In the Spirit of the Season

The Poor sent empty away

Hardships of the Hacienda Days

Bolivians struggle to recover from past, imagine a better future | By Donna Stokes

A high altitude grasslands where the Frasquía community graze their young alpacas and llamas. Mount Illampu is in the background with snowcapped peak.

Frasquia, Bolivia - (from Heifer International) Maxima Callisaya-Mamani sits wrapped in a wool blanket on the ground outside her small adobe home in Frasquía, a village in northwestern Bolivia. Near her sits her adult son, Ponciano Flores-Callisaya. Dark clouds descend from the towering snow-capped mountain Illampu in the late afternoon. “Soon it will snow,” Maxima says, cinching her blanket a bit tighter around her shoulders.

The Hacienda Days

Maxima talks about the hacienda days in Bolivia when large foreign agricultural firms moved in and made the indigenous people work the land as indentured servants.

“In the old days, we used to work from dawn to dusk,” she begins. “We had to carry fertilizer [manure] for the bosses of the hacienda. It was a lot of work for us. We were too tired. We had to do everything for ourselves from nighttime until dawn. We didn’t have time to do things for our families; we just had to work for the boss. Sometimes we didn’t have food ourselves.

“It was slavery. Sometimes the pay was to give you a tiny piece of land to grow your own food on, but it was basically bondage. Everyone told us the bosses would say, ‘you live on my land, so you’re obliged to work my land for me. I stole it from your forebears now you have to work on it.’ It was a feudal arrangement. During the hacienda times I had five sons and five daughters. Ponciano is the oldest.”

From Subservience into Poverty

Beginning in 1952, agrarian reform in Bolivia outlawed coerced labor and introduced a program returning property to the indigenous people, though much of the redistributed land was not as productive, Maxima says.

“My children have all set up around [Frasquía]. Now they’re living in poverty and need a lot of help to progress. We don’t have money to purchase fertilizers for our crops. … In the times of hacienda we didn’t use fertilizer and we had average production of [good-sized] potatoes. They were big and healthy. The earth was relatively new then and was plowed with oxen. We didn’t use chemical fertilizers. We used manure as fertilizer on that ground in order to produce better.

“Now that we produce less, though, we live poor,” Maxima says. “Although it’s our own land we are poor.”

Hope for Future Generations

Maxima’s son Ponciano explains the difficulty in raising crops at this altitude of nearly 14,000 feet. “We do subsistence-level agriculture,” he says. “I stay here because I have to stay here. I have nowhere else to go. Sometimes the rain and hail come and there are a lot of pests. It’s hard to make a living.”

Maxima agrees. “If we had to work, even with stones, we would work with stones. If there was any work to be done to earn more money we would do it.”

Ponciano talks about how Heifer alpacas and llamas have helped his family survive in this stark landscape by providing wool and cooking fuel, and on rare occasions, meat. “It’s safe,” he says of raising animals, “because often crops fail. The frost will kill them. Hail also falls and we don’t have much food for the family.” He concludes, “In this region the best kind of production option is animals.”

The gift of an alpaca helped Maxima and her son. But thousands of other families still live in desperate poverty. You can help.

Rejoice! (you brood of vipers)

This Sunday at St. David's is IG Sunday (IG = Intergenerational). One Sunday a month the kids give us a chance to see other ways of doing church.

What a great couple of texts from Zephaniah and Philippians we'll work with. A kind of Antiphonal Song between God and God's people. In Zephaniah we hear about this outrageous song--God rejoicing over us with singing. If we could film this and post it to Youtube it would surely go viral.

In Philippians we are the ones encouraged to rejoice, to rejoice in God. The ability to rejoice all the time is apparently made more likely by a practice of not worry at any time.

And surely there's some way of working in 'You brood of vipers!' Rejoice, you brood of vipers. Be quiet, you BOVs, so you can hear God singing joyfully to you! Don't worry, you BOVs, and peace will enfold you!

I think the kids will have fun with this. How about you?

Baruch's Uncertain Help

By the Rivers of Bablylon, by Lika Tov

Baruch was written before Jesus came. We read it this week because it asks such helpful Advent questions. What have we done to get in such a bind? Why is it so easy to forget hard lessons learned we swore to remember? How can we live faithfully now?

These questions and the particular history of Baruch's six chapters speak very well to our present reality and quandary. The book was probably written in the last centuries before the common era--although it purports to be written many centuries before by an eye witness to the fall of Jerusalem and the captivity in Babylon (by Baruch, Jeremiah's secretary and friend). It's not a particularly original work-- it mostly cribs from other Hebrew scriptures. It's part of 'our' bible, but it's not exactly sacred scripture--it's 'deutero- canonical,' kind of second team. At a time when good Christians are nostalgic for certainty, we get to read a book written not by whom nor for whom nor when it was claimed.

Yet all this is part of the book's gift to us. By taking what is given and doing his best to speak to present needs, this author models how people have always worked passionately, wisely, and creatively to hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

Baruch's answer to the above questions (What have we done to get in such a bind? Why is it so easy to forget the hard lessons learned we swore to remember? How can we live faithfully now?) is that returning again and again to Wisdom and scripture--to both what is written and remembered and what is experienced and discerned--trusting deeply in God's help--we continually discover that God is continually making for us a way.

Advent Thumbnail

Though the sun sets cold and sullen
and the moon comes dull and red,
we can all work toward a future
where the light of God still spreads.

A verse for Christ the King

"Attend neglected ones, the lost, the least;

the poor," Christ says, "approach on bending knee.

In these you find the majesty you seek,

and all you do for them you do for me."

MH, Songs for the Cycle

Christ the King

The always insightful Bill Loader ends his reflection on John 18.33-37 like this:

This subverted image of kingship, given us in the account of the crucifixion, belongs at the heart of Christian faith and community - and at the heart of God. In that sense it represents the kingdom, the kingship of God. Jesus’ ministry interprets his death and his death interprets his ministry. So this is not a passivity which surrenders, a kind of discipline which learns to find fulfilment in being a doormat through some brave self-persuasion that such behaviour is noble or blessed. It is the transforming compassion which gets on the donkey and rides into Jerusalem. It is an engaged spirituality which lives not from abject obedience to a heavenly king, but in common initiatives of creativity and hope which constitute the being of God.

It is so good to celebrate the feast of Christ the king in the context of the passion. Obsession with power so easily 'rescues' Jesus (and God) from all of this and makes the resurrection the point of return to power from the embarrassment or the stunt of incarnation. The military Jesus makes an appearance quite soon and people forget kingship is a broken metaphor which has legitimacy only in its subversion. Our task is no less today to proclaim the kingdom of God, a kingship not of this world - but here and now.

Loader's full commentary is here.

Sacred Reading

Nature is so replete with divine truth, it is silent concerning the fall of man and the wonder of Redeeming Love. Might she not have been made to speak as clearly and eloquently of these things as she now does of the character and attributes of God? It may be a bad symptom, but I will confess that I take more intense delight from reading the power and goodness of God from "the things which are made" than from the Bible. The two books, however, harmonize beautifully, and contain enough of divine truth for the study of all eternity.

John Muir, Letters to a Friend

The End of the World as We Know It

We're getting to the time of year when the readings get apocalyptic. Over the past few years these readings bring to mind Bart Ehrman--religion professor at UNC, once Evangelical, now agnostic--whom I heard several years ago on "Fresh Air" talking about how he lost his faith in part because of passages like these. Particularly ones in the Gospels.

He thinks Jesus expected the Apocalypse during or just after his life. And, because this didn't happen, it changes the way we relate to Jesus. Simply--how can Jesus be God Incarnate and be wrong? And perhaps more to the point, what use is Christianity if the savior it points to cannot save?

Even if Dr. Ehrman is right about Jesus's apocalypticism, and he may by wrong (this is a question that probably never will be answered with certainty), it says a lot more about the nature of certain ways of 'faithing' than it says about Jesus's faithfulness incarnating God.

I don't much like apocalypticism either--particularly when it comes with images of Jesus as King. Jesus seemed always to be running from those who would make him king. And always to be running toward bringing God's kingdom into reality through loving, courageous action.

Read the post below this, Michael Garrett's short bit of wisdom about the re-framing of questions. Perhaps our answers befuddle us because we need a bit more skill with our questions.

Reading for 7 Creation

Asking the right questions, instead of asking for the right answers, allows us to know the function rather than the effect of our choices. The following is a commonly posed question that reflects one’s outlook on life: “Is the glass half empty or half full?” This question presupposes that the answer can be only one of two possibilities. However, the Truth of Opposites, as I heard one elder put it, poses a different question altogether: “Is the glass the right size?” ...This is just one example of the way in which we limit ourselves through our perception of choice.

Walking on the Wind by Michael Tlanusta Garrett (A native of Cherokee)

The Widow of Zeraphath

Years of drought and crop failure and God 'commands' a widow to feed Elijah. How do you think that command came to her?

When Elijah speaks to her, she doesn't seem to know anything about it. Yet she takes the makings of what she expects to be her and her sons last meal and shares it.

Why? How do God's commands come? What constitutes a tipping point between self-protection and generosity?

How does that work?

Creation Cycle Reading

…All over the West, as in all of America, the old folkway of property as an absolute right is dying. Our mythology doesn’t work anymore.

We find ourselves weathering a rough winter of discontent, snared in the uncertainties of a transitional time and urgently yearning to inhabit a story that might bring sensible order to our lives—even as we know such a story can only evolve through an almost literally infinite series of recognitions of what, individually, we hold sacred. The liberties our people came seeking are more and more constrained, and here in the West, as everywhere, we hate it.

Simple as that. And we have to live with it. There is no more running away to territory. This is it, for most of us. We have no choice but to live in community. If we’re lucky we may discover a story that teaches us to abhor our old romance with conquest and possession.

--William Kittredge, Owning It All

A Poem for All Saints

Where I’m From
--George Ella Lyon

I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush,
the Dutch elm
whose long gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from perk-up and pipe down.
I’m from He restoreth my soul
with a cottontail lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.

I’m from Artemus and Billie’s branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments—
snapped before I budded—
leaf-fall from the family tree.

A (Broad) Song for All Saints

The roots of all things interweave
and grow so close together
that when we pull the crowding weed
the wheat is also severed.

The hummingbird that works its wings
to hover near a flower
will aid the wind that drives the cloud
that forms the distant shower.

Along with God we co-create
a vast, connecting story
and shape a common destiny
and trail a common glory.

The world is one community,
bound root and soul forever;
and if we are to grow at all,
we all must grow together.

Suggested tune: St. Columba

The Grace of the World

Wendell Berry gives rich gifts....

5 Creation

This we know...
All things are connected
like the blood
which unites one family. . . .

Whatever befalls the earth,
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life;
he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself.

Attributed to Chief Seattle

All Saints: Lazarus Unbound

We have a powerful story, this Sunday, of a human-being raised to life. At some point in our journey those of us who follow Jesus have, like Lazarus, been called out of a tomb. In one way and another life has been given fresh to us as only God can give it.

But emerging from the tomb, like Lazarus, we need a whole 'nother kind of help. Like him, we need to be unwrapped. Yards and yards of unwrapping. This is why they pay us Christians the big bucks---it's for the after-care, the miles and miles of unwinding.

Thank God for that burst of life that bears us. Thank God for the friends' hands that spool our bandages one turn, two turns, three turns....

All the saints raised up in this life. All those hands removing what keeps us each from light and life, breath and sight.

Another Voice

A Song for Bartimaeus

Sightless and useless in the eyes of many,

pushed to the edges of a people’s notice,

one yet has courage, and will not keep silent,

calling to Jesus.

Hearing the one cry raised above the many,

sensing a quick soul slowed by the unseeing,

bearing compassion and the hope of wholeness,

Jesus comes nearer.

Touched by God’s goodness, one among the many

gains understanding and the gift of vision,

and with a wide world bright and undiscovered,

one follows Jesus.

Suggested tune: Bickford

Exuberant Need

Loud people often make other people nervous. In this week's gospel, we have one loud person and a lot of nervous people.

JESUS, help ME! the blind beggar blares out.

Shhhhhhhh! lots of proper people insist.

Yet the people who remember and pass this story on to us seem, in hindsight at least, to apprecriate this man's over-the-top energy (look at all the 'big energy' words in these few sentences).

A question that seems really pregnant to me is, What is it about this blind man's exuberant need that is good news for the rest of us?

Religion Unprobed

Religious beliefs—especially those concerning the nature of powers that create and animate—become an effective part of ecological systems. They attract the power of will and channel the forces of labor toward purposive transformations. Religious rituals model relations with material life and transmit habits of practice and attitudes of mind to succeeding generations.

This is not simply to say that religious thoughts occasionally touch the world and leave traces that accumulate over time. The matter is the other way around. From the point of view of environmental studies, religious worldviews propel communities into the world with predispositions toward it because such religious worldviews are primordial, all-encompassing, and unique….

In the struggle to sustain the earth’s environment as viable for future generations, environmental studies has thus far left the role of religion unprobed. This contrasts starkly with the emphasis given, for example, the role of science and technology in threatening or sustaining the ecology. Ignorance of religion prevents environmental studies from achieving its goals, however, for though science and technology share many important features of human culture with religion, they leave unexplored essential wellsprings of human motivation and concern that shape the world as we know it. No understanding of the environment is adequate without a grasp of the religious life that constitutes the human societies which saturate the natural environment. --Lawrence E. Sullivan

The Holiness of Life

Our Contemporary lesson for the third week of the Creation Cycle is about servant leadership, too. We share life from a common Creator. We share life in common with everything created. Wholeness and holiness are utterly related in this shared (consciously or not) in-common-ness.

In the reading for Sunday Wendell Berry writes that we can't know the holiness of life if instead of serving it we 'diminish its possibility.'

"The Bible leaves no doubt at all about the sanctity of the act of world-making (creation), or of the world that was made, or of creaturely or bodily life in this world. We are holy creatures living among other holy creatures in a world that is holy. Some people know this, and some do not. Nobody, of course, knows it all the time…. "The sense of the holiness of life" is not compatible with an exploitive economy. You cannot know that life is holy if you are content to live from economic practices that daily destroy life and diminish its possibility."

Wendell Berry, Berry Behind the Pulpit

Servant Leadership as Creative Response

My friend Frazer Crocker sent the following R. S. Thomas translation of an anonymous Welsh folk stanza this morning. It reminds me how resilient people can be. The sentence following the stanza is Frazer's, too.

Let the stranger, if he will,
Have his way with the glen;
But give us to live
At the bright hem of God
In the heather, in the heather

The lines come from the time when the English bought up the best lowland farms, forcing the native Welsh farmers up into the hills to eke out a living.

Congruence

There's a nice congruence between the Gospel and the Creation Cycle reading for this Sunday. Both are below in earlier posts.

Mary Oliver asks, "Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Wouldn't we love to go back and ask that question of the rich young ruler. What would he say? An hour before he met Jesus? An hour after Jesus left? A year--or twenty years--later?

I don't think many of us would have gone with Jesus that day on the terms the rich young man was offered. But does that end it? Is it a one-shot deal?

It doesn't seem that way to me.

Ms. Oliver's question may feel bigger in our 20s when we're choosing a vocation, but it's a question we get to live into every day. Even though we've missed the mark one way and another every day up to this point.

What is it we'll do? Even though we probably won't ever sell all that we own, will we let go of what holds us back a little more today and a little more tomorrow? We'll never catch Jesus. And following his remarkable (daunting) path is as hard as ever. Nevertheless...

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day

Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

--Mary Oliver

Mark 10:17-3

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."

Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age--houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions--and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."

1 Creation

SACRAMENTALITY

St. David's observes the Creation Cycle, beginning St. Francis Day (Oct 4) and carrying through to the beginning of Advent. It's a gift to focus on the sacramentality of all God creates.

Our first reading highlights this beautifully:

All creation is a sacrament, a visible sign of the invisible presence. The sacramentality of the creation comes first of all from the fact that the Creator leaves an imprint on every creature, as an artist leaves something of himself or herself in every work. Each fragrant rose or singing bird, every cell or atom, bears some imprint of the divine creative love that brings it into being. Each individual, essentially related to God by its indelible imprint, exists in the divine presence and mediates the divine presence. This relationship to God gives each being its worth and dignity, its mystery. Because of this relationship, the entire universe and each creature in it can function as a sacrament or sign of God. All creation mediates and expresses something of the mystery of God to those who can read the signs.

--Charles Cummings, Eco-Spirituality

Not Against Us

Studs Terkel's favorite interview was with C. P. Ellis--a former Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan in Durham, NC. It's a nearly miraculous story of the changing of a heart--and an astonishing example of "Whoever is not against us is for us."

You can read portions of that interview here.

Getting Our Salt Back

Jesus said, "Anyone who causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better if a great millstone where hung around his neck and he was thrown into the sea." Lord have mercy.

In my twenties, before I had children myself, I used to watch parents with their children and think how much better I would be at this one day. Ha.

Later, during a really hard time as a parent myself, I realized love and fear were all mixed up together in me, body and soul. Wishing to protect my child I often intervened in unhelpful ways. Sometimes my 'cure' seemed as bad or worse than the 'disease'.

Jesus said that salt can get mixed up with other stuff and not really be salt anymore. Love often gets mixed up with fear and is really not love anymore. Good intentions can have bad results if we don't learn how to separate love from fear.

Salt is a good thing. It represents what is savory and preserving.

Jesus said everybody will be salted with fire.

One thing this can mean is that the very times when we're most confused or hurt or down on ourselves can become the beginning of the path we take back toward saltiness, toward wholeness. Pain signals that something is wrong and can easily become the motivation to make it right.

Fire (difficult times) can be how we get our salt back--ff we want it back badly enough.

Practical (very practical) Spiritualty

Simplicity by Anne Staub

"Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom."

We preachers could say simply that on Sunday and sit down. (Not that we will.)

When reading James I often imagine someone listening to the typical preacher and thinking Yada, yada, yada. Cut to the chase.

The Epistle of James certains does that--cuts to the chase. It asks us not to worry too much about what to believe but to get on with embodying what we value. And he suggests that we value gentleness and wisdom.

And then, simply, simply, get on with it.

Hear endeth the lesson.

New Life for a Crab

A crab doesn't exactly die in order to live. But molting (the soft-shell stage) must feel a lot like it.

A blue crab's internal self grows almost continuously. It's shell--not so much. The shell has to crack open for the crab to survive its own growth. A fascinating process.

A blue crab can't choose not to grow in order to survive. Humans have that choice--and it's one of our great conundrums.

One Life

Mary Oliver, whose birthday is Thursday of this week, rather famously asks, 'What will you do with your one wild and precious life?'

Jesus famously asks ,'What will it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit you life?'

I am asking at the beginning of the week, 'Do we hear those questions more as related or unrelated?'

Speaking Truth to Power

I always take special notice when Jesus speaks truth to power. It's a hard thing to do, and he does it consistently and wisely throughout his ministry--to his family, his neighbors, to scholars, to religious and political leaders. The world needs more folks who know how to do that.

But in this passage about a Gentile woman with the troubled daughter, Jesus is the power being spoken to. He has the power to heal, but it's not in his job description. However, it is in this mother's job description to intercede...and to intercede.

And what happens? Jesus makes a very significant exception--because this Gentile has both compassion and chutzpah.

Because of what she is able to do, what almost didn't happen does happen, and the world, in small ways and large, is changed.

Always Helpful

Bill Loader has, as usual, a good take on the gospel for this week.

Bread for Dogs

One of the most troubling narratives in the gospels comes up this Sunday:

Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-- the demon has left your daughter."

At the beginning of the week it's good to ask, What do we make of Jesus' apparently harsh interaction with this Gentile woman?

What Are the Chances...

...that Jesus said all these words?

"Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly."

My bet is that the list of all the 'nasty things' was added later by understandably well meaning folk trying to create a well-behaved community. I think Jesus would have left the burden on each listening 'heart' to figure out what was muddying up its own wellspring.

Righteous Rules Die Hard

"Why don't you wash your hands ceremonially before you eat?" The Pharisees ask Jesus. "You know, to show God you know how very, very dirty you are?"

Jesus told them they had a lot to learn about water...and about dirt.

One of the images I love involving water and Jesus is this statue in a courtyard in the Chester Cathedral--it's Jesus and the Samaritan woman. She's giving him water--or is it he who gives it to her? And how do we tell and is it even important?

What's important is water, pure living water that sustains life.

Jesus doesn't make it easy

Bill Loader, an excellent biblical scholar from Australia writes:

"The claim of the fourth gospel is that Israel’s religious heritage is not to be abandoned but to be owned as metaphor which bears witness to the truth."

Which is to say that what was so hard for Jews following Jesus was that at some point he becomes something akin to a new Torah, new Bible, new Law. Not another Torah, but an updated version. He has 'the words of eternal life.'

The Gospel of John is usually hard for me. It seems gnostic sometimes--full of specialized secret knowledge you have to be initiated into to understand (or appreciate!). It's helpful to think of this section of John's gospel in Bill Loader's terms--something we have truly to own as metaphor that bears witness to the truth.

it's still challenging--even to understand. And as we understand, we still have to deal with the realization that Jesus doesn't make it easy. Like in Chapter 3--with Nicodemus--we are called to be born again! And what does that mean for each of us? What crucial life-passage does that bear witness to? And can we stand the persistent discomfort and disorientation that comes to everybody who decides to stay with Jesus to find out?

12 Pentecost

Two phrases immeditately get my attention this week.

BEYOND THE RIVER

In Joshua, the children of Israel after centuries of exile in Egypt and 40 years in the desert are poised to enter the promised land. One of the things Joshua says to them is that what was important to them beyond the river (the river Jordan) will (must) change now. Life Here and the way life is lived Here will be different on this side of the Jordan.

How does 'Beyond the River' speak in our lives?

WORDS OF LIFE

In John, Jesus has baffled, challenged and offended most of the people, including many of the disciples. And they've left him. He asks the 12, Will you leave too? And Peter says, "Lord, where would we go? You have the words of life?"

What are "Words of Life" for each of us?

Twice Blessed

We have a Wisdom passage for one our lessons Sunday (see below).

Wisdom offers a double blessing. It is the knowledge we carefully save and pass on because we recognize meaningful life depends on it. And it is our ever-growing capacity to integrate wisdom from the past into life right now.

Calls to mind a snippet of an old Moody Blues song I heard through earphones lying on my dorm room floor: 'A beam of light will fill your head and you'll remember what's been said by all the wise men this world's ever known.' That's the first part (and it was part of the beginning of a conscious spiritual journey for me).

But what exactly is this capacity that allows us to integrate all those wise words--and how do we get better at it...? Mmmmm. Something to think about for Sunday.

Wisdom

Wisdom has built her house,
she has hewn her seven pillars.
She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,
she has also set her table.
She has sent out her servant girls, she calls
from the highest places in the town,
"You that are simple, turn in here!"
To those without sense she says,
"Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.Lay aside immaturity, and live,
and walk in the way of insight."
Proverbs 9.1-6

Zucchini?

Chad reminds us that Aug 8 is sneak some zucchini onto your neighbors porch day! Read more...

Elijah Fly-Over

In the OT lesson this week, Elijah eats the bread of angels and travels further than he thought possible. Bar-headed geese make an amazing journey too.

Helpful Critique of Rowan Williams Recent Statement

off the cuff:

Homosexuality and the Anglican debate

posted by The Editors

Off the cuff is a new feature at The Immanent Frame, in which we pose a question to a handful of leading thinkers and ask for a brief response. Our question today concerns the issue of homosexuality in debates about the Anglican Communion.

Read it here

The Grace of "Doubt"--Fr. Flynn's opening sermon

Last year, when President Kennedy was assassinated, who among us did not experience the most profound disorientation? Despair? Which way? What now? What do I say to my kids? What do I tell myself? It was a time of people sitting together, bound together by a common feeling of hopelessness. But think of that! Your BOND with your fellow being was your Despair. It was a public experience. It was awful, but we were in it together. How much worse is it then for the lone man, the lone woman, stricken by a private calamity?

‘No one knows I’m sick.’
‘No one knows I’ve lost my last real friend.’
‘No one knows I’ve done something wrong.’

Imagine the isolation. Now you see the world as through a window. On one side of the glass: happy, untroubled people, and on the other side: you.

I want to tell you a story. A cargo ship sank one night. It caught fire and went down. And only this one sailor survived. He found a lifeboat, rigged a sail…and being of a nautical discipline…turned his eyes to the Heavens and read the stars. He set a course for his home, and exhausted, fell asleep. Clouds rolled in. And for the next twenty nights, he could no longer see the stars. He thought he was on course, but there was no way to be certain. And as the days rolled on, and the sailor wasted away, he began to have doubts. Had he set his course right? Was he still going on towards his home? Or was he horribly lost… and doomed to a terrible death? No way to know. The message of the constellations - had he imagined it because of his desperate circumstance? Or had he seen truth once… and now had to hold on to it without further reassurance? There are those of you in church today who know exactly the crisis of faith I describe. And I want to say to you: DOUBT can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Watch the clip

A Different Place

'The Kingdom of Heaven is really a metaphor for a state of consciousness; it is not a place you go to, but a place you come from. It is a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place.' --Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus

Make every effort

We read this Sunday 'I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.'

Last week our diocesan delegates to General Convention met with us clergy to share their impressions of General Convention. One of the things they all seemed to agree on was that this convention was more unified, peaceful, and inspiring than the last two or three. They also said the reason for it was that most of those who disagree with the direction the church is headed have left!

It is terribly frustrating to try to row a boat in one direction when the rowers on the left are pulling and the rowers on the right are pushing. No matter what way the tiller is pointed, the boat goes in a circle.

So in a practical way it's great to be moving forward now. It's wonderful to feel the water slapping against the prow. And great work was done. Work of love, justice, and historic note.

And yet...we are diminished. Had we perhaps worked harder at prayer and listening and creative discernment we might all be moving forward in the same boat.

Perhaps. The odds were always long.

So, God bless those who've left. God give the rest of us grace not to be smug and wisdom to know how to keep rowing in the same direction.

This Sunday is IG!

Church is best as Big Tent!

Melba celebrates art

Sunday we'll cap a week of learning and fun with an intergenerational service. Kids will take part in music and readings, and much of their creative work of the week will be on display.

Newt tells a Jack Tale

Know what 'behavior' is?

Take the Quiz!
Then read the article.

3 Loaves?

In the booming economy of the early 20th century, American industries needed cheap labor. They looked to newly arrived immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe - Italy, Poland and other countries — to provide some of this labor. These immigrants had left behind depressed conditions in the "old country." They said they came to America "for bread" — pane to the Italians, chleb to the Poles.

But life in the United States was full of its own hardships. Some factory owners exploited the newcomers, paying them the lowest wages for the hardest jobs. They often used ethnic tensions to divide workers, paying some immigrant groups lower wages than others and threatening to replace workers of one nationality with workers of another. Executives hoped that creating such rivalries would prevent workers from fo

rming unions.

Since the 1800s, many textile cities had sprouted up in New England's green valleys. But Lawrence,

Massachusetts, reigned as queen of the milltowns. Almost a dozen textile factories lined its riverbanks, with more than 40,000 people laboring in the mills (Read More)

Vacation God School

It's Vacation God School this week at St. David's. The kids are immersed in God's creation through storytelling, arts & crafts, movement; and they're following a great program from Teaching Tolerance as well.

They and their families will be involved in Sunday's service too. A Vacation God Sunday. Don't miss it.

Text for 8 Pentecost, July 28, 2009

Ephesians 3:14-21 (All Lessons)

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

3 Pentecost

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

As we work together with Christ, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,

"At an acceptable time I have listened to you,

and on a day of salvation I have helped you."

See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see-- we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return-- I speak as to children-- open wide your hearts also.

Mark 4:35-41

When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, "Let us go across to the other side." And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

2 Pentecost

Mark 4:26-34

Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."

He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Trinity Sunday

John 3:1-17

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

"Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

Pentecost

Romans 8:22-27

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

7 Easter

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred twenty persons) and said, "Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus-- for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry. So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us-- one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection." So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, "Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place." And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.

5 Easter

John 15:1-8

Jesus said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples."

4 Easter

Sheep grazing, Rievaulx Abbey

John 10:11-18

Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away-- and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father."

3 Easter

Psalm 4 Page 587, BCP

Cum invocarem

1

Answer me when I call, O God, defender of my cause; *
you set me free when I am hard-pressed;
have mercy on me and hear my prayer.

2

"You mortals, how long will you dishonor my glory; *
how long will you worship dumb idols
and run after false gods?"

3

Know that the LORD does wonders for the faithful; *
when I call upon the LORD, he will hear me.

4

Tremble, then, and do not sin; *
speak to your heart in silence upon your bed.

5

Offer the appointed sacrifices *
and put your trust in the LORD.

6

Many are saying, "Oh, that we might see better times!" *
Lift up the light of your countenance upon us, O LORD.

7

You have put gladness in my heart, *
more than when grain and wine and oil increase.

8

I lie down in peace; at once I fall asleep; *
for only you, LORD, make me dwell in safety.

1 John 3:1-7

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

Luke 24:36b-48

While the disciples were telling how they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you-- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things."

Palm Sunday

Palm-Passion Sunday Lessons

5 Lent

Jeremiah 31:31-34

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt-- a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

John 12:20-33

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

"Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say-- `Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him." Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

2 Lent

Mark 8:31-38

Then Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

Last Epiphany

Mark 9:2-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

6 Epiphany

Naaman washes in the Jordan River,
12th century Germany.

2 Kings 5:1-14

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy." So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel."

He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy." When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me."

But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel." So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean." But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, `Wash, and be clean'?" So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

Mark 1:40-45

A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.