Parables

I have preached the last two weeks and led Bible studies on the parables of Jesus.  Today Audrey is preaching on 4 of them.  Parables are stories that we struggle with - not allegories - but stories that we turn around in our minds and allow to surprise us as we relate them to our lives. 

Audrey sent me her sermon yesterday and includes a parable that she wrote.  It goes like this:

The kingdom of heaven is like a novel corona virus in the world.  It starts out with a cough and is spread from person to person.  As it spreads across the world, the world must re order itself and focus primarily on the weak and the vulnerable.

And I realize that this Pandemic has really been about re-ordering our lives.  Figuring out what is safe and what is not, what is worth the risk and what is not?  It is living with the specter (like a ghost) of the unseen illness that may be present and we do not see it.  And it can have serious consequences.  I read today about an older clergy colleague who is now in hospice after having the virus twice.  That certainly gives me pause.

The parables are also bout the hidden and unseen quality of the kingdom of God.  Comparing to an insignificant mustard seed or the leaven in the bread.  There is this miracle of growth that defies an easy explanation.  So I walk around with two images of what I can't see:  the unseen growth of God's love and spirit and unseen presence  (and growth?) of corona virus. They are both present.

Two other parables were  of the pearl of great price as well as the treasure hidden in the field.  In one the person looked for it and in the other, they found it.  With these parables there is surprise and great joy.  I've been slowly reading through The Interior Castle.  The third chapter starts with these words:

Blessed are those in awe of God. 

My prayer practices are always somewhat scattered and sporadic.  I sit here at the computer sometimes, or on my back porch and read and pray and write, or on my front porch and just watch birds.  But the one consistent part of my morning "devotion" is getting to that place of AWE.  I am awed by God who created this amazing world in which I am blessed to live.  I am awed by the word of God and the way it continues to speak to humanity for centuries.  I am awed by the words of the faithful that can touch my deepest pain and joy.  I am awed by the blessings - the many blessings - of my particular life as I work at church and play pickleball and love my friends and family.  Yes, there is evil in this world and sickness in the air.  But God's spirit will not be stopped from bringing life and new life and healing and growth.

I believe that.  I bet my life on that.

Here is a wonderful poem by Mary Oliver

The Summer Day

Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean-- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?

A Sharing Circle

For the past few months I have been offering "A Sharing Circle" - a time when people who have been making phone calls checking in on others at the church can join together to "check in" themselves with each other.  As of yesterday, I am now opening this to anyone who is interested.  We will meet every other Friday from 1 - 2:30.

Like my "Facebook Live" experience of asking people 5 questions for the past two weeks, this project is really close to my heart and most satisfying to me.  I can see that I am slowly but surely imposing a structure on our time together.  I began with a short reading about Frederick Buechner.  It was about "Listening to you Life."

"One of the clearest messages Buechner has woven into his many books is to pay attention—to your life, to the people with whom you are closest, to the things that happen to you. This, according to Buechner, is the best, and most authentic, way to experience yourself and God.

“You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you’ve never seen before. A pair of somebody’s old shoes can do it…. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.” (Beyond Words)

God is right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives…trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. His work embodies “the persistent presentiment that Something is trying to get through in the midst of the muddle of our day-to-day lives.” (Dale Brown)"

Listening to you Life and sharing your life is what this sharing circle is about. Each person had an opportunity to share what is a struggle during this time of pandemic and what is a blessing or God sighting. We sat at the shelter house - socially distancing - on lawn chairs and everyone spoke from the heart. By the end of our time together it was clear that there was one feeling that we all shared - whether it was about our health, or the health of someone else, or the political situation, or family issues. The word was HELPLESS. Life is hard and there are situations in which we hit our limits and we are just helpless. It felt helpful to be able to name it out loud in the presence of other caring people.

So, at the end of our time together I felt compelled to share Psalm 46 - which has two important parts to it for me - the sense that the world is coming apart

God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.
² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
³ though its waters roar and foam
    and the mountains quake with their surging

and the words:

BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.

After that we all prayed together with my beginning and ending and others expressing out loud their concerns to God. And then we went home.

For me, there is something powerful and freeing about being with others and naming what is in my heart. And realizing how universal it is. I came away from our time together thinking that it is hard to be human at times but it is good to be together and to be with God.

Our next sharing circle will be at 1:00 PM Friday August 7th in the Shelterhouse. It is good to have spiritual companions.

May God the COMPANION be with you.

May you know God beside you, before you, behind you, above and below you.

May you be smothered by God's presence as you walk the path of your day.

May God's hands catch yours when you stumble

and applaud when you reach the end of your days.

In the evening twilight may you know God's arm embracing you against the chill.

may God the companion BRING YOU BLESSING.

Abide with Me

Abide with Me was one of my mother's favorite hymns and we sang it at her funeral.  It comes to me this morning as I read the scripture of the day in the app - "Pray as you Go".  John 15 :  1-5

 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. ² He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes^[a] to make it bear more fruit. ³ You have already been cleansed^[b] by the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴ Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. ⁵ I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing

Another word for abide is "remain" - remain in me.  As I sit on my porch in prayer and reflection I picture what it means to me to ABIDE or REMAIN in Jesus.  The image i have is me sitting at his feet and listening - like Mary when Martha was working in the kitchen.  I am abiding and I have found the "better thing"  - that is a life of following the way of Jesus.  It is a way of love, forgiveness, humility, courage in seeking justice, peace. 

Today is my last day to do the "Facebook Live" with my interviews of members of the church.  It has been very satisfying for me because it really is a time to hear how people "abide" in Jesus and bear fruit.  They are people with very ordinary lives - not like the folks I read about in the newspaper or on TV.  They are - like me - ordinary Christian people who have found meaning in their faith and in their life in the church.  I have been truly inspired every day as I sit and listen to their answers to my questions - especially the ones about times when they struggled and found strength in God and their philosophy of life.  For example, yesterday Becky said her philosophy was to trust God, to let go, and to be content whatever the circumstances.  That really is a recipe for peace.   She emphasized it is a "goal."

The other image that came to me today was Jesus kneeling at the feet of his disciples - washing their feet.  Preparing them to go out and to live a life serving others.  That is the life that everyone of these people are living and it inspires me.  I have heard about people who serve on committees, work in the kitchen, mow the yard, make music, reach out to others, help in worship.  Each person shared their involvement  and activity- not as duty and obligation - but as part of their life purpose. (no, they didn't use those words - those are mine!)

Another blessing of these two weeks has been the help of my daughter, Kacey.  Every day, she comes from Reynoldsburg to take care of the technology of putting this little project online.  She is now waiting to find out what is happening in the schools in the next few months.  She is a special education teacher, union rep  and mother and without a doubt is "bearing fruit" in using her gifts to help others during this really unsettling time. She inspires me more than she knows. 

So, I start this day and will soon prepare my Bible study for the facebook live and get ready for this last time.  It has been a real blessing as I get to see how ordinary people who trust God "bear fruit."  It is good.  It is very good.

May the God of EVERYDAY bless you,

;leading you by the hand through each moment,

calling your attention to each tiny trace of blessing threaded through your day.

At the end of every day may you be woven into

the loving arms of God and sleep peacefully as night falls.

May the God of EVERYDAY be with you.

The 5 questions

So I am doing "Facebook Live" this week and next week.  It is a whole new adventure for me.  When I volunteered to do it in Pastor John's absence, I immediately knew I could not do it the way he does it.  He does all the talking and manages all the technology.  There is no way I want to  (or can!) do that.

Instead as I sat with the prospect of this time, I realized I wanted to interview people of the church and it didn't take long for 5 questions to emerge to ask.  I wanted it to be not threatening for them or for me, so to have 5 questions that I asked everyone made sense.  They are these

 - what brought you to Gender Road Christian Church

 - what is your favorite hymn

 - what is a place where you encounter God's presence

 - what is a time of struggle in your life where God strengthened you

 - what is your philosophy of life

I gave the questions to the people ahead of time and then sat with them and asked. 

The technology has been challenging.  I am so grateful for Kacey who makes everything easier for me as my "director."  My first thought was that we would meet outside socially distancing and the traffic and the sound was a problem.  The second day we met in the church narthex socially distancing and the sounds othe children from the preschool who were playing in the gym we problemmatic. Yesterday we met in a classroom and it finally worked.  Sigh. 

Regardless of the technological challenges, I have been touched every day by the answers that people have given to these questions.  I realize that this is really what gives me life - hearing faithful people tell about their faith journeys. It always inspires me.

This pandemic has been hard in so many ways, but I have truly been blessed by my work at the church.  The Bible studies and the book study (Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton) have encouraged my faith as we really dig into what it means to be a follower of Jesus.  And now, these  facebook live sessions have been another great blessing.  And everyone who has participated has also enjoyed the experience.

I think these are pretty good questions to ask people.  You don't usually get to do that in casual conversation, so I am glad to have an opportunity to learn from others.

Always I will say - God is good, all the time.

Here's a blessing from Maxine Shonk I need today as I spend time on this week's sermon:

May the God of CREATIVITY be with you,

helping you to brace new ground and test new horizons

calling you to trust and risk being a co creator of the Kingdom

May the gift of creativity bring you to a recognition of every new revelations of God's goodness.

May the blessing of CREATIVITY be on you.

The Wheat and the Weeds

I am preaching again this week - this time on the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds.  So, right now I am doing alot of chewing on the text.

Yesterday I did two Bible studies on this parable and took copious notes as people shared their wonderings and their insights.  Now I don't know quite where to go with it - but I know that it really is a profound parable.  Here is is:

²⁴He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; ²⁵but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away.

²⁶So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.

²⁷And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’

²⁸He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’

The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’

²⁹But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.

³⁰Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

It is about the reality of evil in the midst of the goodness of life.  Because the commentators tell us that the weed that is mentioned is "darnel" we learn that it looks - until fruiting - very much like wheat.  This speaks to the confusion and the ambiguity that we live in - what is good and what is bad; what is real and what is fake, what is true and what is false?  Sometimes it is hard to tell.  Kay McGlinchey, who is a gardener said "a weed is a plant growing where you don't want it."  Just an example of the discernment that is necessary in life.

At this point, there are so many times I just don't know what to believe.  Whether you are talking about fake news or not; or what science is saying about Covid, or about the legacy of racism in our country - there is much that confuses me about what to do.

In the text the slaves suggest weeding and the master says - No - you don't want to disturb the good wheat. And so part of the message of this parable may be to concentrate on your own fruitfulness and not get distracted by the weeds around us.

Another insight someone gave me  was that because of the Pandemic - much of what gives some of us life - like volunteering, worshiping and connecting with others is unavailable to us.  No wonder so many feel like we are living "in the weeds."

And finally someone said - "you will always find what you look for."  It left me with the understanding that we all need to look up, look around, look within - for God's activity.  That sounds trite maybe - but it is always a challenge not to get distracted by the negative and the unholy aspects of this world we live in.

So, this may be a preview of my sermon for Sunday - I haven't started writing it yet.  But for this day - in the middle of the week - it is reminder to me to look for God  and trust that growth, healing and new life is happening.

Here is a blessing for today by Maxine Shonk

May the God of GROWING THINGS call you to ever more wonderful growth and wholeness.

May the horizons of your life stretch far to the east and west, to the north and south....

and in the stretching may you know the wonder fo God's universe within and aorund you.

Through this awareness may you plant seeds of hope in all you meet.

May the God of    GROWING THINGS be with you.

The Ache

I have been leading a book discussion on the book Untamed by Glennon Doyle for the last few months.  Last night we started by talking about the chapter called "The Ache."

The Ache is the pain that we carry that is part of life.  She writes about the foreboding thoughts of realizing that the person you love may die.  She writes:

 I don't know if the Ache is trying to protect me or terrorize me.  I don't know if it loves me or hates me, if it's bad or good.  I just know that its role is to constantly remind me of the most essential fact of life, which is:  This Ends.  Don't get too attached to anything.

She also writes about how she tried to avoid the ache through her addictions at the time - bulimia, alcohol.

It was only when she became pregnant that she realized that there was "something deeper and truer and more powerful inside.....the deeper thing wins....".She wanted to be a mother which meant healthier living.  And facing the ACHE.

She writes about being a teacher and walking her class past  her friend Josie's classroom with this sign hanging in big black block letters:  WE CAN DO HARD THINGS.

Sometimes I think there is nothing harder than facing the ACHE - the pain of life.  The pain of loss.

The pain of love.  

I started this week at the hospital beside the bedside of a 22 year old who would be having brain surgery.  I stood there beside her parents and felt that ACHE of love and fear.  No words can take that away.  We just witness, and share and are present with each other.  Yesterday I learned about the passing of my son in law's mother, Mimi.  I picture Erik and his sister beside the hospital bed as she leave this earth and know their  ACHE of deep grief. 

As I write this, I am grateful for my faith.  It does not take the ACHE away but actually gives me the courage and the strength to not hide from it - but to accept it.   The ACHE is always a companion to love - because we cannot protect those we love from illness, accidents, death.  We cannot.  But we can do that hard thing of being present and loving in the midst of pain - theirs and ours..  We can also know that in some mysterious mystical way Jesus is with us and encouraging us and bringing healing and peace to every circumstance.

The ACHE is real and so is God.  I find comfort in this poem/ prayer by Joyce Rupp.

Leaning on God – Joyce Rupp

Some people lean against fence posts
when their bodies ache from toil.
Some people lean on oak trees,
seeking cool shade on hot, humid days.

Some people lean on crutches
when their limbs won’t work for them;
and some people lean on each other
when their hearts can’t stand alone.

How long it takes to lean upon you,
God of shelter and strength;
how long it takes to recognize the truth
of where my inner power has its source.

All my independence, with its arrogance,
stands up and stretches within me,
trying to convince my trembling soul
that I can conquer troubles on my own.

But the day of truth always comes
when I finally yield to you,
knowing you are a steady stronghold,
a refuge when times are tough.

Thank you for offering me strength,
for being the oak tree of comfort;
thank you for being the sturdy support
when the limbs of my life are weak.

Praise to you, Eternal Lean-to,
for always being there for me.
Continue to transform me
with the power of your love.

Leaning on God – Joyce Rupp