopeless chaos.

I don’t like stories where people disappear from the plot without resolution.  This sentiment was captured by a photographer in Bangledesh, whose photo was in Time Magazine this week.  The photo is of a couple found in their final embrace in the rubble of a garment factory collapse.  A thousand people are dead, not from an earthquake of natural disaster, but of greed and oppression.  He said,

Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me. It’s as if they are saying to me, we are not a number — not only cheap labor and cheap lives. We are human beings like you. Our life is precious like yours, and our dreams are precious too.

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2013/05/08/a-final-embrace-the-most-haunting-photograph-from-bangladesh/#ixzz2T4W21DkQ

I can’t really judge Paul for his actions, I’m sure he was trying to help, but he too is quickly swept up in the tide, imprisoned for disturbing the peace and tranquility of the community, beaten and put in stocks.  Be careful out there do-gooders.  Changing the world and making a difference is not always a feel good experience, it often breaks your heart and sometimes gets you in trouble.

Paul and Silas were arrested and beaten with rods, perhaps another typical case of Philippian police brutality?  Since Paul and Silas were foreigners, is this also a case of racial profiling?  Greeks called everyone other than themselves “barbarians.”  They are held without trial, perhaps to be deported, or just to sit in the darkness without official charges, access to legal counsel, never read their Miranda rights.  What kind of barbaric legal system tolerates this kind of injustice?

But the story does not end here.  There is yet another disruptive force in the story.  Somewhere deep under the prison walls, the tectonic plates under the Macedonian prison shift.  Somewhere deep in the heart of God there is a shift to another plan.  God is never mentioned as the source, but in most times before our own, earthquakes, lightening, any great natural phenomenon was considered to be a tool of God.  Acts tells us that the foundations of the prison were shaken, the door immediately burst open and everyone’s chains fell off.

Freeing the captive is a great motif throughout scripture, from Moses  parting of the Red Sea in Exodus, to Jesus announcing the Jubilee in Luke with a promise of freedom for the captive, all the way to our times and The Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.  ~Nelson Mandela

This was a “faith-quake”, and it calls us to a great truth, that in the midst of trial and trembling, God has not forgotten us and is not removed from our suffering.  It calls us to remember the words of Psalm 46, “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;”  “Faith-quakes” call us to anticipate and hope for the power of God’s love to shake the foundations of our human created prisons and oppressions, and break the chains that bind us.  God’s quake bends the iron bars we have so cruelly installed to lock out possibilities and potentials.  Where fear has shut and locked the door to close out our hopes and dreams, God bursts the lock and says “Be not afraid.”

To add to the ironic conclusion here, the captives do not flee into the night.  The jailer had slept through all the quaking, comes to see the doors open and is ready to kill himself for his failure, when Paul stops him and says, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”  And the jailer immediately says, “What must I do to be saved?”  Paul and Silas suddenly have quite a group of converts, a jailer, his family, probably a few other prisoners, who were in for God knows what.  I wonder what Lydia the purple cloth merchant thought as Paul brought her new brothers and sisters in Christ to her house church?  Paul now has more of what he truly wants, not just freedom for himself from jail, but to free anyone and everyone from their captivity through encountering the life giving power of God, and bringing them together as a new community called church.

Its very humbling to me as a pastor to hear this story.  What am I to learn and imitate here?  I haven’t caste out any demons lately. Maybe my church growth strategy should be to get arrested for civil disobedience.  The one thing we all can do is to never lose heart and keep on singing.  I always wonder what hymns Paul and Silas were singing in prison.  Was it the Magnificat?  Or did they know a tune to Psalm 23?  Was there an early version of “We Shall Overcome?” Singing in prison is a grand tradition in the faith.  I unearthed this interview of William Sloan Coffin speaking with Bill Moyers in 2004, about being in jail and signing, and I will share it with as our conclusion.

MOYERS: It’s been 30-plus years since you were arrested and jailed for trespassing in the US Capitol, when you were protesting the Vietnam War.

Your fellow demonstrators remember that during the night, when they were uneasy, even depressed, they suddenly heard someone singing. And it was you. Do you remember that?

COFFIN: Yeah. It was a group of clergy and laity concerned with Vietnam. And so, they were all pretty religious folk. So, I started to sing “The Messiah,” as I remember. And quite a few people joined in. It was a good night.

MOYERS: What is it that enables a man to sing in prison?

COFFIN: Well. In my case music, after God, has been my chief source of solace. Song is an expression of hope. And hope is something that is experienced with a kind of psychological certitude, rather than intellectual certainty.

It’s trusting that things all will be well when the day is done. Or, as Havel said wonderfully, “Hope is not waiting for something good to turn up well. But being grateful that something really makes sense.” That’s enough to make you burst into song.

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript310_full.html

Is it enough for you to burst into song?

As a young Christian in my teenage years I struggled to understand the will of God.  Now, some 36 years after my baptism and 24 years of preaching, I struggle to understand the will of God.   Knowing God’s will challenges me at all levels.  It is a daily personal challenge as I wonder about how to be a good parent, spouse and pastor, and generally I can only get two out of three right at the same time.    Knowing God’s will is a corporate challenge as I try to figure out the role of the church in a culture of skepticism, cynicism and alienation.  How will we find the common good?  Where is God in all the pain and suffering and violence?  What, O God, are we to do?

When I was a teenager, I had a problem that was creating a great deal of anxiety.  I have forgotten what the issue was now, but it probably was a romantic dilemma, because that is what teenage boys mostly think about.  Being a good Baptist, I took my problem to God.  Somehow I got the idea that I would let my Bible fall open, and if the page was from the Old Testament, God’s answer was “No” and if the page was from the New Testament then God spoke “Yes.”  I think I wanted a “yes” so notice my piety in letting God have two-thirds of the pages for a “No” answer.  If the answer was “Yes” I wanted a definitive yes.  So I solemnly prayed for the will of God to be revealed and I pledge myself that I would abide by that answer with all my heart, no do-overs or take-backs.  I carefully set my Bible on its back spine, and balanced it solidly in the middle.  Then, much like a basketball referee pausing before a jump ball to make sure both sides were ready for a fair shot, I released my hands and waited for God’s will to be revealed.

At first the Bible seemed to lean a little to the left and my heart sank if it was to be the Old Testament, and then it leaned to the right and my heart raced, and finally God’s Holy Living Word fell on its side unopened.  At first I thought, “God, this was a yes or no exam, there wasn’t a space for maybe or it depends.”  And then I burst into laughter, because I realized how foolish I was being.  I was not practicing Christianity, but rather attempting magic, and that is not how God works.

My interpretation of this event in my life has gone through several phases.  At first my theology drifted towards Deism, much like Thomas Jefferson, believing that God created the world and set it in motion, much like a great clock.  God gave me a brain, granted me human freedom, and it was my responsibility to figure it all out from there.  That is not a bad theological option.  It served Jefferson well, as the architect of the Declaration of Independence and author especially of freedom of religion.  It is what Unitarianism used to be.  Ultimately it is a faith in reason and the power of the human brain, and while I am a great believer in applying reason and logic to any part of faith, I have found reason to be a very limited God.  It is a step above superstition, but only a couple of steps higher on the staircase to truth, because we can convince ourselves of almost anything.  Psychology continues to discover great flaws in our remarkable brains. What good is an amazing brain if we stick our head in the sands, and dismiss everything from evolution to global warming?  If reason and logic ruled the world there would be no advertising, no military, and no children going to be hungry.  Much like Microsoft Windows, we could use some periodic upgrades to fix some of the bugs I our operating systems.  We need a Humanity 2.0 that fixes selfishness error, a Humanity 3.0 that updates anger and violence error when someone disagrees with us.  A Humanity 4.0 that increases our synching capacity with all of creation.

I appreciate the God given reason, and the divine gift of human freedom to choose.  God is generous, but I still need something more.  I need a relationship, I need a guide and mentor, I need an advocate to help me through the great morass.  And this is what Jesus is talking about in John’s Gospel. Our reading today is part of the great discourse Jesus gives to his disciples at the Last Supper.  More than any other Gospel, John takes a great deal of time with this event.  The early Christian community that was the source of this Gospel must have had Communion as its core practice and self-understanding of faith.  This passage is introduced with a question we all ask, when Judas says in the preceding verse 22, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us?”  ²³Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”  God will make a home in us.  The Greek word used here is often translated to the English word “abide.”  It is a core word, appearing 40 times in John’s Gospel.

It is in this Gospel that Jesus says, “I am the vine and you are the branches, abide in me and I will abide in you.”  What does it mean to be a disciple?  It means a close relationship with the living Go, who will make a home within you and abide there.  How will that happen?  Jesus goes on to say,

“²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

That is what I was looking for in my early experiment with my Bible, but I was an impatient youth that wanted this Holy Spirit at my beckon call.  What I remember most about the spiritual life at my Baptist college was a sincere, but over-anxious search for God’s will in all aspects of life. We prayed about what classes to take, who to date, whether to study in our rooms or the library, and the details of life looking for guidance.   I still pray for answers, but here is how I have changed.  The most important answers require a journey.  That is a hard thing in a Google-search world of instant answers, but spiritual wisdom is more like a long walk than a quick kiss with a search engine.  Perhaps it even requires us to walk for days on the Appalachian Trail to give time for God to abide with us and teach us.

I say this because walking is one of my primary spiritual practices.  I learned this in The Artist’s Way, a book about writing and creativity by Julia Cameron.  It is a very simple book that asks the reader to make a 10 week commitment to do two things, write in a journal every morning when you wake up and take a walk every day.  Cameron says everything you need to be a writer will come from these practices, and for the past six years I have found that to be true.  I always take heart from her words, “Expect to be accompanied on the journey.”  Typically when I sit down to write, I stare at a blank page with nothing to say.  The writing practice of the Artists Way is to just start writing whatever is on your mind in the morning, just start rambling about your sleep, petty grievances with the world, the small blessings of the day, and the only rule is that you cannot stop for 30 minutes.  It is OK to write crap, it is not OK to stop.  This can go on for several days, and then there is the moment when something profound and true flows from your pen, and you can’t imagine such creativity was inside. You put down your pen and realize-you were accompanied.  For that moment, there was a sense that God was dwelling within, unexpectedly God made a dwelling place in your soul.  That is what the Holy Spirit is like to me.

If I do not walk or journal for a few days, I feel like I have spiritual indigestion.  The important takeaway from this Gospel lesson is this: We need some practice, some regular thing we do to allow God to make a home within and dwell with us.  You can journal, paint, chant, count your breaths in meditation, do yoga, read from scriptures, garden, walk, run or sit by the river.  There is a spiritual practice for every personality.  Faith in God needs a practice, a regular communion with the life-giving Spirit of God.

End Note:  Julia Cameron now offers much of her Artist’s Way materials online with free videos! Here is the link to practicing morning pages writing:

http://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/

I have not been here a year, and already things are changing around me.  It makes me a little uneasy, nostalgic, even fearful.  If this much change has already happened in 9 months, what about my 30 year mortgage?  What is really secure in our ever changing world?  I read an article on the DOW Industrial index, which is our national surrogate deity, and was surprised to discover that only General Electric is left of the original components, and it was added in 1907.  The Dow 30, the largest and supposedly most important companies in the nation, has changed 48 times since it began.  The American Leather Company, The US Rubber Company, American Tobacco and Tennessee Coal and Iron, no longer exist.

Communities change from being a Happy Valley farm town, to an industrial era mill town, to New England Hamp, to hipster Noho.  Here we sit in the middle of it all, after 350 years, five meeting houses, and twenty some clergy, trying to stay relevant and solvent.

The retail climate for religion changes too.  In 1966 Time Magazine asked “Is God Dead?” on the front cover as theologians and sociologists predicted the US would soon be a secular society like Europe.  But soon after there was a huge resurgence of conservative religion led by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, followed by megachurches with thousands of members.  In the 1980s, it was thought that liberal churches would disappear, being too worldly and wishy-washy.  Now conservative churches are losing members, as society begins to tolerate gay people and become more multi-cultural, younger people don’t want to be associated with intolerant religion.  Some of the megachurches are facing foreclosure.  The last decade had the largest decline in religious involvement since polling began, noting that unaffiliated people are rising.  This doesn’t really bother me, because I think many are unaffiliated because they are tired of judgmental religion that can’t get past sexuality and intolerance of others.

The United Church of Christ has 1000 Open and Affirming Churches that are progressive and growing.  New urbanism is bringing people back to cities and the thriving, innovative churches in our denomination are places like Old South in Boston, Old First in Philadelphia and Riverside in New York. Notice the world “old” in the title.  That doesn’t mean it is easy for a congregation to survive, it still takes energy, courage and commitment. But there is no reason to despair.  People have not stopped looking for God and God has not stopped looking for people.

Jeremiah passes along the wisdom of the ages:

(Those who trust in the Lord) shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.  (Jer. 17:7-8)

We often think of trees when looking for an analogy of longevity, strength over time.  Trees are the oldest living things on the planet, overseeing the rise and fall of powerful empires, corporations and succeeding generations. Trees are a sign of God’s steadfast love in an ever changing world, and we need to not only be good stewards of our trees, but we can learn a great deal from them.

French author Jean Giono wrote a wonderful story in 1952 entitled, “The Man Who Planted Trees.”  The narrator takes a walk in 1910, to the foothills of the Alps, and comes to a rough valley that is overgrown with wild lavender.  An abandon village is just a shell of weathered houses, left by the woodcutters who had made their living cutting trees for charcoal.  The valley had been stripped, the soil eroded away, streams dried up and now everyone had gone.

Giono became thirsty and while looking for a place to refill his canteen, he encountered a man who led him to a Spring, and as the sun was going down, he was invited to stay in the man’s cabin for the night before hiking home.  After supper, Giono describes the actions of his host:

He took out a bag and poured a pile of acorns out onto the table. He began to examine them one after another with a great deal of attention, separating the good ones from the bad. I smoked my pipe. I offered to help him, but he told me it was his own business. Indeed, seeing the care that he devoted to this job, I did not insist. This was our whole conversation. When he had in the good pile a fair number of acorns, he counted them out into packets of ten. In doing this he eliminated some more of the acorns, discarding the smaller ones and those that that showed even the slightest crack.  When he had before him one hundred perfect acorns he stopped, and we went to bed.

The  next day Giono walked with the shepherd for the morning, and saw that the man walked with an iron rod and after a set number of paces he would plunge into the earth and make a hole to plant one of his acorns.  Giono learned that for three years his host had planted one hundred thousand trees. Of these, twenty thousand had come up.  Half would be lost to rodents and to everything else that is unpredictable in the designs of Providence. That left ten thousand oaks that would grow in this place where before there was nothing.

The narrator left and a few years later was swept up in the Great War, fighting in the trenches of Europe.  In 1920, he was a broken man, in body and soul, and he sought solace by hiking back up into the same region.  He was astonished to find that the oak trees planted on that day ten years ago were now higher than his head.  The shepherd had built natural dams and some streams had come back, and there was other vegetation filling in, and more wildlife as well.  It was a remarkable one man transformation.  The narrator continued a yearly trek for 19 years and watched as a forest, the villages and valley was brought back to life by one man with a quiet, remarkable dream.

This story was first published in 1953, and was widely popular in Europe, as the continent was still clearing the rubble of WWII and rebuilding.  It was meant to send a message of hope and the power of people to make a difference through their actions of doing good despite the monstrous evil they lived through.  And that is still the message we need today many years later.

Hope that we still count is what keeps us going.  We are here today because generations before us planted their trees.  They built this meeting house, have cared for it, and you have recently renovated the sanctuary.  That is a great act of hope, because it assumes this sanctuary will be needed for many years.  We are also here because past generations planted love.  They visited the sick, prayed for each other and showed a caring community to Northampton.  The generation before us took risks, and grafted in the Baptists down the street and merged two congregations together.  You were an early adopter in becoming an Open and Affirming congregation, doing so at a time when it was much more controversial than now. These are your trees.  Enjoy them, but realize too that it is not time to sit in the shade and relax.  We need to be planting the next vision.  In the coming weeks I want to prime the pump and throw some thoughts into the mix, but it really needs to be your collective vision.

The next few weeks of stewardship season is about planting our trees for the future.  I want you to imagine that you all have 100 acorns to plant in the next year.  These acorns are your money, your time, your talents and abilities.  Time and money are really just potential energy. When we give a dollar or give an hour to something, we are really sending some of our stored potential energy to the people and communities we believe in.  This is how we build and plant.  Stewardship is getting the most out of the resources we have.  How will you place your potential energy in God’s hands?  How will your acorns serve God’s purposes?  What do you really want to build and plant in the coming year?

Interfaith re-dedicate the finish line near Old South Church.

Sermon for April 21, 2013

Based on Psalm 23 and written after the Boston Marathon Bombing

Tuesday afternoon a Gazette reporter called to ask about my thoughts about the Boston Marathon bombing.  “I hope this is not insulting to ask, but does this kind of attack shake your faith, or do you see it as an opportunity to reaffirm your faith?”  I wish he had printed my first few sentences.

I said this not the first time we thought about violence or evil.  We already had two vigils planned for Tuesday due to violence in the world.  We have been meeting for nearly five months every Tuesday to listen for God regarding the nature of violence in the world, and we were also meeting at 6:30 on Tuesday to ring the church bell for the funeral of Demetress Villiers, a boy kidnaped and murdered in Haiti.  Every week we pray in solidarity with innocents suffering everywhere, from civilians killed in drone strikes in our name in Pakistan to Newtown to Haiti to Copley Square.  We weep, we get angry, and frustrated, and we also find inner peace and courage through which we try to make a better world.

I’m wasn’t insulted by the question, but I am puzzled.  Why would our faith fall apart every time an earthquake, madman or some evil befalls us.  People ask, “How can you still believe in a loving God if this happens in the world?” My answer is-You should read our scriptures sometime.  We follow Jesus, who did not flinch at evil; who died a tortuous death at the hands corrupt religion and empire, and we believe that was not the end of him.  We gather monthly to symbolically eat his body and drink his blood, so we believe he is raised in us to overcome evil in the world.  Our faith has survived the empires of Egypt, Babylon, Rome, Germany and Japan, and we will probably survive terrorism and the American Empire.  We are not here just for the stained glass and organ music.  We are here because God is still speaking.

I mentioned Psalm 23 in the conversation, in part because people know it, but also because it is a blend of comfort, realism and hope.  God is our good shepherd, who will lead us to green pastures and still waters to restore our souls.  We know the valley of the shadow of death is real, and we know evil will come our way.  But we don’t live in fear because God walks with us.  God prepares a table for us to have a banquet when enemies gather to make us feel isolated.  We count our blessings like an overflowing cup in the midst of our tragedies.  Of course life is tough, but surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.  Contrary to misperception, we are not an escapist, magical, narrow-minded religion, we are actually quite resilient.  I would say that is the major message of Psalm 23.  We can be resilient in all things because we believe God’s steadfast love will give us the strength and wisdom we need.

I am glad to see that we as a nation are becoming more resilient in the face of evil.  We witnessed the best of human nature in Boston.   Terrorists should know better than to mess with marathoners, perhaps some of the strongest willed people on the planet.  A 76 year-old man, got up after being knocked over by the blast and finished the race.  Others crossed the finish line and ran two more miles to the hospital to donate blood.    First responders and police officers disregarded danger and put their lives on the line.  Hundreds of people placed ads on a Google doc saying they had couches or rooms available for stranded strangers in town for the marathon.  Area restaurants fed people for free, and even the IRS gave a three month extension on their taxes to all Boston marathon runners.  See, we are truly an open and generous-hearted people.  Many of those folks are probably religious, and some respond out of a basic human instinct of compassion and courage.  We are hard-wired to be compassionate to others, at least when we are not afraid.  Giving into fear, greed and hatred is what allows evil to seize the day.

Which brings us to Congress.  Wednesday, a minority of Senators blocked a very, very modest gun control bill focused on universal background checks   It doesn’t matter that 90 percent of Americans, including gun owners, think this is a common sense law.  What matters is NRA cash.  So it is still harder to buy Sudafed, a Budweiser, get a fishing license or adopt a puppy, than it is to buy an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle?    (You many think the sermon is getting political here, but part of my job is constantly being asked to pray for people, especially for the victims of violence.  I’m not very good at praying about something and then doing nothing.  If I’m asked to pray for the victims of Newtown and the Boston Marathon, don’t ask me to stop there, because I take prayer seriously.  I believe prayer changes my heart and leads me to action.  So be careful with your prayer requests!  You might change me!)

Let me say what is bothering me about this vote.  Background checks are only modestly important, and this legislation was going to fundamentally reshape gun violence in our nation.  It was just a small bill with limited impact.  What frustrates me is that in the face of an epidemic of violence we cannot get Congress to come together a do anything.  Two Senators with perfect NRA scores, one Democrat and one Republican, sat down, talked and tried to discover what kind of legislation to stop gun violence, could get passed in the Senate?  As it turns out, nothing.   Even with the fresh painful memories of teachers holding small children, their bodies bullet-ridden, the Senate can’t do anything.   Powerful lobbies with cash and single-minded commitment can block majorities, and we feel powerless. This bothers me more than sociopaths with bombs and guns.

So I found myself returning to the words of Psalm 23 several times this week, and finding a resiliency within myself, that come from trusting in the steadfast love of God.  The phrase that has really sunk in is this: God restores my soul.  This is what I need more than anything else-a restored soul.

I found a restored soul in several ways this week.  As I first heard about the marathon attack on Monday afternoon, Jeanne and I were preparing for our final session of the “Couplehood as a Spiritual Path” class.  My soul was restored as I saw how four couples have a wonderful commitment to one another, and engaged in truly listening and understanding.  After all, in we cannot live with peace and justice at the heart of our most intimate relationships, how do we expect to overcome the greater brokenness of the world?  It felt like a way to immediately respond to the brokenness of the world by creating greater wholeness.

All week long, I kept saying to myself, what do I need to do let God restore my soul today?  Some things were simple.  Friday, my day off, I pried myself away from Facebook and all the news pouring in and said to myself, they will catch these guys at some point and tell us, whether I’m listening or not, so we got on the bike and went to the new bagel place in Easthampton for lunch, and we invited people over for dinner who we wanted to get to know better, and we cooked a great meal and talked till late at night.  Saturday I was struggling with how to finish my sermon, and was tempted to cancel going to the new gardeners question and answer session.  I’m glad I didn’t.  I’m ready to plant living things in the dirt and watch them grow.

Maybe that isn’t going to save the world, change any senator’s minds or stop the next attack on innocent people.  But don’t count me out yet.  My heart is full and I’m ready to plant the seeds of justice and peace as well.  A restored soul is the most valuable asset we have.  Do whatever you need to do to be in the presence of God, beside still waters and green pastures.  That is why you are here isn’t it?  We do this work of restoration so that when we walk the shadow of death we are strong and read to deal with evil.  This is what we need to offer the world, that is so desperately needed, a place of holy restoration.

Where is the place that can happen in society?  I don’t believe it is only the fearful, angry and paranoid that can develop the passion, commitment to accomplish their goals.  This is an opportunity for the church to recover a relevant role for 21^st century.  We need to model an alternative community to the world that shows the glory of God.  As we go about our business, we need to make sure we do not look like Congress- arguing, breaking into factions, avoiding the real problems and creating an environment where things don’t get done.  We need to show forth love- at the communion table where all our welcome, feeding the hungry, and in how we work together to make sound decisions, even when we are talking about budgets, boilers and windows.  Let us be the place of sustained passion, a community that celebrates, grieves, visits the sick, educates children and sustains a community that stands for human values in the face of evil, greed, selfishness.  We may get knocked over on the way, but let us run this race.

The events will be held rain or shine. Parking and admission are free!  Lots of great LGBT educational information, food and retail vendors, fabulous entertainment and a children’s area will be featured.

FIRST CHURCHES IS “ALL IN!”  Please sign up to march with our group at Second Hour or on our Facebook page (First Churches of Northampton) or email us at admin@firstchurches.org.

IF CAN’T WALK AND WOULD LIKE TO WATCH you may bring a lawn chair to our front lawn.  Space will be limited since Liz Ryan’s 10-piece brass band will play for part of the parade from our front.

“Stumbling into the Beloved Community”

This summer, my wife Patty and I traveled out west in our little Prius to visit some of the big national parks:  Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Tetons, Bryce Canyon, and finally the Grand Canyon.  To stand on the south rim of the Grand Canyon is an awesome experience.  The canyon is a mile deep.  It is so deep you cannot see the Colorado River at the bottom of it.  The canyon is 18 miles across and over 200 miles long.  It is amazing to watch people approach the railing for the first time to view the canyon.  Many draw near in a hushed awe, as though they are entering a church.  They gaze out in silence with a dumbfounded look, as though it is just too big to believe, too immense to fathom!

The day Patty and I visited the south rim, I sat under a tree in a remote place at the edge of the precipice to try to take it all in myself.  About ¼ mile away, I could see one of the main lookouts with about 100 people standing there, all staring out.  What I could see, that they could not, was that at the edge, where they were standing, the cliff dropped down 800 feet.  For a long time I watched these little figures gazing out, trying to grasp this immensity before them, something too vast to take in, and too fascinating to walk away from.

Today you and I are those little figures standing at the edge of a more vast canyon.  And what we are gazing into is the immensity of Jesus’ teaching and vision which, like the Grand Canyon, is so vast that we cannot quite comprehend it, but still we try.  When Jesus taught about God, love and grace, about forgiveness and deep community, it felt to many who heard him that his teachings came from another world – a bigger world, a more spacious, expansive way of thinking and loving that exploded their conventional views.

And so, not surprisingly, the disciples and the people who first heard Jesus speak, often did not get what he was saying.  And oftentimes, we don’t get it either.  Jesus relentlessly pushed his disciples to understand God and the practice of love in bigger ways.  Jesus pushed people to think deeply and originally with his open-ended parables and stories.  He pushed people to see each other in new and more transcendent ways.  He pushed people to be transformed, to grow, to expand, to move beyond where they were emotionally and spiritually.  He pushed them to “be born again,” to live in a new and more expansive consciousness that he called “the kingdom of God” or the “kingdom of heaven.”

At the last supper, Jesus was pushing his disciples one last time to the edge of another vast canyon of revelation.  During their Seder meal, Jesus poured water into a basin and started washing the disciples’ feet, one by one.  When he got to Peter, Peter said, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”  Jesus said, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”  Peter shook his head and said, “You will never wash my feet!”

Wow, look at Peter blocking Jesus, saying “You will never wash my feet.”  What is he so afraid of?  What does he see that we don’t?   Peter is resisting the new frontier that Jesus is nudging him into.  It’s too intimate.  It’s too deep.  It’s too outside what Peter expects of Jesus and what he expects of himself.  Peter is terrified of the intimacy of Jesus stepping off his pedestal and tenderly washing Peter’s calloused feet.   Peter is terrified of the equality, the vulnerability, the ocean of love pouring out of Jesus’ soul.  This tenderness, this vulnerability, this intimacy, this mutuality with God and others, Peter was not ready for.

Look at what Jesus is trying to teach Peter.  Jesus is ushering him and the other disciples into a new kind of community, the beloved community, as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it.  This is a community that bypasses the world’s values and lives by different rules.  It is a “community of equals” where there is no first or last, no top dog or underdog, a foot- washing community in which people accept each other and bear each other’s burdens.

It is an inclusive community, where everyone off the street is welcomed to the banquet, even strangers, even people like Judas whose feet were lovingly washed just like everyone else’s, because everyone is a child of God, whether he or she be lost or found, Democrat or Republican, friend or foe, gay or straight or transgender.

This beloved community is a community of ministers, where every person in it is seen as a minister in his or her own way in one’s workplace, home, church or world.  The old paradigm of “the minister” being the head of the church and the rest of the congregation being a bunch of volunteers – that is over.  Now, everyone owns and deepens their own spiritual life, their own relationship with God, their own ministry efforts. In the new community, everyone participates, everyone prays, everyone ministers and works for justice, and there is no hierarchy of gifts or ministries. All gifts and ministries are cosmically important in God’s eyes, whether they be a widow’s gift of one penny, or a billionaire’s gift of 500 million, whether one be a kindergarten teacher or the president of the United States.

This is inspirational stuff, Christ’s vision of inclusive community, a community of equals, a community of ministers, a community of openness and grace and unconditional love that rejects no one, and affirms the value of all human beings, and therefore the diversity of cultures and personal perspectives.  This global embrace propels us to work for justice and peace and awakening.  This is the progressive Christian vision of community that propels First Churches here in Northhampton, and propels my good friend Todd, who you have called to be your pastor and vision-caster.  This is the vision of church that Jesus has taught you to pray for each week, saying, “Thy kingdom come … on earth…, as it is heaven.”

Yes, this is inspirational stuff, but it’s hard to appropriate.  It’s harder than we expected.   That’s what Peter found out.  That’s what most churches find out.  Most of us lack the inner spiritual maturity required to live this vision.  Peter finally allowed Jesus to wash his feet, but just a few hours later he was publicly denying even knowing Jesus.  Jesus’ call to personal transformation, openness, honest self-reflection, love and deep community, it’s all a little too vulnerable, a little too intimate, a little too risky.  Every once in awhile, we are inspired by the immensity of what our church could be.  But normally we just stumble along like Peter, and we don’t even realize we are blind or have stumbled off the path.  This pattern has repeated itself again and again for 2000 years of church history.

Churches get “sleepy” sometimes, they go unconscious, they “plateau” spiritually, they settle for the “status quo,” they don’t go deep enough into their spiritual lives, into their prayer lives, into the immensity of Jesus’ mind.  Their worship is good, but may not be life-changing.  Their business meetings may be efficient, but they are hierarchical and do not express the new heaven and new earth.  How does a church awaken from its slumber? How does a church become a place of transformation, a place of depth and healing?  How does a church become an inclusive “community of equals” that empowers each person to blossom, and use their God-given gifts?  What do we have to do?

We have to listen.  We have to listen deeply and lovingly to each other in our small groups and board meetings.  We have to be spacious and open, be willing to grow and stretch like new wineskins as Jesus said, be willing humbly to learn from perspectives that are not our own.  The fact is, when we listen to God, God’s view is always more expansive than our own.  When we walk with Christ, everyone becomes our teacher – ordinary folks, children, the lilies of the field, people of other cultures and religions, and people we cannot stand.  They all become our teachers when we listen for truth, when we listen for how God is speaking to us through them.

And we have to create “safe space” in our churches.  Any church that wants to affirm diversity must make “safe space” a top priority for every group, every worship service, every committee meeting.  Because if people don’t feel safe, they shut down, they stay superficial, they don’t express their souls, they cannot find their voice, they cannot think out loud about faith or their lives. They retreat into silence.  And if everyone is silent, if there is only one person in church who is talking about the spiritual journey or about how God works in our lives – which would be the paid pastor – that’s a picture of a dying church!

We all must express the voice of our souls if we’re going to empower each other!  And in a community of equals, discussion of contentious issues that eventually leads to truth, and decision-making that eventually leads to consensus happens ONLY if everyone participates and speaks.  Safe space is the thing that draws people out and allows diversity to flourish.  So it is imperative that progressive Christians ask themselves, “Do people experience me as a ‘safe person,’ a person who they can be real with, be honest with, share their dreams and sorrows and mistakes with, without a hint of judgment from me?”  How do you answer that question?

And we need to be “prophets of vulnerability” with others.  Sometimes, we need to be the first ones to speak about deeper things, about what is precious to us, about our own shadowy behaviors, about how we’re seeking to grow, what God is teaching us.  This is risky.  Some may think less of us.  But our vulnerability helps others to relax, and our brave example encourages them to find their voice, and emerge from their spiritual paralysis.

Lastly, we have to develop “eyes that see treasure” in ordinary people, just as Jesus did.  He saw transcendent treasure in corrupt tax collectors, in prostitutes, in Roman soldiers, in the poor who most people ignored. Jesus saw gifts that nobody else saw – that’s why people loved being with him and were changed by him.  So our practice must be, as the German Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said in the 1300’s, “to see as God sees, to feel as God feels, to know as God knows.”

To see the world through such eyes changes everything.  We see beauty everywhere, we fall in love with creation dozens of times each day, and we see the treasure in others that they themselves cannot see.  When we can speak of that treasure that we see in them, we become powerful advocates of who God built them to be, we help them believe in what they have to offer, we empower them to use their gifts for God.

These are some of the inner building blocks of deep Christlike community – such community cannot evolve here in First Churches or anywhere without them.  And more than anyone I know, Todd, your pastor, who you are about to install, knows these building blocks.  He lives them.  He practices them.  He knows how to encourage their development in others.

It is sobering to see how Peter recoiled repeatedly from the things Jesus taught.  We have to ask, “Are we doing any better than Peter did?”  Maybe not, but as we stumble along, all our efforts to love, be open, express God’s energy, are sacred, even if our efforts are sometimes flawed or out of focus.  Listen to this fable entitled “The Rabbi’s Gift.”  It reveals how we stumble into the beloved community.

“There once was a great monastic order that had fallen on hard times.  There was only the abbot and four monks left, all who were over seventy years of age.   In the deep woods surrounding the monastery, there was an old rabbi who lived in a hut.  The abbot decided to go and talk with the rabbi and see if he might be able to offer some helpful advice.

“The rabbi warmly welcomed the abbot.  “I know how it is,”  the rabbi commiserated.  “The spirit has gone out of the people.  It is the same in my town.  Almost nobody comes to the synagogue.”   So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together.  In leaving, the abbot again asked the rabbi, “Is there nothing you can tell me that would help me save my dying order.”   “No, I am sorry,”  the rabbi replied.  “I have no advice to give.  The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.” 

“Upon the abbot’s return, the other monks quizzed him, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”  “He couldn’t help,” said the abbot.  “The only thing he did say was something cryptic that I couldn’t understand.  He said, ‘The Messiah is one of you.’” 

“In the days and weeks that followed, the old monks pondered this, and they wondered whether there was any possible truth in what the rabbi said.  “The Messiah is one of us?” they thought to themselves.  “Could the rabbi possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery?  If so, which one?  Do you suppose it is the abbot?  He has been our leader for more than a generation.  Brother Thomas is a holy man, maybe it is he. 

“Certainly it could not be Brother Eldred who can be so crotchety at times.  But, actually come to think of it, he is almost always right.  What about Brother Philip?  No way.  Philip is so passive, a real nobody, he couldn’t be the Messiah.  But, he does have a gift of somehow always being there when you need him – maybe it is he!  Well, the rabbi certainly didn’t think it was I.  I’m just an ordinary person.  I’m not very eloquent or saintly.  But suppose I am the Messiah?  O God, not me!  I couldn’t be that much for you, could I?

“Now as the monks contemplated all of this, they quietly began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them actually might be the Messiah.  And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they even treated themselves with greater respect and kindness.   Occasionally people would visit the monastery or have a picnic lunch on the grounds.  They found themselves strangely attracted to the place – they sensed such extraordinary respect and love between the five monks.  Soon more and more people came to the monastery.  Younger men wanted to join as novices.  Within a few years the monastery was full and thriving again.”

Here is a story of the transcendence of love, a story of the creation of deep community that expresses the coming kingdom of God.  The five old monks just sort of stumbled into it when they started having extraordinary respect for each other, when they listened to each other as respectfully and as lovingly as they would to the Messiah.  And they did so even though some of them lacked insight or were crotchety at times.  What happened to them can happen to us.

After the trauma of the crucifixion, the risen Christ sought out Peter and said, “Peter, do you love me?” And Peter said, “Yes, Lord.”  Jesus replied, “Then feed my lambs.”  Jesus asked again, “Peter, do you love me?”  And Peter replied, “Yes, Lord.”  Jesus said, “Then take care of my sheep.”  Jesus asked a third time, “Peter, do you love me?”  And an exasperated Peter said, “Yes lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” “Then, feed my sheep,” said Jesus.  This was Jesus’ way of restoring Peter, of helping him refocus and get back on his feet after denying even knowing Jesus three times. The risen Christ is among us today to do the same thing for us.

Today, Jesus is looking into our faces, and he is saying. “Do you love me?”  And we say, “Yes, Lord, we really do.  And we really love the immensity and the beauty of your vision and your gospel, though we still cannot quite grasp it.”  And Jesus replies, “If you love me, then create safe space that is kind enough and spacious enough for everyone.”  Again he asks, “Do you love me?”  “Yes Lord.”  “Then listen deeply and lovingly to each other, listen to each other with extraordinary respect.”

“Do you love me?  Then develop eyes that see treasure in the ordinary people around you, and especially in those you disagree with.  Do you love me?  Then create relationships of equality and depth with each other, as I did with you.  Take care of each other, take care of this planet, accept each other, learn from each other, wash each other’s feet. 

“Be ‘prophets of vulnerability,’ be the first ones to love, the first ones to share your spiritual journeys and how God is calling you to grow, even if you don’t have the right words.  Do that, so that you give courage to others to do the same.  And be an advocate of everyone’s gifts, so that the light that I have planted in each soul will be expressed in your community.”|

You and Todd have already been building this kind of church with each other.  But now there are new steps to be taken.  You stand at the rim of a beautiful, limitless canyon.  Don’t ever stop gazing out and trying to grasp what you see there in the mind of Christ.

Noon today

Each week we pray at noon on Tuesdays in the hope of lessening violence in our world.  We pray in solidarity with victims of violence, we contemplate our personal and collective misuse of violence, and pray for courage and strength in the struggle for a just peace in our world.  Join us today and any Tuesday at First Churches.

Northampton CROP

Hunger Walk 2013

Walk Details
Location: Lyman Hall in First Churches (10 Center Street, Northampton)
Walk: Noon

Walk route map

For more information, please contact your CWS regional office.

Every dollar raised for our CROP Hunger Walk will be increased this year! The Feinstein Foundation (www.feinsteinfoundation.org) will divide $1 million among hunger-fighting agencies that raise funds during March and April. So the more funds we raise from March 1 to April 30, the more we’ll receive. Every dollar counts even more!

CROP Hunger Walks help children and families worldwide – and here in the U.S. – to have food for today, while building for a better tomorrow.  Our local efforts are making a huge difference… and you are part of it!

Grave Words

John 20:19-31,  Acts 5:27-32

I grew up Baptist and here is how we celebrated Easter.  Every year we sang “Up From the Grave He Arose,” and the key to enjoying the song was the motions that went with it.  We would sit in the pews and quietly sing:

Low in the grave he lay—Jesus, my Saviour,
Waiting the coming day—Jesus, my Lord.

Then we would robustly rise and sing the chorus:

Up from the grave he arose
With a mighty triumph o’er his foes.
He arose a victor from the dark domain,
And he lives forever with his saints to reign.
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

For each verse, we would sit back down and quietly sing again, and then rise and sing the chorus even louder each time, until the chandeliers were shaking by verse four.  Pastor Roy knew how to get us excited for Easter.  I loved this as a kid, but it perplexed me how quickly things went back to normal once the lilies were off the chancel.  If Easter is so triumphant, why wasn’t there more follow through?  We sing at Easter as if the Resurrection of Jesus is the axial moment of history where everything changes, and yet in real life it feels like Good Friday is always chasing us down.  What kind of victory and triumph are we celebrating at Easter, when life is often still so tough?  Easter seems to parallel winning an election, in that the difficulties and challenges really start once the campaign is over.

The disciples were certainly not in control of things and on top of the world after they encountered the Risen Christ. Sure, they rejoiced-but behind locked doors, for they were afraid of the religious leaders.  It was dangerous to preach and share their joy.  In our Acts reading, Peter is hauled back into court for preaching the resurrection, for the same kind of trial Jesus went through.  Soon Stephen, a deacon, is stoned to death for blaspheme.  The early church was periodically persecuted for three centuries, and when Christianity became triumphant in the culture of the Roman Empire, well, many scholars think that was the worst thing that happened to the church, because it became more like Rome, rather than converting the Roman Empire to Jesus’s way.  Neither our lives, nor the scriptures are as tidy as our orderly liturgical seasons of Advent, Lent, Easter and Pentecost.  My spiritual life is more like a New England spring, with sunshine and blossoms one minute and snow flurries in the very same day.  You have to be ready for anything.

I thought of this last Sunday, as we filled our Lenten cross with flowers, and turned a symbol of domination and cruelty into a sign of beauty and hope.  The organ music soared, the bells and chimes tolled, and at the same time tears flowed when we prayed for our brothers and sisters in Haiti, hearing the news that Bishop Villiers son had been kidnapped and killed.  Someone wrote me later and said they were tempted not to come to Easter service because it was hard to feel all the sadness and be present at a joyful celebration.  It made me wonder if that is why many stay away from church.  Some may wonder, are Christians nice but clueless, unable to bear the real pain in the world?

I was reminded how ministry began for me.  When I was ordained in 1990, I had served for a year as an Associate Pastor in Providence, Rhode Island.  The ceremony was a wonderful affirmation and I felt like I was finally all grown up!  Ordained!  After four years of college and three of seminary, thousands of hours of reading and paper writing, I was finally at my goal.  I was in the club and ready for all the privileges and respect of being a pastor.  As I came into work on Monday morning, the secretary asked if I had seen the paper yet.  No I hadn’t.  Did I get mentioned?  No, the headline was that a family from our church, were missing.  Husband, wife and eight year-old daughter had been kidnapped and were presumed dead, with a suspect in custody.  A terrible story unfolded.

Ernie, a member of my church, was trying to help his friend Chris get his commodities trading business off the ground, so he invested $5000 and said he could only lose half of it in this volatile kind of trading.  Chris managed to lose all of it.  When he couldn’t pay, Ernie filed a complaint with the SEC.  On one October day, all Chris’s troubles hit at once.   The SEC said his broker’s license was suspended, his wife left him, and his leased office furniture was repossessed.  He lost everything all at once.  He concocted a diabolical scheme of kidnapping Ernie’s family, having him withdraw his SEC complaint in writing, then murdered them and hid their bodies in the woods.  Chris was found driving Ernie’s car with bloodstains in the back seat, telling a bizarre story about mafia involvement.

What made this all more shocking was that Chris was highly involved in his community, a volunteer soccer coach, a youth group leader at the neighboring Congregational Church, (a seminary colleage was the Associate Pastor in the congregation and had worked closely with him.)  It was hard to get our minds around this.  I remember the Senior Pastor at the Barrington Church being quoted in the paper saying, “We thought we were safe here in Barrington from the evils of the city, but now evil has come among us.”  My first thought was, didn’t you know that evil can wear a suit and tie?

As I listened to members of the congregation pour out their grief and fears, they surprised me with their questions.  I expected people to say “Why?”  Why does God let such things happen?  But the most frequent question people voiced was this: “I wonder what evil I’m capable of doing?”  People were under great financial stress, the Rhode Island Savings and Loan insurance collapsed and one-third of the savings deposits suddenly disappeared.  It was a frightening time and people were living at the edge and fearful, and when a community-minded church goer like themselves went off the rails and murdered innocent people, it was shocking.  I did my best to reassure people, noting that if they were asking the question of themselves, they were probably OK.  It is the questions we don’t ask about ourselves that are the most dangerous.

The experience taught me much about how God works in community.  My role was to sit with the Sunday School children who had just lost their 8 year old friend.  I had no idea how to do this.  But a wise social worker in the congregation who worked with Hospice pulled me aside and gave me some ideas of how to handle the situation.    I said, “You know this better than I do, so why don’t  you do it.”  But she said, “You are their pastor and tell them stories on the steps every Sunday.  You are God’s representative to them.”   I also remember the Conference Minister, Dahler Hayes coming the memorial service, and he recited Psalm 46 from memory, eyes closed,

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.

This rooted me in a centuries long tradition of people getting through thousands of unbearable, unspeakable things, because they were embraced by the steadfast love of God within a church community.  It is the same scripture I recited on 9/11 as we waited in our Poughkeepsie sanctuary for the trains to come up from New York City that day to see if our loved one’s were safe, the same passage Martin Luther turned to when his life was under threat and he wrote “A Mighty Fortress is our God.”

One man stopped into my study and told me he had a story to share.  He had been close to Ernie, the father, and very angry, wanting the death penalty re-instated in Rhode Island for the murderer.  He told me he was driving home the previous evening, feeling tired at the end of a long day, when suddenly Ernie was sitting in the passenger seat, like an apparition of the dead.  The man was not frightened, but rather comforted, as Ernie spoke from beyond the grave to him, telling the man that everything would be OK.  He said, he wanted everyone to know that we spend too much of our lives worried about money and to remember what is truly important.  And he said life is too short not to forgive.  He had forgiven and life goes on.   And then he was gone.  The man asked me if I thought he was crazy, and I said “Of course you are, you are following Jesus.  But not because you had a vision.”  We prayed together and were filled with joy.  It wasn’t the kind of joy that shouts Hallelujah, but more like the reassuring joy of watching the sunrise, and knowing that it will come up again.  No matter what troubles and challenges every new day may bring, the sun will come up in the morning, whether we are awake to see it or not.  God’s steadfast love for us is like that.  Psalm 30, written centuries before Jesus, said “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”  That is the essence of an Easter faith.