Busy is As Busy Does

9-27-09 Sloth: Busy is As Busy Does

We’re up to “sin of the week” #4 with Sloth. Do you have a favorite yet? (Pride, Anger, Gluttony, Sloth….)

It seems as though whenever “sloth” comes up, conversation turns to those much-maligned South and Central American tree-hangers whose incredibly efficient systems make them appear lazy.

If you can get past the critters, sloth talk tends to turn next to the worst possible thing you can accuse a protestant work ethic trained American of: laziness.

If the conversation is sensitive, it will acknowledge that there is a difference between laziness and depression, a treatable medical condition. But let’s leave those boxes behind and steer toward another, causal, alternative this morning.

I really appreciate the way sloth follows gluttony in this fall’s series. Because I am increasingly convinced that sloth is the direct result of being too full.

John Wesley knew this. In fact it’s likely that Wesley would have ranked sloth at the top of his hit sins list. "And when sloth and luxury are joined together, will they not provide an abundant offspring?" (See “The Late Work of God in North America.”)

You see, Wesley’s England was in a period of economic stratification: as industrialization told hold, a new class of mill and mine owners expanded the pool of wealth enjoyed by royals while urban slums developed to house working families who lost the “unfunded” benefits of a farm economy.

Wesley’s sermon addresses those who have plenty, who are “full.”

Proverbs 24: I went by the field of the slothful and by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. (NIV)

Having too much “good” decreases room for “essential,” squeezes it out. The article I referred to a few weeks ago asked why disasters can feel strangely like paradise. In the wake of a disaster we become utterly focused on what is truly life giving.

You don’t hear people lamenting lost bread machines, you see people offering one another bread.

Those early Christian monk’s whose “8 bad thoughts” developed into the modern seven deadly sins considered sloth to be one of the worst, right up there with pride.

In her new book, “Acedia”, Kathleen Norris points out that sloth is not just a “personal problem.” It is a cumulative public problem. [It is] my suspicion that much of the restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that plague us today are the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress. When we look at acedias’ root meaning-not caring-we can see it as a social problem and perceive that the sloth it engenders is anything but an insignificant physical laziness. It may even manifest as hyperactivity, but it is more like the activity of a hamster on a treadmill than the action what will enhance the common good.”

The Rev. Jorge Acevedo will receive the 2009 Distinguished Evangelist of the United Methodist Church award later this month from the Foundation for Evangelism. [Acevedo is] lead pastor at Grace Church, a multi-site United Methodist congregation in Cape Coral, Fla. (UM Portal 9-25-09):

When I came here in 1996, the church was averaging about 400 in attendance on Sundays, and had been in a five-year decline. My first Sunday here, they told me we had $29.16 in our checking account and owed $1.2 million on a building. The church was filled with wonderful people who had just kind of lost their way; they were good people who had just been lulled to sleep. Yet there were 30 people who had been on the Walk to Emmaus who were praying for renewal. They are the unsung heroes of this story: that group of people prayed that God would do a new thing in their church. [Church attendance has grown to more than 2,600 in weekly worship.]

God has given me a passion for reaching the un-churched, the once-churched and the over-churched.

The “over-churched” person is the second son in the prodigal son story, who never left home. The over-churched have lived a good life. … The intimacy of their relationship with Jesus is but a faint memory. There are a lot of over-churched people who are United Methodist in name, but not Christian by their own testimony.

Converting the convinced is really hard! They are convinced that everything is OK, and yet they don’t bear the fruit of a faithful follower of Christ. … The best way is for them to see these un-churched people who come into our church and see the vitality of a fresh new relationship with Jesus. It’s pretty contagious.

In other words, the over churched person is so full, stuffed with good things, that we need to intentionally make room for the fresh and new, but are unlikely to go looking for it..

(Acevedo continues) God has given the local church the primary responsibility of doling out the grace of God a broken and hurting world. But we’ve forgotten that.

We have also forgotten our historical tradition as Wesleyans. We were a movement begun among the working class; we’ve become a movement primarily among the white collar. We’ve forgotten our roots of personal piety and social holiness. We have part of our church that is passionately committed to saving souls and another part that’s passionately committed to meeting human need. The genius of the Wesleyan movement, to quote [Good to Great author] Jim Collins, was the “genius of the and, not the tyranny of the or.” Churches that God seems to be working in and through are those that seek to live out the Wesleyan vision of the spiritual life. Churches that forget that, die; churches that live into that, live.

(He remembers) One of my dearest friends, Jim, was a fifth-of-vodka-a-day drinker, two six packs of beer and a handful-of-Vicodin taker, a womanizer, who, when his wife came to see me and I told her to “Run, don’t walk, get in recovery.” Her husband got into treatment, came back to our church and got busy walking the walk as a disciple of Jesus. Today he and his wife, Kim, lead our marriage ministry. …. There are thousands of Jims out there with stories like that.

Our job is to set the table. God’s job is to serve the meal. What we try to do every day is set the table so God can come and serve the meal. And when He serves the meal, people don’t leave hungry. They leave transformed.

It takes courage for someone who needs recovery to say so out loud, to reach out for help, to witness to their healing.

In the traditional list of seven deadly sins and their counteracting virtues, courage is the antidote to sloth.

Courage grounded in her faith and supported by Christian fellowship is what helped Leymah Gbowee, one of the subjects in the film (Pray the Devil Back to Hell) and a Profile in Courage winner, stand up with other Christian and Muslim women of Liberia to combat the violent warlords and the corrupt Charles Taylor regime.

Armed with white t-shirts, the power of prayer, and their Bibles and Qurans, these women won a long-awaited peace that led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state and Liberia’s first elected female president. In one scene that had the audience cheering, these women barricaded the site of the stalled peace talks in Ghana. The men could not leave the room even to eat until they drafted a workable peace plan. When the guards tried to arrest these women, they evoked the most powerful nonviolent weapon in their arsenal by threatening to remove their clothes. This strategy worked, as the guards chose not to bring shame upon themselves by forcing the women to expose their naked bodies. The women kept their clothes on but they also kept their promise that if need be, “they’ll be back.” (How Women of Faith Fought a Dictator with Nonviolence by Becky Garrison 09-23-2009, sojo.net)

The question underlying sloth is, “what does it matter,” “why bother?” If Gbowee, who we’d expect to be full of fear instead of faith, can find courage in the vacuum of power, how can we, whose lives are full with so much good, fail to realize how much it matters that we act courageously, with faith as our foundation? With God’ help, let us live as though it matters.

Can’t Get Enough

9-20-09 Can’t Get Enough

Last weekend, ahead of the blight and dropping temperatures, I brought in a last beautiful basket of garden produce: 5 deep red lipstick peppers and a couple of green ones. A dozen and a half perfect plum tomatoes and a couple still green around the edges.

I ran down to the post office to grab the mail before it closed, came back and into the kitchen and did a double take. It was all gone-all but two semi ripe tomatoes sitting forlornly on the counter. I looked, scratched my head, questioned my reality, and came to the realization that our dog, Ben, is a glutton.

I didn’t see the evidence until several days later, a light pink stain scattered with a few seeds in the dining room corner.

Gluttony in the church house is not a new problem. There are references scattered all through the New Testament to the gluttony undercutting the infant Christian churches.

Each week, the day after Sabbath (which for Jewish communities is Saturday), Jesus followers would gather in homes large enough to hold them and share a love feast. They brought food (pot luck) and enjoyed that provided by the host, broke and blessed bread in Jesus’ name, passed the cup of forgiveness, and told each other what they had remembered, what they had learned, encouraged each other in the difficult journey of following the resurrected Jesus.

But some of them were wealthier than others, less driven by the clock and demands of bosses. Some of them got there first and dug right in to the fresh fragrant food. Others, who got done with work later and took longer to clean up from grubby work, got there later and got leftovers.

The first group was comfortable with the way things were. It didn’t really bother them. Oh, some might feel badly for those who didn’t get enough, but not enough to challenge their friends and families to wait. It fell to those who had most closely experienced Jesus to rebuke the “family,” to remind them that this was indeed a new community, a community of utter mutual caring and sharing.

Can we have too much of a good thing? When it blinds us to reality, to other’s need, to God’s presence and purpose, yes.

Yesterday in Boston’s Filene’s basement, I overheard a woman complaining to her friend that health care reform might drive her taxes up. With the next breathe she marveled at the good deal she was paying for, an Armani jacket at half price-just $2,500.

So many things can fill us up, give us indigestion, stretch our bellies and dull our abilities.

We can even ingest so many words that there isn’t room for thought. The Ping Pong battle played out in the news has our heads going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth instead of thinking with the mind of Christ about our actual life and the lives of those around us.

A few weeks ago Dr. Scott Morris spoke with New United Methodist District Superintendents and Conference Staff people at their training event.

[Morris is a family Practie Physician and a UM Elder, who founded]….. The Church Health Center provides quality, affordable health care for working, uninsured people and their families. It is the largest faith-based clinic of its type in the country, caring for 50,000 patients of record without relying on government funding.

He told them that People go to the doctor today for things they once would have taken to their pastor….Morris said so often in his practice, a patient came to him with a complaint about their back hurting or some other problem, but what was really wrong was they had a broken heart.

“You can’t MRI somebody’s spirit,” he said. … “We need to explore what it means to have a healing ministry in our congregations and in our lives,” he said. - UM News Service

Our youngest daughter is studying food. This means studying the role food plays in our lives. As Solomon Schimmel, author of the current standard study on gluttony writes, “we are a society inundated with food and drink.” Food plays a social role. It shapes our sharing.

What’s the first thing you think about when you find out someone’s coming to visit? We feed our guests. Food is usually the first way we reach out to neighbors in pain, in poverty.

The way we behave with food both reveals and reforms the way we relate to the other human beings on our planet. Food practices reveal status (where did YOU go out to eat?) The first human murder, Cain against Abel, was over the way God received their gifts of food differently.

Gluttony got listed as a deadly sin because it overfills us to bursting and illness, because it rivets our attention to what we can’t get enough of, whether we are over privileged or deprived, and because when we take more than we need, it means that someone else doesn’t get enough. There’s no good side to gluttony, no silver lining.

One of the most powerful images of God I’ve ever encountered describes God as ever renewing and overflowing.

When we become the body of Christ, we become that open fluid flow of God’s life.

(This Holy Mystery, p. 25) “all who are baptized into the body of Christ Jesus become servants and ministers within that body, which is the church. …the one Body, drawn together by the Spirit, is fully realized when all its many parts eat together in love and offer their lives in service at the Table of the Lord.

We can be too full to care, or full enough to share. What is it you can’t get enough of?

What Are YOU Going to Do About It?

In the English language, "mad" can be either angry or insane.

On July 8, 1741, 38-year-old Jonathon Edwards stood in the pulpit of the Congregational Church in Northampton, Massachusetts and preached what is now the best-known sermon in American History. Edwards was already well known as a preacher of aesthetic theology; he saw God’s love and purpose everywhere in the wonders of nature.

But the sermon he preached on this day, the sermon now included in American anthologies of literature, the sermon that has largely defined our popular impression of God, was called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

Edwards, preaching a revival sermon that helped spark the First Great Awakening, viscerally described a God who is angry, a God who holds us accountable not only for our devastating ignorance of the welfare of creation as of our brother and sister human beings, but also accountable for our willful ignorance of God’s self. His intent was to prompt his listeners to utterly abandon themselves to God’s loving care, erasing all fear.

But the phrase “Angry God,” burned and burrowed itself into our communal psyche until we began to flee this angry God instead of what made God angry.

God’s not alone in this. We have inherited our maker’s capacity for anger.

No matter how much philosophy may want to talk about how we should or shouldn’t get angry, scripture recognizes that we do. In the bible, people get mad.

When the people he’d led out of Egypt built a golden calf to worship as soon as his back was turned, Moses was mad enough to break the first stone tablets with God’s commandments. Can you picture Moses and God together on the mountain, shaking their heads at the denseness of “some people,” (all people?) and re-inscribing the law?

In the ancient, early days of Israel’s political formation, Young Jonathon got angry with his father Saul for treating his beloved friend David unfairly.

In his later years as king of Israel, David’s downfall seems to be that he can’t bring himself to get angry with his errant adult children as they begin to play havoc with each other’s lives and with the kingdom itself.

Jesus was angry with his community’s leaders when they stood by silently and let a man with a useless hand suffer instead of reaching out and helping him; when they were more worried about obeying the established “rules”. The man with the withered hand was more valuable to them as a chance to catch Jesus breaking a rule than he was as a potential productive member of society,

Jesus got mad enough at Peter to call him “satan” when Peter got after him for getting down to the heart of what was to come, the consequences f all this disturbing feeding, and healing, and teaching.

The wisdom book of Proverbs is full of advice about the virtues of patience and soft words, but the fact remains, people get mad.

“Inglorious Bastards,” one of the most critically acclaimed films playing, and a box office pleaser explores a devastating intersection of abusive institutional power and imagined angry response. It’s a “could-a, should-a, would-a” film.

WE don’t want to be angry, we know that anger, especially sustained anger, is unhealthy, one of the major stressors. WE don’t want others to be angry with us. But we now that the best way to “manage” anger induced stress is to resolve, not avoid, the anger. We carry unresolved anger, aware or unaware, forward in our lives. We know that the rate of sudden cardiac death increases when the population is collectively stressed, (CNN 2-24-09 citing Rachel Lampert). And we know that over 60% of the US poplulation reports being angry and irritable on a daily basis.

And a study published last spring by Rachel Lampert demonstrates a link between electrical signal disruptions induced by anger and arrhythmia in patients with existing heart conditions.

“Other studies have also shown that if you ask patients about what happened before a heart attack, they'll most frequently say they were angry, said Dr. Charles Raison, psychiatrist and director of the Mind/Body Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.” (CNN ibid)

And, as Jonathon Edwards embedded in our imaginations, the God who made us in God’s own image gets angry too. The worship book of the psalms lists the seven things that make God mad too. If anger really is wrong, what do we do with God’s wrath?

Proverbs 6: 16-19: There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family.

God’s anger is a response to our sin. Its not God’s character. It’s not who God IS. God is love. In the beginning it is love. In the end it is love. That love is resolved that each and all experience God’s care and is angered when we prevent it.

Injustice causes God’s heart to skip a beat.

So what’s deadly about anger?

Was it wrong to be angry in the aftermath of 9-11?

Is it wrong for a parent to be angry when they can’t access the same basic health care that their neighbor or boss or teacher or pastor’s family has?

Is it wrong for one of my colleagues to grow irritated when in one public dinner after another he is asked for more coffee, peas, pasta because he is a big black man?

Is it wrong for another to become angry when each time he moves to a new parsonage, police cars follow him home until well-placed parishioners call and ask them to stop? He is from the Caribbean.

Shouldn’t my Korean friend be angry when the bouncer at a bar tells him to go find when that likes “Chinamen?”

The seven deadly sins were listed, with the best of intentions, by the church in its early decades as an institutional power, the only remaining effective institutional power, during the chaos of the disintegrating Roman empire. “calm down, keep your head, work together,” were life saving words in that time.

What the philosophers who created the western Vice/virtue lists recognized, and what our Buddhist friends call our attention to, is that passions can drive and misshape us; especially when they are driven by fear, greed, pride, insatiable appetites for more or a need to feel superior.

What scripture and Judeo Christian experience show us is that passions can also align us with the heart of a God who is resolved that each and every one of God’s creatures experience the blessings of divine love.

We underestimate God’s anger at our peril.

And glimpse the results of our actions- in backlashes from imbalance of power, Uprisings, downfalls. The furious power of nature disturbed by careless stewardship of our physical resources..

At the same time, we are constantly underestimating God’s love, a love that is as patient as a wise grandparent who won't let us go too far.

Instead of fearfully trying to tip the cosmic scales in our favor, shouldn’t we be trying to both please God and become our best selves by eliminating the causes of righteous anger so that real love can flourish? Anger can be a wake-up call, and instrument.

Anger can sever us from God and others or anger can move us back into God's embrace, toward God's purpose.

What Are You Going to Do About It?

Merciful, by Steve Parsons

Our Father, who is in heaven, holy is your name.

With one simple phrase, Jesus teaches us how to enter the embrace of One who is as close as a loving daddy and to honor the same One who is unimaginably more than we can name.  Our need for intimacy co-exists with a sense of awe at the core of our being. 

The One who feeds us, who tickles our toes and our nose with feathers and flowers, who provides guidance when we wander into dangerous territory....this same One creates all that is and yet makes a way for us, a tiny  part of that vastness, to come into relationship with Holiness. 

Scripture tells of only one irreconcilable sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:29).After all, how can I be forgiven if I won't turn and face the source of forgiveness. How can holiness soak into my life if I harden my shell against the Holy Spirit?

Try this prayer exercise: 

Breathe an out the way you normally do for a minute, just notice how you breathe.

Now, breathe in deeply and slowly. 

And let your breathe out.

 Do  you notice how more effort is used contracting your muscles to breathe in than while letting the breathe flow out? 

Try taking a deep breathe and holding it.

Now when are you doing the most work?  Notice your need to release the breathe you've taken.  Its hard work not to!  Our bodies health depends on being able to breath in well, just as we need the Holy Spirit to flow freely into our lies, and on being able to exhale well, just as we need to let the Holy Spirit flow through us and into the world.

Try taking a shallow breathe in and then breathe deeply out.   We can only breathe out as well as we breathe in.

Try breathing with tense muscles instead of relaxed.  Which is harder work?  Which is more effective?

Richard Foster once wrote, “ Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love,”  (Prayer:  Finding the Heart’s True Home.” )    

This week, ask Christ to teach you how to pray as naturally as breathing to the One who loves you and who opens a world of possibility to you.  You'll know that others all around the world and throughout time (that was, that is, that will be) as you pray, "Our Father, who is in heaven, Holy is your name....."

(Photo from John and Elizabeth Reinsborough, Dulac, LA, 2009 UMVIM trip)

Coming after winter, spring reminds us that life is not a done deal, there is more in us.  Following close on spring, summer brings us fruits born of  God's gifts.

 Spring brings dreams of what church can be.  Some of our own “lego  church" musings dreamed people, leadership fired up like the apostle Paul, worshippers (believers & non-believers), children learning, a meeting place (of serenity, of worship), bibles, faith,  joy, Holy Spirit, mission, thoughtful (with a creed or covenant of beliefs), power of communication, praise & music.  What would you add in the church God helps you imagine?

This Sunday we read Mark 5: 21ff.  Its two stories intertwined in one Jesus story.  Take a minute to read it.

Go ahead. (Visit biblegateway.com or unboundbible.com for the translation of your choice.)

 Don't you wonder what happened next?  Who did this little girl grow up to be?  What did this now whole woman go on to do?  What fruit developed from these powerful encounters with the living God?  Its hard to imagine that their personal experiences with Jesus wouldn’t change how they lived, the quality of their lives, how they chose to spend the time God had given them, not on loan, but as outright gift of love.  It’s easy to imagine that they would have born abundant, nourishing fruit for the kingdom of God as their faith matured, fruit that inspired others, in Corinth, Galatia, Rome, Ephesus, France, Ethiopia.

As Paul writes to the Corinthians, he is calling that fruitfulness out of an entire community, a community that had: 1) received the gift of the Gospel, 2) witnessed the Spirit’s work in Jesus’ followers who sought them out to tell them that good news, and 3) become part of the first generation Christian family.  

Now Paul asks, “who have you become?”    He reminds them of one of their core characteristics:  excellence, and urges them to excel in this goal he sets before them.

* 2 Corinthians 8: 7-15

 ........Everything you people put your hand to turns to gold. You seem to be the best at everything. You have outstanding faith. You’re articulate. You have great knowledge and insight. Your energy and enthusiasm seem boundless. Even in love you seem to outshine everyone else. So then, we are hoping that you will also come out tops in generosity, as you contribute to the relief fund for the church in Judea.

........I’m not trying to force you into anything. I’m simply telling you about the generosity of others so that you’ll know where the benchmark is. I will be watching to see how your love measures up. Of course, if you really want a standard to aspire to, think about the extravagant offering of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was rich in everything, but he gave it all up for you. He accepted poverty in order to make you rich.

........So if you want my advice on this matter, here it is: it is time to put your money where your mouth is. You talked big last year about how willing you were to help when you first heard about the need. Now it’s time to show that you’re not all hot air. It is time to dig deep and show everyone that you are as generous with your actions as you are with your promises. I’m not concerned about how much actually ends up in the hat when you pass it around. It’s more a question of how what you give compares with what you have. No matter how eager you are, no one expects you to give what you don’t have.

........Please don’t think that I am trying to make life a bed of roses for others by putting the squeeze on you. You have got plenty at the moment, and they’re doing it tough. Next time it might be the other way around. It’s like swings and roundabouts — it all balances out after a while. As the scriptures say,

“Those with the most let nothing go to waste,........and those with the least will not go without.” Paul of Tarsus

 Summer gets hot, that’s when produce ripens.  Christian life gets hot, that’s when spiritual fruit ripens.  Paul is lighting a fire under the Corinthians just as Jesus did under Peter when he said, "Feed my sheep." Jesus’ parting words to Peter, assume that the seeds of faith are tended and bear fruit to feed the hungry, body and soul.  Paul's challenge to the Corinthian church counts on the authenticity of their faith bearing fruit to share. 

When it gets hot we start to see whose faith endures and matures.

One of our favorite hymns, “Here I Am Lord,” springs to life from the compost of the prophet Isaiah’s life experience. Isaiah lived in hot times, listening for a word from the Lord while the kingdom of Babylon, rudderless with its tyrant king dead, reeled in political chaos.

Isaiah’s faith bore fruit, crossing the comfort zone.  “Hear I am Lord, send me” he answers God’s call. (Isaiah 6).

Peter Hawkins writes that Jesus is  “the troublemaker, upsetter of applecarts, the wild card in our ordered deck” (Christian Century 6-2-09). The little girl, the hemorrhaging woman, the Corinthian community, Isaiah, Peter, Paul all had their reality upended by Jesus’ intervention.  What did they do next?

Jesus modeled servanthood and had the audacity to call others to do the same, even though this resulted in harrassment, persecution, and death.  And he dares to call us to servanthood.  …. Christ’s yoke of friendship is not for privilege but for service.   Bill O’Brien, Christian Century 5-05-09 

That sounds hard.

It feels safer to stay here in the early days of spring, pressed up against the fence of doubt, clinging to the edges of from that seed.

When the Church of the Savior in Washington DC started up, its founding members  reached a plateau, a period when doubt crippled them.  Not doubt about God’s presence or love, but doubt about how God wanted them to grow and serve. What fruit were they to bear? 

“We decided that doubt is a dimension that oftentimes is there, and that there is a time to move on in spite of it.  (Elizabeth O'Connor,  Servant Leaders, Servant Structures, p. 25. )

But how do I know God is calling me?

Why don’t we stop right now and ask?

Take a deep breath and remember that God is right here with you. 

Take another deep breath, a breath that receives the Holy Spirit’s gift of life and love.  

Now, say these words,

            “God, you have blessed me.”

            “I know its because you love me.”

            “Now I want to grow as your child”

            “and bear fruit as your servant”

            “guide me to the work “

            “that will nourish my soul”

            “and bear fruit for your kin-dom.”

When we respond, “Here I am Lord,” in the fruit-bearing season, when it is hot,  things start to happen, not just  the “crazy talk,”  of spring, but the crazy, counter-world intuitive stuff that brings the kin-dom into exuberant bloom.

You are a community of personal excellence.  Here is the challenge I set before you today, bear spiritual fruit as an excellent community.If I am supposed to hoe a garden or make a table, then I will be obeying God if I am true to the task I am performing. To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself to God's will in my work. In this way I become His instrument. He works through me. -Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Coming after winter, spring reminds us that life is not a done deal, there is more in us.  Following close on spring, summer brings fruits born of  spring’s possibility, provided by God.

Spring brings dreams of what church can be.  Some of our own “duplo”  church musings dream a church with people, fired up leaders, worshippers (believers & non-believers), children learning, ameeting place (of serenity, of  worship), bibles, faith, joy, the Holy Spirit, mission, thoughtfulness ( a creed/covenant of beliefs), powerful communication,praise & music,

 Mark 5: 21ff   This week we read the intertwined stories of a girl and a woman healed by Jesus. (Mark 5: 21-31, you can read it in the translation of your choice at unboundbible.com or biblegateway.com). Don't you wonder what happened next?  Who did this little girl grow up to be?  What did this now whole woman go on to do?  What fruit developed from these powerful encounters with the living God?  Its hard to imagine that their personal resurrections wouldn’t change how they lived, the quality of their lives, how they chose to spend the time God had given them, not on loan, but as outright gift of love.  It’s easy to imagine that they would have born abundant, nourishing fruit for the kingdom of God as their faith matured, fruit that inspired others, in Corinth, Galatia, Rome, Ephesus, France, Ethiopia.

As Paul writes to the Corinthians, he is calling that fruitfulness out of an entire community, a community that had received the gift of the Gospel, witnessed the Spirit’s work in Jesus’ followers who sought them out to tell them that good news, and become part of the first generation Christian family.  Paul asks, “who have you become?”    He reminds them of one of their core characteristics:  excellence, and urges them to excel in this goal he sets before them.

* 2 Corinthians 8: 7-15

........Everything you people put your hand to turns to gold. You seem to be the best at everything. You have outstanding faith. You’re articulate. You have great knowledge and insight. Your energy and enthusiasm seem boundless. Even in love you seem to outshine everyone else. So then, we are hoping that you will also come out tops in generosity, as you contribute to the relief fund for the church in Judea.

........I’m not trying to force you into anything. I’m simply telling you about the generosity of others so that you’ll know where the benchmark is. I will be watching to see how your love measures up. Of course, if you really want a standard to aspire to, think about the extravagant offering of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was rich in everything, but he gave it all up for you. He accepted poverty in order to make you rich.

........So if you want my advice on this matter, here it is: it is time to put your money where your mouth is. You talked big last year about how willing you were to help when you first heard about the need. Now it’s time to show that you’re not all hot air. It is time to dig deep and show everyone that you are as generous with your actions as you are with your promises. I’m not concerned about how much actually ends up in the hat when you pass it around. It’s more a question of how what you give compares with what you have. No matter how eager you are, no one expects you to give what you don’t have.

........Please don’t think that I am trying to make life a bed of roses for others by putting the squeeze on you. You have got plenty at the moment, and they’re doing it tough. Next time it might be the other way around. It’s like swings and roundabouts — it all balances out after a while. As the scriptures say,“Those with the most let nothing go to waste,........and those with the least will not go without.” Paul of Tarsus 

Summer gets hot, that’s when produce ripens.  Christian life gets hot, that’s when spiritual fruit ripens.  Feed my sheep, Jesus’ parting words to Peter, assumes that the seeds of faith are tended and bear fruit to feed the hungry, body and soul.

 When it gets hot we start to see whose faith endures and matures. 

One of our favorite hymns, “Here I Am Lord,” springs to life from the compost of the prophet Isaiah’s life experience. Isaiah lived in hot times, listening for a word from the Lord while the kingdom of Babylon, rudderless with its tyrant king dead, reeled in political chaos.

 Isaiah’s faith bore fruit, crossing the comfort zone.  “Hear I am Lord, send me” he answers God’s call. (Isaiah 6).

 Peter Hawkins’ (CC 6-2-09) writes that Jesus is  “the troublemaker, upsetter of applecarts, the wild card in our ordered deck.”  The little girl, the hemorrhaging woman, the Corinthian community all had their reality upended by Jesus’ intervention.  What did they do next?

Jesus modeled servanthood and had the audacity to call others to do the same, even though this resulted in harrassment, persecution, and death.  And he dares to call us to servanthood.  …. we need to shed the world’s view of servants and slaves and remember that for some, bearing the title of slave was a high honor.  Moses, Joshua, David, Paul, and James counted a privilege to be known as a slave of the Lord……Christ’s yoke of friendship is not for privilege but for service.   Bill O’Brien, CC 5-05-09

That sounds hard.

It feels safer to stay here in the early days of spring, pressed up against the fence of doubt, clinging to the edges of the seed pod, resisting the son’s upward pull, not knowing what produce God intended to grow when that seed was planted.

When the Church of the Savior in Washington DC started up, its founding members  reached a plateau, a period when doubt crippled them.  Not doubt about God’s presence or love, but doubt about how God wanted them to grow and serve. What fruit were they to bear? 

“We decided that doubt is a dimension that oftentimes is there, and that there is a time to move on in spite of it.  (Elizabeth O'Connor,  Servant Leaders, Servant Structures, p. 25. )

But how do I know God is calling me?

Why don’t we stop right now and ask?

Please take a deep breath and remember that God is right here with you.  

Take another deep breath, a breath that receives the Holy Spirit’s gift of life and love.  

Now, say these words,

            “God, you have blessed me.”

            “I know its because you love me.”

            “Now I want to grow as your child”

            “and bear fruit as your servant”

            “guide me to the work “

            “that will nourish my soul”

            “and bear fruit for your kin-dom.”

When we respond, “Here I am Lord,” in the fruit-bearing season, when it is hot,  things start to happen, not just  the “crazy talk,”  of spring, but the crazy, counter-world intuitive stuff that brings the kin-dom into exuberant bloom,

 You are a community of personal excellence.  Here is the challenge I set before you today, bear spiritual fruit as an excellent community.

If I am supposed to hoe a garden or make a table, then I will be obeying God if I am true to the task I am performing. To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself to God's will in my work. In this way I become His instrument. He works through me.                    -Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prayers: