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FREEDOM

7/5/2015

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Galatians 5:1 
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Yesterday was a very interesting Independence Day, given the wider context in our country right now.  After the SCOTUS ruling on marriage equality LGBTQs and their straight allies definitely have a new freedom to celebrate while those who claim a religious dispensation to discriminate against anyone they don’t like wailed and moaned and cried “governmental tyranny” at the tops of their lungs and worked to paint themselves as victims, and African-Americans pointed to black churches burning across the South and reminded us they are no more free today than they were last month – and while all this was going on about half the population of the east coast, it seems, having thrown their hats into the ring of our next presidential election, are running around pontificating and vying to say the most outrageous thing in order to get their faces on the 24-hour news cycle.

In the light of all this it was almost surprising to see the number of cities and small towns all over the country where ordinary folks just went about the BBQ’s and parades and clambakes and picnics and all the things that ordinary people do to celebrate the 4th of July and enjoy their freedom to gather with family and friends.

The major news sources may scream, “danger, danger, be afraid - ISIS is coming to kill us all!” but we go on beach picnics with our families.  Ultra-conservative religionists cry that the world is ending and threaten to set themselves on fire if gays are allowed to marry (and then do some really fancy back-pedaling to explain they didn’t really mean that in the first place), but most of us just give thanks for our blessings and manage to co-exist pretty well with our Catholic neighbors and our Baptist neighbors, and even those folks who don’t believe in a god of any kind.

The one line from Paul’s letter to the Galatians that I chose as our scripture for today has always intrigued me.  I’m sure Paul had a definite agenda in writing it but as a stand-alone verse it is delightfully ambiguous and can be applied in so many ways. We are “set free for freedom” ..... what does that even mean?  I prefer to take it as face value.  As God’s people we are free – free from doubt and free from fear and free from despair and hopelessness and free to just live in this beautiful world – free from the responsibility to be the whole world’s moral police, free from judging each other, free from forcing everyone to see it "my way" – free to live in kindness and love.  BUT – (there’s always a but...) – as with all God’s gifts to us, freedom isn’t isn’t given us just for our own advantage.  All the gifts God gives us are to be used by us for the betterment of the entire world – to help others who are still struggling to find their freedom.

When read in faith it also carries a list of things we are not free to do: oppress others, judge others, think ourselves in any way superior to others, sit back lazily on our backsides and let others drift in suffering rather than challenge our own comfort zone.

We are free to be the children of God that we are created to be.

Do we all agree with each other?  Absolutely not.  If fact, most of us disagree with someone somewhere on practically everything - and yet here we are - most of us -- still living and working side by side – because most of us understand that we can disagree without hating.  And those of us who have chosen to declare our lives in service to God’s plan - as best we can figure that out - those of us who call ourselves Christians – understand something more.  We understand that we are to rejoice in every victory that comes along – and give thanks for every blessing that appears here among us all – while at the same time we are to see and name every injustice we see still around us and we are to stand up and say “this must change” – and then we are to do whatever comes within our reach and our ability to change it.

We are not called to scream and shout.  We are not called to vilify each other.  We are not called to stamp our feet and throw rocks and make threats and demand that everybody has to be “just like me”.  We are called to see everyone - even those with whom we disagree – especially those with whom we disagree -- through the eyes of God’s love.  Plain and simple.

We are to build the reign of God together and live in peace - together.  We are to seek justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.  And in a world that stridently demands that everything is “my way or the highway,” in a world that sometimes wants to fight about absolutely everything –  that may be the hardest task of all.

Luckily, we are not alone in this.  We are never alone.  Thank God.
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A NOTE FROM PASTOR CHERIE:

6/27/2015

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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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BORN ANEW ... AGAIN

5/31/2015

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John 3:1-12
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" 

Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." 

Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 
This story is the first time Nocodemus is mentioned in John’s gospel – the only gospel which mentions him at all, by the way.  He turns up two more times further along in John – first, when the Sanhedrin is looking for ways to charge Jesus, Nicodemus reminds his fellow Pharisees that the Law says a man must be given the right to speak before he is condemned - not a reminder that made him popular with them.  His last scriptural appearance comes after the crucifixion when Joseph of Arimathea has claimed Jesus’ body from the cross and Nicodemus arrives to help, bringing the herbs and salves needed to properly prepare the body for burial.

Nicodemus is not only a Pharisee but a member of the Sanhedrin, the rabbinic court that was somewhat like our Supreme Court today – the high court that could overrule lower court decisions.  As such, it is clear that Nicodemus was an important man.  He was educated in the Law and respected in the Jewish community.  As Christians, we are predisposed by the gospels to see the Pharisees as the enemy.  I suspect, as in many things, our judgment of them depends on where we stand in the story.  The gospels almost always portray them as acting against Jesus, so we are against them, but for those standing in another part of the story they would have been the defenders of tradition and Jewish values.  The presence of Nicodemus and Joseph in the gospel certainly makes it clear that not all pharisees feared or hated this new teacher or his emerging Jesus-followers.

Still, it is entirely unusual when a pharisee comes to seek out Jesus in order to speak with him “up close and personal,’ instead of trying to catch him in some blasphemy, and that’s why Nicodemus visits at nighttime.  He doesn’t want others to know that he is meeting Jesus, and so he comes under cover of darkness – but darkness is not, in John’s gospel, just the opposite of day – it also represents ignorance and lack of understanding.  In this story, it is Nicodemus - the learned, the scholar – who comes in ignorance.  He has heard of or seen some of Jesus’ “signs and marvels” and wants to see more for himself.  This does not sit particularly well with Jesus – it never does – he often rails against those who don’t pay any attention to what he actually says and just come out instead to see his miracles – come for the “raree show” as the old carnival barkers used to say.

Nicodemus begins humbly enough (for a Pharisee) by acknowledging that no one can do the things Jesus does unless he is connected to God, and when Jesus makes a reply about people needing to be born again, Nicodemus makes it clear he doesn’t get it - but he is willing to pursue the question with Jesus, resulting in what has been one of the more puzzling and misunderstood teachings in the gospels.

Christianity today is full of people who will tell you exactly what being born again means and how it must come about – the words you have to say and the actions that must follow, and for many of these if you didn’t say the exact words or perform the exact acts dictated by them, then rebirth never happened – you ‘failed’ somehow to be reborn.  It becomes just one more thing they can use to close themselves inside the circle of Jesus’ favorites and to shut others out as unacceptable.

The original word Jesus is recorded as saying can be translated as either “again” or “anew,” implying more than a simple repetition, but movement into a whole new realm.  Listen again to Jesus’ response as it is given in The Message translation:
Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.....So don’t be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be ‘born from above’—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.
This is not about being “born again” – this is about returning to a state and time of original innocence – to a state which is just as God created us to be, before it all went wrong.  There is nothing here about saying the “right” words or having the “right” experience – nothing about “asking Jesus to be your personal Lord and Savior” – nothing about the rules so many people want to place on this “born again” experience. This is about the wind of the Holy Spirit – the wind we talked about last week on Pentecost – that wind that was present at the beginning of everything – it’s about allowing that wind to cleanse you back to God’s original intention for you.

This is about being willing to set aside your status, and your good opinion of yourself and your importance, and all your education that has always ranked you higher than others around you, and your assurance that you know how to do it “right” and your conviction that you are “in” even though others are “out.”  It’s also about allowing God to take all the time God wants to work in you.

The gospels give us very little to go with about Nicodemus’ life but John implies that his coming to follow Jesus was a gradual thing, and that it was only at the end that the Spirit had worked enough in him that he was willing to take a public stance as one who followed this teacher, this miracle man who taught and lived and personified God’s Spirit among us.

Be born anew,” Jesus tells us, and the ever-inviting Jesus knows we will all receive the invitation in our own time and in our own way, not by one set of rules set out by the Sanhedrin or by some TV evangelist.  

The wind of the Spirit blows where the Spirit wills – oh, thank God.  

Amen. 
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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

5/17/2015

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NOTE:  This week we again did something a little different.  The previous week I had attended a Regional Ministry Council meeting and out of that meeting and my preparations for it I came up with an idea.  

I am constantly reflecting on the journey that the Church of the Open Door is taking these days and the changes happening with us.  I came up with a question that I posted to three different facebook Group pages, 2 of which are discussion sites for clergy (one Disciples and one UCC) and I asked for replies.  Several good folks did share their answers with me, which I appreciate greatly.  I was so excited by the responses that I took them to church with me last Sunday and shared them (in a generalized way, since several were very personal and I hadn't asked permission to share them in toto).

In church, we talked about the question and some of the responses and my congregants shared their thoughts, as well.

I offer my original question below for any who didn't see it in the original settings.  I am always interested in why we do what we do - not just what do we do.  In that light, I believe this is a question worth pondering.  Here it is:
I have a question, I’m asking this to gather information for our Church Off the Center Mission Cluster (DOC) and I seriously hope some of you will take a few minutes to think about it and respond, whether you consider yourself part of an “off the center” church, or not.

WHAT DO YOU DO NOW IN THE LIFE OF YOUR CHURCH THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN UNTHINKABLE 10 OR 15 YEARS AGO?

By definition, a Church Off the Center is one that is going through changes – many of these changes have been forced by circumstance such as shrinking numbers or budgets insufficient to carry on as usual – but other changes have come about with a shift of direction and emphasis within the congregation – a change of heart, perhaps, or a changing idea of “what church means.”  Many of you who would not classify yourself as ‘off the center” have also made substantive changes to your way of being church.

Please especially note that word “unthinkable” in my question.  I’m not talking about cosmetic or surface changes – I’m looking for those things that, had they been suggested at a board meeting 15 years ago, would have met with either blank stares or outright resistance.  As an example, in the case of my church (Church of the Open Door, Ukiah), we were forced to make changes and we have come to love them, but if the church of 15 years ago and the church of today were to meet I’m not sure they would even recognize themselves as the same church – because we certainly look different and we act different and we see ourselves differently, as well.

So – what is it in the life of your community, whether worship or outreach or whatever, that once would have met with an implacable “NO” that is now a normal part of who you are?  How and why did this change?
Just something to think about .....
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WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE?

5/10/2015

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John 15:12-17
[Jesus said:]  "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another."
“Love” may well be one of the most over-worked and mis-used words in our vocabulary and yet understanding this word is the key to grasping this week’s scripture.  We love our favorite singer’s newest song; we love the smell of roses after the rain; we love to sleep-in on our days off; we love ‘Moose-Tracks’ ice cream!  I’m pretty sure what Jesus is talking about here goes a lot deeper than any of these.

Much of the New Testament was originally written in Greek, and the folks who read Greek (I don’t) tell us there are five different Greek words commonly used for love in New Testament times.

First is mania, which is lust taken to the point of obsession.  I think we can safely eliminate that one.  Another is storge – this is commonly translated as mother love – the love we feel for those we take care of.  Someone might be willing to lay down their life because of this love -- a mother for her child, for instance – but this is too narrowly focused for what Jesus is getting at here.  

Philos is brotherly/sisterly love, the love we feel for those who are in a similar situation or circumstance with us.  It probably comes the closest to describing the love we here in church feel for each other.  We share interests, we share experiences, we work together and we grow to love each other through that experience.  This is a good kind of love and often used to describe the early Christian communities but still not what Jesus is referring to here.  Philos is a fairly easy-going kind of love, not generally the kind that requires us to lay down our lives for it.

Eros is the one of these five Greek words that isn’t actually in the Bible.  It is where we get our word erotic, and goodness knows there’s enough of that is scripture – but it isn’t really just about sexual love - it’s about passionate, emotional, romantic love - it is certainly alluded to but never actually used in the Bible.

The last of the five words is agapao.  This is the word that describes what Jesus is talking about in this reading.  Agape is a love that is all about the giver, not the recipient.  God loves us because of who God is, not who we are.  There is not a soul on earth who has ever “earned” God’s love because God’s love isn’t saying anything about us at all.  It’s all about God. God loves because that’s who God is.

This is the love that St. Paul tells us “never fails.”  Agape makes it possible for us to love our enemies – even though we may not like them at all – we make a choice to love them for Jesus’ sake – period.  This is the love that lays down it’s life for another.  This is the love Jesus commands us to have for each other. 

Jesus commands us to love in this way – and assumes we will obey – not because of any forceful compulsion or threat – but simply because if we truly claim to know Jesus and follow Jesus and love Jesus – there is no other way we can possibly go.

We will love everyone with whom we come in contact – we will love them for Jesus’ sake, and for their own sake, and.....for our own sake.  Drug addicts, welfare cheats, liars, haters, foreigners, Wall Street robber barons, illegals, atheists, people of every color, shape, gender, sexual orientation – the arrogant, the clueless, the down-right nasty – we will love them all with the compassionate, caring love of Jesus.  Not because they all deserve to be loved, but because that’s the kind of people we have become in Christ.  We are the people who recognize that Jesus loves us – the clueless, the selfish and the self-absorbed - not because we in any way deserve to be loved, but because that is the kind of Lord Jesus is.

If we commit to following Jesus there is no backdoor through which we can escape this agape love.  We will lay down our lives – and even harder than that, we will lay down our cherished opinions and assumptions – all for these sisters and brothers we never wanted but – oh, look – here we all are together.  Brothers and sisters in the all-encompassing love of the God who loves us all – because that’s just who God is.

We can buy in – or not.  We can accept Jesus’ love for us – or not – but that won’t in any way change the fact that we are loved.  But if we don’t buy in – if we are not ultimately willing to set aside our pride and our treasured  resentments and our assumptions of rightness – if won’t do these things we will never truly know the deep, deep joy of loving as Jesus loves.  

It really is not that hard.  Just let go of demanding our own way and try following Jesus’ way.  We might actually find that we like it.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
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AN UNPREPARED SUNDAY

5/3/2015

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Last week, on May 1st, I was blessed, alongside my husband, Hilary Marckx, pastor of the Geyserville Christian Church, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our wedding.  It is still somewhat overwhelming to type that number - it seems very unreal.  On Saturday, the 2nd, we had a wing-ding of a party -- with so many good friends and tons of food and great music -- to celebrate.
The up-shot of this celebrating was that I arrived at church Sunday morning with no proper sermon-message and only a bare outline of how the service would proceed.  Luckily for me, the folks of The Church of the Open Door are flexible and willing to cut an occasionally unprepared pastor a little slack.
I can always talk.  I think most pastors -- especially those who have been doing this awhile -- are capable of giving a fairly cohesive message off the cuff -- but we decided to do something different.  We rounded up three different translations of the Bible that we had present that day -- the NRSV, the New American Standard, and The Message.  A congregational member then chose a scripture at random (something in 1st Corinthians, I think) and we spent the next ten minutes reading the different translations and discovering the differences and similarities to be found in the three.  That turned out to be so interesting that we read out the rest of the chapter and discussed it as well.  
One member remarked that she didn't remember ever reading or hearing those particular words before, even though it was a relatively commonly read scripture.  I believe we are so used to hearing scripture read in church that we often do not truly "hear" what is being shared unless we are ourselves involved in reading and unpacking the words.
Our extemporaneous 'message' was such a success that I am seriously considering doing it more often -- perhaps once a month?
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THE SCRIPTURES WE CHOOSE TO IGNORE

4/26/2015

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1 John 3:11, 14b-18
For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.....Whoever does not love abides in death.  All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them.  We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.  How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?  Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
The lectionary reading given for today is the Good Shepherd.  I’ve preached on this scripture several times over the years, but I never feel terribly successful with it because, even up here in northern California, we are basically “townies” – and the symbols of an agrarian, pastoral world just don’t resonate with us any more.  We get it intellectually, but I’m not sure most of us get it viscerally.  So I decided to pass on that reading.

When you get right down to it, the main point of that reading is Jesus’ love for us, the sheep, so I have just chosen to speak on love – Love and Not-Love.  Last week, if you recall, I wore my “don’t-hate-the-sin-and-love-the-sinner, just Love” tee-shirt, and pointed out how often people use that phony not-real scripture as justification to go ahead and hate the sinner anyway.  This week I decided to skim the internet looking for other non-scriptures that get quoted as if they came straight from God’s mouth but I got side-tracked, as I often do, into the realm of things that actually are in the Bible – but that we choose to ignore.

I’ve been your pastor here for quite awhile now and if there is anything you have heard me say over and over ... and over ... it is that ‘fact’ and ‘truth’ are not necessarily the same things.  Similar, yes, but synonymous, no.  Those of us who seek the ‘truth’ in scripture have an easier time, I’m sure, than those who look for facticity.  We can, without damaging ourselves, accept that certain unwieldy sayings are merely cultural artifacts of the time and place in which they were written, and not necessarily the eternal word of God, even though they are in the Bible.  If you are here today, you clearly don’t place any huge importance on Paul’s command that women should sit-down and shut-up in church and none of us (I hope) are in the habit of dashing out the brains of babies when we invade a new territory.

Those who believe in the Bible as literal fact have a more difficult time with this kind of scripture and often end up tying themselves in knots trying to explain them away.  Many of these verses come out of Leviticus.  Some are deadly serious but others are just plain silly to our way of thinking today.  Like, you can’t wear clothing made of mixed fibers.  It’s an abomination.  Anyone here today wearing pure linen all the way down?  I didn’t think so.

Anyone here ever read a fortune cookie or looked at your horoscope in the newspaper?  The penalty for that is permanent exile from the tribe.
How about you men - you look clean-shaven ..... abominable.

Without meaning to pry, are any of you here descended from an illegitimate person?  If so, you’ll have to leave - you can’t be here.  Scripture says.

OK - have you ever eaten shrimp?  Lobster?  Clam chowder?  Too bad - abominations, every one of them.  (I am in trouble, because I’m not giving up clam chowder.)

Now these as I said are basically silly in our context and while we recognize them as maybe important to their time and culture we are perfectly happy to ignore them today.  There are a lot more – a lot more -- but I want to move into a few that are not so humorous.

How about a man who has been unfortunate enough to have testicular cancer?  Thrown off the boat.  Those 'things' are really important in the religious life, you know.  And a woman, who seeing her husband attacked, had better not rush in to help defend him, because if her hand touches the genitals of the attacker, her hand has to be cut off – no exceptions.  Says so, right there in Leviticus.

Absolutely no tattoos allowed.  Tell that one to today’s world.  That shuts a whole lot of people out of the worshiping community.  

And then, of course, there is divorce.  This is one of the few of these prohibitions that shows up in the New Testament, too.  Scripture is really quite clear and blunt.  Don’t do it.  Human decency might point out that forcing  anyone to remain in a failed and miserable marriage is hardly a sign of loving each other, but some churches do remain hard-nosed about this.  It is interesting, though, to see the numbers of biblical literalists who manage to slide right past this one, rather than shut the doors to people who put money in the collection plate.

And then, of course, there is the main “clobber verse” used to excuse all manner of hateful behavior against gays.  In the middle of all these ridiculous prohibitions – right there with don’t wear polyester and don’t eat clam chowder and if a lizard falls into a clay pot you have to break the pot, the writers of Leviticus tells us “do not lie with a man as a woman,” and from that one small sentence – lost in the midst of page after page of other “do not’s” – that we mostly happily ignore – our sad country has lost it’s mind in an orgy of hate-spewing – all in the name of obeying a loving God.

Oh, and there are also some dandy verses in there about not withholding food from the homeless but we don’t hear much about them today either.

My point in all this is not to make fun of others but to point out how deadly serious it can be when we set out to blindly enforce every word in scripture as if they were all of equal importance and without ever pausing to consider if it really sounds like the word of our living, loving God.  So much of what passes for Christian faith today is powered by sheer, blind ignorance.  Like the guy I saw who proudly had the words from Leviticus 18:22 tattooed on his arm in big letters.  That’s the “do not lie with a man as with a woman” one.  He was apparently blissfully ignorant that as far as Leviticus was concerned his tattoo was every bit as much of an abomination as the supposed “sin” he was advertising against.

We cherry-pick what we choose to believe.  We all do it, but if we are going to do it, then let us do it deliberately rather than from ignorance.  The Bible is too important to treat it so casually.  We need to learn about it and read it prayerfully – listening for truth as much as we may look for facts.  How about if more people actually chose to obey Jesus’ teaching that we not judge each other or that we love each other as he loves us?  I wish the Christian world was as dedicated to those verses as that one short one back in Leviticus.  And why are "Christians" ignoring Jesus in favor of Leviticus, anyway?

Listen to part of today’s reading again:  We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.  How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods – [or God’s love or God’s compassion] -- and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? ..... Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

Let us love.
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    Rev. Cherie Marckx

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