ADVENT 4 - B

MARY HEARD THE BELLS ON CHRISTMAS DAY

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My girls have a little Christmas book that came with a tree decoration we put up in their room. At the back of the book are a few carols, one of which I have not sung very often, and had all but forgotten about: “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”

I knew from literature courses in university that this was an older poem – but I was reading the lyrics and thinking to myself how appropriate they sounded. Listen for a second just to three verses:

I heard the bells on Christmas day

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head

“There is no peace on earth,” I said,

“For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail

With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Pretty interesting is it not, that we live in an era when war and disaster loom large all around us, when many people want to say that God is dead and that there is no hope. And yet...

Do you know where that song comes from? It is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was written shortly after his wife burned to death in an accidental fire; shortly after his son returned from war a cripple; all near the end of the America Civil War, Christmas 1864.

But that is nothing. A little over 4000 years ago our prophet, Malachi, was bemoaning the fact that God seemed very absent in light of Babylonian Military invasion, and yet we should have hope.

Some 2000 years later Mary and Elizabeth are wondering about the wisdom of bringing forth sons in Roman occupied Palestine.

I don’t want to seem all doom and gloom a few days before we all celebrate – but hey, this is over 5000 years of anecdotal evidence that life pretty much is not what we would expect it to be.

Having a child is a pretty interesting case study in just how easy it is to forget the good things. I don’t mean, having a child and watching them grow up, I mean physically having a child. Now clearly I am speaking from observation here – but I think pregnancy goes pretty much like this:

We should have kids – wouldn’t that be nice?

I’m Pregnant! (tears of joy, relief, buying baby booties)

Why did you do this to me?

Get this thing out of me!

We tend to forget that the characters in the Bible are real life flesh and blood people. So I think Mary has gone long enough that by the time she goes to see Elizabeth a lot of the original joy and happiness has been replaced by the pain, sore back, morning sickness, lack of sleep, and the fact that Joseph is off with all his carpentry things and not picking up the slack.

What started out as hope and enthusiasm has turned to worry and fear.

This is not just a pregnancy thing, this is a human thing. You start school with such bright eyed optimism, you become a doctor because you are going to heal people, or a lawyer to reform the world, and there comes a point where the pain, the cynicism, the utter reality of life dulls that optimism and you wonder why you should bother.

Another war, another story – remember the Christmas Eve story from the trenches of World War One, when some anonymous German soldier began to sing Stille Nacht...

It started at the battle of Flanders where the two sides were dug into trenches and fighting bitterly. The Germans actually went so far as to put up Christmas trees with candles. As the story has been told, it was the German side that started the truce. Many of them spoke English, while few of the allied soldiers spoke German.

They put up signs that said “you no fight – we no fight” and “Merry Christmas”... eventually someone was brave enough to stand up and test things – and no one fired. Then they made their way into no man’s land and each side buried their dead. After that the truce lasted a few days; gifts were exchanged and the soldiers played soccer together. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. Still....

One song, one night, was enough to reach into the gloom of World War One and restore some of that hope that seemed lost.

It takes something to reach into the darkness that pervades our souls. We cannot do it alone. Even mary had grown weary and worried, frightened for what might become of her baby. It took Elizabeth, and the joyous meeting of two unborn children who seemed somehow to recognize each other to break the spell, and remind them what a miracle childbirth and new life is.

It took Church Bells on Christmas Eve to make Longfellow remember that his pain and struggle did not have the last word.

The trick is to allow these moments of revelation to seep into our soul and revive our hope and spirit. Remember, no matter what is happening in your life, there is hope. That is the miracle of the magnificat, that is what Mary finds the courage to sing about, that is the point of a Christmas Carol penned in the midst of war:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail

With peace on earth, good will to men.”

LINKS THAT I SPOKE OF

Hi All.... this week in church I spoke of a site to rank yourself against the world...

here is the link:
www.globalrichlist.com

Advent 2 - C "Preparing the Way"

Last week I was talking with some friends who were debating about how they would decorate for Christmas this year. Would they go about it simply or use all the decorations they have?

What about you? Are you going all out or cutting back?

You know what the real problem with Christmas is? We are already busy. My house is filled with stuff, every shelf and corner has something on it... my calendar is usually booked solid whether it is May, October, or December... So where do we fit Christmas?

I think this is an actual real practical question that most of us face...

When we begin to decorate, boxes are pulled out from the attic, the basement, a closet or maybe from all these places. And there is a lot of fun, a lot of nostalgia, as you decorate the house. But in order to find a place to put them, we also have to rearrange some of the things that are already out there taking up space in our homes.

I for one, wish I could get some extra time during the month of December. I want to slow things down, just a little. What I find often happens is that I come to the Christmas Eve service and once it is over, I find myself saying, ok now I am ready for Advent to begin.

But the world doesn't stop for Advent & Christmas. Even though we are supposed to be finding more time for family and friends, many have to work extra shifts and we all have to keep doing the usual things that keep our lives running.

And what about gifts? Shopping this year is a real challenge. The economic times we live in make it difficult to set a budget let alone stick to it, after all, when things have been tough, we want to try and make people feel better with the gifts we give. So this year we have to look a little harder, make a little more time and effort.

Now, I hope you can also see that this is a metaphor for something else...

It is not just the house and the schedule that is already filled to the brim come December, I think we have a lot of un-cluttering of our “selves” to do as well to get ready for Christmas.
Consider two of the most famous groups of visitors in the Christmas season; the Wise Men and the Shepherds. They are the role models for how to get this right.

The Wise Men gave up the comfort of home, they set aside everything they were doing as princes and astrologers and made the journey to see this promised king. They brought the best gifts they could think of – ones that meant something to Jesus.

The Shepherds did the same; left the sheep in the field, followed the summons of some strange
heavenly music, and found themselves standing in awe at the sight of a little baby.

John the Baptist, who speaks out in our Gospel today, was one of the most colorful characters in all of history what with his fashion sense and diet. And his marketing techniques weren't the best either. He went out into the wilderness, away from the city, away from the crowds, to attract a great crowd. He seemed almost determined to fail. Despite all of this, Matthew tells us that people from all over the region were flocking to hear this message.

It was, for the record, the same message that had summoned Wise Men and Shepherds.
What John did was to take a moment in history that everyone had read about and could remember, the Exile in Babylon, and use the same words that Isaiah had used to talk about captivity and occupation by the Romans.

His message was simple - comfort will come to God's people, in the wilderness, in exile; a way will be prepared for the Lord. In a time of feeling lost, like in a game of hide and seek, we are assured that God will find us. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing for us to do to make it easier...

As you look at your plans for the holidays, have you been so busy making sure that you do what you think everyone expects of you that you have not have left a little time to spend some quality time with those you love? Maybe a friend or loved one needs “you” more than the gift you will spend hours trying to find. Is it possible that having a smile on our face may be more important than perfecting the decorations in our home or getting everything done on schedule?

I think John’s challenge to us is a constant one. It is too bad that it only comes up once a year, but it is as good a place to start as any. Preparing a way means being willing to ask some tough questions and make some hard decisions. It means trying to let go of things that divert your focus from what really matters.

So where do we start?

Think with me for a moment of some of the clutter that could possibly fill our hearts and minds, think about how these things can drain our hope and diminish our energy.

There are the regrets of things we did not do in the past or things we wished we had done. There are fears of not doing the right thing, or of how we will be viewed by others. There is the grasping for things to bring meaning, for toys and shiny things that in the end always dissapoint; and there is the way we close ourselves off, for whatever reason, from each other.

Advent comes each year with a challenge... Advent comes only after John has been out there in the desert calling for us to repent... and here is what he is really saying:

Surrender.

Let go of all those things that are just not helping to get you to Christmas in the right way. Prepare the way of the Lord – make enough room in your life, and in your heart, that God has a way to be born in there again.

Once again John uses the ancient words of Isaiah to show us the way forward: Every valley shall be filled and every mountain brought low. Those valleys or low places in our lives, such as worry or grief or doubt, and they can be filled with an awareness of the very presence of the living Christ. The mountains we must deal with in our hearts include pride, prejudice, fear, and selfishness. When these are brought low, we can see a greater horizon; we can see the way of the Lord.

The Gospel also calls for us to make the crooked places straight. We are challenged to confront those things in our lives that lure us away, push back the trivial that fill our minds and hearts and seek God's ways. We are being invited to clarify our choices and take the steps needed in order to live our lives as ones who follow Christ.

And we are told to make the rough ways smooth. In our lives, this may mean for us to forgive those who have hurt us, to refuse to allow what has happened to you to control your life. We need to make sure there is enough time for those that we care about. This means looking at how we live, examining, challenging those things that clutter our hearts. Then we will find the way more open.

As we approach Christmas, let each of us see beyond the clutter of living to the hope that was born so many years ago in Bethlehem. The invitation is for us to find a way for God to be in our days and our hearts.

Free your life from the clutter that has cut you off from the real meaning of this season, and let the love of God be born once more in your heart. Amen.

Advent One - "On The Threshold"

{My apologies to everyone for the fall - due to personal issues I was not working and not updating - I will change that forthwith...}


A Sermon for the First of Advent using the first and last lines of the Lectionary as bookends...

“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land...”

The days are surely coming....

My youngest brother is returning this week from Korea. He has been there for about 14 months, teaching English with his girlfriend. He is bringing me a Buddha statue for my desk.

During a conversation about this he said, “Buddhism is not so much a religion as a way of life, a way of living...”

When I heard this it immediately sounded wrong – Buddhism is not a religion because it is a way of living... is that not what Christianity is, a way of living? There are far too many people out there who think it is all about believing certain things, all about praying a certain way, (all about coming to church on a Sunday.... )and has nothing to do with the way we live our lives.

Curious that almost every story of the Bible is about how we live, not about what we think.

When we are told that God will fulfill the promises made to our ancestors, made to Abraham, and to Isaac, made to David and to us, as their descendants, we are told that God will cause someone to rise up who will execute justice and righteousness in the land...

The Messiah, the messenger of God, is going to come and remind us how we are supposed to live. Not how to pray, not how we can get into heaven, not who God is, but how we can live.

Think about what you know about the stories of Jesus... Nichodemus came and asked how to get into heaven and Jesus said it is simple.... be born again... and Nichodemus said, “What?” and Jesus never does explain it any further.

The disciples kept on asking over and over how to pray and at one point Jesus gets frustrated and tells them the Lord’s prayer... but that is it... just one universal prayer...

In fact, Jesus never really does argue theology or ecclesiology... he never talks about how we should build churches or who can and cannot preach in them...

Instead, Jesus says over and over and over and over... God is love. God is righteousness. God is action.

Forgive each other, take care of the widow, don’t throw the first stone, pick up Samaritans on the side of the road, heal those who are hurt, welcome outsiders into your family, feed the hungry...

Here is why we have a hard time with all of this. Jesus coming means we have to change. It still does.

My favourite social philosopher of all time is Charles Dickens. If you know him for nothing else, you know him for the character he created, called Ebenezer Scrooge.

Dickens was a messiah of sorts.

He came into Victorian England at a time when everyone thought they were good and Christian and following God... but in fact there were terrible things happening in society with orphanage, slavery, workhouses, poverty and the like.

Dickens England was probably the worst possible place to live unless you were the Aristocracy.

Dickens was raised as an Anglican; he eventually converted the Unitarian Church because of its broader message. His first career was as a Law Clerk... think Bob Crachit in a Christmas Carol. In the evenings he taught himself shorthand in order to escape and become a reporter, then one of England’s most successful novelists.

Dickens's religious beliefs were those of most 19th century British Unitarians. In his will he urged his children to adopt a liberal, tolerant, and non-sectarian interpretation of Christianity, "the teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit." He recommended they "put no faith in any man's narrow construction" of isolated passages. In The Life of Our Lord, written for his children and not published until 1934, Dickens summarized his faith as "to do good always." He believed humanity, created in the image of the divine, retained a seed of good. He preached the gospel of the second chance. The world would be a better place if, with a change of heart, people were to treat others with kindness and generosity.

In 1843, while he was most active at Little Portland Street chapel, Dickens created the first and greatest of his Christmas books, A Christmas Carol. Around this time Christmas Day was again beginning to be celebrated and the holiday transformed. The story and its characters—Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Crachit and Tiny Tim—defined the holiday's meaning for the English-speaking world as the regenerative spirit of generosity, or what Dickens called his "Carol philosophy." The heart of Dickens's social criticism and his religious message is found in A Christmas Carol.

Here is one of the most memorable quotes from a speech that Scrooge’s cousin berates Scrooge with: “But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round ... as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

Dickens’s was following in Jesus’ footsteps, challenging the way church and state had come to define what was good, what was right, what we were ‘supposed’ to be like. For Charles, people were meant to be kind and generous, righteous and good.

He was one of those voices calling from the wilderness and reminding us that things are about to change – the days are surely coming.

And this is the message of Advent, the message of Christmas, the Message of Scrooge and of Santa. This is what Rudolph and his Island of misfit toys are all about; this is what Frosty and the magic hat is all about... The message is that we can find a different way, God’s way, of love and generosity and hope.

We are preparing for Christmas – the beginning of the message that Jesus came to bring into the world to share with us – and that message is all about a way of living...

Ebenezer Scrooge needed three ghosts to come and point out all of his weaknesses and misunderstandings. Perhaps it is easier for us, we merely need to listen to the stories, to be reminded of the reason for the season. We need to be on guard for the spirit of Goodwill that surrounds this holy season and begins each church year.

The world is not what it is meant to be, and the days are surely coming when we will realize this, or, as the Gospels put it:

“...Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

PENTECOST 16 - B

Ego, Invisibility and the Little Child

(Parts adapted from the writing of The Rev. Stephen Lewis, National Director of the Calling Congregations initiative of the Fund for Theological Education, based in Atlanta, GA.)

I have an ego.

Maybe it is worse than that – perhaps I am narcissistic. I am sure some of my behaviours are.
Through whatever paths and interactions in my life that have brought me to this place, I have come to think that I deserve certain things; that I am owed certain things, that I am more important than a lot of people around me.

I am hoping you are not as bad off as I am. But consider this – I know this is wrong. I know all about empathy, compassion, values, faith, and all of those little things Jesus said about first being last, and eyes of needles.

Maybe I have some real problems, but I can’t help myself sometimes; I get irritated when things don’t work out my way, I get angry at people who do things that I think waste my time, and I genuinely am not a nice guy.

All of this is true, by the way, but I am also trying to make a point – and the point is this – when left to our own devices most of us become narcissistic. We become self centred. We become self important.

Many of us have the wherewithal to move beyond that, or to set our needs aside for others; but it is hard.

Ever wonder why every second passage in the Bible is about learning to get over yourself?

Because the one thing that is really in the way of authentic life is “me”

***

Our society suffers from a debilitating addiction to a "greatness" understanding of leadership. Families feed this addiction to their children. And an addiction to being the best or greatest in ministry, whether it is about leadership or building institutions, is a pandemic virus in the church. The earliest strand of this deadly addiction can be traced back to the church's origin. It is the very question the disciples are arguing about in this text.

Fortunately, Jesus has a response: he provides some answers about how we might break free from our addiction to unhealthy forms of greatness by re-imagining church leadership. This re-imagining is a necessary revolution, it is a rebellion against not only the way things are. But the way they have always been... and it is still the same old message, be more like God.

In our reading we find Jesus schooling the disciples on what greatness looks like in his ministry. He says to the disciples, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all." Notice, he does not say what we have to do, but what we have to “be”. We have to let go of all of that power grasping, all of that ego, and “be”

Jesus then tells his disciples, "Whoever wants to be first must be servant of all." Notice that he does not say servant to all, but servant of all, which suggests that the disciples are called to be servant leaders regardless of what other people seek to be. Servant leaders practice greatness by being givers who serve together through shared leadership, responsibility and accountability.

Jesus then models what leadership looks like for the disciples. He summons a young child to come to him. Children symbolize God's blessing. symbolize the continuance of their family's salvation and inheritance into the future. In the Gospels, children also symbolize the character a person must possess to enter the city of God (Mark 10:15). In spite of the symbolic status children hold, we find their voices silent for the most part throughout the Bible. I want to suggest that children symbolize the voiceless, those at the margin of the community.

Jesus welcomes the child to the center of the community and wraps his arm around her--the voiceless one--and suggests that if we want to be great, then we must practice welcoming the voiceless to the very center of the community. Expand the community's center to include those people at the margins. Make the margins the new center of the community because this is where the welcoming presence of God dwells. Otherwise, we alienate ourselves from the very presence of Jesus and the One who sent him. This is what greatness looks like in Jesus' ministry.

So what does this mean for us? We who love our churches and traditions, must re-imagine our ambitions and concepts of greatness. We must adopt new practices of insignificant greatness. We must cultivate the next generation of church leaders to exhibit these practices. Why? Because, ultimately, what is at stake is the church's future, its witness and its relevance in the world. A church that fails to be the welcoming presence of God ceases to be the church.

So this is an invitation to you to re-imagine what the practices of greatness look like in this church. It is an invitation to re-imagine the kind of church leadership that cares about the ongoing formation and practices of the next generation of church leaders. This is also an invitation to imagine practices that cultivate your capacity to develop a community of disciples who share authentic leadership.

To create a safe space for Christians to explore their vocation in the world.

To spend more time asking provocative questions rather than giving patent answers.

To model what greatness really looks like in Jesus' ministry.

To welcome the voices and the vocations of young people in the community.

To expand your community's center to include the voiceless.

And to make the margins of the community the new centers of congregational and denominational life.

This invitation is not for the faint of heart. It is not for those who are concerned with being popular. There might even be some economic reprisal if you join this movement. Some of you might face a social crucifixion. Some of you will undercut your upward mobility into the priestly class and denominational leadership. However, what is at stake is our alienation from the presence of God, a divided and unhealthy life and a community of gifted people who will continue to be underutilized in God's grand vision for the church in service to the world if we disregard this invitation and do nothing.

This is the invitation to re-imagine greatness; it is the call of the Gospel. So how in this world do we muster the courage to join this movement and become who we are intended to be?

Let us pray
Gracious God, we long to know your Presence, To feel the movement of your spirit. Lead us, O God, into practices from which our spirits shrink because the demand is so great. Give to us quiet confidence, just a simple trust. Let us be true to that which you have entrusted to our keeping, The integrity of our own soul. For us, God, this is enough.
Amen.

PENTECOST 15 - B

God Enters In
(This sermon, (at least in conclusion) is largely based on the Sermon Aaron Billard wrote for this Sunday. Due to personal reasons I could not finish my sermon and am grateful for his help.)

Way back in my students days I had a field placement site in was in Ottawa. I worked at Emmanuel United Church, with approximately 600 families. That was the church Wilbur Howard, Lois Wilson, and Anne Squires all left to become Moderators of our church. Anne Squires sat in the pew when I preached there. So did most of the top scientists of the National Research Council. It was a strange place – the average educational level for the congregation was a PhD. And most of those were in science. It was the proverbial ‘tough crowd’.

Every day I hear that faith is dumb; that the church is either hopelessly outmoded, or downright abusive; that God is a made up projection of people who are afraid; and that the values we talk about here are ‘quaint.’

In other traditions this Sunday is sometimes called “Rally Sunday” which in the United Church we call, “I have to go back to church Sunday.”

It has truly got me thinking about why… why we have to, why we should, what we think we are accomplishing, and if all those naysayers and atheists out there are right.

Do you ever read obituaries? A lot of people seem to. It’s funny how they can go both ways … Often, they are cold and sterile, merely listing off the next of kin of the date of the funeral, if there even is one these days. Usually it will mention the person’s love of cards and that they belonged to some club. The other side of that is to endlessly list someone’s accomplishments. Yet once in a while, an obituary appears that is out of the ordinary. One that describes the passion of a person, the people they loved, what they believed in, and how they tried to live their lives. It’s like one last gasp of life to say that “I existed!” before we turn the page.

Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner, from his book The Yellow Leaves, talks about being in a cemetery and finding the grave of a ten year old boy. On the tombstone was written this:

“Damien Parlor: Child of Light, Bridge in the Universe, So Dearly Loved, Danced in Sunlight, Floated on Moonbeams, Dreamed on Clouds, Laughed Soaring Hawk Song, Cried Brilliant Rainbows, Reached for the Stars, a boy who could pet bees.” (August 1974 – September 1984)

Now that is an obituary I would like on my tombstone. I am nowhere near having earned anything like that. I hope by the time I need it I get a paragraph that speaks to a life lived rather than accomplishments achieved. A bit of writing that shares the core of who we are and what we were trying to do in life.

As I was reading the Gospel this week it occurred to me that it reads a bit like an obituary. It’s what Mark really wants us to remember about Jesus. “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Moreover, Mark wants us to remember that Jesus is the Messiah, which he has mentioned only once before at the beginning of the Gospel.

Just like many of you, one of my favourite haunts is Chapters. I often go there with no intention to buy anything; rather, just to be among the books. I like the idea of being surrounded by words and people quietly reading in a chair or leaning against a book shelf. Well, to be honest I am addicted to coffee too…

It never ceases to amaze me how many books there are about Jesus. So many authors, so many preachers, teachers, philosophers, theologians, poets, all claiming to have some knowledge of what something really means or some particular insight into Jesus. Yet in the Gospel of Mark, the first of the Gospels to be written down, it says from the beginning: Jesus is the Messiah.

Messiah. Such a word is almost too big in our language and in our tradition as Christians. I suspect if I went around the church this morning and asked what the word meant, we would either be silent or throw our best guesses. I even had to crack open a few tomes before I felt that I should even try to say anything.

Way back in Isaiah’s time there was a lot of talk of a Messiah – the one who would come, the one who would suffer, anointed by God. Throughout scriptures, the Messiah is the one who comes like a roaring lion and an angry wave; in other parts, the messiah is the one who heals, who teaches people to walk, and people sing for joy.

Yet for all we surmise and suspect, for all we guess and grow in our faith along the way, I might argue that we aren’t sure why we call Jesus the Messiah. We aren’t sure that we really even need a Messiah in our lives. So much of who we are and what we do is wrapped up in other things. We forget, sometimes, that we need something to save us from hopelessness; something to save us from fear; something to save us from being blind to injustice; something to save us from loneliness and isolation. And at the end of the day, something to save us from ourselves, and that will mean different things for different people.

What does “Messiah” mean for you?

“If you have doubt in your mind,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor, “then I will tell you the truth. Sometimes I would give anything for one fireball from heaven, for one blast of raw power from a tidal wave God who would sweep my and everyone else’s doubts away forever. But that is not what I have. What I have instead is a steady drip of mercy from the followers of a man named Jesus, who is still playing doctor to a lot of marginal people in the world.” (From the book, The Seeds of Heaven)

Aaron Billard shared a video with me this week on youtube of a shipwreck in the Cayman Islands. A passenger liner was being towed in a storm when it broke free and washed up on shore. The video was of the next 20 years, as the water slowly broke it apart, and ground it into the beach.

There is an amazing scene where you see how the waves have eroded a huge hole across the bottom, wearing everything away at an incredible rate.

Just little waves, Just little drops, but with incredible power.

Time and time again as a minister I am confronted with the doubt of people, or with a refusal to even begin to contemplate the notion of God as being anything more than a caricature in a movie starring Charleton Heston.

Well – this year I want to explore more deeply, and more fundamentally, what it is to have faith in this modern world.

It’s my belief that there is a need within the church for a massive re-orientation of our beliefs. In computer language, it’s time to hit the reset button. A lot of what people fight about an disbelieve, and hold as completely true, could be seen quite differently if it was just framed differently.

And Jesus asks one good question: Who do you say that I am? Not who did your grandfather say Jesus was, not who did your Aunt Helen say Jesus was, not who did your Sunday School teacher say Jesus was, who do YOU say that I am? He asks. It’s a question in the present tense. Who is Jesus for you today in light of the fact that there are no lightning bolts, no thunder, no heaven-sent floods, no big dramatic mass miracles where doubt is cast away.

Here is a quote I read: “Remember how a stone is shaped by water. See that round hole? Water did that. Drop by transparent, short-lived drop, water transforms rock as no tidal wave ever could. For reasons beyond our understanding, that is how the Messiah has decided to come for now – not all at once but steadily, drop by drop, for millennia. Every time someone lives as he lived by loving as he loved, another drop falls. For some people, it is not enough. For others, it is a way of life.” (BBT, The Seeds of Heaven)

Let us hope that it will be enough for us. Let us pray:

Loving God, crack open our hearts so that the drops of your love might find their way through the crevices into our souls. Open us to new experiences of the mystery of that love, and be with us in our lives as we live them in response to you.

Summer Sermon Series

AWARENESS

Have you ever spent much time thinking about Moses? He is a fascinating character. His story is truly remarkable. Born in a time of genocide and then brought up under the nose of the very individual who ordered the killing.

He witnessed the beating and torture of his own people. He committed murder and then had to flee for his life. Then taken in by a family, marries and then finds himself a shepherd.

I try to imagine what life must have been like for him in those days of tending the flock. Having been brought up in a palace this must have been quite a shock to the system. With all that happened I can imagine that some days must have seemed like a blur. I wonder if he enjoyed the peace, quite and solitude of tending the sheep.

What is important from today’s reading from Exodus and Moses’ story is two verses: There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight--why the bush does not burn up."

Moses could have easily walked by, I am sure he had a lot on his mind. How many other people had passed the bush by? Not only did he notice but he went to observe, to take it in, to seek its mystery. And with that simple act, the act of awareness or attentiveness, or being present to the moment, whatever you want to call it, Moses witnessed and heard the call of God.

It sounds so simple when we hear in read from scripture. But I wonder how many times he walked past this very bush, alive with the angel of God, beckoning Moses to see what is right there in front of him.

I like to think of it that way, probably for my own piece of mind. I think I walk by opportunities every moment where I could encounter the Holy One. But I get distracted...I become overwhelmed, or worried, preoccupied with what has to be done next. I can even miss what someone is saying who is sitting right across from me, while in the midst of a conversation with them and yet I hope to be able to see God every day.

This is why I think spiritual practices are so important, why I have been focusing on them for the last few weeks. A spiritual practice helps us to keep the spiritual channels open and help keep the heart turned toward God. These disciplines can't save you; they can't even make you a holy person. But they can heighten your desire, awareness, and love of God by stripping down the barriers that you put up within yourself and some that others put up for you.

What makes something a 'spiritual discipline' is that it takes a specific part of your way of life and turns it toward God. A spiritual discipline is, when practiced faithfully and regularly, a habit or regular pattern in your life that repeatedly brings you back to God and opens you up to what God is saying to you.

I have never been the most spiritual of people. Sounds strange to say coming from a minister I know, but I have always thought of faith more as actions – as following God… for me actions speak louder than prayers… But I was young, and well, to much of a head person and less of a heart person. Over the last couple of years I have been seeing that how you feel, that your relationships, that the spiritual side of life is as important, if not more important.

The spiritual life can be profound once you begin to practice it. You begin to take the time to notice what is right in front of you, to see and hear and feel what and where you are. Eckhart Tolle calls it the power of now – being present in this moment. Moses lived it the day he saw the burning bush.

The practice of awareness doesn’t require us to do anything special day, we don’t need to add anything accept our attention. As we do the most mundane activities in our day we can practice awareness.

Here is a story from “Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On”: The Autobiography and Journals of Helen M. Luke edited by Barbara Mowat.

In her autobiography and journals, writer, counselor, and Jungian therapist Helen M. Luke reveals her remarkable ability to observe hints of the inner life. For example, she writes:
"I have recently been more aware, I believe, of the life in things, not only in things of beauty but in the ordinary tools of everyday. Jung used to greet his very saucepans in the mornings at Bollingen! I begin to understand this. In my life-long impatience, how much I have missed. Last night, washing the dishes, I really looked at my iron frying pan in the dishwater. The light made visible for a moment a tiny rainbow — a light through water revealing all the colors of life. It is so easy to miss the tiny symbols. Finding them is something quite different from the business of trying to hatch up big symbolic experiences. It is recognition, not pursuit, of meaning — recognition of the sacramental, of the intersection of the two worlds, breaking through unsought because one is attending."

The poet and doctor William Carlos Williams used to carry a notepad around with him in which he listed "Things I noticed today that I've missed until today."

This spiritual discipline is also known as attention, mindfulness, concentration, and recollection. Although I have saved this for the last sermon, this is probably the primary thing that we can do as a spiritual practice. We must stay alert or we risk missing critical elements of the spiritual life — moments of grace, opportunities for gratitude, evidence of our connections to others, signs of the presence of Spirit. The good news is that attention can be practiced anywhere, anytime, in the daily rounds of our lives.

We can all begin by doing one thing at a time. Keeping our minds focused on whatever we happen to be doing at the moment. It is through the mundane and the familiar that we discover a world of ceaseless wonders. Train yourself to notice details.

The idea is not to become perfect or that you will be aware every moment of every day. But to practice from time to time every day all that goes into being aware so that it becomes easier, and when you need to you can call on those techniques and be aware of what you are encountering.

Think of it like this. If you honestly believe that your spiritual life is a high priority in your life, then regular spiritual practice is essential. Believe me, you are not going to get to the other side of the river unless you get in the boat. The important principle here is to just get started. Don’t plan beyond that. Begin with only five minutes. After a brief time, double it to 10 minutes and eventually work your way up to whatever you believe is right for you.

Awareness is an easy place to start. As you clean the table tonight you can be aware of what is in front of you, the blessings of your life.