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A NOTE FROM PASTOR CHERIE:

6/27/2015

A NOTE FROM PASTOR CHERIE:

Yesterday, in the middle of the joy and excitement of the Supreme Court's announcement, two friends I've known forever and for whom I care deeply, each shared that it was just beginning to sink in that after 26 years of loving and living together -- 26 years of marriage -- they were finally being recognized as married. For several of those 26 years their marriage has been recognized as legal -- but not in the state in which they live. Now they are "legal" even at home. Now - finally -- if one of them should be hospitalized, the other is her recognized and entirely legal "next of kin" -- the one who would have a say in her care.

This is something those of us in hetero marriages take so for granted, and yet it has been routinely denied to so many committed, loving couples, causing untold grief over the years.

This is what yesterday's ruling was all about -- treating people as we would hope to be treated ourselves. It wasn't about cherry-picking a handful of words from Leviticus (while ignoring all the rest of the words that might be inconvenient for us personally). It wasn't about hysterical rants on television about how we're going to hell in a handbasket. It was about people - real living flesh and blood people, who are God's beloved children -- just as we all are. It was about paying more attention to what Jesus actually said than to some purity code from 3000 years ago.

I personally rejoice with all my LGBTQ friends in 'every' state and the Church of the Open Door also rejoices and welcomes another huge step forward in the struggle for justice for everyone. We recognize that we still have far to go in achieving equality for all in this country. We grieve especially this week with those who suffer most directly as a result of the sin of racism, and at the same time we rejoice at this one huge step forward which has just occurred.

We are an Open and Affirming Church, and all of God's people are welcome here. In the words of one of my favorite writers, John Shea, "here there is a feast for all who are willing to feast with all."

May God bless and heal us all. Love Wins -- sometimes immediately, sometimes after long, long years of waiting and suffering -- but eventually, inevitably, Love wins -- because this is God's will for the world.

Love, Cherie

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RACHEL WEEPS

6/21/2015

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Jeremiah 31:15-17
Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more.
Thus says the Lord:
Keep your voice from weeping,
and your eyes from tears;
for there is a reward for your work,
says the Lord:
they shall come back from the land of the enemy;
there is hope for your future,
says the Lord:
your children shall come back to their own country.

My facebook interchanges this week have – as you might expect among a community of clergy types – been awash with grief, discussion, stories and prayers for the horrific killings at Mother Emmanuel AMC church in South Carolina.

I am a white woman living, at this time, in a largely white part of the world. I do not presume to speak as anyone who has ever experienced purely racially motivated hatred, but I can speak of irrational hatred in general and the violence that is too often the only answer of those twisted by such hatreds.

All acts of violence and hatred are horrible – wherever they happen – but I think we instinctively recoil even more strongly at the idea of such violence happening in a place of worship. Whether it has been true in reality or not, at least in our minds, churches and holy places have traditionally been places of sanctuary – places we can be in contact with another world beyond this one we live in everyday.

Unfortunately hatred does not recognize holiness, either in places or in people, and some of the worst scenes of irrational ugliness have taken place in houses of worship. In the 1990's, during the Rwandan genocide, thousand of native people were herded into churches, where they were told they would find sanctuary, and then systematically hacked to death with machetes. Sitting here safely on the other side of the world, my soul still carries scars just from reading of those hideous events.

But there is in reality no “safely here on the other side of the world,” because we too are capable of slaughtering innocent people at prayer in a place they thought of as safe. Here is a handful of examples I’ve culled from various news stories and blogs - all (except perhaps one) acts of violence for no reason other than racial hatred - the sickening belief of too many that any race but their own is sub-human and worthy of nothing but death:

• In April 2014, a gunman opened fire at a Jewish community center and a Jewish assisted living facility in a Kansas City suburb, killing three, including a 14-year-old boy.

• In August 2012, an attacker entered a kitchen at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in suburban Milwaukee before Sunday services and began shooting. He killed three people inside the house of worship and three people outside.

• In July 2008, a man walked into a children's musical performance at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, pulled out a shotgun and began shooting. Two people died and seven were wounded. The attacker stated that the church's "liberal teachings" had compelled him to kill. This one is the only one where race doesn’t appear to be an overt factor - but, a children’s musical?

• In December 2007, a man shot up the Youth With A Mission training center in Arvada, Colorado, killing two people. He then killed two more at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where Youth With A Mission kept an office.

• In August 2007, a man attacked a Micronesian community of the First Congregational Church (didn’t get what town) with bullets. Three people died and five were wounded.

• In July 2006, a man barged through the security entrance of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and shot six women, killing one.

• And, of course, there is the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where four young girls were killed in a bomb attack in 1963.

The sadest thread with these murders is that the killers seem to prefer the defenseless - the elderly, children, people at prayer.

This week’s slaughter was clearly racially motivated - a racism stoked by fear and by unchecked ignorance – but we as a nation have been increasingly showing ourselves to be less and less tolerant of anyone remotely different from our sacred selves -- in race, in politics, in religion. And the time has come – the time is in truth long past when we have to stop pretending that it is all someone else’s problem - “if only they would shape up and change everything would be just fine” - and acknowledge that we are all in this together. There is no longer room for anyone to sit on the sidelines and think it is other people’s problem to deal with.

We are ALL God’s children - whether we are white or black, Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Sikh; whether we are religious or non-religious; Americans or Iranians or Chinese or Sengalese – EVERY person on the earth is a beloved child of God and we had better start seeing them that way.

We have to look – really look – honestly – inside ourselves and face our own ambiguous feelings. We have to check our own behaviors - do we speak up when someone makes a racist or homophobic joke or do we just let it slide? Do we ever, even in our innermost thoughts classify some people – any people – as “those people”?

We have to pay attention to what is done by cities and states and our nation “in our name.” Cities are increasingly passing laws to make it almost impossible to be poor and homeless and remain there. What would we do if that happened here? One of the fastest growing "industries" in our country right now is privately owned and run prisons -- run for profit and increasingly filled with people who do not deserve to in prison with long sentences just to make someone, somewhere a profit. And we allow this.

Our courts are increasingly used to bar certain groups of people from their basic rights as citizens -- all while the perpetrators of these new "laws" chant "I am not a bigot/ racist/whatever." And we allow this, too.

And God alone really knows what is done in the name of our “national security.” Drone strikes murder women and children on the other side of the world - but it's deemed OK because they are not our women and children. Clear back in 1980, in El Salvador, when Archbishop Oscar Romero was gunned down while standing at the communion table, he was murdered by paramilitary supported and trained by our US government. There is no real reason to assume that we have stopped this kind of violent meddling in the affairs of other countries. And we allow this.

If we are going to call ourselves Christians, we have got begin being personally responsible for the world we have helped create. Do I have a magic answer, no, there is no one magic answer, although one important piece is to stop standing off to the side, shaking our heads, but saying and doing nothing. One piece is to stop tolerating intolerance. It IS our job to speak out against hatred. It IS our job to speak out against ignorance being allowed to run unchecked.

This is what we – as Christians, as basic decent human beings – are called to do. We are called to make a difference – and the only way to get there from here requires lots of hard work and real caring – and prayer – lots and lots of prayer.

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BABY STEPS

6/14/2015

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Mark 4:26-34
He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."

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

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

This is a familiar story, one of several where Jesus uses the smallness of the mustard seed to illustrate his point. In one place he says “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” In another that same mustard-seed-sized faith could move a mountain.

Jesus used agricultural references a lot, because in his time and place these were references that everyone who heard him would understand. We here today get the general idea from today’s illustration, but it is somewhat puzzling for those of us who live in the western U.S. where mustard is either grown for its greens and harvested early or else is a field weed, growing wild and spindly - certainly nothing that would support a bird’s nest.

If you look you can find all kinds of scholarly speculations and expositions about the variety of mustard plants of the near east which still don’t make it any clearer for us Californians. Let’s hear the way The Message tells this story - it’s not a literal translation this time but it is one that makes sense of the story for western listeners:

“How can we picture God’s kingdom? What kind of story can we use? It’s like a pine nut. When it lands on the ground it is quite small as seeds go, yet once it is planted it grows into a huge pine tree with thick branches. Eagles nest in it.”

Now, told this way, the story makes sense to us - we live surrounded by pine trees – and we eat pinoles - told this way, the story gives us visual pictures to hold in our minds. This familiar little pine nut gives us this familiar huge tree. We get it. Living where they were, I suspect Jesus’ first listeners would not have gotten his message with this particular kind of illustration. Mustard made much more sense to them.

The point being that Jesus wasn’t talking about the holiness of mustard - he was talking about small things growing, in time, into much bigger things – things we can compare to a seed becoming a tree.

This is one of those stories I’ve heard all my life and assumed I understood the meaning of, and so I never really gave it that much thought. When I’ve preached on it before, I assume I’ve said the standard things, but this time I saw it differently (it’s amazing how that happens when you read and re-read the scripture stories).

This time I looked at Jesus’ actions among us through the light of this parable and realized that everything the gospels tell us that Jesus did was a relatively small action - generally one-on-one actions with a single person. Even when he fed the 5000, he didn’t cause a banquet to suddenly appear – instead he took a mere 2 loaves of bread and a couple of dried fish and broke them up and said, “here - pass this out” – and somehow everyone was fed.

He did not ever -- so far as we know -- announce a mass healing of all blind beggars - instead, he touched the eyes of one man and gave him sight, and we are still talking about it today. One crippled young man picked up his mat and walked home; one young deceased girl, being prepared for burial, was told to get up – and did; one dearly loved friend, already buried, was called back out of his tomb.

Probably the single most visually spectacular thing Jesus ever did – that we know of – was the transfiguration on the mountain top - and that was before a severely limited audience - just 3 of his disciples. When he was betrayed in the garden and some of his followers sought to defend him he told them to put up their weapons saying, “do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he would at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” He clearly understood that he had the power to do things on a large scale, but he chose instead to model small actions for us – presumably hoping that we could understand that, while we may be incapable of the big ta-da moments, we can do the little things, we can take baby steps. And our baby steps, just like a little pine seed or mustard seed, can one day grow into something much bigger, and reach and touch many people.

We simply don’t know how far the ripples from our actions may extend. They may affect only one person or they may, in some way, reach out to touch many others. Yesterday we handed out lunches here in town. Obviously this touched those who were there and got something to eat right then. We had about eight lunches left over and a couple of the older men who were there took the leftovers and told us they liked to take the extras to give to others they smet during the day who hadn’t been at the distribution site. It genuinely seemed to give one gentleman particularly a special joy in being given the wherewithal to help someone else down the line as we were helping him. He told us a story of a family he had met the previous week and the job on the children’s faces as they dove into the simple pb & j sandwiches.

We enjoyed our time together here, with our guests, making the lunches. We laugh a lot when we do this work. Gary and I enjoyed handing them out and interacting with the folks on the receiving end. They enjoyed full stomachs, and at least one enjoyed the opportunity to pass the blessing on.

Did we change the world? Probably not, but we were allowed to create some joy and some peace in this world for a short time. Baby steps, indeed, but baby steps are where every journey begins. We are small - but God is the trail-guide here. Who knows how far the ripples from our actions may one day travel.

In the words of Anne Frank, "Everyone has inside of [them] a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"

We have no way of knowing how big those seeds may one day grow. We just keep on planting them.

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DON’T JUDGE MEANS DON’T JUDGE.....DOESN’T IT?

6/7/2015

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Matthew 7:1-5 (NRSV)

Judging Others
“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

You all know I spend a lot of time everyday cruising the internet. It started out as a way to stay in touch with my family members, then extended out to friends who live at a distance. I am not a telephone person - I’m actually a little phone-phobic. On-line communication is much more comfortable for me. Even at my other workplace, my primary work is designing and implementing on-line communications between the business and our customers. I spend a lot of time out there on “the webs.”

A goodly part of the time I spend on-line has to do with cruising through various “Christian” web-magazines, reading opinion pieces, or in conversations with other church folk, trying to keep an open ear for what is going on in the church at large these days – listening in to what people are thinking and doing as “church.” Many of the ideas I’ve brought in here for discussion over the past few years have come from here. I have learned a lot this way.

There are skills involved in spending much time on-line. There is always a crisis of some sort on social media - you have to learn to discern. And with news sources as partisan as they are these days you can read of the same event from different sources and think you were reading about happenings on two different planets. Again, discernment is needed. One of the skills you learn on-line is how to skim, and tell the valuable stuff from the dreck. There’s a whole lot of dreck. This past week the Crisis of the Week has been Caitlyn Jenner. People have simply lost their minds over the whole affair which, in a saner world, would have simply been one person’s, one family’s issue, and no one else’s. However, the western world left sanity long ago, it seems, and everyone from the predictable knuckle-draggers to the folks who think it’s just fine – and everyone in-between - has chimed in with their precious opinions – as if the wider world honestly gives a hoot about their opinions. I am very sad to report that most of the ugliest postings have come from supposedly “Christian” sites, condemning Jenner as a hideous offense to God.

In light of all this my eye was caught Saturday morning as I sat down to work on my message for today, by an article titled, “Why are Christians So Judgmental?” It was in a non-denominational, trending-toward-liberal on-line magazine and although it asked the question it didn’t really go very far in answering it. I probably would have skimmed it and forgotten it – except for the responses.....I know I shouldn’t read the comments – they are almost always so dreadful – but it’s so tempting to read them and feel superior.

In this case, the Why are Christians so Judgmental? piece, most of the responders began by agreeing entirely with the premise of the piece – Yes, Jesus tells us not to judge others, Yes, we have to take the log out of our own eye -- yup – that’s absolutely right ..... and then, having stated their total agreement, they all launched into all the reasons they have to judge others anyway – because apparently Jesus really wants us to do so. (I guess Jesus didn't really know what he wanted to say.) It’s their job to point out to people that they are sinners and therefore unacceptable to decent folk (meaning the speakers themselves, of course).....all of this done in Christian love, of course.

I had to go back and read the whole thing again from the beginning, and yes, that’s still what it said.

Somehow, the message that many Christians seem to have taken from the gospels is that they are Jesus’ appointed judges. Which is absolutely backwards from what Jesus said. He told us to poke fellow Christians and nudge them back on track when we saw them starting to slide off, but he emphatically did not tell us to stamp through the world telling total strangers they are going to hell.

And we wonder why the wider world views Christians as judgmental.

We wonder why so much of the world is turning away from our message.

And I say “we” with all the humility I can muster because I know I am just as guilty at times – I just get indignant about different things – like people who vote to cut food programs for hungry children or act to deny others basic human rights and dignity. That plank in my eye can get pretty hefty at times. Listen to today’s scripture one more time - this time from The Message where it is sub-titled: A Simple Guide for Behavior --

“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor."

It’s a hard line to walk, at times – that line between standing up to wrong-doing and saying “no more,” and judging. Some days the line looks really clear and other days it’s pretty blurry. I think I know the difference but I still worry about it a lot.

Discernment is recognizing the difference between right and wrong. Judging is condemning the one we judge to be wrong – putting them beyond the pale – shutting them out of our circle and even out of God’s circle – and calling it love. Sometimes I find myself very easily slipping from the first to the second without a thought.

And it is that thought and others like it that are the keys here, I believe. We all tend to operate from a base position that we are rational people who think right and yet we all have our knee-jerk reactions that we have just picked up somewhere and not really thought through. We all have our prejudices. We simply cannot afford to just waltz through life believing that what we think is automatically right – because we are everyone of us capable of being so very wrong.

And love is surely the other key. This quote from Thomas Merton is one of my favorites - I even put it on our church website homepage: "Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether they are worthy."

It is hard work to shift our vision to seeing through God’s eyes and not our own all-too- human eyes, but this is what we are unequivocally called to do - to love others without stopping to inquire whether they are worthy. It's amazing how judging tends to disappear wherever love is present.

The message above all messages is, after all: Don’t judge, just love one another.

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A NOTE FROM PASTOR CHERIE:

RACHEL WEEPS

BABY STEPS

DON’T JUDGE MEANS DON’T JUDGE.....DOESN’T IT?

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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