/Sermons

Absalom--Roger Martin.rtf

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:23:42 GMT

Absalom
Sermon by Roger Martin
August 2006

Today's sermon is the first of two focusing on the court of King David. According to poet Robert Pinsky, ``The story of David is a story of flawed fathers, of unexpectedly powerful women and of defiant sons.''
Our scripture begins at a point when David has been driven from the throne by his flawed son Absalom. David may be down but, being David, slayer of giants, he's not out. He's dispatched troops to fight forces led by Absalom. The battle is the climax of a long chain of poisonous intrigue and conniving.
Years before the action here, Absalom had committed his first murder. He had avenged the rape of his sister, Tamar, by killing his half brother Amnon.
Amnon, like Absalom and David, was a conniver. He set up the rape through a ruse. He pretended to be sick in order to lure Tamar with whom he was infatuated to his bedside.
The natural assumption might be that the young Absalom avenged his sister for the sake of justice. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Here's what he said after Tamar told him she'd been raped: ``He is your brother. Do not take this so much to heart.''
Do not take this so much to heart?
That's cold.
David is upset at Amnon, but he wishes no harm come to him. Amnon is his first born.
But something happens inside Absalom. He waits two years. Then he invites Amnon to a party and says to a band of his thugs, ``OK, when he's drunk, I give the signal and you kill him.'' Pinsky, the poet, compares some of the people in the second book of Samuel to mobsters. It's a great comparison.
The plots unfolds. When Amnon is good and drunk, Absalom's men whack Amnon.
What changed Absalom's mind? Not his sister's feelings. Don't take this so much to heart. No, it was probably personal power Absalmom sought because with Amnon out of the way, Absalom would inherit the throne.
At least Amnon and Absalom came by their conniving ways honestly. They were cut from the same cloth as their dad. David, after all, had connived to steal Bathsheba from her husband Uriah.
One day, standing on his roof, David sees Bathsheba naked. He needs to get her husband out of the picture. So David, like a mafia don, tells Joab, his general and confidante, to send Bathsheba's husband to the battle front. Oh, yeah, and make sure he's right at the base of the wall of the enemy's fortress, Joab. You know, at the spot where the other guy's best archers will be shooting? With Uriah out of the picture, Bathesheba joins David's small army of wives and concubines.
If President George Bush is the Decider, like he says, then maybe we should call King David the Conniver. And the Father of Connivers.
But I'm digressing. Let me get back to the story. So Absalom has Amnon whacked and now he's heir to the throne. But he has to lay low for a while.
Absalom leaves town. Three years later, after some conniving on General Joab's part, he's invited to return by King David. Not that David will talk to him that doesn't happen for another two years.
Which only gives Absalom more time to connive. At one point, the Bible says about this period, ``Absalom seduced the hearts of the men of Israel.'' You've got to get a picture of this guy: Movie-star beautiful, with a terrific head of hair. A verse in Samuel reads, ``When he cut the hair of his head and he would cut it every year; he would cut it then because it grew too heavy for him he would weigh the hair; two hundred shekels king's weight.''
His seductiveness helps him take the throne and it forces David to flee. One of Absalom's advisers says, Let's go after him. Get him now while he's down. But there's a double agent in Absalom's court, a secret ally of David's. He says, Look, Absalom, get all the people in the whole kingdom to love you, THEN track David down . How can the man with the heavy hair resist such flattery?
And that brings us up to today's scripture reading. David, given time, sends his hundreds and thousands out, and they meet Absalom's people. They come to blows in a forest and oddly enough the forest itself helps to determine the battle's outcome. Absalom actually gets snagged in the cleft of a tree branch, hung by the throat or the hair, and dangles in mid-air.
Pinsky, the poet, describes the startling scene in his book The Life of David : ``The servants of David come across Absalom, riding his mule, and in a bizarre image of helplessness and stupid, headlong disaster, his mount wedges Absalom by the head into the low-hanging branches of a tree. The usurper is suspended in a state like incomplete birth, neither on earth nor in heaven, partway-entombed in the delivery into death, a hapless man of nowhere, puppetlike. The mule, like the kingdom or like the course of life, continues on without him . . . . Absalom is made immobile and vulnerable by his own reckless force.''
I'm going to leave Absalom dangling there. Joe Casad will pick up the thread of the story next week. By now you know what I think about this story. I've already used the word ``conniver'' about 40 times. The wages of conniving are horrific here: seduction and rape, murder and warfare .
I wish it were only royal families that engaged in these practices.
At the Western District Conference, a group of us heard a painful story. A search committee was well-pleased with its new pastoral recruit. They thought everybody would like the person. They had no idea that someone in the congregation would connive to derail the hiring. They had no idea that this individual would call folks up and talk against the candidate. And then the Sunday of the vote rolled around.
A 75 percent majority was required to endorse the candidate.
The vote was 74 percent for, 26 percent against.
Imagine how that church feels. Some its congregants, sad to say, were working in a style fit for the court of King David. Whoever was making the phone calls and whipping up the opposition never tried to work out her issues with the search committee. Absalom would understand that approach. He never tried to work out his grievances with Amnon he just had him killed.
I'm thinking about all of this right now in the context of the Mennonite practice called consensus building. I'm on a committee that is studying consensus. So are Adam and Kirsten, Jim Krause and Rob Blum. We are learning some important things about reaching decisions without intrigue, gossip, demonizing those on the other side and all the other bad things that can happen to good congregations.
We hope to draw each of you into the conversation soon if that's where you want to go with us. We'd like to identify the ways and means by which the conspiratorial environment of a King David's court is created and the ways and means of keeping that in check.
We can't just stop with an analytical examination, though; we also need, perhaps, to practice consensus-building. If you decide you'd like to learn with us, we hope to bring in a facilitator to lead a workshop.
I want to share a little about what we've been learning so far.
One thing is that consensus-building requires concentrating pointedly on the other guy's perspective and the other guy's arguments. Collective power builds from putting down the urgency about making yourself understood and rests on your trying, first off, to understand.
Think about David's response to Absalom in this context. David makes no effort to find out what differences Absalom may have had with him. He just takes off. And later, he fights. There's no in-between for him.
A second point about consensus: It focuses you on the process of deliberation. In fact, the process is more important than anything else. To turn back to our story a minute just before Tamar is raped, she says to Amnon that he could have her by approaching her father and asking his permission to marry her. In other words, she gives Amnon a reasonable way to reach the fulfillment he seems to want. She wants dialogue; he wants to act unilaterally.
The means that he uses to achieve his lovesick desire for Tamar kills all possibility of love. In fact many of us in the church may, at times, want to achieve a certain outcome, but we need to pay close attention to how we go about that.
A third thing our group is learning is the crucial importance, in consensus building, of our attitudes toward others. Kirsten said at one meeting, ``Our attitude toward each other all the time feeds into the consensus process whether we're actually in a consensus process or not.''
A fourth point is the importance of soliciting everyone's views those who speak AND those who are silent, the majority AND the minority.
Finally, we've been learning that there is an incredibly orderly process and set of practices related to consensus-building discussion. Following these can make a huge difference when everyone knows them and abides by them.
Of course consensus isn't the world's way; it's countercultural. Absalom's way is more familiar. Sleazy charm. Good looks. Plotting and conniving and manipulating.
In the end, though, even things expressed in private catch up with you. Secrets are never fully secret. Secrets leave tracks.
We all know the tracks, don't we? The failure to make eye contact with someone about whom we have an attitude? A stray sentence or word or glance at a confederate that's full of meaning to a confederate but not to others? A tightening in the chest at the sound of someone's voice?
When conniving occurs between nations, the result can be war. When it occurs between churchgoers, people often leave.
The grace in all this is that God forgives us for being connivers. Again and again. (I don't know that he's got much choice, actually, as long as he gives us free will because we will connive .)
I believe that our responsibility to God is to try to become aware of our appetite for the secret and conspiratorial and to refuse to feed at that table. Our responsibility is to make a place of peace and calm where each of us feels safe to offer our feelings, thoughts, wisdom and prayers and, more importantly, tries hard to listen. To work on consensus decision-making requires making a safe place for discussion, a space in which we touch, and are touched, deeply.

Listening across generations--Joe Casad.rtf

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:24:00 GMT

Listening Across Generations
By Joe Casad
Sermon of Feb 5, 2006

Listening with children, or ``listening across generations''to put it more universally, is one of those subjects that could easily mean anything. The strategy, of course, depends on the child. Kids are very much like adults in that some of them reach out very easily, and others find it very difficult to let down their guard.

One thing I won't do is tell you a lot of delightful stories about my own kids; and another thing I won't do is focus specifically on listening to kids as a parent. I think the parents here probably know way more about listening to their own kids than I do. But more to the point, this kind of parent-to-parent shop talk doesn't really get to the kind of listening we're talking about. We are not talking about listening as a tool or policy for achieving some specific goalwe're talking about listening as a state for viewing the worldas a way of life. And to be honest, some of the most important listeners in a child's life are not parents, but other adults in their society who are not responsible for the child but still take a moment once in a while or maybe even just once to pause and pay attention.

Everyone knows that if you listen to what a child is saying, the child builds confidence and learns to speak more clearly. A benefit that is less often considered, however, is that if you carefully and sincerely listen to a child, you are actually modeling good listening. And sometimes listening with a child is the best you can do, or maybe it is the best you can do any time.

When humans speak to each other, a kind of translation goes oneven if they speak the same language. The brain is always working to bridge across any differences of cultural, gender, experience, or ethnicity. And the more different the people are, the more translation is required for the two to truly communicate. That is perhaps the biggest problem with adults talking to kids as exemplified by that rarefied form of a kid or quasi-kid or quasi-adult we know as a teenager. The mistake teenagers make when talking to an adult is they forget that every adult used to be a teenager. The mistake adults make in talking to a teenager is they forget that no adult is a teenager currently.

Though you may think you remember it all, every starlit night, every moment of pride and shame, every kiss in fact, your brain has been working with those memories -- to give them a shape, to make them flow logically like a story, to turn them into a kind of magic carpet you rode from your first vision of the world beyond your cradle to where you are standing right now.

And it is easy to think that you can go back into those memories and reassemble them into yourself as a teenager, but you never can. There is something that is just different about being there and rememberingand being a child is even more different than a teenager. So when adults talk to young people, they never really come armed with enough tools for translationor with enough confidence and inner peace to allow this translation to either succeed or fail purely as it will.

You see, listening is not the same as communication. Even if you are not connecting in some conventional way that you in your adult mind would see as communication, the listening can still be good, and it can still be noticed. If you think about it, you can probably remember someone in your past with whom you had a really good connection, but if you break it all down, it may not have been someone you actually communicated with a lot. It may have just been someone who was listening. And this listening may have taken the form of just letting you be who you were without judgment and without presumption about who you ought to be. They were not necessarily listening for what you said-- and honestly, they may not have even understood anything you said. But they were listening for you .

How do you listen with a young person? The same way you listen with everyone elsealertly, sincerely, energetically, and inconspicuously, so that the bravado and fanfare of the listening itself does not distort or overwhelm the moment in which you listen. And come with your tools for translationall of them, for the moments of true accord may be as ephemeral as if this person lived all the way on the other side of the world, yet the listening can still make a difference. And be comfortable in the knowledge that, if nothing else gets solved or settled, if lives don't change, or eternal truths don't pass, or moments of clarity do not unveil themselves grandly, maybe the listeni ng was the real connection.

Listening to God--Roger Martin.rtf

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:26:27 GMT

Listening To/For/With God
Sermon by Roger Martin
February 5, 2006

Part 1
I was telling someone about my fondness for contemplative prayer. That's the kind of prayer in which you attempt to calm yourself so deeply that you can hear God whisper. I said that even in when I was deep in that state, I had trouble ``hearing'' God. The person said that he had a thought about why God seems, at such times, to be inaudible.
Perhaps God is listening too, he said.
I was pleased at this idea that both we and God might sometimes wait, in silent anticipation, for each other to speak.
We humans approach God as unfinished works incomplete in different ways. One of the ways I am obviously incomplete is in my ability to listen to God. Sometimes I wonder whether God is mute so I will listen harder.
                                             ***
It's not surprising that I'm not always so good at listening. After all, I am a man. We all know that men, compared with women, aren't so good at listening.
Right?
That's why three men and I will talk today about listening. It would be easy for our sisters to stand up and talk about it, but for us it's a stretch. It's a chance for us to think about listening not just to God but to our partners, to our children and to those with whom we have sharp differences.
My part will be to talk about listening to God . . . or is it WITH God . . . or FOR God? All those prepositions seem accurate to me.
I try hardest to tune in as I pray. The results are mixed. As Rick Moody said in an article that appeared in Esquire magazine, ``All the things I thought about prayer as a child are still true: it takes place in silence, and silence is the response you get . . . . But in silence and motionlessness can come perspective and calm and resolution. . . . Silence is perhaps what a relationship with the Divine is these days. You could do a lot worse.''

Part 2
In the Old Testament, God rages a lot. But somewhere along the line he lowers his voice. Check out these words from the first chapter of Kings:
``There came a mighty wind, so strong it tore the mountains and shattered the rocks before Yahweh. But Yahweh was not in the wind. After the wind came an earthquake. But Yahweh was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire. But Yahweh was not in the fire. And after the fire there came the sound of a gentle breeze. And when Elijah heard this, he covered his face with his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then a voice came to him, which said, `What are you doing here Elijah?'''
No wonder that God says, in Psalms 46: 10, ``Be still, and know that I am God.'' Being still may be crucial if God is as quietly solicitous with us as with Elijah.
                                             ***
If silence is my favorite medium for listening to God, church is my favorite setting for it. Or else just praying with one or two other people. There's something about being WITH other people when you're trying to get with God that heightens everything. It's odd, perhaps, that something as private as prayer would become more richly dimensional in a public setting. But that's how it works for me.
Now if we wait for years trying to hear God, but don't, have we wasted our time? I don't think so. Prayer should, in theory, make us better listeners. If we can get quiet enough to hear God, as Elijah did, isn't such quiet the foundation for hearing each other? It may teach us to hear more than the words. Cultivating listening may mean hearing the feeling, subtexts and nuances that saturate our words and enlarge their meaning. These unvoiced feelings behind my words . . . all our words . . . they long, as God longs, to be heard.
And doesn't God want us to know each other more deeply? Because of the comfort and strength that we gather from knowing and being known? I'm pretty sure that's true. And it starts with listening.
Now there is one other potential benefit of listening to the divine that I'll mention. In Luke 8: 17-19, Jesus says, ``For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Therefore consider carefully how you listen.''
What promise those lines contain. What huge promise. Jesus is saying that we live in a full-disclosure universe. The deep structure of reality can be known no, it WILL be known. So we should reflect on how we listen. Knowing each other deeply is one value of listening carefully, but the rewards of listening surpass and transcend those. One such reward is peering into the heart of things, what Herman Melville called ``the axis of reality.''
                                             ***
A final thought. Because I'm a writer, I've spoken of ``listening'' to God as if words were God's only medium. In fact, I strongly suspect God is a multimedia communicator. God is an unguarded phrase that drops from a friend's lips. Three words from the doctor that make the blood run cold. Goosebumps. A taste of honey or salt. God is a panhandler who comes up to tell us he's run out of gas when he's actually run out of crack.
Listening to . . . or for . . . or with God brings into play all our senses, every inch of memory, every emotion on our palette. To be in a listening relationship with God is to live at attention, ready to notice but always careful not to overread or overinterpret.
If you need two words to get the ball rolling, I would suggest these: BE STILL. If, as you quiet down, you hear nothing, then consider this: God may also be listening.

Sermon on Balaam_s Ass--Roger Martin.rtf

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 04:31:37 GMT

BALAAM'S ASS: Roger Martin, August 2005

Balaam's donkey is the only other animal in the Bible, besides the serpent in Eden, that talks. This makes the story a delight to read and one whose delights have drawn the attention of painters and novelists - Rembrandt for one, and the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky for another. It's a farce, this idea of a talking donkey. To people in my generation, it may bring to mind Francis the Talking Mule, the star of a string of forgettable 1950s black-and-white movies. Surely you remember Francis Goes to the Haunted House and Francis Goes to West Point ? Children today, and plenty of grownups, too, will think of the donkey in Shrek, the lovable beast who can't stop running his mouth.
Because of associations like these, the story of Balaam, the donkey, the angel and God has, for contemporary minds, an edge of black humor. But, of course, I didn't choose to talk about this story only because it's funny - although that helps. In fact, I think the story of Balaam is sort of like a great sponge that's full of juice, and the more you squeeze on the sponge the more juice you can get out of it.
So let me talk a little now about the themes in this story that I believe merit consideration. One of those is servanthood. Balaam is trying to serve a king named Balak. Now Balak is edgy about the Israelites, and so he wants Balaam to go put a curse on their heads and Balaam, at first resistant, finally agrees.
Balaam's donkey is also a faithful servant, one that continues to serve its master despite circumstances that would cause most servants to give the boss notice.
One of the humorous twists on the theme here is that an animal trying to serve its master turns out to be more reasonable than the master. Even after the donkey's been wailed on by Balaam three times, the donkey tries to be reasonable: ``Hey, have I ever let you down before?'' it asks Balaam.
Part of what's wrong for both Balaam and the donkey is that they're confused about who's really in charge of their moves - who they're supposed to be reporting to. Balaam is trying to make King Balak happy by leveling a curse on the Israelites. But he's also trying to please God, who's warned him before he sets out on the journey that it's OK for Balaam to go on the king's mission - but not to do anything but what God wants him to do. So Balaam is hamstrung. Having both a king and God ordering you around is a tough assignment.
The donkey is in the same bind. He's got Balaam on his back, beating on him, but he's got an angel of the Lord standing in front of him, wielding a mighty sword.
So at one level, this story is about trying to respond to direction and to serve well in a world of conflicting authorities. I'm happy to report that the problem is still around today - because it is, this delightful story speaks to us. But the fun stops there. Many of us work in bureaucracies of one kind or another, where such conflicts are legion. People at various levels of authority, hired at different times by different bosses with different agendas, have unspoken conflicts between or among them, and everyone, but particularly those farther down the food chain, suffers because of it.
This leads us to the story's second theme: the need for simplicity in the face of this confusion. The story indicates that in a confusing world, we're to proceed in a spirit that may strike the more sophisticated parts of ourselves as just too elementary. Balaam's donkey, having been beaten for wisely avoiding a confrontation with God's angel, asks Balaam, ``Haven't I always served you?'' What a simple response! The donkey is asking for Balaam to respond to his loyalty by acting better. The donkey is right to point to this attribute: Loyalty is among the loveliest virtues I know.
When I look around our church and think about those who are here and others who may not be with us today but have stuck with Peace Mennonite through thick and thin, even in the absence of air-conditioning, I'm moved to gratitude. Even if we have differed spiritedly with each other, and some of us have, we still show up. I love that loyalty, and I think God loves it too. I imagine God's wanting people to be simple - and simply loyal. It's tremendously hard, given our inner complexity, to make that simple choice for loyalty. To use a metaphor, I'd say that for complicated people, being simple is the Zen of being Christian.
Now there's one more level of meaning I wish to address in this story. It has to do with how hard God works, in some cases, to get our attention.
Let me be blunt. Some of us are stubborn cusses, and we do everything in our power to NOT notice God.
In the story the donkey first sees the angel on the open road, so it veers into a field to get away. Next, the donkey sees the angel when it's on ``a narrow path,'' in the words of the scripture, between vineyards, with walls on both sides. Finally, the angel of the Lord steps in at a point on the road where the donkey simply can't get past him. So the donkey drops to the Earth in resignation.
Notice that God's angel literally blocks Balaam's passage - and even then Balaam can't make out what's happening. He's too busy beating the donkey. And Balaam is a SEER, mind you! If seers can't see, what's to become of the rest of us?
This message - that we humans often miss the most obvious signals about the peril we are in - is one we need to heed both individually and collectively. Make no mistake: Balaam was in peril because of his inattention. If the donkey hadn't turned aside, the angel would have slaughtered Balaam. He says so.
One way to make this passage more up to date is to think of the donkey in terms of the kind that the late scholar Joseph Campbell or the late psychologist C.G. Jung were familiar with. Think of the donkey as a symbol for the body. If you do, the story is translatable to something like this: The body has some wisdom that the mind doesn't. The body knows when to quit - to lay down in the road. People express that by saying, ``My body's trying to tell me something.'' They might say, instead, ``My donkey's trying to tell me something.'' Either way, they'd probably keep on ignoring it.
This is worth considering, surely, yet I want to confess that as I read this story for the first time, recently, I found it psychologically ``true'' in a different way. For me, the story is about my life and about the lives of some other folks I know. Some of us manage to learn only when God blocks every exit, forcing us to be alone with the memories of our actions and the sorrow they have brought to us and others. We are painfully slow learners, some of us. We worship at the altar of the great god Stubborn. We don't gain without pain. And that's because, as with Balaam, we don't see what's right in front of our faces.
Now finally Balaam sees. And he makes quick remedy for his blindness. He admits that he has been blind, has sinned and states his readiness to accept God's direction.
The readiness to accept direction is the key to it all, in the end. It's not just hard because we're confused by all the different secular and sacred authorities trying to provide direction. It's not just hard because we're complicated beings who are being asked to keep things simple. It's not just hard because we can't see God and the sword-wielding angel on the road. All of those factors and many more make accepting direction difficult, but there's one more reason for the difficulty, I think.
The ``oughts'' and ``shoulds'' seem these days to be getting more and more complicated and painful for Christians. Some Christians say one thing about gays or war of when life begins. Others say something else. Everybody points to the Bible to build a case. And when we are asked to point in the direction of God's will, Christian arms shoot out in every direction. What an amazing mess!
But think, now, about the story of Balaam and his donkey. Maybe there's a clue in there. I, of course, think there is. And I think it's about the proper spirit to bring to the problem of figuring out what to do in a complicated world. Be simple. Be reasonable.
I'd suggest a focus on Jesus' one simple command. That is:
Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself.
And love your donkey, too.

Tamar 2--Roger Martin.rtf

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 04:39:01 GMT

Jesus' Flawed Forebears: Tamar
Roger Martin
December 2006

Today I'm going to talk about another of the women referred to in Matthew as an ancestor of Jesus. Like the others, she's no soccer mom. Rahab runs a brothel. Ruth is a Moabite - a people whose roots trace back to an incestuous union. There's the adulterous Bathsheba. But the one I'll talk about today is Tamar.
In the genealogy of Christ in Matthew, the big names are Abraham and Isaac and Jacob - followed by a man named Judah. And Tamar has two sons by Judah. Our scripture reading today told most of the story - though I deliberately omitted a most significant passage from it, which I'll get to later this morning.
Our story begins with Judah as a married man -- but not to Tamar. By his wife, Judah has three sons: Er, Onan and Shelah. And then, as I read to you, ``Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn.'' Her name is Tamar. But Er angers God, and God smites Er dead.
Next comes son No. 2, Onan. His duty to his dead brother, according to custom, is to get Tamar pregnant. She's entitled to have children by someone from the house of Judah. Onan violates the custom. He's already married and has children, it seems, and he doesn't want to dilute their inheritance by bringing additional heirs to Judah into the world. The Bible says he ``spilt his seed upon the ground.'' Today, we call that ``coitus interruptus.''
So God strikes Onan dead, too.
Judah's spooked. He doesn't want his third son, Shelah, marrying this Tamar person, even though he's obliged to arrange this. So he sends Tamar away, supposedly to wait for Shelah to grow up. And she waits for that. And waits. And waits. But the call from Judah never comes.
Now to deal with a world in which custom has broken down, Tamar chooses the path of cunning. She resorts to costume .
She dresses as a prostitute and then sits by the side of a road she knows Judah will be traveling. And old Judah by now has lost the wife who bore him all those sons. And he happens to pass her. He likes her looks, and the veil she's wearing conceals her identity. So he offers her a deal: Have sex with me and I'll give you a baby goat. She says OK, but since you don't have the baby goat right here, I'll just take a few items of your apparel, including that shepherd's staff of yours. I'll keep those as markers of our arrangement.
So they strike a deal. Later on he sends a fellow back with the little lamb. But all the locals tell him that there is no prostitute at that place in the road - never has been, in fact.
Next thing Judah knows, his twice-widowed daughter-in-law is pregnant. And he's furious. It's so . . . well . . . unseemly, I guess. It's best she be burned alive, he figure. So he gets his men to build a woodpile for the occasion and Tamar's being brought to it when she produces the markers - the shepherd's staff and other items Judah had given her. And when Judah sees these, something remarkable occurs. He comes clean.
He says, ``She is more righteous than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Shelah.''
When a society begins to fall apart, and when customary arrangements and understandings fail, the only alternative may be to resort to craft - to put on a costume.
Think about this from God's perspective for a moment. Throughout the Old Testament, he sees humanity renege, again and again, on the expectations set forth by the Ten Commandments and other guidelines. Is it too far fetched a strategy for this God to come to Earth in something of a costume - the guise of a human - in order to get human beings to behave right?
Ultimately, of course, I doubt that God is content either with rigid custom or costuming tricks as a way of getting us to behave. Rules are too often stifling. Somebody says to Jesus in the book of Matthew, What are you doing performing healings on the Sabbath. Isn't there a rule against that? Jesus says, Well, if a sheep fell into a ditch on Sunday, what would YOU do? You'd pull it out, right?
Costume - in the sense of pretense or pomp - isn't Jesus' thing either. Costumes are what Jesus would have had to wear if, when he was out in the wilderness, he'd taken Satan's temptation to be an earthly king .
But the element of costuming in the exchange between Judah and Tamar is different. In this exchange, costuming is a means, not an end. Tamar, in sending Judah the markers he'd left with her because he had no lamb to give says, in effect: ``The mask's off, the game's up, the pretending's over. That was no prostitute, Judah. That was your daughter-in-law. What does that make you?''
And when she stops playing pretend, he also does.
`` She is more righteous than I,'' he says.
In the exchange, Tamar comes off as the better of the two, but neither Tamar nor Judah is pure. Which brings me back to where I began today: the observation that the women among Jesus' ancestors are not above reproach. Nor, would I add, are the men. In some way, that squares, in my mind, with Jesus' habit of hanging out with dubious characters.
There's something important to me, personally, in the fact that Christ had flawed forbears. All my life, I have had trouble remembering that Christ is the product of a long line of imperfect men and women and an heir, therefore, to some imperfection himself.
I keep getting snagged, wholly, on Christ's perfection. That's had serious consequences. For one, I've often been prey to my own perfectionism. One of its worst aspects is, at times, a tendency to judge others harshly.
I quit church at 18 because the adults appeared to me to be flawed and hypocritical, giving Christianity lip service and pew time, but not living it. I admit that in those days, I was, at best, a moral-minded young idealist, at worst, a holier-than-thou goody-two-shoes. And on this occasion I was both.
At issue were the African-American faces that had begun to appear at church. Even even though the newcomers tended to stay in the back rows, the congregation was contemplating a move to the city's white suburbs. I was upset by this, in part because one of the faces belonged to a kid named Marty, and I liked him, though time has erased all details of that liking, other than his shyness, from my memory.
So, anyway, one Sunday I got to deliver what was called, back then, the Junior Sermon. I had written an allegory about racial barriers and discrimination. I wanted my little sermon to make a difference - to galvanize a decision by the church to stay where it was. It made no difference at all. And so I grew bitter toward the ``Christians'' of Bethel Church. And for 30-plus years my mother and I occasionally had this conversation. It played over and over, like a stuck record, and went something like this.
`` But mama,'' I'd say, ``I don't WANT to come back to church. It's full of hypocrites.''
`` But Roger,'' she'd say, ``people don't come to church because they're perfect. They come because they're not.''
Loving to hate Christians isn't anything special. In fact, it's fashionable in some circles. It's even fashionable for Christians to dislike or at least take serious issue with other Christians. How else to account for the more than 80 separate Christian churches in Lawrence that are listed on one Internet site?
You know how it goes.
Do we really want people like that coming to our church?
Frankly, I think they'd be more comfortable with the Southern Baptists.
I haven't seen the movie Borat, but what I hear about it makes me think it's about laughing at the pettiness or meanness of various subcultures or types in America. I don't even want to see it, despite its allure. I'm more aware than I used to be of the meanness inside my judgments of others, of how corrosive contempt is to the spirit. Of course I harbor judgments! By the bushel! But I'd ditch them if I could. The least I can do is to keep them in the dungeon.
For contrast to our painfully fractured world, consider the array of people Jesus loved. He picked fishermen busy mending nets as his administrative assistants. When a tax collector named Zaccheus climbed a tree to see him - from a safe distance - Jesus looked up and called out to him. Jesus wished Roman centurions no harm. Lepers, the demon-possessed - he helped them all.
Given his colorful forebears, with all their virtues and flaws, he contained multitudes of human possibilities and knew that everyone did. He saw through our falseness and beneath the appearances. I think that as Tamar, in disposing of her costume, helped Judah glimpse his own dishonesty, Jesus, in being genuine, helped many people come clean. Integrity in one person gives rise to integrity in others.
Growing up is hard for most of us. For me, it has meant discarding my dreams of self-perfection - and my rigid desire for perfection in others. It feels like a life's work. Aging has helped. So has reading stories like that of Judah, of people who see themselves as better than someone right up to the moment when the illusion shatters. In those stories I recognize my own.
Our bodies are 70 percent water, they say. The percentage of imperfection in our spirits is probably just as high, if not higher. Our best hope is that we will see this truth about ourselves and others sooner rather than later. Learning that we don't get the cold shoulder from God if we fail may be hard to believe, but those of us striving to give up perfectionism - as diligently and perfectly as we can, of course - should remember that.
Recognizing our frailty brings us to ground. It bonds us to each other and permits love to replace fear and curiosity to trump contempt. It brings us closer to a God who came to Earth costumed as a human, in part, perhaps, to inspire us to greater honesty.

Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar.
But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death.
Then Judah said to Onan, "Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother."
But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground. . . .
What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so he put him to death also.
Judah then said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, "Live as a widow in your father's house until my son Shelah grows up." For he thought, "He may die too, just like his brothers." So Tamar went to live in her father's house.
After a long time Judah's wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had recovered from his grief, he went up to Timnah, to the men who were shearing his sheep. . . .
When Tamar was told, "Your father-in-law is on his way to Timnah to shear his sheep,"
She took off her widow's clothes, covered herself with a veil to disguise herself, and then sat down at the entrance to Enaim. . . . For she saw that, though Shelah had now grown up, she had not been given to him as his wife.
When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her by the roadside and said, "Come now, let me sleep with you."
"And what will you give me to sleep with you?" she asked.
"I'll send you a young goat from my flock," he said.
"Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?" she asked.
He said, "What pledge should I give you?"
"Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand," she answered. So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him.

Worshipping in Malaysia--Barbara Yoder.rtf

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 04:37:19 GMT

Worship Abroad
Sermon/April 2005
Barbara Yoder

When asked to speak about worship abroad, I thought, ``piece o' cake.'' I taught English in Asia and attended church in each country. But when I considered what to say, I hit a wall. There seemed to be more similarities than differences between my North American and Asian church experiences.

Church in Korea, Japan and Malaysia included hymns, sermons and scripture, followed by fellowship with coffee and pastries - red bean crullers or tapioca-coconut cakes. Some Sundays, there'd be child dedications, baptisms, special music - an Easter or Christmas cantata. I enjoyed the familiar rituals. They were reminders of home and family. Obviously, church was modeled after the ways of Western missionaries who brought the Gospel to Asia.

The forms of worship were familiar but the feeling of being a Christian wasn't. I gradually understood that in Malaysia, the act of worshiping Christ on Sunday mornings was subversive -- and that Christianity is more than a Sunday morning ritual. In an Islamic nation, the Christian church and the faith go with you when you leave the sanctuary.

What is Malaysia? Few westerners have a map in their heads. Malaysia lies north of Singapore and south of Thailand. Two additional states are on nearby Borneo. It's a land of tropical rain forests, fishing villages, temples, and mosques. It is home to a Malay majority and substantial Chinese and Indian minorities. There are smaller groups of orang putih (literally ``white men'') and indigenous peoples.

There is uneasy peace among the races - and a violent history. The Muslim Malays rule politically, but the Chinese rule economically. The word ``amok'' is Malay - as in our phrase ``running amuck.'' The Malays ran amuck in the 1960s - people were hacked to death in the streets - and everyone else lived in fear.

The diversity also makes for a lively culture. Hungry? Choose Malay, Indian, Chinese or French food for dinner. Or Pizza Hut. It seems every day is a festival or holiday commemorating religious past or heritage - Chinese New Year, Feast of the Hungry Ghosts, Deepavali, Ramadan. The identity of many Malaysians is staked in religious or ethnic heritage.

But let's get back to church.

On my first Sunday in Malaysia, I met Denis and Emme Dutton. Denis was pastor of KL Wesley Methodist church and Emme was organist. They took my former husband and me in and made us part of their family. Today, we are family by marriage: My brother Steve is married to their daughter, Mandy.

Denis is the son of poor Sri Lankan Hindus. Emme is Chinese, the granddaughter of a fabled merchant for whom a major city street is named. She was Buddhist, then became Christian, alienating her family. They sent her to Hong Kong to stymie plans to marry Denis, the poor, Indian seminary student. But the two fled to the United States and married. Emme's family disowned her - a testimony to the critical importance of religious and ethnic heritage.

In 1985, Denis and Emme were leading one of the largest Christian churches in Malaysia, attended by mostly middle- to upper-middle class Chinese and Indians, including Emme's siblings.

We were active participants, singing in the choir and taking part in social activities. Church made us feel at home in a foreign culture. While my American colleagues were experiencing culture shock, we felt like part of a group whose identity was larger than nationality - we belonged to God's people, a group without boundaries.

Then, one Sunday following Ronald Reagan's attack on Libya, Malay teenagers threw firecrackers at the church during the service. Piles of garbage were dumped in our driveway - the only orang putih home in a Malay neighborhood. A student scrawled on my blackboard, ``an eye for an eye.'' I was scared.

In the 1980s, Islamic fundamentalism took hold among Malays. Their identity as Muslims and as the politically empowered race in Malaysia led to frightening events. Teens were caned for walking hand-in-hand, male teachers were punished for tutoring females in isolation. Women students who had worn jeans began coming to class head to toe in black. Things got nuts.

The government rounded up suspected troublemakers, mostly Chinese and Indians. Denis warned us he was on a list. The congregation prepared for his arrest. Denis told us we might be questioned about our relationship with the family.

In the end, we weren't. The suspected political dissidents were freed. Denis escaped. We moved to Japan. They later moved to Switzerland.

One time my mom and aunt came to visit. Aunt Bev asked what she should tell churches in Ohio about the church in Malaysia. Denis said, ``Tell them that Malaysian Christians know why they are Christians. For most, it is a conscious decision, an unpopular decision that puts them and their families at risk.''

As an orang putih woman in a sea of saris, turbans and hijab, my church identity was always with me, both North American Mennonite and Malaysian Methodist.

Cultivating Wholeness--Patrice Krause.rtf

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 05:38:13 GMT

Cultivating Wholeness
Feb 11, 2007

In the story from Matthew that we just heard, Jesus called on the healing presence of God. With crowds as his witness, Jesus cured a man who was blind and mute and possessed by a demon. (In a little while we will look at how people in that time might understand demon possession, but for now, let's just look at it as an act of healing.) As I consider this story, I think that Jesus called on God's love and power in a way that we don't easily understand. The crowds observing these acts were amazed and enthralled, but Mark's version of the same story tells us that some of them also thought he was crazy! Then the Pharisees accused him of doing this not through God, but through the devil. Thus observing God's power at work really evoked quite a mixture of reactions.

How can we understand this healing work that Jesus did?

According to Douglas Hare's commentary on the book of Matthew, the casting out of demons was something that others at this time were also doing. He (Hare) concludes that it was the fear that the crowds really would accept Jesus as the Messiah that prompted the charges of blasphemy, that Jesus' healing was part of an alliance with Satan or Beelzebul, who can be understood as the personification of evil. Thus it seems that there was more behind the accusation of working in league with Satan than just mistrust of the intangible-there was fear that Jesus might really start a revolution! I think that in our time, it's mistrust of that which we can't see or touch that might lead some folks to question the validity of the kind of healing that Jesus did.
John A. Sanford is an Episcopal priest and Jungian psychotherapist who has written about a deeper understanding of Jesus' acts of healing. He explains that in the time of the New Testament, everyone had the understanding that nonphysical reality surrounded us and that we could understand and perceive this reality in non-sensory ways. It was understood that the kingdom of God had a spiritual nature, and that there was an equivalent and opposing kingdom of evil. This kingdom of evil was a spiritual reality that could invade human beings in a personal way-thus the language of demon possession.

This story is also found in the Gospel of Mark, and in his commentary on Mark, William Loader talked about the worldview of that time as well. He said that the ancient world's frame of reference that used the language of demons. While our frame of reference uses the language of medical, psychological, social & political explanations, what these two frames of reference have in common is oppression. Jesus was about freeing people from oppression on many levels.

Thus in Jesus' time, a connection between oppression of the spirit and physical ailments was part of the cultural understanding. How do we look at that connection in our time?

John A. Sanford explains that Jesus saw physical or mental illness as alienation from God. He saw illness and possession as part of the Kingdom of Satan.

In this way of understanding, Jesus' healing influence involves freedom from inward conflict. A person who has conflict within may be easy prey for evil, but where the kingdom of God is taking hold inside a person, there is less opportunity for evil, or negativity, to creep in. What would be an example of this? I wonder if it could be something like this: If I believe in peace, but am very angry at the negativity of someone in my neighborhood or workplace, I might start thinking resentful thoughts that justify my anger-thus getting sucked into the same kind of negativity that I despise in my neighbor.

I also wonder if being divided within oneself is another form of the oppression of the spirit that Jesus came to heal. To continue the example: If I believe in peace but my mind is full of resentful thoughts, then I am not at peace within myself and my more light-hearted and creative nature is being suppressed, or oppressed. But if I begin to realize that human experience can involve a variety of different perspectives, perhaps I can begin to understand my neighbor's differing perspective and let go of their negative judgment of me. Then the creative part of me can become stronger and begin to thrive-I am on the way to being whole.

John A. Sanford also writes about one of the Greek words that is used for healing in the New Testament. The word therapeuo could mean facilitating recovery from illness, worshipping the divine, or cultivating the land. In the Greek mind, these activities were related. So then healing can be understood as cultivating wholeness. This is good news for me, because it means that we can cultivate wholeness even if we have an illness or medical condition that is chronic or has a genetic basis. It is also good news because we can ask for God' help in beginning to cultivate wholeness in body, mind and spirit, and continuing to cultivate it, even if our process of healing is not yet complete.

Jesus' response to those who challenged the source of this healing took two forms, according to Douglas Hare in his commentary on the book of Matthew. First, Jesus made the logical argument that if he was in league with Satan, why would Satan want to be undermining his own kingdom by doing good? The metaphor of tying up the strong man in order to plunder his house is understood by the commentators that I read as Jesus tying up Satan, so that he could do the good work of healing the man who was blind and mute. Another part of this argument was that other contemporary Jewish exorcists had done similar healings which were not considered to be coming from Satan; so why were people questioning Jesus' motives?

The second argument that Jesus made to his challengers appealed to the heart rather than to reason. He said ``If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.'' He seemed to be saying: Isn't the liberation of this man's spirit evidence of the work of God? When our request for God's help results in someone being restored to a positive life, we can trust that the action we took comes from God.

In thinking about this sermon, I remembered a contemporary healer from the Christian tradition that I've read about: Olga Worrall, who offered the ministry of healing through the laying on of hands. She and others conducted healing services in the Mount Washington Methodist Church in Baltimore , MD in the 1960's. They also worked as healers by holding those who requested their help in prayer in a quiet time every evening. Many people contacted her later telling of receiving relief from medical and psychological conditions. A warm and compassionate person, she always insisted that she was not making the healing happen, but that God's healing love and power was flowing through her.

I also tried to find information about the Mennonite view of bringing people to Jesus for healing. I grew up in the General Conference Mennonite church, and I remember nothing about official rituals of healing. I do remember an attitude of approaching healing through service-supporting those in the medical professions and working for social justice to extend the provision of health care services for all who need it. I still think that this practical approach to healing is part of God's work. According to the Global Mennonite Encyclopedia online, anointing with oil was part of the tradition of several other Mennonite branches, including MC, Old Order Amish, and Mennonite Brethren. We will have a chance to participate in healing through anointing a little later this morning.

In my experience as a Mennonite, I have observed quite a few requests for healing through intercessory prayer. I've also tried to participate in intercessory prayer, and spent some time trying to understand what really goes on in that process. It seems like intercessory prayer is often offered with quite a mixture of hope and disbelief, of faith and doubt. I like to read about healers like Olga Worrall and Edgar Cayce, but I asked myself if I really believed such things could happen to me or to anyone I know. Then I remembered a story of something that happened at PMC in our sharing time a few years ago.

Story

But I wonder: Is there really a contrast between the Mennonite understanding of healing that I absorbed as a child, and other modes where the connection to God's healing power comes in ways that go beyond what we can see and touch? In my heart I don't think so--I'd like to say that all of these modes of healing come from God-we can trust that all can be pathways to cultivating wholeness.

This brings us to a final question: how can we participate in the healing process, for ourselves and for others ? If Jesus healed people to free them from oppression on a physical, mental, or spiritual level, and if he asked us to acknowledge that the positive good shown in those healings was really from God, how can we follow his example?

Many of you may have thoughts on this question-either things you have seen or experienced, or things you are pondering now and in the future.

One of my thoughts is that we can begin by being aware of the reality of the spiritual that surrounds us as surely as the material, and be open to God's healing presence in that realm.

Some more of my thoughts are questions: Can we be part of the healing presence of God when we use consensus to listen to each other and build community?

Can we be part of the healing presence of God when we find our place in the natural world that God created and learn to live in harmony with the plants and animals and winds and waters and skies?

Can we be part of the healing presence of God when we open ourselves to the joy of artistic expression?

Can we be part of the presence of God when we acknowledge God's spirit working in ways that are new to us and affirm that those ways are indeed from God?

Whatever restores our connection to God's kingdom has a power beyond what divides us from it. Whenever we are involved in that restoration, for ourselves or others, we are part of the healing that Jesus modeled for us.

Defending the Widow--Joanna Harader.rtf

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:35:26 GMT

January 21, 2007: Stewardship Sunday
Mark 12: 41-44
Defending the Widow

Well, folks. It's stewardship Sunday today according to the Mennonite Church USA calendar. A calendar apparently not designed by treasurers who hope to have pledges in and budgets approved by mid-January. But at any rate, we are abiding by the denomination's suggestion and celebrating stewardship Sunday today.

And since we are being such a good church and duly following the rules set out for us, I thought I might as well preach on the the most traditional stewardship text out there--the story of the widow's mite. (Now those of you who were at the preaching workshop, just play along for awhile.)

Let me summarize the sermon I'm supposed to preach: ``Friends, this poor widow gave everything she had to the temple treasury, so pull out your checkbooks and give a lot of money to this church.''

But I don't think that's how the sermon should go. I want to read this familiar story to you again after I give you some context.

First we have to think about the widow. Throughout the law and the prophets--scripture that Jesus knew intimately and that is included in our Old Testament--the "widow and orphan" are held up as symbols of the most vulnerable people in society. The Israelites are repeatedly told to "defend the cause of the widow;" to provide for the widow; to protect the widow.

This concern for the widow extends into Jesus' time when the male heads of household were required to pay a temple tax; thus the widows were released from that financial obligation. The religious establishment was required by their laws and scriptures to alleviate the oppression of widows.

Second, we have to think about the temple. It is, after all, the temple treasury where this poor widow puts her last two coins. The temple--in a constant state of construction--is the economic lifeblood of Jerusalem. It provides probably over half of the jobs in the city. It's a stronger tourist magnet than Disneyland.

Which is probably why, when Jesus comes into the temple courts spouting scripture and overturning merchant's tables, the powers that be decide they really have to do something about this guy. Heresy is one thing, but disrupting the economic system is entirely unacceptable. Jesus' little "outburst," by the way, happens in the previous chapter--probably two or three days before our story.

And the time in between the driving out the temple merchants and the widow's offering is filled with Jesus verbally sparing with the religious leadership: the Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees, scribes. They aren't too happy with him and the feeling appears to be mutual.

Immediately before the story of the widow, Jesus directs his stinging rhetoric against the scribes. He is in the temple courts and has attracted a large crowd. And he says, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation."

Did you hear that? Scribes, many of whom are beneficiaries of the money put into the temple treasury, ``devour widows' houses.'' Now listen to our story again:

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

*

There is an intriguing intentional Christian community that lives in a series of ramshackle buildings in a poor section of East Dallas, Texas. It's called the Trinity Foundation, and an article in the New Yorker describes the group as a combination of soup kitchen, rehab center, Christian publishing house, and detective firm.

As you might imagine, an organization with such an odd mix of activities has an interesting history. It began in the 1960's as a Bible study that somehow attracted hippies and the homeless; drug addicts and recently-released prisoners.

Eventually a community formed and they moved into buildings in about the only part of town they could afford to live in. And as might be expected, this East Dallas location only brought in more people with more problems.

People started to notice, though, that some of the destitute coming through their doors traced their poverty to an unexpected source-televangelists. One of these folks was Harry Guetzlaff, a filmmaker and former marketing executive for Coca-Cola. His projects had failed, his wife divorced him, and then he gave his last five thousand dollars to Robert Tilton-a TV preacher calling himself a ``prophet of prosperity.''
So in 1988, Trinity Foundation added ``detective firm'' to it's list of ministries and began investigating Robert Tilton. They discovered that Tilton's ministries brought in more than eighty million dollars a year in donations. He owned or had personal access to several lavish "parsonages," one of which was worth four and a half million dollars, and a hundred-and-thirty-two-thousand-dollar yacht.
And Harry Guetzlaff had sent him his last five thousand dollars.
Most people read the story of the widow and her offering and take from it a message about individual stewardship-that each person should give sacrificially to the church. I do think this is a story about stewardship, but I don't think it is directed at individuals. While Jesus seems to have great love and admiration for the generous widow, I'm not sure he is entirely pleased that she gave the corrupt temple system all she had to live on.
This little object lesson of Jesus' is not a message to individuals, it is a message for the church itself.
As the Church, as a church, we represent God to many people. And people do give money to us with the understanding that it will be used for God's work. And so we have an incredible responsibility to use these offerings in a faithful manner.
The house of God should not be a place where the poor are exploited, but where they are cared for. The money collected should not go to support lavish lifestyles for church leaders or luxurious worship spaces for the respectable, ``paying'' congregates.
The Old Testament religious establishment didn't get it--thus the prophets. The temple of Jesus' time didn't get it--and thus his harsh words against the religious leaders. The Medieval church didn't get it-and thus Martin Luther's 95 theses and the Protestant reformation. And many contemporary televangelists and mega-churches and even regular churches seem to still not get it.
Studies on church giving have shown that people in their thirties and younger do not follow the same giving patterns as older church members. The younger people tend to give much less to a church's general fund. But they tend to give much more in specified gifts.
In other words, they don't trust the church to spend their money well. They will give, but only if they get to say how it gets spent. They don't want to buy new carpet for the parlor. They don't want to increase an already padded pastoral package.
While specified giving might ease an individual conscious, it's really quite a terrible way to operate in a church. People should be able to trust the body to use the money faithfully. The people in a church should challenge each other about how they, as a church, spend their money. The dialog should ensure that the church, as a body, spends money more faithfully than any one person in the group would spend it on their own.
This is the part of the sermon where I'm supposed to tell you how bad we are and how we need to mend our ways. But after last week's congregational meeting, I can only stand here and say that I think we are getting it.
At the end of that meeting, Andy said that he was proud to be part of this church. And I feel the same way. I'm proud because when Rod, our treasurer, came up with an increased income projection for next year over last year, the first area of the budget he increased was our giving to other organizations. And I am really proud that during the course of a somewhat prolonged budget discussion, looking at projected expenses significantly more than our projected income, not one person in this body suggested that we cut our giving.
I'm not saying that we have the stewardship thing all figured out. But I think we are on the right track. I think we, as a church, understand that our resources-in terms of money, time, and energy-should be used to promote justice and help the poor.
It should be clear to anyone reading the Gospel of Mark that we do not want to be like the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and devour widow's houses. Most people argue that we should instead be like the widow who gives her last two coins to the treasury.
Without diminishing the importance of generously contributing to the church, let me say, instead, that I think we should be not like the widow, but like the other scribe. Not the ones making a display of their temple contributions. Not the ones Jesus' condemns for taking advantage of the vulnerable, but the one Jesus talks with shortly before that. The one who says that to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is much more important than all of the monetary gifts we can offer.
To this scribe Jesus says, ``You are not far from the kingdom of God.''

From the Depths--Joanna Harader.rtf

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:36:25 GMT

August 13, 2006
Psalm 130: " From the Depths "
Joanna Harader

The Psalms are powerful poetry. We love to read them in worship, sing them in hymns. Benedictines recite all 150 psalms every week.

But they don't get preached on much. And after working on this sermon, I have a sense of why that is. In dealing with a psalm, the preacher has sense that anything she says to try to explain it will never do justice to the beauty of the words, the power of the psalm itself. My inclination is to just read the psalm and sit down. And there are times for that. And I encourage you to use the psalms on your own for prayer and meditation. To read them slowly, prayerfully,and often.

But this morning, something needs to be said about this psalm. Psalm 130. Often called De Profundis --the latin translation of the opening phrase: Out of the depths. "Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD." The poet is locating himself specifically yet vaguely in the depths. The Hebrew term is a poetic one, generally connected with deep, dangerous waters. It is used perhaps more vividly in Psalm 69:
Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.

Perhaps you have never been stranded in a large body of water, near to drowning. But I bet you have been in the depths.
In the depths of a relationship that you do not know how to negotiate.
In the depths of sorrow and loss--when you do not know how you will be able to live without the one who has left your life.
In the depths of depression, unable to control or even understand your anger, frustration, irritability, apathy, sadness.
As Mennonites, as people committed to peace, I imagine most of us have recently, maybe even right now, felt the depths of hopelessness in this world that seems bent on violence. This world where civil war is breaking out in Iraq; where bodies are piling up in Israel and Lebanon. Where in our own country, even people in Christian churches cannot seem to treat each other with loving-kindness.
I feel, too often, that I am in the depths. And my legs and arms grow weary of treading water.
Yes, we know the depths. Better than we would like. We know them because we have lived them. We know them because we have read about them. We know of those deep, dark times of history. Like the Holocaust.
Some of you may have had the opportunity to visit the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. To see the photos, read the stories, of those who were sinking in the miry depths. People targeted for being Jewish or Gypsy, or homosexual, or handicapped. People arrested for writing or speaking or preaching against the Nazi party. Herded like animals onto train cars and shipped to places like Dachau, which was the first official concentration camp.
I cannot imagine the depths of fear-terror-that people must have experienced. Watching friends, loved ones, taken from the camp area to the crematoria area. Smelling, seeing, feeling, the sooty smoke that drifted up through the chimneys. Or being taken themselves to the shooting range, only to be spared at the last minute--this time.
Does it get deeper or darker?
The entrance gates of Dachau contain the infamous motto: Work makes you free. It is not true, of course.
The depths, I think, are those places where our own efforts are futile. Where the best we can hope for is that our flailing arms and legs may at least keep us from sinking further down.
But the flailing will also exhaust us.
And so out of these depths we cry. We cry out because that is all we can do. And we cry to Yahweh because if anyone, anyone, will hear us from the depth, it will have to be our God.
We cry and we wait. We wait as watchmen for the morning. Waiting for something we cannot control. But we wait in hope.
Because as much as crying out and waiting are acts of desperation, they are also acts of hope.
Hope that someone is listening. Hope that the one who might hear might also be able to act on our behalf. This was the hope of the Hebrew people as they were enslaved in Egypt. This has been the hope of Christian martyrs throughout the centuries. This was the hope of those imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps.
If you visit the site of the Dachau camp today, you will see the gate with the infamous, false motto. And you will see the barracks, where prisoners slept crowded together on hard bunk. And you will see the courtyard where people were shot often and for no real reason. And you will see the buildings where medical experiments were conducted on human beings, crippling and often killing them. You will see the crematorium.
If you visit Dachau today, you will also see a memorial chapel. And if you enter the chapel, you can read these words:
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
O Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy. . . .
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope. . . .
O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
It is striking to me that Psalm 130 is displayed at Dachau. I understand the relation of the beginning--of crying out from the depths. But what of the hope? How did the prisoners hope? Why did they hope?
And how dare we talk about hope when we know that millions of people were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. And how dare we talk about hope when the martyrs were killed for their faith. And even the freed Hebrews were only free to wander aimlessly in the desert for forty years. None of those who left Egypt with Moses got to live in the promised land.
How dare we talk about hope. How dare we talk about hope to the Lebanese mother whose home was destroyed and her children killed by Israeli bombs. How dare we talk about hope to the Israeli father whose son was killed in a terrorist attack.
Maybe the psalmist can get away with talking about hope. It makes for good poetry, anyway. But it seems like lousy theology. Certainly dishonest.
Yes, I think a theology of hope is dishonest if we mean it in the sense of hoping for something. If we're hoping for a perfect relationship, hoping for and end to feeling sad about a loss, hoping for a feeling of happiness.
This is the hope that is peddled by the prosperity gospel preachers. Hope that God will deposit $100,000 in your bank account; hope that your children will be well-mannered and obedient; hope that you will feel bubbly and happy all the time; hope that the tumor will be benign.
Now, listen. I believe that God can provide for physical needs; God can mend family relationships; God can lift our spirits; God can heal diseases. God has done all of these things numerous times; God will do these things in the future. God can free the slaves. God can bring peace. God can liberate the camps.
But if our hope is in these things, these things we want to somehow manipulate God into doing for us, we may be sorely disappointed. Because sometimes the bank account is empty, the children are rebellious, the depression sets in, the tumor is malignant. Sometimes the slavery drags on for years and years. Prayers for peace are met with reports of more bombings, more death. Sometimes the smoke keeps rising from the crematorium.
And where does that leave our hope? Where does that leave us when we have hoped for God to sweep in like Superman and save the day?
O Israel, writes the psalmist, put your hope in the LORD.
I think we have to get our preposition right. We hope in Yahweh. We do not hope for specific actions. And we do not base our hope on specific actions that God has done in the past or that we think God might do in the future. Because when it comes to the activity of God, humans have never had much luck predicting outcomes.
No, we do not hope for God to do certain things. We simply hope in God. We base our hope in who God is--not on what God does. We hope because "with the LORD is unfailing love."
The Hebrew term is "hesed." Loving kindness; steadfast love; grace; mercy; faithfulness; goodness; devotion." It is used 240 times in the Hebrew scriptures--the Old Testament. This hesed is at the heart of the Hebrew understanding of God. It is at the heart of Jesus' teaching about God: the father who embraces the prodigal son; the mother hen who longs to gather her chicks under her wings; the God who loves the world so much . . . so much that he enters the depths with us.
It is because of this hesed, the unfathomably faithful love of God, that we can hope in the Lord. We have no guarantees about what will happen. But we can know in whom we hope.
It is Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew scriptures. The God that Eli Wiesel and other Jewish prisoners of the Nazis continued to worship all through their imprisonment. They witnessed to their hope by singing psalms as they were marched to the gas chamber.
We know in whom we hope. It is Jesus Christ, the Risen One. The God of the Christians of Dachau. The God the Orthodox Christians worshiped with exuberance on Easter Sunday, 1945, one week after the liberation of the camp.
In a chapel/barrack borrowed from the Catholic priests, with vestments sewn from towels and adorned with first-aid crosses, a hodge-podge group of Orthodox Christians celebrated the resurrection. Having no books, they recited the prayers, sermons, and scriptures from memory.
Despite the terror of their past. Despite the uncertainty of their future. They recited the Easter liturgy:

Christ has risen from the dead, by death, He conquered death, and to those in the graves, he granted life.''

The freed Christians of Dachau boldly proclaimed their hope in a God who loves passionately and steadfastly; their hope in a God somehow stronger than death itself. Amen.

Dangerous Worship--Joanna Harader.rtf

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:29:02 GMT

Isaiah 6:1-8 (Commissioning of Isaiah)
February 4, 2007
" Dangerous Worship "

`` If you want a safe job, go sell shoes.'' That's what Senator Chuck Hagel told fellow republicans last week as he chastised those who oppose Bush's war but remain unwilling to vote against it.

This same advice could have been given to the Hebrew prophets: If you want a safe job, go sell a few sandals. Because this meeting God face to face business is anything but safe.

Most of us are well read people, knowledgeable about history. We realize that the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures tended to suffer more than their fair share of persecution and execution. Paul and others who proclaimed Jesus as Messiah were not particularly well received by authorities.

Many of you have read Martyr's Mirror and know that a lot of early Anabaptist prophets were, well, martyred. We know what happened to Martin Luther King Jr., to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to Oscar Romero.

Being a prophet is dangerous business. So it's a good thing that we're just regular Christians. It's a good thing we can keep our safe jobs as shoe salesmen, or whatever it is that occupies our time.

Prophet is one job I would not sign up for, thanks anyway.

The problem is, I'm not sure prophet is a job you get to sign up for or not. According to today's scripture, it's a job that happens to you. At least it just happened to Isaiah.

And guess how it happened to Isaiah. He went to the temple to worship God.

Look around my friends. We too have come to worship God.
In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk , the writer Annie Dillard asks, "Does anybody have the foggiest idea of what kind of power that we are dealing with here in worship?" She says,

Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts.'' And guess what? He started walking around the countryside without any money or even a walking stick.
Worship is a dangerous thing-not just for what happens in worship, which can be terrifying enough, but because of what worship can inspire and empower us to do when we walk out the doors.
Like a man, maybe in his forties, fifty. A good Mennonite. A white Mennonite who wasn't really prejudiced. I mean, not really. But he was comfortable being white and not particularly concerned with issues of racial injustice.
Then he went to worship. He had every right to expect it would be a nice safe worship service. It was at a national meeting of Mennonites. And everything was fine until it came time for communion. He was supposed to share communion with the person next to him, so with bread in hand he turned . . . and shared the bread of life, the cup of salvation, with someone who was not white.
Never again was he quite comfortable with his white privilege. Never again could he just let racist slurs and jokes slide by without speaking up against the prejudice.
Worship is a dangerous thing. We can meet the Holy. We can realize and confess our sin. God is ever-faithful to forgive our sin. And before you know it we may say something crazy like, ``Here I am. Send me.'' And sure enough, as Annie Dillard warns, ``T

Deuteronomy 6--Joanna Harader.rtf

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:23:31 GMT

Notes on Deuteronomy 6:1-9; 20-25

See Mark 12:28-34

1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ^[ ^] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

20 In the future, when your son asks you, "What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?" 21 tell him: "We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 Before our eyes the LORD sent miraculous signs and wonders-great and terrible-upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. 23 But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised on oath to our forefathers. 24 The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. 25 And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness."

Traditionally Moses' final discourse before death; on the brink of entering promised land

The Shema must be recited each day in the morning and evening:
1.       Deuteronomy 6:4-9
2.       Deuteronomy 11:13-21
3.       Numbers 15:37-41.
Follows 10 Commandments

*God setting a feast; bread for the journey;

Here they are, those intrepid (sort of) explorers, the ancient Israelites. Where are they? In the desert--where else. Almost to the promised land, but not quite. Nearly everyone left was born in the wilderness, this wilderness that their parents, their grandparents, have been wandering through for about forty years.

Moses, their temperamental leader is not getting any younger. And frankly, just between you and me, it's a good thing. God has said that nobody who came with Moses out of Egypt will get to into this land flowing with milk and honey. And, well, everyone's had about enough of manna and quail. Milk and honey are sounding pretty good these days.

Moses is old, and by this time fairly wise. He knows his time is short. As a leader about to leave his people--a people on the verge of entering the promised land--what can he do? How can he prepare them for his death? How can he prepare them for the life that lays ahead?

By reminding them of the life that is behind them.

Moses has just finished recounting the story of how he received the ten commandments--and what those commandments are. Now he reminds them of the importance of following the commandments of God. And he reminds them of the heart of their obedience: love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.

The law is of utmost importance for this community, and it must be passed on. Moses says: These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

OK. I know what you're thinking. Isn't Moses taking this a bit far? I mean, really, binding the commandments on their foreheads?

It seems excessive. Alright, it seems downright ridiculous. And yet, Moses knows it is necessary. Moses knows that his people, God's people, must work hard to remember who they are, what they believe.

They live in a world of competing gods. They live in a world where people flit from one deity to another depending on what their personal needs happen to be at the time. If folks need rain, they worship one god. If a woman wants to get pregnant, she makes sacrifices to a different god. When there is a war, yet another god is called upon. And the losers of the war are sure to bow down to the god of the winners.

It's an easy trap to get sucked into. Worship as convenience. Worship tailored to personal preferences. The seeking out of a god who will give us what we want and not demand too much in return. The following after a god we can easily categorize and understand.

Moses knows how easy it is. Old as he is, he remembers coming down from the mountain and seeing God's people, Yahweh's people, worshiping a statue they had made from melted jewelry. It's so easy. The statue is right there; solid. Those other gods, they make so much more sense. And so many others out there are worshiping them. And flitting is so much easier than standing firm.

Moses knows. And so he repeats the commandments. And he tells people to tie them onto their hands and foreheads. Ridiculous, yes. But necessary.

And Moses knows that laws strapped to their bodies and written on their doorposts is not enough. It is not enough to know what the laws are. There will come a time when the children will ask what they mean.

Moses knows this is an intimidating question. These wandering Israelites aren't trained theologians. They aren't sophisticated lawyers or even educated teachers. How are they supposed to answer when their children say: OK, we know what the laws are. We see them on the doorpost every day when we get home from school. But what do these commands of God mean ?

Well, Moses says, answer like this: They mean that we were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Before our eyes the LORD sent miraculous signs and wonders char 0x81 =-->\upon Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household. But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised on oath to our forefathers.

That's what the commandments mean. They mean that we were a persecuted people, jailed for refusing to baptize our infant children and for refusing to take up arms in the military. But the Lord strengthened the people and empowered faithful leaders to preach the gospel and promote Christ's way of peace.

They mean that Menno Simons gave up a life of luxury to organize and teach Anabaptist congregations--risking his own life in the process.

They mean that Helene of Freyburg endured exile from her home, her husband, her children because of her support of Anabaptist leaders. And even in exile she was a tireless witness for her faith.

These commandments mean that we were a people ranting against war and God issued a prophetic call to action through the author Ron Sider: we should be willing to risk our lives for peace to the same extent that others are willing to risk their lives for war. And many people were. And the Christian Peacemaker movement was born.

That's what the commandments mean. And we have to know. We have to know what the commandments are and we have to know what they mean.

I can just see Daniel's mom strapping the law to his little hands and forehead before he ran out to play. "Aww, Mom. Come on. None of the other kids have to wear this stuff!"

Whether he liked it or not, Daniel knew the law. And he must have known what it meant. Otherwise, he would have just bowed down to Nebachanezzer. Why not? It would have been easy enough. And he could have slept in his own bed rather than a den full of lions.

But you can almost hear the voice in his head: "The Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might." And he must have know the stories of what that means in some deep deep part of himself. The stories of God's faithfulness. The stories of God's love.

He knew the stories well enough to become part of the story himself.
We have to know the commandments, and we have to know what they mean.

Like Jacob Janzen, a Mennonite elder who refused military service during World War II. An officer asked: "What will you do if we shoot you?"

Janzen still refused to take up arms:
"I've looked down too many rifle barrels in my time," he said, "to be scared in that way. This thing is in our blood for four hundred years, and you can't take it away from us like you'd crack a piece of kindling over your knee. . . . We believe in this."

Truly words of a man who knows the commands of God and knows what they mean.

Now I'm not going insist that you tie the commands to your forehead or get them tatooed on your bicep. And I won't be coming around to your houses this afternoon with paint for your doorposts--unless you want me to.

But I do hope you know, really know, the commandments of God. The commandments Jesus says sum up the law and the prophets: Love the Lord your God with all you've got. And love your neighbor as yourself.

I hope you know them, because we still live in a world of competing gods. And it is still easier to flit than to stand firm.

And I hope you know, what the commandments mean. The children will ask. We should all be asking each other.

And then we should sit back and listen, with joy, to story after story of God's love and faithfulness--from generation to generation.

First Signs--Joanna Harader.rtf

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:29:32 GMT

Sunday, January 14, 2007
John 2: 1-10 (Jesus turning water into wine)
`` First Signs ''

free time. And I can use that time to catch up on writing letters, organize the kitchen, clean the bathrooms-except that I usually end up reading mystery novels instead.

I was doing well on this break, avoiding the novels, throwing out all our expired medicines, etc. Then I read a recommended reading list that included a Rev. Clare mystery. Well, I thought, it's about a woman pastor, so it must be spiritually worthwhile. I devoured the first in three days and am onto the second.

I don't bother with those lame mysteries where you know all of the details and are just watching the detectives figure it out. No, I want to be part of the action. To meet the suspects and assess their characters. To find the holes in their alibis. To compile all of the clues and figure out who dunnit.

It's a search for signs . Which, in some ways, is what the gospels are all about. The people are looking for signs of God's presence; signs of the Messiah. And these signs start to pop up around Jesus.

Matthew and Luke are the only gospels that include birth narratives-the beloved Christmas stories. And these stories are full of signs: angel visitations, dreams, shining stars, exotic visitors, prophecies in the temple.

But it is the gospel of John that is based around the ``signs'' of Jesus-to the extent that some scholars have proposed a hypothetical ``Signs Gospel'' as a source for John. There are seven signs in the gospel and we have just read about the first one.

Jesus is at a wedding party with his friends-and his mom. The wine runs out so he, with a little encouragement from mom, turns some water into wine and the seven-day party continues.

Water to wine is a pretty cool party trick. And I'm sure if word got out he would have frat party invitations pouring in. But it seems a rather odd sort of sign for the son of God.

I mean, if I were a first-century detective hot on the trail of the Messiah, I don't think that's the sort of sign I would be looking for. In fact, I probably wouldn't be looking at a wedding party to begin with because really the Messiah should be planning the next great Jewish revolution. I'd look in the caves, the underground hideouts, maybe the prisons, or, alternately, I would go the path of the magi from the east. The king of the Jews must be hanging out around royalty, right? Oh, I'd have plenty of places to check. But I'm afraid I would miss Jesus at the party making wine.

Wine? What kind of a first sign is this anyway? Now the feeding of the 5,000, the raising of Lazarus from the dead- those are signs. And they will come. They will cause many to believe in Jesus; and make many want to kill him.

But his first sign is barely noticed by anyone. Most of the people at the party don't even know the wine has run out, let alone that one of the guests has just miraculously made 150 gallons of new, exceptional wine.

Who does notice the sign?

We assume the mother of Jesus knows since she's the one who prompts the whole incident.

And there are the disciples. At the beginning of the story we are told that they were invited to the wedding and at the end we are told that they believed in Jesus; so we assume they know what happened.

But the only people the story distinctly says knew what had happened are the servants. The servants. This intrigues me. Who are these servants anyway?

We can reasonably assume that at least some of them are women. That they are of a lower socio-economic status than the guests. While a 7-day party might be great for the revelers, it's not likely much fun for the servants.

Can you imagine the work they must have already done? All of the cleaning and baking and hauling. Can you imagine the stress of so many people demanding so many things-more wine, more food, clean up this mess, go get that.

And while running out of wine would be terribly shameful for the party host, people would probably be pretty hard on the servants. ``What do you mean there's no wine? What's wrong with you? I want wine now!''

These poor servants. And then Jesus tells them to fill up the six stone water jars. Now, I will admit that I have heard and read this story many many times. And at this point in the story I just thought, OK, they filled up the jars. I think I may have had some vague image of going to the sink and filling an empty milk jug.

These are stone jars that hold about 25 gallons of water-each! Despite my muscular physique, I'm not sure I could carry an empty jar; I know I couldn't budge one that is full to the brim. And there is no faucet in the kitchen. They probably have to go out to a well to get that much water.

But they are servants. So they do what they are told. Then they are told to take a cupful to the chief steward. Which is a truly crazy thing, but they do it. And the steward tastes the wine and has no idea of the drama that went into making it. And it is at this point that the gospel writer makes a point of saying that the servants knew what had happened. The steward is clueless, but the servants know.

The servants know, and the vast majority of the guests don't. It's Jesus' first sign and almost all of the beneficiaries are completely oblivious.

So this story has got me wondering if we might not be missing some of the signs of Jesus today. And I'm willing to bet we are. And so I wonder what this story can teach us about how to catch those signs of God's glory.

It's a question a lot of folks are asking today. How can we come into contact with the divine?

It's a question a lot of folks are answering too. Some of the answers I find rather questionable: wearing crystals and sending money to televangelists come to mind. And many of the answers make good sense-both logically and biblically. Centering prayer, spending time in nature, reading good books, participating in worship.

There are clues for us ``God detectives.'' And we often find God's glory just where we would expect it to be.

For example, one place I expect to meet God is at the communion table. And every time I serve and take the Lord's Supper in this community, I am overwhelmed with a sense of God's presence. It's almost physical. I can count on it.

The disciples were a bit like detectives. Young Jewish men, fed up with Roman oppression, on the lookout for the promised Messiah. They had their clues from the scriptures. Some of them were hanging around John the Baptist-hot on the Messiah's trail.

And they, of all the guests , knew the miracle that had taken place. In the free-flowing wine that everyone else was taking for granted, they saw the glory of God.

And that is good news. That when we do our research, follow the trail, go to the right places with the right people, keep our eyes strained, we can see signs of God.

I know this is true. And that's why I constantly think I should be doing more. Praying more, reading more spiritual books, going to more theological lectures, hanging out more with the nuns up in Atchison.

And yet when I have some extra time over winter break, what do I do? Pick up a mystery novel and start reading.

That's why, for me, the really good news is not that the disciples see God's glory, but that the servants see it.

The servants who are just doing their job. Working hard, serving others. Probably too tired to think much about the Messiah, let alone go looking for him. Probably so focused on their tasks that they wouldn't even notice the glory of God unless it came right to them and, say, turned well water into fine wine.

While I expect to see God's glory when I participate in the Lord's supper, when I sing hymns with this congregation, when I study the scriptures, I will let you in on a little clergy secret. Not every part of a pastor's job is spiritually thrilling and God-focused. I suppose it could be and maybe it should be and maybe there are super pastors out there for whom it is. But for me, things like, say, checking e-mail, rarely give me a sense of the living presence of the omnipotent God. But I dutifully check e-mail anyway.

And one e-mail I read this week just flashed with the glory of God. Someone in the church wrote about seeing God at work in a situation in which I had seen nothing but aggravation. And out of that e-mail, one of probably fifty I read this week, the glory of God flashed.

It is truly amazing how often, just in the course of doing what needs to be done, signs of God's glory pop up. Of course sometimes we don't see them. Sometimes we don't recognize them.

We are not told how the servants responded to this first sign of the Messiah. Maybe they left everything and followed Jesus. Maybe they just kept on serving wine, grinning at their secret knowledge.

I suppose different servants responded in different ways. And that's not the point anyway.

The point is not about the servants, and it's not about us. The point is about God. Who God is and how God is present with us. God is not always or only in the expected places doing the expected things. Some signs are healings and feedings, its true. And there are times in Jesus' life when he can be found in places fit for a Messiah-the synagogues, the temple, the cross.

But the first signs in Matthew and Luke lead people to a barn-where I assume the baby Messiah didn't do much at all beyond nursing, peeing, pooping, crying and sleeping. And this first sign in John occurs at a wedding in Cana where Jesus, virtually unobserved, miraculously provides extra wine for a party.

Jesus does not always reveal God's glory in the expected places or in the expected ways. So some of those first century detectives--say the Pharisees, the Sadducees--surely missed the clues. But the glory of God is revealed.

Sometimes we follow the clues and find it. Sometimes it just bumps into us as we go about our daily tasks.

The point is that God, the creator, redeemer, sustainer of all creation, revealed and continues to reveal his glory to those who look for it and to those who don't.

As the gospel of John proclaims, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Whether we know it or not.

Getting Grace the Hard Way--Joanna Harader.rtf

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:35:59 GMT

John 13: 36-38; 18:15-18, 25-27; 21: 15-19

Getting Grace the Hard Way

Let me be the first to say that I don't like this whole ``wretch'' thing. Peter, in the first part of the scripture, didn't like it either. ``I'm no wretch, Jesus,'' he might have said. ``I'm not like these other losers. I'll stick by you. I'm strong. I'm tough.''

Maybe Peter and I could follow the lead of some other hymnals and change the words around a bit: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved someone like me.

That's how some versions go. Too vague and generic? Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved an imperfect but not all that bad person like me . . .

Or: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved someone who is OK but could be doing better like me . . .

Now, setting aside the obvious metrical problems, we also encounter a problem of meaning: if we are ``not all that bad;'' if we are ``OK but we could be doing better,'' do we even need to be saved? What are we being saved from? Our not-that-badness? Our OKness?

This morning we are continuing to talk about some of Mennonite Church USA's habits of a missional church. And the habit in question is: turning, repenting, and receiving God's grace.

What we probably all know but prefer not to think about is that the first part of turning and repenting is acknowledging our wretchedness. In the first scripture, Jesus tells Peter that he cannot follow him-he can't follow because Peter has not acknowledged his own wretchedness.

I know it's an ugly word, but it's the word we've got. It's the word that means we need help; we need help that we cannot provide for ourselves-which is to say that we need to be saved.

The first step in any 10-step addiction recovery program is to acknowledge that you have a problem which you are powerless to overcome on your own. In other words, that you are a wretch.

Now, some people are more obviously wretched than others. Some have drug addictions that have forced them to live on the streets. Some have committed violent crimes that landed them in jail. Then there are those of us that just yell at our kids; those of us who can't figure out what to do with our lives; those of us who can't let go of grudges.

As Kathleen Norris says, ``if you can't ever admit to being a wretch, you haven't been paying attention.'' If there is no wretchedness, there is no need for salvation, so why are we here?

Even if you, personally live a blessed and virtuous life-which some of you do-it should only take about twelve seconds of news coverage to convince you that humanity, in general, is a pretty wretched group. Famine, violence, disease . . . I won't give you my laundry list-I'm sure you have your own.

And if Peter begins this saga thinking he is tough stuff, he soon enough sees his own wretchedness. When the going gets tough, the ``tough guy'' plays dumb. ``Jesus? Jesus who? Never heard of him. Never been to Nazareth. Don't know what you're talking about.''

And then the cock crows. And then Jesus, a gentle, innocent man, is tortured and strung up on a cross by the civil authorities. There are others on crosses as well. Tormented, bloody bodies-death as a public spectacle.

I think we must continue singing the song as John Newton wrote it: Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

We can sing it loud. Belt it out. Claim our wretchedness. And then there is the turning.

Imagine Peter that morning by the Sea of Tiberias with Jesus. His beloved friend. His leader. The man he had betrayed. The man he had watched die. And now that same Jesus is alive and well and eating breakfast with him . . .

Possibly the most awkward breakfast on record. Peter gnawing intently on his fish, glancing occasionally at the grass, a wispy cloud, his dirty toenails-looking anywhere but toward Jesus. Peter letting the other disciples carry the conversation. Enduring small talk about the weather, the Gallillee baseball team.

And then those words that must have stopped his already quaking heart: ``Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?''

Peter can't pretend Jesus is talking to someone else-``Simon, son of John'' is pretty specific. Peter can't ignore the question. Can't deny Jesus a fourth time. ``Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.'' Eyes cast down, picking at the remnants of his breakfast.

`` Feed my lambs.''

Well, that's odd. Peter puts down the fish bones; looks off toward the horizon.

Then Jesus' voice again. ``Simon, son of John, do you love me?''

It hurts. Peter knows he's screwed up. Why does Jesus have to rub it in? Intent on the clouds skimming the tops of the hills ahead: ``Yes, Lord. You know that I love you.''

`` Tend my sheep.'' There are some sheep, Peter sees, on the hillside in the distance.

`` Simon son of John, do you love me?''

Peter had denied Jesus three times and now Peter is being asked to declare his love for Jesus again-the third time.

The other disciples are finished with breakfast now; joking with each other, gathering their fishing supplies. The sheep in the distance sound an occasional bleat. The clouds are melting away as the sun rises higher and hotter in the sky.

And finally the turning. Slowly. Eyes squinting against the sun. Peter turns and looks Jesus in the face: ``Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.''

That turning is hard. There are easier, more pleasant things to look at than the face of the risen Christ. Particularly when you are a wretch like Peter.

Because, frankly, wretchedness is not as bad as it sounds. It's comfortable anyway. Certainly easy. Generally safer.

Just ask Yonatan Shapira. He was an Israeli Blackhawk helicopter pilot. Dedicated to his country. Content in his wretchedness.

Then a Palestinian terrorist attacked the Israeli settlement of Itamar. And there were bodies covering the ground. Many of them children. Yonatan was called in to transport wounded children to a Tel Aviv hospital. And he began to turn. To open his eyes to the horror around him.

Then a friend dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of a Hamas commander. One ton on a single house. The commander was killed--along with several other people including nine children. And Yanatan turned some more and saw that these children were just like those that he had ferried to the hospital earlier.

Then he wrote a letter declaring his refusal to participate in attacks that were likely to result in civilian casualties. Then he shared his letter with other pilots--twenty-six of them signed his "pilot's letter." Then he was, of course, promptly fired.

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

The turning and repenting is hard. And I hate to tell you, but receiving the grace isn't especially easy either.

For Peter, grace meant that he was once again called to follow Jesus. Before Peter's denials and Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus tells Peter that he cannot follow. After the "reinstatement," Jesus says, "follow me." And Peter does. That is the grace he receives. The grace to feed the sheep; tend the lambs; suffer death for the sake of Jesus.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and pastor during the Holocaust, insists that we cannot accept "cheap grace." Grace is costly. "It is costly," he writes, "because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life." And Bonhoeffer did not just write his theology, he lived it. And he was killed by the Nazi's for it.

Costly grace. When Dorothy Day committed herself to following Jesus, she began publishing a newspaper in New York city that advocated for social justice and care of the poor. Then, as winter approached, the homeless of the town began knocking on her door. What was a woman, blessed by grace, to do? She took them in, and the Catholic Worker House movement was born.

Costly grace. And amazing. John Newton, the writer of the hymn, knew this well. He ran a profitable slave ship. Then, in the course of his life, he turned, repented, and received God's grace. The grace to follow Jesus. The grace that demanded he quit trafficking in human beings. And so he became a pastor instead and worked with the abolitionist movement in England.

Where will the grace of God take you? In this wretched and wonderful world, the grace to follow Jesus is a blessing many would prefer not to experience. We can stare at the grass, gaze at the clouds, strain to see the sheep that dot the hillside. Or we can turn and look upon the face of Jesus. We can receive the grace that allows us to follow him. Costly grace. Amazing grace.

Listening to the Ideological Opponent--Ryan Ellett.rtf

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 04:33:26 GMT

Listening to the ``Other''
Sermon of February 5, 2006

Truly listening to someone with whom you fundamentally disagree - especially when that disagreement is accompanied by feelings of anger and even revulsion - is not something many of us choose to do often. Let me say George Bush. Fred Phelps. Howard Dean. Do any of them make you prickle? Indeed, why should we? It's a situation with little opportunity for positive outcomes but a lot of opportunity for negative outcomes.
At best, engaging in honest listening with an ideological opponent may allow you to convince that opponent to adopt your view. Let's be honest. While providing perhaps a brief moment of pride at my debating skills and intellectual prowess, I have experienced little long-term joy or satisfaction at having convinced someone of the rightness of my particular view or belief. At the end of the day, I find I'm not too concerned if that person agrees with me or not.
At worst, however, engaging in honest listening with an ideological opponent my result in humiliation, belittlement, and ridicule. If, after engaging in such a discussion, you decide your viewpoint was incorrect you are then forced to reevaluate many other views you hold. Perhaps they are all wrong as well. It can shake your self-view. Or, maybe you maintain your view but admit it is not supported by the strongest arguments, strings of logic, or data. It's still a good opinion but not the best. So, you didn't lose - you've held on to your own view - but who wants to back the second- or third-best idea? Maybe again you maintain your view and even prevail upon the other as to its superiority. But much to your chagrin, the opponent refuses to accept it as his or her own opinion as well. Well, that's no good. What's a victory without the loser acknowledging it?
So, back to the beginning, it seems there is little incentive to listen honestly to anyone who disagrees with you on core values and philosophies. Without invalidating this entire service, I support just such a conclusion, at least if the content of the disagreement is your actual focus.
If, however, one changes the normal ``rules'' for listening to an opponent, I see great use in such listening. Mutual trust is a foundational element of any relationship, and placing your most closely held beliefs and ideas out for thorough examination by another places you in a very vulnerable position. When these beliefs and ideas are scrutinized with respect and care, a level of trust is built, irregardless of the conclusions of the opposing party. Note that by necessity, this can only happen interpersonally.
I engaged in such a conversation at a recent film-night discussion, with five or six other church members. While I forget the topic of the film, the topic of reflection turned to abortion, one of the most divisive issues of our time. Through the course of the conversation Roger and I gradually staked ourselves out on opposite sides of the issue with everyone else falling somewhere on the continuum between us.
Amazingly enough, this listening worked, primarily because we avoided the criteria for success or failure I set out at the beginning of this piece. No one listened with the intention of changing minds or proving the superiority of one's position. There were no winners or losers. There was simply listening for the sake of listening, with no ulterior motives or strings attached.
At the end of the conversation no minds were changed and few views were modified. Speaking for myself, though, the time was still rich and valuable. I established a new level of trust with each individual who participated, building on whatever level of trust existed before. This is especially true with Roger, my ideological opposite in the discussion. While his friendship was one I valued highly before the evening, it is valued even more now because of the gentleness and respect with which he received my comments.
Because so much time and effort go into such a type of listening, by necessity it can only be done sparingly. The demands of real-life dictate that meaningful relationships - which take so long to establish and nurture - are few. For this reason I believe one must be extremely selective in choosing which ``opponents'' one listens to. The vast majority of ``opponents'' one will not honestly be able to listen to. How this jibes with Mennonite doctrine and ideals I'm not sure, but I'm willing to listen.

Peace in a Fear-Mongering World--Joanna Harader.rtf

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:35:45 GMT

Matthew 14:22-33
Peace in a Fear-Mongering World

Ancient Spanish sailors have documented a condition known as calenture . Some sailors, it seems, would become feverish and delirious after spending long periods at sea. With day after day of nothing but ocean water as far as the eye could see, these folks would begin to see, not frothing waves, but rolling, grassy hills. Convinced that there was solid land beyond the ship, the sailors suffering from calenture would climb overboard and be swallowed up by the sea.

Now, I do not plan on revising this beloved biblical story to suggest that Peter was suffering from calenture. I don't think he had been out to sea long enough to develop the condition. He knew he was stepping out onto water.

But as we continue our discussion of shalom , of peace, I will suggest that calenture is one kind of peace our society offers. Not a true peace, but a deceptive peace. A peace we can obtain only when we succeed in blocking out certain significant segments of reality.

I realize that this may seem a strange passage to explore as we conclude our three-week series on shalom. The word in translation-peace-does not appear in this passage. And yet it is a narrative about Jesus being at peace and bringing peace to those he is with.

At the beginning of our story, Jesus sends his disciples ahead in the boat. Then he dismisses the crowd-those 5,000 plus people he has just fed with five loaves and two fish. And he goes by himself up the mountain to pray.

A few months back our friend Joe Casad was preparing to go out of town for a week. ``I'm going up to Colorado, to the mountains,'' he told me. ``I'm going by myself. I've got some books I want to read; some writing I'm working on.''

Now that's what I call a vacation. Quiet, beauty, slow time . . . peace.

And that type of peace is part of the shalom God desires for us. This is not the only time we see Jesus slipping away to be alone and pray. It is a good habit; a sustaining practice. Even if you can't spend a whole week in Colorado, there are places of calm; environments that nurture your soul. And that is part of the peace.

The writer of Matthew, however, does not let us linger long on the mountainside. He quickly presents a contrasting picture: the disciples are out on the lake fighting the headwinds and trying not to loose the bread and fish they have just eaten.

Now, if given the option between a mountainside and stormy waters, all but the most obsessed seafarers would stay on solid ground. But Jesus, at about four in the morning, heads towards his disciples. And he doesn't even bother to get in a boat.

Proclaiming forgiveness justice truth and peace--Joanna Harader.rtf

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:26:51 GMT

August 6, 2006
John 8: 1-11 (woman caught in adultery)
`` Proclaiming forgiveness, justice, truth, and peace. ''

Well, this is our last Sunday looking at some of MCUSA's habits of a missional church. This morning's habit is ``proclaiming forgiveness, justice, truth, and peace.'' It is also our last Sunday, for awhile, in the gospel of John. As I've mentioned before, John is the renegade gospel-its different from Matthew and Mark and Luke. We read things about Jesus here that we don't find anywhere else. And one of the stories unique to John-and one of my favorite stories-is this one of the woman caught in the act of committing adultery.

I've always felt sorry for this woman. I mean, think about it- caught in the act . That is pretty bad. Even before she got pushed out in front of a crowd of gawking people, she was not having a good day. Now, as she stands there-probably naked-she might even anticipate the heaving stones as a welcome relief from the intense humiliation she feels.

At any rate, it is clear that Jesus' actions; his infamous words ``whoever is without sin, cast the first stone,'' were a life-saving proclamation for her. Those moments must have seemed like decades to her as person after person set down their stones and headed home. In those moments, this woman experienced forgiveness, justice, truth, and, finally, peace.

Of course she did. That is why I chose this particular story to represent this ``habit.'' It's a good fit.

Except that this time around, as I've been dealing with this story this week, I have found myself thinking less about the woman and more about her accusers. While not as obvious, I believe Jesus' actions also proclaimed forgiveness, justice, truth and peace to the gathered mob, rocks in hand.

We have to wonder what kind of fear provoked the teachers of the law and the Pharisees to confront Jesus in this way? Were they afraid his growing popularity would diminish their authority? Were they afraid that this troublemaker, if left unchecked, would give the whole community a bad reputation with the Roman authorities? Were they afraid he was gaining followers for a bloody revolt? Did they think the Pharisee party would loose seats to the Jesus party in the November elections?

I don't know what they thought. But I'm sure they were scared of something. Scared enough to construct an elaborate plot. Scared enough to treat a woman like mere ``collateral damage.'' Scared enough to pick up rocks and prepare to heave them at her fragile body.

And I tell you that there are a hundred things today that make the teachers and Pharisees run scared. Those who seem to be in control. Those who seem to have it all-or at least to have it all figured out.

If you watch, you will see that they are scared. Scared enough to embezzle funds. Scared enough to lay off thousands of workers. Scared enough to join gangs. Scared enough to strap bombs to their chests and then detonate them in crowded shopping areas. Scared enough to drop bomb after bomb after bomb and kill man after woman after child.

But I'm going to let my optimistic nature show through here a bit. And the cynics among you are free to roll your eyes (unless you are one of my children, in which case don't you dare roll your eyes at me.)

I imagine that most CEOs do not really want to oppress workers. I imagine that most gang members don't want to hate-even kill-members of rival gangs. I imagine that most terrorists would prefer peace. That the nation of Israel does not really want the blood of Lebanese children on its head.

I imagine that the men gathered around the cowering adulteress really did not want to throw those stones. Some of them may have seen a stoning before; thrown a rock or two. Maybe aimed a bit short to avoid the sound of rock on bone.

These men do not want to stone this woman. There is tension in the air as they ask Jesus, "In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"

`` Go ahead,'' Jesus says. ``If you are free from sin, go ahead and throw that stone you are holding.''

And there is justice. The high and mighty are reminded of their humanity. And they are reminded of the humanity of the one standing before them, naked.

`` If you have never sinned,'' says Jesus, ``--if you are truly, essentially, better than this woman-throw the stone.''

And as the stones fall one by one with a thud on the dirt, truth is proclaimed. Truth, and an odd sort of forgiveness. Forgiveness of self that only comes when we can honestly look at ourselves and then move in a different-a better-direction.

`` Any of you who have never sinned,'' Jesus says, ``go ahead and stone her.''

It's the oldest, you notice, who drop their stones first. Perhaps because they are the most tired. Perhaps because, after a lifetime of holding a stone poised for launch, they are the most eager for the opportunity to put the stone down. After the tension, the uncertainty, the fear of the readied stone, what peace there must be in just letting it drop in the dust.

I really think that most people want to drop their stones. They just don't know how. How do you live with other people as equals in a world that insists on ranking everything and everybody? How do you compromise in an argument with your spouse in a world that insists that winning is everything? How do you solve problems diplomatically when talking is seen as wimpy and gunplay as cool?

It feels safer to hold onto the stone-just in case.

But as Christians, we believe that God sent Jesus to show us how to live without wielding stones. How to live out justice, forgiveness, peace-that is the truth Christ taught. And if we are to proclaim Christ in the world, we have help others see that holding those stones poised for launch is no way to live.

But first, we have to let our own stones drop to the ground. Amen.

Dying is hard work and other thoughts from God.rtf

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 23:15:30 GMT

May 9, 2004

The following remembrances were read aloud at Peace Mennonite Church on Mother's Day of 2004. They were not necessarily read by their authors, whose identities remained, by choice, in some cases, anonymous.

Dying Is Hard Work and Other Thoughts from God
``Dying is hard work,'' my mother remarked in the last weeks of a 10-year contest with cancer. After that pronouncement, my family began recording on a yellow legal pad everything she said. It seemed to us her words were inspired. I remember thinking she was very close to God and that God might speak to me through her.
I found I didn't much like what God had to say.
The words were direct, sometimes biting. From her bed in the family room, Mom whispered fiercely to my siblings, ``Go on home to Kansas . Take your children and go.'' They were hurt. They cried and protested. They loved her, the grandkids loved her, they wanted to be by her side. She insisted, ``You're all just hovering, waiting for me to die, and I can't do it with you here.'' And once more: ``Dying is hard work.'' My sister and brother, spouses and children packed up and said good-bye.
Mom chastised her brother-in-law for dripping on her pajamas as he held a Popsicle to her lips: ``Jim, you never did know much.'' To me she said, disapprovingly, ``You disappointed me. You said you got a haircut, but I wish you'd cut off all your hair.'' Exhausted from caretaking, I dissolved into tears and called a friend. It wasn't supposed to be like this. My mother was dying and she seemed so, well, inappropriate .
We kept a vigil, Daddy, my aunt and me. In shifts, we sat by her bed. Once, in the middle of the night, Mom called out, ``Get the Bible!'' I jumped up and waited for instructions. ``Read Isaiah 43.'' I read.
But now, this is what the Lord says
He who created you, O Jacob,
He who formed you, O Israel :
Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
And when you pass through the rivers,
They will not sweep over you.
When you pass through the fire,
You will not be burned;
The flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the Lord your God,
The Holy One of Israel , your Savior . . .

After that, Mom didn't say much. She seemed to go inside herself, concentrating on the hard work of dying. After three weeks, she won.
One the first anniversary of her death, on a snowy evening in December, my father and I pulled out the yellow legal pad and read aloud.
We laughed. There was the night she woke Daddy and declared, ``Call the undertaker, Harold. I'm dead.'' When Dad protested, Mom insisted, ``I'm DEAD. Now pick up the phone!''
We wept. There had been one morning when Mom gathered the entire family to tell us her final memories of us. To me, she'd said that she most remembered our times together in the kitchen. I treasure those times, too.
I'd love to tell a story about my mother's saintly, sweet countenance in her final days. I'd love to tell you that I met God face-to-face in this dying woman and that He was the Perfect Parent.
But it wasn't like that.
And maybe God isn't like that. Maybe, just maybe, I did meet God face-face, and he really hates my hair.

Not Like in the Movies
In the back seat on long summer car trips, my sisters and I made up husbands, elaborate wedding ceremonies, and children. I invented a life in a big Victorian house. The thought of little footsteps running up and down flights of stairs filled my dreams with laughter and cheered my spirits. When my pregnancy came, I knew my fairytale would finally be realized. I carefully and happily planned and arranged everything: I painted the room, put up the border, picked out the decorations, found the crib, bought the clothes, took the appropriate classes, read the right books, arranged the best childcare. I exercised, took the right vitamins, ate a healthy diet. I didn't even take an aspirin in the face of excruciating hip pains in the final trimester.
As the day approached, I made casseroles and froze them, cleaned and re-cleaned the house, addressed and stamped the announcement envelopes, and got ahead on all of my work so that I would return to an orderly office after my maternity leave was up. Family and friends filled me with stories of the first moment they saw their babies the happiest, most amazing moments of their lives. I couldn't wait to experience it. The thought of three months of maternity leave, ensconced at home with my beautiful baby, sounded like pure luxury.
The day finally arrived. Despite my careful planning, I was rushed into an emergency C-Section. Groggy and weak from surgery, I barely noticed the infant that was waved over my head and didn't even mind that she was whisked away. For a week, I felt nothing but severe pain, exhaustion, and terror as I lay alone in my hospital room, listening to alarms sound on the machine hooked up to track my baby's abnormal heartbeats.
The heart problem was temporary. I recovered from a post-operative infection, and the baby and I were released together from the hospital. Oddly, I felt no joy in going home. In fact, I felt no joy in anything, not even the baby's sweet gurgles as she suckled from my full and aching breasts. I was leaden, unable to do the simplest chore, unable to feel anything except overwhelming anxiety and exhaustion. Changing the baby's diaper took superhuman effort. I had no desire to eat, no desire to read, no desire to be with others, and no desire to play with the baby. I was in a free-fall into a dark pit more vivid than Sylvia Plath's most vivid description.
Everyone, my physician included, told me to snap out of it. When I called my doctor's office to beg for help, his partner said curtly, ``I've heard about you,'' as if I were a criminal. Feeling abandoned and hopeless, I put down the baby and walked out the door into the 100 degree heat no purse, no phone, no water, nothing. I planned to walk as far as I could away from civilization, lie down under a tree and die. But something deep inside, some little voice from some unknown place, made me go back, made me get out the phone book, made me pick up the phone and call a psychiatrist. Four torturous months, three psychiatrists, and a dozen or more different medications later, I began to emerge from the pit. Things started to feel a bit easier. I could change a diaper, take a shower, and answer the phone. I took short walks outside with the stroller. I socialized a bit with the one friend who had stuck around. I got on the Internet and, after some searching, was flabbergasted to find other women just like me to correspond with.
The most amazing part was that I began to notice the baby touch her tiny hands, watch her chest rise and fall as she slept, feel her hot breath against my cheek as we snuggled on the couch. The desolation and hopelessness of the previous months were replaced by a slow-growing, but deep and heartfelt, love for the tiny being beside me.
The loss I felt from missing the first half-year or so of my baby's life, and the guilt I felt from being an inadequate, neglectful mother, was, and to some extent still is, overwhelming. May we all realize that the fairy tale of new motherhood is just that a fairy tale. For some it is smoother and easier than others. But with a more realistic description, and greater understanding, of the possible outcomes of motherhood, those who need help may actually find it.

Living with The Bomb
Maybe it was third grade, I can't remember. I had to appear on stage in front of the entire school to sing this sappy song. Lyrics like these:
My mom
I love her
Who wouldn't love her?
She's my Madonna,
My mom.

For a third-grade boy in the 1950s, it didn't get more humiliating than that. She wasn't my Madonna, by the way. She was my fallout shelter.
We could have been nuked by the Russians at any second but there was a bigger problem: some of the dads prowling around the houses of America back then. They were timebombs, they were, veterans of World War II with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder .
When Daddy blew up, Mom's Christian spirit was a salve. Trouble is, in a setup like this you can wind up being a little TOO close to good old Mom.
For years, I thought mine was a saint. Then, slowly, it dawned on me that she was the only person around our house who might have defused the bomb. I blamed her for not doing that. I gave up my vision of her as a saint and faulted her, instead, for not being a hero.
That's what it would have taken to have confronted my dad.
Today, I don't blame her for anything. To tell the truth, we've become friends

`A Life Like a Fresh and Lovely Salad'
Last Saturday evening, I took my nephews to the Hy-Vee up the street. We wanted to make burritos. On the way, the younger boy asked me one of those typical little-kid questions: ``Have you ever had a baby?''
I said: ``No, I haven't. I didn't have any kids by the time you guys were born, and once you were around, it just seemed like enough for me.'' I don't know what went through his mind, but he didn't ask anymore.
I'll tell you just a little bit more than I told my nephew.
Flesh it out, so to speak.
The last time I was certain I wanted to have children, I was 18. But instead of taking the plunge, I have spent more than 20 years studying parenthood. I do this constantly and intentionally.
I have talked to dozens of parents about their experiences. I fix dinners for other people's kids. I read them stories, kiss them, get up in the night to listen for a newborn's breathing. I've mopped spit-up, wiped bottoms, put ointment around the stumps of umbilical cords, checked homework and cheered at softball games.
I have been drawn into the lives of particular children -- not because they are children, but because they are interesting people.
When I think about the possibility of parenthood and my decision to forgo it -- at least up until now -- I start to think of what I'm grateful for.
I'm grateful for my siblings and cousins and friends, and to their kids and grandkids, for letting me hang out with them.
For the chance to see my own traits in my niece and nephews. Sometimes it makes me feel proud other times, mortified.
For the chance to share ordinary time with children who are adopted.
I'm grateful that neither my parents nor my spouse has ever pressured me to have children.
For daily solitude. For time to read and to pursue various arts.
For time to talk with adults about adult things.
For many years, parenthood was something I thought I'd consider five or 10 years down the road. Now I have fewer years left to decide. Aside from the urgency brought on by the passage of time, there is really just one reason I have ever considered parenthood, and it is this: I love my niece and nephews.
Even so, never in my life -- not even this morning -- has parenthood been a gift I want to open right now.
That may be because of what parents have already helped to give me -- a life like a fresh and lovely salad. It seems like more than enough.

When Your Bodies Will Not Produce a Child, There Is This
Even as a child, I wanted to be a mother. I think this expectation was the usual one for girls during the 1950s. My first and most positive relationship with a child was with my sister who was much younger than me. At first I helped care for her. Then we were pals. Sometimes I'd pretend to be a stern, overbearing adult and boss her around and she'd talk back to me. With each other, we felt safe being silly in ways that mocked social conventions.
The desire to have children was a strong one for my spouse and me. It seemed that this desire grew out of our love. We looked forward to continuing our families' heritage, to finding out what this combination of our genes would look like. We looked forward to the challenge of raising a child in healthy and peaceful ways, and having fun by sharing our love of reading, nature, and other activities.
I wanted a relationship with a child that was helped along by close proximity. It takes me awhile to get to know most people, so casual relationships with children, even teacher-pupil relationships, are quite unsatisfying.
When it appeared doubtful that our bodies would produce a child, we thought about adoption. That would have been lots of fun. We assessed our potential for taking in an older child who had most likely experienced some sort of pain and rejection and decided that we would do better by starting with an infant. We found that the cost of adoption is prohibitively expensive. For many years, I hoped that maybe there would be a fluke, or a miracle, and I would get pregnant anyway. But that never happened.
Finally I knew that even if it did, I did not have the tremendous energy to devote to raising a child. There was a lot of grief involved in giving up this dream grief that was mostly hidden from others. At the same time, I began to see other aspects of my life that were thriving in spite of, and perhaps partly because of, the absence of children.
When I see couples experiencing the excitement of learning about a pregnancy or preparing for an adoption, when I see newborns, when it is Mother's Day, I still feel a keen sense of loss. These are experiences that I wanted and that I will never have.
I've always tried to stay in touch with the spiritual aspects of this experience. Sometimes it's pretty bewildering. Why do some people experience a miracle that results in a child, but not others? What did God have in mind by giving us a vivid picture of the poignancy and value of children, but then not letting them come to us?
The experience of frustrated parenthood led me to mysteries and questions: What is the spiritual connection of parents with the soul of a child they call forth in love? What is my purpose in life?
I realize now that there are other ways that mothering energy can flow through me: I can realize the great preciousness of unhurried parent-child relationships and encourage that for others. I can support programs in the community that are good for children by voting for increased taxes for schools. I can pray for all the world's children. I can realize that some of our longing for children comes from the desire to reconnect with that part of us that delights in simple pleasures, giggles at pomposity, and feels at home with God.

Exodus 3 1--Joanna Harader.rtf

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 06:33:12 GMT

Exodus 3: 1-17
Hero Complex
3 ^rd Sunday in Lent
March 11, 2007
Joanna Harader

When we first meet our young hero, he is out tending his father-in-law's flock. And it is important for us to remember how he got here. A failed attempt to liberate his people. Perhaps "failed" is being too kind. You see, Moses, even though he was raised in the royal Egyptian family, had figured out that he was a Hebrew. And daily he watched as the Egyptians tormented his enslaved people. One day he finally snapped and went after an Egyptian who he had seen abusing a Hebrew slave. There was no foresight. No consideration of how his actions would possibly benefit anyone. Sheer impulse. He killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. When word got out and Pharaoh got mad, Moses ran away.

So here is our hero hiding out, tending sheep, staying far away from the concerns of his people back in Egypt. I would say Moses has a cushy job, except that I have heard our friend Natalya talk about tending sheep--so I know they are not always the most pleasant or cooperative of animals. Still, it's a far cry from the brutal slave conditions being endured by the Hebrew people in Egypt.

And so our valiant hero comes upon the infamous burning bush. It's on fire, but it's not getting burned up. Now personally, I'm not sure I would have gotten close enough to the flames to figure that out. But our impulsive--we could call him courageous--hero notices the bush isn't burning up and walks right up to the fire.

He is, needless to say, a bit taken aback when the fire calls him by name. "Moses" the bush says. Our hero looks around the vast pastures at the foot of mount Horeb. Funny. Not a very common name--Moses. And I don't see anyone else around. Don't recall naming any of the sheep "Moses."

Oh, me? "Here I am." Truth be told, God already knows exactly where Moses is and what he is about. It's Moses who needs to figure out what God is doing. Does our hero have any idea what he is getting himself into with these words "Here I am"? Does he know he is offering himself to the almighty God? Or is he merely intending to clarify his location?

And God replies, "Well, yes indeed. There you are. Don't come any closer. And take off your shoes if you please. This ground is holy." Once again, Moses is rushing in where angels fear to tread. So excited about this talking, burning, not getting burned up bush that he is completely unaware of the situation. In Mid-Eastern culture, removing your shoes was a religious requirement. Apparently Moses has not yet registered that this is a sacred encounter.

Then the voice finally leaves no room for doubt: "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." And then Moses hides his face. Now that he knows it is God, he is afraid even to look.

So there he is, shoeless, covering his face, listening to a burning bush out in the middle of nowhere waiting for God to say . . .what? How could Moses know what to expect? He is so unfamiliar with God that he doesn't recognize God's voice. But what God says to Moses reveals the nature of this God of Abraham and Sarah in profound ways.

First, the Lord tells Moses, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering." This God is a God who proclaims identity in relationship with people--the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And a God who continues to be in relationship. Intimate relationship.

I believe God still sees the misery of this world and hears the cries of those in bondage. God laments the many ways that we suffer and are enslaved today. People bound to oppressive, unfulfilling jobs. Those who continue to face the obstacles created by racism and sexism and homophobia. Those enslaved to addictions of all kinds. Those enslaved by fear amidst the violence of war.

And, sadly, there are still voices of literal slaves crying out from around the worldabout 27 million of them, mostly women and children.        [From iabolish.com, the web site of the American Anti-Slavery Group.] We like to discuss slavery as a phenomenon of the past, but it is alive and well today. This month's issue of Sojourners magazine focuses on the problem of global slavery, and NPR ran a piece just this past Friday on the slave practice in Brazil.

God heard the cries of the abused Hebrews and he hears the cries of the Burmese boys who are slaves in Thailand. When a well-dressed Thai man came to the boys' village in southern Burma, they were impressed. The man introduced the boys' parents to a 14-year-old boy from their region who was also very well dressed and spoke fluent Thai. The man said, ``Look how well this child from your region is doing. If you let me take your son back to Chiang Mai, I will do the same for him.'' Of course many of the parents, themselves oppressed by extreme poverty, allowed their children to go with this man. But when they got to Chiang Mai, the boys were sold into sex bars and brothels.       [Batstone, David. ``Cry Freedom!'' in Sojourners, March 2007, 17.]

From the ancient Hebrews to the children in Thailand's sex bars, God sees the people, hears the people and is concerned about the people. God is immanent. Present with suffering humanity in myriad ways--not the least of which, for our hero Moses, is this burning not being burned up bush.

Then God tells Moses, "I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey." God is coming down. And God will rescue them from the clutches of a powerful nation. So this immanent God who is present with us is also above us and more powerful than us--is transcendent. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel, is a God grounded in the history of humanity--and yet beyond it.

What must our hero be thinking? "Well, finally. It's about time somebody did something about this problem." Ah. But perhaps Moses isn't expecting this last little bit of God's speech: "So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt." Just when he was getting comfortable with the sheep. Go? Our hero doesn't want to go anywhere, thank you very much! He particularly doesn't want to go to Pharaoh.

Moses has a thousand reasons to stay right there with the sheep, not the least of which is the fact that, as far as he knows, Pharaoh still wants him dead. But with or without a warrant hanging over our heads, speaking truth to power is hard. It's not something most people do readily. It's particularly not something people generally do when they are comfortable. Comfortable with their job, with their community. Comfortable with the fact that the real horrors are miles away, worlds away. None of our concern.

And so, in an attempt to get out of ``going'' anywhere, our hero asks, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" Now, those of you who teach probably tell your students that there are no stupid questions. And if you've been teaching for very long, you've probably heard a few questions that made you re-think your position. I propose that questions can be wrong. And this one is. "Who am I?"

But we still ask it over and over again. Who am I that I should lead in worship? Who am I that I should help the homeless? Who am I that I should speak out for peace? Who am I that I should speak up against the enslaving powers of our day?

And, truth be told, we probably want to hear what, just maybe, our hero Moses wanted to hear: Why, you're Moses. You're Joanna. You're Fred. You're Sally. You are beautiful and talented and--just between you and me--a lot smarter than most of the rest of them down there.

But alas, what we want to hear and what we do hear are two different things. God says, "I will be with you." Notice how this doesn't answer the question. Who is Moses? God will be with him. It is the presence of God that is important. Not the limitations of the person God calls.

Kru Nam is a Thai woman with a university degree in art. Not exactly the qualifications we would be looking for in a fearless crusader against child sex slavery. And she never intended to go up against Pharaoh. She just wanted to teach art. And it seemed like a good thing to her to reach out to children living on the streets of her city.

But when those children began painting disturbing pictures of the lives they had escaped--lives as slaves in the brothels that litter the cityshe couldn't help but go. She marched, unthinkingly, into a sex bar and walked up to boys one by one. ``Let's go. I'm taking you out of here.'' And she walked out with six boys.      [Batstone, 17.]

Iam confident that God was with Kru Nam, because owners do not take kindly to their ``property'' being escorted out the door. When raiding the bars became too dangerous, she and others began trying to get to the boys when they got off of the busesbefore they were sold. She continues this liberating work today, living with about sixty boys and girls in temporary shelters on land she has purchased.

Even though Kru Nam did not have what we might consider the necessary experience or skills to take on the rampant problem of slavery in her city, she readily went when she sensed the call to go. She didn't develop a strategic plan to address human suffering, she simply did the work God gave her to do.

Our hero Moses seems to need a little more convincing. He says to God, "Suppose the Israelites ask me, 'What is this God's name?' What should I tell them?"

What's going on here? Is our headstrong, overzealous hero stalling? Or does he really think the Israelites will demand to know the name of God before they walk away from slavery in Egypt? None of those boys seemed to care what Kru Nam's name was when she led them out of their slavery.

But I suppose Moses' question is a fair one. God knows his name, after all. So God obliges, sort of. God utters the divine name: I am/shall be what/who I am/shall be.

Grueling hours have been spent in the ensuing centuries trying to figure out what this Hebrew term means. But I think Bernard Robinson's observation is key: that God's response to Moses "may well have puzzled early readers as much as it does present day ones." I will give you a name, God says, but not a name by which you can control or even comprehend me.

And so God does provide the divine name--but not quite. Or at least not the way we might like it to be given. My name is justice. My name is mercy. My name is compassion. No. I am who I am. I will be who I will be.

And Moses, you tell the Israelites "I AM has sent me to you."

Our hero is, after all, part of the equation. He is called by God to participate in the saving work God plans to do among God's people. And our hero will succeed. Despite his hot-headedness. Despite his reluctance. Despite any public speaking phobia or speech impediment he may have.

As Kru Nam is succeeding with her fearlessness and her art degree.

Moses will succeed because God--the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah--the God who is who God is and who will be who God will be--that holy, immanent, transcendent, confounding God--will be with him.

Who am I that I should free the oppressed people of our world? Who are you to confront the Pharaohs of our day?

We're asking the wrong questions. We shouldn't ask "Who am I?". We simply need to realize that the One who goes with us is the great I AM.

Tongue Sermon 1--Roger Martin.rtf

Wed, 4 Apr 2007 06:08:24 GMT

The Tongue
March 18, 2007
Roger Martin
Little of the Bible speaks as directly to writers as today's scripture. The words in James 3 are about the enormous power of language, and most writers want to believe this about the medium they wrestle with.
I like the passage in James because of its hint that we don't so much use language as it uses us. In grade school, I had a teacher named Mrs. Billups, who'd use the phrase ``running your mouth'' -- as in ``stop running your mouth, Roger.'' Not that I was the target - this is just an example.
I like the images the phrase ``running your mouth'' brings to mind. I see the speaker in relationship to something bigger and more powerful. ``Running your mouth'' makes me think of a machinist running a drill press or a gardener running a rototiller or a construction worker running a bulldozer. I think the relationship between people and potentially dangerous equipment is a little like that between themselves and their tongues.
The danger of careless speech is ever present. Why else would there be all these phrases floating around that tell us to hold our tongues, watch our mouths, button our lips, shut our yaps, put a muzzle on it, put a lid on it or stifle?
Don't shoot off your mouth, in other words. There's a lovely embedded metaphor in that one, isn't there? Personally, I think of mine as a 12-gauge mouth, like a shotgun. Some people pack a .22 rifle, others, Derringers.
Humans may have dominion over the beasts of the field and birds of the air, says the writer of James - speculated to have been a half-brother of Jesus, by the way - but over the tongue, we have little dominion.
`` No man can tame his tongue,'' James says. In other words, we don't run our mouths so much as they run us.
Writers know the blessing and curse of this. Very occasionally, in something I write, I seem to exceed my ration of wisdom. I am tempted to strut. But when I pay close attention, I realize that every word I write is, in some sense, the product of dictation from some mysterious source. For me, writing results from hyperattentive listening to a little voice inside that offers words, one by one, then, those failing, others. Phrases laid down, then torn up. Punch up a verb, slice out an adverb, try this, ditch that. Words may join hands briefly on the page, but then some fraction of consciousness realizes they're clichés - in effect, old news - and they're trashed. A verb that's seems surprisingly fresh whistles and winks. At first, I love its dazzle. Then I'm ashamed at its gaudiness and show it the exit. Writing, then, is actually a kind of auditioning in which language is sometimes a bad actor - cantankerous, stubborn, defiant, lame, halt, worn - and sometimes a guru. I don't own it. We don't own it. James knew that. So should we all.
Now the second aspect of the tongue that fascinates James is its relative smallness. Think of the metaphors he uses: It's hardly bigger than a spark - yet it can burn down the woods. It's like a rudder, small but able to stabilize a ship in a tempest.
Like a spark , words can ignite a raging fire. Hitler's phrase ``master race'' were fighting words that move millions to slaughter and to be slaughtered. We all know plenty of spark words and who they'll ignite.
Like a rudder , a very few words can help us steer when winds rage around us and seas are high. I think of Julian of Norwich's mantra: All things shall be well, and all things shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Or the simpler words of the Jesus prayer, used in times of trouble: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. Even simpler is the recommendation of a desert father, Abba Macarius, who said that when conflict grows fierce, a prayer may be as simple as one word: HELP!
Life affords endless opportunities to discover the malfunctions of language. I've often had words blow up in my face. I want to share some of my core beliefs and rules about speech, admitting at once that I do not always stay faithful to them.
Rule No. 1 about speech: Strike when the iron is cold.
I have had to learn to keep still when I'm upset. I need to take the time to know more precisely what's stirring in me and more cautious in choosing the words to articulate it. This is in part because feelings often elude our power to name them. We sometimes think we feel rage when, in fact, we feel hurt . We think we feel jealous when, in fact, it's helplessness we're experiencing.
There's scriptural support for holding back. I find one of the most appealing qualities of Jesus to be his restraint - indeed, his silence - in the face of those who treat him most unjustly. Herod plies Jesus with questions but, according to Matthew, ``Jesus gave no answer.'' Pilate asks Jesus to answer the charges of his accusers. Jesus is silent. Still later, mocked and insulted as he's led to crucifixion, Jesus' response is not to respond.
By contrast, think of the roar of the crowd when Pilate asks them what he should do with Jesus. They shout and shout again, ``Crucify him! Crucify him!''
Jesus' demeanor suggests the power, on some occasions, of non-resistance and of speechlessness: the power that doesn't seem powerful, but is: the power of staying still during a storm. Of underreacting. The wisest person I know has often said to me, ``During a quarrel, if one person can underreact, that helps the other to cool down.''
This was exactly what I did not do during a congregational meeting I once attended. Angry and hurt, I said words to this effect: ``Whatever is said in this room is, as far as I'm concerned, on the record. If you don't want what you say to be on the record, you shouldn't say it.'' That angered some people. One person even told me so later, and I know he wasn't alone. I do not doubt, looking back, that I used the wrong words. The right ones wouldn't have left such a residue of anger and resentment.
The hotter we are, the more reluctant to speak we should be. Remember: The tongue is like a spark that can burn down the forest. We need to practice an exquisite patience as we try to match our words to our inner states. The name for this is integrity. We also should attempt to gauge the likely effect of our words on others, specifically in terms of their capacity to create a negative response. The name for this is respect. Neither integrity nor respect is, by itself, sufficient. When we speak, we need both.
Rule No. 2: Say less than I'm tempted to say.
Twenty years ago, a friendship ended, and I felt destroyed. It's still a mystery to me that I was so undone by this, but I could not stop thinking and talking and writing about the experience, thinking and talking and writing. I was borne along by a torrent of words that came, unstoppably, from me.
Looking back, I know today that I was soul sick. Finally, one sleepless night, I prayed, God please take this anger off of me. Eight words. Those words, used again and again in the months that followed, helped the pain ebb. Eight words accomplished what thousands had not.
Beware of word torrents - diatribes, monlogues, long e-mails. Where there is a compulsion to speak, we may accidentally use language for reasons that fail to honor integrity and respect.
Rule 3: Don't say what you can't live with for a long time to come.
This rule acknowledges the raw power that a single word can have. Jessie Jackson, in 1984, said ``Hymietown,'' referring to New York City, and I'll never forget it. Joe Biden used the word ``clean'' to refer to Barack Obama, and that, too, will linger. I was talking about this the other night with Barbara, and she reminded me of an old saying: ``A card laid is a card played.'' The prayer to send up against saying something awful is this one from Psalms: `` Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight.''
Rule 4: Don't gossip.
Jesus, in Matthew 18, says this: ``If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone.'' If that doesn't work, Jesus advises, then take two or three others along with you, to witness your difference. In other words, in addition to being patient as you let your own dust settle and your thoughts clear . . . in addition to being spare in your expression, especially when things get hot . . . and in addition to not saying what you can't live with for a long, long time, we are called to resist the nearly irresistible temptation of talking about the difficulty we're having with someone with everybody in the world except for that someone.
When I took my current job, I was asked the inevitable end-of-the-interview question: So do you have any questions for us? And I asked, ``Is this the kind of workplace where a couple of folks go out to lunch and talk about another worker? Because if you are, I want no part of it.''
I asked this question as much for my own sake as for anyone else's. I can be an absolutely horrid gossip because, in truth, I have trouble, like most of us, with being forthright. This is doubly true when I'm edgy about someone. I hold back because my feelings may be complicated, I want to be liked - and being open makes me feel vulnerable.
But for our spiritual welfare, as individuals and a church, I think it's tremendously important NOT to gossip. There will be plenty of lapses and setbacks. But if, when someone starts to gossip or to complain about someone, we suggest that he or she approach that person, we will be doing everyone a service.
Even if the gossip is REALLY, REALLY juicy.
If we want to call ourselves Peace Mennonite Church, with a capital P in ``peace,'' we must do more than oppose war. We must make a deeper peace with each other. The closer we get, the harder that become. The hotter the issues we face, the harder that becomes.
But I'm drawn to the hope of growing a culture of peace at Peace Mennonite Church. If we take to heart the wisdom of James 3, it's only sensible to strive to learn to speak from a calm center, not from a tumultuous one. If we find it hard to quell the turmoil, we can at least watch our words. If we find we simply MUST speak, we can say just a little and be decent, knowing that ONE word can be explosive when emotions are high.
?
I view the way forward for us to be a gradual expansion of our collective knowledge of the consensus-building process.
In our Sunday school discussions of consensus, we've been talking about the need for patience.
About how deadline pressures undo consensus.
About how we need to plan thing so we have as few deadlines as possible. Urgency is a bad omen.
Next Sunday we'll be talking about the nuts and bolts of consensus processes. This includes having a shared sense of guidelines and boundaries, for example, as well as designating individuals to play certain roles: as go-betweens during dialogue, for example, or as monitors who gauge the emotional temperature of the room and keep it from coming to a boil.
This fall, we hope to arrange for a workshop so we can learn, at a greater depth, about how to proceed peaceably.
In the 9 ^th and 10 ^th verses of the 3 ^rd chapter of James, it is said that `` with the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing.''
It would be unrealistic to think we can quell the cursing. It is within our grasp to improve the ratio of praising to cursing. To be silent when we are most disturbed and wait until our dust settles. To be spare in speech when we are aroused. To speak, at those moments, with integrity and respect. To resist the siren call of gossip. To recognize the power of one word.
In the beginning, after all, was the word.

Eastersermon 1--Johanna Harader.rtf

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 07:06:39 GMT

April 8, 2007: Easter Sunday: Luke 24: 1-12
Joanna Harader

Taming Easter

A couple of days ago I saw an announcement on TV for an Easter weekend event. Huge words flashed on the screen: THE BIG ONE. The tag line said: ``Expect Great Things.''

I should think that when God incarnate walks the earth we can expect great things. The resurrectionthe defeat of death, darkness, violencecould surely be called ``The Big One.'' But this event being announced had nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ. It was advertising a sale at Kohl's.

Isn't that nice? The omnipotent is tortured; the infinite dies and then defeats death! And we celebrate by getting to buy stuff cheap. Or by eating lots of candy. Or by decorating with cute little bunnies.

Of course, it's what we expect from the secular world. The broadly accepted and rarely criticized goal of the marketplace is to make as much profit as possible. And bunnies sell better than, say, mangled bodies or bewildered-looking disciples. So I don't really blame Kohl's or Hallmark or any of the rest of the secular corporations for taming Easter.

I mean, did you listen to what you were just singing? Up from the grave he arose, with a mighty triumph o'er his foes! Death cannot keep its prey; he tore the bars away!

This is powerful stuff. Of course the department stores and candy-makers have to tame Easter if they want to make money off of it.

What really bothers me is the way that Christian churches tame Easter. I recently came across a web site offering pre-packaged Easter Services to churches. One service was promoted with a blurb that read in part:

``Jesus' resurrection brings a hope that can sustain you through the hard times of life, a hope that can heal your pain and wash away your shame and regret. It's a hope that can give you the power to recover from those bad life investments relational, vocational, financial, moral, spiritual-you made based on flawed assumptions.''

As soon as I read this, it bothered me. It bothered me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why it bothered me. Maybe it was because I have a bit of disdain for ``pre-packaged'' services in general. Maybe it was because the group promoting this service is affiliated with a mega church that will have six identical Easter serviceswith thousands at each.

And then it hit me. This take on the resurrection is way too tame. It's too middle class American. I mean, I will certainly affirm that the resurrection gives hope. And I will gladly agree that a resurrection faith can help you through difficulties. But then I thought, You know, if Jesus' whole point was to `give you the power to recover from those bad life investments that you made based on flawed assumptions,' he didn't have to suffer torture, die, defeat Satanic forces, and be resurrected. He could have just got his psychology degree and hung out a shingle. If the ultimate goal of God's redeeming work through Jesus Christ is to fix my bad choices and heal my finances, isn't the resurrection a bit of overkill?

This isn't to say that God is unconcerned with our personal strugglesrelational, financial, and otherwise. But the resurrection of Christ has meaning far beyonddare I suggest sometimes even counter toour personal ability to live a comfortable and happy life.

No matter how much we try to tame it, the power of Easter remains. And it is not the in vogue, personal empowerment kind of power that we all like to talk about. It is a raw and brilliant power that simply pushes grave-blocking boulders aside.

I ran up against my own tendency to tame Easter when I first saw the artwork that Karen had done for this morning's bulletin cover. My first reaction was, ``Why did she draw Jesus on the cross? We are supposed to be celebrating his resurrection.'' I guess I wanted some happy flowers, smiling angels. I don't know exactly. Just that looking at the image of Christ hanging on the cross made me uncomfortable.

But it's an image we have to seereally seeif we want to glimpse the power of Easter. What we see on the cross is not just a dead or dying body. We see oppression. We see what the government can do to people who threaten its power.

What Jesus actually carried as he walked to Golgotha was not the entire cross, but only the cross-beam. The vertical posts were already in place. Jesus was not the first or the last person to be crucified by the Roman government on the hilltop where everyone could see what happened to people who challenged the authority of the Empire.

To realize the extent of resurrection power, we have to look at the empty tomb in the shadow of the cross. We are celebrating a power that defies both the laws of nature and the laws of empire. Jesus defeated death and Caesar [ Thanks to Harvey Cox, Jesus Comes to Harvard ]. The Roman government did its worst to punish this political insurgent. The empire exercised the full extent of its authorityand it was not enough.

The resurrection is a sign that the life-giving power of God is ultimately victorious over the death-dealing powers of the Empire.

We see the power of Easter when those pesky disciples--who had been cowering in fear after the crucifixionbegan boldly proclaiming Jesus as Christ to all who would listen. No matter how sternly the authorities told these people to be quiet, they just wouldn't shut up about Jesus. So the powers that be executed them. Except that in the face of resurrection, execution was a weak display of power. The deaths of the apostles did not stop the message they carried.

We see the power of Easter when the Anabaptist martyrs, many of them women, just kept on preaching the Good News of Jesus even as they were being dragged down the road to their execution sites. This pre-death preaching got to be such a problem that the authorities finally began using a nice medieval device called a tongue screw. And yet their voices were not silenced by violence. Andy and Carol and I learned about them in class two weeks ago.

We see the power of Easter when we look at the life of the El Salvadoran bishop Oscar Romero who got on the government's bad side by advocating for the rights of the poor. Romero insisted that ``The risen Christ belongs now to present history, and he is the source of human liberty and dignity.'' He also assured his enemies that if they killed him he would live on in the people of El Salvador. They did kill him. And he does live on.

We see the power of Easter when Bishop Desmond Tutu was preaching at Saint George's Cathedral in South Africa during the time of apartheid. He was known for being a ``Rabble-Rouser for Peace'' as his latest biography is titled, so the SA security police broke into the cathedral. You could feel the power of the people shrink in terror at the threat of yet more violence. Tutu stopped preaching and just looked at the intruders as they lined the walls of the cathedral, ready to arrest him for any ``treasonous''utterance. After meeting their eyes with his steely gaze, he acknowledged their power saying, ``You are powerful, very powerful.''But he reminded them that he served a higher power than their political authority. And ``since you have already lost,''he said to the armed forces, ``I invite you this day to come over to the winning side.'' These words electrified the people; they began to sing and dance in exultation of the coming triumph of god's love. The security police withdrew [ Story taken from a sermon by J. Stuart Taylor III at http://www.stmarkspresbyterian.org/stmarks/sermons/16apr06.htm ]. And, as we know, the system of apartheid in South Africa has been dismantled and Bishop Tutu has won numerous peace awards.

We see the power of Easter in the life of Rachel Corrie, who was killed by a bulldozer as she defended a Palestinian home on the Gaza strip. In the Christian Peacemaker Team members who abandon their worldly comforts and risk their lives for the cause of peace. In the thousands of Christians who went to Washington D.C. last month to participate in the Christian witness for peace in Iraq. And in those of us who gathered hear to add our voices and our signatures to the movement for peace.

The power of Easter is not a comfortable thing. Particularly not for those in power. I can understand why they want to tame it. But we need to take Easter back from those who would market it into submission.

Easter is indeed ``The Big One.'' God's word that the forces of death in our worldthe hatred, the oppression, the violenceare overcome by the true and deep life of Jesus, who embodies love, justice, and peace. And yes. We can expect great things! The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will rise again.

Despite all our best efforts, Easter cannot be tamed. The message God sends through Jesus Christ fills the world, and it can never again be secured in a burial cave and sealed with a stone.

Matthew 5 1--Joanna Harader.rtf

Wed, 4 Apr 2007 06:03:53 GMT

Sermon on Consensus
Matthew 5:3-10
March 25, 2007; Fourth Sunday of Lent

Blessed are the Consensus-Builders

As you know, our church is in the midst of learning about consensus-building as we work towards being a more faithful church. We have studied consensus during Sunday school this Lenten season, and the consenus task force folks wanted me to also preach on consensus; to present a theological and biblical perspective.

So we have listened this morning to several versions of the Beatitudes--the opening to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The teachings of Jesus are at the center of Mennonite theology, and these words are considered by many to be at the center of Jesus' teachings.

And as I have been thinking about consensus from a theological and biblical standpoint, I realized that this way of being put forth in the Beatitudes will naturally lead to a way of being church that follows all of the best consensus-building principles.

We tend to read the Beatitudes as if they are statements merely relevant to our individual lives. I have read them this way for years, partly because I always envisioned Jesus standing up on the mountainside giving this sermon to the vast crowd below. A crowd, not a community. People trying to figure this Jesus guy out, but not ready to commit to him. So Jesus tells them some nice things about how they should be when they go home.

But as some of the translations make clear, Jesus is not talking to the crowd. He's talking to the disciples. He is talking to those who have committed their lives to following him, and in so doing have found that they also have to spend their lives trying to get along with one another.

Without diminishing the importance that the Beatitudes can have for individuals, I propose that they are absolutely essential for Christian community. And in thinking about how to form a community around these core teachings, I think working towards a healthy consensus process is essential.

I know I don't usually do list-type sermons, but this morning I want to look at the first seven beatitudes as they particularly relate to the practice of consensus.

Jesus opens his sermon by saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." I like the way Clarence Jordan explains this concept. He relates it to the story of the tax collector and the pharisee. Both men went into the synagogue to pray. The Pharasee prayed loudly, "God, thank you that I am such a good guy. I'm not wicked and sinful like that tax collector over there." The tax collector, however, bows his head and pleads with God, "Have mercy on me, a sinner."

Being poor in spirit, says Jordan, is all about recognizing our need. Both of these men received from God what they felt they needed. One got nothing. The other recieved justification-holy grace.

I think this poverty of spirit is essential not just in our relationship with God, but also in our relationships with each other. If we believe others have nothing to offer us, we will recieve nothing from them. If, on the other hand, we know we deeply need each other, then God can work through us to bless each other.

And consensus, as many of you know, requires that we approach each other with this deep sense of need. If we think we know best, that we can be suffient unto ourselves, then we will not be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit or the input of our friends in the community.

Next, Jesus says, "Blessed are those who mourn." I will admit that when I first started exploring the connections between the Beatitudes and consensus, I thought I might just skip this one. It doesn't really seem to relate. Actually, this has always been the most difficult one for me to understand in any context.

So I again look to Clarence Jordan who says that "we must be really grieved that things are the way they are." We must be "concerned to the point of action."

This makes a lot of sense. And it relates to consensus. I actually think that this congregation is putting so much energy into learning and using the consensus process because we are so grieved about the way decisions have been made in the past.
I was not here when the congregation decided to become a member of the Supportive Congregations Network-a group of churches that are open and affirming of gays and lesbians. But I have been around long enough to witness the grief many of you still carry, not about the decision itself, but about the way the decision was made. The consensus process was not implemented well and many people were hurt.

I was here when the congregation had a conflict over the contract of our previous pastor. I saw and was part of that particular break-down of consensus. People came to meetings with pre-set agendas. Problems with the pastor were whispered about behind her back but not openly discussed with her. There was a whole lot of talking and not a lot of listening. It was a painful time.

We are grieved that things are the way they are-we mourn. And it is this mourning that motivates us to action.

Then Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek." Now the quality of meekness translates quite easily into the practice of consensus. The meek are those who deal gently with others. The meek are those who, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggests, renounce their own personal rights. And linking this term to Bonhoeffer, and to Jesus himself, should prevent us from falsely equating "meek" and "weak." If these two men had been weak , the ruling governments would not have executed them.

The meek are those who have power, but choose not to use it in abusive ways. And so, when we work toward consensus, I don't try to push through my agenda just because I'm the pastor. Really, I shouldn't even have an agenda to push. Those who can talk long and loud and well sit silent and listen. Those with money don't offer it with conditions. When we think of a way to cut down someone who disagrees with us, we don't do it.

Jesus' next statement is: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." Part of the reason we do not exercise our power abusively is because we long to be in right relationship with God and with each other.

Still, I think sometimes that this is the beatitude we are most likely to neglect when we work at consensus-building. We want everyone to agree and get along. So the temptation is to take the easy way instead of the right way.

Ken Sande of Peacemaker Ministries says that "peacemaking is not peace faking." (There's a bumber sticker for you.) "Often," he says, "a peacemaker is the one who says 'Let's stop covering up. Let's deal with this.'" Because we want things to be right-we want righteousness, not just smiley happy people.

Then, "Blessed are the merciful." We know mercy includes compassion and forgiveness. What I did not know until recently is that in Jesus' context it likely had an additional meaning of almsgiving. Being merciful meant tangibly helping those in need.

Or, as Clarence Jordan puts it, the merciful are "those who have an attitude of such compassion toward all [people] that they want to share gladly all that they have with one another and with the world."

I think this sharing is intended to extend beyond just money and material possessions. Shouldn't we also share our time? Our ideas? Our power? This is the type of sharing that true consensus is built on.

Blessed are the pure in heart. Soren Kierkegaard wrote a book titled Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing . It's a rather awkward title, but an insightful book. Kierkegaard is concerned with the integrity of the individual, which is, of course, important. And I think his basic concept relates to community as well.

For a church to be pure of heart means for the church community to will one thing. And that is at the heart of consensus. When we come together to make a decision, we must always be prayerfully aware that we all, ultimately, want the same thing.

We want to do the will of God--to bring forth the peace and justice that God desires for all. We might have different ideas about what that means. We might have different ideas about how to do it. But if we realize that we want the same thing, we will be more ready to listen and less eager to take sides.

Blessed are the peacemakers. This is a principle that this community takes to heart. Peace is part of our name, a key to our identity. Our mission statement says that we are committed to ``shalom''-the Hebrew word for peace. The concept inherent in Jesus' statement here. Not just peace in the sense of calm, but peace in the sense of wholeness for all people and all of creation.

We are committed to working toward this peace in our world; we hold peace witnesses and write letters against the Iraq war, we work with Habitat for Humanity and Link, we send relief kits through MCC and provide snacks for military veterans.

I was saddened this week to hear John McCain continue to urge more aggressive military action in Iraq. He declared that we must ``give victory a chance.'' This is frightening rhetoric to those of us who prefer peace-true shalom-to any victory, even our own.

We can look at Iraq and say that we prefer peace to victory. Can we look at our personal conflicts and say the same thing? I think this is at the heart of consensus-building. Can we let go of the need to be the one who is heard? The one who is right? Can we let go of the need to win? When we can let go of these things, we can make peace.

Trying to live by these beatitudes can be overwhelming. These traits that we need to build consensus are not easy to come by, especially not in our competitive culture. Yet, the more I study consensus-building and the more I think about it theologically and biblically, the more convinced I am that it is the ideal for decision-making in a Christian community--particularly a Mennonite community. Consensus flows from the core of Jesus' teaching.

And as we work towards the ideals presented by Jesus in the Beatitudes, we can be encouraged by the grammatical structure. Really. Because Jesus doesn't put forth a list of "shoulds": "You should be poor in spirit. You should mourn . . . "

He simply states the reality. Those who learn to live with each other in these Godly ways are blessed.

And we in this community are blessed in so many ways. And God will continue to bless our efforts to follow Jesus as best we can; our efforts to follow him even in the ways that we talk together and make decisions.

The Parables.rtf

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 06:37:39 GMT

The Parables: Reading God's Mind
A reading for four at Peace Mennonite Church, September 2005
Bible Background
Roger : The book of Matthew talks again and again about the ``kingdom of Heaven.'' The first reference to the ``kingdom'' comes not from Jesus but John, the famous baptizer, in Matthew 3:

Steve : In due course John the Baptist appeared; he proclaimed this message in the desert of Judaea, ^` Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.'

Roger : After John was arrested by the authorities, Jesus withdrew to Gallilee. But he continued to promote the same message.

Steve : From then onwards Jesus began his proclamation with the message, 'Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.'

Roger : Jesus described the kingdom to those who would listen to him through stories called parables. Here, in an abridged version of Matthew 13: 10-16, Jesus tells why he speaks this way.

Steve : . . . The disciples went up to him and asked, 'Why do you talk to them in parables?' In answer, he said, 'Because to you it is granted to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven , but to them it is not granted. . . . The reason I talk to them in parables is that they look without seeing and listen without hearing or understanding. . . .

But blessed are your eyes because they see, your ears because they hear! In truth I tell you, many prophets and upright people longed to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.

Roger : If you're like me, it's hard to wrap your mind around that. Why would Jesus make things hard for those who already have trouble paying attention? I mean maybe they had attention-deficit disorder. Maybe all they needed was Ritalin. But God is a mystery and the world is a mystery and people are a mystery. And for some of us, the whole thing is more of a mystery than it is for others.

Barbara : A 17 ^th century mathematician and physicist named Blaise Pascal said this: We understand nothing of the works of God if we do not take as a principle that he has willed to blind some, and enlighten others.
Hymn 315: This Is a Story Full of Love

Parable Nuts and Bolts
Roger : Amid all the mystery, at least a few things about parables are certain . Sort of.
Anne : There are none in the gospel of John. Matthew, Mark and Luke share three in common, including the famous one about the mustard seed. How many are there in all? That's less certain. One source says 33, another says 40.
Roger : At least we can define a parable. Kind of.
Barbara : Sometimes it's a short story with a double meaning. Sometimes it's a riddle. A parable is like a question without a question mark behind it. In some people's minds, ``speaking in parables'' suggests obscurity. A theologian named Walter Wink compared parables to `` tiny lumps of coal squeezed into diamonds . . . metaphors that catch the rays of something ultimate and glint it at our lives.''
Roger : Some have a brighter glint than others. Here's one from Matthew 13. It's among the most familiar to Christians, and its familiarity makes it comfortable to be around, like an old friend.
Anne : The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air can come and shelter in its branches.
Roger : What's a mustard seed? How come they don't put those in with the mustard? Or maybe they do, but they're so tiny we don't notice them? Here's another friendly parable, one that seems pretty clear right away.
Steve : The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls; when he finds one of great value he goes and sells everything he owns and buys it.
Roger : And here's another that's a lot like that one but with just a touch more mystery in it to some minds.
Barbara : The kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone has found; he hides it again, goes off in his joy, sells everything he owns and buys the field.
Roger : How is this one different? The word ``hide'' suggests something a little secretive, something that has to be concealed maybe from others. Some people might read that and ask, ``So what do ownership and property rights have to do with the kingdom of Heaven? Isn't there enough kingdom to go around?''
Steve : Others read it and say, ``Well, the person has found something remarkable and life-changing and she wants to own it so much she'll give up everything to do so. What's wrong with zeal?'' Sometimes the problem with parables isn't that they're obscure but that they are too rich with possible meanings.
Hymn 499: Lord, Speak to Me
What Writers Have Said
Roger : Walter Wink says that parables force you to ponder. In his words:
Barbara : To hear a parable . . . is to submit oneself to entering its world, to make oneself vulnerable, to know that we do not know at the outset what it means. Parables function much as the Zen koan, or the tales of the dervishes, to tease the mind out of familiar channels. . . . Parables have hooks all over them; they can grab each of us in a different way, according to our needs.
Roger : Harvard theologian Harvey Cox thinks that being baffled by a parable isn't so bad. In fact, becoming mature means realizing that life isn't as tidy as a movie or book. Cox says this:
Anne : Perplexity and confusion are not always obstacles to learning. . . . Growing up means learning to live with unsatisfying and incomplete endings. The parables remain vivid because they refuse to cater to our craving for tidy completion.
Roger : Another way to think about parables is that they're like a good Web site interactive. Listen to William Sloane Coffin writing in his book The Heart Is a Little to the Left .
Steve : It is a mistake to look to the Bible to close a discussion; the Bible seeks to open one. God leads with a light rein, giving us our head. Jesus spoke in parables because these stories have a way of shifting responsibility from the narrator to the hearer.
Roger : Not that this is a small responsibility. We humans of the 21 ^st century tend to be a literal-minded bunch. We trust numbers, we want to quantify everything, we want people to get to the point and not beat around the bush or the shrub or the tree. You know what I'm sayin'? We don't trust poetry or the tricks poets use, like simile, metaphor, personification. Writer Kathleen Norris makes these points in her book The Cloister Walk . She writes:

Barbara : If you're looking for a belief in the power of words to change things . . . you're better off with poets these days than with Christians. It's ironic, because the scriptures of the Christian canon are full of strange metaphors that create their own realitythe `blood of the Lamb, the `throne of grace,' the `sword of the Spirit'and among the names for Jesus himself are `the Word' and the `Way.'

Poets believe in metaphor, and that alone sets them apart from many Christians. . . . As [a] pastor . . . once said in a sermon, many Christians can no longer recognize that the most significant part of the first line of `Onward Christians Soldiers, marching as to war' is the word `as.'
Roger and Barbara : ``Onward Christian soldiers, marching AS to war. . . ``
Hymn 61 (Sing & Rejoice!): Jesus Walked the Lonesome Valley
Going to the Chapel
Roger : But the bottom line is this: Not all parables are brain-busters. Some are just good stories filled with surprises that make our jaws drop. Harvey Cox says he likes the parable of the good Samaritan because it contains the surprise of an improbable character showing mercy. Then he thinks of another of his favorites. He says this:
Anne : I also like the King's Banquet, when none of the invitees show up, so unsuspecting passersby are pulled in. That's life!
Roger : Here's that parable.
Steve : The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son's wedding. He sent his servants to call those who had been invited, but they would not come. Next he sent some more servants with the words, "Tell those who have been invited: Look, my banquet is all prepared, my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, everything is ready. Come to the wedding."
Anne : But they were not interested: one went off to his farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his servants, maltreated them and killed them. The king was furious. He dispatched his troops, destroyed those murderers and burnt their town.
Barbara : Then he said to his servants, "The wedding is ready; but as those who were invited proved to be unworthy, go to the main crossroads and invite everyone you can find to come to the wedding."
Steve : So these servants went out onto the roads and collected together everyone they could find, bad and good alike; and the wedding hall was filled with guests. When the king came in to look at the guests he noticed one man who was not wearing a wedding garment, and said to him,
Roger : "How did you get in here, my friend, without a wedding garment?"
Anne : And the man was silent. Then the king said to the attendants, "Bind him hand and foot and throw him into the darkness outside, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth." For many are invited but not all are chosen.'
Hymn: Wedding Banquet (handout)
Conclusion
Roger : You got all that? Listen to the first line again: ``The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son's wedding.'' Now think of all that follows. Does it seem as chaotic to you as it does to me? How is all this stuff about a king's servants getting murdered and then strangers being invited to the party and then one of them being thrown out into the darkness, bound hand and foot, comparable to the kingdom of Heaven? Don't ask me.
Steve : Even if you don't ask him, do ask yourself. A parable is a riddle sitting there waiting, generation after generation, for Christians to decode.
Anne : In the end, we don't really judge the parables. In fact, they test us. They take a measure of our willingness to engage with the mind of God.
Barbara : And they tell us something about our capacity for bearing up under the mystery of living in God's mysterious world.
Hymn: I Love to Tell the Story (handout)

Anabaptists and Discipleship--Joanna Harader.rtf

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:50:08 GMT

Anabaptist Distinctives: Discipleship
Matt. 4:18-22; Mk 2:13-14; Lk 9:57-62; Matt. 16:24-25
July 22, 2007
Joanna Harader

This summer, we are exploring some different elements of our Anabaptist Mennonite tradition. The focus this week is on discipleship, which is often sited as one of the three Anabaptist distinctives.

I have a feeling that of the three distinctives, this is the one most likely to put other Christians on the defensive. They might give us peace and community without much fuss. But discipleship? Who are we Mennonites to lay claim to discipleship as "distinctive" of our particular expression of Christianity?

Yes. Other denominations will fight us on this one. And that's good. I hope all Christians consider themselves disciples--followers--of Jesus.

But to claim discipleship as a Mennonite distinctive is not to say that we are the only ones practicing it. It is to say that historically--and hopefully today--the struggle to fully follow Jesus is at the heart of who we are as individuals and communities.

And that's a fair statement. We have the quotes to prove it. Menno Simons said, "Those who claim to be a Christian must live as Christ lived." Hans Denck, another early Anabaptist, said, somewhat enigmatically, "The medium is Christ whom no one can know unless they follow him and no one can follow him unless they know him."

And we have the history to prove it. The popular sentiment in the 16th Century had become that the demands of Jesus were too hard for most people. Surely he didn't really mean for everyone to love their enemies, feed the hungry, and all of those other bothersome things Jesus told people to do. No. Following Jesus was too hard for your average citizen. The monastics were the only ones who really had to live as Jesus said.

So when everyday people started actually trying to follow the way of Jesus, it aroused suspicion. To be fair, the early Anabaptists were certainly not the only ones claiming that the teachings of Christ extended beyond the "professional" clergy. But they must have been pretty good at living out this claim. Because people were sometimes accused of being an Anabaptist just because they led a ``clean'' moral life.

Luckily, most Christians, I think it's fair to say, have moved away from this notion that only us ``professional'' religious folk should live decent lives. Most churches like to talk about discipleship. The Christian bookstores like to sell you things with WWJD-standing for ``What would Jesus do?''-emblazoned on them. You can buy bracelets, coffee mugs, mouse pads, T-shirts, thong underwear, all reminding you to think about what Jesus would do before you act.

Surely this is the central point of discipleship: to live our lives the way Jesus would live. I think, at it's core, the question posed by the WWJD paraphernalia is a good one. But condensing the hard task of discipleship into four simple letters seems to over-simplify the demands of discipleship. The question itself is complex, and different people answer it in different ways.

What would Jesus do? Would Jesus drink only fair trade coffee out of his WWJD mug? What web links would he click on while moving his mouse around on the mouse pad? Would Jesus even buy the WWJD merchandise at the Christian bookstore? Or would he be turning over the tables?

We need to take a hard look at what it means to follow Jesus. It is a complex issue, and certainly a divisive issue within the church. One thing I have learned about our Anabaptist forebears is how they dealt with difficult, complex questions. Without fail, century after century, the Anabaptists have turned to the scriptures--particularly the life and teachings of Jesus-- to guide their thinking and their acting in the face of disagreement and confusion.

And that is what we can do-or at least start to do-this morning. The scripture reading was compiled from four different passages. It pretty much represents the scope of what Jesus says about being disciples.

He says to follow him. Drop what you're doing right now. Leave your career. Leave your family. Let your dad bury himself. And, by the way, it's going to be uncomfortable, possibly deadly.

I was talking with someone earlier this summer who had read through the gospel of Matthew and was surprised to find that Jesus came off as pretty harsh. Sometimes he just wasn't nice to people.

He certainly does give some harsh responses to people who say they want to follow him but aren't prepared to actually do it. Jesus probably sounds harshest in our readings when he tells a man who wants to bury his father to ``let the dead bury their own dead.''

It is harsh. But I should tell you it's probably not as harsh as it sounds. The guy's dad was probably alive and well. The son wanted to fulfill his duty to care for his aging parent-not a bad thing-before he began to follow Jesus.

The thread that runs through all of these passages that we read today-in fact all of the gospel passages I looked at relating to discipleship-is that Jesus calls people to abandon the lives they know for life with him. Following Jesus is not an add-on to an already satisfactory life. It's not a neon pink WWJD bracelet put on your wrist before you walk out the door.

The early Anabaptists knew-discipleship is a radically new, different, frequently dangerous life. It requires leaving your old life behind, not just mixing some Christianity into what you've already got going.

This is a hard concept in our ``all of the above'' society. North Americans, in general, have an unbelievable sense of entitlement. We deserve, certainly, to have all of the stuff we want. A friend told me once that his dad had an entire storage space rented just for his clothes. Clothes he never wore but wouldn't get rid of.

In addition to having all of our stuff, we also want to do everything we want to do. And yes, I realize I'm talking about myself here. We want the degrees, the careers, and the families. We want to be fit, smart, involved. Do we give up one activity to do another? No, we multi-task .

We are told over and over again by our culture that we are entitled to have everything we want and do everything we want. No sacrifices are needed. It seems like every week in the check-out line at the grocery store there is at least one magazine cover article with a title like: ``Eat everything you want and still loose weight.'' And I'm sure plenty of people buy the magazine and read the article while getting the pizza on the table and talking on the phone.

`` Come follow me,'' Jesus said. And immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

How hard it is to leave, to loose, the lives we know.

It's particularly difficult because we do not fully understand the new life before we are asked to give up the old.

The Greek word for ``disciple'' also means ``apprentice.'' Following Jesus is a process. We learn as we go. That's another problem I have with the WWJD fad. The assumption is that if we know what Jesus would do, we can do what Jesus would do. As Socrates put it, ``to know the good is to do the good.''

I'm not so sure. Imagine that Matt, our very own master carpenter, took me under his wing and told me, even showed me, everything I needed to do to make a cabinet. Then he gave me the wood and the tools and let me have at it. I might know perfectly well what Matt would do with a hammer and a saw. That doesn't mean I could do it. Not without a lot of guidance and a lot of practice. And even then I probably wouldn't do it as well as Matt.

We can know Jesus would love his enemies. We can know Jesus would not worry about tomorrow. We can know Jesus would risk his own life to confront oppressive religious and political forces. But doing these things takes study and practice. It is a lifetime struggle.

And so we come back to Hans Denck's affirmation: "The medium is Christ whom no one can know unless they follow him and no one can follow him unless they know him." The knowing and the following are intertwined. It is a process.

Biblical scholar and pastor Eugene Peterson, borrowing from Nietzche, calls discipleship ``A long obedience in the same direction.'' And, he says, our ``instant society'' has little patience for real discipleship.

I love this description of discipleship: a long obedience in the same direction. We may leave our nets immediately, but actually learning to live like Christ takes time. One thing that always comforts me when I read the gospels is just how much the disciples screw up.

But they stick with Jesus. They follow him. They learn from him. And, eventually, they get it. Not perfectly. Not all of the time. But they basically get what it means to be a disciple. At least enough to get themselves killed.

For the earliest Anabaptists, following Jesus-as they came to know him-often meant leaving their old lives behind quite literally. Some were estranged from their families. Many were exiled from their homelands. Some were executed.

What does it mean for us, today, to decide to follow Jesus? In what ways must we leave our old lives behind?

There are the dramatic examples. Christian Peacemaker Team members who leave their homes and risk their lives. Missionaries who literally sell all of their possessions and move to a foreign land. Those called "new monastics" who sacrifice privacy and a certain amount of independence to live in intentional Christian communities. People who adopt high needs children.

Is leaving our old lives behind necessarily so dramatic, so sudden? We know of the disciples who left their nets immediately and followed him. Were there others whose turning toward Jesus was more gradual? Did the guy who wanted to bury his dad go home that day disappointed yet wondering. Did he continue to hang out in the back of the crowds, listening and watching. Did he, eventually, leave his old life behind for the life he was coming to know as he took the first tentative steps of following Jesus?

I know of people who only work part time and live on a small income so they have more time for God and their neighbor. I know of religious leaders who have endured heresy trials, lost teaching positions, and seen their congregations dwindle.

I know of those who, in a culture of debt, live below their means and give generously to others. I know of those who, in a culture of over-consumption, work to use as little of the earth's resources as possible. I know of those who, in this boisterous world, choose to listen before they speak.

`` Come,'' says Jesus, ``follow me.''

It is a call I believe we should take more seriously than we usually do. A call that we should realize must, ultimately, lead to us abandoning our old lives. And however many theological quibbles I might have with the ancestors of my Mennonite faith, I look to them as examples of discipleship.

Wouldn't it be great if today people were again accused of being Mennonite because they lived good lives. Because they fed the hungry, clothed the naked, cared for the earth, shared abundantly.

We who claim to be Christians must indeed live as Christ lived.

Anabaptists and Communion--Joanna Harader.rtf

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:50:33 GMT

Anabaptist Tradition: Lord's Supper
I Corinthians 11:20-34
Is There Room at the Table?
August 5, 2007
Joanna Harader

It was New Year's day, barely. My brother, our friends Jennifer and Kristin, and I had just-don't ask me why-run outside barefoot banging pots and pans. In the snow. And screaming at the top of our lungs.

I suppose that after this bit of craziness I began to consider whether this was how I wanted to begin 1987. Wasn't there something more dignified, more meaningful, that we could do to bring in the new year?

Of course there was. We could have communion. We could acknowledge the presence of God with us as we faced the unknowns of another year.

The adults were doing their own thing. So we four kids headed to the kitchen. We found some saltines. No grape juice, but there was Sprite. And Dixie cups.

I did not have any kind of a developed theology of Communion. We probably butchered the words of institution. And I'm not sure Sprite can legitimately represent the blood of our savior. I suppose we were as solemn as pre-teens can be at 12:30 a.m. sitting on the floor with Dixie cups-which is not very.

Yet I remember it as a sacred moment.

I'd love to have a painting titled ``Communion.'' Four kids sitting criss-crosss applesauce, crackers to their lips, Dixie cups raised.

Of course, the picture you usually see is titled ``Last Supper'' and features thirteen guys sitting behind a long table-which I always thought would be an awkward way to eat a meal.

In a lot of the older pictures these guys have halos, with, in many cases, one halo conspicuously missing.

I think this formal meal of haloed disciples must be the picture of the Lord's Supper that the early Anabaptists most had in mind. They took Paul's teaching about not eating the meal in an unworthy fashion quite seriously.

They also understood that to offer someone communion was to include them in the church; and the church, the body of Christ, was to be spotless and pure. As it says in Ephesians (5), the church should be a ``radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.''

To that end, many Anabaptist communities became quite particular about who could and could not take communion with them.

In 1740 a Dutch Mennonite named Cornelius moved to the town of Danzig. Now Cornelius was a stylish man, and in the style that was, apparently, hip among Dutch Mennonites in 1740, Cornelius wore a wig. The Mennonites of Danzig did not wear wigs. In fact, they decided that wearing a wig was a sure sign of worldliness and pride. The pastor of the church refused to serve communion to Cornelius.

In fact, a whole hoopla arose over whether or not people wearing wigs could eat the bread and drink the wine. The elder of the church, at one point, was put on house arrest.

Now there's a picture for you. The one holding the food doing a toupee-check before handing over the bread.

Now, Paul warns that those who take the Supper in an ``unworthy'' manner are guilty of sinning against the body and blood of Christ. We may have different ideas today about what makes someone ``unworthy'' of partaking of the Lord's Supper. I haven't heard of anyone recently refusing communion to someone wearing a wig. No toupee checks at the altar.

But while we disagree with the particulars, we can't ignore the principle. The scripture admonishes us to commemorate the death of our Savior in a worthy manner.

As the early Anabaptists saw it, the Catholics and the followers of Luther and Zwingli did not adhere closely enough to scripture. They allowed anyone to join in communion with the church-much to the financial gain of the church institution and often the state. Unrepentant sinners-thieves, drunkards, abusers-were admitted to the table of the Lord without question.

This practice seemed to grossly neglect the teaching of scripture. The Anabaptists sought to be an alternative community, an example of the Kingdom of God on earth. Surely this meant that they should be careful who was part of the community-the body of Christ. And offering communion to someone was a sign of that person's inclusion in the body.

There is something to be said for having standards. As the church, we are an example of the Kingdom. Do you realize that when you take communion you declare yourself to be part of the church-the living example of God's reign on earth? People look to us, as the church, to see what God is like, to watch Christ in action. When you take the body, you claim to be part of the body.

But before we all go home and leave this wonderful homemade bread untouched, let's flip the coin over.

In some ways, the Anabaptists had a good, scriptural idea about the purity of the church. And they were reacting against clear abuses that were happening in the state church. But their tendency to exclude people from communion did cause problems.

The elder at the Danzig church who refused Cornelius communion was placed under house arrest, and thus ensued a long and painful chapter in that church's history.

It seems like a fairly minor thing to not allow someone to share in the Lord's Supper. I mean, it's not like we serve enough bread to fill a hungry tummy or enough juice to quench a thirst.

And the Anabaptists, theologically, do not believe that the elements themselves impart grace. Taking the Lord's Supper is a symbol of the grace that God imparts on the Christian community. The grace itself is there with or without the bread and wine.

But the meal is the ultimate sign of inclusion in the church. And to be excluded from the community is painful indeed.

My mom shared with you last week about some of her struggles as a woman in ministry. I remember one time when she was feeling particularly beat down by the discrimination against her. She went on a retreat to a monastery, and as is the Catholic practice, she was not allowed to fully participate in the Lord's Supper.

At a time when she was already feeling attacked and rejected by some within the church, this exclusion from the table was incredibly painful for her.

It does matter who we invite to the table. And I follow firmly in the Anabaptist tradition when I say that we should make up our invitation lists based on biblical teachings.

One thing that interests me about the history of Anabaptists is that, while we generally privilege the teachings of Jesus over other teachings in the Bible, our Anabaptist forebears seem to have ignored Jesus and held up Paul when it came to decisions about the Lord's Supper.

Now frankly I think people have misread Paul on this point for centuries. I won't go into the details right now, because some of you have already heard that sermon.

But when we look at the life of Jesus, there can hardly be any question who he would invite to the table. He was accused of eating with tax collectors and prostitutes-sinners of the worst kind. We like to think that everyone who dined with Jesus immediately left their lives of sin and turned their energies to running soup kitchens, but probably not.

I think most of the paintings we see of the Last Supper get it wrong. Probably historically wrong. Certainly theologically wrong.

Jesus is long-faced, serving dainty portions of bread to haloed disciples. But based on other stories of Jesus' eating habits, I think we should add some people to the picture. Certainly some women. And some kids. Maybe a beggar or two off of the street. A couple of the blind people he had healed.

And everyone there would have bread and wine from the hands of Jesus himself.

Despite the heaviness of death that hung over the meal, there would be a sense of deep joy, an edge of peace in the chaos.

It might look something like the meal Michelle Hovey, a Mennonite professor, was part of recently when she visited the war-ravaged country of Liberia. She writes of sharing the communion table at Monrovia United Methodist Church with the poor and the rich; with the young and old; with those whose hands had been cut off and those who had cut off the hands of others; with those who had been raped and those who had committed rape.

It is a rather grotesque picture, really-those with dead limbs, dead hearts, dead spirits coming together to eat the body, drink the blood of a resurrected execution victim.

The composition of this painting might not be especially balanced. And some of the colors will no doubt clash with each other. I suspect there won't be many halos.

But isn't this a picture of the Kingdom? A table set for any who would come.

It is a heretical picture of a meal served by one soon to be executed for heresy.

I think it only fitting that when we eat this meal in remembrance of Christ, we include all of those that Christ would include.

Parable of the Banquet--Joanna Harader.rtf

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:51:16 GMT

September 2, 2007
Guests at the Banquet
Matthew 22:1-14
Joanna Harader

We have listened this morning to a familiar parable, often called the parable of the great banquet. This is the first of a number of parables we will look at this fall; I chose it for this morning because, like the people in the story, we have come together around the table. Communion Sunday and LINK Sunday seems an appropriate time to talk about banquets.

The traditional interpretation of this parable is pretty straight forward. God is the host. God is always the host, or the landowner, or whoever has power in the story. The first invited guests are the Jewish people. Since they refused God's invitation to salvationgiven through JesusGod has invited the less desirables into the Kingdom. That would be most of usthe Gentiles.

I like this interpretation to the extent that it presents the Kingdom of God as inclusive of all types of peopleand particularly inclusive of the poor and oppressed. But beyond that, there are some serious problems with the traditional view of the parable.

I read a story recently. I can't vouch for it's accuracy, but it seems true enough. One Sunday morning, all of the children were gathered around the pastor at the front of the sanctuary for children's time. The paster, in an effort to creatively engage the children, said, ``Imagine! On my way to church this morning I something amazing. A little brown thing with a bushy tail, very fast. It ran up a tree. Can you guess what it was?'' One little boy piped up, ``Well, normally I would say it was a squirrel. But the way things go around here, it must have been the Lord Jesus.'' Luise Schottroff. The Parables of Jesus, p. 102.

This child recognized that sometimes the church's metaphors for the divine become ridiculous. And I would argue that presenting a squirrel as the Lord Jesus is not necessarily more ridiculous than equating God with the host in this parable.

Metaphors are utterly dependent on context, and in the context of our story, Jesus has just said to his dinner companions, ``When you give a meal, don't invite your friends and family, do not call your rich neighbors.''

And what does our host do? He invites his friends, his rich neighbors. We can tell by their excuses that the invited guests are of a relatively high social status just like the host.

Does it make sense that the character representing God would be doing something that Jesus just told people not to do?

In arguing against the idea of host as God, biblical scholar Luise Schottroff tells the story of the toll collector's son from the Talmud: A poor man died and the proper honor was not given to him. Soon after, the son of the toll collectora rich mandied and he received great honor. A friend of the poor man complained saying that the poor man had committed only one sin, and that involved a minor infraction of ceremony, which hardly counted as a sin. But the rich man, the one everyone honored, had only done one good thing. His good deed was that once he had prepared a meal for the city rulers, and when they did not come to eat, the man gave orders for the food to go to the poor so it would not be wasted. This, according to the Talmud, barely even counts as a good deed.

I would like to think that our God does not invite the poor to the banquet just to spite those wealthy who refuse to come. But that God invites the poor out of love and joy. That God does not shut the door to those who refuse the first invitation, but continually invites and re-invites us all to a banquet hall where the doors are always open.

But I think most of us have been trained to read the parables as allegories. Surely Jesus wasn't just talking about regular folk. Someone has to ``be'' God, and someone the ``wicked people'' and someone the ``good people.''

What do we do with parables in general, if the power figure is not representative of God? What do we do with this parable in particular, if the host is not God? What message is Jesus trying to convey if this is just a story about a spiteful host and some lucky street people?

Maybe this one is a little too easy. Because I think Jesus tells people what he wants them to know before he tells the story. We often do this with our children. ``You need to stop lying. Haven't you ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf? Well, once there was this boy . . . ``

Jesus says, ``When you have a nice meal (like the one we're eating here together), be sure you don't just invite people who can return the favor. You should invite the poor, the lame, the blind. Haven't you ever heard the story of the host who only invited his rich friends? Well, once there was a man who gave a great banquet . . . ''

If the host represents anyone, he represents those of us with the means to host a banquet. And Jesus is not telling us to set up soup kitchens or food banks. Those are good things, but not what this story is about. In this story, Jesus is telling us that the poor, the lame, the outcasts, should be our friends. We should eat with them, not just give them food.

In the end, says Jesus, you'll be eating with them anyway. You might as well start now.

The spiteful host is not God, but it might be us. And if the first-invited guests represent anyone, I don't think it is the Jewish people, I think it is us again. Those of us who can afford farms and oxen and weddings.

New Testament scholar Fred Craddock points out that all of the excuses given in this story would have been considered legitimate reasons for canceling a dinner engagement. These are not ``the dog ate my homework'' kinds of excuses.

It was important for upper class people to acquire property, engage in commerce and solidify social ties through marriage. And it is precisely these obligations that prevented them from enjoying the meal their friend had prepared for them.

I am glad to say that our friends did not have give excuses last weekend when Grace had a birthday party. Almost everyone we invited came. That was a great feeling. It felt like we had friends, that we were loved. And we had a great time!

I know we would have felt really sad and rejected if nobody had comeif it had been just our family, some balloons, and two Elmo cakes.

There is a graciousness in giving the invitation, and there is also a graciousness in accepting the invitation.

In this passage, I don't think Jesus is talking about God and heaven and the Jews and the Gentiles. I think Jesus is actually talking about what he's talking about--giving invitations and accepting them. How our attempts at respectability can get in the way of both. As the first-invited demonstrate, being socially respectable takes a significant amount of time and energy. And sometimes we are tempted to prioritize social and economic obligations over opportunities for true relationship.

Now, I'm not saying that the meaning of this parable is to watch out for social obligations. Or that you should never refuse a dinner invitation. But I think those messages are there as part of the story; they are there for those who need to hear them.

The beauty of Jesus' parables is that they meet us where we are. We might be the host. We might be the first-invited. We might be the poor off of the street. But wherever we find ourselves in the story, we can be sure of the good news: there is a party, andone way or anotherwe're all invited!

Count it All Joy--Rebecca Barrett-Fox.rtf

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:51:24 GMT

Rebecca Barrett-Fox

Job 2
¹ On another day the angels ^[ ^] came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him. ² And the LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"
Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."
³ Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason."
⁴ "Skin for skin!" Satan replied. "A man will give all he has for his own life. ⁵ But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face."
⁶ The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life."
⁷ So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. ⁸ Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.
⁹ His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!"
¹⁰ He replied, "You are talking like a foolish ^[ ^] woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?"
In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.

James 1
² Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. ⁴ Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
¹³ When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; ¹⁴ but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. ¹⁵ Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
¹⁶ Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. ¹⁷ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ¹⁸ He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

Ephesians 20

¹⁵ Be very careful, then, how you livenot as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶ making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. ¹⁷ Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. ¹⁸ Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. ¹⁹ Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, ²⁰ always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

         Inspired by movies like Crash and Babel and the novels of Thomas Pyncheon, I have organized this sermon into several apparently unrelated parts: two personal stories, two sets of facts, and a textual analysis of our Bible passages. The goal is that, at the end, I'll be able to join these disparate parts into a meaningful whole. But we'll see…

Story #1: My mother was a good mother, which I know because she insisted on adding vegetables to otherwise entirely palatable foods. I recall one instance in particular when she ruined one of my favorite mealsManwich Sandwichesby adding julienned carrots. I adored everything about these greasy, orange sloppy messes. Right in the middle of my sloppy joe, there was a crunchy, hard, bright orange carrot. I immediately gagged, spit out the food, and insisted that I would STARVE before I ate another bite. The alternativethe option that I tookwas to pick out each carrot sliver. The problem wasn't that I was a picky eater, because I wasn't. And I actually LIKED carrot sticks. The problem was that, like many kids, I didn't particularly care for foods mixed together. Even so, I ate casseroles, soups, stews, and all kinds of Tuna Helper, but I didn't want the integrity of my sloppy joe ruined by carrot slivers. My mother had not only messed up one of my favorite meals, but she had insulted me by suggesting that I was too stupid to notice carrots inserted into the smooth greasiness of my sandwich.
         While I was busy telling my mother how insulted I was by her trickery, my sister, two years younger, was silently eating her sandwich, demurely swallowing every bite, carrots and all. When my mother told me to go ahead and starve, I turned to my sister and asked her, accusingly, why she was not joining in my protest. ``How can you eat this garbage?'' I complained, picking out the carrots.
         And this was her response: ``I just pretend that I'm a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp, and I think, I'm so happy to eat this.''
         If you do not yet see why my sister is utterly detestable, I will explain further.
         Year after year, she insisted we give our family Christmas money from my grandparents to support a starving orphan in Africa . For this reason, we were the last family on earth to buy a VCR, which was the gift that my brother and I begged for.
         If given a quarter to buy a piece of candy from the vending machine at the grocery store exit, my sister would consistently put it into the Make-a-Wish foundation's quarter chart for kids with leukemia. She always did this after I had bought a ridiculously large jawbreaker, so I felt like a fool slobbering over my candy while she looked like a saint.
         She was happy to shop at the Goodwill, while I complained, because, as she explained, ``just imagine how those poor Cherokee children on the Trail of Tears felt when they had no shoes in the middle of winter and they had to march all across America in bare feet.''
         Worst of all, at Christmas, she insisted that us three kids take turns opening one present at a time and, after each present was opening, reciting one reason why we were thankful for it. This especially irritated my mother, who was forced to make sure that each of us had the exact same number of presents for this event so that no one was left with no presents to open while the other two siblings kept on unwrapping. Waiting to unwrap presents was particularly hard for my brother, the youngest of us, but he and I did it, year after year, not because we liked this tradition, because the truth was, like any normal children, we hated stopping to reflect on our many Christmas blessings. Instead, we took turns each year because it meant so much to my sister.
There were simply not enough tragedies in the world to allow her to be as good as she wanted to be. Disasters of every sort captured her attention and motivated her to saintly behavior, and it was all sincere. Give her a good book about a historical disasterslavery, the Holocaust, and man made disasters like the Johnstown floodand she was the happiest sad girl in the world, floating morbidly on thoughts of how she might respond heroically to such tragedy.
         Do not think that my distaste for my sister is jealousy, though that is part of it. As some of you know, I like being good, and I especially liked it as a childand I didn't mind suffering for it. The difference between my sister and I is that her suffering required us all to suffer. It wasn't enough that she wanted to spend her Thanksgiving serving the homelessdespite the fact that we lived in a rural community where there were, literally, no homeless shelters at which to serve donated turkeys; she required us all to serve or to feel horrid about our failure to serve. Every grace she said went into such great detail about the hunger and thirst of those without that, by the time we opened our eyes, we had no appetite left and, even if we had, we were too guilt-ridden at the wealth represented by another meal of Tuna Helper to possibly eat it. If my sister had her way, we would have immediately shipped the leftovers to India to feed street children. I consistently wished that she herself would just go over there and live among the poor like she seemed so much to want to do.
         Not surprisingly, my sister grew up to be a social worker.

Fact #1: [Use map and comparison chart]: The people of the nation of Vanuatu, a chain of islands in the Pacific, are the happiest people on earth according to the Happy Planet Index, a measure of human progress created by the New Economics Foundation and Friends of the Earth. The Happy Planet Index weighs three areas in determining its rankings: life satisfaction, life expectancy, and ecological sustainability. Colombia ranks second. Costa Rica is third, Dominica is fourth, and Panama is fifth. That's rightfour of the top five are former colonies located in south or central America or the Caribbean. The highest ranking European nation is Austria, which is ranked 61^st. The United States ranked 150^th out of 178 nations ranked. Vanuatu wins because the life expectancy is nearly as high as it is in Western nations. Additionally, Vanuatu has strong democratic traditions and a commitment to the preservation of natural resources. Not surprisingly, the citizens of the nation reported high levels of satisfaction with their lives. Jay Walljasper, ``The Happiest Place on Earth: Studies Ranking People's Satisfaction Yield Surprising Results.'' Ode , International Edition . January/February 2007. Volume 5, Issue 1.pg. 25-26.
         The average life span in Vanuatu is 62.85 years, while in the U.S. it is 77.85 years. The infant mortality rate is 53.8 per 1000 in Vanuatu. In the U.S., it is 6.4 deaths per thousand. Despite these differences, the population of Vanuata is growing at a much faster rate than the population in the United States, due primarily to higher birth rates.
The unemployment rate is 1.7%, with 65% of the people working in agriculture, whereas in the U.S., the unemployment rate is 4.8% with most workers in service and professional fields and less than 1% working in agriculture. The gross domestic product per person is $2,900. In the U.S. that figure is $43,500.74% of the population is literate in Vanuatu, compared with 99% of Americans.
         Vanuatu has no regular military. Information taken from The World Fact Book webpages on the United States and Vanuatu , by the Central Intelligence Agency. and
So, the people of Vanuatu die earlier than Americans, are more likely to be working at jobs requiring hard labor, are less educated, and earn less than 7% of what Americans earn. But they are happier.

Story #2: [Use video excerpt]: In 2002, I visited Lakewood Church , which was then outside of Houston , Texas . In all my travels, I have never seen another church that ``comes on,'' like a television show. Since then, the largest church in America has moved to the former Compaq Center , where the Rockets used to play. 16,000 people can attend a service at once, which is good since the church has 30,000 members. Pastor Joel Osteen leads the church, which has become one of the most diverse churches in America and a leader in the most current incarnation of what is called, alternatively, the Gospel of Wealth or Prosperity Gospel. The slogan of the church is quite revealing: ``Bring out the Champion in You.'' While many other religious leaders make fun of this kind of self-help, feel-good Christianity, Osteen's basic message is that God's plans for us are good, that we are not intended for suffering, and that wealth is what we should expect from God; such themes are obviously appealing. In September, Time magazine's cover story on the Gospel of Wealth used Osteen and Lakewood Church to illustrate the basic principles of the theology. The article started with an interview with George Adams. Adams had lost his job in a tile factory in Ohio . Encouraged by Osteen's message that God wants to grant us blessings, he moved his wife and four sons to Texas in order to attend Osteen's church. Rather than seeking another position in the tile industry, he followed Osteen's instruction that God wants him to have big ambitions; he went to a local car dealership, looking for a job as a sales representative. According to Adams , "God has showed me that he doesn't want me to be a run-of-the-mill person.'' For Adams , that means that God wants him to earn a six-figure income, the amount he thinks he needs to buy a home worthy of a man of God. His aim is to buy 25 acres so that his sons, who are homeschooled, can have their own school on the property, along with horses, ponies, cattle, and a pond. In the article, he explains, ``I'm dreaming big--because all of heaven is dreaming big…Jesus died for our sins. That was the best gift God could give us," he says. "But we have something else. Because I want to follow Jesus and do what he ordained, God wants to support us. It's Joel Osteen's ministry that told me. Why would an awesome and mighty God want anything less for his children?" David Van Biema, ``Does God Want You to be Rich?'' Time , September 18 2006.
Fact #2: The people of Okinawa, Japan, have the longest life span on Earth and the highest number of people living to be one hundred years or older. They have much lower rates of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes, top killers of Americans, and no obesity; indeed, those living the longest in the area have body mass indexes of 18-22, compared to Americans' BMIs of 26. Currently, almost 75% of the American population is obese. French fries are the most commonly consumed vegetable by toddlers, and a solid 1/3 of toddlers eat virtually no vegetables. The Japanese diet is composed mostly of low calorie, low glycemic index foods such as fish, vegetables, and rice. The Okinawa Centenarian Study. ``The Study.'' date of access April 10, 2007 In the U.S. , even our pets are fat60% of them, according to a study by Purina. ``The Nation's Pets are Living Large…Too Large.'' January 2005 accessed April 10, 2007
According to one financial planner with whom I spoke, if your stock portfolio does not include investments in diabetes care, you are not investing wisely, because the number of diabetes cases is predicted to increase by 30 to 70% by 2030. Celia Hall, ``Surge in Obesity Among Children Adds to Britain 's Growing Band of Diabetics,'' The Telegraph . February 3, 2007. accessed April 10, 2007. This generation of Americans is the first to have shorter, not longer, lives than their parents, according to a study reported in 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine .



A Potential Decline in Life Expectancy in the United States in the 21st Century

, , , , . . Boston : .Vol.352,Iss.11;pg.1138,8pgs
The life span of the average Japanese woman, in contrast, just rose another year, to a record 85.52 years.

Associated Press, ``Life Expectancy Rises Even Higher in Japan: Women Born There Can Expect to Live 85-plus years.'' March 1, 2007. date of access April 10, 2007.

Textual Analysis: We heard three readings this morning. I want to give offer a short analysis of each, independently, before examining them in light of the other information I shared this morning.

First, the story of Job. At this point, Job has already lost his ox, donkeys, sheep, camels, servants and childrenwho were killed when the house in which they were visiting collapsed after being struck by a strong wind. Now he is struck with sores all over his body. His wife's response is not encouraging. She instructs him to ``curse God and die,'' a comment that often promotes contemporary interpretations of her as an unsupportive wife. But given the situation, her advice might be rather practical. Job has lost the source of his wealth, which perhaps a man could endure if he could count on his children to provide for him in his old age. But his children are dead, too, and with them his dreams of a long life celebrated by his posterity. The sores might mean that he isn't going to have such a long life anyway. What are the chances, after all, that a man covered in boils in that day and age had long to live? Job's wife may have seen herself as arguing for the best choice for Job: to end his suffering in a way that he could control after so much else had been out of his control. And, don't forget, this suffering that he was enduring was her suffering, too. In this culture, she was an economic support for the family, too, and she had helped her husband create their wealth. Just as Job lost his children and thus his hope for the continuation of his lineage, she had lost her children and her hope, too. Looking at her husband, who must have appeared to be dying, she might have felt overwhelmed by the task of caring for himespecially when doing so might have endangered her own health by exposing her to his disease. This poor woman had not yet grieved for the loss of her financial security, much less the loss of her offspring, when she was faced with the task of caring for a very sick spouse. For her own sake as well as his, then, she instructed him to ``curse God and die.'' And she asks a reasonable question: Why hold on to integrity when it only causes suffering? Isn't it better to let go of that integrity, which might even be akin to a kind of pride, and find relief in death?

Second, the passage from James. The King James translation starts the passage with these famous words: Count it all joy. James does not remind us to enjoy the good parts of life because we do not need reminding of this. It's natural to smile in response to good things, and for most of us, most of life is good. James does remind us, however, that all that is good is from an unchanging God, a God whose nature is to give us life so that we can enjoy the ``firstfruits of all he created.'' James also reminds us that we are to take joy not only in these things but also in the challenges we face. He tells us to ``count it all joy,'' all of it, even the bad parts, even though they don't come from God. He reminds us in verse 13 that no one should say that temptation is from God. God does not, in other words, give us temptations. Though Job asks his wife ``Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" this is not God's perspective. In fact, what the rest of us know from this story is that the trouble is not from God but an illustration of how rich God's blessings have been to Job. It is God's blessings on Job that have given him all these ``good and perfect'' gifts. But a lack of these blessings does not mean that God is not with us, for we see, in the longer story of Job, that God is keenly aware of Job's pain, is pleased with Job, and cares about Job. Job responds faithfully to God's unchanging nature as his Lord, trusting in God's judgment and wisdom, even when he loses his material blessings, and Job blesses God, remaining in a right relationship with God. He cannot, from his perspective, probably, see how God will work through his difficulties.

James tells us that trials that challenge our faith in God build perseverance so that we can be ``mature and complete, not lacking anything.'' But this is like our parents telling us that the chores they force us to do build characterand no child appreciates that. We'd much rather have less character and more time for play. The mature perspective that James wants us to have sees that character is far more valuable than play, wisdom more precious than leisure and indulgence. James encourages us to take that bigger perspective.

Third, the passage from Ephesians. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul dispenses wisdom that seems a bit contradictory. Carpe Diem is the heart of his message. We are to seize the day, ``make the most of every opportunity.'' But Paul isn't encouraging us to waste our time dallying with short-lived pleasures as some might interpret Carpe Diem . Instead, we are to live with integritythe same word that Job's wife uses to describe her husband. Paul tells us to be careful how we live, seeking to live a wise life. That is, we are to live one where our decisions are thoughtful.

In our Mennonite community, that is often understood to mean seeing ourselves in a bigger picture, taking that larger perspective, understanding our global connections in the world. This is why so many of us are active in fair trade, in stewarding the earth, in understanding how our lives are intertwined with the lives of others. Paul tells us to skip the stuff of instant pleasure, because it leads to debaucherymoral degeneracy, the same kind of thinking that Job accuses his wife of when she tells him to ``curse God and die.'' In fact, Job calls her foolish, and the connotation of the original Hebrew is ``moral deficiency.''

Instead of the moral deficiency that results from the pursuit of the superficial, we are to focus on the good. James reminds us that all good is from God. If that's the case, then if we follow Paul's advice to focus on the good, we will experience God more intimately each time we consider the good, for each good we consider reminds us of God. Through practice, gratitude will become our natural response to good. This is different, though, from an attachment to God's blessings, for even these can be ephemeral, as Job discovers when his children are killed by a strong gust of wind. From Buddhists, we can learn the dangers of attachment, of putting meaning where it cannot be sustained. At the same time, we are to consider the good God gives us at all times. Paul instructs us to `` ²⁰ always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.'' What clearer advice can there be: Paul uses the word ``always,'' and James uses the words ``all things.'' We've probably all been warned by our therapists and lawyers of the dangers of using words like ``always'' and ``never,'' but here are Paul and James doing it anyway. They aren't giving this advice as an option. Instead, it's an order. Here is what we are told to do.

Bringing it all together: You might be guessing now that this sermon is a railing against American consumerism and consumption, and it is, in part, and you might guess, too, that it's about Americans insensitivity to the suffering of the rest of the world and particularly many contemporary Christians' refusal to suffer, and it is, too, in part. But I want to focus not on the unfairness of this position or the consequences our over-consumption has on the world ecology and economy. Instead, I want to talk about what we lose when we, to use Pat Robertson's language, ``expect a miracle,'' as if our faith protects exempts us from suffering and its benefits.

The biggest loss, I think, is the ability to experience pleasure. The corollary, I think, is that the things we see, at first, as difficulties, can lead us to higher pleasures that we might not otherwise experience.

How can pain lead to pleasure? I am not suggesting a trite answer, like we're to look on the sunny side of life or that every cloud has a silver lining or even that all things happen for a reason. That last one``all things happen for a reason''especially grates on my nerves, and when well-meaning people trying to comfort me through some personal difficult offer it, I usually want to point out that it's Newton's third law of motion that "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction," so, yes, everything does happen for a reason, generally easily explained through physics or chemistry. While everything happens for a reason, evil does not come from God, as Job shows us and James reminds us.

So, again, why are we to experience suffering as good? It's because suffering allows us, over time, to experience more pleasure. I agree with Joel Osteen that God built us to experience good. This is different, though, from a guarantee that faithful believers will be showered with blessings. Instead, I argue that faithful believers will experience blessings even from episodes that don't feel like blessings and that, with practice, we might even experience blessings in those moments, not just years afterward when we are able to look back and say, ``Boy am I glad I went through that because I learned so much.'' In other words, we may be able to experience pleasure even if the midst of pain. We can see blessings even when they are not clear to others.

God's intention for humanity is good, and we know this because we are built for pleasure. Most of the tasks of maintaining our bodies are pleasurableeating, sleeping, and reproducing being the big ones. Our skin is both our largest organ and the key way we experience pleasure, including warmth, taste, and pressure. Taking care of ourselves feels good. And yet taking care of ourselves is almost exactly the opposite of what many Americans do on a daily basis. We live in a culture that is very concerned with making sure that we love ourselves and take care of ourselves. McDonald's reminds us that ``You deserve a break today.'' And the company is righttoo many of us drive ourselves into the ground, spiritually, physically, and mentally, in a pursuit of things decidedly unpleasant. But the company is very wrong to suggest that another burger is the break we need. McDonald's encourages us to confuse self-care with self-indulgence. As James reminds us, self-indulgence leads only to death. The secret to the long life of the people of Okinawa is that they eat until only 80% full, a practice known as hari hachi bu. This means that they end each meal still 20% hungry. This is unimaginable for many Americans. But also imagine not worrying about growing out of your clothesin adulthood, long after you've stopped getting taller. The discipline of not taking more than they need allows Okinawans to care for themselves better than most Americans do.

Suggesting that hunger is a pleasure seems backwards. In fact, for those of us who say we love food, it turns the entire idea of pleasure on its head. We might mistake the people of Japan for being masochistic. After all, who can love hunger, even if it means that you aren't dying of diabetes later in life? Personally, I'd rather be fat and happy. The secret, though, is that the Japanese, I think, love their food even moreso they are both thinner and happier. How, after all, can you love a McDonald's cheeseburger? The food is not fresh. It's more artificial than real, more filler than meat. And McDonald's is not the only culprit. Read the label of nearly any meat you purchase at the grocery store. Up to 20% of your purchase will be something other than meatfiller, preservatives, flavoring, or some other mystery ``solution'' that keeps us eating but never allowing us to experience the taste of real food. The Japanese, then, I think probably experience their food more fully than do most Americans and thus appreciate it more.

Pleasure is rooted in appreciating an experience, in understanding it, in enjoying it with integrity. In other words, we are to engage in it fully, with knowledge and deliberation and foresight, with, as James says, wisdom. This is one reason why the people of so many poorer nations are happier than so many Americans. The American lifestyle is marked by stress, and, for many of us, stress becomes a kind of wealth that we can display to others to show how important we are. `` You think you're stressed. Well, let me tell you about my workload, my horrible kids, my lazy husband or nagging wife, my horrid boss, my busy schedule.'' We should be ashamed of the decisions in our life that make our lives a state of constant stressand not just because our stresses come from our selfish choice to pursue more and more. We should be ashamed because our priorities are entirely out of whack and because we are not practicing gratitude. People who have less, we think, suffer more, but we fail to see how both our pursuit of more as well as our achievement of more rob of us happiness and security. We work more hours so that our children can live in a nicer neighborhood and go to a better school rather than working less at our jobs and working more at improving our neighborhoods and schools. We work longer shifts so we can afford a McMansion so that our children never have to share a bedroom or a bathroom with each other, robbing them of the intimacy that develops when we share space. We buy a huge house with a little tiny yard in development where the houses are as colorless as the neighborhood population so that our kids have plenty of room to play inside, safe from all suburban dangers, but no room to play outside or meet those neighbors. Among the poor in other nations, there are many worriesreal worries, like landmines and guerilla warfare and religious persecution and persistent hungerbut there is little worry about whether the housekeeper you hire to clean your too-big house is bonded and insured or if you bought the best security system for your new car. We disgrace ourselves by having no real worries but instead using our blessings of wealth and security to create new ones.

But now I am sounding like I am ranting against an American obsession with consumption, and I don't mean to, because my real complaint is our lack of pleasure. That's not a complaint you hear too many Christians, especially Mennonites, make, but I am offering it. In his essay ``The Weight of Glory,'' C.S. Lewis scolds us, telling us that, `` We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.'' The problem is not that we love pleasure but that we do not understand it and, consequently, seldom come close to it.

How do we know this kind of pleasure? For me, it means following my sister's model a bit more, though I hope I stuff it down the throat of others a bit less. You see, my sister grew up genuinely liking more of life than I did. I thought she suffered more than me because she willingly wore hand me downs and ate her peas without complaining. What I failed to notice was that, by the end of our childhood, we had eaten the same number of peas and worn the same number of hand me downs. But she had smiled through it, a genuine smile, knowing not only that her situation could be much, much worse, but that, actually, it wasn't bad at all. When she chewed the food that I would have slid under the table to feed to the dog, she ended the evening full and I was hungryand she developed a taste for food that took me a much longer time to learn. She learned to love food that I hated, while I pursued the food that was easy to love but much less healthy for me. I too often yearned for easy pleasures, even when they were not available to me, but, in counting it all joy, she experienced much more joy than me.

Parable of the Yeast--Joanna Harader.rtf

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:51:34 GMT

Luke 13: 10-21 (focus on 20-21)
The Powers That Be
by Joanna Harader

This morning, most of us here have uttered treasonous words. And no, I am not talking about whatever government-bashing might have gone on at the breakfast table or the words you might have muttered under your breath as you heard the latest NPR report on the Iraq war. I'm talking about words that we all said together a few minutes ago: ``Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.''

We, or at least I, tend to say these words without really thinking about them. But my professor pointed out last week that in the first century, these words were treason. The Greek termbasileia--that gets translated as ``kingdom'' is a somewhat slippery word. To the ancients, the concept that would have been triggered by this word is ``imperial rule.'' Specifically, the oppressive Roman imperial rule.

For Jesus and his followers to pray for God's kingdom to come was to pray, in no uncertain terms, for the end of the Roman empire . Treason.

And in this morning's scripture Jesus is again talking about the basileia of God. In these two little parablesthe mustard seed and the breadit becomes obvious to Jesus' listeners that the rule of God is quite different from the imperial rule of Rome under which they are suffering.

We get just a hint of that oppression in the beginning of this chapter. People in the crowd tell Jesus ``about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.''

Some scholars read this as a reference to an event not documented elsewhere in which Pilate's forces murdered rebellious Galileans as they were offering sacrifices at the temple. Others think this passage is a reference to a documented incident in which Pilate had his men dress as Galileans and mingle with the crowd. When the signal was given, the slaughter of the unarmed Galileans began.

But whatever the specifics, it is clear that Jesus is being told about an incident where Roman imperial rule was maintained through violence and oppression. There is surprisingly little attention given to this report. Maybe because it was a common story in the first century Mediterranean world. We know the government slaughtered innocent people and routinely crucified those that threatened the control of Rome .

About 1500 years later, governments continued to practice this basic method of maintaining political power. Machiavelli summed it up with his advice to political rulers: it is better to be feared than to be loved.

And, sadly, such methods of kingdom-building and maintenance are alive and well today. If you've listened to much news this week, you have heard how the Burmese government is again using military force to quell the protests in that country.
I am not enough of a scholar of history or political science to lay out a list of governments that have exercised power in the manner of Pilate. But I know the list is long. I know the victims are many. Indigenous peoples, the disappeared, the poor, women, children, soldiers, pastors, those who dare to question, those who try to hold the powers accountable.

Great violence has been done against human bodies and spirits in the name of maintaining power. It is happening right now in Burma and Guantanamo Bay and Guatemala and too too many other places around the world.

That's the kind of power we read about in the beginning of Luke 13.

A little later in the chapter we move to the story of Jesus healing the bent-over woman in the synagogue. And here, I think, we see a different kind of power at play. The synagogue leader is upset with Jesus for healing this woman on the Sabbath.

The leader, surely, is not upset that the woman has been healed. But he is concerned about the rules. The rules that the religious elite established; the rules that the religious leaders were in charge of upholding.

Really, to break a rule was to threaten the power of the religious leaders. And Jesus broke a rulea big one. I think it is interesting that the synagogue leader directs his admonishments to the people and not to Jesus himself. Jesus has already broken the rule; the leader's power over him is thus broken as well. But to the other people in the synagogue the leader says, ``Come on one of the other six days of the week to be cured, not on the Sabbath.'' He doesn't want to loose his power over them.

Religious power is usually more subtle than political power. And it generally seems less oppressive because there is a sense that people have chosen to submit to a particular religious power. But psychological and spiritualsometimes even physicalabuse happens because of religious authority on a regular basis. And such abuse is usually a means for the religious leaders to maintain power.

I know of women who were told by their pastors to stay in abusive marriages because God wanted them to submit to the headship of their husbands. I know of poor people who were pressed to give their life savings to the ``ministry'' of a multi-millionaire preacher. Of sick people convinced that they are spiritually deficient because the cancer is back. Of gays and lesbians told repeatedly that they are despised by God.

The power of religious leaders to stifle people's livesthat is the power we hear about in the middle of Luke 13.

And then Luke moves us on to Jesus' proclamations about the Basileia of God. It is not like a political leader who massacres people to prevent rebellion. It is not like a synagogue leader who cares more about maintaining authority than loving the people.

The Basileia of God is like leaven mixed with three measures of flour.

Where the governments act immediately, decisively, the Kingdom takes time. And at first, you might not even know it's there.

A woman in her forties, maybe fifty, was driving a bus full of mentally handicapped children. It was her normal route, and things were going in the normal manner until a deranged man forced his way onto the bus and took the passengers hostage. The driver was able to remain calm and talk this man out of using the gun he was waving around. When reporters later asked her how she was able to do what she did, she replied, ``I pray a lot.'' Not ``I prayed a lot.'' Not a big dose of God in the moment. But ``I pray a lot.'' Day in, day out, connecting, grounding herself in God's love. That's how she did it.

The Basileia of God is like leaven.

Where the religious establishment focuses on the maintenance of its own power, the Kingdom slowly but surely builds up all people.

A group of mothers in East L.A. grew tired of living in fear of the gang members who seemed to run the neighborhood. During a Bible Study one day, they decided to stop living out of their fear. They all sat out on their front porches at the same time each day. The public presence of so many mothers made the gang members pretty uncomfortable. Many of them left. Some later joined the women in a community work party to paint over graffiti in the neighborhood.

The Basileia of God is like leaven that a woman mixed in with three measures of flour.

Where the worldly kingdoms are instigated and maintained by the privileged people, God's Kingdom can be tended by whoever is willing to do the work. Women. The poor. The (gasp) Gentiles.

It's not easy work. The woman is mixing this leaven into about fifty pounds of flour. That's ten five-pound bags. She will have to knead all of that dough. Pushing and pulling and wiping the sweat on the sleeve of her clothes. She will have to shape the loaves and let them rise. Then, the next morning, she will carry the loaves to the village oven and bake them.

It's not easy work. But when she is done, she will have bread. Lots of it. Enough to feed the other women at the oven, and their husbands, and their children. Enough to give to any homeless people she might pass on her way home. Enough to have a feast for her own family. Enough to feed any guests that might show up.

That, says Jesus, is what power looks like in the Basileia of God.

Parable of Three Servants--Joanna Harader.rtf

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:52:00 GMT

October 28, 2007
Matthew 25: 14-30-The Parable of the Three Servants
`` Profit Margins''
Joanna Harader

Some of us gathered last Monday night to discuss how our congregation might form a relationship to help out a community in Central America. And someone rightly pointed out that a relationship has to go two ways. We have financial resources to offer, but what, we wondered, can Central American peasants offer us?

For one thing, I said, they can help us interpret the scriptures. They hear the stories of Jesus in more faithful ways.

Take this morning's parable for example. Us Westerners really don't know what to do with it. We don't understand the socio-economic structures of first century Palestine. But it's convenient, don't you think, that the unit of money used in the story gets transliterated as ``talent.'' So we don't have to talk about money at all, because that makes us really uncomfortable anyway. So we'll just talk about our talents and how we should use them and not bury them-because surely we all want to enter into the joy of our master-God.

And then we get to that troubling part at the end where the master says ``To whoever already has more will be given and to those who do not have, even what they do have will be taken away.'' I don't know about you, but that part has always bothered me. I'm not too fond of the wailing and gnashing of teeth bit either.

I think, for the most part, we Westerners get stuck in this story. And we either turn it into an allegory about God and heaven and personal talents, or we just read really fast and move on to the next part.

Rural peasants, however, don't seem to have the same difficulty interpreting this parable. The peasants Ernesto Calderon worked with in Nicaragua, for example, immediately recognize this as a story of exploitation. This master is not God, he is a wealthy elite-therefore an oppressor--and the first two slaves are his henchmen.

If we take a step back from the hyper-capitalism of our culture, we can see that they are right. I mean really, how does one earn 100% interest? Imagine that we are already having our congregational meeting. Rod gets up to give the church finance report. And he is happy to tell us that he invested $15,000 from our savings and we now have $30,000. Anyone here who knew anything about investments would have questions. Like which horses did you bet on/? Or what kind of drugs are we selling? Or how old are the children working the off-shore factory? Because there just is no secure and ethical way to make that kind of a profit.

Likewise in the first century. The peasants listening to Jesus knew how those first two servants made such impressive returns. They loaned money to subsistence farmers at exorbitant interest rates. This practice was the mechanism that made the rich richer and the poor poorer.

This type of economic exploitation assured that those who already had a lot would get more and those who had next to nothing would loose even what they had-to the point of having to sell themselves and their family members into slavery.

As soon as the peasants hear this story they know that the first two slaves are the master's henchmen. They do the dirty work of the ruling class. And in exchange they lead comfortable lives.

These slaves can only be seen in a positive light if we view the master as good-a stand-in for God. Westerners tend to jump to this conclusion without questioning if it is appropriate. But all we really know about this master is that he reaps where he has not sown and gathers where he has not scattered seed. The third slave accuses him of this, and he doesn't deny it.

To a good capitalist, this description can be read as a commendation. He is efficient, industrious, a good businessman.

To rural peasants, he is just a thief. He is taking the crops that they have planted and tended. He is selling those crops to buy unnecessary luxury items for himself while the ones who grow the food live on the brink of starvation.

Peasants intuitively understand that it is the third slave who is to be commended.

This slave who has, somehow, changed his mind. It's clear this slave was a trusted member of the master's household because he was entrusted with a talent. That's a lot of money-estimated by some to be the equivalent of fifteen year's wages. You can bet the master fully expected this slave to get a good return on the money.

But this time, for some reason, the slave decided not to participate in the oppressive economic system that had supported him all these years.

I wonder why. I wonder why, this time, he followed Jewish teaching and buried the money rather than doing what he knew was expected of him. I wonder why, this time, he chose to stand up to the oppressive master?

Maybe the last time the master went on a trip this slave dutifully went out and loaned money to farmer Sam. When the slave returned to collect the money with interest, Sam pleaded for more time. ``Please, don't take it yet. The locust have been bad this year. Our crops are not healthy and my wife will have a baby soon. This is all we have to live on. Please, maybe next year we can pay . . .'' But the slave knew his duty to the master and took the profit anyway.

So this time, when the master goes away, the third slave again goes to see if Sam needs to borrow some money. Only Sam doesn't want it this time. Because the baby and his wife died and the other children have become slaves or wandered from home because Sam could not feed them. ``So no thanks,'' says Sam. ``You can keep your precious talent.''

Maybe that's why the third slave digs a hole and buries the money. Maybe it is Sam's face he pictures-dirt settled in the lines around his eyes-as he says to the master: ``Here is what belongs to you.''

Maybe. We don't know because that's not part of the story. We only know the consequence of his action. He was thrown into the darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. He is completely cut off from his community and from any means of supporting himself. He is, essentially, given a death sentence.

So while we Westerners fumble about with our discussions of talents and responsibility, our Christian brothers and sisters in Nicaragua-and other places as well-know that Jesus is simply talking about harsh economic reality. He's talking about the judgments of this world. How strong the pressure is to live out the values of the wealthy and powerful, even when those values are counter to the ways of peace and justice demanded by God. And Jesus is talking about the consequences of not living up to those worldly expectations.

It's not a pleasant story. And it's no wonder we Westerners like to allegorize it. Why we like to read it as if it is about singing in church instead of about money and power.

When we look at it from the perspective of the peasants, we have to wonder why Jesus even told this parable. The peasants knew what life was like-what happened to those who dared to question the practices of the ruling elites. Why does Jesus have to rub their noses in it? How is this possibly good news?

To find the good news, I think you have to keep reading. And preferably in Greek, because the English translations leave out the word ``but'' in verse 31.

The earthly master throws out the justice-conscious slave, but " When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.''

And we know this part, right. It's probably at the top of the Mennonite list of ``Greatest Hits of the Bible''--right under the beatitudes. Jesus welcomes into God's kingdom all those who have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, welcomed the stranger. When the Son of Man judges people, it is the third servant who will be welcomed by God and will receive his inheritance-greater riches than those taken from him by his earthly master. While the master and his henchmen will be cast out of God's presence.

Taken together, these stories contrast the judgment of God with the judgment of the world. The judgment of God is portrayed by many people as a threatening thing, as a time when God will come and prove that I am right and everyone who doesn't agree with me is wrong. A time when ``we'' can stick out our tongues and say ``I told you so'' to all of ``them.''

To be perfectly honest, I have a difficult time understanding the judgment of God as ``Good News.'' And maybe that is because I am so exhausted by all of the judgments that surround me. We live in a hyper-critical society.

We are constantly being judged and being asked to judge others. I have an annual pastoral review coming up, and I assume many of you also have frequent evaluations of your job performance. Those of you in academia have to grade papers and review articles and have your own work critiqued. Anyone who has submitted writing for publication probably has a stack of rejection letters. Almost every time I buy something there is an opportunity to take a survey where I can rate the product and the store employees and let them know if there was enough toilet paper in the bathroom. All of these judgments can wear on your soul.

And then there are social judgments about how we dress and where we live and the vehicles we drive and where we work and how much we work and how much we earn and . . . and . . . and . . . It can wear on your soul.

Judgment doesn't sound like good news. The judgment of the master surely isn't. But, says Jesus, but the judgment of God is not like the judgments of the world. God's judgment is not based on a dollar figure or a ranking of your effectiveness on a 1-5 scale.

The judgments of God are based on relationships. Did you feed me? Did you visit me? When you finally figured it out, did you refuse to participate in the exploitation of the poor? The judgment of God is based on how we are toward other people.

And yes, we can start counting how many people we help. And yes, we do. But there we are falling back into the judgment of the world. Jesus doesn't let the sheep who clothed twenty people in ahead of those that clothed only two. God's judgment is not about quantity. It is about the condition of our relationship to others in the world.

This is good news for our immortal souls. And this is good news for our earthly life.

If we look further in the biblical text, we see the good news of God's judgment. If we look further in the parable itself, maybe we will see another ending. The third slave is thrown into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth-or that's what the master imagines. But maybe the master is wrong.

Maybe that third slave had been visiting Sam, even though Sam had no financial resources left to offer. Maybe the slave fed him when he was hungry and bought one of his children out of debtors prison. Maybe he met other farmers in the village who shared bread with him after he helped them in the fields all day. And maybe he gave the young children horsey rides on his knee in the evenings.

So when the third slave is cast out into the darkness, there are people waiting with lamps lit to walk with him back to Sam's house. And rather than weeping and gnashing of teeth there is singing and food and laughter.

Parable of the Tenants--Joanna Harader.rtf

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:52:10 GMT

Mark 12: 1-12
November 4, 2007
``Desperate Times''
Joanna Harader

This juice on the table is made from grapes which come, I assume, from a vineyard. I have never gone to a vineyard myself, but I have seen them in movies. I remember one movie scene where there is an early frost coming and the whole family has to go out to the vineyard in the middle of the night in the their pajamas with torches to keep the grapes warm. In the movie, of course, this is a warm fuzzy occasion with joyful music and nicely framed shots of the beautiful daughter in her flowing night gown. You know, the one the main male character is falling in love with.

Somehow, I don't think I would be quite so lovely, or so happy, to be outside in the middle of the night trying to care for a bunch of grapes.

So, based on this extensive research of a movie I saw several years ago, I have concluded that caring for a vineyard is a pretty tough job. Certainly a job that the wealthy vineyard owner doesn't want to have to do himself.

He's done the hard work of loaning money to peasants and then taking their land when they can't pay the exorbitant interest rates. This is how he acquired the acreage needed for a vineyard. He's done the hard work of saving enough money so that he can live comfortably for the five years it will take the new vineyard to begin bearing fruit. And he's done the hard work, or at least overseen the work, of building the walls and the watchtower, digging the pit for the winepress, and planting the vines.

Now it's time for the owner to go back to his main household where his family and slaves are. So he turns the land over to tenantssome of whom might be the previous owners of the land they will now tend for the benefit of someone else.

These tenants will grow their own food in between the rows of grape vines during the five years it takes for the vines to mature. They may or may not have to give the owner a portion of this produce. But they know that when the grapes come, the owner will collect his sharepossibly up to fifty percent.

Ryan and I got lost once in Chicago . And it seemed that by simply crossing one street we went from the ``nice'' part of town--where the landscaping costs more than our houseto the poor part of town where broken windows and graffiti were the norm.

In Mexico City , the tour bus takes you along a mountain road, and from part way up you can look down on the city and see the posh hotels and gated estates. From the same spot you can look up and see clusters of cardboard and tin shelters where people live without electricity or running water.

In first century Palestine , everywhere was that dividing street in Chicago , that spot on the Mexico City mountainside. There was no middle class. There was no comfortable place you could situate yourself so that you didn't have to see the extreme povertyor the grotesque wealth. They were both there, side by side, all the time.

And this made the rich fearful. Because if they stopped being rich, they would be terribly, terribly poor.

And this made the poor angry. Because their already difficult poverty seemed even more unbearable next to the lavish living of the elite.

So while this story Jesus tells is bloody and horrific, it should not be surprising. Fear and anger, often born of injustice, are a sure recipe for violence.

Bush and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld knew this. When 9/11 happened, it provided just the shot of fear and anger they needed to get support for their war plans. The terrorism our country is supposedly fighting is born and fueled by fear and anger. It is fear and anger that suck people into committing abuses like those of Guantanamo Bay .

It is likely both fear and anger that motivate the tenants to abuse the first slave that is sent to collect the owner's share of the vineyard produce. They are angry that this man who has so muchwho even owns slav es that he can send to do his dirty work for himwould demand an unreasonable portion of the grapes they have worked so hard to produce. They are afraid that after the owner takes his share there will not be enough left for them to live on.

Violence seems to them the only way to protect themselves from exploitation. And once they have abused the first slave, it's just that much easier to beat the next one, and to kill the next. The text itself seems to speed up as the violence of the story intensifies.

Violence becomes a pattern for the tenants. It's just what they do; it's how they relate to the slaves of the owner. The owner, of course, continues to send slaveshuman beings that he ownsto these tenants, knowing full well that the slaves will be beaten and possibly killed on this errand.

Finally, though, the game is up. The owner is running low on human collateral and decides it is time to collect. He sends his son because surely the tenants will know that the consequences of killing a member of the elite are far more dire than those of killing mere slaves.

Now either the tenants no longer care about consequences or they mistake the meaning of the son's visit. They might think that the owner is deadotherwise he would be coming himself. If the owner is dead and the son is dead then the vineyard belongs to them. So the tenants kill the son and, as the ultimate form of degradation, throw his body outside the vineyard walls to be devoured by wild animals.

This story that Jesus tells is a true tragedy. It reminds me of Hamletbodies strewn all over the stage. Needless death. A hopeless situation.

Except that I found a glimmer of hope as I studied this text. The hope is in Jesus' question: ``What then will the owner of the vineyard do?''

Now my Bible has both the question and answer in redmeaning that Jesus answers his own question: ``The owner will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.''

The thing is, there are no quotation marks in the Greek texts. We have to guess about who said what based on the context. And since Jesus is talking to the chief priests, scribes, and elders, it is possible that they are the ones who answer Jesus' question. They take an already tragic tale to it's ultimate bloody conclusion.

But that answer belongs to the scribes and elders. Jesus gives us the question. The question which suggests that the answer might be different. The question that gives hope for an end to the cycle of violence.

Because however quickly the violence escalates, all people involved have the opportunity to answer the question for themselves: ``What will I do now in response to this violence?''

We know that the response is often, ``I will go and destroy.''

But sometimes the response is, ``I will train people in non-violent resistance and preach that hatred only begets more hatred.''

Sometimes the response is, ``We will reach out with love to the family of the man who shot our children.''

Sometimes the response is, ``We will protest the death penalty because the death of the man who killed our son will not make anything right.''

Sometimes, by the grace of God, the response is, ``We will ask the courts to forgive those who kidnapped us, those who killed our friend. Because we understand that our captors are caught up in an out-of-control cycle of violence. And the violence has to stop somewhere.''

It is difficult to stop the violence. But not impossible.

This juice on the tables is made from grapes from a vineyard. It represents for us the blood of Jesus. And as we remember the crucifixion, we know that even God became a victim of the injustice and violence of the world. We also know that in Christ God did not perpetuate the cycle of violence, but told his disciples to put away their swords and died with words of forgiveness on his lips.

As Christians, this meal is not merely, not mostly, a commemoration of Jesus' death, but a celebration of his resurrection. A witness to the world that the power of God's love will ultimately bring life even out of the ruins of injustice and violence.

At this table, Jesus again asks, ``What will you do in response to the violence of the world?'' And in eating the bread, taking the cup, we give our answer.

Workers in the Vineyard--Rebecca Barrett-Fox.rtf

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:51:00 GMT

Rebecca Barrett-Fox

This parable is often understood as an explanation of heaven and who gets thereand for good reason, as it follows Jesus' warning that ``it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.'' This might not have been very threatening to the disciples, for, having left their previous jobs, having left their material possessions, they were not wealthy. In fact, Peter's response to Jesus' warning to the wealthy is: ``Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?'' I can hear in these words a bit of humor. If wealth is indirectly proportionate to one's likelihood of getting into heaven, then the disciples should be getting box seats! At the same time, Peter's words sound a little like a complaint: I've made all kinds of sacrifices for this Jesus adventure, and what do I have to show for it? Jesus assures him that he's got a reward coming, then launches into this story. Frequently, the parable of the workers in the vineyard is told to bolster the Calvinist tenet that God predestines those who will go to heaven and those who will not. God is the vineyard owner, and he dispenses grace as he desires. I have nothing against that interpretation, but I am going to suggest some more applications that we can draw from the text today by reading it closely and literally rather than allegorically.
First, note that the landowner goes out early in the morningabout 6 am, probablyto find workers and agrees to pay what the New Revised Standard Version calls ``the usual daily wage.'' This wage was equal to one denarius, which was enough to feed a large peasant family for one day. In other words, he provided a living wage thatget thisa single person could earn to support an entire family. And, moreover, this was ``the usual daily wage''meaning that the community as a whole agreed that it was important to pay workers enough to allow support a family on the income of one person, allowing that person dignity in work and freeing other adults in the household to support the family in ways other than paid employment. I find this impressive, especially since it was not the most advantageous economic plan for the vineyard owner. As we soon see, the community had more workers who were looking for work, and, in this situation, the landowner could have played the workers off against each other in order to drive down wages.
The vineyard owner returns at 9 am, noon, and 3:00, hiring new workers each time and promising to pay them ``whatever is right.'' We assume that this means that each will be paid in proportion to his work, for that meets our definition of ``fair.'' Apparently, this is what the early-birds expected, too, but we learn that it's not what the vineyard owner meant. He paid them all the same wagesand he made sure that the ones who had worked longest knew it, because he paid them after he had handed out money to everyone else.
In order for the vineyard owner to be consistent, we must accept that giving all the workers the same wage was ``right.'' If this offends your capitalist, individualist spirit, it should, because it says that what is right is not always what is fair, what is proportionate, what we earn. Here, I think, are some ways that the vineyard owner does what is ``right'':
He recognizes the dignity of work by allowing work to provide a living for others.
He does not abuse his economic power by lowering wages in order to maximize his profits.
He recognizes the dignity of unpaid labor in the household by allowing one wage to support the family, freeing other adults in the home to provide for the household in other ways, like through childrearing and caring for the aged and people with disabilities.
He respects the community standard of a living wage.
He provides work for those who are ``idle.'' He gives them something to do that will perhaps restore their confidence in their ability to work. He does not blame them for their lack of work or judge them for failing to be present at 6:00 am when he chose the first set of laborers.
He recognizes that the needs of a worker are not proportionate to his hours of work. Indeed, the needs of a worker may be in indirect proportion to the hours he is available to work. As many of us know, the more people we have to care forour elderly parents, our ill relatives, friends who are hurting, childrenthe fewer hours we have to work. After all, the men hired late in the day still had to provide a denarius to care for their families. The cost of life must be paid regardless of the hours worked.
In all these ways, the vineyard owner does what is right. The workers who spent the whole day in the field complain, much like Jonah did when the Ninevehites turned from their wickedness toward God. There, God asks Jonah, ``Is it right for you to be angry?'' and Jonah replies, ``Yes, angry enough to die.'' Well, we see how that story ends upJonah suffering in the sun.
Here, the vineyard owner says much the same, but the story ends happierkind of. ``Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?'' Of course, the answer to both questions is ``yes.'' They made their deal, and they got what they bargained for. What they received is entirely adequate for their needs. The story ends happily in that everyone has their needs met. Yet there is grumbling, too. What the early workers fail to see is that it is the graciousness of the vineyard owner that has provided all their needs in the first place. He did what was right by them out of the same just spirit that prompted him to do right by the workers later in the day.
This text is about heaven, but I think it is also about earthearthly possessions, actually. If you have a roof over your head, shoes on your feet, and food on your plate, you are in better shape than most people in the world. In looking at the material possessions of others, we may get jealous, may devalue the good decisions we have made to work less or at a job that pays less. In fact, nothing good, I think can come from watching how much other people earn. For me, reading those lists of the world's wealthiest peopleor even just reading celebrity gossip magazinesdepresses me, makes me feel less important and more resentful of my situation. Instead of preoccupying ourselves with what may genuinely be unfairbecause, really, it is quite unfair that Paris Hilton is worth $36 million dollars right now, and it is unfair that 19 year olds living in sororities and fraternities on campus drive luxury SUVs and take their spring breaks in Mexico, and I am still flabbergasted that my younger brother's girlfriend, who just graduated from college this May, earns more than twice what I do as a computer programmer…Thinking on these things only works to make me forget that I am actually happy with my own life. Had the workers who came early remembered this, they may have been able to retire to their homes and families that evening, assured that the work they did, though not highly paid, provided what it needed to provide. Out of the landowner's graciousness, each worker was able to give his family what it needed. In the same way, what God gives usmaterially and spirituallyis enough to sustain us.

God's Silence.doc

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:29:32 GMT

God's Silence.doc

Metanoia--Roger Martin.doc

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:30:01 GMT

Metanoia--Roger Martin.doc

MLK Day Readings.doc

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:44:43 GMT

MLK Day Readings.doc

Carnival--Jason Fox.doc

Tue, 5 Feb 2008 05:24:41 GMT

Carnival--Jason Fox.doc

A Story for All A Part for Each--Thomas Heilke.doc

Tue, 5 Feb 2008 05:30:10 GMT

A Story for All A Part for Each--Thomas Heilke.doc

Amnesty Writing--Jason Fox.rtf

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:51:45 GMT

October 21, 2007
Jason Fox

         The 19th century German sociologist Max Weber was the first to apply the term ``believers' church'' to Mennonites and Quakers (Dyck 136). This emphasis on the Mennonite church's constitution is crucial for those of us today who harbor even the most subtle anti-institutional feelings. We practice a version of Christianity called ``normative Anabaptism'' that takes Jesus to be the norm of truth but ``leaves room for creative additions or alternatives'' (Dyck 136). Traditionally, Mennonites have venerated the ``common man'' over clerics who wielded, among other things, monetary and institutional credibility as well as top-down appeals to doctrine or liturgical precedent (Dyck 135). This is not to argue that Mennonites today are relativistic in the least, nor is it to devalue the church as an institution, but what it does mean that is if the church, for us, is the body of believers united in fellowship and conversation, we have a well-acknowledged responsibility to participate in knowing the world around us and standing against practices we consider unjust. In our pacifism we have always maintained an ironic but necessary oppositional status. This places our practice of Christianity among those few others that maintain critical and activist orientations toward systems of oppression that many people ignore or tackle as confused individuals. We are a collective, and in that our status as Christians and our power to critique and shape cultural norms is maintained.
         Today is Amnesty International Sunday, a day set aside in many churches for the discussion of the death penalty. Today, I will speak to the death penalty and its relation to our status as citizens of the world, as Americans, and, most important, as Mennonites united in the pursuit of Christ in a violent world.
         Internationally, the death penalty seems to be losing popularity, even as genocide seems to maintain a cyclic interval of historical popularity. But capital punishment, unlike genocide, exists in politically maintained and institutionally regimented spaces. This situation reveals the conservatism of all institutions, but it also makes possible systematic adjustments. For instance, there is currently a resolution on the floor of the United Nations calling for a global moratorium on the death penalty, and the moratorium has garnered more support than expected. This support is also identifiable in the fact that in 2006 capital punishment dropped 25 percent worldwide. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States reigns as the government most invested in capital punishment, being the only state in the Americas to carry out any executions at all since 2003.
         Why does the U.S. hang on to capital punishment in the face of a global reduction trend? Not being a political scientist, I can only guess at the answer to this question. Weber articulated, when asked what his definition of a state would be, that the state is that which has the monopoly on legitimized violence. Striking. Of all the ways that a state could be described, Weber marked it merely through its relation to violence. I find Weber's formulation as disturbing as it is probable. If the state is defined through its relation to violence, then that relation should be looked at in more detail. In his book Discipline and Punish, French theorist and historian Michel Foucault argues that capital punishment functions to both demonstrate the government's power to its people and to consolidate that power internationally. He says, the ``execution is to be understood not only as a judicial, but also a political ritual. It belongs, even in minor cases, to the ceremonies by which power is manifested'' (Foucault 47). Capital punishment is not meant to punish people or even to deter future crime, it merely reactivates the public understanding of the government's power. The function of the right to punish is an important ``aspect of the [government's] right to make war on its enemies'' (Foucault 48).
         What does this mean? Capital punishment consolidates the perception of the government's power by means of spectacle. The spectacle, the fact that is an act that draws people's attention toward some things and away from others, creates the perception of the government's power. Spectacle, according to Guy Debord's book The Society of Spectacle, ``is the omnipresent celebration of a choice already made'' and ``serves as [the] total justification for the conditions and aims of the existing system,'' in our case the system of international governmental violence (Debord 13). To put it simply, the perception of the right and ability to make war on our ``domestic enemies'' makes possible the ability to make war on our ``foreign'' enemies. International conquest is not possible without domestic conquest, and people who commit crimes give the government the opportunity it needs to reassert its right to the monopoly of legitimized violence through capital punishment.
         Curious about my thesis, I thought that if this is true, if capital punishment does justify the spectacle of American military prowess abroad, that there should be a correlation between the numbers of executions and the years the U.S. participates in foreign wars. In my mind, the fighting of a foreign war (being its end or goal) precludes the need for the spectacle of capital punishment. Indeed, this looks to be the case. The times in the last fifty years when capital punishment numbers dip significantly are during the Viet Nam War and during our most recent war in the Mid East. I've included a chart in my notes here that I'd be happy to show anyone after the service.

         The spectacle of governmental power that we see manifest in capital punishment does not significantly deter crime or decrease recidivism, as we've seen in the dramatic rise in numbers of people on death row since the early 1990s. But what the spectacle of capital punishment does is to elide other more salient discussions with the appearance of government power and its seemingly commensurate juridical acumen. The question of race is one of these questions.
         As early as 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report noting a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in ``charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty'' leading the American Bar Association to call in 1997 for a moratorium on the death penalty for the same reason. Nearly half of those people executed since 1976 have been people of color, with blacks alone accounting for 35 percent. All told, 82% have been put to death for the murder of a white person. Only 1.8% were white people killing people of African, Asian, or Latin descent. Two-thirds of all state and federal prisoners are people of color. Blacks are 8.2 times more likely to be imprisoned than whites. The U.S. has long incarcerated more people of African descent per capita than any other nation in the world, including South Africa under apartheid.
         So what are we Mennonites to do? What is our responsibility as people of peace? First, in my opinion, we are responsible to know. And once we know, an entirely new matrix of responsibilities opens up to us, and it is in this matrix that we define our faith in action. In John 9, vs. 41 Jesus says that ``If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.'' The judgment lies in us, as people of faith and knowledge to work against the inequalities in society that underpin and make possible capital punishment. Judgment is a call for a change of action, not a call for the ceasing of action. That is what the government misses. Capital punishment is does not represent a judgment. It does the opposite: it make judgment as process impossible by denying the basic medium in which judgment is carried out, life.
         Consider Saul who murdered Christians for a living. If we don't act like all murderers can be redeemed and transformed into saints, we deny the potency of the transformative power of the resurrection and our own transformative power, as Christ's followers, through social action. If we can believe that Jesus rose from the dead, how dare we not believe that the same animating power can move humans who have committed evils deeds? Yet the question is not one of rehabilitation. The question is one of the Mennonite vision. Consensus is our vision. Dialogue is our vocation. Hope is our mandate. Capital punishment works against all three in order to project the government's monopoly on violence into the future. Look at our international company. In 2006 only six countries including the U.S. carried out 91 percent of all executions. The others? China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Sudan. Our mandate is not to consider the guilt or innocence of those who have committed crimes but our own responsibility as peacemaker for helping the government remember its true responsibility is to entertain the most difficult conversations not through them away as it does people. It is only then that forgiveness and social hope have the potential not only to change individual lives but to redefine our nation's relationship with violence.

how can I keep from singing--Andrea Zuercher.pdf

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:40:28 GMT

how can I keep from singing--Andrea Zuercher.pdf

Approaching God--Roger Martin.doc

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:42:44 GMT

Approaching God--Roger Martin.doc

The Practice of Being Mennonite--Ben Chappell.rtf

Tue, 7 Oct 2008 03:03:09 GMT

May 18, 2008
Ben Chappell

The Practice of Being Mennonite

This morning I'm proud of the egalitarian believers' church tradition to know that we are willing to hear a message even from someone who is absolutely unqualified as a theologian or religious scholar to deliver one. I have no seminary preparation to offer insight this morning. What I can offer is what anyone cana bit of perspective out of my particular experience about what it is that brings us together these Sunday mornings. But I have to warn you that if I ``share my story,'' it is not one of how I acquired faith. Instead, I want to talk about how it is that I have come to juggle or balance two identities. One is being Mennonite, which I have felt increasingly invested in claiming as I get older, and especially as I make a life outside of predominately Mennonite contexts. The other is a professional identity that grows out of an encounter with a particular set of ideas, which hit me at the same level as religion hits some others. These are two definitive paths in my life, and I am enriched by the ways they intersect as well as their clashes.
         What started me thinking about this was a conversation I had in my second year of grad school, riding an Austin city bus with a classmate. My friend, like most people Marike and I got to know in Austin, knew that we self-identified as Mennonites; this person found it slightly exotic and interesting (which of course is one very good reason to go to grad school). At least he didn't get it wrong like some of our friends: ``So, you're Mormon?'' or my favorite, ``I hear you're Maronite?'' That time we shared a bus ride, though, he posed the question that will organize my remarks today: "So, how do you reconcile your faith with what goes on in our department?"
         My first thought was "Faith? Do I have a faith? Is that what I'm talking about when I tell people I'm Mennonite?'' I'll get to that. To understand my friend's question you also have to know something about what he meant by "what goes on in our department." What went on in my graduate program in anthropology could be called humanist, materialist cultural theory. The upshot for my friend's question was that most people in my program would have tended to agree that religious belief is one of the areas in which there is vast cultural variation among human beings, and that the religious "truths" that contrast so widely are narrative constructions that grow out of and respond to the material circumstances that particular human beings and their ancestors have faced. While we anthropologists in training argued with one another about a lot of things, there would have been a broad agreement with the ideas of thinkers like Emile Durkheim and others who propose for instance that societies tend to construct deities that reflect in some ways the aspirations or priorities of the human beings involved. Sunday school inverts the equation, teaching that humanity is created in God's image. The effects of this idea have historically been ambivalent. On one hand, to believe we are the image of the divine creates an ethical obligation to fellow humans, perhaps summed up best when Jesus instructed his followers to understand their treatment of ``the least of these'' as expressing their relationship to him. On the other hand, though, believing that humans are a poor, low-resolution copy of the divine situates the absolute standard of right and good in an inaccessible, invisible world. This opens the door to the kind of corruption Anabaptists rebelled against in the beginning of our Reformation movement, in which human authority figures place their position beyond the reach of criticism by attributing it to a divinity. ``I didn't make myself king (or pope, or bishop)-- no human has that power. God did it, so you better fall in line.''
         A materialist point of view, among other things, rejects this appeal to invisible authority. My friend's question about reconciling Mennonitism and materialism was a common-sense one, since we are accustomed to thinking of religion as specifically being a matter of faith in the invisible. But as I look back on that conversation, it occurs to me that my way of being Mennonite is itself materialist. What's more, I don't think I'm alone. In a lot of ways Mennonites have been materialist from the beginning.
         Let me clarify, because for many of us who take seriously the Mennonite ethic of simple living, materialism is precisely what we are supposed to be against in a first-world society, which is to say one that is characterized by overconsumption of resources. But in a philosophical sense, materialism is not what we often call it. It is not, for instance, consumerism, that faith in the ability of purchased things to provide us with retail therapy. Marx, in his famous materialist critique of the commodity, proposes that faith is actually idealist, a move to value the immaterial promise of an object over what it actually is.
         Yet materialism and religion may also seem like oil and water when you sit in a seminar room and discuss ideas like one from the French structuralist Marxist Louis Althusser, who apparently was a horrible person but who had some good writing days, like when he quoted Pascal to say ``Kneel, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.'' This sounds like a cynic's account of religious practice, but isn't it the way we really encounter it? Long before I could tell you I believed anything, I had strong bodily and emotional associations with being in church next to my grandmother, who liked to stand during hymns with her eyes proudly uplifted to show she didn't need to look at the words in the bookshe knew all the songs. But aren't we the believer's church? Aren't we supposed to come to the faith out of a felt and thought motivation, such that, as a young Brethren pastor once described it to me, the act of baptism is ``just taking a bath'' after the fact of a real, internal transformation?
         Perhaps. But I would also argue that being Mennonite is materialist in the sense that it is not just about what would be ideal, or what we would do if we were perfect, or what our intentions are. It is about what actually gets done. Moreover, to belong to the community does not always require perfect conformity in thoughtnot in all Mennonite communities, I should say, for while I embrace the notion that we are not a ``creedal people,'' that's an idea that some Mennonites value differently than others. The best way I know to understand being not creedal comes from a story which may or may not be true. I've studied folklore, so I know that doesn't matter. It goes like this: a couple of evangelists visit the door of an Amish farmer and pose The Question to him: Do you believe in Jesus? Are you saved? Are you a Christian? Rather than coming back with the expected ``yes'' or ``no,'' the farmer hems and haws and says ``Oh, I wouldn't presume to know that. You'll have to go around the section and ask all my neighbors.''
         If this is a strange way to view religion, I propose that we Mennonite should remain and grow ever more strange. We should not be at all comfortable with the way that today's society hits us with that question. Are you Christian? It is possible for that to mean ``Are you part of that movement that has produced mega-churches? Coffee houses called Son-bucks? Prosperity theologies? Homosexuality recovery programs?'' I remember being in high school, as the question of religious affiliation seemed to become more personal and pressing, and the misconception that Mennonite was just another brand of Christian was commonplace. Attending a Mennonite youth conference I saw the film The Radicals, which dramatizes the history of early Anabaptism and its martyrs, and came away from it with exactly the quandary that the youth pastors probably had in mind for uscould I be so brave as to face death rather than deny my faith? Encountered in a modern society built on secular Enlightenment theory and that consumerist idealism I've already mentioned, the challenge to follow the example of our forerunners is easily interpreted as a challenge to declare the existence of God in a secular world, however unpopular it may be to do so.
         But the existence of God is not what the Anabaptist movement was about. Neither the Catholic nor the Protestant oppressors of early Anabaptists disagreed with them on that point. Anabaptism was a movement within Christendom, a context in which certain beliefs were not up for discussion. What is most important that we inherit from the Anabaptist revolution is not an ontological proposal about the command structure or organizational chart of heaven, but the position that Jesus's movement was one that addressed social relations, and that presented ways of re-organizing human community that are still rare enough to be considered new. The great anarchist Emma Goldman, after all, called him ``the agitator of Nazereth.''
         The question of what to preserve from a radical 16^th century religious movement amounts to this: what is religious affiliation made of, anyway? Is it belief, a kind of non-empirical knowledge about the nature of seen and unseen worlds? Or is it something else? Is it an ethics? A plan of action in this, material world? The word "faith" often implies the former, an emphasis on belief. Yet if that was what my friend in Austin was inquiring about, what I believed, my worldview, I would have had to respond that my faith WAS "what goes on in our department." I don't believe in invisible people. I can't join Cornell West, for example, the avowed Marxist materialist and avowed Christian, who explained his faith to fellow academics once by saying "God is an operative metaphor in my life" (though I appreciate his precision. Usually when people use "God-talk" it serves as a way to avoid precise argument by leaning on a presumed consensus about what it means).
         God-talk aside, I still claim Mennonite. This may seem like a contradiction, as I'm sure it did to a college classmate who once hit me with the evangelist's question. In other circumstances, the Christian question would be an easy-- on a tour of a Tibetan Buddhist monastary? No problem! I know what religio-cultural context it is that I spring from! But in this case, I was being witnessed to. I didn't realize until years later, but my honest answer to a witnessing should be "Christian? Not in the way you mean." But closer to home, this is a fraught moment. Here is a neighbor, a familiar face whom I have no trouble greeting in a friendly manner, but now he is concerned about my eternal life! How insulting is that?
         What my evangelist classmate meant in asking whether I was Christian was not at all about what I usually thought of as being "Mennonite." He was not asking, "If there is a draft to get Iraq out of Kuwait, would you apply for conscientious objector status or resist the whole system and go to jail or Canada?" or "Is it even ok to drive a car when people are being killed over oil prices?" He wasn't even asking whether I went to church. Instead, the question was "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?" In other words, DO YOU BELIEVE?
         The witnessing question is about where we're headed after we diedo I have a membership in the big gated community in the sky, or am I destined for the ultimate bad neighborhood? These are not the questions that defined in my upbringing what it meant to be Mennonite, and they continue to sound foreign to me. I can understand what Marike felt when she was young and wondered, if you invite Jesus into your heart, how do you drop subtle hints when you want him to leave again?
         There is a fundamental difference, I think, between the notion of a personal Lord and Savior and the Mennonite tradition of seeking to be disciples, together, in the way of the historical person, Jesus. When I heard faculty at Bethel College say (and they may have been quoting someone else) "Jesus meant what he said, and he was talking to us," that articulated the very Mennonite idea that the gospels are to be taken as suggesting a model for right action in the world, an ethics. But when I encounter "Christian" discourse today, often the name "Jesus" stands not for a historical person, but for an invisible presence, the attributes of which vary widely. Remember Durkheim. Many Christians I think envision Jesus as a human presence that they long for in their lives-- a strong yet benevolent father, for instance. I have a feeling that for some Christians I grew up with, Jesus is a Vietnam vet with a beard and a motorcycle, who doesn't waste words, and loves that song about being proud to be an American, and Chuck Norris movies. Some weekends, Jesus puts on his knee-high moccasins and goes to the knife show.
         I say this not to mock that view or version of religious experience, but to dramatize that this ``Jesus'' that Christians talk about sometimes is an idea that has nothing necessarily to do with the historical person narrated in the gospels. In contrast, the Mennonites that I know best were likely to have scoffed back in the 2000 presidential election when Bush named ``Jesus Christ'' as his preferred political philosopherand it is notable that we never again heard reference to Jesus to explain any policy decisions of his administration. It's because what matters in American Protestantism is not the particular ethics that Jesus modeled and counseled, but rather it is THAT YOU BELIEVE. In my opinion, too many Mennonites for too long have embraced this protestant idea, a sort of convoluted derivative of Luther's motto ``Not by works but by grace alone…'' This is a tradition of ascribing religious matters to the immaterial domain. Being Christian is about what kind of soul you have, on which side of the scoreboard you have chosen to be counted.
         I don't think I am completely going my own way to suggest that this is not what it means to be Mennonite. After all, when Constantine converted to Christianity, at a stroke it was a huge victory in souls for Christendom. But what a terrible cost. The crucifix of empathy with those most violently rejected in society was inverted into a sword, the weapon of empire. Mennonites have long rejected Constantine's conversion and the very idea of a Christian empire, putting us more in line with the Agnostic bumpersticker that says ``Jesus, save me from your followers.'' While every now and then the news uncovers another high-ranking military figure or ordinary American who understands the ``war on terror'' to be a new Crusade led by a Christian nation, the Mennonite community that I call home understands that if the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount were here to witness this war, he would turn over tables.
         We do a disservice to the radical distinctiveness of the Anabaptist reformation when we allow ourselves to be subsumed into Protestantism. Am I Christian? Do you mean, have I achieved the elite status of the saved? Do I long for a genocidal second coming of General Jesus as imagined in millennial texts like the Left Behind series? More generally, do I believe my ancestor's stories are magically more true than others? Do I honor laws of ritual purity and contamination that, in the interest of elevating one category of human over all others, works to maintain a violent order in which certain of my species-mates, and certain aspects of all of our humanity, are to be treated with contempt?
         Not like that. No, because like that, Christian is mistaken for a noun, a class of person, rather than being understood as an adjective, describing an action or relationship that reflects the ethics which our Anabaptist ancestors took seriously as a real option for working in the world. I recognize that ethics and embrace it when I see it enacted: for example, when Marike's father's cousin died last year in the Elbing area. It was time to put in the summer crop, and cousin Herman's son Russell was overwhelmed with work. When he also had to face the arrangements for the burial of his father, six other farmers showed up at his door, and they sowed Russell's fields in record time.
         Lots of people help each other. That's not exclusively Mennonite. But Mennonites take it to extremes, sometimes. I know again that I can call myself Mennonite without reservation when I read about dear friends from college in the Christian Peacemaker Teams, literally getting in the way of bulldozers in Hebron, or sitting down at a table in Iraq with a group called Muslim Peacemaker Teams. There are so many of these stories, that the label ``Christian,'' the way it's used in our culture, doesn't begin to evoke or capture.
         After some thought, I finally did answer my friend on that bus in Austin. I said ``A whole lot of people would disagree, but being Mennonite to me is almost more about potluck suppers than faith.'' It was a poor attempt to articulate a materialist preference for religion as ethics and as practice, but it was a start. My friend smiled and said ``but potlucks are important.'' Amen.

The Death Penalty Readings.doc

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:31:43 GMT

The Death Penalty Readings.doc

Seasons and Sabbath--Jenny Buller.doc

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:50:05 GMT

Seasons and Sabbath--Jenny Buller.doc

Sermon for Peace--Marike Janzen.doc

Fri, 2 Oct 2009 03:09:48 GMT

Sermon for Peace--Marike Janzen.doc