FIXED BY THE MAKER

ISAIAH 43; JOHN 11: 38-44; 12:1-3

4 10 2011

REV ANTHONY E ACHESON

In our first reading for today, from the book of Isaiah, the people of Israel are in need of some major fixing. The whole nation - its social, political, and religious system - has been broken beyond repair. This is the context of that passage I just read for you from Isaiah 43. This was the case because Israel has just been conquered by Babylon Empire. Most of its population had been taken away into exile. The temple had been largely destroyed. The king was being held captive. Families had been torn asunder. The whole system had been broken, and no amount of tweaking could patch things back together. Isaiah’s purpose in writing the passage we just heard was to convince the broken-down people of Israel to have faith in a truth larger that their immediate circumstances. He wanted to point them to the larger Divine Power that was available to help them deal with this dire situation. What Isaiah tells the exiled people of Israel in Babylon might be paraphrased like this: the only power that can fix you is the power that made you.

But if we read the fine print, we find that this redemption requires something. In one sense we might say that it requires a whole new world order. And what that means in its turn is that it required a whole different way of thinking and a whole different way of perceiving their reality and condition. The old world order that had resulted in the original creation of the world was being laid to waste, as it certainly was for the Israelites in Babylon, and we see much of the same happening to many corners of our world today. Think Japan. Think Libya and the rest of the Middle East. Think global warming. Think the American economy, or the federal budget. In both instances, the old way of doing things had resulted, or was resulting, in a desert where life could not be sustained.

But the God, who created this world as a garden, says, “There’s no tweaking this broken-down thing; for I am about to do a whole new thing. It will be an entirely new creation in which there will be water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

Now, fast forward, if you will, 5 or 6 hundred years. When we do that we find that just as in the Isaiah reading, the context of our Gospel lesson is also lifelessness. This time, however, it’s not a literal desert from which God’s children need to be rescued. In the story from John as we heard it today, Jesus steps right into the middle of the human dilemma as a whole. Just as the wasteland of the exile is the context for the words of hope spoken by the prophet Isaiah, this Lazarus story is the context that the word of God in Jesus brings forth. In this story Lazarus, who has just died, is the symbol of the lifeless desert of mortality that is awaiting the spring rain of hope.

The last century that all of us have lived through a substantial part of, has witnessed amazing strides in the ability of modern medicine to sustain human life by repairing parts, replacing worn out parts with still working used parts from similar models, even making new parts to replace the old ones. But despite those great strides, there are still certain things that can come only from the manufacturer. Life itself and the physical life of our own bodies can come only from the manufacturer. And if that is true of the body, how much more true is it about the human soul, the breath of life itself. That breath is ultimately a Divine breath. The Book of Genesis tells the story of how God created the human being out of the humus — the dirt — and breathed life into it. And when the breath of God entered him, her, us, the earth creature became a living being. Modern medicine can transplant livers, but it cannot replicate breath. It can create an artificial knee for a human being but it can’t make an artificial brain for us. That part comes only from God. When the breath leaves, life leaves. When the brain leaves viable life leaves.

This story of Jesus stepping into the tomb of Lazarus is a story I interpret symbolically. I see it as symbolizing Jesus’ power to restore true life, the life that is larger even than the physical life of the biological body. Jesus stands here as the living symbol and embodiment of the One who created Lazarus [and you and me] and of the power of that One to restore life by liberating him and us not only from death but from the fear of death.

In the symbolism of this story, the reference to the remaining stench of Lazarus’ tomb is included in the story, I believe, to provide dramatic contrast to the story immediately following the raising of Lazarus, in which the bottle of expensive perfume opened by Mary fills the air with an exquisite fragrance. With the skill of a poet and dramatist, John starts off by drawing our attention to the human dilemmas of death and despair - made starkly clear by the reference to the bad smell of a dead body; but then quickly turns our attention to the hope of the new life available again and again in the Divine - this time made starkly clear by the wonderful smell of a delicious perfume.

And, of course, it is this same Mary who brings the fragrant perfume again to place on Jesus before his death. And it is that very same Mary who shows up yet again in our story soon enough in the resurrection story of John 20, as she stands amid another fragrance, this time the sweet smell of the flowers in the garden outside Jesus’ tomb.  The writer of John’s gospel is clear to emphasize that that tomb was surrounded by a garden. [That garden carries another round of symbols as it echoes for us the Garden of Eden in which the Biblical story starts.] Mary is given the gift to enjoy that garden because of her devotion. Her devotion takes the form of tending Jesus body when he is alive with that fragrant perfume. And it takes the form of her tending his body after he is dead even in the tomb. And because of that depth of devotion she is the one to whom the gifts and mysteries of the resurrection garden are first opened.

The meanings of the resurrection are great mysteries. That is why, I believe, the scriptural stories of the resurrection differ from each other so much. Understanding the resurrection, and understanding what the Bible actually says about the resurrection can be very complex. But some parts of the story are very simple. Mary’s devotion is ultimately simple. Elsewhere in John’s gospel it says of Jesus that, having loved his disciples, he loved them to the end. The same is very much true of Mary. Having loved Jesus, she loved him to the end. And why was her devotion so great? It was so great because in Jesus she found real life; real, vital, powerful, enlivening, life-repairing life. In Jesus she found a window and on opening into what the Divine was all about, and she trusted her intuition that that same Divine power that generated us is the one thing that can repair us.

Mary could see that a radical new reality, and indeed the basis of a genuinely new world order, was showing forth in Jesus. This is a new world order based on the only true revolution available to human beings, which is turning to the power of love and allowing love to change and transform, and indeed resurrect us in part. This transformation by and to love takes place only if we allow there to be a restructuring our whole way of thinking, and our whole perception about the nature our lives and about the nature of our life-conditions; such that even when we are in captivity, whether it be in the captivity of the oppression known by the Hebrews in Babylon; or whether it be the captivity of the fear of harsh problem or circumstances; or whether it be the fear of our own decline and death; or whether it be the captivity of the weaknesses and limitations and dysfunctions of our own personalities; whether it be any or all of these things or any other troublesome things, in any and all such circumstances the good news of the gospels is that there can be a whole new restructuring of our ways of thinking to find God even in those circumstances and situations.

In this new order, we have made available to us a whole new form of nourishment and hope represented by this Easter season that we are about to enter into in a celebration that offers us a food that does not perish but has the capacity to sustain us through all circumstances, even through eternity. May this new food of eternity be with us as the delicious perfume of new and unending life as found in the living and resurrected Christ. Amen.

FAITH AND FEAR

MATTHEW 4:1-12

3 20 2011

REV ANTHONY E ACHESON

This passage from Matthew 4 is one of the preeminent passages in the New Testament associated with Lent. It tells us of the time prior to beginning his public life when Jesus goes to the wilderness of the desert. To my ear, this is most essentially a story about a man making a courageous, significant and proactive choice. This is the choice, first to fully confront, and, second, to fully master the contents and processes of his own mind under conditions of stress and distress.

Many people, of course, would question this line of interpretation by asserting that the text explicitly refers to Jesus being tempted by the Devil. To my mind, however, I would interpret these images of an actual Devil-entity as being metaphoric language used commonly in the culture of a past era. In that time period of nearly 2000 years ago, it was common to talk about the kind of major struggles described here as taking place between the self and an external being. I interpret that language as poetic and metaphoric language appropriate in that time period. My perspective is that we need to ask ourselves what lies under that language, and what would the language be in our time to describe the same kind of experience if we were to have it ourselves. So that’s why I describe this as a story of a man who went out to confront and master the seemingly devilish contents and processes of his own mind.

As Jesus did engage in that process of confrontation and mastery of difficult emotions and inner experiences, we might ask: how would we sum up the key element of what Jesus had to, first, confront and, then, master? I would say that at the heart and core, specifically, was his need to confront his own fear. At the heart and core was his need to confront certain specific fears that he had.

The initial form his fear took regarded the lack of food. This is the most obvious and basic level. The legendary football coach Vince Lombardi once said ‘Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Well, coward isn’t a word that I use very often, but as I listen behind that statement, I think what he is saying is that fatigue has a tendency to pressure us to give in to our anxieties. If any of us goes out into the wilderness; if we give up all your external props; if we go away from the house and bed we usually rest in; and most especially, if we stop eating the food we usually eat; and if we do all this for any extended period of time, there is a powerful fatigue that comes over our being. In that state of solitude, and of giving up most of our props, including the main prop we turn to several times a day, which is food; how do we feel? How would most of us respond emotionally and psychologically under those kinds of circumstances? For most of us, major deprivations of that kind would have triggered an enormous influx of fear. And major episodes of fear trigger unpredictable mental eruptions.

Consider these stories in today’s reading. In the first, the devil appears and says, ‘Look, you can turn these rocks into food.’ Then he comes again and says, ‘You can engage in risky behavior and test this faith you think you have in your all-powerful God.’ The devil then comes the third time and says, ‘You can also have all the wealth and political power in the world; everything you might desire.’  Those are the three forms these temptations take. I see these three temptations as expressions of what happens to the human psyche under circumstances of great deprivation. The deprivation leads to fear, and that fear almost always leads us to fantasies of avoidance. When fear comes up our human tendency is to put our minds to work imagining how we can avoid what we fear. So if we’re out in a wilderness, if we are near naked in our relation to our comfortable props and routines, our minds go toward what can restore us to comfort and remove the sources of our discomfort. And in the process, our minds go toward avoiding what we don’t want to do, or doing what wouldn’t be in our best interest.

When we look at the teachings of Jesus, the one that appears the most often, certainly numerically, is the theme of faith. Over and over we hear Jesus call us to have faith, to fear not; to be not afraid.  Those different phrases I just mentioned are all essentially variants on the same teaching because having faith means being free of fear. This is a theme that is repeated many times in Jesus’ teachings. “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid, you who believe in God believe also in me (John 14:27). That’s a teaching to have faith, to not to be afraid. When the risen Christ appears in the garden on Easter morning, and Mary Magdalene has her revelation that this is in fact risen Christ, even though he doesn’t physically resemble Jesus, what do we hear? The resurrection voice says ‘Don’t be afraid.’  We hear this theme restated constantly and consistently through the body of Christ’s teachings. I would suggest that one of the reasons that he could teach about non-fear or faith in a way that was so powerful to his hearers was that he was willing to do the spiritual work - as represented by this story we heard today - of fully confronting his own fear. That’s how I read this story.

It is significant that in many cases in the New Testament, and specifically in the teachings of Jesus, the teaching to have faith or to avoid fear is something presented to us as a command. The fact that it comes as a command carries the implication that we can choose to do it. I suggest that being free of fear and maintaining our choice to be fear-free - or, at least, to not allow fear to dominate us — is something that can become a decision in our lives. At the most fundamental level of our existence, being at peace is, or at least can be, a choice and decision that I can make about my being. At the deepest level of things, faith and freedom from fear is not essentially a statement of being free of fearful circumstance; it’s a statement about having the freedom to respond to fearful circumstances in a way other than being dominated by fear.

I said a moment ago that faith - or freedom from fear - can be a choice or a decision. I understand, of course, that that is not the way most of us experience our lives on a day to day basis. All of us humans have a deeply ingrained experience — which I would argue is based on a deeply ingrained belief — that the state of our being is largely determined by outer circumstances. This is a belief so deeply ingrained in us that it is virtually an a priori assumption. We believe deeply that our circumstances determine how we feel. We believe that circumstanced determine whether or not we’re happy and sad. Specifically we believe deeply that our circumstances determine whether or not we’re afraid. We believe these things thoroughly and deeply partly because it is a pervasive assumption of our culture, and those cultural influences have a major impact on the developmental level each of us has, or has not, reached. And for the vast majority of the people the vast majority of the time, that is simply the way reality is - this experience, this felt sense, this belief, that outer circumstances determine our mood and emotions, especially in the form we are discussing today, which has to do with whether or not we are afraid.

By contrast, I would suggest that the offering - the invitation, the availability and the resource - of what loosely might be called spirituality, or the spiritual life, is something different. The spiritual life invites us to engage in the process by which we acquire a set of spiritual skills. And one of the most important of those spiritual skills lies in learning to determine our inner state of experience by choosing the inner state of our consciousness. Spirituality involves learning to determine the state of our overall lives by learning how to determine our thoughts, attitudes and emotions. This includes learning the spiritual skill of increasingly being able to influence our fluctuations between fear and faith, and to do so more and more by choice, rather than by crisis, or by having our emotional states determined by external events. The more we can learn these skills of mastering our own minds and mental processes, the more what we are learning is how to set in motion a shift in the way we experience life. Life starts to look different to us.  Things change in such a way that the circumstances of our lives more and more are determined by what is going on in our minds rather than the more customary experience wherein the state of our minds and emotions is primarily determined by what is going on in our outer circumstances.  I believe a very deep and central part of the spiritual life has to do with learning how to set this shift in motion, whereby we put more and more focus on learning to control and master and choose the state of our own consciousness, the result of which is that more and more the outer circumstances in our lives bend to what is in our minds rather than our minds bending to what is going on in outer circumstances.

I want to qualify that immediately. I hope nobody goes away from here thinking we can somehow learn some kind of magic mental skills by which we are in complete control of our outer circumstances. It doesn’t work that way, of course. It doesn’t mean the circumstances of our lives are always enjoyable or fun; it doesn’t mean suffering goes away; it doesn’t mean we don’t die; it doesn’t mean we can get obtain or avoid everything our surface mind wants or seeks.

What I am suggesting, however, is that there is a fundamental shift made available to us in the promise of the spiritual approach to life. I do suggest that many great minds and spirits over the years - Christ, Socrates, Buddha - teach variants on this core insight: that the more we learn mastery of our own minds, the more life works for us. This is why I think Jesus makes statements such as: if you have all faith you can move mountains. This is, of course, metaphorical language. It does not refer to moving geological mountains. Why would we want or need to do that? But the metaphor expounds a deep, real, highly practical truth: the more we have faith, the more we can deal with what may seem like insurmountable problems. The more we have faith, the more we move, or clear away problems that may, in our minds, seem mountainous. The more we have faith, the more we can claim a mind that doesn’t become seized up by fear, or dominated by fear.  The more faith we are able to maintain, especially in difficult circumstance, the more we have the ability to be masters of our own lives, rather than mere responders to what befalls us.

On Friday night several of us heard Jon Kabat-Zinn speak at the University of Vermont. Kabat-Zinn is a molecular biologist who has become an expert studying the effects of the mind on people’s medical conditions. He created an approach now called MBSR - mindfulness based stress reduction. When he founded a clinic by that name in 1979, the idea that mental attitude would affect medical outcomes was a view held by only a small minority in Western medicine. Today, however, it’s a very pervasive understanding in Western medicine. Kabat-Zinn is one of the figures - along with Herbert Benson and others - who have helped usher in this profound shift in western medicine over the last 35 years. Today there is extensive tested and verified evidence that what goes on in the mind affects our health. One of the studies Jon Kabat-Zinn mentioned Friday was one that had to do with people treated for psoriasis. Ultra violet light is a treatment for psoriasis.  It’s a treatment that is medically accepted and proven. But they’ve done studies - replicated by other parties - that when you have two groups; one group just gets the ultraviolet light and another group gets the ultraviolet light, but is also trained in mind-body techniques; that group that uses both the light and the mental technique has a 400% better result rate. They are four times as likely to recover or recover 4 times as fast.

One of the things that struck me about Jon Kabat-Zinn’s talk, was the remarkable turn out of people who came to that talk. About 1,000 people came to the Ira Allen Chapel to hear that talk. Why is that? That large attendance indicates that people are hungry not just for spiritual experiences but for practical spiritual skills. That’s one of the reasons I emphasize having a stillness practice in our lives. I have a stillness practice in my life; meditation and prayer - I call it a stillness practice. Pretty close to every day I make the choice to make my body be still and to allow my mind to be still. I have learned that as we develop the skill of stillness - and that is a skill - what happens is that we can then learn to choose what we do with our mind. When we still our mind, we can learn whether or not to go into fear.

One way I have been working on this has to do with when I go to sleep at night. Often my mind goes through the many things I have to do the next day. What I’ve been able to do more and more — in no small part because I do have a stillness practice - has been to notice more of the process going on within me. I been noticing more the ways that I tighten up on the inside. What is that? It’s a form of fear. It’s a fear that I’m not going to be able to get the things on my list done. One of the things I’m learning, specifically, is that I can notice where that fear manifests in my body, and I can make a choice and say I’m going to relax that. I’m going to be at peace there.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27). The world doesn’t teach us that we can choose to be at peace. The world doesn’t teach us that we can choose to fear not. But a part of the reality of spirituality is that we can choose to be not afraid. I don’t have to be in anxiety about whether or not I’ll get everything done. I can let my mind go. I can say okay, I’ll come back to that. This is a very small example. But those are the places where we have the opportunity to learn. If we can learn to notice how we tighten up and where it happens in our bodies, then, increasingly, we can train ourselves not to tighten up in those ways. This is an invaluable secret that our mainstream religious teachings don’t often teach us, but it is a fact that every time we get afraid, that fear manifests in the body. That is a reality 100 percent of the time. This is not to say that fear does not have a mental and emotional component. It, of course, does. But when fear rises up in us, there is always a physical aspect, a physical component to it. When fear comes up, there is always a contraction that happens in the body, usually somewhere in the torso. And it is to our benefit and aid when we can learn to notice and work with that physical level of manifestation.

So we need to learn with small things. We need to learn to notice how our tensions and fears manifest themselves - both as mental events and also as physical events. We need to learn to work with both our minds and bodies and say: I’m going to lay down this fear, this worry, this concern, this project; I’m going to to say to myself, I’m going to turn the mind off now for the day; I’m going to release this physical tension or contraction now for today. It’s possible for human beings to do that. Taking a pill isn’t the only way to do it. Having a drink isn’t the only way to relax yourself. You can learn how to turn the mind off. You can learn how to know where your fear reactions happen in your body, and you can say okay, I’m going to let that go. And when you do that, those are spirit skills. Those are some examples about why I say that learning how to be not afraid, learning how to be free of fear, learning how to have faith, all those things close to the center of Jesus’ teachings, are instance of spiritual skills. They are examples of spiritual abilities we can learn how to do and to claim. Jesus was articulating a deep and powerful truth when he said that when you have faith you will be able to move mountains. His metaphor reminds us that as you and I learn how to have faith - how to be not afraid - the more we learn that, the things that seem like mountains in our lives can be moved. That happens not just through having a theoretical theological belief, it happens through learning to practice that state of consciousness.

And I would suggest that learning that is integrally related to having a stillness practice, where we take time every day to let our bodies and mind be still which is really a major technique for learning to move beyond our captivity to fear.  All our preoccupations, all our fears, all our worrying, all our woundedness - all these things keep generating, and regenerating our fear patterns. But if and as we can learn to bring our minds back to simply being here in this moment, then we can learn the profound power that comes from being able to choose not only our bodily states, but also our attitudes, thoughts and emotions. Part of the Good News is that we can choose to have faith; we can choose to be confident; we can choose to be optimistic; we can choose to see the good in all things. Those are all manifestations of faith; and, we can choose to be not afraid, which is another manifestation of having faith.

My hope and my prayer is that each of us will learn more about choosing that today, tomorrow, and through the rest of our lives. We pray this in the name of the living Christ. Amen.

THE LENGTHENING OF LENT

MATTHEW 6:24-34

3 13 2011

REV ANTHONY E ACHESON

Today we begin the season of Lent, traditionally a time when we are encouraged by the church to focus on our spiritual lives.

This is a period of religious history in which there is an increasing emphasis on the distinction between religion and spirituality. How are religion and spirituality different? In simple terms, spirituality has to do with the process that takes place inside us having to do with seeking and experiencing the spirit; whereas religion has to do with the human structures, institutions and traditions that we create to enhance and support that process.

I would suggest that although spirituality is the main event, we also need religion. There is no such thing as a purely individual or solitary spirituality. Any spirituality that we seek to enact fully alone is neither full nor mature. Spirituality does, to be sure, have an interior, solitary aspect, but it also relates to how we connect to the world around us. So spirituality can never be thought of as something fully solitary, and once we realize that, we realize that we need religion, or something analogous to it. We need organization, if only for buildings to meet in. We need traditions to transmit major teachings and truths over history. For most of us in this room, I would assume that the teachings of Jesus are very important. You and I wouldn’t know what the teachings of Jesus are, unless there had been an institution that would have passed those teachings down to us across the generations.

There’s almost no historical record of Jesus of Nazareth outside the Christian church. There are very, very few references even to his name even in secular history. Therefore, for any of us who value the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth - which is probably all of us by virtue of the fact that we are here in a church setting - we have access to those teachings because a religion exists that has transmitted them. In the early days, that meant many generations of faithful and committed monks, primarily, who were willing to sit and copy texts and translate texts and make them available for other people and for later generations.

So, we need structure, and we need some version of religion so we can have our spiritual experience and our spirituality. Having acknowledged that truth I suggest that one resource that our Christian religion makes to us, is the liturgical calendar. For those of you who have been attending services for the last couple of months, we’ve been emphasizing the season of Epiphany. That season is part of the structure of our religion. We have a liturgical calendar that has various seasons to it. Each season is there for a reason and conveys a particular meaning.

Today, we enter another season as we begin Lent. I want to invite us to use these weeks to come to reflect on the meanings of this season of Lent. I’d like to begin by examining the  word,’ Lent’ itself. The origin of this word can give us some significant cluee both about this season and about the spiritual life generally. The word Lent is a shortened version the Anglo-Saxon word “lengthen.” The word Lent referred originally to the time of years when the daylight was lengthening.  The choice of this word to refer to this season has a multilayered meaning. It refers, most literally and directly to the physical season of spring, when the daylight is lengthening; when the light is getting longer. But beneath this physical, seasonal dimension, there is also a metaphorical signal about the potential for the light of the Spirit, the light of Christ, the light of God, to be lengthen and expand, to grow greater within each of us. So “Lent” on one level is the time when the physical light gets longer. “Lent” on another level is a time when we have an opportunity to open ourselves to the light of the Spirit, to allow it to become larger and more expanded in our lives.

As we take note of the natural or seasonal dimension of the word, ‘Lent,’ we do well to also note that there are several aspects of our liturgical calendar based, in significant part, on natural phenomena. The lengthening of the light in spring is a natural phenomenon. In the season of Advent, we celebrate the coming of the light during a season when the amount of daily light is shrinking, at least in the northern hemisphere where Christianity first took root and developed. Then, at Christmas, we celebrate the arrival of the light. Why does Christmas happen right around December 21^st? It happens a little bit after Dec. 21^st because that’s the time of year when the daylight is minimal and when human beings are most aware of their need for light. We human beings are hugely dependent upon light. We need light for warmth; we need sunlight to grow crops for food; we need light to physically move in our surroundings. We are profoundly dependent upon light. So it’s not just the Lent season playing upon the importance of physical light; it’s also the Christmas season playing upon the importance of light, and the coming and going of light in the natural calendar.

Consider also the date of Easter. Two factors are at the forefront of the setting of this date. The first factor was that Easter came at the time of the Jewish Feast of the Passover. We hear that referred to all four Biblical gospels. Scholars now know that the Jewish feast of the Passover was itself a reworking of an ancient rite of fertility. This was the time of year when the crops were planted and the gods were invoked to take these seeds, which were buried and seemingly dead, and bring them back to new life in full fruitfulness. Passover, therefore, was woven around an originally agricultural ritual. Eventually that agricultural ritual was woven into the historical events associated with Passover. And then later, Passover was taken by Christianity and  woven into what we now think of as Easter.

What we can see here is that Lent has a connection to physical light and physical seasons. Christmas has a relation to physical light and physical seasons. Easter has a relationship to physical life and physical seasons. Then, to add one more layer, later in the Christian tradition when Christians were setting the date of Easter, they decided, again, to set that date in relationship to the physical seasons. They set the date of Easter by calculating the full moon. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. The date of Easer, then, has a highly direct correlation to the world of nature.

Taking this principle further, if you look at the teachings of Jesus, you see that they also are heavily correlated with the realm nature. Jesus, for example, said “be not anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself.” Then he said - I’m paraphrasing here - he said “do you want to know what that means? Let me give you some examples. He said consider the birds of the air; consider the lilies of the field. Look at the pattern here. First, Jesus gives a teaching, in this case about being free of anxiety for the future.  Then, he demonstrate the teaching by giving specific examples. And how does he do that? The examples he gives are from the world of nature. There are many instances of this in Jesus’ teaching. When, for example, he was asked how people could most fruitfully make use of His teachings, He said,  ”A certain man went out scattering seeds. Some of them fell on the road and some fell on rocky soil and some fell on thin soil and some fell on rich, fertile soil.” Here we see the same pattern. First he gave a teaching. Then he explained it by pointing to a process from nature. In another case, he was teaching about faith, encouraging people to have faith. Then he says, “Look at a small mustard seed; it looks tiny doesn’t it?  It appears weak and powerless. It looks insignificant. But look at that seed from a larger perspective. Consider what happens to it after it’s gone through its entire process. It becomes a large bush that even birds can come up and put their nests in. So we can see an ongoing pattern. Jesus would offer a teaching, and then would explain it, often by inviting his hearers to look more closely at what was already going on around them, in the realm of nature.

We look at Lent, and we see that the name Lent is related to a natural phenomenon. We see that the date and time of Christmas is related to a natural phenomenon. The date and time of both Passover and Easter is related to natural seasons, and the natural phenomenon of the cycles of the moon. What all of these things suggest is that when we approach our spirituality - which is what we began with this morning - that one of the most important resources we have for developing our spirituality, is to learn from, and to be rooted in, and to draw from spiritual principles, divine principles - Divine principles - as they are found in the world of nature.

I therefore encourage us today, first, to be mindful of the fundamental call of this season to step back and pause and remind ourselves of the centrality and importance of focusing on our spiritual lives; and of asking ourselves the question, how can we do that this Lent? It may mean coming to a study group such as we have taking place here at church this Lent. It may mean reading a new book; it may mean setting aside some time for prayer and meditation every day in our lives; it may mean rereading some of the gospel passages; it may mean something else. But the first invitation of Lent is to remind ourselves of the importance of focusing on our spiritual lives. And the second is to remind ourselves that the God we seek, the Divine principles we hunger for, are not far distant. They are not forces to be found outside this world, but rather are a Presence that is right here with us; that is ingrained in the flux and flow of life itself, including the immediacy of the physical natural world we find ourselves ensconced in.

And we ask, O Lord God, that as we prepare to go forth from this place that you would remind us that we are not human beings having occasional spiritual experiences, but that we are most fundamentally spiritual beings that are finding and expressing that spiritual power from, and then back into, into our natural human experience. We ask that you would help us know the importance of developing our spiritual selves and give us the eyes to see Your spiritual powers and Presence as already and work in the world we live in. We pray all these things in Christ’s holy name. Amen.

DEALING WITH JIHAD (PART 2)

SEPTEMBER 19, 2010

LUKE 9:46-56

REV ANTHONY E ACHESON, M.DIV

Today we continue to consider the question: how can and should Christians and Americans relate with the religion of Islam and people of Islam. This question carries an urgency especially in light of those aspects of Islam and its believers that are troublesome and violent.

Last week we focused on the importance of historical perspective [finding a perspective that is accurate and helpful.] Today I want to encourage us to look at some practical tools that help us to respond to this question in an effective and life affirming way, that can inform how we respond to the religion of Islam, particularly some of its most troublesome aspects. What actually works? What is helpful? What actually can work and be helpful in the long run? I’d like to suggest four things.

A good place to start lies in identifying and engaging in local proactive actions that are based on life-affirming spiritual principles. As we noted last week, the religion of Islam does have a troublesome and violent aspect to it. But this has also been true of various versions of Christianity and Judaism, both in the past and present. [And indeed, it is also very much true of the United States as a nation as it seeks to maintain its position as a global empire.] It is good, then, to begin by being clear that Islam is hardly the only entity in today’s world containing violent and dangerous elements. In the face of the endemic violence around us [both in its Islamic and non-Islamic forms] how can we as individuals and communities help provide a counterbalance? How can we and be agents for cooperation rather than confrontation; for non-violence rather than war.

One way we can do this is to engage is local, life-affirming action. A demonstration of this occurred in our own community just this past week. A member of this church, Sally Lonegren, called me mid-week and asked if I would co-facilitate a meeting in the church, to gather to read some of the Qur’an and to reflect upon some questions having to do with our relations with Islam. I was not able to directly participate at the event because Nancy and I had a long-standing commitment to out of town at the time this gathering was to take place. Sally, however, was willing to lead that effort on her own. From all reports it turned out to be a wonderful event. It was well attended. There were readings from the Qur’an. A reporter attended from a local newspaper and ran an article in the next edition of her paper. The event itself was helpful for some of those people to actually read some of the Qur’an. I read a few pages of the Qur’an in response to Sally’s initiative. I have not read the whole book by any means. I think I may go ahead and do that, partly in response to Sally’s initiative. In response to Sally’s initiative, I read the first few pages of the Qur’an, that’s obviously a very small sample. I found many beautiful and to me seemingly inspired statements; I also did a little additional reading from some verses Sonia Dunbar sent me which gave me a little more information about the Qur’an. That individual effort on the part of one of our members who organized the event, as well as others from our fellowship who attend,  had a positive effect both for the people who came and also for publicizing a loving, life-affirming, local, individual initiative. This was an example of a pro-active effort taken by a member of our community. That gathering helped, in effect, to de-demonize the Q’uran. And it also bore witness to the fact that there are people in our society who are willing to pick this book up and read it and make clear publicly that not all church people, not all Christians, not all Americans are people who want to burn that book. The event bore witness to the fact that there are religious people who want to understand it, not destroy it. It bore witness to the fact that not everybody wants to be in conflict with Muslims. Some among uswant to be in  dialogue and relationship with them. Something positive happened through that gathering, because an individual in our community took a local, individual, pro-active initiative that was successful and made a difference for the good..

There is a second practical resource that can help guide us in our relationship with the more troublesome aspects of Islam. And that is to look at history and see what has worked in history for dealing with troublesome historic movements. I offer one example from our own American history in our lifetime. After the Second World War, Soviet Communism appeared as a movement that was troublesome to many people both inside and outside its borders. Now, what worked in the way our society dealt with that troublesome aspect? I would suggest to you that what worked was an approach that is usually referred to as containment. Containment was the historical policy adopted by the United States government based on the work of Marshall, Kennan and Dean Acheson. Those three men were instrumental in creating a policy of containment. Containment worked.  We did not go to war with the Soviet Union directly. We did not engage in a major, direct, full-scale war with communism. The two wars we did engage in frontally - in Korea and Vietnam — did not work out well for us. The main policy was containment.

When we speak of containment, this may seem to be merely a political or strategic concept, but let’s go a little deeper into the concept of containment. I would argue that the real essence of containment lay in an approach the counseled proactive patience. We as a society were proactively patient with a profoundly troublesome social reality that manifested itself as the Communist movement. Over time, that troublesome system eventually ran out of speed. That troublesome system eventually fell of its own weight because it was constructed on untenable foundations. I believe that it is of major importance to us today to remember and realize that there was a fundamental wisdom in our society - we might say that there was a fundamentally wise decision was made in our society - that we would not attack that troublesome Communist system head on. We made a choice not to deal with the Communist threat by launching a third world war. We made a choice not to try to deal with that Communist threat head on primarily through violence. It is true that we flirted with violence, yes, in some ways. But we basically said with respect to dealing with the Soviet Union per se, we are going to be patient. We are going to let the situation play itself out over time. I would say that when we examine that approach carefully, we can see that that was only a political strategy that made sense - which it was. At a deeper level, it was a strategy what was based on two core, and fundamentally spiritual, virtue and values: the virtue of patience and the efficacy of non-violence. The policy of containment may have been a geo-political strategy, but it was also an incorporation of two profoundly powerful spiritual tools: patience and non-violence. I believe that just as patience as manifested in policy contained the cold war helped to solve the Communist threat in the post WW II era, so to are patience and non-violence the keys to dealing with the most troublesome elements of the violence we see in some segments of contemporary Islam.  So the strategy is the crucial element.

So we have seen the value, first, of individual local proactive effort. And we have seen, second, the importance of learning from what has worked in the past, in today’s example, the resource of patience as exemplified in the containment policy used in the Cold War.

And then, thirdly, I believe it is important that we who are Christians - and also we as a society - need to have the wisdom to support peaceful life-affirming elements within Islam itself. And in this climate that requires summoning political courage. There are peaceful life-affirming elements within Islam. Nancy and I know several people in the Brattleboro area who are Sufis. Sufism is a form of Islam. Anybody who has spent time with members of the Sufi community knows they are profoundly non-violent people. Many Sufis are pacifists. Sufis are Muslims who are profoundly non-violent.

The imam who was trying to create a cultural center in New York was a Sufi. We should be supporting people like him. We should be working to strengthening forms of Islam such as he represents. We should be doing everything in our power to enhance the elements in Islam that are life-affirming and loving. We should have the courage to stand and support peaceful, life-affirming elements within Islam, because that religion needs renewal. All religion need renewal, because all religions are life-form, and life-forms inherently need infusions of new life. Our  own Christian religion needs renewal also. The religion of Islam at the age of 1400, or so, needs reformation just as our religion needed reformation when it was 14, or so, centuries old [and just as our own Christian religion still needs reformation today.]

So we have some practical tools available to us. We have the tool of individual, local proactive action. We have the resource of opening ourselves to models and templates of examples that have worked in the past, including the successful model of containment in the Cold War period. We also have the tool of supporting peaceful life-affirming elements within the religion of Islam.

And then fourth, and finally - and by far most important- is to do your own inner work. The most important work for change and peace in the world is always the work we do within our own selves. The most important work for change and peace in the world is the work we do within our own beings, within our own minds, within our own emotions, within the zone of our own choices and … patterns and most specifically the most important work for change and peace in the world is the work we do within our own selves to deal with our own fear. All these troublesome behaviors in the world in Islam and Christianity and Middle Eastern countries, in the United States, they all spring out of fear.

The key work is always dealing with our own fear patterns, dealing with our own fear responses and becoming conscious of them, and dealing with our own conflictual behavior patterns, becoming conscious of them, and being willing to change ourselves basically, to find new more creative patterns of behavior that are both effective and life-affirming. There are many people in the world who think what’s really effective can’t be life-affirming - that you have to be tough; you have to be willing to enter into conflict; you have to be willing to fight.

Who are the most significant human beings who have lived in the last 100 years?  My list would have Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa - how many of them said violence is the answer? How many of them said conflict, attack is the answer. Those people I just mentioned all believed there is a spiritual power that was at the same time both effective and life-affirming, which is another way of saying that there was and is a spiritual power that is both effective and loving.

I want to close this morning with a wonderful story about three men, all of whom were attempting to deal with and solve troublesome realities in their lives, but did so in three very different ways. The first of these three men was seeking to deal with his life problems through drunkenness and self-indulgence. The second was seeking to deal with his life-problems through a diametrically opposite path, namely the highly disciplined life of Marshall arts … and the third, well, let’s listen to their story … this is a true story and was told through the view of the second of these three men, the practitioner of Marshall arts. He says it all happened in a train clanking through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy spring afternoon. Our car was comparatively empty. There were a few housewives with their kids in tow; some old folks going shopping. I gazed absently at the drab houses and dusty hedgerows.

At one station the doors opened, and suddenly the afternoon quiet was shattered by a man bellowing violent, incomprehensible curses. The man staggered into our car. He wore laborer’s clothingoand he was big, drunk and dirty. Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby. The blow sent her spinning into the laps of an elderlv couple. It was a miracle that the babv was unharmed.

Terrified, the couple jumped up and scrambled toward the other end of the car. The laborer aimed a kick at the retreating back of the old woman but missed as she scuttled to safety. This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole in the center of the car and tried to wrench it out of its stanchion. I could see that one of his hands was cut and bleeding The train lurched ahead, the passengers frozen with fear. I stood up.

I was young then, some twenty years ago, and in pretty good shape. I’d been putting in a solid eight hours of Aikido training nearly every day for the past three years. I liked to throw and grapple. I thought I was tough. The trouble was, my martial skill was untested in actual combat. As students of Aikido, we were not allowed to fight.

“Aikido, ” my-teacher had said again and again, “is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people, you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it.”

I listened to his words. I tried hard. I even went so far as to cross the street to avoid the chimpira, the pinball punks who lounged around the train stations. My forbearance exalted me. I felt both tough and holy. In my heart, however, I wanted an absolutely legitimate opportunity whereby I might save the innocent by destroying the guilty.

“This is it!” I said to myself as I got to my feet. “People are in danger. If I don’t do something fast people will probably get hurt.”

Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized a chance to focus his rage. “Aha!” he roared. “A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!”

I held on lightly to the commuter strap overhead and gave him a slow look of disgust and dismissal. I planned to take this turkey apart, but he had to make the first move. I wanted him mad, so I pursed my lips and blew him an insolent kiss.

“All right!” he hollered. “You’re gonna get a lesson.” He gathered himself for a rush at me.

A fraction of a second before he could move, someone shouted, “Hey!” It was earsplitting. I remember the strangely joyous, lilting quality of it-as though you and a friend had been searching dlligently for something, and he had suddenly stumbled upon it. “Hey!”

I wheeled to my left; the drunk spun to his right. We both stared down at a little, old Japanese man. He must have been well into his seventies, this tiny gentleman, sitting there immaculate in his kimono. He took no notice of me, but beamed delightedly at the laborer, as though he had a most important, most welcome secret to share.

“C’mere,” the old man said in an easy vernacular, beckoning to the drunk. “C’mere and talk with me.” He waved his hand lightly.

The big man followed, as if on a string. He planted his feet belligerently in front of the old gentleman, and roared above the clacking wheels, “Why the hell should I talk to you? The drunk now had his back to me. If his elbow moved so much as a millimeter, I’d drop him in his socks.

The old man continued to beam at the laborer. “What’cha been drinkin’?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with interest. “I been drinkin’ sake,” the laborer bellowed back, “and it’s none of your business!” Flecks of spittle spattered the old man.

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” the old man said, “absolutely wonderful! You see, l love sake too. Every night, me and my wife (she’s seventy-slx, you know), we warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench. We watch the sun go down and we look to see how our persimmon tree is doing.  My great-grandfatherplanted that tree, and we worry about whether it will recover from those ice storms we had last winter. Our tree has done better than I expected, though, especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil. It is gratifying to watch when we take our sake and go out to enjoy the evening even when it rains!” He looked up at the laborer, eyes twinkling

As he struggled to follow the old man’s conversation, the drunk’s face began to soften. His fists slowly unclenched. “Yeah,” he said. “I love persimmons, too. . .”"His voice trailed off.

“Yes,” said the old man smiling, “and I’m sure vou have a wond.erfu1 wife”

“No,” replied the laborer. “My wife died.” Very gently, swaying with the motion of the train, the big man began to sob. “I don’t got no wife, I don’t ,got no home, I don’t got no job. I’m so ashamed of myself.” Tears rolled down his cheeks; a spasm of despair rippled through his body.

Now it was my turn. Standing there in my well-scrubbed youthful innocence, my make-this-world-safe for-democracy righteousness, I suddenly felt dirtier than he was.

Then the-train arrived at my stop. As the doors opened, I heard the old man cluck sympathetically. “My my,” he said, “that is a difficult predicament, indeed. Sit down here and tell me about it.”

I turned my head for one last look. The laborer was sprawled on the seat, his head in the old man’s lap. The old man was softly stroking the filthy, matted hair.

As the train pulled away, I sat down on a bench What I had wanted to do with muscle had been accomplished with kind words . I had just seen Aikido tried in combat, and the essence of it was love.

I love that story as an example, first, of the power of non-violent love; and second, as an example of a man who had obviously done great work on his own self and being over the years to be able to not only see but learn to embody the power and efficacy of love over judgment and hostility, confrontation and attack.

In the long run, our ability to deal with violent movements, including the violent elements of Islam, will be most effective by recognizing that the real power to heal and move ourselves forward lies in the fundamentally spiritual powers of love, patience, non-violence and mutual respect. May our churches be instruments of help in teaching us the wisdom - and the superior practical effectiveness - of this approach.

And we ask this in the name of the living and ever-present Christ, the Prince of Peace. Amen.

DEALING WITH JIHAD (PART ONE)

SEPTEMBER 12, 2010

LUKE 9:46-56

REV ANTHONY E ACHESON, M.DIV

This week was the ninth anniversary of 9/11. That milestone highlighted two current news stories that have triggered some strong emotional reactions. The first was the plan by a church in Florida to burn the Koran publicly; a threat was canceled at the last hour. The second has been the groundswell of opposition to the possible construction of a Muslim cultural center near Ground Zero in New York.

These controversies raise important questions. For those of us who are Christians and Americans, how should we be relating to Islam and its people? Would we support destroying its holy books, or those of any religion? Should we oppose building a house of worship near a crime site simply because a small group of people connected to the religion in question, committed the crime in question? Most importantly, what principles can help guide us to intelligently ask and answer such questions? I want to address these matters both in today’s and next week’s sermons.

First, ‘How should those of us who happen to be Christians and Americans relate to Islam?’ There are two core principles we could begin with. The first is to make sure that whatever views we formulate, and whatever positions we hold is characterized by discernment; by the kind of discernment that can only come from coming into a state of perspective that is well-informed, comprehensive and accurate. Many things could contribute to this. And the one thing that I want to say about that today, and then I’ll come back and continue to deal with this theme next week is that I believe that it can be helpful for us when we look at the religion of Islam to at least in part look at it through the perspective of where the religion of Islam is in its overall development by comparison with how Christianity as a religion has developed throughout its history.

In this regard I want to draw one thing to your attention that can help us attain unto such perspective, but is often overlooked in our culture’s awareness of itself in relationship to the Muslim world. Consider these facts. The Prophet Mohammed, who founded Islam, died in the year 632, and although it’s impossible to pinpoint a single year in which we could say definitively that the religion of Islam started, we could say that the religion of Islam started somewhere in the zone of 630 CE [or AD] of the Common Era.  Consider also the historic age of the religion of Islam. It is now approximately 1,350 or 1400 years old.

Here is a question that can be helpful for us to ask. What was the state, or the condition, of the religion Christianity, taken as a whole, when it was approximately fourteen hundred years old? We could say that Christianity was approximately fourteen hundred years old in the vicinity of  the year 1400.  That is, of course, a general and approximate number. But it bears asking: where was Christianity in its development when it was the same age, approximately, that Islam is today?

As we consider that question, one thing we notice immediately is that Christianity was in the middle of series crusades it had undertaken. The crusades began in 1095. There were about fifteen or twenty crusades, depending on which historian you ask, or how these campaigns are calculated.  Nine out of the first ten crusades were directed specifically against Islam. They were motivated, in large part, by a belief in holy war, and were focused on repeated attempts to reclaim the holy land from Muslim occupiers who were considered to be infidels.

In the middle of that initial cluster of nine crusades against Islam there was another crusade that began in 1209 and was particularly brutal. That was the Albigensian Crusade in Southern France that was leveled against a religious sect referred to as the Cathers [often also called the Albigensians.]  Followers disagree as to how many people were massacred in that crusade but it was at least a half a million people who were killed. The Christian army, under orders from the Christian pope, followed a routine military policy of killing 100% of the population in towns it subdue. Those killings routinely included all women and children. Those campaign and those tactics were officially approved were officially condoned, and actually ordered, by the Christian leaders of that day.

The crusades lasted into the 1500’s. After the crusades against the holy land, there were a whole series of crusades against Eastern Europe and also up toward Scandinavia that we don’t remember that much. [The ones we are more likely to remember and the ones that were more highlighted in the history lessons I grew up with, were the ones against the Muslims.] The crusades, however, lasted well into the 1500’s.

As we ask ourselves, then, ‘What was the state and condition of Christianity when it was thirteen hundred or fourteen hundred years old; what was the state and condition of Christianity when it was the same approximate age that Islam is now, what do we find?  We find, first, that our religion was in the middle of the crusades. We find also that our religion was in the middle of the Inquisition.  The inquisition began in 1184. The Spanish inquisition began in 1478. The Spanish inquisition was heavily targeted against Jews. It was primarily an anti-Semitic campaign although there were other people victimized as well. This Inquisition began lose steam around the 1600’s, although it was not officially abolished until 1813. Like the crusades, this was a profoundly tragic event.  So if we ask ourselves the question where is Islam in its developmental arc today? And if we then also ask ourselves the parallel question where were we as Christians–where was our own Christian religion–when we were thirteen or fourteen hundred years old; when we ask that questions, we may notice that when our Christian religion was approximately the same age that Islam is now, we ourselves; our own Christian religion, was at a stage where it was also, correspondingly, highly violent and cruel. When Christianity was 1350 years old, as Islam is now, Christianity itself was practicing torture. When Christianity was at an analagous chronological age as Islam is now, Christianity was also using war and violence as an instrument of religion. It also considered such wars to be instances of holy war. The wars which were the Crusades, the torture of the Inquisition, the common killing of women, children and civilians in the name of doing God’s work - all of these approaches were essentially the same in kind as the phenomenon of jihad that we see coming from some portions of the Islamic world. Were we to travel back to the world of the Christian middle ages, we would no doubt find many kind and decent Christians who would have abhorred torture or the killing of civilians, or the attempt to attack Muslims by force. [Thomas Aquinas, the supreme theologian of the middle ages was deeply indebted to Arabs for their preservation of ancient Greek texts that he considered to be invaluable theological resources.] And in like manner, there are many millions Muslims today who are as horrified of Islamic violence and excesses, and the Christians of the crusade days would have been at the action of their leaders. [And, indeed, there are many kind and decent Christians of today who are equally grieved at the violent, conflictual ways of many prominent people today who adhere to Christian beliefs.] Put simply, the 1350 [or so] year old version that we see in the Christianity of the middle ages bears at least some similarities to the 1350 year old version of Islam that we are struggling to deal with today. To see that and acknowledge that gives us a measure of historical perspective. And it gives us an opportunity to give ourselves the gift of some welcome measure of humility. Those elements of our own historical record help us get a perspective that is larger than the way we ordinarily think. They add to our sense of discernment and perspective by encouraging us to include in our thinking questions about the development of religions generally; about the long-arc of unfolding or evolution of each religion, taken as a whole which, life other life forms, has ups and down, and travel through periods that may be relatively more or less healthy. This option to see our religions along their longer running developmental lines adds an additional angle of vision that can, specifically, help us see things more accurately with regard to where the religion of Islam is in its overall historic development. For those of us who are Christians, if we think that the violence and cruelty of our own middle ages period, can be viewed with some understand and compassion; and if we believe that our own earlier period of cruelty and violence has been, at least to some degree, outgrown; then perhaps from that perspective we can have both the compassion, as well as the ability to hold a long-term perspective that can result in the discernment to rein in our temptation to view Islam as an object of abhorrence and scorn, rather than seeing it more as a living life-form that is very much in process. Part of that life-form has indeed gone down a wrong road, just as Christianity has been a life-form that has gone down wrong roads at times during its history [and indeed has unhealthy manifestations even today.]

And that is why I believe that one potentially helpful tool is to be aware of the chronological age of Islam, as well as the chronological age of Christianity. This tool can help us to become more aware of what stage of its development Christianity had reached during the days of the crusades and the inquisition. And when we hold that awareness, it may give us the perspective to see that the way Islam is presenting itself today is one stage in a longer-term historical development. And, as such, it is not the last chapter or the final story in theoveral evolution of this religious tradition.

There is one additional perspective to consider under this umbrella of the importance of having a historical perspective, and one that is accurate. As we think about the Quran, the Holy book of Islam, we need to be aware of the wide range of material that is to be found in that text. There are many wonderful, high and sublime elements in that text. And yes, there are also some calls to violence in that book. But when we are able and willing to see from a wide perspective, we can remind ourselves that the Holy book that Christians and Jews look to also has a wide range of elements to it, including violent elements, and including calls to violence (along with its own riches and resources that are also high and sublime.) In Deuteronomy 7:2, for example, the voice of God is said to tell the Hebrews that when the land of Canaan is given to them, ‘then you must utterly destroy (the Canaanites)….and show them no mercy.’ Or, in Psalm 137, we find a similar passage in which the voice of God is represented as counseling the people to kill all the inhabitants and show no mercy, even to the point of bashing the heads of babies against the stones.

We do well to ask ourselves, does the presence of such verses in Deuteronomy of the Psalms invalidate our Bible?  Of course not. Do those verses invalidate the Christian religion or Judiasm?  Hardly.  Does the presence of such verses mean that the Bible, or the Christian religion, are an inherently violent phenomenon?  I don’t believe so.  What it means is that all scriptural traditions, alongside the elements of inspiration that they contain, are also, at least partly, humanly produced documents. Standing side by side with the inspiration that is present in these texts, we also find reflections of the attitudes, mores and beliefs of the specific cultures from which those texts emerged as they evolved over many centuries, What those texts do tell us is that in that period of history, people commonly believed that that was the kind of thing that a national or ethnic God might call ‘His’ people to do.  In those days, it was common for people to believe that God was on the side of a particular nation.  Many people then believed that God supported particular wars.  They believed that it was acceptable in fighting evil - or what they perceived to be evil — to go out and kill whole populations of people. Beliefs such as that were common in that period of history. And because such beliefs were common, they were placed into the mouth of God in writings that later centuries came to think of as ’scripture’.  And when that happened, later generations of people came along and began to say, ‘This is actually God’s will; or that this kind of thing might actually be God’s will today.’ We would do much better to recognize that those words are more accurately seen as reflecting what people believed was the will of God 2 or 3 thousand years ago. But we today don’t have to interpret it that way anymore. We have the right, as well as the scholarly interpretive tools, as well as more developed moral and cultural wisdom, to interpret different sections of the Bible as reflecting different realities. Some sections are highly inspired; and some reflect the cultural realities of the times in which they were written, and need, therefore, to be seen as being less inspired.

Going back to the question how do we relate to the religion of Islam when it comes to if they are going to establish a cultural center in New York City, or how we who may be Christians going to relate to Muslim scriptures, it helps to have a perspective. It helps to include in that perspective a willingness to perceive both honestly and with humility the imperfections and the complexities of our own tradition. In helps to see that many of the things that we do not like in the Islamic traditions have been present and may even continue in some ways to be present in our own tradition. And I believe that that perspective can, first, nourish our own humility; and, second, it can help us make decisions and to nurture attitudes within ourselves that are compassionate and wise and essentially non-conflictual.  It is my counsel that we look especially at what Jesus said, as we heard it in today’s passage, when the disciples wanted to come and take a conflictual stance toward the Samaritans.  He said no to them.  He said, ‘Walk on by.’ He said, ‘Let’s just continue on to the next town.’

So next week I want to continue to address some more thoughts about this subject and in the intervening time I ask that the Spirit of God would be guiding each of our ongoing reflections about how we relate to our own faith and how we relate our own faith to other faiths.  And I ask this is the name of the living Christ.

AMEN

WHO MADE ME A JUDGE

9 5 10

LUKE  12:13-21

ANTHONY E.ACHESON, M.DIV.

One of Jesus’ most frequent teaching techniques was the asking of questions. In today’s passage a man asks Jesus to take sides with him in a family dispute. The man asks Jesus to command an offending brother to share the family inheritance. Jesus responds with one of the most incisive of all his questions, ‘Who set me to be a judge or decider over you?’ And he follows that question with an admonition. ‘Take care,’ he says,  ‘and be on guard against all kinds of greed; for a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of his or her possessions.’ But if life doesn’t consist in what we can acquire or possess, what, then, does it consist in?

As a working minister, I hear a multitude of variations on the theme of that question. It is, of course, framed in varied and nuanced ways. But at root, most of the inquiries wend their way back to the same starting point: what makes for an authentic and satisfying life? Among people who seek my counsel, the number asking about whether they are going to heaven or hell is small. Very few come to my office to discuss the theory of evolution. Those questions, of course, have their rightful place. But when people do come in my office, the questions I hear most often have to do with meaning and with well-being. People want to talk about getting on top of their problems, and dealing with their challenges. They want to learn how to live down painful mistakes, or find workable ways to deal with devilishly demanding interactions with other people. They come wanting to deal with conflict in their relationships. They are seeking out ways of being creative in finding hope when all hope seems lost. And just like the man in today’s story, I’ve spent more than one hour of my life, both professionally and personally, dealing with questions of money and fairness, inheritance and anger.

When most people come to their minister or therapist asking such questions, they don’t need much persuasion to accept the wisdom we hear from Jesus in today’s story. Even before they start to speak, most of my counselees already ‘get it’ that the quality of life they are seeking does not lie in the abundance of their possessions. Meaning won’t be uncovered in what they have come to own or may have succeeded in storing up. Authentic and lasting satisfaction is not going to be attained in anything they might inherit. What they are seeking is very definitely not in the abundance of their possessions. And they already know it. So they ask their minister or therapist; they ask their support group, or partners or friends: where do I go from here? Where are the pathways to living my life in a way that feels good and right? What are my good and better options or choices? And how can I find courage or power to make them? I can sense that life doesn’t consist in the abundance of my possessions. But what does authentic life really consist of and how can I get there?

There are, of course, many things that bring well-being into our experience: moments in which we find our best selves; moments in which we find ourselves released from our fears, or from the quirks of our conditioned and habituated minds; moments in which we are able to live in harmony with those we love, with those we may have a hard time loving, and with the world around us. The good news is that those are freedoms and capacitiess that humans beings can and do experience. There are times when we do and can find and express our best selves. There are times we do and can love and forgive. There are numerous example of real and vital people who manage to do that; people who live largely hopeful and creative lives.

The people I know who live the most abundant lives are those who know how to draw on both spiritual resources and attitudinal resources that are beyond the limits of their own ingrained personality patterns; that are beyond the narrowness of their own chronic mental habits. The people I know who live the most abundant lives are the ones who know how to draw on the energy of the spiritual dimension of life. They are people who know how to draw on the energies of Being Itself, the energies of Reality Itself in its original, Divine form. These are people who know how to utilize the powers of faith - which could equally be called the power of confidence: confidence in Life Itself, or a sense of safety that we know and feel when we are connected to the Divine Power which is behind life and which is Life. These are people who know how to draw on a Spirit-based creativity. These are the company of those who have learned, and been willing to learn, the secret of making a connection with and - more importantly - maintaining a connection, with the higher spiritual power that has made them, and that is their actual moment to moment Life-Power.

A fundamental task of the church - a fundamental task of all spiritual communities - is to provide help and resources to enable people to make and maintain those spiritual connections. In order to do this successfully spiritual communities must work in a world - in a culture - filled to the gills with distractions that encourage people to do the opposite. We live in a culture filled with distractions that encourage people not to make spiritual connections; not to go deeply into spiritual experience; not to succeed in maintaining spiritual commitment. Our world and culture is filled with the desire for devices that keep us squarely focused on the superficial and immediately evident aspects of life, rather than on the deeper dimensions, rather than on the higher powers of things.

In today’s world, one prevalent vehicle of choice for self-distraction lies in the plethora of electronic screens and devices on which to keep our eyes fixed in order to keep our internal discomforts quiet for at least another moment or another day, if we can. In the Opus comic series, there is a telling strip. In the first panel we see a fallen teenager spread eagle on the sidewalk. Around him are a cluster of electronic devices, as well as distraught passers-by. Then a bulletin goes out about his condition. It says that the young man has been ‘un-entertained for 20 minutes.’ His iBook is dead, as well as his iPod. His Nano, Shuffle, and blackberry; are out of order; his Gameboy, instant messaging, and  musical phone, are all not working. Imagine that: being un-entertained for a full 20 minutes. The friends try to connect an archaic desktop computer, but the electrical cord is too short. In a final last ditch effort to revive him, they put a newspaper in front of him, but alas, the newspaper takes too much effort to actually hold up and read. In the final panel comes the somber news: we lost him.

We live in a culture in which we are hemorrhaging millions of people into mindlessness, as they retreat into private cocoons, mesmerized by a near infinite menu ofcultural distractions, including today’s endless emergence of novel electronics. We are witnessing a remarkable and astonishing phenomenon. Even in an economy with great remaining uncertainty, including among those still employed, the sales for consumer electronics keeps on growing, even though many who buy, can barely afford them. There is an old cliché that when the economy goes down, the one thing that does not go down is sales of beer and booze. We are witnessing a similar dynamic with today’s electronics. As the economy has gone down (or struggled to maintain itself), the sales of consumer electronics keeps going up. And just as with alcohol, the primary function of most of these devices is to satisfy our culture’s craving for distraction. Most of their use is deeply addictive. I don’t mean to suggest that these instruments have no use whatsoever. In and of themselves they are neutral. They can be useful tools on occasion. But the primary reason we have turned to them so massively lies in their novelty as a tool for addicted self-distraction. Being fixated on our electronic screens and games is essentially a way to avoid doing the harder but ultimately unavoidable labor of solving real problems both within our own lives and personalities, and within society as a whole. And if we are spending many hours daily monitoring our messages and gazing at internet images, we are also starving ourselves spiritually, because we are distracting ourselves from forging deeper connections with the spiritual world and its realities. When my generation came of age in the sixties, the distractions were compulsive sex and excessive drink and drugs. The electronic screens of today may seem highly new. But they are really just a new set of additions to an ever-old scroll of addictions. In the hands of wisdom and moderation they have their use and place. But in the hands of a sterile culture, they are largely a distraction in modern dress from what Jesus called, ‘the things that make for life.”

That harder but ultimately better endeavor is doing the serious labor of learning how to draw not primarily on electronic or technological energies, but on the energies of the spiritual dimension of reality. The more fruitful use of our mental attention lies in learning to make better use of our own inborn creativity; and learning to harness our own inborn, spiritually-based intelligence. It lies in the hard won richness of deep relationships that can only be forged by spending generous portions of our discretionary time together, face to face, and with deep self-revelation. And it lies in learning the secret of both making and sustaining a connection with, and awareness of, those higher spiritual energies that have generated our beings into existence, and into this world.

In a few moments we will receive communion. This sacrament symbolizes many things. One is the fundamental goodness of taking into our bodies small and appropriate portions of the physical goods of this world. But there is also a reminder here that even the physical blessing of the food of this table is, in the end, only a tool. This food - and all food — is a vehicle, a bridge, a transitional object, for helping connect us with something higher; something deeper and more alive; something more foundational, and real than the physical food itself. The visible tools and vehicles of the finite world are never the most important things in and of themselves. This is true of the small amounts of food in this sacrament just as it is equally true of the slightly larger portions of bread, meat and drink we consume in our more ordinary meals and snacks and feasts.  And the same is true of our human inventions - including the electronic tools we bring into our places of work and play. Wisdom sees them all as tools to be picked up and laid down. There is nothing wrong with picking them up. But there is something seriously wrong when we can’t put them down.

As Jesus, our wise teacher, reminds us in today’s passage: our life - our real, actual, authentic, vital, satisfying life - does not consist, and never has or will, in the abundance of our physical possessions and distractions. The most important thing is always finding and maintaining our connection to the invisible reality that stands behind and within all things. The most important thing is always that invisible,and fundamentally spiritual reality.

As we receive, then, the gifts of this table, as well as all of life’s good gifts; may they remind us of our God-given ability to prioritize accurately and clearly. And may we choose to surround ourselves more consistently with our truest boons and nourishments, in the knowing that they are not located for long in any finite beings, but only in the eternal power and divine essence of Being Itself.  Amen.

Sonia Dunbar

Greensboro UCC

August 29, 2010

Angels and Radical Hospitality

(Genesis 18.1-8 and Hebrews 12.14-15, 13.1-3, 5, 7-8)

As I read the lectionary passages for today, searching for the verses which would inspire me for this reflection, I kept returning to the passage in Hebrews and specifically to the first and second verses of Chapter 13:  “Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Disguised angels appear throughout the Bible, often looking no different from ordinary humans.  In the passage from Genesis for example, God and two angels look like three very ordinary men when they appear to Abraham and Sarah.  They could have been peasants, robbers, camel drivers, or any number of a host of outcasts from the dregs of that society.  Abraham has never seen these men before and he certainly does not know who they truly are.  But he greets them and treats them in a most remarkable manner.  As he sees the men from the doorway of his tent on a typical, scorching mid-day in the Middle Eastern dessert, he gets up, runs out to them, and bows deeply.  He asks that they grant him the honour of bringing them some of his precious stores of water to drink, of giving them an opportunity to wash their hot, achy feet and allowing them to rest next to his tent in the shade of a tree.  Although this offer may not stand out to us in our marvelously rich 21^st century culture, for its time and its circumstances, Abraham’s offer was nothing short of extravagant.  But when the three accept his offer, Abraham and Sarah go above and beyond that original offer by not simply providing them bread and water, but serving them specially made cakes from their best flour, plus meat, cheese and milk.  The hosts didn’t even join in the meal with the strangers; Abraham stood nearby, under a tree, ready to wait upon them.

What struck me in particular about this story was that there was nothing in the telling of it which could lead us to believe that Abraham treated these three men any differently from any other travelers who had previously crossed his path.

The more I meditated on these passages, the more brightly the spotlight glared on my personal failures and weaknesses.  So forgive me that this reflection is a bit of a confessional musing.

On the cusp of another church school year as we begin our efforts to keep - and improve - church school attendance, the demographics of this, my home church, came starkly into focus, a focus highlighted recently for me in realizing that at 47, I am often the baby of the choir.  So, where are the disguised angels who are our children?  Our youth?  For that matter, where are the disguised angels who are their parents?  I do not believe we will find the answers until we can first face these questions inspired by our scripture passages today:  How do we as a denomination, as a church, as a community, how do I as an individual, treat the disguised angels we come upon?  How do we and more important, how should we?

It seems clear from the Abraham story and the admonition in Hebrews that mere kindness isn’t sufficient.  Nor is generic hospitality.  We are seeking to entertain angels and angels are divine beings after all; so the kindness we show, the hospitality we embody should be appropriate for their status.  And what does that hospitality look like for a Christian church community in the 21^st century?

Robert Schnase, a United Methodist Bishop, provides some guidance to living these questions in his book, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. In his chapter entitled, “The Practice of Radical Hospitality,” Schnase either directly or indirectly helps to identify three necessary themes:  1) the identity of the host; 2) the identity of the recipient; and 3) constituent elements of a level of hospitality which he believes is necessary to save the Christian churches.

Who are the hosts?

So who is it who is supposed to provide the hospitality to the strangers on behalf of the church?

Did you notice that in the Genesis story Abraham didn’t designate the responsibility of playing host to anyone else, like, say, his pastor?  He and his family took on the responsibility and privilege of welcoming and comforting these people he did not know.  Similarly, in Hebrews, which was written to a Christian community as a whole, the verse admonishing us to give hospitality to strangers comes fast on the heels of the reminder to:  “Let mutual love continue.”

Who are we collectively then as the hosts to the world of angels who can grace our sacred community?  Schnase describes a congregation as “a school for love, the place where God’s Spirit forms us and the place where we learn to give love to and receive love from friends, neighbors, and strangers.”  Let me repeat that.  A congregation is, “a school for love, the place where God’s Spirit forms us and the place where we can learn to give love to and receive love from friends, neighbors and strangers.”

Notice that this definition doesn’t use the passive forms of the verbs.  We shouldn’t be content with just learning what love “is”, or making bullet-point lists of ways in which we can provide caring without getting our hands dirty.  Abraham didn’t just yell from the doorway, “Hey, I’ve got water; help yourself.”  He left his comfortable seat in the doorway of his own tent and ran out to stop the travelers, offer his gifts and then waited to see that they had all they wanted, irrespective of who they were.

None of us can be sure that we will never be the one to whom a divine messenger will appear.  None of us can be sure that we’re not the one whom God has made responsible for bringing the one most needy for divine love into this church-house.  WWJD - what would Jesus do?  That’s pretty trite these days, but the question remains valid.  Who would Jesus allow through our doors?  Who would Jesus actively invite in?  And how would Jesus treat her or him once here?

Who are the Angels?

What does an angel look like?  Several years ago the movie “Michael” came out and the part of the archangel was played by John Travolta.  In the first scene where Michael appears, Travolta is slogging down the stairs, unshaven, slovenly, wearing boxers, a sleeveless white T-shirt and black socks.  Certainly not the vision most of us have of a heavenly messenger from God.  What he provided and achieved though by the end of the film couldn’t leave anyone in doubt that they had been in the presence of divinity.

Now, once upon a time, on a Sunday morning not unlike this, in a little white church, in a little rural town, there appeared a strange man.  He smiled at the people, said “Hello,” laughed with the children and sat down in the back pew, immediately behind one of the distinguished elders of the church.

Worship services went along as they had for many Sundays, for many years, and the congregation settled comfortably into the pews as the pastor began her sermon.  Everything preceded as usual for several minutes, when suddenly, following a particularly salient point in the sermon, the strange man piped up from the back pew, “Amen!”  The members of the congregation shifted uncomfortably in their seats.  Some glanced out of the corners of their eyes at the man and many pursed their lips in annoyance.  The pastor thought, “Good!  This fellow is with me on this,” and she began speaking with just a bit more energy and conviction.

Another few minutes pass and the pastor arrives at another key lesson for the day.  The strange man’s right arm shoots up, fist raised, a broad grin on his face:  “Hallelujah!” he exclaims.  The congregation members now openly turn toward the man and glare at him.  Several exchange whispers of annoyance.  The distinguished elder sitting in front of the man fumes, while the pastor becomes more impassioned and inspired by the outburst, delivering her sermon with more zeal that she had felt in years.

Another few minutes, another core teaching and the pastor suddenly emphasizes her point by pounding her fist down on the lectern.  The congregation gasps.  The strange man jumps to his feet, both arms waving in the air, smiling eyes focused heavenward: “Praise the Lord!” he shouts.

The elder whirls around and confronts the stranger:  “Sir.  We do not ‘Praise the Lord’ in this church!”

Are there times when we have told angels disguised as strangers that they cannot “Praise the Lord” in our church?  I certainly hope not.  But, do we do it silently by expecting newcomers to act like us old-timers?  Do we silently tell our children that, by expecting them to be as silent as adults and sitting still for an hour on hard, wood benches?  What if our next angel walked through that door, with spiked blue hair, pierced eyebrows, combat boots with chains, laughing uproariously?  Would we silently ignore her and by our silence tell her she can’t “Praise the Lord” in our church?  Or would we introduce her to everyone, tell her choir practice starts at 8:30 on Sunday morning, offer her coffee and crackers after services, and invite her to bring her children and her friends to church next Sunday because all would be welcome?

If this woman walked through the door right now, how would we know she isn’t an angel?  How do you know I’m not?  If anyone has an ‘angel-o-meter’ on hand, I’d really love to see it.

So these two scripture passages are telling us that all of us are responsible for providing extravagant hospitality to everyone.  Tall order.  But now what is the hospitality which we are expected to share as 21^st century Christians?

What is Christian hospitality?

Schnase says that:  “Hospitality is a quality of spiritual initiative, the practice of an active and genuine love, a graciousness unaffected by self-interest, an opening of ourselves and our faith community to receive others.”   He doesn’t stop with that, however.  He also notes that Christian hospitality includes “a love that motivates members to openness and adaptability, a willingness to change behaviors in order to accommodate the needs and receive the talents of newcomers.”

Every newcomer changes us down to the core of our being, whether we desire it or not, whether we recognize it or not.  Close your eyes for a moment.  Take a deep breath in.  And exhale.  Now think of the people immediately surrounding you.  Take another deep breath in, but this time, don’t breathe in anything which was exhaled by the people around you.  Trying not to adapt to a stranger is like trying not to inhale air exhaled by someone else; eventually, even if you succeed, you die.

Spiritual initiative cannot take place in a single hour, once a week, in a particular building, surrounded by the same faces.  Jesus of Nazareth did not guide us to be who we have become, or even desire to be, by sequestering himself in temples and never challenging the traditions of his faith.  He was a radical thorn in the side of the religious status quo.  And he even changed his behavior to accommodate the needs and talents of others on occasion.  I believe that I owe it to myself, that we owe it to ourselves, that we owe it to our children, to look deeply and honestly into the mirror held aloft by these scripture passages and see where we can welcome others in a more Godly, more Christ-like manner.

As we look toward blessing this community for years well beyond our present day, as we prepare to welcome children back into the joy which can be experienced playing ‘Follow the Leader’ with Jesus, may we find angels everywhere and may we embrace them deeply.  With Wisdom, Compassion and Forgiveness, we humbly say, “Amen.”

THE ONE AND THE NINETY NINE

8 15 10

MATTHEW 18:1-14

ANTHONY E.ACHESON, M.DIV.

You and I live in a society in which great deal of attention and resources tend to get focused on those who are considered to be the best and the brightest among us. The dominant mindset of our culture says that everyone ought to be able to keep up; and if someone falls behind, it is probably because they have failed to take proper responsibility in some way for themselves. Yes, there may have been adverse cultural conditions at work, but there is a strong line of thinking in our culture that holds the belief that those left behind should have tried more strenuously, studied more diligently, worked more consistently, and perhaps even lived more righteously. Our culture tends pretty heavily toward saying that the present and the future belong to those who were born with talent and worked hard to develop it.

In today’s story from Matthew 18, however, Jesus is clearly focusing on those whose life has not been so smooth.  First he turns to a child who, according to the social norms of the day, did not have equal standing or significance to an adult. Jesus is referring symbolically here to any individual who is considered to be less than the standard set by the status quo. Jesus says to the dominant majority take care or be careful that you do not despise one of these little ones even if you think of them as being the least among you.

Then, to emphasize this priority for Jesus concerning the value of the least among us, Jesus gives this powerful illustration: If a shepherd has 100 sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountain and go in search of the one that went astray; and if he finds it, truly, I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. This illustration teaches us at least three things about Christian life and the life of the Christian community.

First, the illustration lifts up the need for every serious follower of Christ to take close and constant inventory of what is happening in his or her life, both on an interior level and also with respect to what is going on around us. In the illustration, how would the shepherd have known that one of his sheep had gone astray if he had not been taking constant inventory of his flock? Notice that the shepherd does not assume that all of the sheep are safely in the flock. Ninety-nine sheep could and would easily look like 100 sheep from a distance. The only way to detect the deficiency was for the shepherd to conduct a careful inventory. At a general cursory glance, our lives may look to be in order and may look to be OK, but take a closer look at the details of our daily lives. Take a closer look at our work performance and our behind-the-scenes behavior. Take a closer look at what really motivates and moves us to do the things that we do and say. Take a closer look at our chronic attitudes. We all know how to make a good presentation from a distance. But closer inspection and constant inventory helps to avoid the pitfalls of self-deception. And we shouldn’t always have to depend upon someone else to tell us where we are weak and wanting. We should be candid enough with ourselves that we can admit and address our own fallacies and flaws without getting defensive, making excuses, and always trying to lay blame elsewhere for our shortcomings on someone else. The best evaluation is a self-evaluation. Shakespeare has one of his characters say, “To thine own self be true and it follows as the night follows day that thout canst not then be false to any man.” The shepherd in this illustration of Jesus does not need anyone to tell him that something is missing. This shepherd conducts his own inventory, inspects his own work, and determines for himself that he is deficient by one sheep.

Then secondly, the illustration teaches us that everyone has equal value. The majority may rule, and whenever we talk about a majority we are talking about large numbers. But according to Jesus, in the kingdom of God, value is not defined by great numbers. If Jesus defined values by the greater numbers, the shepherd in the illustration never would have left 99 sheep to go after just one. The value system of heaven defies our mathematical assumptions. Why would the shepherd risk the security of the greater number to attend to the needs of just one? Most of us would not have done that because we are impressed and moved by large numbers. But in the eyes of heaven each and every individual is precious.

Legend has it that in a rural region of Kentucky during the early 1800s, a young school teacher showed up at a wooden-framed school house one Autumn morning ready to teach her class of students. At the beginning there were a handful of students, but after the first few days of school, she was disappointed that only one student showed up for class consistently. That one student, though, did come every day. After a while, the teacher got over her disappointment, and the teacher determined to just make the best of her one student. So she prepared to teach that one student like she was preparing to teach 50. She poured into that one student all of the knowledge and wisdom she had. She gave that one student the best that she could give. When the school year was complete and it was time for her one consistent pupil to move on, she was proud of her work but every now and then the thought crept in, ‘O, but I have only really helped one student. And that was the true. But something else was also true. That that one student’s name was Abraham Lincoln. There is a message right there in that one. Never underestimate the power of one. Don’t overlook any single one. Don’t take anyone for granted. Don’t ever assume that God cannot use and God cannot bless anyone.

Finally, this illustration teaches us that we should never give up on anybody or anything God has given us without a valiant effort. When the shepherd discovered that he was missing one sheep, in spite of all the negative odds against that one sheep’s survival, the shepherd made his trek back out into the wilderness searching for his one lost sheep. We could see him walking through the valley of the shadow of death, but he would not give up on that one lost sheep. We could see him climbing up some steep mountains, but he would not give up on that one lost sheep. We could see him wading through some rough waters, but he would not give up on that one lost sheep. We could see him looking over some steep cliffs, but would he give up on that one lost sheep? We could see the sun fading fast behind the boulders of the western horizon, but still the shepherd would not give up on that one lost sheep. He kept on searching until, finally, he sees something moving through the dark shadows of the night. Then, just before danger can strike, just before the wild predators can pounce, the shepherd takes his sheep up into his arms, hugs it gently, and carries it back to the safety of the fold with joy in his heart and praises on his lips.

In this life which we all have to make our way through, we can lose some precious things. Marriages can turn sour. Relationships get rocky. Our career plans can go belly-up. Our money can run out. Our friends can disappear. Our families can suffer heavy blows. But before we call it all up as a loss and completely give up on our loved ones, or on ourselves, or on our dreams and hopes, we should make sure we DON’T give up on whatever is precious, and we should make sure we don’t give up on our spiritual resources as a source of strength; we should make sure we do keep on searching and keep on reaching and keep on trying. We should never easily give up on any relationship without giving it all we’ve got. We should never let go of anything good, anything of value, without doing everything we can to hold on. We may have to go out of our own way in order to retrieve it. We may have to leave our comfort zones in order to get back that which the hand of heaven has given us. We may have to go sometimes the extra mile to accomplish our mission, but we will never know what the Divine hand has in store for us unless we keep on searching.

The different disciplines of the spiritual life exist for us to provide real access to the one who never gave up on us. May we also never give up on that Divine Spirit or on ourselves, or on life itself, so long as it is ours to live and breathe. And we pray and ask all this in the name of the living Christ. Amen.

WHAT IS THE CHURCH

8 22 10

John 17:1-11

ANTHONY ACHESON, M.DIV

Today’s reading from John 17 invites us to reflect on a core question: ‘What is the church, and what does it most need to keep itself healthy and strong?’

There are a variety of ways we customarily think about the church, aren’t there? We often refer to the church as a building, as when we may say, ‘I’m going over to the church,’ by which we mean we are going to physically enter a building like the one we’re in now. We also often conceptualize the church is as an organization , as when we may say, ‘I’m active in this church;’ or, ‘I’m a member of that church’s governing board.’ A third way we frequently refer to the church is as a sustained, historic tradition that is a carrier of specific teachings and doctrines across the centuries. So, if we ask, ‘What is the church?’ all of those concepts might provide elements of an answer. But none of them is sufficient or satisfying as an answer that is complete or definitive.

What is the church? Each of us, of course, brings our own thoughts and associations to that question. For me, I would point to three elements as the qualities closest to mf core of sense of what ‘church’ is. First, in its heart of hearts the church is a community. Second, and more specifically, the church is a community of people who are seeking spiritual reality and spiritual consciousness. And thirdly, the church is a community that is seeking to translate this spiritual reality and consciousness into forms of behavior, into patterns of right action that help to serve and heal the world. In traditional Christian language we might say that the defining marks of the church are Holy Spirit, fellowship and mission.  If we were to use Buddhist language we might say that spiritual community manifests when people commit themselves to the Buddha, sangha [community] and dharma [law or teaching.] What is the church? In its heart of hearts the church is a community of people doing the sacred work of seeking out the spirit, and activating and exercising the powers of that spiritual reality in the lives they lead in the world.

In John chapter 17 we heard the prayer for his movement that Jesus offers near the end of his life. Jesus prays for two main things on behalf of his followers–which also means potentially for you and for me.

The first and by far the most important is that we who are involved in the church be people who are growing in our consciousness and knowledge of spiritual reality and spiritual truth. In verses 1 through 3 Jesus says, “Father, the hour has now come. Glorify thy son as thy son has glorified thee….thou hast given him power to give eternal life over all flesh. (And what is eternal life?) This is eternal life–that they know Thee, the only true god.” What is eternal life? This is eternal life, that you be a person who is growing , and that I be a person who is growing in the knowledge and consciousness of God and of the spiritual dimension which stands behind life and permeates life and is our life. First and foremost, then, the church is the community of people seeking and finding spiritual consciousness and spiritual awareness.

Let’s talk for a moment about spiritual reality. The world of the spirit has a paradoxical element to it in that at one and the same time it is something that is completely invisible while at the same time also being radically real. One of the greatest gifts to humankind in recent centuries has been the astonishing growth in our awareness of unseen realities. Think, for example, of the lessons of Copernicus and Galileo at the dawn of the scientific age. These great scientists were able to “see” that the earth goes around the sun even though the opposite was what seemed obvious. Think of the pioneers of medicine who learned to “see” germs and microbes for the first time, even though they were seemingly nowhere to be seen. In their time many such scientists were ridiculed, reviled and even persecuted.  But they were right. Think also, more recently, of Einstein. Can anyone “see” relativity? Can anyone ’see,’ the interchangeability of energy and matter? No one can see any  of those things; certainly not with the immediate perceptions of our five senses. But all of those non-visible things are nonetheless acutely real.

Consider the fact that at this very moment, to use just one more example, this beautiful room that we are worshiping in is filled with many things that we can’t see. At this very moment this beautiful room that we are worshiping in is filled with oxygen and carbon dioxide and other gases that we depend on for life. But can’t see them. This room is also filled with completely invisible television waves, radio waves, and microwaves. This very room, yes, even this room at this moment filled with electromagnetic waves of energy that constitute a whole host of Tweets and texts, emails and family photos. Yesterday afternoon Emma and Nancy and I went on a hike up the mountain on the west side of Lake Willoughby, and when we got to the top, one of our friends pulled out his Blackberry, saw that he was in range for reception and proceeded to check his messages. Whether you would actually want to do that at the top of a magnificent mountain with such a breathtaking view is another question. But even there, out in the wilds of nature, some of those very same electronic pulses I mentioned earlier, though quite invisible to our senses, are nonetheless quite real and quite present. But although none of us can see or hear that level of reality with our five senses, if we do happen to have our Blackberry handy, or a radio or tv or computer, those tools to plug us right in so that we can tune in and translate the reality of those unseen telecommunications, which are all literally right here, down into a form that you and I could see and hear. In our contemporary world, science is often seen as being an enemy or opponent of spirituality. I hold a very different view. I see science and spirituality as being complementary partners. The technological examples I just gave you reflect one arena where that partnership is potentially evident, because one very important thing that both science and spirituality have in common is that they both point us in the direction of recognizing the reality of unseen and invisible things. Both science and spirituality, each in their own way, are signposts and reminders to us of one crucially important fact about life: namely, that many things that are real are invisible; and that there are many invisible things that are highly real. Science and spirituality both remind us of what I like to call the reality of invisibility.

Just as those omnipresent electro-magnetic waves that carry our emails and tweets and text messages as  I mentioned a moment ago are all very real and are all right here, so is the spiritual world also right here and very real. And this brings us back to our original question: what is the church? The purpose of the church as I understand it is also to give us the spiritual tools–analogous to those electronic tools of our Blackberry’s and iPhones sand computers we spoke of a moment ago–to translate the patterns–or, if you will, the signals–of spiritual reality and power and truth down into human consciousness. The purpose of the church is to help us develop the spiritual tools to translate those invisible spiritual realities into forms and feelings, insights and experiences, and patterns of behavior, that you and I can know and make use of in our day to day personal lives.

And how does that happen? Well-there are  many sides to that, of course, and   clearly more than we can cover comprehensively here today. But one thing that is clear….and this is one thing I can and do want to focus on today…..and that one thing that is emphasized in our scripture reading from John 17 this morning. And this is that the spiritual search we are all engaged upon is a journey we take together and not alone. All of which is another way of saying that our spiritual search is a journey we take in community. In John 17 Jesus starts by praying that we all might know our Source, which is the Divine power behind life. But then Jesus goes on to pray  that we might all be one. And he doesn’t simply pray that we might be one. More specifically, he prays, as we hear it in verse 21, “May they all be one in order that the world may believe.” We need to be one because it is precisely through our oneness; it is precisely through our community, and indeed it is precisely through our loving of one another, that we are enabled to find that knowledge of God and of spirit that Jesus so fervently prays for and for which we so fervently thirst.

I want to close this morning with a story that has a lot to say about searching for spiritual life together. It’s called the Rabbi’s Gift. It has been told, among others, by Dr. M. Scott Peck in his book, “A Different Drum.”  This story tells us that once upon a time there was a monastery that had fallen on hard times such that there were only five old monks left.

One day the monastery’s abbot went to visit a rabbi on a retreat nearby. The abbot was agonizing over the imminent death of his order, and he asked the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer some advice that might save his order. The rabbi shook his head, and said, “No, my friend, I cannot. But I know how it is. The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same with us.”

Just before leaving, the abbot pressed him again, “Is there nothing you can tell me, dear rabbi, no piece of advice that can save my order?”

” No,” said the rabbi, “I have no advice. The only small thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.  But otherwise I have no help.”

When the abbot came home, he told his fellow monks that the rabbi could not help. “The only thing he mentioned,” he said, “Was something very cryptic just as I was leaving. he said that the Messiah was one of us. But I have no idea what he meant.”

In the days and months that followed, the old monks pondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words. The Messiah is one of us? Did he mean the abbot? Yes. If he meant anyone here, he must have meant Father abbot. He’s led us, and very well, for many years. But then again, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of great light.

Certainly he could mot have meant Eldred. Eldred gets crotchety at times. But–come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Eldred is virtually always right. Often very right!  Maybe the rabbi did mean Eldred.

But surely, not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive. A real nobody. But then again–even with Phillip–almost mysteriously, he somehow has a gift for always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the  Messiah.

Of course, the rabbi did not mean me. I’m just an average person. But–supposing he did? Suppose I was the Messiah. It couldn’t be me, Lord, could it?

As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with great respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the messiah, they began to treat their own selves with extraordinary respect.

The forest in which they lived was exquisite. And it happened that people often came to visit the monastery to picnic on its lawn, to wander through its paths and even now and then enter the old chapel to pray. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks, and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more and more frequently to picnic, play, and pray. They began to bring their friends, and their friends brought their friends.

And then it happened that some of the younger men started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another.  And another. And so it was that within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.

And my prayer and desire is that as it was for them, and as it was for the forebears of our faith so might it be for all of us for many rich years to come. Amen.

KEEPING FAITH

8 8 10

2 TIMOTHY 4: 1-2,6-8,16-18

ANTHONY ACHESON, M.DIV

This past Tuesday I was having lunch with our local clergy group and we welcomed for the first time a new colleague in this area, The Rev Laura Cadmus who is the new UCC pastor in Cabot. During that conversation there was some talk about where Laura had come from and how she had gotten here, conversation which included talk about her interview process with the folks from Cabot. That conversation reminded me of the story of the clergyperson who was reported to have written a letter to a prospective search committee. The letter read:  “Dear Friends, I understand your church is looking for a pastor and I want to apply. I am generally considered to be a good preacher. I have pretty good leadership skills. I have also found time to do some writing on the side. I am now in my mid-fifties. And even though my health has had one or two ups and downs, I still do have quite a bit of energy, and have managed to get enough work done to please my congregations, or at least, most of the time anyway. As for references– Well, it’s true that recently I haven’t served in any one place more than three years, and the churches where I have preached have generally been small. There HAVE been a couple of places where there’s been some controversy, I will acknowledge. But despite all this, I feel confident I can bring vitality to your church. And I respectfully ask that you consider my application.”

When the search committee received this letter they had mixed feelings about whether or not they should interview someone with this kind of background. He obviously had some ability but was now, as he himself admitted, well into his fifties and had a history of stirring things up and taking some clearly controversial positions. “So, what was that man’s name, again?” one member of the committee was heard to ask?  “I’m not completely sure,” said the chairman of the committee, looking at the application. “He only used one name when he signed it. At the bottom of the letter it simply says, ‘Paul’.”

A few moments ago we heard some words traditionally attributed to the Apostle Paul. When you think about the ministry, it is interesting to wonder how well some of the early church’s leaders would make it through the ministerial interview process people go through today. Theirs was a rough and dangerous world, which tended to produce people who themselves were rough and somewhat hard-edged. It was a dangerous terrain that the Apostle Paul faced as he traveled for 20 years and thousands of miles all over the Roman world.

In this New Testament reading from Timothy for today, we hear about this same traveling Paul, and we hear specifically about how his end appeared to be drawing near. He was under house arrest in Rome. He was under no illusion about his fate. So it was that he took pen in hand and wrote a parting letter to his friend and close associate, Timothy of Ephesus. He writes in words that have become timeless and immortal: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” He is telling us that, in his own eyes at least, he looks back on a life that has been basically well lived. And this morning I want to invite us to reflect on what these words may have to tell us about at least some aspects of a well lived life.

The first thing Paul says about his own well-lived life is that he has fought the good fight. That phrase has become a common part of our language. As we hear Paul say that he has fought the good fight we might also think about the things that he did not say. He didn’t say, for example, I’ve achieved the American dream–or in those days it might have been the Roman dream. He didn’t say, I’ve always lived the good life, and let the good times roll. He didn’t say, I’ve achieved great wealth, respect and reputation in my community. He didn’t say, I did it my way. By contrast, Paul points to the fact that his life has been constant hard work. Who of us in this room doesn’t understand that life involves a whole lot of hard work? A child has to work to learn. The teenager has to work to deal with peer pressure. College aged students have to be very proactive in finding their identity. Young adults have to work harder than ever these days to even find a job, let alone to create and manage a career, keep their marriages together, and raise children. No one has to struggle more than older adults who fight with frequent health problems; and in these times unexpected financial issues. Even newborns have to work to come into this world and take birth. From the beginning of life to the end, we are all involved in necessary labors. Paul was right on target when he saw life through the prism of fighting a good fight. And of all the battles that we must inescapably face and deal with, the most difficult one is always the inner battle. It is the work that needs to be done within us. It is the inner work for self-mastery and against self-seeking.

The first secret, then, of the life well lived is to fight that good fight and to do the inner work that life requires of us. And then secondly, Paul says that even if people around us let us down, we can’t let that bring us down. When Paul was brought before the Roman Emperor to defend the charges brought against him, as we hear in book of Second Timothy, the clear implication is that when it came to Paul’s closest associates most of them deserted him. Barnabas, Paul’s constant traveling companion for more than 10 years is nowhere mentioned in this letter. Mark, another of Paul’s close friends and by tradition the writer of the second Gospel, had fled in fear. Luke, the great physician, writer of the third Gospel, and traveling companion had apparently deserted his friend. Titus and Silas were all gone. We are left to assume they all hid in the shadows during Paul’s darkest hour. As Paul writes here in verse 16 of Chapter 4, “At my trial, no one came to my support, everyone deserted me.” What Paul went through before the Emperor was not so different, was it, from the desertions Jesus went through in Gethsemane. The author Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.” Those are words that Paul could have well understood.

So, if the first secret of a life well lived is fighting the good fight, and the second secret is that being deserted does not mean being defeated; then finally there is a third secret of a life well-lived, which lies in the fact that we need to focus over and over again on relying on and maintaining and rebuilding our faith. Paul says, “I have kept the faith.” That is really a remarkable declaration when you look back on all the occasions Paul could easily have let his faith slip away and given it all up.  Consider all the things Paul tells us he endured during his ministry: Hunger, thirst, nakedness, cold, sleeplessness, homelessness and persecution; being cast down, afflicted, beaten, imprisoned and slandered; poverty, floggings, five times given 39 lashes, being beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked, drifted in the open sea for 24 hours, in danger from rivers, bandits, and his own country-men. Paul says he has been in danger in the city, in the country, at sea, and around all people both Jew and Gentile. But despite all this, he still viewed his life as a success. Why? Surely one of the keys, one of the secrets, is that he had kept faith alive within him.

In the Broadway play “The Miracle Worker,” we see the story of Ann Sullivan, the woman who taught Helen Keller how to communicate. It was during the 1890’s, in the hills of northern Alabama, that she struggled with Helen and her seemingly insurmountable handicaps-being deaf, blind, and mute. Helen Keller may have been the miracle that history seems to present to us, but Ann Sullivan was clearly every bit as much a worker of miracles in that story as was Helen Keller. What were the qualities that marked the lives of those two women? Was it that they fought a good fight? Clearly they did that. It is hard for us to even imagine not only the primitive care and the prejudices of that day, but also the fact that Helen’s own parents saw her as a hopeless case. Was it the fact that they finished the race? Clearly they both did that as well. Ann Sullivan and Helen Keller went on when most everyone else would have given in and given up. Both the teacher and the student in their remarkable drama saw Helen Keller go on to receive a PhD from Temple University in Philadelphia and become a world renowned author and speaker and an inspiration to millions. The thing that most distinguished the lives of both those women, however, is that they kept the faith. Throughout it all both of these women kept believing, and refused to stop believing, that Helen could surmount her monstrously large handicaps, that she could surmount her blindness and her deafness and profound isolation, not to mention desperation; and go on to become a woman who could not only communicate with other human beings, but far beyond that become a major force in her community, and indeed even become a major force in history. The story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan is a story of two women who not only fought a good fight and ran a good race; it as also a story of two human beings who refused to lose their faith.

And so it can be for each of us. In 2 Timothy 4 Paul writes, “The time of my departure is at hand.” “But that is alright,” he seems to be saying, ” because I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” May we also echo these words in the midst of all the seasons of our lives, when things are high and good, when things are low and bad, whether we are coming to the end of our life’s journey or when we feel as if we are at wit’s end; may we also do the essentially spiritual work of keeping our faith strong through our own spiritual work and commitment, as well as through the gift of the unearned grace and power of the living God.

And this we ask in the name of the living Christ. Amen.