Romans 8:14-17
Acts 2:1-21

Do any of you remember that 1960’s children’s book “Are you my mother?” by P.D. Eastman. You know the one, with the blue cover and the picture of a little bird standing on a hound dog’s head peering inquisitively into the dog’s sleepy eyes?

It was a well loved book of my childhood and told the story of a little baby bird who cracked out of his shell when his mother was out looking for food. Eager to know her, the baby bird tumbles out of the nest and then spends the rest of the book wandering around asking “Are you my mother?” first to a kitten then a hen then a cow and a dog and on and on. And as each one says “no,” the baby bird gets more and more frantic until finally a big steam shovel picks up the baby and plops it back in the nest, just in time for the arrival of the mother with a big wiggly worm in her beak.

Up until this past week, I had not read that book since I was a child and yet I remembered it vividly, from the red scarf of the mother bird to the “snort” of the steam shovel.

And as I reread the book this week it evoked in me those very same feelings that it did when it was first read to me all those many years ago when I was snuggled up on the soft lap of my grandmother. I felt again this immediate identification with the baby bird, delight in the baby bird’s tenacity and determination, then an increasing anxiety and fear as the baby wanders farther and farther away in an increasingly dangerous landscape, and then the sweet relief when the baby bird is delivered safely home and recognizes and is embraced by his one true mother.
But before we go too far on what must seem to you to be an irrelevant tangent, let us pray: Gracious God guide my speaking and deepen our listening so that we may hear your word for us this day. AMEN.

I am quite convinced that this children’s book , this 1960s classic has such staying power because at its core it is a retelling really of a deep primordial narrative of our communal being. Somewhere in our collective unconscious, I think, there is a deep memory of a time when all was as it ought to be. Call it that little nest in the Eastman book, or call it the Garden of Eden as the Christian and Jewish tradition does. We “remember” a time when all was well and all manner of things was well.

But as the narrative goes, somehow we have fallen out of that nest, fallen out of Eden. And now, for many of us, in the words of that old Crosby Stills Nash and Young song, much of our life energy is spent trying to figure out how “to get ourselves back to the garden.”
~~~
We may feel at first feel tenacious and determined but over time I think some of us feel more and more anxious and fearful as over and over again we do not find that “mother” — that homecoming that we deeply crave.

So we turn to those out there who are quite convinced that they know and have exactly what it is we need to find our way back to whatever it we feel we have lost. They tell us “You need a new car!” “You need to lose ten pounds and get your teeth whitened.” “You need to drink more beer!” And we can get more lost than ever in their insistence for how many times have you found yourselves in the grips of an “if…then” mindset. If ___________, (you fill in the blank), then ______________________ you fill in the blank.

Maybe some do find what they need there, and God bless them if they do. But many do not. And for those of us who don’t, the hard thing is that we don’t even get the benefit of the placebo effect. We take the sugar pill they offer as medicine for whatever ails us while knowing full well, deep down that it has no power to cure us. So our feelings of displacement, of being not just where we need to be are compounded.

And so some of us, continue to wander with this deep dis-ease, a restless, exiled people, a baby bird having tumbled out of the nest, wanting nothing more than to find a way home.
~~~~

There is some interesting research out of the University of Virginia by a man named Jonathan Haidt. Haidt a professor of psychology, has from a very early age been troubled and fascinated by this question of “how do we come home to our life?”, “How do we cease our restless wanderings and find fullness and peace?” Or as he puts it “How do we discover for ourselves, each one of us what is the purpose within our life?”

In his provocative book “The Happiness Hypothesis,” he postulates that there are three realms or dimensions that when calibrated in a way that is right for our unique selves, create the environment or atmosphere in which happiness, or groundedness, or home coming, or sweet shalom whatever you want to call, can rise and flourish in our lives. In essence he says that the nest or garden we crave is not out there, but instead is right here, available now. He writes “Just as plants need sun, water and good soil to thrive, people need love, works and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and how you spend your time, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.”

I will not go into the first two dimensions of right relationship he lifts up: relationship between ourselves and others, between ourselves and how we spend our time –because we do not have time right now. But I do want to speak briefly of the third relationship: that of our relationship with something larger than ourselves.

In his chapter entitled “Divinity with or without God” Haidt retells the story of what a “charming little book written in 1884 by the English novelist and mathematician Edwin Abbot entitled Flatland. “Flatland is a two dimensional world whose inhabitants are geometric figures. The protagonist is a square. One day, the square is visited by a sphere from the three dimensional world called Spaceland. When sphere visits Flatland, however, all that is visible to Flat landers is the part of the sphere that lies in their plane, in other words a circle. The square is astonished that the circle is able to grow or shrink at will (by rising or sinking) on the plane of Flatland and even to disappear and reappear in a different place (by leaving the plane and then reentering it.) The sphere tries to explain the concept of the third dimension to the two dimensional square but the square though skilled at two dimensional geometry doesn’t get it.”
Haidt says that we are all, in some way, the square. We all have encountered something we failed to understand yet smugly believed we understood because we could not conceive of the dimension to which we were blind. Then one day something happens that makes no sense in our two dimensional world and we catch our first glimpse of another dimension.”

That happened to me yesterday. I was the square that the sphere suddenly lifted up and I caught a glimpse of a new dimension. Bart Kelso took ten of us on a walk through the Arnold Arboretum. I am afraid I was a bit like that square in flatland when we started out for I did not expect to be astonished. I live quite close to that arboretum and run or walk through it multiple times throughout the week, I thought I had already keep all there was to see.

But yesterday, I was astonished. I was lifted up into a different dimension. As we slowly meandered Bart pointed out things I had never seen. Have you ever seen a dove tree in bloom! It will change your life I promise. Have you ever peered into a dogwood blossom and heard the story of its bloom? Have you ever stood under a centuries old, Beech tree and felt the power of its life force surround you and claim you as another blessed living creature on this planet? I had this rather eerie but powerfully real realization that the arboretum was not just a beautiful backdrop to my walks and runs but a living, breathing, world full of elders who held a wisdom and a sense of place and knowledge that I had been craving but that which I had been running by day after day!

My husband, Mark works at an educational center in Milton that as part of its mission, invites Boston public school kids out to the site to learn from and experience the natural world. The Russell School kids were out there this week as a matter of fact. He says that about half of those urban kids who come out to the site have never been in the woods. They do not know what it is to sit on grass, to hold a frog, to wander among the trees. Growing up in concrete and asphalt in city streets that are unsafe and city parks that are more dangerous still, they have not experienced the relationship with nature, with that something larger that may very well be if Haidt is right, a key to coming home to the purpose in living.

How much of coming home could begin by just being present to the natural world. Of taking up our place in the family of all things? How are we robbing our selves and our children by not experiencing the embrace of the beech and the beauty of the dove tree?
~~~

Being in relationship to something larger than themselves is exactly what is happening in the Pentecost story from Acts today. The same spirit that moved over the waters of the deep is now moving through those gathered and they are being brought home to their place in the family of all things. Divisions and boundaries are dissolving under the common language of the inspiration of being caught up in the family of God. This is the moment when those that day discovered that the home that sought was the now they lived. Eden was now.

So on this care of creation Sunday, let us too explore what it may mean to be in relationship with something larger than ourselves. Let us look out on the world not as a stage, (sorry Shakespeare) but instead let us look out on the world as a living, breathing being with whom we are called to be in relation.

This is what Paul proclaims, in his letter to the Romans, we are children of the creator God who made all things. We are adopted into the family of creation. We are brothers and sisters to the wren and the whale, the ancient and massive beach tree and the delicate dove tree. They are our brothers and sisters as much as the person in the pew next to you today.

Isn’t that what Jesus was getting at when he said over and over again that the Kingdom of God is at hand? That the healing you desperate need is available to you know. That your alienation is over and that right now you can come home to your place in the family of all things?

So what if my favorite children’s story played out a little differently. What if it told the story of a baby bird that toppled out of the nest but that met a kitten along the way that said, sure! You can be at home with me! What if it the hen and the dog and the cow said, you bet. What if that bird discovered the freedom of being at home right where he was. I wonder if that story is the story that needs to be told, the story that the disciples full of Spirit announce, the story we celebrate every Sunday here. We are the children of God at home in God’s good creation, right now. That is a good story, a story worth remembering. Amen

Arnold Arboretum Tour 

Kathryn Henderson will lead a meditation workshop on Saturday morning. Join her at 10:00 a.m. in Stacy’s office. Contact Kathryn with any questions.

Our Stewardship Campaign continues.  Please remember to turn in your pledge cards if you have not yet already done so. Pledges enable us to determine a budget for the upcoming year in time for the annual meeting. Pledge cards are available in the side chapel or call the office.

The Stewardship Committee will meet Tuesday morning at 7:30 a.m.

The Pastoral Relations Committee will meet at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday.

Living Waters Prayer Group will meet Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m. in the side chapel.

Next Youth Group meeting is Friday, May 30, from 6:00 -8:00 p.m. at church.

The Annual Meeting will be held on Sunday, June 2 at 11:30 a.m. Everyone is welcome to attend this church-wide meeting, and childcare will be available.

Children’s Sunday is June 9

Our children and youth will lead worship on this day.  There are opportunities for every child to participate in this service.  We will start assigning parts in Sunday School this week.  Please check with your children to make sure they have signed up for parts if they’d like one.

Camp Sing, Serve and Soar is almost full.  A few spaces remain for our June 27 field trip to Overlook Farm and for our June 28 afternoon trip to SkyZone.  RSVP to Kathy if interested.

Was your photo part of our photo directory last fall? If not, here’s your chance! We will be updating the directory at the end of the summer, so start to think about gathering your pictures. The more photos we have, the better the directory will be!

Mark your calendars for our annual church picnic on June 9. We will be returning to Claxton Park in Needham. Stay tuned for more details.

We had our writing group this past Wednesday and as is our custom, we began our time with an opener. The intention of our opener is to help us widen our imaginations as we prepare to write. So for our opener last Wednesday, I posed the question “If you could have any kind of super power, what kind of super power would you like to have?” Some of us knew immediately. We’d like to fly. Others thought for a bit before answering that they’d like to be able to hear the thoughts of animals or perhaps to be able to turn back the hands of time.

Reflecting on it, I think I asked that question as our opener on Wednesday, because, I have been feeling like I could really use some super powers lately. I have been feeling pretty pressed upon by the enormity of all that is wrong in the world — pressed upon by all the devastation, domination, and abuse that is out there. It feels lately like we, as a human race, are devolving not evolving, and that we seem to be taking all of creation with us.

Three women and a little girl held captive and dominated by a man in Cleveland for ten years! Sexual assault in the military up one third since 2010, meaning that at least 26,000 were abused in 2012 in a line of work that is supposed to be about keeping us all safe. Bombs ripping lives apart and shaking all of us to the core and then the ugly backlash against all Muslims whipped up in horror’s wake. And that is just what makes the domestic headlines.

And then there is the interior space of our own hearts which, I fear, are burdened, weighed down by our own secret shame, anxiety, or rage. Weighted down by neglect and the disappointment of perhaps not receiving what we deeply need, leaving us struggling with an emptiness we fear will never be filled.

Everywhere we look these days, there seems to be something bearing down on us. And I don’t know about you, but “I’m feeling like my back is up against the wall” to borrow a phrase from Howard Thurman, theologian, pastor and spiritual director to the civil rights movement.

So I go dreaming about superpowers. I think we all could use a little bit of super power to get us through our days, let alone begin to change the course of our time.

And if I am really honest, there is a part of me that still thinks of God as a kind of superhero — full of otherworldly super powers. And when I examine my heart there is a place there that thinks that this superhero God really ought to be swooping in just about now to save us from all this madness.

When God doesn’t seem to show up, despite that terrible things keep happening and despite that many of us are as stuck as ever, well that leaves me, and maybe you too scratching our heads and wondering if the God we conceive of is really real after all? There just seems to be a vast distance between what we say about an active God of love and goodness and our lived experience in the world.

Well it may be some small measure of comfort to know we are not alone in our anguish and confusion. It may be some small measure of comfort to know that wishing for a little super power for themselves or a superhero God to swoop in and make things right was exactly what I bet Shiprah and Puah were thinking when they heard the latest decree from Pharaoh telling them they were to kill all the boy babies on the birth stool. These were women of faith trying hard to hold onto belief in a situation that rapidly going from bad to worse.

There was a time when it seemed God smiled on the Hebrew people, when all was good and right but that was a few centuries ago when Joseph held the respect and confidence of the then Pharaoh and was able to give shelter to the Hebrew people in Egypt during the time of famine. That is why they came down to Egypt from the land of Cannan afterall; to find refuge and they did find it, they found refuge.

But now, Egypt is not such a friendly place, and this Pharaoh is mean if not down right cruel. He is suspicious of the Hebrew people and is looking for a way sap their strength. First he enslaves them forcing them to build the supply cities of Pithom and Rameses, and then he made their “lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and every kind of field labor” (Exodus 1:14).

“And now this? Kill the boy babies on the birth stool?” I imagine Shiprah and Pual muttering to each other with tear streaked faces as they share a cup of tea. They must have been scared and furious and struggled with deep doubt that their God would let it come to this. “The only reason Pharaoh did not tell us to kill the girl babies as well,” I imagine them muttering in their grief “is because he is so sure that girls pose no threat.” And then, I like to imagine that they lifted their heads and with a gleam in their eyes, they suddenly smiled.

Some of you I see are smiling too, — for how wrong Pharaoh was. Let’s be clear, Shiprah and Puah were not suddenly endowed in that moment with superpowers, and there was no superhero God rushing in to save the day. All there was, was a couple of wizen woman who had had enough. And as it turns out Pharaoh, the superpower of the land, was no match for a couple of powerless women who were filled with a power of conviction beyond belief.

For when they are hauled up in front of Pharaoh to account for their violation of his decree, they do not go to pieces. Stop for a moment and think about the power differential here — a couple of immigrant midwives and the king of not just Egypt but most influential superpower in the region. And yet these two old women craftily side step the snare and wring their hands and lift their brows and play on Pharaoh’s complete ignorance of and indifference to the miracle of giving birth by saying something absolutely ridiculous but compellingly true to Pharaoh: “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes.”

But the story doesn’t stop with the midwives right? Their defiance sets in motion a chain of events that builds as each woman who comes face to face with death dealing domination says “no.” Who in her small and subtle ways makes room for life.
For next in the account, there is the mother. Her baby is fine and regardless of what Pharaoh says she is not about to end his life. So she tends to him, nurturing him in secret, caring for him until she can no longer do so safely and then this remarkable woman makes an ark for him, trusting the universe to care for him sending him out on the waters trusting creation to bring him to solid ground. Can you imagine her courage and her pain?

And then there is shrewd Miriam, the sister of the baby who knows what her mom is up to and knows the danger her brother faces and so she being a child who can wander unnoticed where grown women cannot, she follows her brother in his ark as he drifts down the Nile. Was she muttering a mantra all the way the he would not be eaten by a crocodile or overturned to drown in an eddy? Courageous and powerful, little girl Miriam who takes a stand ( the Hebrew word here is the same as one who goes out in battle to take a stand against one’s enemies, it carries the force of one who goes out in battle and will not be moved) she takes a stand to witness what is to come even if she has no power to change it. Which, it turns out, she does by offering Pharaoh’s daughter to get a nurse for the baby thereby restoring the baby to his mom. How beautiful is that!

Then there is Pharaoh’s daughter. What drew her out to the River in that moment? Was it a tug on her heart initiated by the prayers of the courageous mother and protective sister? What universal pull drew her out to that watery place at that moment? But she is there. She is there and she sees. She too is moved by something other than the power of Pharaoh’s degree. She feels compassion for a baby, an immigrant child washed up on a hostile shore, and she acts in a way that feels true to who she is even thought that is in defiance of what she has been told.

And then there are the women around her, her maids. They should have talked her out of it. They should have said “Can you imagine what trouble you will get into princess when your father discovers you have rescued one of the one’s he wants dead?” And they surely would have lost their jobs or worse for conspiring with this crazy plan, but they do it. Rather than turn away, they wade into the waters and draw the helpless baby out of the reeds.

All of them from Shiprah to the nameless maids of the daughter of Pharaoh defy domination and oppression and quietly each in their own way give themselves wholly and completely to love, and life. These powerless women powerfully deliver and sustain Moses; the same Moses — who will deliver the Hebrew people from the tyranny of Pharaoh and lead them to the promised land. Without them, their quiet courage and conviction, the Exodus, the central story of the Jewish people, never would have happened. These women and their acts of courage and love were like leaven that raised a nation.

And not just those woman, but there are women all around the world today doing the same thing right now. Did you know that extensive research by the UN and the World Bank has shown that as women are educated family health improves, literacy accelerates in future generations, regions stabilize, family and national income grows.

So perhaps in this mixed up confusing time when we are wishing for superpowers and scanning the sky line for a super hero, it actually comes down to us. All of us who say, enough! Enough to domination, abuse and oppression and who have the courage and conviction to take a stand for love and life. Today in the Gospel of John we hear Jesus giving his final farewell to the disciples. He tells them that his physical time on this planet is ending but that their time is beginning. He is in essence passing the baton on to them. “Love” he says. Love as I love. As God loves. In that you will find the strength and all the “super powers” you need..

Rev. June Cooper, who was our guest preacher last week, gave us this powerful image of a statue of Jesus without hands and without arms. Why? Because we are to be Jesus hands and arms. We are to be the ones who catch life, cradle it, release it, draw it in, take a stand even if that means, especially if it means, taking on powerful dominating, oppressive death-dealing forces of our time.

So where is God? Why does God seem so absent in the time when we need God most? Maybe it is because we may be absent to the time when God needs us the most. If God, who is love, entrusts love to us, maybe the degree to which we know God is the degree to which we are able to give ourselves to love. So how are we to be the Shiprah and the Puah of our time, and stand up to and circumvent the powers of death? How are we to be that courageous mother and stalwart sister? How are we to be curious and compassionate like Pharaoh’s daughter and her maids? For I believe, if we follow what we know to be good and true and right even if that means, and especially when that means standing up to death dealing powers, it is then that God is revealed.

Thanks be to Shiprah and Puah. Thanks be to the defiant power of love. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sunday’s  special Mother’s Day offering will be for our music ministry. Your contribution will help keep our instruments in tune, our choir in harmony,  and our Sunday worship whole with the joy of music.

The Children’s Choir will rehearse in the Sanctuary  Sunday morning after worship.

Lunch Bunch will meet Tuesday, May 14, at noon.

Mission will meet Tuesday evening, May 14, at 7:00 p.m.

Living Waters Prayer Group will meet Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m. in the side chapel.

Wellspring, the Union Church’s women’s group, will meet Wednesday evening at 6:30 p.m. Please RSVP to the church office if you will be attending.

This month’s visit to Waban Health will be on Thursday morning, May 16,

at 10:30 a.m. Contact Stacy if you would like to participate.

Java Gents will meet Friday morning, May 17, at 7:00 a.m. for breakfast and a time of fellowship led by Jay O’Beirne.

Next Friday Fun Night for fourth and fifth graders: May 17, 6:00-8:00 p.m. at church.

The Meditation Group will be meeting on Saturday morning, May 18 at 10:00 a.m.

On Sunday, May 19th, we will celebrate Care of Creation Sunday and have a Blessing of the Bikes. Those who would like to participate are invited to gather at Cold Spring Park at 9:15 a.m. and ride their bikes to church.

Assistant needed in Sunday School this Sunday, May 12,  and on June 16.  If you can help out, let Kathy (Kathy@ucw.org) know.

Children’s Sunday is June 9

Our children and youth will lead worship on this day.  There are opportunities for every child to participate in this service.  We will start assigning parts in Sunday School this week.  Please check with your children to make sure they have signed up for parts if they’d like one.

Camp Sing, Serve and Soar is almost full.  A few spaces remain for our June 27 field trip to Overlook Farm and for our June 28 afternoon trip to SkyZone.  RSVP to Kathy if interested.

Was your photo part of our photo directory last fall? If not, here’s your chance! We will be updating the directory at the end of the summer, so start to think about gathering your pictures. The more photos we have, the better the directory will be!

I have heard it said — that the bombings of Marathon Monday – ought to be a wake-up call; that it ought to wake us up from the erroneous idea that we can live free from fear, that we can trust each other, that the world is good. I have heard it said that the bombings exposed the truth under the lie we have been living — that the world is actually a very scary place full of very scary people. Turbulence, not goodness, is the mark of our time and a touch of fear and suspicion is necessary for it keeps us vigilant. I have heard it said that it is time we face the fact that we live in a fallen world, full of fallen people, and we are just being naïve if we think compassion, not caution, ought to guide us.
~~~
Now we may not be in the habit of bringing our faith claims into the public square. We may be more in the practice of keeping our faith personal. But there are times when the truth claims of our faith need to be spoken. I believe now is such a time. For those terrible, terrible bombings did reveal a truth, but the truth they revealed is that grace and goodness, blessing and peace are the deeper reality, the deeper essence that holds and animates the world – and that hate, violence, vengeance and fear are the aberration, not the confirmation, of the nature of reality.

But, before we step into the audacity of that claim, let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you O God our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
~~~
So, how is it that our faith dares to make the audacious claim that grace and goodness, blessing and peace are deep reality? How is it that we dare live that claim?

First, because such an assertion is our foundational story. “In the beginning, God created all that is and blessed all that is as good. That is how the Bible opens. The first truth that needs to be told.
I had a teacher who said “myth is the history that people forgot.” The opening creation myth holds the truth that people of faith across the millennium have affirmed and that is that God who we know as love creates, and as such all creation therefore has the imprint of love within it. And that the God of love blessed all that is as good and not just a “gold star” kind of good, but deep goodness. The Hebrew word is tov and it is a kind of powerful, connective force, like a gravitational pull of goodness, that holds everything together. The ontological nature of reality therefore is love and the divine physics that holds it all together is a connection of blessed goodness.
~~~
And we dare make this claim also because the Bible, (humankind’s attempt to give witness to a lived experience of God), is littered with encounters with this deeper reality of goodness, and what is striking is that many of these encounters occur in the most ordinary of places to the most ordinary of people.

There is Jacob who at least at the start is really more of a scoundrel having just cheated his brother out of his birthright than the hero of faith that he will become. Jacob is on the run when night falls. So he lies down on the ground in the middle of nowhere to sleep, and wraps his arm around a nearby stone to use as a pillow. And as he sleeps he has a vision of a heavenly ladder and of angels going up and coming down from heaven. He is so arrested by his vision of the meeting of heaven and earth, so certain was he that God had to be far away from wherever he was, that he takes his stone pillow, tips it on end as a marker and altar, saying “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!” (Gen. 28: 10-22).

Then of course there Moses who is minding his own business and his father-in –law’s flock when suddenly a bush burns; he is told to take off his sandels for he stands on Holy Ground and in doing so his life is changed forever. (Exodus 3:1-6).

And of course we remember the Samaritan woman at the well where she had gone a thousand times in that back breaking chore of hauling up water. But then he was there, Jesus and in the presence and with the words of this stranger from Galilee, the well becomes for her a font of living water and she finds refreshment and renewal like she never before had known. (John 4: 1-15).

Rocks, bushes, springs of water, the Iona Community in Scotland has a name for such places – places where heaven and earth embrace — where the deeper truth of tov, of goodness is revealed. They call these places—“thin places;” where the thick impenetrable fog of all the muck and mire of living dissolves and where deeper truth of grace and goodness, peace and blessing is revealed.
~~~

Have you known such a thin place? Do you know one now? There was a thin place that I visited a lot when I was in my teens. There was a huge boulder in a stream near our house that created a kind of waterfall as the water cascaded around it. I would often go there to sit upon the boulder, watching the flow of that water and as I did a deep peace would come over as I felt the goodness of all things lift the burden of my adolescent anguish from me.
~~~

I hear in the scripture from the Book of Revelation today what it is to encounter a thin place. For the new Jerusalem, this beautiful holy space, is not at a distance far way, out of our grasp place. Instead it descends and dwells on earth. And the new thing God is doing turns out is as old as that blessing of Goodness that dawned on that first day of creation. For

“the home of God is among mortals.
God dwells with us as our God and we as God’s people.
God is with us, wiping every tear from our eyes.
Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.”
~~~

But of course a thin place does not have to be a place at all. And it does not have to be something that one just happens upon. For the ultimate thin place is of course the person of Jesus. In Jesus is the meeting of heaven and earth. Jesus inhabited and inhabits still that liminal space of the co-mingling of heaven and earth. Why do you think ordinary people crowded to be with him? I think it is because to be in his presence was to be awoken to and drawn into the foundational truth of blessing and goodness that is the deeper reality. That is why people found wholeness so profoundly in his presence. Yes, perhaps the blind actually did regain their sight and the lame actually walked again, and perhaps yes the deaf again heard clearly.

But I also believe that underneath whatever healing there may been, there was also a reclaiming of the goodness and blessing that is our deeper truth. And that brought wholeness.

And that is exactly what Jesus is again doing in the scripture today. The passage is really quite a powerful one. It is situated right after Judas gets up from the table and heads out into the night to betray. It comes, therefore just before Jesus faces his arrest. It ought to be a turbulent time. A time of fear, suspicion and caution. But instead, Jesus speaks these expansive words of dazzling beauty. Jesus says that right now, in this place, God’s glory is shinning forth he says. And that they are called to live in that place of glory and to help bring it about and extend it further by living love.

Why did Jesus tell his disciples to love? So that in the midst of what ever they face, in the midst of even the most turbulent times, the power of love would unveil the deeper reality of goodness and grace that not only will sustain them in trying time, but that will also redeem and heal and transform.
~~~

That is exactly what was happening in those moments after the bomb blasts. As those bombers walked away from the devastation with whatever hate filled motivations they had, love came rushing in. Compassion overcame caution as those places of horror were filled up by grace, goodness and healing, as people, ordinary people rushed in to help.
And over this past week, I dare say that stretch of Boylston street, that Copley Square has gotten thinner and thinner, as hundreds of people come to simply stand in that space, to pray, to weep — As altars of remembrance are made, as hearts burn with compassion, as each join their love with the love of all who turn our faces towards that place, to join our love with the love of God. I would not be surprised if there were not more than one of us who felt the urge to take off our shoes so real was the goodness and grace, blessing and peace, so real was the sense of holiness.
~~~

I think that fundamentally our purpose as people and role as a community of faith is; to reveal through living love the deeper ontological reality of goodness and grace. It is through living love that we join with God in opening thin places so that the outpouring of that goodness and grace can help bring about the healing and wholeness of the world.

And living love is exactly what we are doing and I even dare say that this corner of Beacon Street and Collins road is a thin place.

It was a thin place surely, that Tuesday at our prayer service when we opened our hearts in love to all who were killed, injured and reeling from those explosions. That chapel was a thin, thin place for as we did, the goodness and glory of God surely rushed in, we all felt it, and I am sure in some small but significant way, the darkness of that terrible Monday was pushed back. In fact I would not have been surprised if a passerby did not stop for a moment to wonder at the radiance coming from this place.

It was a thin place this Wednesday, down in the reception room as some of us meet for our spiritual autobiography class. It was thin as we took time to write and then speak stories of who we are, how we are, where it is we are going. There was healing and wholeness happening. Surely God was in this place.

And I felt it this past Thursday morning when we were at Waban Health Center; we went there to have a worship service as we do every month, but instead we stepped into such a sweet celebration that the residents had planned for us! With cake, poetry, and stories and certificates the residents poured out their love, for us. What a gloriously thin place that activity room became for us all as love pulled back the veil so that glory of goodness and grace, peace could rush in.

I could go on and on. So could you
~~~

Today is our stewardship Sunday and during our service of sharing those who have not already sent their pledges in will perhaps be moved to place them in the offering plate; and today, downstairs on the stage after the service you are invited to speak with people serving on the committees of the church; and your insert in the bulletin speaks of many of the ministry opportunities available to you. We do this because yes, we as a community do need our talents and treasure and ideas to keep this church running.

But what this is really about is an invitation to step into a deeper truth. It is an invitation to deepen and widen our love for each other and for God so that we may more fully experience the thinness of this place, so that we may more fully experience the grace and goodness, and sweet shalom of God. And that by experiencing it for ourselves we can extend it out into the world through ever widening reach of love.

So let us live love not just in this place but out into the public square. Let us live love out into the world. Let us live the audacious and truth- filled claim, that that grace and goodness, blessing and peace of God’s creation are the deeper reality, the deeper essence that holds and animates the world – and that hate, violence, vengeance and fear are the aberration, and not the confirmation, of the nature of reality. Let us live this audacious, life giving truth filled claim of our faith. It is who we are, and it is what we are called to do. Thanks be to God, Amen

FIRST READING — Genesis 1:1-5
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

“The Cape of Light” From The Genesis Meditations
The Rabbis were discussing the divine light in the first chapter of Genesis. From where did it originate? One said that the light was created first, like a king building a palace. The site is in the shade, so first he sets up lights and then builds. Another said that this was wrong. First the king builds the palace and then crowns it with light. A third said that the light came from God’s words, as in Psalm 119:130: “The opening of your word sheds light.” Rabbi Simeon asked Rabbi Samuel what he thought.

He whispered in his ear, “The Holy One, blessed be the Name, put on a cape of light and that cape spread until it illuminated one end of creation to the other.”

“Why are you telling me this in a whisper?” asked Rabbi Simeon. “It’s no secret. The Psalms say, ‘You cover yourself with light like a cape.’”

“I heard it in a whisper, so I’m telling you in a whisper,” Rabbi Samuel replied.

Response (Sung in unison)
To you, O God, all creatures sing,
and all creation, everything
Sings your praises, alleluia!
Your burning sun with golden beam,
Your silver moon with softer gleam,
Sing your praises, alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

SECOND READING — Genesis 1:20-22
And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”

From The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod Henry Beston
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

Sung Response (together)
Your flowing waters, crystal clear,
make melodies for you to hear,
Sing your praises, alleluia!
Your fire. . .bountiful and bright,
remembering your warmth and light,
Sings your praises, alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

THIRD READING — Genesis 1:12 and 18:1-8
The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

From “The Shewings of Julian of Norwich”
Be a gardener.
Dig a ditch,
toil and sweat,
and turn the earth upside down
and seek the deepness
and water the plants in time.
Continue this labor and make sweet floods to run
and noble and abundant fruits
to spring.
Take this food and drink
and carry it to God
as your true worship.

Sung Response (together)
Dear Mother Earth, who day by day,
Unfolds rich blessings on our way,
Sing your praises, alleluia!
As savory fruit and fragrant flower
Show forth your glory and your power,
Singing praises, Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

FOURTH READING — Isaiah 58:8-12
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

“The Spiritual Power of Matter” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Then, suddenly, a breath of scorching air passed across his forehead, broke through the barrier of his closed eyelids, and penetrated his soul.

…in a flash he discovered, everywhere present around him, the one thing necessary.

Once and for all he understood that, like the atom, man has no value save for that part of himself which passes into the universe. And he felt that henceforth nothing in the world would ever be able to alienate his heart from the greater reality which was now revealing itself to him, nothing at all.

A deep process of renewal had taken place within him. And not a soul in the world could do anything to change this.

‘Never say, “Matter is accursed, matter is evil”: for there has come one who said, “You will drink poisonous draughts and they shall not harm you,” and again, “Life shall spring forth out of death,” and then finally, the words which spell my definitive liberation, “This is my body.”

Turning his eyes resolutely away from what was receding from him, he surrendered himself, in superabounding faith, to the wind which was sweeping the universe onwards.

Sung Response (together)
Your wind that blows the tempest by,
Your clouds that sail across the sky,
Sing your praises, alleluia!
Your morning rises with a song,
and lights of evening sing along,
Sing your praises, alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

April 22 is Earth Day, so this Sunday, April 21, we’ll be celebrating our connection with the planet and the natural world during the morning worship service through special music and readings. Go here  for the stewardship resources used in the worship service. 

 Later that afternoon there is a special program at Society of St. John the Evangelist for anyone who would like to explore some of these themes more fully. See more details here. 

 There will be a meeting of the Russell School Initiative on Monday evening, April 22 at 6:30 p.m.

Living Waters Prayer Group will meet Wednesday morning at 7:30 in the side chapel.

This month’s visit to Waban Health will be on Thursday, April 25 at 10:30 a.m. Let Stacy know  if you would like to join her.

Exploring Sacred Spaces: Day Trip to the Boston College Labyrinth and Episcopal Monastery in Cambridge on Sunday, April 28, noon to 5:30 p.m.  Click here for more details.

Clean Up Day is May 4th at the Union Church. Please join us to work inside or outside together to beautify our building and grounds! Arrive anytime after 8:00 a.m.and stay for an hour, or as long as you can. LOTS TO DO for everyone of all ages.

 Plan to attend the committee fairs that we will be hosting on April 28th and May 5th. Join us on the stage during reception, learn about the opportunities in our various committees, and see if one might be a fit for you!

Come join us at the All-Comers party on Friday, May 3rd!

You may be thinking, “What a ridiculous name for a party! I wonder why they call it All-Comers.” Well, we used to call it “New-Comers,” and people wondered how new they had to be in order to attend. It was very confusing. But just like our church, this party is inclusive. Bring your kids, bring your spouse, bring yourself even if you haven’t been to church in years. We’d love to see you on Friday, May 3rd from 6:30-8:30ish. For more details, contact the office, or call 617-527-6221. 

C.E. News

The next Youth Group meeting is Friday, April 26, 6:00-8:00 p.m. at church.

Camp “Sing, Serve and Soar,” a 2 1/2 day Summer Camp at UCW  Wednesday evening, June 26 through Friday afternoon June 28. Come for part or all of the camp. See the bulletin board in the Crocker Chapel or go here for more information.

It is good, to plan for retirement and to plan for our children’s college education. Learning plans for kids and lesson plans for teachers are essential. Plans for the end of life make all the difference as we make those difficult decisions on behalf of the departing ones we love.

A plan is a good thing.  It gives focus and intention in what could otherwise be a confusing and disorienting landscape.

And we at the church are engaging in planning. You know that this is our stewardship season. We are planning now for all we hope to do and be in the coming year and we are planning how we will meet the budgetary needs our life together will bring.We are also planning for committees and leadership for next year. And we plan on asking you all to consider how your interests and passions intersect with the life of the church and how that may inform your plan for how you will choose to participate in our life together next year.It is good to have a plan so all just seamlessly unfolds — according to plan.

But having a plan does not that things will always go according to plan. Sometimes plans are sidelined by happenings we could never have imagined, let alone planned for. Sometimes, when plans are sidelined, I have heard people say “Well, I guess that was just not part of the plan.“I guess God has something else in mind for us.”

In those times when our plans fall apart, when we may not feel in control of our lives, one can find comfort in trusting that God has a plan, that God is in control of all life.

I saw this most strikingly when Mark and I lived for several years in post civil war El Salvador. We lived in a very rural area of the country with people whose lives had been completely upended by brutal civil war and who were now trying to live off increasingly depleted land and an increasingly erratic climate. These were people who knew what it was to not be in control of their lives and yet had to find a way to live. The public health work that we were doing together required a lot of planning and at that time there were no phones, no texting or email. So every six weeks or so,all of us health promoters would meet up and make a extensive plan to guide the work during the weeks ahead and we would each meticulously write it down the plan in our calendars. We would plan which village would have a vaccination campaigns and when; which village would have a well child clinics and when;which village would begin their water project, what supplies would be needed and when work would begin. And at the end of all our planning and looking over our calendars, Mark and I would say. “Ok, see you then.” And our Salvadoran partners would inevitably reply: “Si Dios quiere!” God willing.;”Si Dios quiere.”

If it turned out that things didn’t go according to plan, well that would be OK because it just meant that God has something else in mind. Trusting that God, not us, ultimately holds the plan for our lives works just fine. Until it doesn’t.

Until something so hard, devastating or abhorrent happens that believing it was part of God’s plan would be so appalling that one would just have to stop believing in God all together.

A devastating illness strikes. A relationship ends.A hurricane destroys. A girl in Pakistan is shot in the head for wanting to learn. A gun man kills 26 in an elementary school in Newtown. None of that was ever, could ever have been part of God’s plan.

And this week we remember the Holocaust. That horrible indictment of humanity.

So in the light of our personal losses and collective failings, there comes a time when I think we have to ask “Does God really have a plan for us?

As I pursued these questions this week, I started pulling books off the shelves in my study and soon found myself in the midst of a head spinning cacophony of voices of theologians across the centuries arguing the question. With impassioned voices all around but no consensus to be found, I did what any well schooled minister in the 21^st century  would do (apologies to my professors in our midst) — I “Googled” it.“Does God have a plan for our lives?” I typed and hit enter. Do you know how many entries that Google search pulled up?135,000,000. Million!!

So this question “Does God have a plan for our lives?” has not only been on the hearts and minds of theologians throughout the centuries, but it turns out that it continues to be in the minds and hearts of millions now.Well I think because it speaks to the very heart of our relationship with God. What is the essence of that relationship? If God really loves us and the world, then God ought to have a plan for our well being, right?

It is on the knife edge of this question, that we enter the story today.

For “Does God have a plan for our lives?” is the question that Peter needs answered more than anything.For I imagine it was the question the others had been asking him in the days and weeks leading up to today.Ever since that night when Jesus was arrested in the garden and handed over to the religious authorities and then to Roman rule, the disciples must have been whispering amongst themselves and outright asking Peter “What is the plan?”For Peter had always been right at Jesus’ He was recognized as a leader among them. He was the one who always knew the plan.

“So,what’s the plan now?”I can just hear them asking Peter with increasing urgency. And if Peter had had wi-fi, I bet he too would have Googled it!But he didn’t and he didn’t have centuries of theologians lending their thoughts. He only has what he knows and somehow at this point that just does not seem quite enough. And so, in answer to their question, he says:“I’m going fishing.” “I’m going fishing.” he says.

>And what comes next?Well they say, “We will go with you.” And this is the first good newsin the scripture today, the first teaching. When things fall apart we tend to do the same right? We as people together tend to fall a-part when things get too hard, to go our separate ways, to let the ties that bind unravel. We who are in pain tend to isolate ourselves while the rest of us tend to pull away from the one in pain. But not these disciples, it turns out!“We will go with you” they say. Peter may have left Jesus alone in this time of need, but the disciples will not leave Peter and each other alone, now in their time of need and there is

And so they go fishing together.But after a night of doing what they know best their nets are still empty. I imagine that they must feel such a sense of emptiness at this point. Sure they know how to fish but there are no fish.Sure they know the physical relief of working hard through the night but for what? What does the dawn bring?

And then, as the sun crests the low lying hills, they see someone on the shore who shouts out to them.“Cast your nets on the right side,” he says and the remarkable thing is they do! I mean really. Would you?If you were cold and tired and discouraged from a night of fruitfulness toil, from three years of what now seems fruitless toil, would you cast your net out again at the word from a stranger on the shore?

But they do, and they catch a boat load of fish. And in the abundance of it all, they recognize Jesus. Being ready to risk, to step out into what on the surface makes little sense then, brings them face to face with God. Face to face with the truth that God is at work even in the midst of the empty and aimless places in our lives. This is the second teaching of the passage, the second proclamation of good news. God is working to bring abundance out of emptiness, hope out of despair, purpose out of aimlessness.

And then there is this incredibly tender interlude in the text that I just love. It is as if Jesus knows that all this learning and unlearning is exhausting for the disciples and so he gives them this tender time out.Jesus cooks them breakfast. (The first Java Gents!) Jesus knows that they are tired and hungry and cold so he lights a charcoal fire, a charcoal fire – let that detail not be lost on us for it was around a charcoal fire that Peter denied Jesus three times. Jesus makes a charcoal fire and cooks some fish and has some bread and invites them in.

And after Peter has dried off and warmed up and perhaps even began to integrate the good news that his best friends and God are with him still, Jesus calls him aside to ask him three times a question that not only will undo the failings of Peter’s denials but that will point Peter towards his future.

Do you love me?” “Feed my lambs!” “Do you love me?” “Tend my sheep” “Do you love me” “Feed my sheep”

In each question and response, Jesus claims and then sends Peter. Claims the love between them that cannot die and then sends Peter out to love

Turns out there is a plan after all. And you know what? It is a really good plan. Love and be love.That’s it really. Love God. Let God love you and then be love in all that you say and do. That’s the plan. No matter what comes. No matter if what you hoped for works out or crumbles around you. No matter what, love and live love.

By way of closing, I’d like to share with you the story of a woman that I met in the hospital during the year of my clinical pastoral education training. I will call her Sam.

I met Sam as she came in for what all presumed would be some routine testing but that uncovered instead a terminal illness.Sam was just a bit older than I was. She was an active woman with many friends and many plans. As I sat with her in those next few days as more tests confirmed the diagnosis. As we sat she tried hard to make sense of what was happening, but just kept shaking her head and saying “This was not the plan.” “This was not the plan.”

Once the final diagnosis was confirmed, they started coming. Friends by the scores. Young and old, men and women from all parts of her life. They just kept coming. Day or evening, I would knock quietly on her door to ask if I could come infor a visit and I’d find her with one, two or many more people. With their presence they were saying “Where ever you are going, we are going too, at least as far with you as we can.”

Then one late afternoon, I came into her room in one of those rare moments when she was alone.As I sat down beside her I could tell that something had changed in her. She was completely present.It’s hard to describe but no longer was she chasing after something that was no longer to be. It is as if all of herself had come home and was now fully dwelling in one space now. And then she said “You know, I am not angry any more.I was angry because I love living so much.I love living so much and I wanted so much to live out a long life. But you know what I think I love the most about living?I think what I love the most about living is love.So that’s what I am going to do.I am just going live this love I feel for life, for you, for all my friends right now and in the next moment and the next and that’s enough.I’m not even the least bit afraid anymore of what comes next.No not the least bit afraid.In fact I’m down right curious,” she added with a laugh.

So let’s go ahead and make plans. Good plans. Let’s plan with wisdom and let inspiration lead our life together as we move into next year and the next. Let us plan how our pledges, time and talents will help grow the vibrancy and reach of this beloved community. But let’s also remember that beneath, above, before, behind, in and through all, our good planning is God’s plan.That we love, love God with all our hearts and minds and strength and that we love each other and all the world as ourselves. When we live love, singularly and steadfastly, regardless of whatever may come, to borrow a phrase from Julian of Norwich “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Sounds like a good plan to me!

Thanks be to God.Amen.

The next Youth Group meeting is Friday, April 26, 6:00-8:00 p.m. at church.

Camp “Sing, Serve and Soar,” a 2 1/2 day Summer Camp at UCW

Wednesday evening, June 26 through Friday afternoon June 28.  Come for part or all of the camp.  See the bulletin board in the Crocker Chapel or www.ucw.org for more information.

Stacy will be away from April 16to April 23. Contact Judy Nagle for any pastoral emergency. Kathryn Henderson will be leading worship on April 21^st.

The Union Church office will be closed Monday, April 15 thru Wednesday, April 17.

Living Waters Prayer Group will meet Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m. in the side chapel,  and will be led by Sandra DaDalt.

Wellspring will meet Wednesday evening, April 17, at 6:30 p.m. Please let Kathy Malone know if you are coming. Kathy@ucw.org.

The Teaching Parish Committee will meet Thursday evening at 6:30 p.m.

Java Gents will meet Friday morning, April 19, at 7:00 a.m.

Kathryn Henderson will lead Bible Study on Sunday morning, April 21, at 8:00 a.m.

Mark your calendars: Clean Up Day is May 4th at the Union Church. Please join us to work inside or outside together to beautify our building and grounds!
Arrive anytime after 8:00 a.m. and stay for an hour, or as long as you can. LOTS TO DO for everyone of all ages.

Come join us at the All-Comers party on Friday, May 3^rd!          

You may be thinking, “What a ridiculous name for a party! I wonder why they call it All-Comers.” Well, we used to call it “New-Comers,” and people wondered how new they had to be in order to attend. It was very confusing. But just like our church, this party is inclusive. Bring your kids, bring your spouse, bring yourself even if you haven’t been to church in years. We’d love to see you. Friday, May 3^rd from 6:30-8:30ish. Call the office for more details.

John 20: 24-31

Acts 5:27-32

           Last week, Vicky beautifully read for us the Resurrection Story of Mary encountering the Risen Christ in the Garden on that first Easter morning.  And then with the “Alleluias” of Suzie’s soaring voice reverberating in the rafters, I spoke that resurrection is to be our great commissioning.  I spoke of how we are to step into and live out of the story making resurrection come alive in our living.  I invited us all to be Mary, running with “Alleluia” on our lips out into the word to share the good news of Living Love. 

~~~

         But, I’m afraid I might have been a bit hasty.  I’m afraid I may have gotten ahead of myself.   Because — resurrection living is not something one hears about and then just suddenly decides to do, right?  I mean, we cannot be expected that just taking someone else’s word for it will make it true for us.  That we can just decide to start living resurrection now.

         I asked us to be as Mary was, but I think it is actually not as straightforward as that after all. For even if Mary’s words have touched us, we may not feel ready to run through those doors and out onto Beacon street announcing the Good News.  The more that I consider it, in fact, the more I feel that most of us may be more akin to those other disciples than to Mary – more akin to those other disciples that were sitting in that darkened room behind drawn drapes than the one who burst in with face aflush with joy.

           We may be more like those who have heard the good news announced, and who may even want to believe, but don’t really know how.  We hear the stories of God’s love alive in the world.  We pass the peace.  We drink from the cup and eat the bread.  We do all of this, but do we really feel it alive for us?   Are we really stepping into and living out of the story?  Is God’s living love rising in us?

         Maybe, hopefully but I don’t think totally and completely, not yet at least. Instead, I think there is still some fear, worry, some wondering about what living love really is, with us yet.  This is not a judgment.  It’s simply a recognition of how hard it can be to let God’s love enliven us.  Sometimes it is just really hard to trust that all of this could possibly be true.  The passage just before the one read for today tells that in the evening of that first day, the day that began with Mary’s announcement,  Jesus came to them too!  Even though the door was locked and the drapes were drawn and even though it was is dark outside and they were full of fear, Jesus comes to them with his peace.

         But what is so poignant is that even after Mary’s flushed announcement and even after they heard and saw Jesus for themselves, they still remained locked away in that room.  The text for today tells us that a week passes after that remarkable day and still they are stuck there in that room, stuck there in that fear and wondering, even after they too “have seen the Lord.”

~~~

         But Thomas missed it. The twin who knows what it is to live so in synch with another.  Thomas missed it.  He wasn’t there that evening when Living Love came into that room.   The text doesn’t tell us why.  Maybe he was simply out picking up provisions in the market.  But, I tend to think there was something more going on.  I imagine Thomas felt so intensely a longing, a  deep desire to see and be with Jesus.  I image he hungered to be with Jesus again so much that he just could not sit there in that room any longer. I imagine his longing to be with Jesus was so acute that it propelled him up and out of fear and worry and into actively seeking for himself what it was that Mary saw.  He was not in the room that night because he had gone out seeking the risen Lord even if that meant risking those darkening and dangerous streets.

~~

         And then when Thomas returned and entered again that room later that night, a quick glance at the rest of them shows that nothing had changed.  They are still all there, the drapes still drawn.  They are all still sitting there. So it is no wonder that Thomas does not believe them when they tell him that they have seen the Lord. For Thomas who hungers so deeply sees nothing in them that would make him believe that what they say is true. They are as he left them.  So deep was his longing for Jesus that he cannot imagine that anyone could possibly have seen the Risen Christ and not have been changed.  And so he insists that he will not believe until he actually touches Jesus for himself.    

         And of course that is exactly what comes next.  Jesus appears again this time for Thomas.  In the moment that Thomas’ longing meets the risen Jesus, transformation begins.  Thomas begins to feel deep in his heart the rising of love. He begins to feel love rising in him.  And all face to face with love he stammers “My Lord and my God!”

~~~

         So why is it that Mary and Thomas are so profoundly moved and changed by their encounter with Jesus while the rest of the disciples, at least at this point are not?  Why is resurrection life beginning to rise in Mary and Thomas while the rest of the disciples still sit in darkness, at least at this point?  What is it that Mary and Thomas share that the rest of the disciples at least at this point, don’t seem to yet be in touch with?

~~~

         I think it has everything to do with what it is what they most truly and deeply desire.  I think it has everything to do with a bone deep, soul  yearning desire to be with Jesus.  The rest of the disciples are putting all of their effort into trying hard not to be afraid, trying hard to figure out what is to come next, trying to figure out what to do now.  Maybe all of this trying so hard has buried that burning desire they once had to be nowhere else than at his side.  Perhaps all their effort to not be afraid and trying hard to figure out what is to come next has buried that expansive peace and deep contentment they once felt in his presence.

         But, in contrast,  a deep down, bone deep, soul yearning kind of desire still burns in Mary and still burns in Thomas.  These two could not sit still but had to go, had to go out and find him, had to be with him even if that meant going to the tomb, or even if that meant wandering down darkened streets alone. 

         Franciscan friar and author Richard Rohr writes that the spiritual life is all about is stripping away all that has buried this ontological deep down, bone deep, soul yearning kind of desire that is our birth right from God.  The spiritual life is about uncovering, stripping away, excavating and laying bare this yearning.

         Being able to awaken this hunger, to be in touch again with this desire, he believes uncovers the place where God is waiting to meet us and tips us into a transformed life of living love.  In essence awakening this hunger and longing gives the space for the risen one who has been waiting at the door of one’s heart, to walk fully in, and when that happens,  living love rises.

         In a few short verses, the Gospel of John will add Peter to the likes of Mary and Thomas.   For in few short verses, Peter will rediscover this passion for Jesus that had been dulled by fear, worry and maybe even the shame of failings.  The gospel of John will tell us in a few short verses that  when Peter and the others decided that they could sit in that room no longer, they headed back to Galilee to return to the only thing they figured they could do now, fish.  The Gospel will tell us that at day break they see someone standing on the beach who calls out to them and tells them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat so that they will find some fish.  At this the Gospel tells us they recognize that is Jesus who calls.  And over come with a resurrected bone deep, soul yearning hunger to be no where else but with Jesus, Peter leaps out of the boat and swims frantically to reach Jesus as fast as he can.

~~~

         This wet to the bone, wide eyed, jubilant Peter is the same Peter who we now see encounter in the book of Acts, fully living love,  fearless before the court, holding fast to what he knows now, bone deep down knows now to be true: that Love lives and that through living love, all now can truly live.  

         So the good news of this resurrection story is perhaps not so much that we, like Mary, must now run out into the world announcing living love.  The good news of this story is perhaps that there is room for all of us to step into it and live out of it.   There is room for the Mary’s among us who are ready with swift feet and Alleluia on our lips.  There is room for those of us who are still stuck in a dark place unsure of what to do or what to believe. There is room for those of us like Thomas who are restlessly seeking, boldly doubting until it becomes real for us too!

         But it doesn’t just stop there, for the really good news of the story is that no matter where we are in the story, the risen living love that is Jesus will find us.  Not just once, not just twice, but over and over again until we too are ready to be tipped into living love.  Until we too want nothing more than that the risen one who has been waiting at the door of our heart, may walk fully in, and that we too may feel living love rise in us!  And please, don’t just take my word for it. Let love live for yourselves!!  Amen

Easter 2013

John 20:1-18

~~~~

           With “Alleluia!” on her lips, she ran.  She ran with all her might out of that garden down those dusty streets, back to where the others were.

With “Alleluia” on her lips and a face radiant with unbounded joy, she bursts through the doors and into the room where the disciples were waiting, waiting because the future they imagined was no more and they could not yet conceive of what was to come next.  Into their waiting Mary comes and she announces “I have seen the Lord,” I have seen the Lord!”

Then as her words reverberate in the air …. the Gospel account goes strangely silent. This passage just stops here.  If this were a scene in a movie, there would be a close up of Mary’s expectant and jubilant face and then the screen would fade to black and silence.

I find it maddening that we don’t get to see and hear what comes next?  We don’t get to see if a look of doubt and disbelief gives way to unbounded joy on the faces of the disciples as they take in Mary’s words.  We don’t get to see if they rise out of their chairs and begin to pass that new found peace one to another, with hugs and handshakes.   We don’t get to see if they share in the communion of the bread and the cup that constitutes community not out of sacrifice but out of fellowship. We don’t get to hear if they sing out in one voice a soaring song of praise.

Or maybe it was not like that at all.  Maybe there was no joy.  Maybe they did not rise or sing. Maybe they just sat there blankly staring at Mary as if she were out of her mind. We don’t know.   The Gospel is silent.

Instead of telling us we have a pregnant pause.  For when the text picks up again it continues by saying “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week.”  Much time has passed in the text.  It was predawn when Mary got to the tomb and then suddenly– it is evening.

What did they do all day, on that day, when they heard that good news? Why doesn’t the Gospel author tell us what comes next?

~~~

         Why?  Well I think the Gospel writer does not tell us what those disciples did on that day when they heard the good news so long ago because he wants to see what those disciples in his day will do, and what these disciples in our day will also do when we hear the good news.  The gospel writer, I believe is giving space for all of us who ever have and ever will hear the good news, writing us, as it were, into the story.  Asking through his silence what it is that we will do with Mary’s startling announcement?

You see, the culmination of the story that is Jesus, the point of its greatest suspense, is not Jesus’ death nor is it his resurrection.  The culmination of the story that is Jesus, the nail biting, cliff hanging moment of this story, is this moment when we are left wondering what will come next. For what will comes next will determine if this great story remains just Jesus’ story or if it will becomes our story? — What happens next will determine if this great story gets shelved and gathers dust or if it will becomes the greatest story ever lived.

~~~

         You see up until this point in the story that is Jesus, the disciples were more like spectators to the miracle that was unfolding than participants in it.  Jesus was center stage.  Only he knew the script it seemed.   And that was just fine.  They were perfectly happy to follow along watching Jesus, taking in all that he was doing and saying.  It was after all, spectacular.  Jesus was spectacular.  And just to be close to such wonder was wonderful.  The future that was coming was wonder filled for as far as they could see it the future was full of him.

But then this great story ended.  It was nailed shut on the cross.  With Jesus dead and entombed, the story came to a close.

That is why the disciples were just sitting there that day in that darkened room with the drapes pulled and the door shut.  Jesus had called them out of the life that they had had and into life with him.  And they had come.  They had put down fishing nets and dish towels and stepped out into the unfolding of his ministry.  But without him, there was nothing.

I think that is a large part of why Mary was weeping that day.  Weeping for the death of Jesus, to be sure, but also weeping for the death of the life she had with him.

Mary came to that garden to tend to death.  To tend to the ending.  To tenderly close that story forever.

How could she possibly have known that the author of life was about to do a new thing by opening up that story forever?  When Jesus spoke Mary’s name in that garden, a page was turned and a new chapter began.    Resurrection it turns out was not for Jesus alone, it was for Mary and for the disciples that were and are and will be.  Resurrection, it turns out, is for us.

Now I do believe that there is life after death, — that resurrection is something that we are to experience after our last breath is taken, but I also believe that resurrection is now.  Jesus’ resurrection is, in essence, our great commissioning.  For through the power of Jesus living presence, we are to be the bearers of the good news in the world, now.  Like Mary we are to run with Alleluia on our lips announcing the good news that love lives.  Resurrection is our new beginning for the peace, forgiveness, and love that was Jesus – through Christ’s living presence, is alive now within us and alive in the world.  Or to borrow words from the Apostle Paul “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” (Gal 2:20).   As we live in the Way of Jesus healing and loving the world as he healed and loved the world, the resurrected Christ is alive in us and is alive in the world.

That is why every Sunday we come into this place not just to hear the good news but also by God’s grace, that we may be the good news.  Resurrection is not just about what happened on that morning long ago, and it is not just about what will happen when we draw our last breath at the end of our time, it is about –perhaps even most importantly about — how it is that we live now.  So as much as we love listening to these Gospel stories from so long ago, as captivating as they are, their truth will continue to live to the degree that we are able to step into the story and make it our own – enlivening and embodying their life giving truths through our living.

The Gospel of John does not let us in on how the disciples reacted to Mary’s announcement that day, but we do know what happened next.  We know what happened next because we are here today.  We are here as doubt and disbelief give way to unbounded joy on our faces as we take in Mary’s words.  We are here rising from our pews and passing that timeless peace one to another, with hugs and handshakes.   We are here sharing in the communion of the bread and cup constituting community not out of sacrifice but out of fellowship.  We are here singing out with one voice a soaring song of praise.

And so on this Easter morning, may Christ’s living presence of love rise in you this day.  May your life shine with resurrections new beginnings.  May your feet be swift as you bear the good news out into what is far too often a fear bound and dead ended world.  May “Alleluia!” be on your lips.  And may Easter’s joy be yours always.  Amen.

It was the start of the High Holy Week of Passover and a million or more Jews from all over the Mediterranean basin had come to Jerusalem.  Passover is the time to remember and celebrate God’s mighty act of Exodus when God brought the people out from under Pharaoh’s oppression, and led them into the Promised Land.   And now during Passover, the whole city was churning with a restless hope that once again God will act to free God’s people, not from Pharaoh this time, but from the heavy hand of the Roman Empire.[2]

Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, fearing that Passover’s remembrance could tip into revolt, has called for military reinforcements – a show of muscle to remind the populous who calls the shots and whose town Jerusalem really is.   And those legions of soldiers that entered Jerusalem, well they must have been impressive.  War horses snorting and pawing at pavement, sun glinting off shields and sharpened swords and spears.

And of course Jesus was aware of all this for he crafted his entry into Jerusalem in such a way that is not only in sharp contrast with the procession of Roman might across town, but that also provocatively evoked the Passover’s expectations.  His entrance was essentially an enactment of, performance art really, of the words from the book of Prophet Zechariah that tell of the battle to be fought on the Mount of Olives at the end of the age and proclaims “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!  Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey.” (Zech 9:9).

And the crowd around Jesus that day also clearly made the connection to the Prophet Zechariah’s words.  For they sang Hosanna “O Save” a cry of acclamation reserved for one victorious in battle, for a king returning from conquest.[3]  They spread their cloaks on the road and others cut branches from the trees and wave them — “Hosanna”  “Blessed is the King!”

What a contrast:  Jesus on a humble donkey; Empire on war horses.  Disciples with palm branches; soldiers with swords.

~~~

          But as impressive as it is, have you ever stopped to wonder “What is it for?”  “Why did he do it?”  Two processions entered the city that day, but only one King lived to see the week’s end. And it wasn’t Jesus.  So, why did he do it?  Why such a provocative entrance?  Why come to Jerusalem in the first place?

The doctrines of our faith tells us: “Because he had to.”  That this final anguishing week and the crucifixion that is coming had to happen.  Jesus had to go to Jerusalem and he had to be crucified because that was what was needed in order to save us from our sins.

~~~~

          Now most of the time, we stop here.  Most of the time, especially this time of year, we nod our acquiescence to the cross without speaking the gnawing questions of “Why?” that still may be on our hearts.

~~~

          But sometimes, we do.  Sometimes we give voice to our questions and over the last several weeks I have heard many of you do so.  “How is it” you ask, “that Jesus’ crucifixion saves us?”  “How can anything good come out of a cross death?” you wonder.  “If God is Love why would God sacrifice God’s child?” you protest.

~~~

          Now I do not think that there is one right way to answer these questions.  And each of us, I believe, must do the hard work of faith and grapple with them in the light of God’s love and pray that a sliver of understanding may dawn for us.

But over the millenniums the church’s answer to these central questions of faith has coalesced around some primary doctrines or teachings.  The most central doctrine or teaching as to the “why of the cross” was first articulated over a thousand years ago by the then English Archbishop Anselm and is referred to as the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.  It teaches that humanity had deeply failed God and owed God for the depth of its failing.  But the problem was, we did not have the capacity to repay God because we were so deeply flawed.  So out of God’s mercy, God offered Jesus, who is not flawed, to die in our place, thereby cancelling out the debt that we owed God.  By Jesus’ blood, so to speak, the ledger was wiped clean and we again are reconciled and restored to God.

Does that sound familiar?  Have you heard this teaching before? The trouble for some, however, is that as familiar as it may be, it can, for some, raises more questions than it answers.

~~~~

          I can remember my confirmation class.  Sprawling on the overstuffed couches in our equivalent of the tower room, listening to my pastor, I remember being deeply troubled by this doctrine’s teaching about why Jesus died on the cross.  I remember  wondering “Why, if we did owe something to God, why couldn’t God just forgive the dept, cancel the loan?” I remember thinking “Why doesn’t God just change the equation all together and not hold humanity hostage to a dept that seems to be of God’s own accounting.  Why go through all the grizzly machinations of the cross to balance the ledgers?”

And just this past week, some of us were wrestling with “Why God would insist on the suffering of God’s child.  What kind of God would do that we wondered?”

And didn’t God already do away with this kind of sacrifice of that sort?  Remember that story in the Hebrew Scriptures when God steps in to stop Abraham’s sacrifice of his son, Isaac, and tells Abraham not to hurt the boy?  And remember Jesus stepping in and stopping the crowd from stoning that woman who was caught in the act of adultery?  Remember how he turned their blood thirsty hunger for punishment into reflective self examination by challenging them: “let the one without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7)?

So for many, this teaching that God called for the sacrifice of Jesus in order to cancel the debt that humanity owed God, at best does not make a lot of sense any more, and at worst is down-right troubling.

~~~

          And so many are then left with these central questions of faith unanswered: “Why the processional through that east gate? Why come into Jerusalem? Why a cross death? What was it for?”     Now if that is true for you, and I am not saying it should be, for many still do find a sliver of understanding through this teaching of substitutionary atonement and that is well and good, but if unanswered questions still trouble you, I invite you to consider some new ways of thinking about the cross that are coming out of the scholarship and prayer of people like Mark Heim, Biblical scholar and pastor who is a professor of theology at Andover Newton Theology School.(4)

In the teaching of the substitutionary atonement, it is understood that God uses the cross to solve a problem that God has with God’s people.  “People cannot repay God for what God is due so God will use the cross in order to make Jesus a sacrifice that repays humanity’s debt.

But in Heim and other’s teaching, it is understood that God uses the cross not to solve a problem God has with God’s people but to resolve a problem that people have with each other.  And what is that problem humanity has with humanity?  Well:  It is the cross.

Let me explain.

Ever since the beginning of human communities, ever since the time of Cain and Able, a contagion of rivalry, competition, envy and violence has infected the way that we relate to one another.  However, good and blessed we fundamentally are as God’s children, in our living with each other over time we succumb to and are acculturated by patterns of relational violence.    We begin to think that the other is out to out-do us in some important ways that threaten our ability to be on top, we learn that might makes right and that violence is the most effective way of solving the difficulties this way of relating inevitably brings.

And if you are a ruler and those you rule are starting to get restless under your authority, history has shown that the most effective way of restoring peace is by redirecting that restless energy and channeling it against  a  common enemy, regardless of whether that enemy is truly guilty of what it is that is charged.  Jesus after all was not the first to ever be crucified.  Crucifixion was a well honed practice of keeping the peace in empire.

What is important in this way of violence is not practicing justice but retaining control, and if that means sacrificing someone so that order can be maintained, so be it.  The ends  justify the means. Look at the trial of Jesus.  Pilate is clear Jesus is not guilty of any capital offense but Pilate is also perfectly willing to use Jesus’ death as a means for restoring order, as a spectacle to distract the people away from their Exodus longings and revolutionary undertones.

This is the world that Jesus came into that day when he came in through that East gate on the back of that lowly donkey.  No wonder, he wept and cried “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace.”

Why does Jesus come into a city that surely will kill him?  I am increasingly convinced that God wanted so desperately to save us from this torturous way of relating to each other.  Jesus came in to Jerusalem in order to deliver us from all that the cross represents as an instrument repression, control, fear, violence and death.

God does not need Jesus to die on the cross to satisfy a need that God has.  But God and Jesus in their loving embrace of each other and all humanity knew that it may take a cross death for God to break apart forever our paradigm of violence and fear and break into the human heart in a new way.

So how is it that Jesus cross death delivers us from the paradigm of violence that has so marked human interaction?   First by fully exposing the injustice and brutality of that paradigm for what it is.   For when people gazed on Jesus hanging on the cross on that Friday that is coming, many (not all) but many saw how wrong it was.  One of the criminals crucified next to Jesus that day saw it.  He said “This man has done nothing wrong.” Luke 23: 41.  And even the centurion, one of those legions of soldiers who marched into through the west gate with sharpened spear and shinning sword saw it “Truly this man was God’s Son!” he exclaimed when the earth shook as Jesus took his last breath. (Matt: 27:54) And you see it in your questioning, when you sense that something is terribly wrong about this death and have the courage to begin to speak that protest out loud.

And each year, as we step into Holy week and approach the cross again, this new way of thinking about the cross insists that we too must come to terms with how wrong it was that Jesus died a cross death.  We must comes to terms with the suffering we see exposed through Jesus death;  how wrong it is that so many suffer; that so many lives and futures are sacrificed in the name of greed, self serving power and control.

But we know the story does not stop there.  Heim in his teaching continues that Jesus saves us not just by exposing the sin of our violence-filled way of relating to each other but also by offering in its place a new way of being with each other forged in the fellowship of the ministry that was Jesus life and infused by the power of peace, love and forgiveness that is his resurrection.

For on that Easter morning when the disciples experienced in very real ways the living presence of Jesus, they must have been shocked that Jesus came back not to scold them or berate them for their failings of faith.  Nor did Jesus head back into Jerusalem to wreck revenge on those who killed him.  Instead he offered forgiveness and peace.  This is not what they could have imagined. Nothing they had seen before would have led them to believe it could be possible.  This was something new.  Jesus’ living presence infused the disciples with a power and faith they had not had before.  The words Jesus had spoken before his death, were just that words, but now in the light of the resurrection his teachings came alive in them.  As they were in Jesus so too was he now in them.  And a new way of being together was born.  A new community came to life, characterized not by rivalry, control, competition, and violence, but instead by of service, humility, cooperation, and love.

So “What was it all for?”  Why the provocative processional, why step into the jaws of hate, jealousy, rivalry.  Why the cross?

To put an end to cross deaths. To put an end to employing suffering as a means of social control.  To expose a culture of violence and death that chokes the very breath out of humanity for what it is.  To enliven a new community infused with the living presence of Jesus, a community living love.

~~~

          Now what this new teaching about the cross means is that every time we use violence, hate, demean, scapegoat, tear someone else down so that we can be built up;  or every time we turn that violence upon our selves, hating our selves in self destructive ways, we participate in Jesus death. We are colluding with the very forces that nailed Jesus to that cross.  But every time we love, forgive, serve, heal, lift up, reach out we are living into and out of the new life that Jesus’ resurrection birthed.

So in a very real way, I believe that the life of faith is all about deciding in each moment of each day on what side of the cross are we going to live.  Are we going to live a way of fear, violence and hate, a way that leads to so many crosses and suffering?  Or can we live out of the far side of the cross?  Can we step out of the tomb and into new life empowered by the living presence of God’s love?

When we say that we are Easter people,  that we want to live in the Way of Jesus, we are affirming the power of what it is that Jesus did that day so long ago on that cross.  We are rejecting humanity’s age old patterns of hurtful and death dealing ways of relating and we are affirming and participating in the beginning of a new community born of care, compassion, service and love.

Therefore, when I now ask myself “What was it for?”  I look around and I see you and I see what we are trying to do and be together and I see the way that God is animating and leading our living together.  When I ask  “What was it for?”  I know, it was and is for us; for our life together in love, for a life giving and world changing Way of Love.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 Please join us for a life-affirming discussion of the life and ministry of the church on March 24^th after reception. The open forum, which will be facilitated by the moderators Molly Owen-Kiritsy and Kent Wittler, and Pastor Stacy Swain, will include topics on how we communicate church- wide activities and in what form. Are you feeling well informed about the mission initiatives of the church? Are you getting all you need from Christian education for both children and adults? What things would you do differently, or like to see added to the life of the church? Help us understand where the church can better meet your needs in all of their dimensions. We look forward to seeing you there. All are welcome.

Sunday is the last day to order Easter blooms! Look for order forms in the side chapel, or download here. 

The Lenten Book Group will meet Sunday after worship.

We have several Lenten resources available. Look for them on the side table in the sanctuary. They are: the Table Prayer Tent, a Lenten resource created by Bread for the World; our own Union Church weekly Lenten Guide with scripture, reflection, meditation, prayer, and even recipes; and a Lenten meditation practices guide with weekly meditation practice suggestions compiled by Kathryn Henderson.

“Training the Trainers” for Literacy Night at the Russell School will take place Monday evening, March 25 from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. at the Russell School.

There will be a meeting of the C.E. committee at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday evening, March 26.

Prayer Group meets each Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m.

The Lenten Fast Reflection will take place on Wednesday evening, March 27^th at 7:00 p.m. in the Reception Room. We will watch the movie No Place at the Table and follow up with a discussion on hunger afterwards.

Maundy Thursday, March 28th, 6:15 p.m.   The service is held in the vestry and begins with a meal before transitioning into a meditative Tenebrae Service of song and scripture as we meditate on Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, and death.  Child care will be available.  A sign-up sheet for this service is in the side chapel, or call the office. Please RSVP so that the deacons can plan for the food.

The trip to monastery for the Stations of the Cross service has been cancelled because the service is not being held this year. Apologies to everyone who has been planning on this! Kathryn will lead a trip for a regular prayer service in April, more details to come.

Holy Saturday Easter Vigil, Saturday, March 30th at 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.  Join us for this time to reflect on all that has transpired during Holy Week and to anticipate the coming dawn of Easter.  During this service we will share in the Lord’s Supper and reaffirm our baptismal vows. Childcare will be available.

Bible Study will not meet on Easter Sunday morning, March 31.

Eggs Needed for the Easter Egg Hunt. It’s time to think about our annual Easter Egg Hunt.  Your donations of candy-filled, plastic eggs are invited.  Please bring them to church anytime before worship on Easter morning.  You can leave them in the designated box in the Crocker Chapel or in Kathy’s office. Thanks in advance for your contribution.

Planning ahead: Save the date for a retreat on April 27 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Edwards House in Framingham. We will be spending time together in prayer and meditation, and exploring other spiritual practices. We need a minimum of 10 people to sign up. The cost will be $25, including lunch and snacks. Please contact the office to rsvp.

The next Game Night has been planned for Friday evening, April 12, at 6:30 p.m.  Mark your calendars for this fun evening.

Psalm 126

For the past few weeks, we have been thinking about two contrasting ways of experiencing our life in the world with God.  With the story of the fig tree two weeks ago, we compared a way of Retribution where God merits out the future based on what we do or do not deserve, — in contrast with the Way of caring and cultivating where God is a gardener — doing all God can do to help a fig tree bear fruit.

And last week we explored the story of the prodigal son and compared the “bad behavior” of those willing to break with social convention and to rejoice in what was lost as being found; in contrast with whose could not let go of their construction of what was right and wrong, a construction that very well may have kept them from God’s grace.

Each week we ended with the question, “What paradigm, what way of being with God in the world are we going to choose?”

Today the contrast continues and the choice again is before us again.

Do we live asserting that “There is nothing new under the sun”?[1]  That “What is past is prologue”?[2]  That “What has been will be?”[3]   Or are we willing to entertain the radical possibility that God may be about to do a new thing — that we are to look for it, to perceive it!

But before we go any further, let us pray:  may the words of our hearts and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God our rock and our redeemer.  Amen

The Roman Catholic Church, as you know, was on center stage this week as the Cardinals put on their vestments and stepped deep into their tradition to choose a new leader , and in the hopes of many, a new trajectory for the Catholic Church.  And as the Pope, the first Pope Francis, the first Non-European Pope, the first Spanish speaking Pope stepped onto the balcony that day, thousands cheered.

While many of our Catholic brothers and sisters now wait to see if this new Pope will bring the change they desire, those of us in the Protestant Tradition are also in the midst of profound change, on the cusp of something new.   We too are in a time of transition.

Phyllis Tickle who has studied and written extensively on this time of transition we are in, what she calls this Great Emergence[4], claims that the church particularly the mainline north American church, is in the midst of a great rummage sale.  She sees a surge of restless Jesus following people who are no longer content to simply do what has always been done and believe what has always been believed, and be church in the way church has always been.  Instead she sees these restless Jesus following people rolling up their sleeves, and putting on their work gloves in order to dig into tradition, pry into practices, crack open beliefs and sort through all that has accumulated, in order to discard that which no longer serves, dust off and perhaps refurbish that which needs a little updating, embrace anew what serves and discover gems that have been long forgotten.

And what is remarkable asserts Tickle is that this great rummage sale, well it is nothing new.  In fact it is quite predictable, for it seems looking back in history that every five hundred years the church has had one.

Five hundred years ago from now this rummage sale was called the Great Reformation and it birthed Protestantism distinct form Catholicism.

Five hundred years before that it was called the Great Schism birthed the Eastern Orthodox church of Constantinople as distinctly separate from the Roman Catholic church.

Five hundred years before that the dark ages birthed a  “reconfigured form of monasticism that functioned not only as a way of private holiness but also as a way of societal and political stability.”[5]

Five hundred years before that the crucible time of Roman Imperialism birthed Christianity as people tried to make sense of the public ministry, teachings, crucifixion, and resurrection of an itinerant teacher and provocative preacher named Jesus; and reconfigured Judaism as it was shaken to the core as the Holy temple was destroyed in 70 CE.[6]

And five hundred years before that the exiled people of Jerusalem, a drift in the strange culture of Babylon birthed a new Hope midwived by the prophetic utterances of Second Isaiah. Second Isaiah whose words we heard this morning: words that hearken to a time of slavery under Pharaoh that birthed deliverance and a new life as covenanted people of God.

Five hundred year cycles of cleaning out, washing way, followed by a surge of generative, spirit lead energy building on what was while also creating something new.  After Exodus comes Genesis — every five hundred years.

And so, the thinking goes, now is our Exodus. Now is our Genesis

“ I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth,
do you not perceive it?”

~~~~~

         So how do we live into what is emerging?  How is it that we perceive the new thing God may be doing?  While many churches are struggling to figure out their relationship with or proximity to what is emerging, I truly think we are already living it. I truly think that the founder of this church had a touch of second Isaiah upon them.  For the emerging church I would argue looks a lot like the church we have been, the church we are and the church we are becoming.

And what is that?

Well it is a community defined not by a commonality of commitment to right belief but on a commonality of commitment to right relationship.  A community not under the authority of clergy but where as our bulletin asserts each person has the right and responsibility to minister on behalf of all.  A community that values scripture deeply but also values the lived experience of God with us now. A community defined not by denominational difference but by the unity the Holy Spirit that animates all.   A community not defined by place but by purpose.

Doesn’t that sound a lot like this community?

Now that is not to say we do not have our own rummage sale to conduct, our own closets to sort through and basements to clean. But I do think we are very much a part of the new thing that God may be doing.  There is something very generative going on in this place.  Did you hear it in the incredibly beautiful and heartfelt words of Beth, one of our new members last week how there is something happening here. Something of God is here.   “Something is springing forth.”

Next Sunday we will step into the seminal Exodus and Genesis story of our faith as we enter Holy Week.  We will witness Jesus refusal to relinquish the good news of his living even if that costs him his life. He will be delivered to the cross. But we know how the cross story is not the end. Exodus births Genesis. The cross opens to the empty tomb.  Something new is born.

Next Sunday we will also begin our stewardship campaign were we reflect on this community and our place within in, as we recommit ourselves to each other and to God as we walk together into the future of this beloved church.

And so as we draw close to that seminal Exodus and Genesis story of our faith even as we live into the Exodus and Genesis that this five hundred year cycle bequeaths us now, I ask you “From what do you need to be delivered in order to step into that which may be waiting to emerge?”  “What no longer serves?”  “What needs to be put into that rummage sale or heaved into the dumpster so that there may be room for what is coming.”  Here is the gift that this time of emergence offers: do we need to hold onto what we have known about ourselves, about the world or about God if it is what we have known is no longer life-giving?  Perhaps instead in this hinge time, this great rummage sale that we are having, we can trust God – the creator, to create us; Jesus the Way to lead us; and the Holy Spirit the wisdom to inspire us so that we too can become something new!

What a time!  What a time to be part of what is emerging!  What a time to be the Union Church in Waban.  Thanks be to God. Amen.

Please make sure to sign up for the Maundy Thursday Tenebrae Supper. Look for the sign-up sheet in the side chapel, or call the office.

The Lenten Book Group will meet Sunday after worship.

We have several Lenten resources available. Look for them on the side table in the sanctuary. They are: the Table Prayer Tent, a Lenten resource created by Bread for the World; our own Union Church weekly Lenten Guide with scripture, reflection, meditation, prayer, and even recipes; and a Lenten Meditation Practices Guide with weekly meditation practice suggestions compiled by Kathryn Henderson.

The Strategy Committee will meet Tuesday evening, March 19, at 7:00 p.m.

Prayer Group meets each Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m.

Wellspring will meet Wednesday evening at 6:30 p.m. Join the women of Union Church for a light supper and time of fellowship.

The Internet Committee will meet Thursday morning, March 21, at 8:00 a.m.

Our monthly trip to Waban Health will be on Thursday morning at 10:30 a.m.

The Teaching Parish Committee will meet Thursday evening, March 21, at 6:30 p.m.

Bible Study will meet on March 24, but will not meet on Easter Sunday morning, March 31.

Eggs Needed for the Easter Egg Hunt It’s time to think about our annual Easter Egg Hunt.  Your donations of candy-filled, plastic eggs are invited.  Please bring them to church anytime between this Sunday and before worship on Easter morning.  You can leave them in the designated box in the Crocker Chapel or  in Kathy’s office. Thanks in advance for your contribution.

Planning ahead: Save the date for a retreat on April 27 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Edwards House in Framingham. We will be spending time together in prayer and meditation, and exploring other spiritual practices. We need a minimum of 10 people to sign up. The cost will be $25, including lunch and snacks. Please contact the office to rsvp by March 22.

The next Game Night has been planned for Friday evening, April 12, at 6:30 p.m.  Mark your calendars for this fun evening.

Small Group Lenten Dinners  

Throughout Lent we will be hosting several small group potluck dinners. We invite you to choose from the following, a time and place when you can join with others from the Union Church community for a time of fellowship. Everyone is encouraged to sign up, whether you are a long-time member or new to the community, whether you have long-time friends within the congregation, or are just getting to know people,  everyone is invited, so don’t miss out.  Please take advantage of this opportunity.  

These dinners are for everyone, so please let’s have everyone sign up! Call the office, or sign up directly on the sign-up sheet posted in the Reception Room.

More details are on the sign-up sheet. Your host will be in touch with details when sign ups are complete. Don’t miss this chance to connect with someone new! Remaining dinners are as follows:

• Sunday, March 17th at Diane Tillotson and Karen Harvey’s home in Newton;
• Saturday, March 23rd in Weston at Lara and Grant Gund’s home;
• Sunday, March 24th in Waban at Gary and Brita Gill-Austern’s home.

Congregational Conversation of the life and Ministry of the Church

When: Sunday, March 24, 2013

Where: Church Vestry

Time: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.                                                         

Please join us for a life-affirming discussion of the life and ministry of the church on March 24^th after reception. The open forum, which will be facilitated by the moderators Molly Owen-Kiritsy and Kent Wittler, and Pastor Stacy Swain, will include topics on how we communicate church- wide activities and in what form. Are you feeling well informed about the mission initiatives of the church? Are you getting all you need from Christian education for both children and adults? What things would you do differently, or like to see added to the life of the church? Help us understand where the church can better meet your needs in all of their dimensions. We look forward to seeing you there. All are welcome.

Rev Stacy Swain

Bad behavior.  The passage bristles with it.  The story Jesus tells today and that we know as the “Prodigal Son,” I think would more aptly be named “An Epidemic of Bad Behavior.” For it is not just the youngest son who behaves badly, everyone does.

It all starts when the youngest son asks his father to give him his inheritance while the father is still alive — flaunting social convention and insulting his father profoundly.  And then this emboldened son leaves home for a foreign land and behaves so badly that he ends up starving and tending pigs.

Then, there is the father.  This esteemed patriarch breaks with convention and does the unthinkable. When seeing his wayward son on the rise of that road, he hitches up his robe and runs to meet him, clearly a gross violation of social norms and a down-right embarrassment.

And finally there is the prickly eldest son, so is so full of self righteousness, that he’d rather stand on principle than cross the threshold and join in the party.

And if we were to widen the focus of the passage a bit we would see that the very reason Jesus tells this story is because a some Pharisees and Scribes are grumbling about Jesus’ bad behavior of consorting with tax collectors and sinners.

But as Jesus speaks this parable to those grumbling Pharisees and Scribes, I would not have been surprised to see a slightly bemused look creep onto his face for I bet Jesus seems to be saying “if there is bad behavior here, my friends, it is yours.”

But, before we parse how any of this has to do with us, let us pray:

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you O God, our rock and our redeemer, Amen.

The passage today comes when Jesus is already well into his ministry and has become something of a sensation.  Great crowds are traveling with him wherever he goes and the air is abuzz with the amazing things he is doing and saying.  Jesus is gaining fame and a following so much so that the religious establishment cannot ignore him any longer.  They are trying to figure out what he is all about – is he one of them or is he a threat to who they are?

The problem, of course, is that he is also doing things that are not, in their minds at least, appropriate for a Man of God, for a Rabbi and respected teacher to be doing.  For not only is he welcoming sinners which would have been bad enough, but he also sits down and eats with them.  And we know that sitting down and sharing a meal together is akin to welcoming one into your own family, embracing one as kin.  Here is this clearly gifted and quite remarkable Rabbi, debasing himself by intentionally embracing those that really ought to be kept at arm’s length.

This troubles them. They are grumbling.  And hearing them grumble, Jesus tells them three parables.

In the first parable, Jesus asks the Pharisees and Scribes “which one of you having 100 sheep does not leave the 99 and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” In the second parable he asks them “what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?”

Searching for that which is lost is reasonable and commonplace behavior?  For that one sheep is of much value to the shepherd, as is that one coin to the woman.  And having found the sheep and having found the coin, what do the shepherd and the woman do? Well rejoice, of course!  Throw a party! Invite your friends — for what was lost has been found!

~~~~~

         Now I can completely relate to this because last Wednesday after our council meeting, I went out to my car only to discover that somehow I had lost my key.  So for the next half hour or so, I looked everywhere.  I turned this church upside down.  I looked and looked but could not find that key. And later, as I lay awake, I kept going over all I had done at church that night, retracing my every step in search of those lost keys.  So, imagine my thrill when I came in the next day to find that key on my desk!  Someone had found it in the parking lot.  I was so thrilled I felt like throwing a party.  That key was valuable and could have cost me $500 to replace.

Searching for what is lost and rejoicing when what was lost is found makes sense. Especially when what is lost, like a sheep, or a coin or a key, is of such value!  And I imagine the Pharisees and Scribes hearing these first two parables would have, like me, nodded in agreement.

~~~~~

         And then Jesus tells the parable read for us today — and in it he makes an unsettling leap.  By telling this parable after the other two, Jesus sets up the parallel that the father’s joyful response to the returning son is just like that of the shepherd or the woman.  Far from being inappropriate or even scandalous, the father behavior in rejoicing at the homecoming of his son is exactly what ought to be done.  It makes perfect sense.

And so, (and here’s the unsettling leap), one ought to conclude that not only is Jesus not behaving badly in searching out, welcoming and eating with sinners; but doing so is what ought to be done; and if the Pharisee and Scribes like Jesus are doing the work that God asks of them; then they too, like the father ought to be hitching up their robes and running to receive, embrace, restore, celebrate anyone and everyone who come over that horizon line regardless of whether they have mud on their sandals and the stench of pigs on their skin.

~~~~~

         Now, I bet that caught the Pharisees and Scribes up short.  I bet they did not see that coming and I bet that was not what their grumblings would bring.

~~~~~

         But that is the nature of grace.  It surprises us.  We just don’t see it coming.  It certainly surprised the youngest son.  He never expected that he would see his father running out to receive him, not after all he had done, all he had lost.  The best he had hoped for was to be taken in as a hired hand and permitted to work until he could repay his father for all that he had squandered.

He must have been dumbfounded as first he is caught up in his father’s embrace, then given the signet ring and the father’s own cloak, clear signs of restoration to his place in the family as beloved son; and then welcomed into an extravagant party — A party to which the entire community was invited.

What I think Jesus is saying through this parable, and what must  have been so theologically shocking to those Pharisees and Scribes, is that the sinning of the son does not diminish the father’s love for him  — failures and folly do not diminish the value of a person in God’s eyes.  Let me say that again, what Jesus seems to be saying is that sinning (getting lost, falling down, messing up, behaving badly) does not diminish the value of a person in God’s eyes. And what matters most to God is not the shame of our transgressions but joy of our restoration.

Simply said, God is dying to forgive us.  Isn’t that the heart of it really?

If you look at this parable, the younger son’s bad behavior kind of just falls away all together when he is met by the extravagant love of the father, when met by grace. There is no more mention of transgression.  There is only an invitation to come live anew, life out of love.

~~~~

         No more mention of transgression?  Well that is not entirely correct.  The father never mentions it but someone else sure does, right? There is one who is not going to let all that loose living go so easily.

It’s the eldest son.  The father may be overcome with joy but the eldest is miffed.  He is so miffed that he won’t even go into the house.  When his father comes out to find him and plead with him to come into the party, the eldest basically tells him that what the father is doing is wrong.  The eldest has been playing by the rules doing what is right while his brother has been breaking every rule and doing what is wrong.  And now the younger son is to be celebrated while the elder son get’s nothing?  Well that is just upside down and down-right wrong.

As irritating as the eldest son is, I cannot help but empathize with him.  It is really hard to let go to the idea that we really ought to be rewarded for good behavior, that somehow love should be allocated by merit.  To let go of that construction can be really unnerving leaving us feeling rather vulnerable.  For if we have defined ourselves as good and expect others to do the same, it we set that down — then who are we?  Can we let ourselves be loved period and then let that love shape how we live so that all we do is not for reward but out of joy.  Can we let love not obligation be the starting place of all we do? How different would our lives look if we live out of love?

And so with the eldest, the parable comes full circle, back to the Pharisees and Scribes.  For Jesus could have said that that son was the older one — described him that way.  The younger son and the older son, that would have made sense right?  But Jesus did not say that, he chose not older but elder to describe the first born.  Why? Well it turns out that is the same word that was used to describe those who sat on the highest Council or court of the Jewish people, the Sanhedrian, those who sat in judgment of and presided over the Jewish people, those who will soon condemn Jesus and hand him over to Pilate.  So is Jesus subtly indicting the Scribes and the Pharisees by tying them rhetorically to this eldest son? Is Jesus implying that they too may be missing out; missing the joyous celebration of their own home coming; missing out the love that is looking them right in the eye?  I think so, yes.

But of course not just them, but all of us who are so set in our own understandings of what we must and must not do to earn God’s favor that we miss out on grace that may be right in front of us.  We might miss out on what is truly our deep down desire, more than anything else.  We may miss out on looking up and seeing our heavenly parent rushing out to meet us, catching us up in her embrace, wrapping us in love and taking us home again.

The parable ends with the father pleading to his elder son while the sound of celebration hangs in the air.   We don’t know what comes next.  Will the elder son follow his father into the party or will he turn away, alone?

If there is an epidemic of bad behavior in this parable, if there is something that is truly problematic, maybe it is the behavior not that of those who have sinned or those who eat with the sinners, maybe it is of those who refuse to come in and to take up their place at the table.

And that is food for thought for all of us.  Amen.

Luke 13:1-9

– Rev. Stacy Swain

Did you hear the news?” they ask him.  “Did you hear the news about those Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifice?”  It was horrible!

Did you hear the news? It was terrible.

This past Friday morning for example, the news report was of a man in Florida who awoke to find himself being sucked into a giant sink hole! That report was followed by one from Missouri where a recent study has shown that half of the wild bee population that was present 100 years ago is now gone.[1]  Half of the wild bee population has died!  And the report concluded with the grizzly image of how devastating the pending sequestration is going to be saying that it will be akin to performing surgery with a meat cleaver. And now we cannot even be comfortable under the sky for at any moment a meteorite could streak in from nowhere and blow glass out of windows for miles with its sonic boom.

Did you hear the news? It’s a pretty crazy, mixed up, strange, and uncertain world out there.

When those around Jesus ask him if he has heard about the Galileans, I believe their question is as much to make sure he knew what had happened as it was to ask what they are to do in the face of such horror.

And the same is true for us.  The news is not neutral.  Once we hear it, it becomes a part of us and we need to try to figure out what comes next.   How are we to relate to all the uncertainty and disaster around us?  Do we withdraw, ignore – lead smaller more inward focused lives?  Do we live keeping our heads down; hoping that if chaos knocks, it knocks on another one’s door, not ours?

And then there is the fraying of our social fabric that leaves us feeling more exposed, more vulnerable.[2]  The fabric of connections that once wove us into community are now rather threadbare.  There are just fewer people we can rely on, a smaller patch of firm ground on which to stand.

For us as people of faith it gets even more complex for we have to ask “Where is God in all of this?”  “Is God standing back or above or beyond all this mess?”  “Is God an indifferent Creator letting creation spin out of control?”

Or, like those in the reading today, do we think that God is in the mix meriting out reward or punishment based on what we do or don’t deserve?  Do we, like them, rely perhaps subconsciously if not overtly on some simplistic theory of retribution where God rewards those people who are good and punishes those who are bad?  So if bad things are happening to others, we don’t have to be too concerned because somehow in the cosmic scale of justice they are getting their just desserts.   Do we tolerate the violence in our urban neighborhoods and turn away from the profound disparities in our public education system because a part of us may think that somehow they are getting what they deserve — that somehow they made their bed and now must lie in it, so to speak?

Is this the paradigm we live in? The paradigm that orders our understanding of the world, ourselves and God. The paradigm that says:  1) the world is chaotic; 2) we are vulnerable and more and more alone; and 3) that somehow if God is out there God must be either a detached observer, or a judging arbitrator of reward and punishment.

Is this the paradigm that frames our lives?  Unfortunately, I think that for many people and perhaps even us as well, it is. But as much as that paradigm may be how we see  –  I don’t think it is how Jesus sees.  This paradigm of fear and failing is not his.  My understanding is that the whole point of Jesus’ ministry was to open for us through his living, a different way of seeing and being in the world.  It was not just a matter of reinterpretation of what is and replacing it with another construction, but instead it was a revelation of an underlying God given reality that waits to be engaged and experienced — waits to be awoken to and lived into.

So what does this paradigm that Jesus reveals look like?

Let’s turn to Scripture.  Instead of stepping into the conversation that those with Jesus initiated, he side-steps it completely and tells them a parable.

Jesus tells them:  there is a vineyard, a garden.  And in it there is a fig tree that is not doing so well.  It’s been growing in that garden for three years but still there are not figs on it.  But the gardener is not ready to give up on it.  Instead the gardener commits herself even more readily to that tree.  The gardener will dig around it and put some manure on it.  And I bet the gardener will make it a point to check on its progress daily, checking for signs of blight, pruning back any dead leaves.  Doing all the gardener can to help the tree thrive.

Jesus holds us this parable as a provocative contrast to how those with him are seeing the world.  Through this parable does he show us a new way of understanding and invite us into that Way?  Are we to say “no” to retribution and “yes” to a little manure?  Is the world actually God’s garden?  Have we a place within it? Are we rooted there not alone, but side by side with all of our brother and sisters?   Does God not give up on us but instead does God work on our behalf, caring and cultivating our lives and all lives so that we may one day bear fruit?

If this parable speaks to the reality that God is calling us into, and I think it is, then how do we go from that pervasive paradigm of fear and anxiety to this garden?  Stepping out of a paradigm of fear and failing and into a new way of seeing and being in the world has been and continues to be what I think is the most challenging but also the most central and essential call of faith.

The way we do it, at least according to Jesus in the scripture today is through repentance. “Repent” Jesus says “or you will perish as they did.”

But what does it mean to repent?   If seen through the paradigm of fear and anxiety, repentance means saying you are sorry and promising to do better. To strive harder to be a better mom, a better husband, a better worker, a more patient, harder working, kinder person. Repentance within this paradigm places the responsibility of becoming better on ourselves and that is a lot to shoulder and if history is a predictor of what will be, we are not very good at repentance.

But what could repentance look like if see through the prism of this parable?  What does repentance within God’s garden look like?  Perhaps, like the fig tree, repentance means putting our lives in the care and cultivation of God and trusting that in God’s hands we will become who we were meant to be and bear the fruit that we were meant to bear.

Maybe our prayer of repentance is not so much, “Forgive me God, I promise to do better.”  But “Forgive me God and take me into your care.”

Living out of the paradigm of God, living like the fig tree with the care and cultivation of God is to live out of a place of trust, resilience, hope and yes, even joy.  The world maybe uncertain and even scary but we need not to be afraid.  We are rooted, well watered, and not to be moved.

Now, in complete disclosure, I find this very hard.  I find this invitation to let go of the paradigm of fear and to trust God, and to root oneself instead in accepting God’s care and cultivation so that our lives may bear good fruit, well I find all of that really hard.

But I have to say, I also find it really hopeful.  For I know that by myself and on my own in this unsettling world, I can do very little.  But with God maybe I can let go of my fear and start trying to live from my heart.  Maybe I can let care and compassion, and not judgment and fear lead me.  Maybe I can even begin to work with God and help make the world, or at least the world within my reach a bit of a garden.  May be I can push the wheel barrel, maybe I can help dig in the soil a bit and maybe even help in spreading a bit of manure,  so that others may find the care and cultivation they need and bear fruit and thrive.  Thanks be to God, the tender gardener.  Amen.

Bible Study will meet Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m. in Stacy’s office. We are currently reading through the Gospel of Matthew. All are welcome.

The Lenten Book Group will meet Sunday after worship.

We have several Lenten resources available. Look for them on the side table in the sanctuary. They are: the Table Prayer Tent, a Lenten resource created by Bread for the World; our own Union Church weekly Lenten Guide with scripture, reflection, meditation, prayer, and even recipes; and a Lenten Meditation Practices Guide with weekly meditation practices compiled by Kathryn Henderson.

Prayer Group meets each Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m.

Lunch Bunch will meet on Tuesday, March 12 at noon.

The Mission Committee will meet at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening, March 12.

Book Group has been re-scheduled to Tuesday, March 12, at 7:30 p.m.

The next Youth Group meeting is Friday, March 15, 6:00-8:00 p.m. here at church.  We are hosting the middle school youth group from Second Church in Newton UCC.  Middle Schoolers from other Newton UCC churches may be joining us as well.

This Thursday, March 14, is an early release day in the Newton Schools. We are having a St. Patrick’s party with the residents of the Waban Health Center.  Plan to bring your kids to church after school with a bag lunch.  After eating lunch, we’ll walk over the Health Center for some celebration and sweet treats with the residents. Friends are welcome. Questions?  Ask Kathy Malone.

Java Gents will meet Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. in the Reception Room.

We have several Lenten resources available. Look for them on the side table in the sanctuary. They are: the Table Prayer Tent, a Lenten resource created by Bread for the World; our own Union Church weekly Lenten Guide with scripture, reflection, meditation, prayer, and even recipes; (which you can download here) and a Lenten Meditation Practices Guide with weekly meditation practices compiled by Kathryn Henderson (available here). 

Don’t miss our Ancianos luncheon Sunday at 12 noon.

There will be a Deacons’ meeting Tuesday, March 5, at 6:00 p.m.

Prayer Group meets each Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m.

 Join Stacy at the Waban Starbucks on Wednesday morning, March 6, at 9:00 a.m. for Conversations Along the Way.

 Council will meet Wednesday evening, March 6^th, at 6:30 p.m.

 Lunch Bunch will meet on Tuesday, March 12 at noon.

The Mission Committee will meet at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening, March 12.

Book Group has been re-scheduled to Tuesday, March 12, at 7:30 p.m.

Mark your calendars for Thursday, March 14, an early release day in the Newton Schools. C.E. is having a St. Patrick’s party with the residents of the Waban Health Center.

The next Youth Group meeting is Friday, March 15, at 6:00 p.m. Join us for a get together with the middle schoolers of Second Church in Newton UCC.  Middle Schoolers from other Newton UCC churches may be joining us as well.

Bible Study meets on Sunday mornings at 8:00 a.m. in Stacy’s office. Join us as we start a new study of the Gospel of Matthew. We invite you to join us whether you are new to Bible Study or have participated many times before.

Small Group Lenten Dinners

Throughout Lent we will be hosting several small group potluck dinners. We invite you to choose from the following, a time and place when you can join with others from the Union Church community for a time of fellowship. Please rsvp by Friday, March  8. Everyone is encouraged to sign up,  whether you are a long-time member or new to the community, whether you have long-time friends within the congregation, or are just getting to know people,  everyone is invited so don’t miss out.  Please take advantage of this opportunity.  These dinners are for everyone so please let’s have everyone sign up! Call the office, or sign up directly on the sign up sheet posted in the Reception Room. More details are on the sign-up sheet. Your host will be in touch with details when sign ups are complete. Don’t miss this chance to connect with someone new!

• Friday, March 8th in Roslindale at Mark Smith and Stacy Swain’s home;
• Saturday, March 16th in Waban at Chris Kiritsy and Molly Owen-Kiritsy’s home;
• Saturday, March 16th in Watertown at David Spertner’s home;
• Sunday, March 17th at Diane Tillotson and Karen Harvey’s home in Newton;
• Saturday, March 23rd in Weston at Lara and Grant Gund’s home;
• Sunday, March 24th in Waban at Gary and Brita Gill-Austern’s home.

Kathryn Henderson,  Student Intern

Have you had a chance to go sledding this winter? Pretty good winter for it, right? You know the sleds that are like giant saucers — how about setting out to sea in one of them? I’m serious. That’s essentially what Irish monks in the early Middle Ages used to do. They would cast off from the people, possessions, and places they loved most in the world for an even greater love — God. They floated in tiny vessels made out of willow strips and animal hides called coracles. No sails, no rudders, no paddles. Just the wind, sea, and sky…and a whole lot of faith. They allowed themselves to be blown to their destination by the Holy Spirit. Literally. Wherever they landed they would work to do God’s will.

During Lent I recall these wandering monks because they inspire me to remember that this can be a time of holy adventure, if I will relinquish something I love dearly — my certainty about who I am and what I’m doing here — and renew my love for God, and trust that to chart my course. No sails, no rudders, no paddles. Seriously?! Ok, ok, I can do this. Who knows, maybe God is calling me to something I’d never have imagined otherwise. What will I discover as I venture out? What mysteries, surprises, and puzzles will I encounter?

This Lent I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Reading today’s scripture I’ll admit made for some choppy weather. Little whitecaps formed inside my head as I tried to dive into the truths of this text that has so many apparent contradictions and an unsettling conclusion.

Certainly Luke, the master storyteller, and legend has it, painter, creates a vivid picture. A picture full of surprises. Over here are the usually antagonistic Pharisees, worried and solicitous, concerned about Jesus and waving to him that he should flee. What is going on here? Are they being sincere, or is this another attempt to test him, or to goad him into demonstrating who he really is?

Then there is Jesus, unperturbed by their warning and unconcerned about whatever they are up to. Typically mild mannered, here he scowls as he answers them, his tone dismissive, even derisive — he can’t be bothered with the Pharisees or Herod; he has work to do. God’s work. And then Jesus describes what lies ahead, remembering the desolate history of Israel. For a moment he seems to soften, imagining God’s tender care — just like a mother hen. It’s a lovely image of the sheltering love that embraces all. And then we realize what is wrong with this picture: Jesus isn’t offering consolation; this is a lament. A cry from an anguished heart because once again, as so many times in Israel’s past, God’s saving love will be rejected, and the one who seeks to shelter his people will be put to death.

Perhaps Jesus is prophesying the destruction of the Temple, and thus the end of life as Israel knew it. Or perhaps Luke chooses those words for him after the fact. Whichever it is, Luke is clear that Jesus is the center of time and history; the fulfillment of all the prophesies in Hebrew scripture. Thus the image of the protective mother hen is bitterly ironic: only the death of Jesus can restore Israel. Wow, the waves are getting rougher. What happened to my quiet, contemplative Lenten journey? You know, a beatitude or nice miracle, say the loaves and fishes, would be good right about now.

So I keep reminding myself that this is the gift of Lent: that it is the season of mystery, of venturing into the unknown to discover more about who we are, and who God wants us to be. And, more about Jesus the human being, and our relationship with him. Throughout the weeks ahead we will be encountering these kinds of texts that can be so troubling. So I have a choice. I can play it safe, be at ease within the comfort of my meditations on beautiful passages that make perfect sense. Or I can hang onto the edges of the coracle, and keep moving where the Holy Spirit sends me. I don’t know about you all, but some days this is a choice I don’t even want to think about, let alone make.

And yet, I want to grow through this time, this is an opportunity to discover the meaning of faith and holy adventure. I want to believe I can venture further, and the only way to have that kind of faith is to live it, to follow the way of this journey, trusting that this will have meaning for my life. That means coming ashore and walking, step by sometimes excruciating step, following Jesus as he really was, not just as I might wish him to be. Listening to the tone of his voice, observing his gestures, imagining him watching others — what do you think he was seeing and hearing? And, if you dare, try to feel some of what he may have been feeling. Like, perhaps, despair as he remembers the people’s rejection of God, of himself. And reflecting on his own destiny, which he makes clear to the Pharisees is irretrievable.

Actually, I think that Luke is making clear to us that Jesus is determined to live out his fate, his vocation. Jesus knows what must be done, and what it will cost. His Work is in Jerusalem, where he must challenge the status quo to bring about God’s plan for Israel. He was born for this time and place, and walking there with him is…risky. I am definitely more at ease with Jesus the teacher, the healer, and the comforter than Jesus as the incarnation of the Kingdom of God. I’m very content being the disciple of the One Who is Peace. But this man who speaks so defiantly to the Pharisees — I don’t know about you, but he’s, well…unsettling….

This is Jesus the first-century Palestinian Jew, a prophet in the apocalyptic tradition of that era. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about all of us being “Left Behind.” Jesus’ understanding of the apocalypse didn’t have anything to do with the Rapture or what contemporary culture associates with the end of the world. Instead, he believed, like many Jews of his time, that the Kingdom of God, the literal presence and reign of God throughout the earth, was imminent, and that it would be manifested through his life, death, and resurrection.

A few years ago I took a class on Moses and Jesus at Andover Newton and Hebrew College. About midway through the semester one of the rabbinical students said: “So I’m beginning to get the picture of Jesus as a kind of ‘Samurai shaman,’ traveling the countryside as an embodiment of Divine Justice.” I remember how we all laughed at that, nervously. Perhaps Luke is showing us that Jesus — the man with singular focus, a purpose beyond mortal understanding. If that’s so, then who does that make me, as his disciple? A peacemaker, a prophet, a revolutionary…?

These questions, for me, are what Lent is all about. That’s why the image of the monks in their coracles inspires me. They remind me that it’s important every now and then to cast off from the shores of daily life, the security of routines we know well — even if only for a few minutes a day, to be suspended in God’s time. And that it’s also necessary to step out of the normal limits of how we view ourselves as people of God. This holy season invites us into a respite from certainty, offering a particular kind freedom — space to reflect, to question, to not have to have the answers, to see where the question lead. To allow the Holy Spirit to blow into our hearts and minds, guiding and shaping; renewing us. This is the time when we can look at familiar things, like the metaphor of the hen and her chicks, with new eyes, and soften our gaze — allow the picture to lose some of its focus so that the deeper truths can emerge.

The danger in this is that I may discover questions that I wasn’t prepared for — and didn’t really want to consider. Have I been ignoring God’s invitation, just like Jesus says? If I only accept the parts of his story and personality that I like, aren’t I doing exactly what he accuses the people of Jerusalem of? And, most dangerous of all, am I just as stubborn, foolish, and self-centered? Hmm…maybe…this is making life at sea in a coracle look pretty good……

But, you know, what if our holy wanderings with Jesus can show us how to connect our hearts through his heart — the source of the charity that transforms fear and anger into friendship and community. The source of the courage and compassion that can rebuild a broken world.

And that’s what I think Luke is getting at here. Yes, the Temple will be destroyed, but Hope will live on. God — the living God — will be with us still. A new community and way of life will be born, and can be lived every moment we say yes. We can reject Jesus and his message just like Jerusalem of long ago. But he will still be here. He will still be here for us. Even when we try to shape him into who we think he is, or should be.

The risk is real — that by traveling with Jesus we will discover a love so deep and wide, so all encompassing, that we will find we have become… disciples. And that means being willing to challenge the status quo. Yes, it means speaking prophetically and acting justly. It means going to Zambia and Nicaragua and Dorchester. And it means opening our hearts to receive this love that surpasses human understanding, that demands we share it with others, like the residents of Waban Health Center, our families and friend, and also people we’ll meet in passing and never see again.

When we allow ourselves to rest in God’s loving embrace, we will be renewed, but we will also be challenged. And we will be given what we need to live this sometimes difficult and terrifying life of discipleship fully — just like those fearless, faith-filled monks. In case you’re wondering how their holy adventures turned out — they founded some of the great Christian monastic communities and centers of learning in Europe.

So you never know where a coracle, real or imagined, and the Holy Spirit will take you. Where do you think God may be calling you to go? Where might you venture the next few weeks? What is just beyond your known horizon that you want to explore? We all have vulnerabilities and fears — I’m not talking about overcoming them in 40 days flat. Rather, what is one question that you’d like to take this time to consider? See where that leads you. Think about what your own holy adventure might look like, even if it’s only for a few minutes a day. In the midst of the uncertainty that may arise, be grateful for the encounter — with the living God, with yourself. And know that there is a love that surpasses our certainty, fears, and judgments. This is the place of rest, of true refreshment, and preparation for our lives as Easter People.

Amen.

Prayer Group meets each Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m.

 Bible Study meets on Sunday mornings at 8:00 a.m. in Stacy’s office. Join us as we start a new study of the Gospel of Matthew. We invite you to join us whether you are new to Bible Study or have participated many times before.

 The next 4^th and 5^th graders Friday Fun Night is March 1. Join us for Cosmic Bowling at the Needham Bowlaway from 6:00-8:00 p.m.

 Don’t miss the next Union Church game night and potluck supper, this Friday evening, March 1^st at 6:30 p.m. Look for the sign-up sheet in the Reception Room.

 The next Youth Group meeting is Friday March 15, at 6:00 p.m.  Join us for a get-together with the middle schoolers of Second Church in Newton UCC.  Middle Schoolers from other Newton UCC churches may be joining us as well.

 NICA information: Sunday, March 3rd is going to be our 1st Ancianos event and we are looking for a few more volunteers to make some appetizers or desserts. Travel to Nicaragua:  Are you considering going on our next Mission Trip to Nicaragua in only 12 Months? (Projected dates are 2/13/14 – 2/22/14).

Please contact Dave Spertner (dspertner@gmail.com or 617-549-1200) for more information or to sign up for one or both of these opportunities.

 Small Group Lenten Dinners

Throughout Lent we will be hosting several small group potluck dinners. We invite you to choose from the following, a time and place when you can join with others  from the Union Church community for a time of fellowship. Please rsvp by Friday, March 1^st.  Call the office, or sign up directly on the sign up sheet posted in the Reception Room. More details are on the sign-up sheet. Your host will be in touch with details when sign ups are complete.

Don’t miss this chance to connect with someone new!

Luke 4:1-13

This passage that Sandra read for us today is referred to as “the Temptation of Jesus.” In fact, my bible actually prints that above this text in bold as the title of the section.  But it has always made me wonder, why does Jesus need to be tempted before he starts his ministry?

I would have thought that Jesus’ baptism would have been commission enough to get him started.  I would have thought that it would have been enough that the heavens opened, and a dove descended upon Jesus and a voice from heaven spoke saying “this is my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”   Surely that was all Jesus needed, right?

But I guess it isn’t.  For in all three Gospel accounts, Jesus emerges from the baptismal blessing at the River Jordan and turns not towards Galilee to begin the work for which he was born, but instead he is lead or driven depending on which Gospel account you read, by the Spirit, into the wilderness.

Why?

One commentary answers that: “the purpose of this passage was to prove that Jesus was the Son of God by “defeating Satan in open combat.”[1]  Prove Jesus is the Son of God?  Prove to whom?  To Jesus? To Satan?  To all of us?  But that still begs the question “why wasn’t the baptism proof enough?”

Another way that this “temptation” passage is explained is that it is a test of Jesus, a test to see if he is ready.  That despite God’s affirmation of Jesus as God’s beloved, God seems to needs a bit more assurance and so God sets up this kind of entrance exam to see whether Jesus is really up to and ready for his ministry of the Good News that is to be entrusted to him?

Is that what is going on in this passage?

If so then it makes sense that Jesus would need those forty days before the encounter with the Devil in the wilderness as a kind of spiritual boot camp to get ready for this great open combat; or those forty days as an intensive study session for the test that is coming.  It would make sense that those forty days were all about preparing for what was really important, the test, combat that was to come.

But what happens if we shift the accent in this passage from the encounter with the devil and place it instead on that time, those forty days spent in the wilderness.  After all forty days is a long time, but the encounter with the devil seems to have taken very little.  Perhaps no more than a few minutes or hours, or a day, who knows.  Perhaps the encounter with the devil then is nothing more than a coda to the real work and import of the passage which was and is those forty days.  How would that change the way we see Jesus and through his example, how we see ourselves?

~~~~~

The number forty, you know, often shows up in the Bible.  The waters of the great flood in Noah’s time covered the earth for forty days before subsiding.  The Hebrew people, newly freed from the dominion of Pharaoh were in the wilderness of the Sinai for forty years before entering the Promised Land.  Moses was on top of Mt Sinai with God for forty days as he received from God the covenant of the Ten Commandments.  And Jesus now is in the wilderness for forty days before the devil shows up with these three challenges.

Forty, in Biblical parlance, connotes a kind of generative space, a pausing to give time for what is – to be completed.

So I wonder if what is happens here in the wilderness is a more of germination time for Jesus – It is not a time apart from the baptismal blessing– a time for him to prove or to test if he is really worthy of it, but instead a time for that God given blessing as beloved to really come home to him fully.  To fill him completely.  Jesus is fully human after all and may very well need time to  mediate on and awaken to that startling reality that he is beloved of God and that God is well pleased, well pleased with him! The Spirit is wise and seems to know that that the blessing of being beloved and the assurance of being well pleasing is not one we humans know well and that Jesus may need some time to absorb it all.  And so the Spirit gives Jesus that time by creating a generative space, a retreat in the wilderness, outside the domestication and demands of life to let the fullness of who Jesus is as beloved, the starting place of all he will do, complete him.

When I read this passage branded as the “the temptation of Jesus” in this new light of these forty days as being a time of integration and completion,  the passage then takes on a completely different resonance for me.

Temptation, afterall, connotes struggle, right?  If I am tempted by that open bag of potato chips I feel a conflict inside of myself, a battle between my desire for that salty greasy loveliness and my will that knows those chips are not good for me at all.

But did you notice? There is no struggle here.   And the Bible knows struggle. Remember in the book of Genesis when that strange otherworldly figure comes to Jacob in the night and wrestles with him so strenuously that Jacobs hip is dislocated.  That is a struggle! (Genesis 32:22-32).

But there is none of that here.   We don’t get the sense that Jesus is waging an inner battle with himself or an overt one with the devil.  We do not get the sense that the outcome of the struggle is uncertain that it could go either way.   It is not drawn on and does not seem to require must energy from Jesus at all.

Instead, Jesus enters into what we term temptation already in complete mastery of the situation. He is decided, calm, centered in himself.  There is no struggle.  He just states what he has come to know as truth and then moves on: “One does not live by bread alone, Worship the Lord your God, serve only God; do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

So perhaps the point of this passage is that there actually is no temptation, at least not for Jesus.  Perhaps the blessing at the Jordan and the forty days in the wilderness have somehow delivered Jesus to the far side of temptation.  Perhaps he has found completion in himself and in his relationship with God.  Nothing more is needed.  Nothing can hook him for nothing in him is lacking.

And beginning as complete, beginning completely has profound ramifications for his ministry.

After this wilderness time, Jesus is able to move out into his ministry fully present to those he is with and to the power of God’s love that is with him.  He is able to be fully present because he is not seeking something for himself in his encounters but is only seeking to be of service to God.  His presence is wholly other directed in pure and loving compassion.  He does not use others to prop up or complete something that is lacking in himself.  Jesus is centered in and completed by his being beloved of God.  Nothing else is needed.  That is everything.

This is not to say that Jesus does not need connection with others for we know he does. That is the fabric of his ministry.  From the get go he calls others to come with him and weaves together lives in a community that stretches across time and space. And that is the whole point really.  Jesus calls people to him and forges community so that people may know what he knows, to live as he lives, to be complete as the beloved of God as he is complete and to have that be the beginning of all that is done.   So that from that starting place, all may be freed to love in the way that Jesus loves and in the way that the world needs.

But we are not there yet, are we? I don’t think so. I’m not at least.   We tend to set off into each day not complete in and of ourselves but looking for ways in which others can complete us.  We look in the face of others around us to see mirrored back to us who are to be.  Our identity is a reflected identity not one that come from deep within.  Am I good enough?  Well what do people say about me?  Am I important enough?  Well how do people react when I walk into the room or when I open my mouth to speak?  Am I valued enough?  Are people impressed by the car I drive and jewelry I wear?

And that is a slippery slope for sure.  Just this week, Peter Seagle the host of “Wait Wait don’t tell me” on NPR quipped that Valentine’s day is really a set up by the card, chocolate and flower industry to reveal our inadequacy in meeting the expectations of those we love.

Whether we are trying to fill other people’s needs or waiting for others to fill ours, we get ourselves into a distracted tangle of tests, temptations and failings that take us way from what we really ought to be doing and that is following Jesus and bringing God’s love more and more fully into the world.

The temptation in this passage, perhaps then is really ours.  For aren’t we the ones that get caught up with and entangled by the temptations that the devil brings?

Aren’t we deeply hungry for something that seems to lie beyond our grasp?  Is there a deep shame within us of not being enough, forever failing?  Is there an emptiness inside that we thing only someone else can fill for us?

Or are we so full of pride and self import that we think all ought to heed our word and opinion?  Do we listen to others only so that they will stop speaking and finally listen to what it is we have to say?  Do we wish that others would just get their act together and step in line with what it is that we know to be best?   How tiresome truly are those who just don’t seem able to see as clearly as we do?

Or are we so awash by the showiness of our day? Where we are instructed and encouraged to put on a happy face and conform to an “I’m great! How are you?” attitude where going deeper than surface appearance is taboo and honest sharing down-right discouraged?

How exhausting to set out each day into this charged energy field of inadequacy seeking affirmation.  Maybe that is why zombies and vampires are so popular in the movies and video games these days.  Are they a commentary on our culture, that we are dead to ourselves and must leech life off others in order to live?

Can you imagine, really I ask you, can you imagine in that sense that creative imagining brings into being what is waiting to be.  Can you imagine what it would be to live our lives out of the blessing of beloved and the affirmation of having God well pleased with us?  To have the starting place of all that we do be the peace of completeness and the calm of being centered in God’s love. To know in your heart of hearts in the words of the Apostle Paul that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate you form the love of God” (Romans 8:38-39).

We may not have forty days in the wilderness outside the domestication and demands of life but we do have Lent.  We do have these next forty days.  Not so that we may enter spiritual boot camp in order to prepare for open combat with the devil or an intensive study session for a test we must take all to prove that we are somehow worthy of the love that has been given us and the good news that has been entrusted with us to share.  But instead so that we have time to let God’s love and acceptance  germinate within us and complete us. To let the fullness of who we are as beloved be the starting place of all we do.  So that we too may go out into the world not seeking something for ourselves but only seeking to be of service.  So that our presence may be wholly other directed in pure and loving compassion.  Let this be our 40 days.  Amen

The Children’s Choir will not be rehearsing on Sunday. 

Bible Study meets this Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m. in Stacy’s office. We will be finishing the Book of Revelation.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to last week’s Youth Group bake sale.  We raised $325, enough money to send three children to school and to buy two pairs of shoes for children in our sister community of M’tendere (Zambia).

Prayer Group meets each Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m.

The next 4^th  and 5 ^th  graders Friday Fun Night is March 1.  Join us for Cosmic Bowling at the Needham Bowlaway from 6:00 -8:00 p.m.

Don’t miss the next Union Church game night and potluck supper, on Friday evening, March 1 ^st  at 6:30 p.m. Look for the sign-up sheet in the Reception Room.

NICA information: Sunday, March 3rd is going to be our 1st Ancianos event and we are looking for a few more volunteers to make some appetizers or desserts.

Travel to Nicaragua:  Are you considering going on our next Mission Trip to Nicaragua in only 12 Months? (Projected dates are 2/13/14 – 2/22/14).

Please contact Dave Spertner (dspertner@gmail.com or 617-549-1200) for more information or to sign up for one or both of these opportunities.

The next Youth Group meeting is Friday March 15, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.  Join us for a get together with the middle schoolers of Second Church in Newton UCC.

 Middle Schoolers from other Newton UCC churches may be joining us as well.

Small Group Lenten Dinners Throughout Lent we will be hosting several small group potluck dinners. We invite you to choose from the following, a time and place when you can join with others from the Union Church community for a time of fellowship.

 More details are on the sign-up sheet in the Reception Room.

Your host will be in touch with details when sign ups are complete.

Don’t miss this chance to connect with someone new!

• Friday, March 8th in Roslindale at Mark Smith and Stacy Swain’s home;
• Saturday, March 16th in Waban at Chris and Molly Owen-Kiritsy’s home;
• Saturday, March 16th in Watertown at David Spertner’s house;
• Saturday, March 23rd in Weston at Lara and Grant Gund’s home;
• Sunday, March 24th in Waban Brita and Gary Gill-Austern’s home.

“It’s a matter of perspective”

Exodus 34:29-35
Luke 9:28-43

Maybe it is because I am a middle child.  Or maybe it is because I tended to be among the last when captains picked teams for playground kickball, but whatever the reason it just did not seem fair.

It just did not seem fair that Jesus picked Peter, John and James to take up the mountain.  It doesn’t seem fair that Jesus leaves the rest behind.  Isn’t that playing favorites?  Wouldn’t all of them have wanted to go?

This passage bothered me until I stopped entering the scene as one of the disciples left behind and instead put myself in the shoes of Peter, John and James.  And then instead of envying these three favorites I began to feel rather sorry for them.

But before we go any further let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you O God, our rock and our redeemer, Amen.

The text says that “Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up the mountain.”  It does not say, Jesus asked Peter and John and James if they would consider coming with him on what certainly would be a demanding excursion but one that he hoped would be well worth the effort.  And the passage does not say that after Peter and James and John thought about Jesus invitation a while, they then decided that “yes, indeed” they would like to go.  It does not say that at all, does it?  No, it says Jesus took them.

I tend to think that Peter, John and James had no idea that Jesus was planning on going up the mountain that day, let alone that Jesus was thinking of taking them.  I imagine Jesus woke up early, before dawn when it was still quite cold, while the others were still wrapped in their cloaks stretched out on the ground around a fire that had gone to ashes. And I imagine and I had made his way over to where Peter and James and John were sleeping.  And I imagine he startled them awake by saying “Get up.  I am taking you with me.”

And if another of the disciples sleeping there in the predawn chill chanced awake at Jesus words, I bet he rolled over and whispered to himself “thank God he is taking those guys and not me. It is too darn early. I’m too exhausted and who even knows what crazy-wild place he’s off to.”

I now feel kind of protective for Peter, James and John because I remember what it felt like to be taken up a mountain  – and I hated it.

~~~~

         We lived in Alaska then.  It was a wild place.  Full of bears that would eat you for breakfast without blinking an eye and mountains that towered around us with peaks that avalanched in the winter.  And my father had what seemed to me a crazy, wild passion for getting on top of mountains.  It seemed about every weekend he would load my brother and sister and I up in the jeep and we would set out way too early in the morning for a peak.

I dreaded these “adventures.”   My stomach would be in knots as we drove the switch backs up to the impossibly high parking lot and as we put on back packs, retied boots and headed out.  I mean who could love trying to keep up with my dad who for every one of his paces it took three of mine.  I remember struggling over boulder upon boulder, being terrified as shale slipped beneath my feet — sure I was going to slide into the oblivion of the pass below before my summit driven dad even noticed I was gone.  I remember the competition I felt with my siblings, somehow needing to be first on the path even though my lungs were bursting.

Looking back on it, I dreaded these excursions I think because they pressed me up against my limitations.  They pressed me up against my fears.   Each time we set out I knew I would meet exhaustion, inadequacy, and jealousy and all that bad stuff never seemed to emerge until I we set off for a mountain top.

And then after what always seemed like forever, we would come up over that final ridge and I’d I throw myself down on the rocks gasping in the thin air while my dad would unpack lunch, and begin spreading spam on rye crisp crackers.

~~~~

         There is much commentary that pokes fun at Peter, James and John for  how when they get to the top of the mountain, they can barely keep their eyes open.  But really, who can blame them?  Following Jesus is exhausting,  especially when he rustles you up out of a particularly good sleep to climb a mountain for heaven’s sake.  And the whole point of climbing a mountain is to get to the top, right?. So why not take a nap once you are there and let Jesus pray a bit in the rarified air if that is what feels he needs to do?

But it turns out that the excursion is not over when one gets to the top.   The excursion turns out not to be a test of endurance and fortitude seeing if one has what one needs to make it to the top.  Instead the point of climbing a mountain, is so that one can see something that one could never have seen if one stayed below.  The point of the excursion is what is revealed once the final ridge is crested.

I know now that that is why my father took us up mountains.  He wanted us to know what the world looks from a mountain top.  He wanted to give us that perspective and have that perspective change something in us.  And you know once my heart had stopped pounding and my breath evened out, I can remember even to this day being awed by the view.  There stretched out below us was the city of Anchorage looking so small and contained.  And beyond the city the inlet with the huge snow caped peaks of the Alaskan range beyond with Mt McKinley presiding over them all.  It was spectacular.  I was mesmerized.  And as I stood there taking it all in I would often lift my arms and roll onto the balls of my feet as if in any moment I could push off and effortlessly glide out over the city to the mountains beyond.

~~~~

         This scripture passage from the Gospel this morning is referred to as the transfiguration because of how Jesus’ appearance is transformed, how Peter, John and James see his face shine and his clothes become dazzling white.  But I wonder if we have misplaced who it is that is transfigured. This passage comes in the lectionary at the end of the season of epiphany, and you remember that epiphany is when we celebrate the revelation of God in the person of Jesus.  So maybe instead of being transfigured on that mountaintop, Jesus is revealed.  Maybe there on that mountain top, Peter, James and John see the radiance that truly is Jesus all of the time if they only had eyes to see it.  Perhaps Jesus did not change at all.  His glory always was there it’s just that those around him down below could not preceive it.

So, if that is the case, perhaps the ones who are to be transfigured are the disciples?  Having seen Jesus as he truly is, having seen his glory, having seen Jesus conversing with Moses and Elijah, Jesus in continuity with the great Jewish tradition of the Law and Prophets, having heard the voice of God from the cloud, maybe all of that should have changed the disciples a bit.  Maybe it should have changed their way of seeing themselves and what is possible with God.

After all look what happens to Moses when he encounters God on the top of Mt. Sinai.  His face shines.  And we often read this that Moses face shines because he has been in the presence of God as if some of God’s glory rubs off on Moses.  But I wonder if instead there is something of the of the glory of God seeded in Moses is revealed, is drawn out by the presence of God so that what is revealed on Moses face is glory meeting glory.  A kind of awakening of God’s glory within him that is called forth in the meeting with God.

Moses is transformed by the mountaintop and in doing so he carries the gift of God, the 10 commandments he has been given, down from the summit and into the life of the people.  But not so for our friends, Peter, James and John.  At least not yet.  They come down that mountain and not only are their faces not shining but they are not even whispering a word of what just happened to them.  They refuse to carry any of what was given to them back down  into their lives and into the lives of crowd that is waiting for them.

For the very next passage confirms this, there is a boy that is being tormented by demons and they do nothing to free him from his suffering.

It’s curious isn’t it?  Why do Peter, James and John not speak of what has happened.  Why don’t they let the glory of God that was revealed to them on that mountaintop transfigure something in them so that they too may shine with glory and carry that glory out into the world transforming the lives of those they meet?

Why?  Well I think some of it is because they are afraid.  They are afraid of how their lives would change if they let their encounter with God change them.   Because Glory living has consequences.  It makes us responsible for those around us.  Glory means that one can no longer walk by the demon possessed boy, the hungry child, the trafficked girl, the people torn by war, the person who comes knocking at the church door asking for money because she cannot pay her electricity bill.  Glory living means not turning away from pain and hurt but instead walking straight into it.  Glory living means following the way of the One who walked into fear, and pain and death trusting the God who called him beloved, his chosen one.  Glory living means trusting that not even the cross or a sealed tomb can keep the radiance of God’s love from transfiguring our lives and all the world.

We can envy Peter, James and John for being Jesus favorite but in our heart of hearts, I wonder if we are glad that he took them and not us?  Are we secretively happy that we were not burdened by what it was they experienced? Happy that we do not have to make a commitment to be changed by it?

But do we really want to roll over and go back to sleep?  I wonder, has the time come?  In this time of Lent that is upon us I wonder if we are not ready for the challenge of letting ourselves be roused out of our comfort and taken to places where we may see something of God and allow that to change us forever.

I wonder if our time has not come to go up that mountain.  What does that look like?  It could in fact mean a lung ripping, leg burning excursion up Mount Washington to catch a glimpse of the great expanse of God’s beautiful creation and our place within it.  But it could also mean letting Jesus rouse you from sleep every morning and take you to your prayer space where for the next 30 minutes or so you struggle over distraction, slip on the shale of discomfort until perhaps you get there.  You get to that place where you glimpse something of God and you feel that if you were to roll onto the balls of your feet and push off you could effortlessly soar out over all that is.

Or it could mean taking time each day to write, or walk, or sing, or paint or meditate, whatever it is that brings you into an expansive stillness and beauty where you see in ways you had not seen before, and in doing so something within you shifts and changes and opens to a radiance you had not known.

Why did Jesus make his way through the sleeping disciples to where Peter, James and John lie?  Why did he rouse them and not the others?  We don’t really know, but I suspect because he sensed that there was something in them that was ready for the adventure, ready for the excursion, ready for the mountain top experience.  And maybe they were not fully ready to be changed then.  Maybe we are not either, who knows. But we do know that they will be.  They will shine forth God’s glory and one day, God willing, we like them will do so too.  Amen

Spiritual Autobiography course continues Monday evening. We will meet in the Reception Room from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

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This Tuesday, February 12, Lunch Bunch meets at noon, Strategy at 7:00 p.m. and Mission at 7:30 p.m.  

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Prayer Group meets each Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m.

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The Internet Committee will meet Thursday.

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