Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Reflection and Renewal: Your Love Won't Let Us Go (based on 1 John 1:9)
May your all-encompassing love shine through in all that we do. Keep our eyes and our hearts open.
Amen.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Benediction: Every Part Of Our Lives (based on Luke 1:31-38)
In every part of our lives God; may our ears hear your voice, may our hands do your work, may our feet walk your path, and may our hearts share your love for all people.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Monday, December 7, 2015
Preaching the Whole Magnificat - Nadia Bolz Weber
Mary's song isn’t a docile picture of obedience singing about how great it is to be pregnant. Mary is singing of nothing less than complete overturning of the social and economic order.
There’s a reason why the Magnificat is said to have terrified the Russian Czars. Because, the message is that if you find yourself rich and powerful then … watch out! This young little Jewish girl is not singing about a whole lot of good news for you.
What Mary sings of is not an endless cycle of retribution, but a total dismantling of the entire system. The child she bears is not coming to make the oppressed the oppressors. He is coming to disrupt the whole notion of oppression itself. This divinely vulnerable love is the only way out of our cycle of power and oppression.
I’m certain that the reality of empire and oppression and poverty and the abject powerlessness of her very self in her very context was not lost on the mother of our Lord. Quite the opposite. I think she knew. She knew that because of her lowliness and poverty and insignificance – because of this and not in spite of this that God was and is doing an entirely new thing.
Never had the poor been so exalted than for God to slip into their skin insistently blessing the whole world in a radical way. She knew you simply can’t speak of such things. They have to be sung.
The full article is available here
Thursday, December 3, 2015
John The Baptist and Mary's Magnificat: The Economics of Hope - Nancy Rockwell in Patheos
Each advent, John the Baptist steps up, announcing that the economics of the empire and the temple are a corrupt system. People listened to him because they already knew this to be true.
We've gotten so used to thinking of John the Baptist as a secondary figure to Jesus, the message was meant only to point towards Jesus. In this we sell him well short.
The corruption of the temple economy was at the center of John's attention. His leaving Jerusalem, his camel skin clothing and his diet of honey and locust were signs of his refusal to participate in that economy.
Yet for all of his fiery conviction, John's answer to the corrupt economy is practical, reasonable, and most of all, full of hope: You who have two coats, give one away to someone who has none, he says. You who have two loaves of bread, do likewise. Behave fairly, treat people justly, no matter what job you have.
Changing the economy is John's answer to Herod's imperial acts of terror and the Temple Leader's economic exploitation. He teaches that we can build a world of hope among us by meeting each other's needs.
Mary of Nazareth, Jesus’ mother and John’s cousin, and the other Forerunner who is our Advent guide, rings out the same message, telling about how God scatters the proud in the imaginations of their hearts, who brings down the powerful from their thrones and lifts up the lowly, who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich empty away.
The repentance John advises to the crowds is economic change. The dedication Mary sings about is the same. These actions are hopeful, and in their view, fit preparation for the redemption of the world.
The full article is available here
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome - Reba Riley
When I read surveys and studies about America's changing religious landscape, I don't see statistics. I see Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome.
It is real, pervasive, and quite possibly one of the reasons why the percentage of adults who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly 80 percentage points since 2007.
Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome is:
- A condition of spiritual injury that occurs in the context of religion, faith and/or the leaving, losing or breaking thereof
- The aftermath of said spiritual injury
- A diagnosis intended to aid in serious spiritual healing.
Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome can be seen in the many people tired of being spiritually bruised, of their faith being used to justify unloving policies, and some of whom give up on faith altogether. In fact, 59% of all Millennials who grew up in church drop out either permanently or for an extended period of time.
For me, questions about faith weren't being asked or answered by the theology preached by family's church of my childhood. It felt like the deconstruction of an entire world view all at once.
No one ever told me it was ok to explore outside the lines of my upbringing. No one told me that God was big enough to handle all of my doubts, questions, wondering and wandering or that God would meet (and was already residing) wherever I was - or wasn't.
For me, the term Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome framed the pain I couldn't express. It helped to identify the reason why I couldn't pray or darken the door of a church. In the midst of such tumult, it is important for each individual to remember that they are not alone in their upheaval. When I have shared my experience with others, so many have had the same experience and say, "[t]hat's me."
I found my way through Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome by finally understanding that God was everywhere and in everyone whether they knew it or not. I finally understood that we are all connected.
At last I understood that we cannot experience God without one another, because God is love. If faith is love in action, God is in love in action times infinity.
Full articles are available at Time Magazine, HuffPost Religion, Religion News and Faith Street.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Why We Need A Little Advent - Ben Irwin
We're not very good at waiting for Christmas - or lingering over it when it finally comes.
This may be because we're hoping for some kind of respite from the world, but somehow the payoff of Christmas feels hollow when we finally get there.
I believe the answer lies, in part, in allowing ourselves to fully experience Advent first.
Advent forces us to linger in the dark—even as we wait, sometimes impatiently, for our redemption. It’s only by lingering here that we can see the light of Christmas properly.
To experience the respite Christmas offers, we first have to understand: respite from what and for whom?
Advent calls us to look upon the distress of our world and insists that we see the world as it is - that we see its brokenness and our part in it. This can be challenging for those of us who’ve known nothing but privilege and power and comfort our whole lives.
Confronting the brokenness in our world means confronting the brokenness in our own hearts. It means confronting our complicity in systems that oppress, discriminate, or take away life.
Mary anticipated that her son would bring down rulers, lift up the humble, feed the hungry—and send the rich packing. His birth challenged (and continues to challenge) the legitimacy of an empire built upon slavery and coercion.
The angelic proclamation of “peace on earth” is not something we were supposed to just sit around and wait for. (No peace this year. Oh well… maybe next Christmas.) The Christmas proclamation is a vision we are called to embody.
The full article is available here
Monday, November 30, 2015
A War On What Christmas Has Become? Sign This Minister Up - Reverend Mark Sandlin
The baby we remember this time of year was not part of the dominant culture (unlike us). The religious stories told in the time of Jesus' birth were told under the shadow of the dominant culture. They were stories of oppression and hardships; stories of hope for people living in times and cultural positions that felt hopeless.
Today, our stories are told from places and positions of power. So, instead of the story of a Middle-Eastern, unwed, pregnant woman who was seen as little more than property, giving birth to what her society would see as an illegitimate child who was placed in a smelly feeding-trough in an animal stall, we end up with a clean White Anglo Saxon Protestant woman giving birth to a glowing baby wrapped in impossibly white cloths and laid in a manger that looks more like a crib than any feeding-trough.
The Christmas story has been hijacked by the dominant culture. Our current story has become increasingly white-washed and sanitized. That has warped the comeuppance sensibilities of the original Christmas story. God's vision of liberating the oppressed and downtrodden has been air-brushed into a safe story that no longer brings fear to the Powers that Be, but rather supports big business agendas of profit and mass consumerism.
Does the story we tell bring light into darkness? Does it bring hope to hopeless? Does our celebration bring justice to those who have been treated unjustly?
Jesus' birth is a part of a story meant to teach us something about the value of every human soul; meant to teach us that "the least of these" is simply a human construct; meant to show us what life looks like when it starts from the assumption that all people are worthy of love.
So if there is a War on Christmas like many of the "not-least of these" claim, then sign me up. I refuse to let the story of my faith be co-opted by corporate interests who want us to believe we are entitled to a certain materialistic status that can be bought and that we should revel in our obscene abundance even as we celebrate the birth of a child who had no place to lay his head and told us "just as you do it unto the least of these, you do unto me."
In the 1st World, our abundance which is carried on and carved out of the backs of the 2nd and 3rd World. This corporate global dominance is enabled by an economic and cultural empire that dwarfs the Romans.
The full article is available here
Thursday, November 26, 2015
Giving Thanks As A Life Changing Dynamic - Fred Plumer
Living with thankfulness is not just about things that we have acquired or have been given. It is not even about good things that have happened. Being in-thankfulness is a way of living. It is a way of being aware. It is a way of being conscious. It is a way of discovering a new perspective; a new reality.
We are often one-dimensional in our thinking. We tend to think in terms of the material. We become score keepers for life based on things we think of as measurable. When we are thankful it is usually for things and events when we get what we thought we wanted.
This way of being ignores the multi-dimensions of existence, those things that bring us a more fulfilling happiness if we are open to them; i.e. beauty, grace, love, growth, connection. All too often, I suspect we pay less attention to what is happening in our relationships, to our souls, in the very essence or the beauty of all that is around us and within us than we do to our financial balance sheet. We concern ourselves far too much with how we are matching up with others.
The 2nd thing this kind of thinking ignores is that every day provides an abundance of lessons for life; every day can be a teacher. Let’s face it. Most of us know that some of our most painful experiences provide our greatest and often most profound lessons. We don’t necessarily choose to go through them but we can decide to learn what we can from them with a faith that says, someday I will look back on this and realize that there was an incredible gift in this experience.
The full article is available here
Shalom-Seeking - Kate Kooyman in Do Justice!
While the image for justice in our culture is a set of scales, the image for justice in Scripture is a river (Amos 5:24). A broad, flowing, living, rolling, sustaining, beautiful river. This river, I believe, is all about abundance.
I want there to be an abundance of compassion in life. I don’t want our hearts to be divided, I want our hearts to grow. I want to make things more alive. I want the church to be pro-life -- pro-abundant life.
Our deeply-felt callings look different in their details, but look the same in their essence: That all may have life, and have it abundantly.
We can more deeply invest in the issue that we believe in passionately when we come to understand and value other people's issues. Because drones have to do with immigration, which has to do with prisoners, which has to do with education, which has to do with racism, which has to do with abortion, which has to do with poverty, which has to do with housing.
These issues are all interconnected, and they all deeply affect people’s ability to flourish in community--which is to say, that they’re all about shalom.
I think to be pro-life today means embracing this ethic of abundance -- that there’s no person for whom God does not desire an abundant life. It is up to each of us to contribute to that vision of a wild, rolling, life-giving river of justice.
The full article is available here
Monday, November 9, 2015
Benediction: Lives of Gratitude & Service (based on Lamentations 3:24)
Friday, November 6, 2015
Monday, November 2, 2015
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
5 Reasons We Still Need Intentional Community - Christian Piatt at Patheos
People are leaving organized religion by the millions.
The reasons cited are many: suspicion of institutions in general; perceived hypocrisy; too busy; simply never raised within a religious culture. All of these reasons are legitimate.
But there are some things that community tends to offer us that few other things in the culture afford. And we need them, whether we know it or not. And without them, we suffer, both individually and collectively.
(This is in NO WAY meant to imply that "church" is the only valid place where community can be found and dwelt in. Rather, this discussion seeks address what those who leave organized religion replace it's inherent sense of community with, if at all.)
1. We Want To Know and Be Known. We long to be known, to share our lives with one another. And in our increasingly distributed, virtualized world, our relationships grow more and more strained, abstracted. We want to be known – really known – and we want to know others with equal depth.
2. Joys Are Multiplied and Sorrows Are Made Lighter. The 1st thing we want to do when something amazing happens is share it with people we care about. It makes it so much more meaningful when we can share it. On the other hand, grief is so much heavier when borne alone. Going through difficult times together makes the grief far easier to bear.
3. We Long For "Set Apart" Time. Though the word “sacred” tends to be loaded with religious implications, the root meaning of it means “set apart. We want occasions that are special, set apart, which significes to us and others, “this is important.”
4. We Need Input From People Who Know Us Well. We are notoriously self-deceiving creatures. We tend to justify whatever we’re doing as ok, even as what we do, value, own and consume changes over time. We benefit by being members of a closely knit community that holds each other responsible. Strong community gives us life and wisdom in ways that living alone can’t.
5. We Long for Sanctuary. Our lives are incredibly complicated. I think we can all agree that, though technology has been created with the intent to simplify our lives, our expectations of our performance always rises to meet our maximum potential for efficiency.
Whereas we used to expend energy to seek out information, now we spend that much energy – or more – holding stimulus at arms-length and filtering through what’s real and what’s bullshit. It’s exhausting. It affects our physical and emotional health.
We need somewhere that we can hear and be reminded of an alternative narrative to the relentless marketing assault of consumer society, somewhere we are reminded that life is built around cooperation not competition, somewhere we are reminded that it is better to give than to get, somewhere we are reminded that our fellow creatures are members of the same interconnected web to be cared for not defeated and walked on in the race to "look out for #1."
The full article is available here
Monday, October 26, 2015
What Do Racism & Progressive Christianity Have To Do With Each Other? Timothy Murphy at Progressive Christianity
While liberal Christianity has been driven for 200 years by questions like, “How can Christian faith make sense in a modern world,” a more compelling question for me is “When people are being dehumanized, and their neighbors feel nothing, what does that say about people’s capacity for transformation?”
The latter question points to the nature of sin, how we stand complicit in one another’s suffering, and how salvation must include the liberation of bodies as much as the redemption of souls. While that feels compelling, it pains me when my community gets stuck on feeling personally attacked when issues of race come up.
But here’s the thing: 9 times out of 10 it is not about explicit individual prejudice. It’s fundamentally not about you as an individual, nor is it about feeling guilty for being “racist” as a white person. It’s about principalities and powers, systems so deeply rooted in us that they shape our very way of life. And those dynamics are built to remain invisible to all those are advantaged by them. Now that’s sin!
But it’s so hard to express this in ways white people can hear without feeling like they are under attack (If you feel that way even now, please read this).
Addressing exploitation, violence, powerlessness, and oppression with a gospel of radical solidarity and an affirmation of the beauty and fortitude of what the systems of this world call worthless is the central thrust of Christian faith, whether it calls itself “progressive” or not.
In a world where the violence done to others is more often hidden from our eyes than in plain, even horrific, view, may each of us ask questions that help us better love our sisters and brothers as ourselves.
Friday, October 23, 2015
Pro-Life Series: Women At The Margins - Do Justice!
In our region, the hospital that performs high risk deliveries also performs abortions. So when I visit women after they give birth, I always cross the picket line of sign-waving pro-lifers.
I want to beg them to put down their signs and instead invest that time in helping vulnerable women and their children.
What if every vulnerable mother (and father) had a family who helped her and cared for her and supported her as if she were their own?
What if we spent more time with pregnant teens? Or with girls who are at risk of becoming pregnant long before they graduate from high school?
What if each one of us helped a young child who was lost in the system?
What if we spent more our time with those who are at risk of sexual exploitation, children with no homes and no families, and those born with preventable disabilities like FASD?
For me, being pro-life means that I will continue to cross the picket line of pro-life sign-holders to get to the people inside, some of whom are so broken and struggling and alone that they believe their only option is an abortion.
The full article is available here
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