Sabbatical

Luke 5:12-16, Exodus 20:8-11

If you’ve been following the news lately, you know that we’ve begun a national conversation about our health care crisis and how to solve it. I heard Obama, in a recent speech, succinctly sum up part of what the problem is: While we spend more money on health care than any other country, we are not the healthiest by any measure. At least part of the problem is that those who actually have health insurance are getting too much of a good things – too many tests, too many therapies, too many drugs. And the evidence has shown that more is often not better – the more tests, the more drugs given to patients, the worse their health outcomes and the unhappier they become.

This was in the back of my mind when I read a story recently about a doctor in a book called Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in our Busy Lives, by Wayne Muller, a local author. “Charles,” says Muller, “is a gifted, thoughtful physician. One day…” (5)

Isn’t that fascinating, I thought? Perhaps part of the reason for the health care crisis, the reason for our soaring health-care costs, is because we are not allowing our healers the space and time and rest they need to actually heal us. Busy, tired, distracted, our doctors and health-care professionals are relying on machines to give them the information that their intuition can supply when they have the space in which to listen, to be present. If that isn’t a plea for the importance of Sabbath in our lives, I don’t know what is.

In the Jewish tradition, which is also our own, of course, Moses goes up, alone, onto a high mountain to be given by Creator God the fundamental moral laws that should govern our existence together. Christians have come to call these laws the Ten Commandments, and they include all the things you hope a wise God would have in such a list: don’t kill each other, don’t take what doesn’t belong to you, don’t lie. Most of these things we learned in kindergarten, right? But then, there’s this one (Exodus 20:8-11)

[8] "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. [9] Six days you shall labor and
do all your work, [10] but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On
it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your
manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. [11]
For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that
is in them, but God rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the
Sabbath day and made it holy.”

Right up there with not murdering each other or stealing, is: “Take a rest.” Take a rest. We learned that in kindergarten, too, didn’t we? Basically, God is saying, “Even I needed to rest after my labors of creating the planet. So, really, you need to do it to. In fact, I am commanding that you do it.” Perhaps our wise God knew we needed “take a rest” to be a clear-cut commandment or otherwise we wouldn’t do it.

Why is resting of such godly importance? Why would it merit its own commandment? There’s only 10 of them. Why give so much air time to this one? In fact, why do most of the world’s spiritual traditions include something like ‘take a rest’ in their own list of ethical imperatives?
I think the reason is, if we don’t rest, if we don’t observe Sabbath, we forget who we are. And there is nothing so alienating, or potentially dangerous for us, as this forgetting. We forget that we are beings made in the image of God. We forget that we live in a world with other beings also made in the image of God. We forget – in the words of the psalmist -- that the “earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.” (Psalm 24)

When I go too long without a rest, I forget to kneel down and look into my son’s face when he really wants to say something important to me. I forget that we waited for three long years for him to come into our life, and that it was a miracle when he did, and that surely now I can give him 30 seconds of my undivided attention before he heads to preschool for the day. When I go too long without a rest, I forget that I am something more than a machine with a to-do list, that I am a body that needs a hug, a soul that needs a long walk at dusk, a spirit that needs to commune with God in prayer.

We forget. It’s so easy to do that. Even Jesus forgot. Or maybe he was afraid he’d forget. So numerous times in the Gospels he, too, departs to a mountain or a wilderness or a lonely place to pray – to rest, to be renewed, to remember: Who am I, really? Who are we, really? Why am I here? To what should I give my attention?

“Like a path in the forest,” Wayne Muller says, “Sabbath creates a marker for ourselves so, if we are lost, we can find our way back to our center. “Remember the Sabbath” means “Remember that everything you have received is a blessing. Remember to delight in your life, in the fruits of your labor. Remember to stop and offer thanks for the wonder of it.” The commandment from God assumes that we will forget. And so, we need to have those demarcated, set-apart times, in which we rest, and remember. Ideally, I think, we set aside a few minutes every day where we do this, a day every week or month, a few days every year.

Of course, if you are lucky enough to be a professor or an employee at Genentech or a pastor at this church, you get a few weeks every few years to take some Sabbath time. I know how blessed I am to have this sabbatical time. I know how many of you could use a sabbatical yourselves. And I know how blessed I am to have a congregation that recognizes the need for pastors to take a sabbatical. I just heard, the other day, from a Mennonite pastor applying for the same sabbatical grant that I got. He told me that some people in his congregation have said to him, “Your job isn’t very hard. Why do you need a break from it?” I couldn’t help thinking, once again, of how very blessed I am to be among you.

And so, I wanted to say a bit more about what I am going to be doing during my eight weeks away. The short answer is: meditating, gardening, writing poetry, hanging out with my family, reading good books, cooking good food. And I want to put in both a greywater and rainwater catchment system at my house. The longer, slightly more poetic answer is that I hope to become more fully an inhabitant of my home, my neighborhood, my community, my ecosystem. I read a story recently about a man whose farmer father, upon coming to a new place, would take a pinch of dirt, sprinkle it in his palm, sniff it, stir it, squeeze it, then taste it. When the boy would ask his dad “Why eat dirt?” his Dad would say, “Just trying to figure out where I am.” (From Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World by Scott Russell Sanders)

In a way, that’s what I hope to do on my sabbatical: I want to really figure out where I am. I want to pinch, stir, sniff, squeeze and taste the place I live. I want to know what bird sings every day at the first suggestion of morning. Is that a towhee? A robin? I want to know what that wild plant is that grows everywhere around our house. I want to know what kind of tomato my soil produces, and then I want to taste it – sun dry it, can it, simmer it into sauces and, of course, put it on top of a basil leaf and eat it standing up, right there in the garden. I want to go on long bike rides on the flat island where I live. I want to smell the tide as it goes out on the waterfront that is only a few hundred feet from my house, but to which I’ve rarely been.

I also want to more fully inhabit my marriage, and my motherhood. I am curious what I will discover about Jerome and Patrick, and my relationship to them, when I am able to be more present to them, when I will not be quite so preoccupied with the remnants of that day’s work. And I want to more fully inhabit my neighborhood and town. I am blessed to live on a street where people actually know each other and hang out together. I want to get to know my neighbors better. And I want to get to know the faith communities and clergy colleagues in my town of Alameda. I plan to visit several of them on Sunday mornings during my sabbatical time.
When I went to a workshop for other pastors who had received sabbatical grants, I was struck by the fact that so many of them were traveling to Turkey or Greece or Israel for their sabbaticals. Those not traveling overseas were going to drive across the country on various excursions. My own sabbatical plans – to not leave my house and neighborhood, to inhabit this one place even more – were rather ordinary in comparison.

But I have long known that when we are fully present to the ordinary, to the familiar, that begin to “hear how it all fits together” in the words of the physician, Charles. I have long known that when I am fully present to that which is “close at hand,” I begin to see the outlines of a realm that was there all along, but which I couldn’t see because of my busyness, my distraction. I’ve long wondered if this is why Jesus says so often that the “Kingdom of heaven is close at hand.” Maybe he didn’t mean that it was close in terms of time – just a few days or years or millennia around the corner. Maybe he meant that it was close in terms of consciousness or perception – a realm that is right here if we only have eyes to see.

Thank you for giving me this gift of time in which I can see, hear, taste, and remember. I am deeply grateful for this. I encourage each of you to see this summer also as a time of mini-sabbatical – as a time to more consciously set aside a few minutes or hours or days to rest, to renew, to remember. We all need it. And, if you need a further reason, the Creator of heaven and earth has commanded you to do it! Tell that to your supervisor! May we each be blessed by our times of Sabbath in these coming weeks. Amen.

"The Sappy Vine"

Psalm 98, John 15:1-8

Of the 4 or so billion people on the planet, we are some of the few fortunate enough to live in a Mediterranean climate zone. While Mediterranean refers to the countries that rim the Mediterranean Sea, it also refers to a kind of climate zone found scattered throughout the planet that – to my mind – is about the closest thing one can get to paradise on earth. Only 2 percent of the globe enjoys our benign Mediterranean weather pattern, where warm, dry summers follow mild, wet winters – and where a profusion of plants grow. A docent at the Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco told me soon after I moved here, that even though the Mediterranean climate zone comprises only 2% of the earth’s surface, 98% of the earth’s plant life can grow in it.

Anyone who has gardened here can be, think, both excited and sometimes overwhelmed by the sheer number of plant choices we have in this area. With no freezing cold to kill off half of the plants and no baking heat to take down what remains, almost anything can grow here. It is a gardener’s paradise.

It is a small wonder, then, that the metaphor of the Garden of Eden sprung from the imaginations of a people who also lived in a Mediterranean climate zone known as the Holy Land. Some of humanity’s most ancient and widespread crops – figs, olives, grapes – were first domesticated in the rich flood plains of Syria and the Holy Land, and historians reckon that this is where the very idea of gardening and horticulture was invented about 8,000 years ago.

And so earthy, sensuous agricultural images inspired by the Mediterranean permeate the writings of the Old and New Testaments. Perhaps no agricultural metaphor was more often employed in these writings than the one we heard today – that of the grape vine, a plant celebrated and loved by the people of Biblical times. The grape vine, of course, is a plant also much beloved in the Bay Area. I read in the Chronicle a few years back that Bay Area folks spend more money on alcohol than any other city in the country. But why wouldn’t we? We are the only Mediterranean city in this country, the only city that knows firsthand the delight of the vineyards, the juicy reality of grapes and the wines they produce. Grapes and vineyards and wines inspire our imaginations, and provide one of the central metaphors of the good life here in California.

The people of Biblical times were similarly inspired by the grape vine. Over and over, the image of the vine occurs in scripture —evidence of an agricultural people who prayed their praise and laments through metaphors found in their native landscapes. In Genesis, vines were the source of life and prosperity. Prophetic utterances of doom foretold languishing vineyards and vines with withered leaves in Isaiah. The Song of Songs, that incredible love story, is set in a vineyard. The Hebrew Scriptures refer repeatedly to the House of Israel itself as the Lord’s vineyard, the soil from which the divine gardener longed to harvest good fruit.

It is no surprise, then, that Jesus took up the images of the vine and the vineyard and wove them into his own theological vision. More than once, Jesus explores the mystery of the kingdom of God through parables centered around the vineyard. And in the passage we heard today, John’s Gospel makes use of this metaphor to help explore and explain the identity not only of Jesus and his relationship to God, but of our identity and our relationship to God: “I am the true vine, and God is the vinedresser,” Jesus says. “Abide in me, as I abide in you. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in them, bears fruit in plenty.”

There’s a lot of meat in this metaphor. Or is it wine? I think we could spend a sermon series or two unpacking everything in it, but let me simply pull out two strands from this metaphor.

First, let’s look at what this metaphor tells us about our relationship to God and Christ. Let’s look particularly at verses 4 and 5: “Abide in me as I abide in you. (Some translations say this “make your home in me, as I make my home in you.”) Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me, you can do nothing.”

This image of the vine and branches calls to mind most vividly the idea of our fruitfulness in Christ – our calling to “bear much fruit,” to produce “good works” in the world. It’s a rich image that has been mined throughout centuries of Christian life and thought – but it is sometimes, I think, a misused metaphor. The focus within much liberal Protestantism (as well as in Anabaptism) has typically been on producing much fruit, rather than abiding in the vine – which is really the central point of the passage.

This emphasis on fruit production comes from a compassionate impulse. Faced with the urgent needs of the world, we feel compelled to “bear much fruit.” In our passion for justice, in our impatience for change, in our belief that “faith without works is dead,” we can come to believe that social change is more urgent than a rich, sustaining contact with the Vine, the Source of all life. We become quite ready to appropriate the aspect of Jesus’ metaphor that best affirms our own core values — productivity and effectiveness – while ignoring the contemplative element of simply “abiding” in God.

In fact, these verses are very clear as to what comes first. If you read them carefully, you’ll see that Jesus does not command his disciples anywhere these verses to bear fruit. They are simply asked to abide in the vine. Fruit-bearing is not a command here, it is a promise. If you want to bear fruit, Jesus is saying, don’t focus on bearing fruit. Focus on abiding. The fruit will follow. If you want to bear fruit, abide in the vine.

In our life as Christians, cutting ourselves off from the life-giving vine has many consequences, not the least of which is we may never develop much stamina for seasons of drought and failure. We risk forgetting that the image of the vine and branches speaks to the necessity of making ourselves available to the hidden depths of God – even if in fact there is no harvest. If we identify the life-giving goodness of God too closely with the fruitfulness of our own lives, we will be tempted to feel abandoned by God when calamity or spiritual drought occurs.

The prophet Habakkuk, writing in the 7th century BC during the worst of the Babylonian captivity, braved the question of why God seems to countenance the treacherous and is silent when “the wicked swallow those more righteous than they.” The answer he receives assures him that God is eternally present: “There is still a vision for the appointed time… If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come.” And then the book ends with a song of serenity and trust in the face of utter desolation:

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines…
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation.

That’s what it means to abide in the vine, even when no fruit is present.

Second, I want to pull out the strand of this metaphor that tells us about our identity, about who we are. Basically, this metaphor speaks to our essential sappiness. I love to tell the story of the first time I visited one of the Napa Valley wineries, and some of you may remember me telling it before. While there, we were told that one vine can have branches extending 30 to 40 feet out in each direction. I decided to prove this fact for myself in a section of the vineyard in which we were free to roam and taste the fruits. I traced a branch from the base of the vine to its end and, looking back, I gauged that it was indeed close to 30 or 40 feet. Hanging at the end of this long branch was a huge cluster of grapes. I picked one and ate it: it was warm from the sun, sweet and juicy.

Obviously, such fruitfulness is possible only because the sap that animates the vine at its base is also the same sap that animates the branches 30 or 40 feet away. There is one and the same sap running through the vine and its branches. What this says about us is exactly the same. There is one and the same sap running through the capital V Vine (Jesus) and its branches (us), and that is the very sap of God. What this metaphor tells us is that the deepest thing I am is the energy of God, the life-giving, fruity force of God. I am animated, brought to life, made fruitful by the divine Sap of God. You are animated, brought to life, made fruitful by the divine Sap of God.

There is one and the same sap running through the Vine and its branches, even though the branches are different, even unique. I might not like your branches, but I have to love your sap. In fact, underneath your annoying tics and your overbearing personality and (fill in the blank here) underneath it all, you and I are made of the same sappy substance. Underneath it all, you are my Sap and I am yours, and we are all together in this unity of the sappy Spirit that Jesus loved to talk about. I live in you and you live in me, and together we live in God and – oh my– our identity is starting to get as complicated here as one of those twining, tangled far-reaching grapevines that spread their tendrils out in a maze of interconnected shoots.

There was an obnoxious Calvin Klein ad that ran a few years ago for a perfume called “Obsession.” The video showed two young heterosexual lovers mooning at each other, while the announcer said underneath: “I don’t know where you end, and I begin. Obsession.” Jerome and I thought this ad line so ridiculous that we still sprinkle it into our verbal banter from time to time, and it always makes us laugh. And yet, the true is, in our essential sappy substance, we really don’t know where one of us ends and another of us begins, for we are all tangled up with each other, animated by one and the same sap.

Perhaps the best place we experience our sappiness is in community. For if the deepest thing we are is the energy, the life-giving Sap of God, then when I bump into you, I am bumping into God. And one of the things we need to do, we must do, in spiritual community is recognize and reverence each other’s Sap. The medieval mystic Meister Eckhardt once said that the only blessing we can give each other is the glance of recognition – the glance that says, “I recognize your sappiness. I recognize that the same sap that animates me, animates you. I reverence you as the holy Sap that you are.”

There’s so much more in this metaphor. For instance, I discovered about a month ago that the Aramaic word for blood, “dami,” can also be translated as “sap.” It’s made me rethink all that language about the blood of Christ – the sap of Christ.

But for now, it’s enough for me to chew on the fact that we are to be abiders at heart – that our main job as Christians is simply to abide in Christ. And that the deepest part of our identity is our sappiness. So I guess you can say that when we are living the Christian life to the fullest, we are abidingly sappy people. May we know ourselves even moreso to be those people.

"The Shepherd’s Voice"

Third Sunday of Eastertide

Psalm 23, John 10:11-18

The story goes that Tommy was sitting in his 3rd grade Sunday School class, getting ready to do a drawing. His teacher came up to him and asked him what he was preparing to draw. "God," he said. "I'm drawing a picture of God." "Why, Tommy, you can't draw a picture of God," said the well-meaning teacher. "No one knows what God looks like." "They will after I'm done with my drawing," Tommy said.

I like the sassiness of the imaginary Tommy, who has the audacity to draw God. But, in truth, we’re always doing that. God is Mystery, ineffable, beyond all imagining. And yet we have to imagine the Divine, we have to “draw” God some way. We have to use words, concepts and images because they're all we mortals have -- blunt instruments though they may be. In other words, all of our language about God is inherently metaphorical.

One of the most-beloved metaphors of the Divine, humanity and the relationship between us is that of the shepherd and the sheep. It was a common metaphor in the Bible, mentioned more than 80 times – sometimes referring to the King of Israel as a shepherd of his people, but more often referring to God as the good shepherd, the one who – in Isaiah – feeds his flock like a shepherd, gathers the lambs with his arm, carries them in his bosom, and gently leads those that are with young. It reaches its peak of metaphoric perfection it the 23rd psalm, which is probably the most beloved psalm in the Bible. I’m guessing many of us know that by heart, too.

In the New Testament, the author of the gospel of John picks up this potent metaphor from the Hebrew Scriptures and uses it to describe who Jesus is. This is Jesus speaking:

10:11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the
sheep.
10:12 The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the
sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away--and the wolf
snatches them and scatters them.
10:13 The hired hand runs away because a
hired hand does not care for the sheep.
10:14 I am the good shepherd. I know
my own and my own know me,
10:15 just as the Father knows me and I know the
Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.

This image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd has become so beloved you’d be hard-pressed to find a Protestant church that does stained glass windows that does not have one of them devoted to a beautiful, pastoral image of Jesus holding a lamb. The problem with much-beloved metaphors, however, is that they can become old, hackneyed, sentimentalized -- too familiar. Metaphors at their best open a window into a truth we hadn't realized before or at least hadn’t realized that profoundly. They shake us up a bit. At their worst, metaphors dull our perceptions. Our eyes glaze over. We've heard it all before, and there's nothing there that makes us see things anew.

I fear the latter is more often true of this shepherd-sheep metaphor. It's been used a lot, and it’s easy to sentimentalize the idea, easy for it to lose its edge. For instance, have you ever noticed how pictures of the Jesus shepherd and sheep are always remarkably dirt-free? The shepherd, Jesus, is wearing flowing robes that look like they just came back from the dry cleaners, and the sheep are spotless, "white as snow." In fact, we usually don't even see grown sheep, just lambs. Innocent, playful, cute lambs, whom the shepherd is cuddling in his arms. It's a lovely -- and unreal -- pastoral scene.

Let's peel back the layers of this metaphor and see if there's anything new there. We can start with the shepherd: shepherds (both then and now) were dirty. They didn't bathe much, if at all. Gretel Ehrlich, a writer from Wyoming who lives on a sheep ranch, tells of one modern-day sheepherder named Fred who showered so infrequently that his body hair had grown through his long johns.[1] Now if that repulsive piece of information doesn't shatter the “shepherd as Mr. Clean” image, I don't know what will.

The reason shepherds are so dirty is that they live a hard life, away from any of the comforts of home, completely exposed to the ravages of both sunshine and storm. Sheep need grass to eat and water to drink, and lots of it, and the search for such will take a shepherd into far hills and meadows, whether we are talking about 1st-century Judea or 20th-century Wyoming. The same Gretel Ehrlich found herself one Wyoming summer serving as a substitute sheepherder when one of the regulars quit. And so at 5 o'clock one morning, with a mare and a border collie, she rode off to find the herd of 2000 sheep who were grazing somewhere in the middle of nowhere. For the next several months, alone, she let her flock wander over 90 square miles of pasture land, wherever they wanted to go.

And where sheep want to go is often where they shouldn't go, she found – down into crags or ravines or, if they are in a panicked run, which sheep seem to be in often, right over a cliff. Sheep become easily lost, and once lost they are defenseless. They are easy prey for wild animals and thieves. The idea that a shepherd might have to lay down his or her life for the sheep is not an exaggerated claim. In 1st-century Palestine, it was not uncommon for a single shepherd to have to fight off bands of thieves. In 20th-century Montana, Ivan Doig – another sheepherder turned writer – tells of his father fighting off a bear to protect his sheep, and almost getting killed in the process.[2] This is why today’s passage from John speaks so scornfully of the hired hand, who will not do what is needed – that is, risk his own life – to protect the sheep.

Perhaps there was more to this willingness to risk life than just economic concern. In ancient and present-day Palestine, at least, sheep are raised for their wool. And thus, sheep are often with a shepherd for years. The shepherd grows to care deeply for them, giving each of them names and knowing when even one of them wanders away.[3] As our passage for today says, accurately, “I know my own and my own know me.”

One traveler to the Holy Land wrote this description of a shepherd that beautifully summarizes all I’ve just said: “On some high moor, across which at night the hyenas howl, when you meet him, sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, leaning on his staff, and looking out over his scattered sheep, everyone of them on his heart, you understand why the shepherd of Judea sprang to the front in his people’s history; why they… made the shepherd the ultimate symbol of providence.”[4] The people of the ancient Middle East were so impressed with the vigilance, courage, love and care of the shepherd that they gave that name -- shepherd -- to their rulers, to their God and eventually to Jesus.

What a beautiful, and gritty, metaphor of God’s or Jesus’ affection for us: fierce, protective, tenacious, willing to endure whatever it takes to see us through to green pastures and cool waters. It’s a metaphor you can climb inside, take comfort in. Put me under the care of this God, this Good Shepherd, and I shall not want.

There’s only one catch. If God is the Shepherd, what does that make us? Baaaaa. The sheep, obviously. And here the going gets a little more rough, in terms of this metaphor. Because there’s some hard facts to face about being sheep.

Sheep are easily thrown off balance and have difficulty righting themselves again, with catastrophic results. Ivan Doig tells a story of he and his grandmother being left alone for two weeks one summer to tend a herd of 4000 sheep, while Ivan’s father was away. No sooner had the father left, than grandma and Ivan noticed that not all of their new charges were happily grazing. A few were on their backs, legs stiff in the air, dead as stones, he writes. Soon, they figured out that the sheep had ticks and were rolling themselves on the ground to scratch themselves. “The roll easily carried them too far onto their deep-wooled backs to be able to get up again, and within minutes in the summer heat, their struggling would bloat them to death.” Gases build up in the stomach, and as these expand it cuts off blood circulation to the body. Sheep die this way, and fast if it’s hot. So Ivan and his grandmother spent every daylight hour of the next 14 days patrolling the sheep and heaving them over onto their feet when they spotted the kick of hooves in the air.

It’s not just ticks that cause a sheep to turn bottom up, by the way. If an extra woolly or fat sheep happens to lie down in a small depression in the ground, and roll slightly to its side to stretch out or relax, the center of gravity in its body can suddenly shift so that its feet no longer touch the ground. It panics and starts to paw frantically, which of course, makes things worse. It rolls over even further onto its back and now has no hope of regaining its feet.[5] Sound like any humans we know? There’s whole days when I feel like this.

Unfortunately, there’s more: As I mentioned earlier, sheep get lost quite easily and want to wander into places that aren’t good for them. They are also easily panicked. In one story I read, a tiny Pekinese pup jumping out of a car parked was enough to send the 200 terrorized sheep bolting across the pasture, away from the 8-pound menace.

And finally, sheep are notorious creatures of habit. If left to themselves, they will follow the same trails until they become ruts; graze the same hills until they turn to desert wastes; and we will pollute our own ground – I mean, sheep will pollute their own ground until it is rife with disease and parasites. I’ll leave it to you to draw any parallels between sheep and humanity.

However, sheep have one saving grace going for them – they are obedient. They know and understand their shepherd’s voice, and they do what she asks. In addition, they won’t listen to the voice of a stranger. Another traveler to the Holy Land, W.M. Thomson, writes this, “The shepherd calls sharply from time to time, to remind the sheep of his presence. They know his voice and follow on; but, if a stranger calls, they stop short, life up their heads in alarm, and if the call is repeated, they turn and flee, because they know not the voice of a stranger. I have made this experiment repeatedly.”[6] Can’t you just see W.M. Thomson scaring sheep all throughout the Holy Land with his experiment?

Now, so far, you may have been going along with this metaphor of humans-as-sheep. You may agree that is a large part of the human condition to be easily unbalanced, easily lost, easily panicked and that we easily make a big mess of things.

At obedience, however, we tend to draw the line and say “That’s it. The metaphor is over.” Our modern American temper not only celebrates individualism, in which we bow to no authority other than ourselves, and in the process, the idea of obedience has lost favor. In crossword puzzles, the clue “act the robot” is supposed to yield the four-letter answer “obey.” To obey is to not think for oneself, to mindlessly go along. And it is true that the excuse “I was just obeying orders” has been used to justify many an unjust act. Obedience, then, is yet one more pathetic trait that we hope to cure ourselves of so that we can enter true spiritual adulthood.

Joan Chittister is a Benedictine nun who took the traditional three vows that all nuns and monks take, one of which is a vow of obedience. But she is anything but a mindless robot. She is a woman alive with passion for the poor and with indignation at any institution – especially her own church – that propagates injustice. She is a champion of women's rights and environmental justice. She is considered a renegade, and I'm sure most of the Catholic hierarchy would wish she would just be quiet. But, Joan would say, “I can't be quiet. I took a vow of obedience.”

Chittister points to the fact that the word "obedience" is derived from the Latin word that shares its root with the verb "to hear." So listening and obedience are very closely connected. In fact, to obey, Chittister suggests, means to listen closely to the voice of God in life, and then to act on what we hear. Like sheep, we need to become so accustomed to that voice that we hear it clearly over the others that call to us. So we hear the voice that calls us to the good, to the just, above the voices that call us to power, to respectability, to cynicism, to fear, to despair. Unlike sheep, however, there’s a variety of ways in which we can hear that voice. We may hear it in quiet times, when our spirits is stilled -- whether that happens on a church pew or on the Muni or in a city park. We may hear it in Scripture and other holy books. We may hear it when we listen to ourselves, paying attention to that ache in our back and realizing it may be telling us something about the stress and tension of our lives. And, we hear the voice of God in one another: in the “members of our communities, both old and young; in the person we married, all of whose jokes we know by now; in underlings and children; old parents and boring in-laws.”[7] If we get really good at hearing, we can hear the voice of God in the person we most disagree with, who pushes our buttons, whom we find it hard to love.

To be obedient, then, means to cultivate the spiritual discipline of listening – to listen in such a way that we develop a sensitivity to the call of Christ within the context of our daily interactions.

Because, like sheep, we do need a shepherd. We do need a guide. We know we can drive ourselves a bit crazy – over cliffs, into ravines, onto our backs, kicking wildly, fearful of the least sound. Obedience – the willingness and ability to hear the voice of God when we’re feet up, when we’re heading for that cliff – obedience is what will save us. Obedience is what will enable us to stay on the right paths, the paths that lead to life. May we hear the voice of the shepherd even more clearly. And may it guide us to green pastures and still waters, to the overflowing table.

Amen.

__________

[1] Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces (New York: Penguin Books, 1986).
[2] Ivan Doig, This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978)
[3] William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press), 1975.
[4] Quoted in Barclay, p. 53.
[5] Phillip Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996).
[6] Quoted in Barclay, p.57.
[7] Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages (New York: Crossroad, 1995).

“Gee, that was fun (I especially liked the music) but what does it all mean?”

First Sunday of Eastertide

Acts 4:32-35, John 20:19-31

I’m so glad that Thomas, the Patron Saint of Doubters, always makes his appearance this first Sunday after Easter in our cycle of scripture readings. Because by now, the Easter afterglow has worn off. We’ve sung the hymns, we’ve enjoyed the choirs, we’ve digested the Easter potluck, and we’ve probably even come down off our sugar high from all those chocolate bunnies, peeps and jelly beans. By the way: Peeps? Those are Satanic. They should really be outlawed.

By now, if not before, some of us may be wondering, like Thomas: What the heck was that all about? Do I really believe that story? How do I make sense of this?

So, I’d like to attempt an answer to those questions, with the help of a wonderful book by the well-known Biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. It’s called The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem. They dig into Mark’s day-to-day account of the week leading up to Easter and, in doing so, give answer to many of the questions that doubting Thomases have.

So, let’s start with the question of Good Friday – Adam’s question from Palm Sunday: Why did they kill Jesus? Did Jesus really have to die? Did God want that to happen?

The most familiar explanation of Jesus’ death is called substitutionary atonement. It’s so familiar, I’m sure at least one of you can tell the rest of us what it means. So, one of you, tell us why Jesus had to die? Right. We’re sinners, and God is offended by this sin – sickened by it. There has to be a sacrifice or a punishment for sin before we can be forgiven, but one of us wouldn’t be adequate since we’re despicable sinners, right? So, it had to be a perfect human being. Only Jesus, the spotless lamb, could do the trick. Thus he is the sacrifice, and Good Friday is good because it is the day that makes God’s forgiveness of us possible. So, Jesus – literally – died for our sins.

A long time ago, I decided that I could not believe in a God that demanded this sort of sacrifice. That someone – namely, his own son – had to be tortured and murdered before God could get around to forgiving us. I knew I did wrong things, but I didn’t think I was so despicable that it demanded the killing of someone else. My own, mortal parents were capable of more love than God seemed capable of – they loved us more like the prodigal son’s father, unconditionally, putting up with our stupid behavior, ready to accept us even before we had “atoned.” If God was that sort of God – a divine child abuser – then I wanted nothing to do with ‘him.’

I think lots of Thomases feel this way, both in and out of the church. If you are one of those Thomases, you might be heartened to know that substitutionary atonement is not the only Christian understanding of “why Jesus had to die.” It took more than 1,000 years for it to become dominant, around the time that St. Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a theological treatise on it in 1097. Over the centuries, it has become the most common explanation. But it’s not necessarily the most Biblical explanation.

It’s true that the language of sacrifice is used in the New Testament, but it is only one of several different ways of talking about the meaning of Jesus’ execution. One way sees the death and resurrection of Jesus as the embodiment of a path of psychological and spiritual transformation that lies at the center of Christian life. Paul expresses this idea a lot, in writings such as “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” The old Paul has to die – has to be crucified – so that the new Paul, the one who is one with Christ, can live.

There’s a lot of truth, I think, in this spiritual and psychological reading of Jesus’ death -- one that many spiritual traditions affirm. It’s a natural human habit to become egotistic, centered in the “small self” with its anxieties and preoccupations. This small self can be both terribly anxious and fearful as well as preoccupied with its own accomplishments and successes. Part of our human task is to die to this small self, and rise again to a new, larger, more expansive self, one grounded in that which is ultimate, grounded in a compassion and peace that “surpasses understanding.” Grounded in God, who is the source of our “true self.”

There are also meanings behind the crucifixion that are much more political – Jesus countered the domination system of his day, a system in which about 1-2% of the population owned almost all the wealth, while the rest of the people lived in moderate to severe poverty. This economic exploitations was joined with political oppression and religious legitimation of the status quo. Jesus challenged the system, the reign of Caesar, with a vision and a passion for the reign of God, a reign where the least were first, and the first were last. A reign where all of God’s resources were distributed equitably among everyone.

Given how threatening this vision was to the status quo, the execution of Jesus was almost inevitable. Not because of divine necessity, but because this is what empires do to people who publicly and vigorously challenge them. Jesus’ passion for the reign of God to come on earth, as it is in heaven, got him killed.

I cannot affirm that Jesus died for the sins of the world. But I can affirm that Jesus was killed because of the sin of the world. I cannot believe in a God that demanded the death of Jesus to make “him” less angry at the rest of us. But I do believe in a God who wills the death of no one but who can turn even the worst thing into a very good thing.

Which leads me to Easter… just what was that very good thing?

Now, some people say that that very good thing was that Jesus’ corpse physically rose from the grave. God transformed his dead body into one that lived again – that was able to talk and walk with his friends, eat food with them, appearing in a form that could be seen, heard and touched. This unique event in history means that Jesus really is the son of God, and that Christianity is true. And it demonstrates once and for all that death is dead – that we, like Jesus, will also be resurrected in heaven after we die. I know that many people – some of us, I think – believe that this is the good news, and if you can’t believe this, then you aren’t really a Christian.

But what about the doubting Thomases among us who can’t quite say yes to this? Is this really the only way we can understand Easter? I don’t believe it is.

To start with, there are mixed messages from the biblical accounts about what form Jesus takes after his resurrection – does he have a physical body like ours? Or is it some sort of transformed spiritual body – one that still bears our physical traits (like scars) but one that is also capable of appearing suddenly in rooms and perhaps even being in more than one place at a time? Or a vision? Paul – Acts. (You know, we in modern Western culture tend to disparage visions. We see them as hallucinations, as deviations from reality. And lots of times, they might be. I’ve been around enough schizophrenics in my time. But I believe they can also be disclosures of reality.)

Some biblical scholars believe it’s quite possible that the Gospel writers are using the language of parable metaphor rather than of historical reporting to talk about the events around Easter. Maybe they’re not expecting us to take this as historical fact. Maybe they’re expecting us to take this as a profoundly true metaphor.

To me, at some level, none of this debate about what happened to Jesus’ physical body matters. Something spectacularly wonderful and earth-shaking happened on Easter morning. Physical body or not, vision or not Jesus lives. He continues to be experienced after his death, though in a radically new way. He lives. John Dominic Crossan puts it so well, “The essence of Easter is that despite his crucifixion, Jesus was for his followers alive, present, and empowering them to do the work of Kingdom still. That’s the only mystery and the only miracle and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s more than enough of both.”

Jesus lives, and because of that, his followers go from a group of dispirited, fearful people hiding behind locked doors to a group of bold, fearless “missionaries” – people who continue to announce and embody the good news of Jesus in the same way that he did while live. Listen to what Acts says about these early disciples (Acts 4:32-35):

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no
one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was
held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not
a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and
brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and
it was distributed to each as any had need.

This is the only miracle and mystery I need – that Jesus is alive and present enough to empower these people to throw off their fear and risk the same death Jesus had so that they could proclaim and live out his vision for the reign of God. The only miracle and mystery that I need is the that Jesus was alive and present enough to empower Ahmed, the guy from the children’s story, to do something as crazy as give away all his food to his hungry neighbors.

Jesus lives and that means that God has said “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the domination system that executed him. Jesus lives and that means that God has said that he is Lord of the earth, not the death-dealing powers that crucified him. Matthew puts it this way: That God has given the resurrected Jesus “all authority in heaven and on earth.” We may cringe when hear this, seeing in it a triumphalist claim that Christianity is the only way, that you have to believe in Jesus or else. I’m not at all sure that’s the way Matthew means it. I think he means, Jesus is Lord, which means that the Caesars of the world aren’t. Jesus is Lord, not the domination systems that oppress the poor to benefit the wealthy and the powerful. Jesus is Lord, not the religious systems that legitimate this oppression, nor the religious systems that marginalize and exclude whole groups of people.

I think I told you once about hearing Yvette Flunders, the lesbian African-American pastor of City of Refuge, here in San Francisco. She said, to a group of mainly white feminists, that she had been called on the carpet for using the patriarchal word “Lord.” But she refused to stop using that word because calling Jesus Lord meant that the homophobia that threatened to kill her spirit was not Lord; Jesus was Lord, not the racism that wanted to bring her down; Jesus was Lord, not the sexism that told her she couldn’t be a pastor, that wanted to keep her in her place. She went on to get ordained and to found a multiracial, multi-class church that has a vital, multi-million dollar foundation to aid those living with HIV/AIDS, especially in the African-American community. Yvette Flunders is one of the most powerful people I have ever come across and, I believe, it’s because Jesus lives and Jesus is Lord.

May this same Jesus be alive for us, present for us, continually empowering us to do the work of the Kingdom in our time and our place. Can I get an “amen” from the doubting Thomases?

Amen. Alleluia.

"Icons of Resurrection"

Easter Sunday
Isaiah 25:6-9, Mark 16:1-8

When faced with disaster, with the death of your dreams and – more importantly – with the death of a real, live person whom you loved, whose warm hand you had just held days before – the first step is to bury the dead. Properly, and with love. This is what the three women know, Mary Magdalene, Mary and Salome, the ones who go to Jesus’ tomb early on the first Easter. You awake before dawn and carry pounds of expensive oils, spices and herbs a mile or more to the tomb. You go, despite the fact that you have no idea how you are going to roll back the stone, weighing tons, that sits in front of the tomb carved from rock. You’ll figure that out when you get there.

The important thing is to bury your dead. To unwrap the body – in this case, the bloodied and bruised body – and rub oils mixed with the perfume of herbs and spices all over it, caressing this body that is already stiff, loving for the last time this flesh, making the body smell sweet and fragrant again, giving the dead man back the dignity that he gave you in life. The important thing is to love bodies, to honor them even when you can no longer protect them from death.

Afterwards, the women will figure out what the next important thing is to do. Perhaps it will be to make breakfast for their grieving friends. Perhaps it will be to hold each other while they weep. Perhaps it will be to tell the story of how he died – sharing the horror they each witnessed. For these women were the only ones who stayed with Jesus while he died. It was excruciating to watch. Perhaps that was why his male disciples fled – or maybe they did so because it was too dangerous for them to be there. The Roman authorities didn’t expect women to be subversives as readily as men. In any event, the women were the only ones who kept vigil at the cross while he died. Most likely, they simply wanted this man, their beloved friend, to know that he was not going to die alone. The important thing is to know that you are not alone.

They were ordinary people doing the important work that needs to be done, that always needs to be done, even amid violence, confusion and chaos. They are so ordinary their three names are not mentioned in any other place in the Gospels save for at the crucifixion and on Easter morning. (Magdalene) And yet, these three ordinary women are one of two icons of the Resurrection found in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. You should all have this icon – it was in your order of worship. It’s called “The Holy Women at the Tomb,” although its more traditional title is “The Spice Bearers.”

The Orthodox tradition believes that icons can be as revelatory of spiritual truths as words are. Maybe moreso. Because of that, there’s lots of icons in the Orthodox tradition – except for icons about the Resurrection, the main event in Christianity. This is because the Orthodox faith sees the Resurrection as a deep Mystery, one that cannot be captured in word or picture.

Which means the two icons of the Resurrection they do have must be pretty important, pretty significant. They have to carry a lot of mystery, a lot of meaning. I shared the other one with you last Easter, the one called “The Descent into Hell,” which depicts Christ riding into the darkness of hell on the cross and bringing the Divine Light even there. You have in your hands the other icon of the Resurrection from this tradition: The spice bearers. Three ordinary women doing the important work of loving: Bringing the spice of their presence, the ointment of their love to the tombs of life.

We know these people. They rarely make the news. But they know the important thing to do, and they do it. They clean up after disasters. They soothe the scared child who wakes up from a nightmare in the middle of the night. They counsel the drug addict they know will use again. They invite a grieving friend over for dinner. They counsel students and employees in distress, even though that isn’t part of their job description. They plan vigils at the gates of San Quentin and Lawrence Livermore labs. They set up clinics in rural Indonesia. They bring the spice of their presence, the ointment of their love to the tombs of life.

When I was in Louisville, Kentucky recently, attending a workshop for ministers who had gotten sabbatical grants, one of the presenters mentioned a recent trip he had taken to Burundi, where he had the chance to meet a remarkable woman named Maggy Barinkitse. Maggy had encountered the tombs of death in a way I pray none of us ever will. In 1993, she tried in vain to protect her co-workers and friends from a band of murdering Tutsis who came to the Catholic bishops’ residence where she worked. Her punishment for trying to do so was to be tied up and forced to watch while 72 of her Hutu friends and co-workers were killed. Faced with violence and death beyond imagining, Maggy found herself in a tomb wider than the world. But I’ll let Maggy tell her own story. This a video made by the Opus Prize for Faith-Based Entrepreneurship, a prize sponsored by Catholic universities and a prize Maggy won last year. (Video can be found at http://www.opusprize.org/winners/08_Barankitse.cfm.)

Finding herself in a tomb wider than the world, Maggy did the first important thing: She buried her dead. Like Mary, Mary Magdalene and Salome, she risked her life to care for bodies, even those she could no longer protect from death. And then, Maggy did the next important thing in her power to do: She scrounged up enough money to pay the Tutsi killers a ransom for 25 children belonging to friends they had just killed. She began to raise these children as her own, along with 7 other orphans – four Hutu and three Tutsis – she was already raising.

Maggy kept on doing the next important thing. She kept on bringing her presence and her love to Burundi’s tombs and -- years later – she has helped 30,000 orphans, giving them families and homes and jobs, a cinema, a swimming pool, a hospital. I’m sure Maggy could have imagined none of this in the devastating days and weeks following the massacre. Like the women walking to Jesus’ tomb, she had no idea how she was going to roll back the stone of death.

But she kept on showing up at the tombs of death – and, miraculously, she found that God was there. She found that the stones guarding the tombs of death kept getting rolled away, beyond her knowing how, beyond her ability make it happen. She found that Christ’s light could penetrate any darkness, including her own. She found that evil and death could never ever have the last word. She found resurrection. And she has become an icon of the resurrection. An icon of the light of Christ that can be found in the darkest places of death.

You know, this icon of the resurrection you have in your hands isn’t called “The Empty Tomb,” although the empty tomb is shown there. It would seem to make a great name for one of two icons of the resurrection. It would underscore the main point of Easter, right – that the body isn’t there?

Instead, the icon is called “The Holy Women at the Tomb,” or “The Spice Bearers.” The empty tomb is important, but maybe it’s not the only important thing. Maybe, just as important, is the three spice bearers, the three holy women doing what was in their power to do. Doing the next important thing. Loving bodies, caring for them. Bringing their spices, their presence, their love to the tombs of death. By doing so, they also found that evil and death can never have the last word. They found resurrection. And they became icons of the resurrections.

Look at these women. And see in their faces, your own face. For you are an icon of the resurrection, just as surely as Mary Magdalene, Mary and Salome. You are an icon of the resurrection, just as surely as Maggy Barinkitse. Christ descended into the darkness of death and brought to it the light that will always, always outshine the darkness. And now, we are the icons of that light. We are the ones who bring to the tombs in our lives the spice of our presence, the ointment of our love. We are the ones who – as Maggy says -- say no to violence and death, and yes to the love, yes to the life. We are the spice-bearers. We are icons of the resurrection. Amen. Alleluia.

"Descending With Jesus"

Palm Sunday
Mark 21:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11

And so it begins. We’ve been through Lent, our season of prayer, our season of preparation for this very time – this Holy Week we are now entering, the most sacred time of the Christian year, this week that contains the central teaching, the central Mystery of the Christian faith.

And we begin at the heights, as does Jesus. Both symbolically and literally. Symbolically, because Jesus is at the height of his popularity as a teacher and leader. After spending most of his ministry in the hinterlands — outside the Beltway as we might say in this country — he’s about to enter the seat of power: Jerusalem. He’s making plans for his triumphal entry into this “capital city,” where many of his followers expect him to foment revolution, take over, take charge.

And he’s making these plans, literally, in the heights — in the town of Bethany, which is located on the eastern flank of the Mount of Olives. Standing at this spot, you overlook the entire city of Jerusalem. It’s one of those places we have plenty of here in the Bay Area. The East Bay Hills along Skyline Drive, the top of Mt. Tamalpais, Twin Peaks — a place you go to get a sense of the big picture, to look out over your world and imagine you can see it whole. One of those places where you can see clearly and lay good plans.

And so, Jesus does plan. Quite a bit. Of the 11 verses Mark devotes to the story of the procession into Jerusalem, more than half of them are about Jesus’ preparations for the event. There’s plenty of political and spiritual symbolism packed into his plans. First, he’s starting from the Mt. of Olives, the location from which the Jewish people expected the final battle for Jerusalem’s liberation to begin.

Then he sends for his provisions, which are not what any other kingly leader would call for. Instead of asking for a horse — the animal associated with warrior kings — he gets a colt, not even a full-grown donkey! Can you imagine a grown man riding this? His feet probably are dragging on the ground. I think people right away would get that he’s mocking the grand processions of the Roman military as they march into Jerusalem, strutting their stuff — their massive war horses, their leather armor, their gleaming helmets. Here’s Jesus, in his procession, riding a little donkey, with his feet dragging on the ground, unarmed. It’s a grand bit of street theater.

And the crowds are loving it. They treat him just as they would a triumphant national hero. They spread their branches and cloaks before him as a symbol of honor. They shout “Hosanna,” which means “God saves.” “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David.”

It doesn’t get any higher than this. This is Barack Obama at the Democratic convention. The crowds are going wild. They’re hanging on his every word, his every movement. He can’t say a sentence that doesn’t get applause. What a high! Most public figures, most leaders, do everything they can to stay there. To keep their approval ratings as high as possible.

But Jesus doesn’t. Instead, he chooses to descend. Literally, he descends from the heights of the Mt. of Olives into the city of Jerusalem. And he also, symbolically, descends — from the relatively safe hinterlands into the place of power, into Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the place where the authorities levy taxes and create unjust laws that make the poor even poorer, even more hungry and hopeless. And Jerusalem is the place where this inhumanity, this death can be confronted. But this is what also makes it a dangerous place — because here, the powerful people threatened by Jesus’ teaching, can get to him.

I have a picture, which was on my wall the entire time I was growing up. It shows Jesus sitting on the Mt. of Olives, looking over the city of Jerusalem. He’s sitting in a remote spot, surrounded only by trees and rocks and sky, and he’s looking down, down into the valley where Jerusalem lies. Down into the streets crowded with Roman soldiers with hair-trigger nerves and Jewish peasants with revolutionary dreams, down into the palaces of cruel leaders quick to quell any sign of unrest, down into the cross-marked landscape where the Romans regularly execute troublemakers.

I imagine that Jesus is sitting there, wondering if he should do this. Wondering if he should descend. It would be so easy to choose to stay in Bethany, to stay in that simple little village. It would be so easy to choose to return to the Sea of Galilee, 90 miles away from Jerusalem, where he did most of his healing and teaching. He could go back there, be a beloved regional teacher and have a good, long life. But he chooses to descend.

Maybe it was a choice he made even before this. In what is thought to be one of the oldest Christian hymns ever written down, Philippians 2:5-11 says, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” Jesus descends. He becomes one of us, to experience our bondage, to experience our pain.

We got it wrong this morning. We shouldn’t have been ascending the stairs waving our palm branches, we should have been descending them if we really want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. But most of us avoid this descent, if we can. The crowds singing his praises don’t get this. In fact, some of the same people cheering him during this procession will turn on him later when it becomes clear that he is not going to be the conquering leader. Not even his disciples get it. They’re always trying to talk him out of this descent, no, you won’t need to suffer. You’re our leader! You’re going to save us — that’s why we’re shouting hosanna, right? You’re going to save us, to conquer the oppressor. Right?

No one really gets that the core choice of Jesus’ existence will be to descend, for the sake of love, into the mindless cruelty of the world. There, he will expose himself to the full force of the powers of death. For the sake of his befuddled disciples, for the sake of the fair-weather crowds, for the sake of the diseased, of outcasts, of women, of children, he descends. He descends to confront — with the full force of love — all that is unlovely and unloving.

Of course, we who choose to follow Jesus also must descend. It’s our existential choice, too. The Mennonite poet Julia Kasdorf had an uncle who, following Jesus, also chose to descend into the mindless cruelty of the world and meet it unarmed, with only his love:

Uncle
At nine I knew what Jesus would do
if he got C.O. just for being
born Mennonite. He’d go anyway, like you.

In the name of peace, he’d race
an ambulance through the screaming streets
of Saigon. He’d grow a moustache to show
he wasn’t a soldier – a speck
on the camera lens, Grandpa insisted.

He’d take a generator to a village
in the hills where golden children
would run behind him yelling, “Mother
F*****.”

He’d thrust brilliant green blades
of rice into the fields where men’s legs
and the torsos of water buffaloes exploded
when plows struck bombs in the mud.

When the planes returned, he’d
load whomever he could into the only car,
drive to a refugee camp, and
there give up at last, as you gave up bearing that war
on your tall, blond body.

Lost across the continents for months,
you returned to us,
the uncle of someone else,
gaunt as a corpse, pale and haunted.
and when you could barely finish
a child’s portion at Howard Johnson’s,
that was the only miracle I could grasp.
(From Sleeping Preacher)

Yes, we got it wrong this morning. We shouldn’t have been ascending the stairs. If we really want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, we too need to descend. I don’t know what that means for you, but I have some idea of what it means for me. As much as I would like to stay in the heights, be above it all, to not look into the mindless cruelty of the world, I know that that is where I need to go if I choose to follow Jesus. It means I can’t avoid suffering — my own or yours or the earth’s. I’m not going to be called to Vietnam during a war like Julia’s uncle, but I am called to enter those places of pain when I come across them and be the presence of love as best as I can.

And it means I can’t avoid this coming week, as much as I want to sometimes. You know, I really don’t like Holy Week. I hate the passion story. Because I can’t hear it, and not think of all the people who have been and are being tortured, who have been and are being betrayed by those they love, who have been and are dying alone and forsaken. But we can’t avoid this suffering if we want to walk through Holy Week.

This week that is coming is holy but not because of suffering, even the suffering of Jesus. Rather, it is holy because of the inexplicable and immeasurable love that prompted that suffering. So, as we make our descent, onto the streets of this city, back to our homes, our workplaces; as we make our descent into the suffering of this time and this place; as we descend with Jesus into this Holy Week, may we carry with us that love — that central teaching, that central Mystery of our faith. Amen.

"How Do I Pray, and What Does Prayer Mean To Me?" Reflection

Kenda Autumn

I was honored—and a little floored!—to be asked to talk about prayer during our Lenten series. The question from Worship Committee was, how do I pray, and what does prayer mean to me. As I was working on this, I felt like I was giving a “mini faith story!”

I think my prayer life has always been on a slightly off-balance journey. Growing up as a family, we did pray together before meals. In restaurants, I remember that we might have held hands for a moment, but that might have been more common at extended family gatherings. I do not remember praying before going to bed.

At some point in my adult life, my prayer life has come to find expression in lots of different ways. On this journey, I feel like I have been searching for a deeper connection with God. And I thought I might get to this place of deeper connection by spending time in prayer. That, “spending time in prayer,” is what has changed over the years.

Prayer started to become a major part of my life in high school. When I was a junior or senior, some of my friends and I started a morning prayer group. My interest in praying in a group probably came about because of my previous leadership at a Mennonite Camp, MennoHaven. I enjoyed leading staff devotions there, and decided to bring some of that to school. At any rate, it was like a club—we even had an advisor. This was right around the time of the “no prayer in public schools” debates. We would have some kind of devotional together, people would share, and then we would pray for each other. So here I was, carrying my Bible into school, and leading this prayer meeting. It only lasted for about two months—but our intention was good. I remember thinking that this was how a person needed to pray—with this kind of structure.

I do not remember if it was the changing of the law, or lack of interest, but at some point the group stopped meeting. My Mom was all about fighting these laws to keep this group going. That is when I pulled out the argument about “If you would fight for prayer in schools, than you would need to fight for a group that wanted to pray to Satan.” She never did know what to do with me!!

At some point, between high school and now, I started to realize that when I simply thought of people—that this is “praying” for them. It has helped me to see that I actually do have an active prayer life. It has allowed me to not beat myself up because I am not sitting and doing some guided devotional. At the same time, I also realized I would like that kind—and would find a peace with that type of prayer. But I know I do not need to berate myself for not having any meditative prayer practice, either.

Now, prayer for me is when I think of someone and lift them up to God. I hold people in my heart and wish or pray or think of God’s arms wrapped around them, loving them, and caring for them. For me, this is a meaningful way to pray. This way of holding people does not happen for me at any regular time of day. It may occur when I’m doing some repetitive function, and need a way to engage my mind. For example, when I’m working out at the gym early in the morning. I also do this form of praying when I’m biking through the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park, on my way to work. Often, this turns in to a prayer of thanksgiving:

“Thank God for the beauty of nature.”
“Thank God for all the shades of GREEN!”

I moved to the Lower Haight last June. And in the rainy months, I ride the 21 bus to and from work. On my way home from work, I am blessed to get off the bus at Hayes Street—at the top of Alamo Square Park. I am always amazed when I look around. I stand and look out over the city skyline—as though I am seeing it for the very first time.

“Thank God I live in San Francisco!” is the thought that runs through my mind.

And every time I drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and enjoy the rugged landscape, I am in awe of creation, of God’s awesome power. I see these signs of beauty, and find them to be reminders of God’s love and care. I am reminded of the passage in Matthew, about the lilies of the field, and how God cares for them. And God’s care for me—for us—is much greater.

Moments such as this—a glance, a glimpse, a view—are very grounding for me. This form of “Thanksgiving” prayer helps me to remember my blessings in life. It helps keep the challenges of living and working in perspective.

I also think that it’s only been recently that this process has become true prayer for me. I think my turning point around this was probably my year of grief, when a previous relationship ended. At that time, I realized that my thoughts were the same as talking with God. It was the simple act of letting go of my control, and receiving peace. I felt like I was given a deep sense of peace when I was able to release my own thought processes and make this discovery.

During this time, I was writing a lot in a journal. I was writing about my pain and my loss, and for it to be taken from me. I wrote about wanting to be held. I remember asking to be held in an embrace of love and comfort. Not really feeling the comfort, but believing I was truly being held—like a parent would hold a newborn or a small child. The act of writing about it helped me realize that I would be fine. I had a strong sense that if I could get the negative thoughts out of my own head and heart, then they could not eat at me—or consume me—and grow. If I could release the hate and offer it to God, then I knew that it would not engulf me. So journaling, also, became a key form of prayer.

During this darker period in my life, I was spending a lot of time on the beach at Crissy Field. This, too, allowed me to find joy in God’s creation. I would stand on the beach and sing—lines of different hymns that would bring me comfort. “Great is Thy Faithfulness” is one that came to me frequently.

It was this time of remembering blessings that started to allow me to be thankful for the different parts of my life. It has shown me that prayer happens all the time when we allow God to be present in us. Prayer happens all the time, when I allow God to be present in me. For me, the still small voice is God—the Spirit of strength and peace.

"Prayer, Spirituality, and Surfing"

Fourth Sunday of Lent: "Teach us, Lord, to Pray"

Benjamin Bolanos

"If I were called in to construct a religion I should make use of water." Phillip Larkin[1]

This might come to a surprise to you but I have some trouble with meditation. I really can’t do it. I can’t sit there and try to clear my thoughts, relax, and then feel present. I kind of just get sleepy. Don’t get me wrong; I see the value in it for other people, just not for me. I’m not good at prayers either. I find it forced when I do it or meaningless or almost too ritualistic and full of language that feels contrite and prescribed. I’m a disaster to my preacher father. But there is hope for me. I find spiritual discipline in a somewhat unorthodox but common way: I physically need to be in the ocean on a 15 to 23 pound board (depending on conditions), wearing a 4/3 thick wetsuit, in 55 degree water, using all my mental and physical abilities to read waves, calculate swell direction, triangulate my position in the water, check tide changes, wind direction, currents, locate channels, rate abilities of other surfers to avoid collisions, grade the force of each wave, and then paddle into position given all these factors. Not to mention the shark factor. This is my spiritual discipline. So I should probably explain.

Surfing is the hardest and slowest learning curve of any sport. It takes dedication, discipline, courage, and physical and mental conditioning. No one will ever master surfing. No one will ever master surfing since there are so many many variables to surfing. But that in itself is the very thing keeps us surfers going. Perfecting our abilities so that we may enjoy this strange closeness to the ocean and the wave. We strive to be close to the wave. It’s this relational part of surfing that is quite remarkable.

I think all of us feel a mysterious longing for the sea as some kind of secret to our own identity or existence, says Peter Kreeft, author of Surfing and Spirituality. We pay good money to be near the ocean. We buy property. We take vacations to the beach. When we think of a respite we usually think of lying on white sand near water, basking in the sun, doing absolutely nothing but being present in that moment.

Likewise, we surfers share a love for the ocean, our playing field. But we fear the ocean, we respect it, we honor it. We pay homage to it. It's a relationship we find sometimes find extremely hard to articulate to non-surfers.

Allow me to articulate that relationship via a story. Every surfer has a story that grounded him or her for life. Here’s mine:

Joan Didion once wrote, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live."[2] But sometimes those stories begin to fail us. So we need new ones to remind ourselves that life is precious.

Spring 2005. I had the day off and decided to head to Pacifica. I had checked the report and the tide was a mid tide, which is good for parts in Pacifica, swell was from the NW and I could tell from the wave intervals from the buoys that they had some size to them. It was raining too. I know when it rains the winds change and move south to southwest, which in Pacifica creates some clean glassy waves. Perfect ideal conditions. I checked the line up and saw where the peaks were breaking and paddled out. I was dialed in that day. I knew where to position myself correctly and I knew how much paddling speed I needed to match the wave velocity. It was as if I could tell the future and make it happened. I was catching wave after wave, bottom turning and ripping it.

Then it happened. I was getting cocky. Humility comes at a price sometimes. The wave roaring toward me was a "living memory." It was born some thousand of miles away when a change in temperature produced a change in pressure. Air moves from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure. That’s wind. When the wind flickers on the ocean surface it creates small ripples. Then those small ripples become larger and larger into they become waves, which makes this whole thing weird since it’s not the water itself traveling across the ocean but merely the memory of the original wind’s energy transmitted from one water particle to the next. So as I was catching that fateful wave, I was really hearing the sound of the past arriving in the present with me directly in its path.[3] Ummm. That can cause problems.

Toward the end of my session, I paddled into that wave. Now ideally you want to position yourself so that you get close to the peak of the wave but not too close. The peak is where the lip of the wave is about to crash and here is where the greatest transfer of energy is and getting to one’s feet beneath the lip requires a little nimbleness. You need to move from a flat position to an upright position in the shattering "micro-moments" it takes for this transfer to occur. Technically this requires a leap of faith. You need to push yourself up from the front of the board with your hands and simultaneously pushing the board downward into the steep wave, in my case I was pushing myself off a cliff. I made an error. As I raced down the wave and tried to bottom turn, which is a taking the whole energy of the initial drop, turning from the bottom of the wave and hoping you have the momentum to race up to the top of the wave and speed down the line,[4] the wave began to pitched forward. I looked up and it was a lot bigger than before and my first thought were not "oh wow, what a cool physical representation of wind and memory." It was more like "Blank blank and blank. Sweet Jesus! Get me out of this now!"

It was bad. It was like a house falling on top of me. I was tossed around like a sock caught in a washing machine. When I came up for air, I realized I was in the impact zone. I went under 4 times and the whole thing repeated itself again an again. I was losing air. I was getting tired. I was scared. I needed to relax but couldn’t. After the last submersion I had to make a break for it. I mustered all my remaining strength and jumped on my board and paddled like a madman over the approaching waves. I don’t remember how I made it out but I did. As a soon as I went over the last wave, everything stopped, as if Jesus had outstretched his hands and in one moment, he stilled the waters. Silence. Panting, gasping, lying on my board, I looked around and everyone had the same look and position as I had. I then saw some dolphins a distance away. I saw a bird swoop down and hit the ocean surface and fly out with a fish in its beak. A seal popped its head up and just stared. It stopped raining. And I lay there dumbfounded, wondering how I managed to survive. I sat up, thanked God and in my own way gave my respects to the sea and honored it. I felt strangely centered and at peace.

The calm and the storm. Humility. Solitude. "From a Jewish perspective, the ocean, the first thing God created, is the most powerful force in the world."[5] Thus, the ocean is a natural force stronger than the individual, a force that requires the athlete to surrender himself. To give in, to submit to the will of the God, to be humbled, to understand that god is the ocean, the vast sea where we seek solace, comfort, and wisdom. Thus surfers are part athletes, artists, and spiritual seekers.

Rabbi Nachum Shifren, author of "Surfing Rabbi: A Kabbalistic Quest for Soul," is a tall bearded man who rides a longboard with such grace, writes "If you want to know God, learn to surf. Do you think Tennis players feel like they’re getting spiritual fulfillment out of their matches? Does the mail department at Gun World have a hard time handling the letters from readers about the spirituality of firing a .357?" Surfing is really a transformative spiritual journey. Surfers believe since the ocean is where life began on this planet, the act of riding a wave is momentarily a connection to this living memory. It’s the real deal.

"Surfing has more moving parts than any other sport, and because of that it requires the same laser pinpoint focused concentration to ride a wave as it does to meditate."[6] When you take off on a wave, you are now at the mercy of the sea. In a split second, those surfing variables disappear. You disappear. You begin to dance on the board on a wave as you move to stay in trim, stay in the wave. You shift your body, feet, your concentration is so sharp that for just 10 seconds you become one with the vast sea and now glide through water like birds in the sky. And that moment is breathless, powerful, and very transformative. You feel that power of the ocean; you can hear it roar behind you and simultaneously feel its gentleness. It is this "presence" that surfers yearn for over and over. It calls to them.

My favorite time to surf is sundown or sunrise. It’s quiet, no wind, no people, no sound but just the crashing of waves. Just me, my board, and hopefully God. I think about patience, harmony, my kids, my wife, my parents, love, fear, impermanence, death, my childhood, my purpose, joys, or sometimes nothing at all. I just sit, wait and catch a wave. And I understand that every time I take off on a wave, I am partaking in the last moments of a wave that began thousands of miles away. It’s an awesome transformative experience.

Every time I leave the ocean or surfers leave the ocean, carrying his or her board, head down, board in one hand pressed against the hips, slowly walking back across the sand, the movement of the walk is contemplative, as if in a trance. As if the body and mind were renewed. And if you wait long enough, you’ll see a surfer turn around, watch the ocean for some time and in their own way give thanks and then head home. That image speaks volumes to me.

"So I, the surfer, in the sea symbolizes the soul, with which I 'surf' in God. The sea is God. The beach is the path to God. Surfing is the experience of God, or the spiritual life."[7]

_________________

[1] First line from Larkin’s Poem "Water"

[2] Joan Didion. We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live. Collection of nonfiction stories. Piece is also in "The White Album." Some of the stories reflect her loss of both parents, spouse, then daughter.

[3] Living memory concept comes from parts of Steven Kotler’s West of Jesus Novel. Description of wave and wind memory was captivating.

[4] Ibid., writing about surfing technique is hard and I find it boring. Kotler wrote those pieces quite nicely. However, wipe out stories are so common that they inevitably have common quotes and descriptions. Oh well.

[5] From "SurfingRabbi.com: A Kabbalistic Quest for Soul"

[6] Most sports have this component to them but it’s labeled "in the zone" or some other term. It’s the feeling of completely letting go as if it becomes automatic.

[7] Peter Kreeft. "Surfing and Spirituality" Catholic Education Resource Center.

"Prayer Personalities"

Third Sunday of Lent: "Teach us, Lord, to Pray"
[Psalm 119 ]

Last Sunday, I invited you to think about prayer as a wheel… All these spokes radiate into the center, the hub. The hub of the wheel of prayer is what I called intentional awareness. Or an awareness of the Divine Presence. I was intentionally trying to use very simple, almost untheological language, because I wanted to look at prayer’s essence.

We’re going to talk about the spokes today. What leads us into that hub? What leads us into this awareness, into this Presence? What concepts about God and Divinity will resonate most with us? Creator God, brother Jesus, Spirit? Do we think of God as our Ground of Being, as Beloved Friend, as Liberator? Do we tend not to think of God in personal terms at all? Or does it have to be made concrete for us? What forms of prayer will lead us into this hub, into an awareness of Presence? Will it be silent meditation, small group sharing, reading and journaling, acts of service or justice-making?

Fittingly, given our wheel metaphor, there is a way of talking about these different prayer personalities that also uses the metaphor of the wheel. It’s been made popular by a writer named Corinne Ware.[1]

I want to first talk about these horizontal and vertical lines and the four quadrants they make. Each of those four quadrants represents a different spiritual type. I’ll also explain the funny-sounding words like apophatic and kataphatic. I was going to replace these words with more common ones, but I have a great fondness for exotic words. I think we need to use them from time to time to make sure they don’t go extinct.

The vertical axis is labeled speculative and affective. These two poles pose the question of how one goes about knowing. Do we know through via our rational mind? That’s the speculative pole. Or do we know through accessing our feelings? That’s the affective pole. For those of you familiar with the Myers Briggs personality test, these poles would correspond with the thinking/feeling functions. “Head” and “heart” would be another way to describe it. So, a “speculative” or “head” person would tend to gain their information about God, and life in general, through emphasizing logic and accumulated facts. A “heart” or “affective” person would tend to gain their information via instinct and intuitive feeling.

The horizontal line represents how we conceptualize Divinity. On the left, you have apophatic, from a Greek word that means “negative.” It refers to a person or a spiritual discipline that tends to think of God in non-concrete ways. God is more of a mystery, and any attempt to box God in by confining the Mystery to a particular image or concept is resisted. The purpose of apophatic spiritual disciplines is to empty oneself, empty the mind of concepts so that the God beyond all concepts can be experienced. Apophatic folks tend to be drawn to meditation: Zen, forms of Christian meditation. An apophatic-type person might really love the name God gives to Godself in story of burning bush: “I am who I am.” Or “I am Who I am Becoming.” That can be quite meaningful to an apophatic person, whereas it might leave a more kataphatic person quite cold. God as “Ground of Being.”

Apophatic spiritualities do use symbols for the Divine —they have to – but they will tend to be less anthropomorphic, and not as concrete. Perhaps creation-centered. Those metaphors we use for Spirit will probably work better: Wind, Fire, Breath.

At the opposite end of this scale is the Greek word kataphatic, translated as affirmative. It refers to the method of thinking most familiar to Western culture, in which God is revealed and knowable. In this way of thinking, we tend to see God or the Divine in concrete, often anthropomorphic terms – God is friend, the one who walks with us in the Garden in the cool of the evening. (The Bible is quite kataphatic, although it has its apophatic moments.) Or God is incarnate in Jesus, who walks with us, breaks bread with us, whom we can know and talk to. The hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus” is a very typical kataphatic hymn.

I tend toward the apophatic, and when I first came here as pastor, I had a bit of trouble with the joys and concerns prayer. That sort of verbal prayer, addressed to a person-like God, was not completely natural for me. But I didn’t think it would be OK to come up here, have you share your prayer concerns, and then just stand in silence and say my mantra. So I adjusted. And, in fact, my own understandings of how I can pray and my concepts of God were stretched. Though you may identify with one type, it is always good to be stretched.

So, let’s talk about the four quadrants these two continuums create, and the different spiritual types they represent. These descriptions are, of necessity, going to be a bit overdrawn. No one, I’m guessing, is just one spiritual type. We may likely have a dominant type, but we’ll also contain some of the other quadrants, too. My sense is also that at different times in our life, we may gravitate toward a certain spiritual type more than other.

This typology is used not only to talk about individuals but congregations. Congregations will tend toward one or two types. Perhaps even whole denominations. This will of necessity be brief, but we can talk about it more during Education Hour.

Type 1: Speculative/Kataphatic. Head Spirituality. Theologian.

• They want to understand, make sense. If God and prayer are not presented to them in ways that make sense, forget about it. The intellect, in a way, is a kind of gate that their spiritual self must walk through before they can get to anything else.
• This person loves intellectual order. They like things to be logical and consistent. They will examine the texts of our hymns to see if we are singing what we actually believe.
• Highest spiritual moments might have come when you heard something that stirred you to understanding or in reading a passage that seemed to say exactly what felt true to you.
• Jewish ideal of study-as-worship. They like Bible studies that dig deep. What was life like for the Biblical community when a given book or passage was written? What does that word mean in Greek and where and in what context is it used elsewhere in the Bible?
• While types 2 or 3 “experience the Holy,” this type tries to make sense of that experience and name it. They codify and so preserve the faith story from generation to generation. They are our theologians, our scholars. Denominations: many mainline Protestant denominations, especially Presbyterians, who do things “decently and in good order.”

Prayer/Spiritual Juice: They will seek spiritual guidance mainly from words – sermons, books, scripture, study groups. Prayer in this quadrant is almost always language or word-based prayer, whether aloud or silent. “Reading can be the avenue of God’s speech.” They may want to learn Hebrew or Greek so they can read Bible in original language.

Danger: The danger is that faith can become a “head trip,” overly focused on the rational or the intellectual; avoiding feeling, or an interior connection with God. They might come across as dogmatic or dry.

Type 2: Affective/Kataphatic. Heart Spirituality.

• God is still view in kataphatic terms – concrete terms – but now we’ve dropped into affective, or feeling, half of circle. It is heart combined with the concrete, real-life stuff.
• Lot of feeling here. Lots of devotion. Experiences highs and lows in religious feeling. They are looking for things that will give them an emotionally moving experience. Think charismatic churches, and evangelical churches, both African-American and white.
• Their theology emphasizes the anthropomorphic representation of God. A type 2 person may talk about their “daily walk with Jesus.” Rumi, whom I like to quote, is, I believe,also a type 2 spiritual person. He talks about the Divine as his Friend, his Beloved, as the lap on whom he lays his head. Very relational, very intimate.

Prayer/Spiritual Juice: Worship may include a lot of music, and a feeling of warmth, energy and freedom of expression. Prayer is still mainly with words in this quadrant, but less formal than in type 1. Prayers in church or alone often extemporaneous, as opposed to the theologically correct prayers from the prayer book of type 1. Drawn to singing, use of memory and imagination.

Danger: Pietism. While a kataphatic of the mind may say, “My doctrine is purer than yours,” a kataphatic of the heart may say: “My walk with Jesus is closer than yours.”
Smugness about how real their relationship with Jesus/God is, and they may believe that anyone who doesn’t have their emotional energy is second rate. You have to relate to my God my way. If you’ve not had the “born again” experience then you’re not really saved.

Type 3: Affective/Apophatic. Mystic Spirituality.

• Still within the feeling experience, but move into apophatic knowing. Instead of God that possesses characteristic to humans, God is ineffable, unnamable, vast. God’s statement to Moses: “I am who I am” makes perfect sense to this person. Or they may tend to see God as the Creative Force.
• The aim is union with the Holy, even when one knows that this is not completely achievable. Ware: These people seem to be perpetually on a journey. In fact journey is one of their favorite words.
• Contemplative, introspective, intuitive. Great gift is they can penetrate past the temporal, to engage in a “deeper sort of knowing.”
• They are pretty comfortable with things not making sense, whereas type1 isn’t satisfied until they can understand. Prefer prayer group to study group.

Prayer: Like simplicity and silence in worship. Empty mind, simply be in presence of the Holy. Whereas type 2 might like the stimulation of praise band, this type might recoil. It’s too much. They can’t hear internally when it’s too loud out there. Prayer is less about what I’m expressing or saying, than it is about being receptive. Here “hearing from God” rather than “speaking to God” is prominent.

Danger: Quietism, an exaggerated retreat from reality and interaction with world. Go into my cave and be alone there. They have to guard against being too self-absorbed and self-protective. Not want to share gifts with world because that’s messy and distracting.

Type 4: Speculative/Apophatic. Kingdom spirituality.

• Smallest group. The mystical, apophatic experience coupled with an intellectual mode of gathering data produces an active visionary who is single-minded – has a deeply focused, almost crusading type of spirituality.
• They like intellectual stimulation – people with original ideas, especially on anything connected with issues they care about and social change.
• They care less about affiliation with organized religion than either types 1 or 2 – many faith communities simply aren’t engaged enough in changing society for them.
• Their aim is to simply obey God and to witness to God’s coming reign. Concerned with justice on earth, the transformation of society. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
• They are the praying activists. Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King. Some Mennonites! Perhaps there’s a reason we’re so small…

Prayer: Action. “My work and my prayer are one.” “I pray with my hands and feet.” Need prayer more than they may think because action and hunger for results can overtake them. In prayer, they need to continue to give up control to God or they could become quite bitter and angry at how “uncaring” other Christians are, who are not as single-minded and focused on transforming society as they are. Which leads to the…

Danger: Encratism, a moralistic and unrelenting tunnel-vision. If you are not supporting the cause with the same selflessness and energy as they are, you are not a part of their world. They may make us feel guilty, even as we admire them. They offer judgment and cause others to be more responsible. But they can sometimes be overly critical, wounding, and lose support of others.

A wheel is stronger the more spokes it has. And the Christian community is stronger with all of these types. They each offer gifts. We need theologians, the exuberant witnesses to God’s love, the mystics, the crusaders. We need those people to be as fully themselves, and as fully connected to the Divine as possible. May we each come to know God deeply through our thinking, our loving, our being, our doing. Amen.
____________

[1] Discover Your Spiritual Type: A Guide to Individual and Congregational Growth, by Corinne Ware (Alban Institute, 1995).