"Are we there yet?"-- Hebrew 11:1-3, 8-16, Luke 12:32-40 -- August 11, 2013

 

The first time I came to Vermont was in the 1950's and there were no interstate highways. Our family set out early in the morning from New Jersey for Greensboro, up in the Northeast Kingdom, with a mailed, written confirmation of our reservations at a lodge there and a colorful brochure, showing simple white cottages, a shimmering blue lake with sailboats and canoes, and a dining room full of happy people eating stacks of fluffy pancakes dripping with Vermont maple syrup. For a while we traveled on the Garden State Parkway, then the Northway section of the NYS Thruway. Then we headed east to Whitehall, following my father’s carefully laid out route, up through Rutland, and on up into Killington, squirreling along Rts. 100 and 107 to Bethel and then, not onto Route I-89, which didn’t exist then, but simply on and on, around endless twists and curves, trees and more trees. I don’t remember when I started asking, "Are we there yet?" but I have a feeling it wasn’t much beyond our Northway exit. By the afternoon, my dad introduced us to the game where you would count the number of cows you saw on your side of the car (back when there were lots of cows to count), a white horse doubled your count, and a cemetery wiped out your numbers. That was fun for a little while. But the route kept going and going. It got so that every time I caught a glimpse of blue–what I thought surely must be Caspian Lake–I would ask, "Is that it?"

I realize now, having been the driver with kids in the backseat on a few similar journeys, what an incredible test of my parents’ patience that drive must have been. If they hadn’t had that brochure, if they hadn’t had been assured by friends who had been there that it was a wonderful place, if they hadn’t paid that deposit, it would have been sorely tempting to pull over at any number of spots, turn around and head for the Jersey shore, a familiar place less than 2 hours from home. Of course, I’m glad they kept on. We ended up vacationing at Highland Lodge in Greensboro year after year, and both my brother and I worked there during college summers. I fell in love with Vermont, ended up going to college here, and, lo and behold, moving here 18 years ago this week to become the pastor of Second Congregational Church.

But if my parents hadn’t ventured forth, assured that those white cottages and stacks of pancakes were real, my life might have taken a very different path.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen...By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going..." So says the writer of the letter, which is really more of a sermon, to the Hebrews, who really aren’t Jews but rather a young Christian community. "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

What is it you hope for? That makes a difference, doesn’t it? in the direction you travel, in the path you take. It makes a real difference if your hope is more than just wishful thinking. If what you hope for is, say, fame and fortune, you’ll make certain decisions about what you’ll do, where you’ll live and work, the kind of people you’ll associate with. If what you hope for is good health, you’ll make certain decisions about what you eat, how you exercise, what you do with and for your body. If only, alas, you could choose your genes, which may be possible some day, because that has a huge effect on our health. If what you hope for is a comfortable life, with enough money to pay your bills, a few friends or family to keep you company, then that too determines the kinds of decisions you will make about what you do with your time, where you’ll live, what you’ll spend your time thinking about.

All of these hopes, at least initially, chart our course. The thing about any kind of travel or journey, of course, is the unexpected. "Life is what happens when you’ve made other plans," right? What if fame and fortune don’t come, or maybe they do, and you discover you’re absolutely miserable? What if, despite all your best efforts, no matter how many green smoothies you drink, no matter how many aerobics or yoga classes you attend or miles you run, a lump still appears in your breast or your PSA comes back elevated? What if, despite the beautiful house and brilliant children, your partner decides to leave or one of your kids starts to smoke pot? What about the "assurance of things hoped for? The conviction of things not seen?"

"Where your treasure is," Jesus said, "there your heart will be also." Where is your heart invested?

It’s faith that the writer of Hebrews says is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. Faith. Too often, and in fact for generations of Christians, "faith" has been a thing, a list of propositions to give your assent to, a creed to memorize.

When my life broke open seven years ago [writes poet Christian Wyman of his diagnosis of an incurable cancer], I knew very well that I believed in something. Exactly what I believed, however, was considerably less clear. So I set out to answer that question, though I have come to realize that the real question–the real difficulty–is how, not what. How do you answer that burn of being? What might it mean for your life–and for your death–to acknowledge that insistent, persistent ghost? [My Bright Abyss, p. x.]

It’s the how, not the what, of faith that is the real question. Faith as list of agreed to propositions can sit on the shelf and not make a whole lot of difference in your life. It is possible to go about your business and not let that kind of faith impede your progress too much.

But faith that is more than a head trip, that wraps around your heart, where your treasure is, faith as trust rather than intellectual belief, that can change your life. That kind of faith can re-route not only your life path but your neural pathways as well. "The opposite of faith is not doubt," wrote the great holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, "the opposite of faith is not doubt, but indifference." (Cited by Kate Huey in Weekly Seeds, 8/11/13)

There is no way to ‘return to the faith of your childhood,’ [writes Christian Wyman], not really, not unless you’ve just woken from a decades-long and absolutely literal coma. ...No... Whatever faith you emerge with at the end of your life is going to be not simply affected by that life but intimately dependent upon it, for faith in God is, in the deepest sense, faith in life–which means that even the staunchest life of faith is a life of great change. It follows that if you believe at fifty what you believed at fifteen, then you have not lived–or have denied the reality of your life. [Wyman, op cit., p. 7]

"Where your treasure is," Jesus said, "there your heart will be also." Faith, in the sense of trust, in the sense of "ultimate concern," the center of gravity of our lives, the longing of our hearts, that is our treasure. Jesus spoke of the kingdom or reign of God as that treasure, the kingdom that was both far-country and in our midst. "Do not be afraid, little flock, [he told them] for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Jesus opened the door for the kingdom to come into our midst, and we’re not there yet. As long as there are people living in their vans, we’re not there yet. As long as there are children who must witness unspeakable acts of violence and depravity, we’re not there yet. As long as the earth’s air and water are polluted and the seas warm and rise, we’re not there yet. As long as some have more than they can possibly ever use while many more do not have enough, we’re not there yet. "All of these, the writer of Hebrews says, all of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them." "Not yet...."

"Don’t be afraid, little flock," Jesus said. It is indeed fear that steals the treasure of faith away, and there’s plenty to be afraid of. Look around, turn on the news, read the paper, feel the change in the weather. "The madness and lostness we see all around us and within us," writes author/preacher Frederick Buechner, " are not the last truth about the world but only the next to last truth." "Like the writer of Hebrews, Buechner knows that faith, that is trust, is a thing of the heart that helps us see the truth hidden sometimes beneath appearances, ‘the last truth of the world,’ the truth of God’s love, and God’s peace," (Kate Huey, op cit.)

If we were to miraculously find a pair of "kingdom glasses" [John Jewell, Lectionary Tales, 8/11/13] that would provide lenses through which we could see the kingdom in our midst–the real last truth about the world–what would we see? Would we see Christ sleeping next to the homeless man and his cat? Would we see small groups of people taking up rakes and mops and scrubbers, cleaning up parks and highways and vacant lots? Would we see "angels" sitting beside us at death beds, holding us and gently leading our loved ones off to the dance? Would we see artists and musicians and dancers connected by rainbow musical scores and weaving threads of light through all creation? Research tells us that what we focus our attention on grows. Appreciate the good and the good appreciates. What do you hope the kingdom of God, here in our midst, is like? "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen..."

Again, Christian Wyman, writing from the perspective of one who is actively wrestling with pain and death, but also with hope and life, says,

Perhaps it is never disbelief, which at least is active and conscious, that destroys a person, but unacknowledged belief, or a need for belief so strong that it is continually and silently crucified on the crosses of science, humanism, art, or

(to name the thing that poisons all these gifts of God) the overweening self. [p. 12]...Faith is not some hard, unchanging thing you cling to through the vicissitudes of life [he writes]. Those who try to make it into this are destined to become brittle, shatterable creatures. Faith never grows harder, never so deviates from its nature and becomes actually destructive, than in the person who refuses to admit that faith is change...faith is folded into change, is the mutable and messy process of our lives rather than any fixed, mental product...[p. 18]

What you must realize, [writes Wyman] what you must even come to praise, is the fact that there is no right way that is going to become apparent to you once and for all...Wisdom is accepting the truth of this. Courage is persisting with life in spite of it. And faith is finding yourself, in the deepest part of your soul, in the very heart of who you are, moved to praise it. (Pp. 29-30)

"My Bright Abyss" is the title of Christian Wyman’s book and is what calls God, that homeland toward which he longs. "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." We’ve all set out on this journey called life, and our faith is intimately wrapped up in the journey. It’s not a "what" but more of a "how." We’re not only headed to a far country, but are daily, in every moment, surrounded by it, it’s in the cells of our bodies. The kingdom is coming and now is. "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit." Pay attention. Notice your life. Live it, don’t just phone it in. "Don’t be afraid, little flock, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

A woman was talking about the stresses of modern life with her doctor, who happens to be Hindu. "Live in the past," he said, "and you will be depressed. Live in the future, and you will be anxious. Live in the present with gratitude and you will be at peace." (Alyce McKenzie, patheos, 8/8/10) Live with gratitude. Live with God’s promise in your heart. So may we live with wisdom, courage, and faith. Amen, and amen.

 

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

 

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"Treasure Investment" --Hosea 11:1-11, Luke 12:13-21-- August 4, 2013

 

The heading in many of our Bibles for this morning’s Gospel reading is "The Parable of the Rich Fool." Now, the thing about the parables of Jesus is they’re like Trojan horses–they sound like quaint little folk stories–you know, something to entertain folks before there was television,-- but what they actually do is get inside you and keep working on you long after they’re done. They might even creep up on you on a Tuesday afternoon, long after you’ve heard the parable on a Sunday morning. So, there should be a warning issued before we read these things. In fact, in this morning’s reading, Jesus does just that. He says, "Watch out! Be on guard! Be very certain...."

The other ruse about this particular parable is that the title makes it seem like it’s not about us. I’m not rich, and I’d rather not think of myself as a fool, so I can listen to the parable with a certain amount of distance and objectivity...until on Tuesday afternoon it occurs to me that that story that I heard on Sunday morning may actually have been about me. What was it about storing stuff away in my barn, or basement, or attic, or garage that Jesus was talking about?

So, a landowner’s farm had a bumper crop, a very good year, not necessarily because he did anything in particular to make it grow, but because the weather happened to cooperate–not too much rain, just enough heat and sun. But it produced more than he could use and even more than he could store. So he has this little conversation with himself, as Peterson translates it–

"‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, ‘Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’"

But in the only one of Jesus’ parables where God speaks directly, "God showed up, and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods–who gets it?’" (The Message)

The landowner isn’t evil. This isn’t ill-gotten gain. He’s just all wrapped up in himself. There’s not a single other being who he takes into consideration. He even talks to himself, answers his own questions. Until God breaks into the conversation with the ultimate reality test–"Tonight you will die."–and makes his little building project seem rather short-sighted. "And your barnful of goods–who gets it?"

Here’s how this little Trojan horse of a parable has been working on me this week since I re-read it Tuesday morning. One of the things I did over vacation was re-do our back room– stripped the wallpaper, painted it, took out the loveseat that our cats had trashed, and moved in some bookshelves and a loveseat that we had taken out of Bruce’s parents house in getting it ready for sale. But, alas, there’s plenty more where that came from. We’re not building bigger barns, we’re just stuffing more things into our current barn, and garage, and basement. For all sorts of reasons,–the least of which is, I don’t know what we’ll do with her stuff-- I’m hoping my mom lives many more years. And when I’m tempted to buy one more thing–that we’re not going to eat or use up in the next week–this harmless little story bubbles up and says, "Really?"

And that’s not even touching the challenge of being responsible–and faithful–about the stuff that I will leave behind, if I die tonight or in 40 years. Do I want to burden my children with disposing of all my stuff, or do I want to pass on to them a blessing?

Here’s an alternative version of this parable, suggested by Rev. John Jewell, which I think faithful to the spirit of the one told by Jesus–

Once there was a man who was richly blessed by God... After receiving word that he had received yet another windfall, he said to himself ‘What in the world am I going to do with all this money?! ‘ He thought long and hard about what he should do and he finally came up with how to invest his money in a way that would bring even more to his richly blessed life. He summoned his accountants and managers and said to them, ‘I have been blessed above most people I know, [and certainly most people in the world,] and now I have more money than I even dreamed of. I’ve decided how I want to invest this money to make even more. I want to put everything I own–except for enough to live on in a simple way–into a charitable foundation. Each year half the money is to be given to organizations that feed the hungry and the other half to assist prisoners who desire to transition to a life free from crime.’ Then the rich man who became poor to become rich said to himself, ‘I have been blessed beyond anything I ever imagined and now I am blessed even more." And God said to him, ‘My child, you have many good things stored up, come now and rest in the joy of your God.’" (JP Jewell, "Lectionary Tales," 8/4/13)

Now most of us don’t consider ourselves rich, with more money than we know what to do with. Some of us struggle every month to pay our bills and to provide for our families. An unexpected windfall, or winning the lottery, or finding out we’ve been named in a rich uncle’s will sounds like an answer to prayer. The thing is, unless you’re on the extreme end of survival, where receiving more money would be a matter of life and death, more money has been shown not to essentially change people’s level of happiness and well-being. There are more than enough nightmare stories from people who have won the lottery. For many, it’s ruined their lives. If you were miserable before you received an influx of money, chances are after a brief spike, you’ll be miserable again.

I’d like my life to be a version of this revised parable of abundance and letting go to become a blessing to others. I know that I have been blessed above many people, certainly above the majority of people in the world, and so I need to keep asking myself, "What am I storing up in my barn?" What am I teaching my children and others to store up?

One woman who, like most of us, was accustomed to buying Christmas gifts for her 3 children and several grandchildren, decided one year, after participating in her church’s mission festival, to give each of the families $200 and asked them to decide, with the children, how they’d like to spend the money–on people who really needed it. The kids in one family noticed that some of the kids at school couldn’t go out for recess because they didn’t have warm coats. They went to the Goodwill Store and bought several coats in perfect condition to take to school. Another family bought food for the homeless shelter. What if, instead of saying, "I’d like one of those," our children said, "I wonder who could use one of those?" (Jewell, op cit.)

This parable asks, "What is the ‘good life’?" What makes us truly happy? What is the ultimate currency in your life? Would you rather have a million bucks or a close, loving relationship? What would it mean to be "rich toward God"? Is blessing or abundance to be hoarded and stored up or shared with the community? Not only would the rich man have had the additional blessing of experiencing the joy of seeing others in his community have enough to eat or have adequate housing or education or health care–while he was alive–; he also wouldn’t have spent his last day alive on a building project that was ultimately doomed to failure. Who needs a barn or silo full of rotting grain? We need to share what we have now–as well as think about how we can share after we’re gone. As one sage put it, "You can’t take it with you, but, my friends, you can send it on ahead!" (Jewell, op cit.) Do you have a will? Are the people and causes important to you included in it?

And there’s that other sage, Miss Piggy, who said, "Many people think money is something to be set aside for a rainy day. But honestly, how much money do you really need for a dozen or so hours of inclement weather?" (Cited by Kate Huey, Weekly Seeds, 8/4/13)

Jesus was not afraid to talk about money. In fact, he talked about that and what we do with our resources more than any other single topic. So does the rest of the Bible. So we too might begin a conversation with each other; after all, we’re all in this together. What do our checkbooks and credit card statements say about our lives and what we value? How much do we need to live "the good life"? We might practice counting our blessings, which are many, and supporting one another in our struggles to "be on guard," as Jesus said, "against all kinds of greed."

Sharing the one loaf and one cup is a good place to start, reminding us that sometimes just a morsel and a sip are all you need, especially when it connects to the endless, abundant Source of Love and Life. So, take and eat. Take and drink. Let us keep the feast. Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Photo Directory

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We are making a new Church Family Photo Directory. There will be two sets of photo shoots, August 22-24th and then October 8-10th.   The Deacons will be in Webster Hall on Sundays after service to set up appointments beginning July 14th  through August 19th. 

 

In late July, everyone listed in the church family telephone directory will receive an automated call from Mary.  This call will contain instructions on how to schedule your photo sitting online if you have not scheduled in person already.

 

To be sure we don't have double bookings, the access to this site to make your own appointments will be turned off from Friday through Monday so that the folks who schedule after Sunday service can be entered into the system.

 

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"Don’t Look Back!"-- Galatians 5:1, 13-25, Luke 9:51-62-- June 30, 2013

In March of 1965, I was in the 7^th grade, barely a month into being 13 years old. I was painfully insecure, had a mouth full of braces, and was anxiously anticipating freshman cheerleading tryouts, which was the only junior varsity sport available to girls. I was absorbed in what I thought were the important things in life–fitting in, figuring out what table to sit at during lunch, finding my way around the huge junior high.

On March 7, 1965, 600 people gathered in Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama, to pray before their march to Montgomery to demand equal rights and an end to racial segregation. On what would be known as Bloody Sunday, the marchers were met at Edmund Pettits Bridge by police and police dogs and citizens brandishing inner tubes studded with nails. Many were wounded and hospitalized. 2 days later, 1500 people began the march again, this time led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and once again met the line of police and dogs and citizens. King knelt in prayer, and the marchers returned to Brown Chapel to avoid violence. On March 21, thousands gathered in Selma. Responding to outcries from the nation, President Johnson had ordered the National Guard to accompany the marchers, though only 300 were allowed on the road to Montgomery. They walked for three days, averaging about 12 mi. a day, in unusually cold temperatures. It was below freezing some nights. They slept in farmers’ fields and local churches brought food and blankets. It rained almost every day.

On March 25, 1965, 25,000 people from around the nation, and others around the world, listened to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

They told us we wouldn’t get here.

[he said] And there were those who said we would get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, ‘We ain’t goin’ let nobody turn us around!’ [As one writer describes it, "King’s words brought the crowd to a mountaintop of determination as he continued:] and as we go away this afternoon, let us go away more than ever before committed to this struggle and committed to non-violence. I must admit to you that there are still some difficult days ahead. We are still in for a season of suffering in many of the black belt counties of Alabama, many areas of Mississippi, many areas of Louisiana. I must admit to you that there are still jail cells waiting for us, and dark and difficult moments. But if we will go on with the faith that non-violence and its power can transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, we will be able to change all these conditions." [cited by John Jewell, Lectionary Tales, 6/30/13]

And I was worried about making the cheerleading squad.

"When the days drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem." The next several chapters of the gospel of Luke all take place on this march to Jerusalem. Jesus knows what confrontation will take place there–it was inevitable, as the forces of domination awaited the forces of non-violent Love. But Jesus "set his face to go to Jerusalem." James and John apparently think it’s all about force and domination–"Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" they ask about the inhospitable Samaritan village. Jesus will have nothing of it. It’s not that kind of a march.

When others along the way want to join in, Jesus is brutally honest. To the one who said he’d follow Jesus wherever he went, Jesus said, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Humanity has nowhere to lay his head." To another person Jesus said, "Follow me." But that one said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." Seems eminently reasonable. But Jesus said to him, "let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." And another man said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." After all, honor your mother and father, right? But Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

"Life is what happens when you’ve made other plans," they say. I’m a big planner, but I wonder, how many times has Life come to me but I had other plans? As one commentator asks, "Does Jesus make a noticeable difference in our lives? Do we try to shape our faith to fit the lives we’ve already planned?" (Michael Rogness, cited by David Lose in Working Preacher, 6/30/13)

I received a phone call Thursday noon from a member of the Bennington Homeless Coalition. It seems that the budget that our state legislature passed this past month has cut 75% of the money used for motel vouchers for homeless individuals and families. That goes into effect July 1, tomorrow. Here in Bennington, that means that upwards of 50 people, including men, women, and children, who have been living in temporary housing in area motels, will no longer have any housing. The area Director of Human Services, Sadie Fischesser, is desperately trying to find housing or alternatives for these people, and one of the options being explored is housing them in faith communities. The National Guard has offered sleeping bags.

"Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Humanity has nowhere to lay his head." I don’t know about you, but that strikes me as an ironically appropriate text for today. And, I’ll admit, it scares me. This is just the beginning, at least for us, as the effects of the federal sequester begin to reach us, as the appalling gap between the haves and have nots in our country grows wider and wider. Some of us have been frustrated that our resident homeless man, who lives in his maroon van, can’t find somewhere else to live besides our parking lot or the street out front. Imagine Mike times 50 or 100. Where will they go? Who should we send them to? To human service agencies? They’ve all been cut. What jobs are available for folks with these limited resources and skills? "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Humanity has nowhere to lay his head."

Remember that story of the monastery whose rule included hospitality to all who came to them, and the one monk who confessed, "When I see another person coming up the walk, I say, ‘Jesus Christ, is that you again?’" I’ve reminded myself of that many times.

And then there are those other two seemingly reasonable explanations for hesitating in our discipleship–"Lord, first let me bury my father" and "Lord, first let me say good-by to those at home." In Jesus’ time and culture, even more so than ours perhaps, family was everything–

status, identity, vocation, security, survival even. And Jesus said that following the path to God’s kingdom took precedence over all that. We all are your family. Seek life, not death.

Yup, this is a text we’d just as soon skip over. But you’ve got to admit, it keeps working at you. At least it does to me, here as I’m getting ready to go on vacation.

And remember that month of March 1965 when I was worried about braces and cheerleading, and others were being attacked with billie clubs and dogs? I know we’re not responsible for where we’re born and in what situation we grow up, so I’m not beating myself up for not being more aware of, let alone joining in, the march from Selma to Montgomery. But now that I am aware, not only of that monumental effort that literally cost blood, sweat and tears, even lives, but am also aware of the situation that literally millions of our brothers and sisters find themselves in today–still denied the right to vote in some parts of the country, still discriminated against because of race or religion or sexual orientation or ethnic background, still unable to find decent housing or health care or employment–then this text begins to get under my skin. Can I really just turn away? Do I have the luxury to give up and say, "Wow, that’s just such a huge problem!"

"Not everybody has that luxury to give up," one writer reminds me. She cites ethicist Sharon Welch, who says "that the temptation to cynicism and despair when problems are seen as intransigent is a temptation that takes a particular form for the middle class. The despair of the affluent, the middle class, has a particular tone: it is a despair cushioned by privilege and grounded in privilege. It is easier to give up on long-term social change when one is comfortable in the present–when it is possible to have challenging work, excellent health care and housing, and access to the fine arts. When the good life is present or within reach, it is tempting to despair of its ever being in reach for others and resort to merely enjoying it for oneself and one’s family...Becoming so easily discouraged is the privilege of those accustomed to too much power, accustomed to having needs met without negotiation and work, accustomed to having a political and economic system that responds to their needs." (Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk, cited by Alyce McKenzie in Edgy Exegesis, 6/30/13) Ouch. I don’t know about you, but that cuts pretty close to the bone for me. So do Jesus’ responses to the would-be followers.

This is a call to prophetic ministry. It isn’t everyone’s calling, but as Bruce Epperly writes, "Prophetic ministry is not for those who think small; it is for adventurers who ask much of themselves and more of God to achieve God’s and their greatest dreams...Everything that shrinks your world, imprisons you in the past, and ties you to habitual reactions must be jettisoned for the value of God’s realm." (Adventurous Lectionary, 6/30 13) Talk about "re-thinking church"!

There is an old proverb that says, "When you’re at your wit’s end, remember that God lives there." Martin Luther King, Jr., praying in his kitchen late one night, in the midst of threatening phone calls, sheer exhaustion, deep self-doubt, said that at one point, when he had laid out all his despair and fear and doubt before God, "it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world. I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me alone." "When you’re at your wit’s end, remember that God lives there."

What would we do if we knew that ultimately we could not fail, because God will be with us to the end of the world? What would happen if we let ourselves be used by God to usher in God’s realm in ways that stretched us and rearranged us? What if Life showed up at our doorsteps and instead of burrowing into our plans, we opened up the door? We’re none of us in this alone, you know. None of us have to do this all by ourselves. "Wherever two or three are gathered in my name," Jesus said, "there am I in the midst of you." "Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering," wrote a preacher to another group of would-be disciples, "for the One who has promised is faithful." (Hebrews 10:23)

Finally, hear these affirmations from Margaret Wheatley’s book, So Far from Home. She calls this "A Path for Warriors"--

...--We embody values and practices that offer us meaningful lives now. We let go of needing to impact the future.

–We refrain from adding to the aggression, fear, and confusion of this time.

–We welcome every opportunity to practice our skills of compassion and insight, even very challenging ones.

–We resist seeking the illusory comfort of certainty and stability...

–We know that all problems have complex causes. We do not place blame on any one person or cause, including ourselves and colleagues.

–We are vigilant with our relationships, mindful to counteract the polarizing dynamics of this time.

–Our actions embody our confidence that humans can get through anything as long as we’re together.

–We stay present to the world as it is with open minds and hearts, knowing this cultivates our gentleness, decency, and bravery.

–We care for ourselves as tenderly as we care for others, taking time for rest, reflection, and renewal...

The One who has promised to be with us is faithful. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.

 

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Profile: Dara Lindley

Dara K. Lindley is one of our faithful members who joined us in 2001.  She drives up from Pownal to attend church and the activities in which she is involved.  Though quiet and unassuming, Dara is a great addition to our membership with her attendance at services and using her skills to assist in other activities.

Dara was born in Noakind, Thailand and has been in the United States since 1980.  She came with her parents who wanted her to have United States citizenship, and to learn the English language.  So she attended Woodrow Wilson High School in San Francisco to accomplish this goal which she has done admirably.

She became apprenticed at this school taking pastry courses and others in chocolate works.

Dara is married to Peter T. Lindley who is employed in Williamstown.  They have a daughter, Jennifer K. who often attends services with Dara.

To prepare herself for her specialty courses in chocolate working, Dara served apprenticeships in San Francisco.  Since coming to the area she has been employed at the Williams Inn as the pastry chef baking and cake decorating for 20 years.  She also has worked at the Orchard Hotel as the pastry chef and at Mother Myricks in Manchester for ten years.  Presently she is employed at Tunnel City coffee shop as pastry chef in Williamstown where she has worked for ten years.

As a personal testimonial of her art I must tell you that she baked the most beautifully decorated birthday cake for my 100^th celebration.  She has taught Sunday School in the past and also served on the Christian Ed Board.  She also contributes her skill and help at the Snowball Bazaar at the food table where you can find her specialties.

Speaking fluent English Dara is a delight to know.  She uses her talents to add to other activities in the church.  She also likes to garden at their home on Puddingstone Road in Pownal.

We salute this pleasant person who came to us from another country.

Submitted by Harriette Leidich.

 

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“Pressing the Flesh”--1 Kings 17:8-24, Luke 7:11-17-- June 9, 2013

Two widows on the edge of the abyss.  Already they were near the edge, women without husbands in cultures that had no other provision for them, other than the ones not unknown in our day–begging or prostitution.  And now, both of them already headed over the edge, their only sons dying or having died, leaving them not only without the hope of future support, but also, as any parent can testify, without their hearts.  Who can imagine anything worse than losing a child?  Some of you have been there.  Others of us can barely allow such a thought into our minds.

And then into each story, just before their feet leave the scrabbly ground on the edge of the cliff, into each story appears a man of God.  “Don’t be afraid,” he says.  “Give me some water.”  “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”  “Do not weep,” the other one says.  Each one an utterly ridiculous statement or request.   Each one speaking of a possibility that had, just an instant ago, seemed impossible.  Each one grounded in an abundance where only utter desolation and scarcity seemed to be the order of the day.  Each one ushering newness into the life of someone, as Walter Brueggemann puts it, was not “not privy to much newness.” (Cited by Kate Huey in Sermon Seeds, 6/9/13) Each one bringing life where there had appeared to be only death.

There are plenty of people today whose lives appear to be as hopeless and destitute as these two widows’.  People who have long ago given up trying to find work.  People overwhelmed by bills demanding to be paid with the income side of the ledger pathetically inadequate.  Or the widows or widowers who maybe have just enough resources to get by, but who wonder if ever again they will experience that abundance of heart, that joy and energy in living, now that he or she is gone.  Or those for whom physical or emotional wounds or conditions just seem never to heal, or if they do, only to give way to something else.  “Don’t be afraid.”  “Do not weep.”  “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”

There are those who see the church in the same situation as the widows.  Declining numbers. Ever-shrinking budgets, at least on the income side.  Loss of credibility and influence and relevance.  Aging and dying.  “Don’t be afraid.”  “Do not weep.”  “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”

These stories–of Elijah and the widow of Zarapheth and of Jesus and the widow of Nain– bear on their telling and hearing reminders that when we are utterly empty, there is room for grace, and hope.  “Today’s passages,” writes Bruce Epperly, “assert that faith opens us to new dimensions of reality and within these new dimensions, miraculous releases of energy, congruent with the laws of nature, are released.  Willingness to trust God despite appearances opens us to new possibilities, new energies, and a greater sense of vocation.”  (Adventurous Lectionary, 6/9/13)

The realities of our lives–our economic hardship, our declining membership, the loss of loved ones or of former significance–all those are “real,” but they are not the whole story.  “Realism that doesn’t take into consideration divine possibility,” as Epperly says, “stifles the imagination and lends itself to self-fulfilling demise and decrepitude.”  (Ibid.)  We need to be “realistic” AND we need to stay open to God’s possibilities and creativity.  It’s not an either/or, but rather both/and.

There are some who say that, since God is all-powerful, God must have willed the drought that had devastated the widow of Zarepheth’s life (and the story-teller in 1 Kings certainly presents it that way), but more than that, God must have also willed the death of the widow’s son.  What if we let go of that idea that God must be all-powerful, “omnipotent,” and say, rather, that God is all-present, “omnipresent,”present in every moment, offering transformation?  “Bring me a little water in a vessel,” Elijah says to the widow, gathering the last bit of firewood, “so that I may drink....And while you’re at it,” he calls to her, “ bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”  Such tiny openings–a little water, a morsel of bread in your hand.  “As the Lord your God lives,” the widow says, “I have nothing.... nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; ..my son and I are going to die.”  “Do not be afraid,” Elijah says.  “This is plenty for God to work with.  Make a little cake for me and something for yourselves.”  “And the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.”

Well, ok, we made it through that crisis.  But then the son of the widow dies.  “What are you going to do about this, man of God?” cries the widow.  And Elijah carries the boy upstairs to his room and prays to God to save him, and perhaps in a kind of artificial respiration, stretches himself upon the boy’s body three times, crying out in between, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.”  And “the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah,” the storyteller says; “the life of child came into him again, and he revived.”

The story of Jesus’ raising the son of the widow of Nain is a little more “miraculous.”  Here it appears to be only at Jesus’ word that the young man’s life is restored, but there still may be lessons for us.  When Jesus encounters the crowd accompanying the bereft widow and sees her despair, “he had compassion on her.”  The word “compassion” means not only to “suffer with,” but it comes from an amazing Greek word splagcnizomai, from the noun splanxna, meaning “bowels, heart, lungs, liver, or kidneys,” what was thought to be the center of emotions.  Jesus’ gut wrenched when he saw the widow.  He stood in her suffering.  And then he crossed the boundary into the circle of the unclean.  He touched the funeral bier.  He literally entered into their circle of contamination and vulnerability.  “And the bearers stood still.  And he said ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.”

That’s when “fear seized all of them.”  Death we know.  Death is all around us.  But resurrection?  New life emerging out of contamination and death?  Now that’s terrifying!  Maybe we are all too willing to look for signs of death around us–in our own lives, in the life of our church–but do we have the courage to look for signs of resurrection?  New possibilities appearing in nothing more than a morsel of bread in a cupped hand?  Do we have the imagination to join with Elijah and Jesus to allow transformation to enter in at any moment, through the tiniest crack or gesture?

“There are all sorts of wonderful things swirling around in [these stories]:” writes the UCC’s Kate Huey, “the power of God, the rains of mercy on parched earth and dried up lives, the small ones lifted up, the generosity that transforms the direst of situations, the blessings of God multiplying in unexpected and unimagined ways.  When we look around at our lives and the life of the world, and the life of our churches, what abundance is about to break forth because of unexpected generosity and surprising compassion?  What hope do we dare to welcome, and to entertain, in our lives?  What dreams of God are we, too, willing to imagine?” (Op cit.)

The by-laws changes that we are voting on today will not bring about transformation or resurrection.  No matter what structure or constitution we adopt, unless we put our flesh and passion into action, unless our lives reflect the power and compassion of the God who is with us at every moment, able to work with and through us to bring new life and possibilities where there had been too much staleness and cynicism, unless we lean into God’s amazing creativity and strength, transformation will not take place.  But if faith is not a matter of “believing” such and such a thing about God, but rather about trusting in–really trusting into-- the incomprehensible mystery of God, then such faith will carry us through, into God’s future. “Faith is radically embodied trust,” says Robin Meyers, our keynote speaker from Annual Meeting.   Just a morsel in your hand.  Just a touch. Radically embodied trust.

God is already in our future–the future of each one of us, the future of our nation and world, the future of the church.  “Do not be afraid, and do not weep.”  God is with us.  We are not alone.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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“The Dance of God” --Proverbs 8:1-4, 21-31, John 16:12-15-- May 26, 2013

"The Dance of God" Proverbs 8:1-4, 21-31, John 16:12-15 5/26/13

Now that the Holy Spirit has arrived, as we heard last week in the Pentecost story, the Church moves on to this Sunday, called, with not a lot of imagination, "Trinity Sunday." It’s the only festival based on a doctrine instead of an event. As the Church moves from the "Age of Belief," as Harvey Cox and Diana Butler Bass describe it, when doctrines and "what you believe" were the standard, to the Age of the Spirit, when the experience of the Holy is primary, what are we to make of the doctrine of the Trinity and why does it matter? What difference does "the Trinity" make in my life and how would I ever explain it to my kids?

The word "trinity" doesn’t appear in Scripture, at least as a doctrine referring to God, though there are places, like the ending of the gospel of Matthew, where the early church reports Jesus’ telling them to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..." It’s the early church speaking, not Jesus, because those are the words of an institution, even a young one. And yet, this "command of Jesus" has been, even fairly recently, the cause of church arguments and division. In discussions about church unity and mutual recognition, the words used in baptism have been a source of contention. When members of the United Church of Christ advocate for expanding the language we use to describe the God in whose name we baptize–to, say, "Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer"–other churches insist that baptism can only be performed "in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit," otherwise there can be no unity.

It’s this kind of thing that drives more and more people to describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious"–the "nones," as in the survey question, "What religious tradition do you consider yourself part of?" "None" reply a growing number of people, according to a recent Pew Research study. One seminary professor suggests that the question that more and more people are asking, including the "nones," is "How can my life be re-enchanted?" (Cheryl Jones, in Journal for Preachers, Pentecost, 2013, p. 4) Our culture, she says, is suffering from EDD–Enchantment Deficit Disorder, the "loss of a sense of wonder, a skepticism of anything that smacks of the supernatural or the miraculous," yet many of us long for "the wonderful, the holy, and the genuinely spiritual." (Ibid.) Protestants–like us, quite frankly–especially from the Reformed tradition, have been "part of the modern project of disenchantment," with our rational, word-centered worship, and our distrust if not ridicule of other more mystical or emotional or movement centered forms of worship. We’re not sure we should laugh or clap or dance or move or do anything spontaneous in worship, and there will be no losing of control, God forbid. We are the "frozen chosen," as some have called us, and on a cold, rainy weekend like this, it seems a pretty apt description.

So what does this have to do with the Trinity? It has to do with the kind and character of the God we worship. What is our God like? The doctrine of the Trinity was the response of the early church–and by early I mean 3^rd and 4^th century–to explain how the one God could also have been experienced through Jesus and whose Spirit was poured into ordinary people empowering them to be extraordinary and do extraordinary things. The language and way of thinking available to those early church thinkers was Greek, and while much of their explanations may seem tortured and abstract to us, this was a matter of ultimate concern to them. Actually, some of the earliest descriptions are the most intriguing. Tertullian, an early church father, used terms from the performing arts to describe the nature of God. He suggested that, like the masks that actors put over their faces to convey a certain character, so God puts on different masks when acting as creator, redeemer, or spirt. All the aspects of God are present when any one mask is on, so they dance around behind the mask, in a kind of whirling circle dance, called perichoresis. When the Greek got translated into Latin and then into modern languages, the word for mask turned into persona, which implies distinct, self-contained beings, and then all sorts of tortured explanations followed from that.

What the Trinity communicates is that God is a community, dynamic, flowing, inter- personal, creative, not necessarily limited to three, but like our bodies and Paul’s image of the church as a body, made up of many different parts. In fact, the community that God is like might even be described like the community formed on Pentecost when tongues of fire and energy touched down on all those gathered in the upper room, transforming them, empowering them, giving them languages and the ability to communicate with people all over the world. "The lively, energizing, relational vision of the Trinity," writes Bruce Epperly, is in contrast to the "disembodied, abstract, and irrelevant description" that the doctrine often implies. "I believe that the Trinitarian God is constantly dancing, growing, choosing, and changing," he goes on, and "hasn’t decided everything in advance without interraction with the creation." (Adventurous Lectionary, 5/26/13) That is what Process Theology says–God is still speaking and moving and interacting and responding.

The image from Proverbs of Sophia, Lady Wisdom, calling to all who live to "wise up," to listen to wisdom, is another aspect of God. It is a playful, creative, even child-like part of the Divine, deeply involved in the creation of the universe and delighting in it. The universe was created for joy, abundance, and delight, so that spirituality is "about fiery, passionate love of the earth, not otherworldly withdrawal." (Epperly, op cit.) Paul writes to the Romans in today’s epistle reading that "God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us," and the reading from John tells us that the same Spirit that was in Christ is now in us, that we are embodiments of the divine creative wisdom.

The Feast of Pentecost was originally a Jewish harvest festival, the festival of bringing the first fruits to God. The Eastern Christian Church still celebrates Pentecost as a "green" holiday , a feast of the earth, and people decorate their churches and homes with greenery. All life is filled with God’s Spirit and like Wisdom delighting in God’s creation, so nature is re-enchanted.

Former Archbishop if Canterbury Rowan Williams writes that "the present ecological crisis may be attributed to our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience." (William P. Brown, Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2013, p. 12) Indeed, Rachel Carson, one of the early environmentalists, said that "wonder is a virtue necessary for the long-term survival of our species," if not the planet. (Ibid.) Mission 4/1 Earth goes on.

So what kind of life results from this understanding of God? It is communal, participatory, hand reaching out to hand in an on-going, colorful, earth-delighting dance. It is a dance that carries the Cross along within it, bearing the burdens of those who are still suffering and being crucified, including the earth itself. St. Augustine described the Trinity as the Lover, the Beloved, and Love Itself.

It is into this circle that we are called to join in. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke puts the invitation this way–

Go to the limits of your longing

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Give me your hand.

May we join in that dance. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Youth Service, Sunday May 19th, enjoyed by all

Wonderful service for Pentecost Sunday lead by our youth group.

Please click the link below to our Facebook page to see all the pictures.

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Three Confirmands, Sunday, May 12th

Wonderful Mother's Day gift as three of our youth get Confirmed.  Congratulations!

Please click the link below to our Facebook page for the photo album taken that day.

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"Going up? Down? In?"-- Acts 1:1-11, Luke 24:44-53 -- May 12, 2013

What’s a 21^st century, Google Earth-savvy, texting and tweeting, thoughtful and intelligent girl to make of these 2000-year-old stories of Jesus’ being taken up into the sky on a cloud or sunbeam? What are any of us to make of them? Do we just say, "Well, they’re in the Bible, so we have to believe them?" Or, "that’s just religion. You know how crazy those religious types are." Or, "God did things differently back then."

How about, "What do you suppose the early followers of Jesus were trying to tell people about their experience of him with this story?" I happen to think that’s a much more fruitful question to explore, which actually has something to do with what happened here this morning, when these three young women said that they would stay open to the questions about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the church, that they believe that God is still speaking and committed themselves to continue listening.

The two passages that Inge read for us–one from the Book of Acts and the other from the Gospel of Luke–were actually both written by the same author, whom we call "Luke." And in fact, Luke ends his gospel–Volume 1 of his 2-part account–with the story of Jesus taking the disciples out to Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem, and "while he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven." Luke then begins Volume 2–the Book of Acts–with a slightly different version of the same story, this time saying that Jesus was taken up in a cloud while they were watching, and two men in white robes appeared and asked them why they were standing there, looking up in the sky.

It’s ok that these two stories are a little different. They’re not meant to be newspaper articles, reporting "the facts." They’re meant to say something about Jesus and about how his followers experienced him after they no longer saw him. He was taken up into heaven, they said. "He ascended into heaven," the ancient Apostles’ Creed of the Church says, "and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty." It was as majestic and powerful and holy an image as they could imagine, for whenever they thought of God now, they thought of Jesus, who had been so full of God for them. Jesus is sitting on a throne in heaven–up in the sky somewhere–right next to God’s throne.

Ever since they’d known him, Jesus seemed to be full of God. He spoke of God like he really knew what he was talking about, like he really knew God. He’d go off into the hills for hours and come back like he’d been plugged into some incredible power source. He’d tell stories and ask questions that made them think and unsettled all their assumptions. He seemed to know himself thoroughly and he seemed to know them better than they knew themselves. And then, of course, there were the healings. He wasn’t afraid to touch anyone or to have anyone touch him. More often than not he’d say it was the person’s own faith that had healed them, not anything he had done. He wasn’t afraid of weird spirits either and would call them out to release their grip on minds and bodies. He was a full human being–who loved to laugh and eat and drink and sing, whose passion for justice and compassion could be expressed in anger and sarcasm. He had a particularly soft spot for people and things dismissed by others, and even death, since it fell within the care and power of God, could be met full-on.

Those early followers looked to Jesus as teacher and friend, but more than that. Peter spoke for them, confessing that Jesus was the messiah. Jesus never claimed that title for himself. If anything, he chose that odd title, "Son of Man," or "Fully Human One." Though they didn’t believe it, Jesus told his followers they could be "fully human" too–even doing the things he did, and more.

Then, of course, he died, crucified by the Romans, between two thieves, shaking up his followers’ ideas of who Jesus really was. We thought he was the one to save Israel. But then they did see him again, they did experience him as alive beside them, changed, of course, but still Jesus. They all experienced him differently.

Until the stories we read today, when Jesus appeared one last time to them, told them it was up to them now, that they would receive power from God to be as Jesus was in the world, only in their own way. And he was "lifted up, and a cloud took them from their sight." He went up into heaven.

The Hubble telescope has sent back to earth remarkable, mind-blowing photographs, not only of unfathomable distances and sizes, but also of mind-bending measures of time. How do we wrap our brains around "20,000 light years away"? Just recently I heard of one picture, I’m not sure if it was from the Hubble or some other device, that scientists think is about as old a photograph as we will get, when the universe was still relatively young, relatively "shortly" after the Big Bang, that initial explosion of light and energy that set the universe into being. Yikes! I’m not sure what to do with that information other than to stand in awe at the mystery and wonder of it all.

You can understand why the ancients thought the gods lived up in the sky. Talk about your mystery and wonder! And their starry nights were far starrier than ours. Plus, storms and wind and rain and snow and sun and all kinds of weather came from "the sky." So, when they spoke of Jesus–and others from their tradition: Enoch, Ezekiel, Elijah–being taken up into heaven, they were saying that they were going to be with God–up there; into the mystery.

"The final mystery," wrote Oscar Wilde, "is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his [or her] own soul?" (De Profundis)

The final mystery is oneself. Modern psychology and brain research are daily discovering more and more about the mystery of the human brain and psyche. If the ancients spoke of Jesus "going up" to be with God, because God surely lived in the sky, where or how might we think about Jesus being now? What if we thought about Jesus–this model or archetype of the human being, charged with energy and full of God–going deep into God whom we experience everywhere, including within ourselves? That’s what one of my teachers, Biblical scholar Walter Wink, writes, that the ascension of Jesus is really the descension of this model or archetype of the fully human one into human consciousness.

Psychologists have discovered that we often project onto others parts of ourselves that we can’t quite deal with. You’ve no doubt experienced that there are people who drive you absolutely crazy, who seem to push all your buttons, but if you’re able to be absolutely honest with yourself, you realize that what drives you crazy in them is actually a quality in yourself that you don’t want to deal with–your perfectionism, or your judgmentalism, or your disorganization, or whatever. It works with positive qualities as well. What we admire in other people is often a quality that we have within ourselves but maybe are afraid to claim it. So we project it outside ourselves, until we are able to recognize it and own it within ourselves.

Wink suggests that that’s what happened in human evolution with Jesus. We evolve not only physically but psychically as well. Jesus embodied the full potential, the full humaneness and even divinity, in a human being, so we could see what that looked like. When he "ascended" into God, that model or archetype of the full Human Being actually entered into the human subconscious, deep within all of us, where it longs to be embodied. From "out there" to "in here."

Up until the time we become full adults, we project all kinds of qualities onto others–first our parents, then our friends, our heroes and celebrities–where we can take a look at them, see what resonates with us. As we mature, we need to claim those qualities that we will nurture for ourselves. We need to figure out what we will believe, what we "know for sure," as Oprah puts it, what kind of person we want to be, what purpose we think our lives have.

The disciples saw in Jesus a deep wisdom, the ability to heal and challenge, to call demons out of people, to know what authority was worth following in one’s life and what wasn’t. After he left and they no longer saw him, they discovered that they had those qualities within themselves, that calling up Jesus’ presence in their lives drew those qualities out of them and they could, as he said they would be able to, do what he had done, "and more."

"The final mystery is oneself." "Know thyself," said all the sages from Buddha to Aristotle to Jesus and beyond. To know and come to love yourself, "to be true to your reality as Jesus was to his own," as the Confirmation question asks, is, to use another of Jesus’ phrases, "the pearl of great price," the thing worth your best time and effort. You could certainly get a very different impression about what’s most important from school or the media or others– getting good grades, being the best in your sport, getting into the right college, getting the right job, marrying the right person–that’s what’s most important. That’s what will make you happy. But all of that is still outside yourself, up there, out there.

Tal Ben-Shahar, my positive psychology teacher, asked his students at Harvard how many of them could remember the day they received their acceptance letters to Harvard. Every hand went up. And how many of you thought you’d be set, that you’d be happy? All the hands stayed up. So now that we’re into the second semester, you’ve been at Harvard for awhile, how many of you are happy today? All but one or two hands went down. Isn’t that interesting? What they thought would make them happy–"success," by most people’s standards–actually didn’t have much to do with their happiness.

For what we know, from research, and from experience, is that the quality of our relationships is the #1 predictor of happiness, that knowing and being known and loved, having a sense of gratitude for your life, that being part of something greater than yourself is far more likely to give you a sense of well-being and meaning than success, money, fame, physical beauty, or anything else our culture holds up to us to pursue.

"And while he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was taken up into heaven." Heaven is where God is. Heaven is in our midst, beyond and inside of you. "The implications of these reflections are profound," Walter Wink writes. "It means we are free to go on the journey that Jesus charted rather than to worship the journey of Jesus...Most important, perhaps, Jesus shows us something of what it means to become human, but not enough to keep us from having to discover our own humanity. We must weave the story, and for each of us the story will be unique." (Engaging the Powers, p. 139)

"The final mystery is yourself," Oscar Wilde wrote, and I would add, the real hero’s journey is to discover how God is made flesh in you and in everyone else. Stay open to the fact of God. Be true to your reality as Jesus was to his. Stay open to the movement of the Holy Spirit. Be true to the community of people who are willing to offer themselves as vessels of God’s Love and Light in the world, to be the hands and feet, the heart and mind of Christ, which is the true calling of the Church. It is a journey of wonder and mystery, of laughter and tears, demanding everything you’ve got and giving you more than you ever dreamed. I am delighted and honored to be on this journey with you. Amen. And Amen.

 

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

 

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"The leaves of the tree...for the healing of the nations..."-- Revelation 22:1-5 --May 5, 2013

It is that exquisite time of year when the leaves of the trees are just about to burst open or already have. I experience this time of year as incredibly beautiful to the eye, ear, and nose, but I realize that for many, including those near and dear to me, that while it may be a beautiful and song-filled time, it is also a time of extreme discomfort, with runny nose and itchy eyes. Allergy season is upon us.

Still, one only has to spend a few minutes quietly observing to notice the comings and goings, the callings and chatterings, the fluttering and scurrying that goes on in and around the trees. We have a huge old hemlock tree next to our house, probably at least as old as the house itself, so over 100 years old, that we’ve been told was at one time girdled, in an attempt to keep the two trunks from falling apart. Alas, that well-intentioned intervention will most likely mean the death of the old tree, as it is essentially being strangled. Nonetheless, we cannot bring ourselves to have the tree cut down. It is literally a skyscraper apartment complex for countless numbers of bird and squirrel couples, not to mention a landing zone for hundreds of others who swoop in to wait their turns at our feeders and bird bath.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

John’s vision of the new heaven and the new earth, including the New Jerusalem, includes this wonderful image of the river of the water of life, flowing from the throne of God. "Shall we gather at the river, that flows from the throne of God?" asks the old spiritual. And then that equally wonderful and mind-blowing image of the tree of life, "on either side of the river," straddling it somehow, with its twelve kinds of fruit–the quintessential Fruit-of-the-Month Club–"and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."

The tree of life, the same tree of life from the second creation story in Genesis, that was in the middle of the garden of Eden, along with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The first humans ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as the story explains our sense of conscience, but God knew we were not ready to be immortal. So, the story goes, we were expelled from the Garden before we could eat of the Tree of Life.

But here we are, at the end of time, or at least at the end or goal of God’s intention for us, in John’s vision, in the New Jerusalem, through the middle of which flows the river of the water of life and on either side of the river is the tree of life. It seems that it is only after we’ve experienced what it means to be mortal, to know the preciousness and fragility of life, to have experienced love and loss, that we are even allowed to see once again that beautiful Tree of Life. And, caught up in the Spirit, as John was, immersed in the Spirit which is Love and Life, we recognize that it is healing we are in need of. "The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."

Imagine–all the time, money, energy, lives–spent on weapons, Departments of Defense, aircraft, ships, tanks, drones, personnel, all to stop the nations, or defend the nations, or beef up the nations...and here in this vision, it is the leaves of the tree of life that are for the healing of the nations. How "simple." How green. How naive. Or is it?

The leaves of our trees are little microcosms of the whole planet. In them are found the pollutants that exist, even here in relatively pristine Vermont, in our air and water and soil. In the leaves of our trees are reflected the climactic conditions of drought or warming. The leaves of our trees share an amazing amount of genetic and organic material with us. We would do well to listen to the wisdom of the leaves of our trees.

And within the leaves and needles of our trees live whole communities–of birds and squirrels and chipmunks and insects, not to mention moss and other symbiotic plants. The trees themselves live within a community of organisms and elements, created in a balance that we have tampered with at not only their but our own peril. "The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."

Mission 4/1 Earth is the denomination-wide effort of the United Church of Christ to witness to our commitment to take on our essential and urgent task of caring for the earth, by planting trees, spending hours in earthcare, and engaging in acts of advocacy for policies that will protect and honor the earth. We confess that for too long, western Christianity has sanctioned abuse and exploitation of the earth and its creatures in a tragic misunderstanding of our place in the scheme of things. Western industrialism and scientific rationalism have pushed us further away from our essential identity with the rest of nature, even going to extremes to prove that we are "other" than nature. We have literally changed the chemistry and structure of the earth to such an extent that we may indeed have gone too far.

There is no "going back to the garden," despite Joni Mitchell’s and Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s singing so sweetly that "we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden." There is only going ahead. Which is what John vision tells us...going on to the New Heaven and the New Earth which, even now, God is bringing forth. It is a vision of community, of inclusion, of restored harmony of humanity with nature, of restored communion between God and all of creation, including humanity, for "God is in the midst of them," John says.

Elsewhere, the vision of God’s intention for us is portrayed as a banquet table, flowing with food and wine, where everyone is welcome at the table and there is enough for all. This table to which we are about to come is a foretaste of that day, where all who wish to come are welcome. It is a vision and a memory. It is an infinite moment here and now. In Christ, God and humanity become one. Heaven and earth are united. God enters into the cells of our bodies and even into the leaves of the trees. That is our healing and our hope, not only for us, but for the nations and the whole world. "Take and eat. Take and drink." Let us keep the feast. Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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“Imagine....” -- Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-34 -- April 28, 2013

The Book of The Revelation (only one) to John is to most of us UCC-types the stuff of eyeball rolling skepticism and even dismissal.  Of course, for others, it’s the most important book in the Bible, as Tim LeHay’s wildly popular Left Behind series can attest to.  For these folks, the Book of Revelation is a road map and guidebook for these final days of planet earth, and there is a certain amount of smug satisfaction in that they will be taken up in glory while we will be “left behind.”  Already there have been sightings of and speculations about the four horsemen of the apocalypse and just who the Beast and the Anti-Christ are.  I prefer a more agnostic perspective, leaving it up to an infinitely loving and just God to determine where we all are headed.

Still, it would be a shame to give up completely on this book which, despite a good deal of controversy, did make it into our canon (or authorized set of books of the Bible).  After all, it’s only since the 19th century that people began to take the Bible literally, so our ancient ancestors in faith knew that there was more to this book than terrifying beasts and puzzling numbers.  They also had experienced enough blood baths and terror to know that if God is totally uninterested and removed from our struggles and terrors, then we really are in trouble.

The passage which Andrea read for us this morning is one of the real jewels in the book and almost makes slogging through the rest of the book worth it.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’

As Biblical scholar Eugene Boring writes, “All of Revelation’s statements about ‘the End’ are really statements about God...[John gives] remarkable expression to the Christian conviction that at the End we meet not an event but a Person.” (Boring, Revelation, p. 215) And I would add that we meet not even a Person with a capital “P,” for God is more than a “person.”  As William Sloan Coffin put it in his memoir, “I don’t know what awaits me after death, I only know Who, and that is enough.” (Credo) Along with Coffin, the Book of Revelation affirms that “at the end,...God.”

You know that we’ve been “re-thinking church,” trying to open ourselves up to the possibilities of new forms, new ways of thinking and being and doing “church.”  We’re in the midst of this 500 year rummage sale, as Phyllis Tickle puts it, and we’re not really sure what we should throw out, what we should keep, or really, where we’re headed.  Another way of putting that is, we’re not sure what our “end” is, not so much in the sense of “the end,” “it’s over,” “there ain’t no mo’,” but rather, our end as our goal, where we’re headed, what fulfilling our destiny and purpose might look like.

And of course, the same could be said of any of our lives.  We may wonder, particularly as we begin to accumulate more and more birthdays, where we are headed, what lies ahead, maybe doing some wondering about what happens after we die, though Bill Coffin’s confession that we only know Who awaits us may just have to be enough.

So, for the early church, awaiting the end of the world, because everything was falling apart, for the church today, and for each of our lives, the Book of the Revelation to John holds wisdom for us–“in the end,....God.”

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Again, Eugene Boring writes, “In John’s view, the new Jerusalem is the fulfillment of all human dreams for the community and security of life in an ideal city.” (214)

It is a dream of community.  This is not a vision of individuals holed up in their cells, each one communing one-on-one with God or Jesus, but rather an interdependent community, a city, “the concrete living out of interdependence as the essential nature of human life.” (Boring, 219)   It’s the African notion of ubuntu, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu explains it–“My well-being is wrapped up in your well-being.”

“And the sea was no more,” John notes.  The sea in Biblical usage often signifies chaos, so in this vision there is a deep order or at least harmony here.  “The sea” also separated John from the rest of his community, if, as he says, he is in exile on the island of Patmos.  “The sea was no more” means that all the barriers to human relationship and community will be gone.

“God will wipe every tear from their eyes[John continues]. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more...”  “All that now robs life from being fulfilled, joyful, vibrant life [Eugene Boring writes] will be absent from the transcendent reality to which [God] is leading history.” (217)    Isn’t that what we long for?  Isn’t that what we fear from death?  Pain and separation from loved ones?  “God will wipe every tear from their eyes, Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more...”  “The sea was no more...”

And not only all that separates us from loved ones will be removed but also all that separates us from God will be no more.  God is not one “item” in this new heaven and new earth, but God is all in all, God is in the midst of humanity.  There is no temple in the New Jerusalem –no church or mosque or shrine either–no place where people go to be in God’s presence because now God’s presence is everywhere.  We are in God and God is in us.  “See, the home of God is among mortals.”  “My Lord, what a morning!”

“I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.  And I saw the New Jerusalem...”  The voice from the One seated on the throne does not say, “See, I make all new things,” but rather, “See, I make all things new.”  Heaven and earth and we are not obliterated; rather, we are renewed, made new.  Jerusalem was where the story of God’s dealing with humanity took place, and there is continuity.  This is the New Jerusalem.  “We shall not all die,” Paul wrote, “but we shall all be changed.”  Boring writes that this is “a world in which nothing human is lost.  Salvation is beyond but not without this world.” (221).  This world, right now, in the present moment, is where “salvation” begins. The new heaven and new earth are coming and already are in our midst.  This is not a world-abandoning vision.  We are called to “love one another, as Jesus loved us,” right now.  The New Jerusalem comes out of heaven from God, but that does not mean we can give up all our responsibility.  “The present moment is the decisive one,” calling us–commanding us–to “love one another.”

And despite the desire of some to be part of the exclusive club, this is an inclusive vision.  They will be my peoples, God says.  The vision of the New Jerusalem that the writer sets out does have gates to the city, so there are those outside the walls, but the gates are always open. The choice is always ours–to come in, or to stay out.

And then, there is the image of the city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  This is a vision of beauty.  I love Robin Meyers’ working definition of beauty as “the effortless manifestation of inner peace.”  (The Underground Church).  I wish I’d known that as an adolescent girl, holding Seventeen magazine in one hand and looking into the mirror.  That was a very different image of “beauty.”

Eugene Boring sums up John’s vision this way–“If this is where the world, under the sovereign grace of God, is finally going, then every thought, move, deed in some other direction is out of step with reality and is finally wasted.”  (224) If God’s intention, God’s dream, for the world, for the church, for each of us, is community, deep harmony, interdependence, beauty, inclusion, communion, if that is, indeed, the ultimate Reality, then all other thoughts, moves, deeds are a waste of time.

So perhaps some questions might guide our thinking and acting and dreaming in the days and weeks and months, even years, ahead.
–How and where are you, are we, most likely to encounter God, right now and in the future?
–What in my life, what in our church’s life, is no longer vibrant and alive and could be turned over to God for renewal?
–What in my life, what in our church’s life, is full of greenness and potential and might be brought to blossom and bear fruit in God’s dream for me, for us?
–Who have I–we–thought we were separated from, and how might we be re-connected through God?
–What might I–we–do to find the deep harmony and inner peace that manifests itself in beauty? –How would I live my life if I knew that nothing, ultimately, would be able to separate me from God?   How would that translate into the life of our church?
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’
This is good news!  Amen.                                                  — Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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“You are my beloved” April 14, 2013

"You are my beloved"–What the church might learn from Positive Psychology

Final Project for the Certificate in Positive Psychology by Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

Imagine a place where, no matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done, no matter how old or young or inbetween, you are welcome and reminded that you are a beloved child of God, precious in God’s sight. – That is my dream for Second Congregational Church, and I believe that insights and practices from Positive Psychology could help us become more of such a place.

The field of Positive Psychology is a relatively new–or newly revived–discipline within the wider field of psychology. Rather than focusing only on mental illness and dysfunction, what happens when things go wrong, Positive Psychology focuses on what helps human beings flourish, what contributes to well-being, what "works." It asks questions like, Why do some kids succeed and flourish in incredibly challenging environments and situations? not just, why do so many others fail? How could my day go 5% better? What gives life meaning? How can I be happier–not "happy" all the time, but generally experience a higher level of well-being? What makes some people more resilient, able to weather the real crises and challenges of life? What difference could all of this make to our experience of community and relationships, in our families and most intimate relationships, in our communities, in our world?

Just as Paul writes in Galatians about the fruit of the Spirit as "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (5:22), so Positive Psychology researches and helps us to develop gratitude, grace, joy, kindness, health, courage, vulnerability, discipline, ritual, relationships, service, connection, healing. Indeed, the vocabulary of Positive Psychology may very well communicate the concept of "abundant life" which Jesus said he came to bring, as well if not better than the traditional language of the church, which is no longer the native tongue of growing numbers of people in our culture.

So perhaps one entry point–to pick just one-- for discovering where Positive Psychology might be infused into the church is where we enter into the Christian community. Baptism is the initiation rite into that community of people who seek to follow in the Way of Jesus. It’s an experience that we share with Jesus who, as tradition tells us, was also baptized. The story in Mark’s gospel says,

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased."

(Mark 1: 9-11)

For Christians, baptism is our reminder that we are beloved sons and daughters of God. Just as Jesus was marked but still had to affirm and live out his identity as the beloved Child of God, so do we all need to claim and live out our identity as beloved children of God.

Listen to this baptism story from Preaching Professor Heather Murray Elkins, who tells of

a young man on a clergy retreat she was leading.

As a part of the retreat, Elkins had asked the pastors to spend some time to find their story, and their name, in scripture. On the last day of the retreat, the pastors gathered in a circle, with a chair in the middle. Then, one by one, they took their turn to sit in the chair in the middle of the circle, and told the story they had found, and the name they had found, and how they knew it was theirs.

The final gathering was going well, and the preachers were telling profound and moving stories. And then, one young man took his place in the center. But he just sat there, and said nothing. And at first, the others waited, but still, the young man said nothing. Then folks began to get a little nervous and a little fidgety. Some were looking at their watches. Finally, Elkins said to the young man, "Is there something you would like to share with us?"

"I spent all three days looking through the bible," he said. "And I saw many names there that I wanted to have. I read many stories that I wanted to claim. But none of the names were strong enough to overcome the name I already have. My father gave me this name when I was very little. And there was nothing I found in these last three days that is strong enough to change that name."

Then the man fell silent again.

So Elkins waited a bit, and then asked, "Would you be willing to share your name with us?"

And the young pastor answered, "My name, that my father gave me when I was very small, is ‘Not good enough.’" And the man put his head in his hands and began to sob. It was as if he was drowning there before them. And there they were, a room full of life guards, and no one knew what to do.

But then, as if the Holy Spirit was descending like a dove right there in that room, one by one the others rose and went to the man. Then a few others rose, and then more. They surrounded him, and they laid their hands on him, and in one voice they said, "You are my beloved son. In you I am well pleased."

Elkins says that at the end of the retreat, she saw the young pastor packing up his car and she just had to go over to him and ask him, "Do you think what happened in that circle will make a difference?"

"I don’t know," he said. "But it does feel that something inside me that was broken somehow isn’t broken anymore. And I do know this. From now on, every time I hold a baby, and dip my hand into the water to name that child before the congregation, I will remember this moment, and I will remember who I am." (Grateful to the Rev. Catherine Foote, University Congregational UCC, Seattle, WA, for transcribing story told by HME, Living the Questions...)

This is the "What" of the intersection of Positive Psychology and the church. What and Who are we really? "Know thyself" say all the sages from Aristotle to Buddha to Jesus. ("Love your neighbor as you love yourself.") "Not good enough." How many of us have been given that name, or claimed it as our own? "Not good enough." Is that your name? Not pretty enough, not thin enough, not successful enough, not smart enough; your house isn’t clean enough, your golf score not low enough....not good enough? If I asked you for a list of your faults, could you stop at one or two, or do we not have time for the whole list? We all know people, like the young pastor’s father, who are always finding fault, who focus on what’s wrong, what’s not quite right, the glass that is half empty. Fault-finders. The church has a reputation for being full of them. Finger-waggers. Sin-seekers.

Perfectionism has its own deadly self-reinforcing feedback loop–no matter how hard we strive to be perfect, we inevitably fail or fall short of the ideal, which then makes us think that if we had just tried harder, we would have made it; so we continue to drive ourselves, and continue to fail...because we are human. "Permission to be human" is a theme of Positive Psychology. What if instead of perfectionists, we became Optimalists–doing our best at any moment, taking into consideration all we’ve got available to us at the time, our human limitations, the circumstances? What if we saw failure not as a catastrophe but as an opportunity to learn?

Not good enough. Shame says we’re not good enough, we’re not worthy of connection, which, actually, is "why we’re here." (B. Brown) Sociologist and Pos. Psychologist Brene Brown found in her research that those who feel that they are worthy of connection have more resilience to shame. What if the church taught shame resilience instead of just shame? A sense of worthiness despite our vulnerability? A sense of belovedness, of unconditional acceptance?

This, of course, does not mean that whatever we do or say is ok. Our children–and we-- need to be taught what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t, that what we do actually does affect other people, and that we value our God-given connection with all other people and creatures. There are things for which a sense of guilt is not only necessary but helpful. We need to be able to recognize when we have betrayed our true selves, when we have hurt others, when we have failed to act when our actions or words might have helped another. We need to be able to say we’re sorry and make amends when that happens.

The kingdom of God that Jesus spoke about has not fully arrived. There is evil and there is injustice and an infinite number of ways that we wander from our best selves and end up doing things we regret or that harm ourselves or others. And yet we know from research that those who focus on the full half of the glass, who identify and build on their strengths instead of focusing on their weaknesses, who look upon failure as an opportunity to grow and learn, who are "Benefit finders" instead of "Fault finders"–we know that these people experience more well-being, are physically healthier, and in fact, contribute more to the well-being of others. When we appreciate the good, the good appreciates, i.e. it grows.

"You are my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased," rather than, "Not good enough." Imagine if we in the church help people discover their true name, instead of adding to the shame and sense of failure.

Another baptism story–this one from Janet Wolf, a United Methodist pastor who used to serve the Hobson United Methodist Church in Nashville, TN.

Years ago, a woman named Fayette found her way to Hobson. Fayette lived with mental illness and lupus and without a home. She joined the new member class. The conversation about baptism–‘This holy moment when we are named by God’s grace with such power it won’t come undone,’ as Janet puts it–especially grabbed Fayette’s imagination. Janet tells of how, during the class, Fayette would ask again and again, ‘And when I’m baptized, I am...?’ ‘The class,’ Janet writes, ‘learned to respond, ‘Beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.’ "Oh, yes!’ she’d say, and then we could go back to our discussion.

The day of Fayette’s baptism came. This is how Janet describes it:

Fayette went under, came up spluttering, and cried, ‘And now I am...?’ And we all sang, ‘Beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.’ ‘Oh, yes!’ she shouted as she danced all around the fellowship hall.

Two months later, Janet received a phone call. Fayette had been beaten and raped and was at the county hospital. So I went [Janet says]. I could see her from a distance, pacing back and forth. When I got to the door, I heard, ‘I am beloved....’ She turned, saw me, and said, "I am beloved, precious child of God, and....’ Catching sight of herself in the mirror–hair sticking up, blood and tears streaking her face, dress torn, dirty, and rebuttoned askew, she started again, ‘I am beloved, precious child of God, and...’ She looked in the mirror again and declared, ‘....and God is still working on me. If you come back tomorrow, I’ll be so beautiful I’ll take your breath away!’

(Janet Wolf’s story is from The Upper Room Disciplines 1999[Nashville: The Upper Room] and cited by Jan Richardson in her blog, paintedprayerbook.com, Dec. 31, 2009)

This, in a sense, is the "how" that Positive Psychology can help us with. Being positive doesn’t mean bad or negative things don’t happen. Being a beloved child of God doesn’t mean you won’t get beat up or sick or crucified. We’ve been through enough funerals together, been driven to our knees over tragedies that left us feeling helpless and hopeless. Positive psychology does not tell us, "Don’t worry. Be Happy." It is important to be as present to the negative emotions and experiences as we are to the positive, for, in fact, fully experiencing the negative emotions allows us also to experience the positive emotions more fully-- The "happy" life is not "happy" all the time. The only people who don’t experience negative emotions, our professor reminds us, are the sociopaths and the dead.

The more present and mindful we can be in our negative experiences–to allow grief, or anger or sadness or frustration to be real, the more likely we will be able to return to a sense of well-being, to see the negative as temporary–"This too shall pass." "If you come back tomorrow," Fayette said, "I’ll be so beautiful I’ll take your breath away....God is still working on me."

To be able to return to that core identity, that seed of greatness, even in the midst of turmoil and tragedy, is such a gift–and such a skill. Over and over, every day. We can create daily rituals that remind us who we are and Whose we are. As you know, I actually do say this baptismal affirmation everyday–"I too am beloved, a precious child of God, beautiful to behold, and [I add] I serve the God of Love and Light." And daily rituals that include mindful breathing, some kind of physical movement, some kind of intentional affirmation of our core identity can literally begin to re-wire our brains, no matter how old we are.

A third and final baptism story is not really a baptism story per se, but it is related and comes from the great preaching professor Fred Craddock.

Fred and his wife had stopped to eat in a little restaurant in the Smokey Mountains. Now, Fred is a quiet, unassuming man, but is not an unknown figure in that part of the country

. An elderly gentleman came over to the Craddocks’ table and introduced himself. [His name vaguely rang a bell.] He said that his mom was not married when she had given birth to him, and the community directed shame toward her and her child. He often ate alone at school; he sat alone at church, which for some reason he felt drawn to, but he always left early. One day, as he was trying to slip out, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find the minister looking down at him. "He looked closely at my face," the gentleman said, "and I knew he was trying to figure out whose features I shared. I knew he was trying to guess who my father was." "Well, boy," the minister said, "you are a child of...." and then he paused. When he spoke again, he said, "Boy, you are a child of God. I see a striking resemblance." Then he swatted me on the bottom and said, "Now you go on and claim your inheritance."

I left church that day a different person," the now-elderly man said. "In fact, that was the beginning of my life."

Fred Craddock said that when he told his dad this story, his father recalled that the two-term governor of Tennessee

[that’s who the gentleman was] had been born to an unwed mother. (Told by Joanna Adams, Day1.org., 1/10/10)

This is the "So what?" The man who eventually became the governor of Tennessee was reminded of his true self and it changed his life. And not only did it change his life, it also changed the lives of countless other citizens of Tennessee. Tending to the seed of greatness planted within us has endless ripple effects out into our family, our community, the world. When we know that we are worthy of connection, when we recognize that not only we, but every other person, is a beloved child of God, then we will engage in acts to advocate for justice and alleviate suffering. That’s part of who we are.

So, imagine our church–this place and this community-- where those seeds of greatness, that spark of divinity and true humanity, are tended to in a garden of care, accountability, challenge, nurture, joy, celebration, shared sorrow and struggle, and in acts of justice and compassion; where all around you are reminders of your true identity– Reminders of who we are and Whose we are, to post on our doorways, wear around our necks and wrists, to write upon our hearts, even, to tattoo on the palms of our hands.

Jesus wasn’t the only or first to be named and claimed and loved by God. The prophet Isaiah, in the midst of exile in the 6^th century BCE, sent a love letter from God to the people of Israel. The love letter is to us as well.—[If you’d like to see the video I showed here, go to saltproject.org, and to their video section where you’ll find Tattooed.]

What a privilege and joy my immersion in Positive Psychology has been, not only taking me into new places and learning new skills, but also helping me to go deeper into the well of living water that the Way of Jesus has offered me. I’ve made a list of some of my imaginings of how positive psychology might help us to transform lives, which I invite you to pick up on the way out and see what you think. I am so grateful for your support and your companionship on this amazing journey into life in all its fullness. Let the journey continue!

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