12-13-20 - A Living Hope

A Living Hope

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Bob Henry, Minister

December 13, 2020

Ephesians 1:18-19 (Common English Bible)

I pray that the eyes of your heart will have enough light to see what is the hope of God’s call, what is the richness of God’s glorious inheritance among believers, and what is the overwhelming greatness of God’s power that is working among us believers. This power is conferred by the energy of God’s powerful strength.

John 1:5 (The Message)

3-5 Everything was created through him;
    nothing—not one thing!—
    came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
    and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
    the darkness couldn’t put it out.

For quite some time now, I have to admit I have been wrestling with, what we typically call, hope. I don’t consider myself hopeless, but I do keep hearing myself and others say, “We need to have more hope during these difficult times.”

What do we actually mean when we say we need hope?   

Many churches during the holiday season spend the four weeks leading up to Christmas talking about love, joy, peace, and yes, hope. Yet, it seems to me hope is the hardest to define or wrap our minds around. 

In some ways it seems too easy to turn these four attributes over to Jesus and his miraculous birth and life, and never see the impact of hope in our present condition.

Just maybe, the hope we see in the Christmas story is the same hope we long for in our daily experience.

To explore this hope, I want to look at some of the queries I have been wrestling with lately…let’s begin with…

Why is hope so important?

Many today describe hope as wanting an outcome that makes one’s life better in some way.

It not only can help make a tough present situation more bearable but also can eventually improve one’s life – because envisioning a better future motivates one to take the steps to make it a reality.

Jesus’s birth was the beginning of a life that was to show us a better way to live.  A way to transcend our current situations and envision a better future.

This means that the life and ministry of Jesus was fundamentally about HOPE – what often is described in scriptures as a “living hope” which is given by the Divine. 

For example, 1 Peter 1:3 states, “[God] has given us new birth into a living hope through…Jesus Christ.” 

This means, just as there is that of God in everyone, there is a living hope in each of us as well - you and I are considered a “living hope” right now!  

Just think about it, we all hope for something. It’s an inherent part of being a human. Hope is what helps us define what we want for our futures. It is also part of the self-narrative about our lives we all have running within our being.

This is why our scriptures insist we “abide in faith, hope and love.” 

Out of those three, faith, hope, and love, I believe hope is the hardest to define. So that leads me into my next query…

What Is Hope, Exactly?

I have found that the definition of hope can differ quite dramatically depending on the person or theologian doing the talking.

When people speak about hope in a spiritual context, they often mean believing good things will happen with faith in a higher power. Some would even direct these hopes outward in prayer or meditation.

Others might mean always looking on the bright side and seeing challenges as opportunities. I am sure you know people like this – they are always saying, “I’m just hoping for the best.”

If we turn to the definition experts at Merriam-Webster, they make “hope” almost more like a “wish” or as they say, “to cherish a desire with anticipation: to want something to happen or be true.”

Many believe their hopes are going to come true in Jiminy Cricket-fashion “When you wish upon a star…” And that I think is why we say, “may your hopes and dreams come true.” Even though it may seem a bit of a stretch at first, we must remember, even Pinocchio hoped to fully live.  

Whatever the specifics, hope in general means a desire for things to change for the better, and to desire a better situation or outcome of life.

Also, I need to clarify something else I have learned in this study. Hope is not the same as optimism.

If one is considered an optimist (like my wife, who even won the optimist award in high school) they are naturally more hopeful than others.

Yet, on the other hand, some of the most pessimistic people we encounter can still be hopeful about something. Hope is often very specific and focused, usually on just one issue, though.

This is why as the embodiment of the Divine’s living hope, we each may find different ways to express our hopes for a better world. 

I see it playing out in real-time, right here in our meeting.  Some of us hope for a better world through the work and opportunities presented by Witness and Service, some through taking care of the building and grounds through being a Trustee, some in caring for others through Circle of Care, and some creating opportunities for hospitality and connecting through the Fellowship Committee and Connections, and we could go on and on…

We could easily say that at First Friends we embody the living hope in all that we do.  

So that brings me to another of my queries…

Why is Hope So Vital?

Most people associate hope with a dire situation – it is evident in our current condition with the pandemic and political atmosphere in our country. Just listen carefully and you will hear the word, “hope,” being used more and more. 

People hope to get out of difficult times like we are in currently. It is often in these moments, when people do find themselves hoping fervently! As the scriptures indicate:

Not only so, but we glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, HOPE. (Romans 5:3-4)

But…it is not just in the dreadful situations people turn to hope.

What I am learning, and have been made keenly aware of, is that hope can actually provide the key to making everyday life better.

The American Psychology Association reported that children who grew up in poverty but had success later in life all had one thing in common – hope.

Dr. Valerie Maholmes, who worked on the research, said hope involves “planning and motivation and determination” to get what one hopes for.

And this is the piece we often miss…hoping in God to make a difference in our lives is not magic.  Christmas for Christians should not be about a baby who came to help us escape this world, but rather about a living hope that showed us how to live a better life in this world right now. 

God wants us to be co-workers, co-creators, co-hope-bearers to our world.  And God wants us to utilize our gifts, our stories, our entire lives to bring hope into our world. 

For Jesus, having hope links one’s past and present to the future – and that is the same for us. 

This is why Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12)

You and I have a vision for what we hope will happen each and every day. Whether it comes to fruition or not, just envisioning and sharing it can begin to make the world a better place.

I believe hope is contagious. Just think about it, you and I are drawn to people who present and convey hope.  It is people of hope who motivate us to take the steps needed to make the world a better place.

This all means, having hope is essential to the very act of being human – and that means it is also directly connected to the Divine – since there is that of God in each of us.

As Dr. Judith Rich writes,

“Hope is a match in a dark tunnel, a moment of light, just enough to reveal the path ahead and ultimately the way out.”

Or as it says in 2 Corinthians 4:6 (NRSV),

6 For it is God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Christ was the light coming into the darkness of our world bringing hope on that first Christmas, and you and I are the Light being sent into the world today in all of its darkness, pain, and suffering. 

We must embody the living hope and continue the legacy that Christ lived on this planet.  May we be the match in the dark tunnel of life -- a moment of light that reveals the next steps or path to freedom and peace – this is the call of Christmas to our hurting world. 

Go and be a living hope in the way of Christ this Christmas!

This morning, I have prepared some queries for us to ponder as we enter waiting worship.

1.     Currently, who is helping me see hope in the world?

2.     Do I consider myself a co-worker, co-creator, co-hope-bearer with Christ?

3.     How am I being called to be a living hope and continue the legacy of Christ, this Christmas?

11-22-20 - Thanks for Letting Me Vent

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

November 22, 2020

Romans 5:3-5 The Message

3-5 There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!

Good morning, Friends and thank you Eric for that beautiful rendition of “40” – a song based on the words of the scriptural Psalm 40 – which focuses on bridging the space between lament and thanksgiving – just what I am exploring in this sermon.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been observing carefully what people around me say that they are thankful for in preparation for what I was going to say today.  

Obviously, the ongoing pandemic and the continued rise in cases has caused some restlessness in our lives – even a new medical term we now know as “pandemic fatigue” has arisen.  

I sense these conditions have led many people to be fed up, weary, and seeking release. Take for instance, one of the phrases I have heard on numerous occasions in my pastoral conversations this week,

“Thank you for letting me vent.”

As a pastor, whose ministry as of late consists in doing a lot more listening and having less answers, letting people download and process out loud seems to be a key aspect of helping them find relief and hope in such discouraging times. 

Usually, the Thanksgiving holiday raises concerns of family members coming and downloading or venting their views, frustrations, and opinions around the dinner table - making everyone overwhelming uncomfortable – especially during a political year. 

And in years past, the days and weeks following Thanksgiving, I would normally receive a plethora of phone calls of people needing to download and vent their Thanksgiving conversations. 

Currently, I sense the limits of the pandemic taking its toll and leaving us having these conversations in our own minds – thus the relevance of making space for venting in the present moment.

I know when I find myself venting to someone (which I have to admit I have been doing a lot lately) I immediately find a sense of guilt or the realization that no one really deserves to have me download all my feelings on them. Yes, I too have said those words,

“Thank you for letting me vent.”

But folks, just maybe this expression of gratitude is the genuine declaration of our souls, because it speaks honestly to our condition.

Adele Ahlberg Calhoun illustrates this this when she writes, 

“Thankfulness is a thread that can bind together all the patchwork squares of our lives. Difficult times, happy days, seasons of sickness, hours of bliss – all can be sewn together into something lovely with the thread of thankfulness.”

When we say “Thank you for letting me vent” we are realizing that the difficult parts of our lives need balanced by a loving and thankful response. And just maybe that gratitude is at the core of our healing.

A person that has taught me so much about gratitude and giving thanks is Henri Nouwen. His humble and thoughtful approach to life’s difficulties have helped me see how we can achieve more of this healing balance.  He says,

“Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment.

It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint. . . . The choice for gratitude rarely comes without some real effort.

But each time I make it, the next choice is a little easier, a little freer, a little less self-conscious. . .

There is an Estonian proverb that says: “Who does not thank for little will not thank for much.”

Acts of gratitude make one grateful because, step by step, they reveal that all is grace.

Folks, you and I have choices – we each have the power to interpret our life’s frustrations and the difficulties we face in the present. We have a choice whether we are going to be bitter or grateful people. 

That is why it makes sense that we say things like, “Thank you for letting me vent.”  We feel better sharing with others our frustrations and difficulties, and we know if we stay stuck in those feelings that it will become all bottled up inside of us and make us bitter and discouraged.

Instead, our desire should be to see those things in which we need to vent as part of our journey.  Again, Henri Nouwen says,

“Jesus calls us to recognize that gladness and sadness are never separate, that joy and sorrow really belong together, and that mourning, and dancing are part of the same movement. 

That is why Jesus calls us to be grateful for every moment that we have lived and to claim our unique journey as God’s way to mold our hearts to greater conformity with God’s own… 

It is so easy for me to put the bad memories under the rug of my life and to think only about the good things that please me.

By doing so, however, I prevent myself from discovering the joy beneath my sorrow, the peace hidden in the midst of my conflicts, and the strength that becomes visible in the midst of my weakness.” (“All is Grace” 39-40) 

That is why when we proclaim gratitude for the opportunity to vent our frustrations, it is an acknowledgement that we are discovering our joy again, that we are sensing some peace in the midst of the struggles, and that we are going to make it through. 

When I hear those words, “Thanks for letting me vent” – I can hear in a person’s voice or even my own voice, a glimmer of hope.

Is everything all figured out?  No

Are there still difficulties? Yes

Is my attitude changed? Maybe or it is beginning to be seen in a new light. 

In this moment, gratitude is a predictor of hope and happiness to come.

If that is the case, then maybe during these difficult times, we need to embrace a posture of gratitude and giving thanks so we can see the hope and happiness awaiting us instead of spiraling down into despair and bitterness for the things we cannot control. 

To illustrate what I have been learning about gratitude and hope in difficult times, I want to share with you what I might call a “Grateful Lament.” 

It is written by Colleen Temple and is titled: “To my friends who let me vent—thank you for not judging me.” 

It capsulates so much of what I have said and what many of us are experiencing. Collen writes…

I pride myself on not complaining much. I make a conscious effort to not drag on and on about how hard things can seem or how exhausted I am to my friends and family because—what's the point?

Everyone is tired or frustrated or stressed about something at different moments throughout the day, throughout the week. No matter how rich you are, how beautiful you are, how fit you are, how "together" you are, it doesn't matter.

Bad things still happen, stress is still present, and challenges still get in your way.

You can't throw money at a tantrum.

Your student loan debt doesn't care about the number on the scale (just the number on your bill.)

No one is excused from problems, issues, stressors or challenges—they happen to everyone. 

So, since everyone has their own stuff going on, why should anyone else care about mine? (Except my husband—he has to care. 😂) 

Well, because sometimes you just have to vent, to just let it all out—in a safe, judgement-free zone. And if you want to be the vent-er, you have to be able to be the vent-ee, too. 

It's nice to be able to be the friend who listens. I will commiserate with my BFF when she texts about the five consecutive nights they've had with rough bedtimes.

I will nod and "amen!" throughout my sister's rant about feeling like there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything that's expected of us. 

I'm happy to know my friends feel comfortable enough with me to let loose; to let their anger, worries, frustrations out. 

And it's always nice to know who your go-to person is that you can go to day or night with any complaint that you just need to get off your chest—knowing you won't be judged. 

So, to my person—thank you. 

Thank you for letting me come over and basically yell at you (but not at you) about someone who really ticked me off. You have saved me from lashing out at that person at the height of my frustration and instead allowed me to calm down a bit before I address it with them directly.

Thank you for letting me complain about the way my haircut turned out or the gray eyebrow hair I found or the way I'm feeling about my body on a bad day.

You have saved me from continuing to obsess about these things in my own mind. 

Thank you for letting me text you 10 messages in a row detailing what my kiddo is melting down over. Multiple times. At various points on various days. You have saved me from thousands of meltdowns, too. 

Thank you for letting me grumble about how tired I am some days or how much I have to do or how everything seems to be piling up on me—when I know you have the same stuff going on in your life, too.

We're both in the thick of parenting young kids but you always hear me out and make me feel like my worries are legitimate. Quite frankly, you've saved me from feeling like I'm losing it. 

Thank you for letting me hash out a problem that's really bothering me. You have saved me from letting negative feelings bubble up inside me. Letting it out with you is better than an explosion at them, right? 

Sometimes I really do just have to lay it all out there. To say what I need to say to someone I trust with my feelings. To feel heard. To help sort through my worries and fears.

As my 4-year-old daughter said tonight in an overly exhausted mini-meltdown, "Whining just helps me calm down, Mom."

Whining/complaining/venting helps me think through something I need help processing or allows me to say something that I feel like I need to say to someone but that someone probably shouldn't hear it, so you get to hear it instead.

I have my occasional vent session here and there and then; I try to move on. Because I feel like if I dwell in the Land of Complaints, then I get stuck.

And I definitely don't want to be stuck feeling sorry for myself or being pitied. 

I want to—and I want to teach my children to—pick myself up by the bootstraps and soldier on.

Life is great and I am lucky to be here. Sure, sometimes things will bother me—and I can and should acknowledge them—but ultimately, I'd rather focus on the positive than the negative. 

So, I guess whining helps me calm down sometimes, too. And while I'm not going to whine all the time and I'm not going to whine to just anyone—I am really glad I have you to whine to, my friend.

Thank you, Colleen for this “Grateful Lament.”  And thank you for illustrating how your gratitude can be a predictor of hope.

Folks, I challenge you this Thanksgiving Week, if you find yourself venting, sensing bitterness in your soul, or feeling overwhelmed by life, take time to reach out to a friend – someone that you are grateful for and that will really listen.

Or if you need someone who will listen, give me or Beth a call. We will listen and allow you to vent. 

And as you vent, lean into a posture of gratitude and let it grow for the person listening to you and for the ways God is unveiling hope in your life. 

During waiting worship today, I ask that you consider these queries.

1.        Who allows me to vent my frustrations and struggles? Have I acknowledged my gratitude for their presence?

2.        Since gratitude is a choice, where in my life do I need to choose gratitude over becoming bitter?

3.        This week, how will I look for God to unveil hope in my life?

11-15-20 - Lessons for Our Current Condition

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

November 15, 2020

Philippians 2:1-8 The Message

2 1-4 If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

5-8 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

With all the current talk of healing and reconciliation in our world amidst so much polarization and division, I spent most of my week reflecting on the role we as the church (whether together or individually) play in this important time. 

When I ponder deep issues such as the ones we currently face, I always turn to both mentors and other people who have lived and found ways to handle and overcome similar issues.

Sometimes I find examples in Scripture and other times I find them in history – but almost always they reflect the life and ministry of Jesus which Beth described in the scripture for today.

As I was watching the news the other morning and considering our current condition over a warm cup of coffee, I was reminded of the work of Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa. 

Desmond Tutu has long been a hero of mine. I have studied his work, teachings, and evolution as a man of God and found his wisdom to speak directly to my condition and often to the condition of our world. 

As you may remember, I have shared a wealth of learning from Desmond Tutu and the Dali Lama’s, “The Book of Joy.”  That book alone changed my life and allowed me to transcend some of the deep personal pain I had experienced and find new ways to tap into real joy in my life and world.

Yet, even more appropriate for our current condition, is Desmond Tutu’s vital work in South Africa with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

If you are not familiar with his work, Tutu was appointed the chairman of the Commission to provide support and reparation to victims and their families, while also compiling an objective record of the effects of apartheid on South African society. 

The South African government’s hope was to utilize the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to deal with the adverse effects of the oppression, the polarization, and ultimately advance the cause of reconciliation.

For Desmond Tutu, an Archbishop in the Episcopal Church, he quickly realized that for the people of South Africa to begin imagining a new beginning – it must first begin with forgiveness and be based on honesty, peace, and compassion.  

If you want to spend some time reading a personal account of Tutu’s work and how forgiveness came to be a foundation for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, you may want to read his book, “No Future without Forgiveness.”

Some have said, with our nation’s painful racial history, our current political divide, and our stubborn unwillingness to forgive and reconcile, we too need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There are both positives and negatives to this discourse.

Desmond Tutu set the standard for this work in South Africa, by focusing on the biblical concept of forgiveness. It would seem appropriate as a member of the clergy that he would lean heavily on his faith to bring healing.

Actually, there was much more behind Desmond Tutu that helped him find success with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and I believe before we are able to begin the hard work in our families, communities, workplaces, and even in our nation, we are going to need to explore some of these foundations for our own lives, especially to help us find truth, forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope in our world. 

Writer Tim Hoiland pointed out 5 lessons from Desmond Tutu’s life in a reflection he wrote after readings Tutu’s authorized biography.  I would like to expand upon these five truths and show how they could help lay a foundation for us as we move through these current difficult times. 

As I have said on many occasions, even just last week in my sermon, the work we need to do begins in our own hearts and lives.  It is evident that Desmond Tutu would not have been as effective or impactful if it had not been for him making these pillars, foundational in his life. 

Since the publishing of Celebration of Discipline by Quaker Richard Foster back in 1978, Modern Quakers have found the wealth and wisdom of the spiritual disciplines a key aspect to melding our personal and communal lives. 

As well, one cannot reflect on the life of Desmond Tutu without referring to the impact of the spiritual disciplines on his life. Tutu is known to spend several hours every day in silence and meditation, and prayer. Tim Hoiland points out that,

“While it could come across as snobbish or holier-than-thou for Tutu to leave a meeting or party or to sit silently in a car ride with a reporter and spend that time praying, no one seems to think he’s a spiritual snob.

Rather, they see the rest of his life — the calm, the joy, the perseverance, the humility – and they’re impressed.”

In facing the struggles in our world today, who better than us, Quakers, to model the spiritual disciplines and put a priority on the need for silence, meditation and prayer. We need more than ever to center down and allow the still small voice of the Divine to speak to our condition. 

Ask yourself: Where might I need to remove myself from the conversations, the news and social media, and even my own family members to become silent and center down?

Another area that I often emphasize and teach that I have learned from several mentors including Desmond Tutu, is Being fully present.

Tim Hoiland points out that,

“Tutu recognizes that to give to others as he does so deeply and consistently, he needs to be nourished. The flip side of spending so much time alone and in prayer, then, is that when he’s with people, he’s with them fully.

And he’s the same person, it seems, whether he’s with long-time friends, with a world leader for the first time, or with an ordinary person like you or me.

He seems to have a humanizing effect on people even — or perhaps especially — in dehumanizing situations.

This plays out in his belief in ubuntu, which roughly translates into “a person is a person through other people.”

As a people who are not only dealing with the polarization of politics and a long history of racial unrest, we are also dealing with a deadly pandemic.

That means Being Fully Present has been challenged to the max. Yet, I am finding new ways to be fully present in people’s lives even in these difficult times.

To bring healing and reconciliation, we must first be able to hear those in which we disagree and be open to learning from them. That means I may need to put my wants and desires aside to really listen and hear our neighbor.

Ask yourself: To whom in my life do I need to be more fully present?  

One thing I try hard to nourish in my ministry is getting people to laugh.  If you have ever watched a video of Desmond Tutu and the Dali Lama (who are best of friends) you will experience a lot of giggling and it is contagious. 

Humor is an immensely important, but largely overlooked quality – especially in difficult times.

Desmond Tutu never seems to take himself too seriously, and his humor is often self-deprecating. Tim Hoiland points out that,

“It’s evident that his sense of humor had a lot to do with dispelling a number of quite tense situations during the apartheid era when there wasn’t much to laugh about. By putting his audiences at ease, it made his costly message of peace and reconciliation a lot easier to swallow.”

Sometimes humor can be seen as a cop-out for deeper issues, but if we cannot find humor, joy, and laugh a little, we will quickly find ourselves losing hope. I always find myself gravitating toward people who find humor a foundation for getting through hard times.

Ask yourself:  Who are the people in my life that make me laugh?  How might I bring a little joy into someone’s life who needs the healing of humor? 

The next lesson is an important one – and one I have heard being focused on a great deal lately. 

Desmond Tutu exemplifies Humility.  When reading about him or listening to him, you never get the sense that Tutu considers himself better than anyone else. Tim Hoiland says,

“He was constantly present with poor, angry black South Africans when it would have been much safer to champion their cause from a distance.

He didn’t allow his international fame to go to his head or to distract him from the reality on the ground.

Also, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Tutu quietly stepped away from his temporary role as political leader of the movement, happy to see someone else take the lead. This kind of humility is beautiful because it is rare.”

In a world that flaunts arrogance and putting down others for one’s benefit, a call to personal humility is necessary before we can seek healing or reconciliation.

I will be the first to say that it is hard in our American culture to embrace humility, but when we do, we begin to remove ourselves from the center of our world and allow other voices to be heard. 

Ask yourself: In what areas of my life, might I need to take a humbler position, allowing other perspectives to be heard?

Lastly, and we cannot miss this lesson from Desmond Tutu for our present condition - Civility.

Tom Hoiland points out that,

“At a time when pressure was mounting among black South Africans to take up arms against the apartheid government, Tutu did what he could to seek nonviolent alternatives and to urge restraint on both sides.

Rather than pitting himself against white South Africans or demonizing them, he sought to show that everyone desperately needed a new way forward. In a world of terrifying religious extremism, Tutu’s civility is a breath of fresh air.”

If there is something we need right now – it is a breath of fresh air.  The civility around our dinner tables, in our classrooms, workrooms, or Zoom meetings, and even in the thoughts that run through our minds is a must if we are going to find a new way forward. 

To close, I want to reiterate those 5 lessons from Desmond Tutu, 

1.     Spiritual Disciplines

2.     Being Fully Present

3.     Humor

4.     Humility and

5.     Civility.

These reflect so well the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, as it was described by Paul in his letter to the people of Philippi.  I believe Desmond Tutu speaks to our current condition, because he was and continues to be faithful to living out the way of Jesus Christ.

Let me close with reading again our Scripture for today. I pray we can hear these words as a charge to us, as Desmond Tutu so obviously has…

2 1-4 If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

5-8 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

As we enter waiting worship this morning, we will share again the queries I offered as we looked at the lessons from Desmond Tutu’s life.  Let us take this time of silence for reflection and introspection.

Where might I need to remove myself from the conversations, the news and social media, and even my own family members to become silent and center down?

To whom in my life do I need to be more fully present?  

Who are the people in my life that make me laugh?  How might I bring a little joy into someone’s life who needs the healing of humor? 

In what areas of my life, might I need to take a humbler position, allowing other perspectives to be heard?

11-8-20 - Love Wastefully: Resurrection (Part 5)

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

November 8, 2020

2 Corinthians 3:1-3 (The Message)

3 1-3 Does it sound like we’re patting ourselves on the back, insisting on our credentials, asserting our authority? Well, we’re not. Neither do we need letters of endorsement, either to you or from you. You yourselves are all the endorsement we need. Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.

Good morning Friends, before I start my sermon today, I want to remind you that we recorded this Meeting for Worship on Wednesday of this week.

Please understand how difficult it is to prepare sermons without knowing how the rest of the week will unfold. We pastors take seriously our preparation and the Spirit’s leading.  And I pray this message speaks to your condition, today. 

Last week on my day-long spiritual retreat, I began reading Elaine Pagels personal memoir, “Why Religion?”  Elaine is definitely no stranger to suffering, which Beth spoke of last week in her sermon.

Elaine’s son died at the age of six from a rare lung disease and about a year later her husband fell to his death while mountain climbing. Many assumed she would simply “curse God and die” but that was not what happened.

Instead Elaine found a way to transcend her situations and embrace life. She found herself relating to the Old Testament character, Job, and delved into

·        looking at the origins of Satan,

·        what life after death really means,

·        and a fuller understanding of the gospel we so often relegate to just a life after death transaction. 

I know for me, when I have gone through tough times or even suffering, I have found myself being forced to see things from different perspectives and angles – sometimes to bring me comfort and other times to help me transcend my situation and embrace life more fully.

Maybe you are starting, or need to start doing that currently, in this pandemic, or this week because of the tensions surrounding the election. 

Actually, as I had time to ponder last Thursday during my spiritual retreat, I realized that most of my breakthroughs in life have come during very difficult times.  

Take for example my breakthrough and openness to understanding God’s unconditional love for me and ALL people no matter their race, gender, sexuality, or faith. 

It came after I was personally attacked by so-called Christians who followed and believed in an angry, threatening, and judgmental God (not the God of love and grace that I had come to know)…and who took on those damaging racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic attributes to hurt many including myself. 

Instead of being followers of Christ bearing good news, new life, and forgiveness, they presented just the opposite, and I realized that is not who I wanted to be.

Now, if you are like me, I have wanted all week to transcend this world and find a way to embrace life more fully.

There is a lot of unnecessary suffering going on in our world right now.  Our lawn furniture has been turned upside down (as Beth said last week) by this election process, and many are responding in ways that do not represent the Divine.

Many are even questioning the role of the Divine in our nation, right now. 

But just maybe instead of questioning God or the leaders of our country or even religion, we need to turn the questioning on ourselves. 

Victor Frankl out of his own Holocaust survival said it this way…

“…think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by life – daily and hourly…. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems, and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

Just take a moment and ask yourself…

·        How have I been questioned by life this week? 

·        What responsibilities am I being convicted of, to seek answers to the problems I am facing? 

·        What new tasks am I being called to, in this present moment?

Too often we spend our time demanding that our leaders and authorities be responsible and tasked with answering our questions for us.

If you think about it, the entire election process has been about demanding that those we elect execute roles that instead of helping us answer our call – simply fulfill the call for us.

And sadly, many have come to do the same with religion. For us Christians, we have limited our capacity to see our role in this world by allowing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to be our substitutionary sacrifice.

His life gets us off the hook…But does it really? 

If only I could have Jesus sub in for me and do my work, raise my kids, get the oil changed in my car, deal with that family member who has differing political views….or maybe just play tag team with Jesus when life gets too tough – tapping him in when I need a break. 

You see what I mean?    

What if it was not solely a substitute, but actually as the early Christians believed, “THE WAY”? 

Or as the Scripture Beth read said, “Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.”

It’s God’s Spirit living within us not just substituting for us. God wants to work with us so together we can bring more life and hope to this world.  

Yes, Jesus was the way by giving us the ultimate example for us and filling us with his Spirit, so we too may overcome our suffering, daily struggling and dying and find new life and resurrection in the present moment.

What if all along we were to be seeing the suffering and problems we were facing in this world not as punishment for wrong doing, judgment, or sinful acts, but as teachable moments, conviction points, opportunities for relationship building, and possibilities for us bringing ongoing resurrection to our daily lives?

What if “Loving Wastefully” was ultimately living out the resurrection again and again in our daily lives and bringing “new life” to those around us?

Just think about this for a moment…

What if we saw this ongoing pandemic as an opportunity for us to experience resurrection in the here and now? What relationships, new endeavors, and life-giving opportunities might we seek to create?

Or what if we saw the election process we just endured as an opportunity for us to experience resurrection? What might we be concerned with, convicted by, and seeing as our calling, now? 

What if the racial unrest in our country is an opportunity for us to experience resurrection? Who might need to experience “new life” and hope today?

What if the pain and suffering we are facing in our personal lives are not punishment for something we have done wrong but could be transformed into a vehicle for resurrection in our own lives?

·        What if your divorce could be turned into a vehicle for resurrection?

·        What if that therapy session could be turned into a vehicle for resurrection?

·        What if your addiction could be turned into a vehicle for resurrection?

·        What if your allegiance to a political party could be turned into a vehicle for resurrection?

·        And the list could go on…

·         

What if we sought how to transcend our guilt, our pain, our personal sin, or suffering into hope and new life? 

Elaine Pagels helped me see this perspective even more vividly when she suggested taking a look at the Gospel of Truth – one of the additional gospels (or what scholars call a Gnostic Gospel) not included in the canon of the Christian Scriptures. 

For those unfamiliar with the Gospel of Truth, it was written possibly by Valentinus between 90 and 160 CE.  Through it is unique poetry focusing on joy, fulfillment, and sensuousness, it opens up a new, but helpful view of Jesus’ gospel.  Pagels points out that

“the Gospel of Truth reframes the vision of the cross from an instrument of torture into a new tree of knowledge. Here Jesus’ battered body, ‘nailed to a tree,’ is seen as fruit on a tree of ‘knowing the Father,’ which unlike that tree in Paradise, doesn’t bring death, but life, to those who eat from it…

After years of contending with familiar Jewish and Christian sources, (Pagels says), I found here a vision that goes beyond what Paul calls, “the message of the cross.”

Instead of seeing suffering as punishment, this gospel suggests that, seen through the eyes of wisdom, suffering can show how we are connected, with each other, and with God; what Paul’s letter to the Colossians calls, “the mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  

Instead of the substitutionary or transactional aspects, The Gospel of Truth returns us to the importance of relationships and how when we come to know ourselves, simultaneously we come to know God. 

It is a gnosis – not intellectual knowledge, but a knowledge of the heart. 

Pagels proclaims that, “What we first must come to know is that we cannot fully know God, since that Source far transcends our understanding. But what we can know is that we’re intimately connected with the divine Source, since “in him we live and move and have our being. 

This past week, I have been reading through the Gospel of Truth and allowing it to speak deeply to my condition as well as help me see my connection to the Divine. 

I have found myself re-reading this brief section titled The Good News and Hidden Mystery of Jesus. Just listen as I read it:

The Gospel of Truth 4:1-8

            1 This is the good news of one whom they seek, revealed to those filled           through the mercies of the Father. 2 Through the hidden mystery, Jesus Christ shone to the ones in the darkness of forgetfulness. 3 He enlightened       them and showed them a way. The way he taught them was truth. 4             Because of this Transgression was angry with him and pursued him. She    was distressed by him and left barren.

5 He was nailed to a tree and became the fruit of the Father’s knowledge. 6 It did not cause destruction when it was eaten, but it caused those who ate it to come into being and find contentment within its discovery. 7 And he discovered them in himself – the uncontainable, the unknowable Father, the one who is full and made all things. 8 All things are in him and all things have need of him.

Folks, what I believe Elaine Pagels was trying to help me see is that the mystery of Christ lives in You and Me! 

That our inner light – that of God with in us – is the vehicle helping us to see the Way to new life (or Resurrection) and find hope in our world in the PRESENT MOMENT!  

And through our relationships with others (who also have that of God in them) we get a front row seat in seeing the life of Christ unfold in our lives TOGETHER. 

We get to be incarnate light in the lives of those around us. 

We get to be the love, the hope, the NEW LIFE (resurrection) in our world. 

Or as we have been saying through this entire series…we get to…

Live life to its fullest, love wastefully, and be all that we can be.

Something we desperately need currently in our country and world.

So no matter what is happening with the election, the pandemic, our personal sufferings and crises, the question we should be asking is how am I living out the Resurrection in real-time to make this world a better place – all while continuing to discover that we are in the Divine as the Divine is in us. 

So now let us take some time to center ourselves and enter into Waiting Worship – here are some queries to ponder:

1.     How might I see the struggles and sufferings in my life as a vehicle for bringing resurrection (new life)?

2.     What relationships do I need to nurture so that I can experience the Divine more fully in my life?

3.     What concerns, convicts, and is calling me to love wastefully in the present moment?   

11-1-20 - Love Wastefully, Part 4

Scripture is Matthew 7:13-14

The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr

Bread of Angels by Barbara Brown Taylor

Friends, I have so appreciated Bob’s series on loving wastefully.  Today I received a gift from a friend that has the words from Psalm 23:6 etched on its wood – Your love is wild for me.  This idea of extravagant love is something that Jesus spent his time teaching and in his three years in ministry living it out every day.  I think of the  story of the Prodigal Son where Jesus describes the lavish and wasteful love the Father gives to the son that wants to leave the house and make it on his own.  He doesn’t want the weight and restrictions of his father’s house.  And the father gives him his inheritance  - sounds ridiculous and rash and wasteful.  The father knows that his son will throw this all away.  But gives it to him anyways.  That is loving wastefully, and I think that is the point of Jesus story.  God’s love is not merited, not conditional, doesn’t require us to adhere to a set of rules and can’t be bought or sold.   As Bob has shared during the last three weeks,  our only true way to worship God is by living fully, loving wastefully and having the courage to be all that we can be in full authenticity. 

Today I want to examine how Jesus calls us to a different way of living.  It is not an easy way, or a  comfortable way.  I think we sometimes focus so much on the theology of Jesus that we miss the call in his teachings and his way of living out these teachings.  Jesus is many things to many people.  He is this person that we have come to love, admire, understand to be unique beyond us and our savior.  But I think we have diminished his humanity throughout the last 1700 years. This particularly started when Christianity became more tame and respectable during the time of Constantine. I think we have spent more time creating a belief system and less time on the actual words and actions of Jesus as narrated in the gospels.  Following Jesus is no casual thing.  Sometimes it seems like we are more willing and ready to quote Jesus words versus how we put those words into action in our lives.

I think most of us are familiar with the  Apostles’ Creed – “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.  I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into hell…..” you know the rest.    Richard Rohr in his book The Universal Christ asks if we ‘have ever noticed the huge leap the creed makes between born of the Virgin Mary and suffered under Pontius Pilate?  A single comma connects the two statements, and falling into that yawning gap, as if it were a mere detail is everything Jesus said and did between his birth and death.”  The Great Comma! It seems like this statement sent Christianity on a path of a belief that Jesus was all divine and that his words were important, but we could never try to step into his experience and embrace his teachings and life in our own lives because we are just ordinary humans. 

It is clear from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that Jesus was flesh and blood just like us. Sometimes we think of Jesus as this part man part God person and think he is not like us. It gives us an excuse to stay comfortable and in place.   But friends, Jesus was totally human- full of flesh with all our human thoughts and feelings. He experienced our fears, our disappointments, rejections, pain, and longings. And aren’t we all part human, part God?  It is a foundational principle in our Quaker faith – that of God in every human being.

When Jesus calls his disciples, he asks them to leave their jobs and their families.  Just as Jesus did.  The disciples traveled with him for three years without jobs, without their families, without knowing where they were going to sleep each night.  Talk about a path of sacrifice.  I think they did this because they embraced the teachings of Jesus that turned the establishment of both the church and the government upside down.  And they took this path because they saw that Jesus lived the way he taught. There was no hypocrisy to his words and actions.   Jesus gave them a vision for a future that was different.  And they bought into this vision as they watched  Jesus love wastefully to many in that society that were unlovable, poor, marginalized, left behind.  He healed folks and shared the vision of a God that loves wastefully and without exclusivity.

I believe Jesus was able to teach, preach, heal and love wastefully because he was filled with God’s spirit.  He faced his demons out in the desert where he was tempted just like we all have to face our shadows.  I think he was out in that desert for a long time as evidenced by the fact that he was thirty years old before he began his public ministry.  How did Jesus move out from the shadows and into the Light, responding to the call of God? He became incarnated.  Because the spirit of God was in him all along and he allowed that Spirit to direct his life – from ministry, healings, his death and resurrection.

I love what Barbara Brown Taylors shares in her book Bread of Angels.  “The power of the Holy Spirit is talked about two ways in the Bible.  First as the abiding presence of God in Christ with all the safety and comfort that relationship promises.  This is the Spirit most of us know and love – the spirit of peace and concord – the one that smooths our ruffled feathers and revives our weary souls, the one that – lo!-is with us always, whenever we have the good sense to breathe in and say thank you.    But there is another way the Spirit acts – not another Spirit but another manifestation of the same Spirit – that is not nearly so comforting.  This is the Spirit who blows and burns, howling down the chimney and turning all the lawn furniture upside down.  Ask Job about the whirlwind, or Ezekiel about the chariot of fire,  Ask anyone who was in that room on Pentecost what it was like to be caught up in the Spirit and whether it is something they would like to happen every Sunday afternoon

We have seen many examples of humans that have followed this radical call of Jesus in the Gospels.  Our saints and our martyrs willing to give up everything for Jesus.  Just as Jesus was willing to give up his life to show the world that God stands with us in our suffering, that each one of us can be incarnated with God’s spirit and experience resurrection.  Richard Rohr, again in his book The Universal Christ, shares a beautiful story of Etty Hillesum, a Jew living in Amsterdam in the 1930’s who saw the Nazi’s were getting closer and closer to  imprisoning and killing her family.  She wrote extensively in a diary and did not question or blame God for these circumstances but says ‘Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives.  Neither do I hold you responsible.  You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last.”  Etty did not hate her oppressors even though the Nazi’s killed all of her family including Etty in their concentration camps.  She wrote in her diary….. “Those two months behind barbed wire have been the two richest and most intense months of my life, in which my highest values were so deeply confirmed. I have learnt to love Westerbork".  What an example of living in humanity amidst a brutal and violent world while transcending internally with God’s spirit and showing the world how to love wastefully.

I wonder if the human Jesus were here today with us what he would say about our churches.  Have they become buildings of comfort and care and preservation of our tradition and belief system?   Are we living the radical life of transformation and Spirit that Jesus taught and lived?   Jesus calls to each of us is to carry his vision into our world.  If we answer that call, Jesus may take us into uncomfortable places, may push us to give up things, may take us down a path that is not in our list of goals and objectives for our life. If we say we believe in Jesus, are we willing to sacrifice and suffer as he did?

Brown again in her book Bread of Angels book says, “Let’ not let Jesus get away from us again.  Let’s listen to him, to each other and live together like people who believe.”

Friends as we enter a time of waiting worship, we are not going to have music play in the background; rather I encourage you to sit in silence and consider the image of Jesus, however you see Jesus. How might I more fully embrace the teachings and the life of Jesus to love wastefully?  Am I ready to go where Jesus might lead me?  Am I willing to have my lawn furniture turned upside down?

10-25-20 - Love Wastefully, Part 3

Indianapolis First Friends 

Pastor Bob Henry 

October 25, 2020 

Romans 8:35-39

35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;

    we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Last week during Seeking Friends, my wife, Sue, briefly shared about being raised in a church that had, what we called, a corporate confession. And how each week we had to say these words…

“I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess to you all my sins and iniquities.”

One could not say those words out loud without in some way feeling bad about one’s self. 

“Poor...miserable...sinner.”  Three words that none of us ask or want to be described as.   

When you and I begin to explore love and especially the love of God, as we have the last couple weeks, at some point we will be made to take a personal inventory…

…to go inside and ask ourselves some hard questions about our own views of how we might experience the love of the Divine in and through our lives.  

The pandemic has had many of us on an inward and more reflective journey – mostly because we have finally been forced, or we have actually allowed ourselves, to take time to ask some deeper questions. 

As we start to ask ourselves these deeper questions like, “Who am I? and how do I ”love wastefully?” and “What is my purpose, currently?”  we begin the hard work of cleaning out what Teresa of Avilla calls our “inner castle.”

Most of us consider this type of soul work rather hard - often it resembles the difficult work of deep cleaning our homes. Something during the pandemic I, and many of you, have taken up.

Just the other night on the news there was a report about what ugly things people have been finding in the deep recesses of their homes during the pandemic as they are embracing and tackling deep cleaning.

They have been finding everything from E.coli growing in the refrigerator ice maker to bed bugs taking residence in the guest room mattress. 

In the same way, many of us have begun to move the furniture and clean in those places that haven’t seen light for months - maybe years.

We have begun to throw things out that have started to mold, have gone out of date, or that have begun to clutter our rooms and are no longer needed.    

We have cleaned the glass on the windows to see more clearly and let the LIGHT in as the days get darker. 

We have even prepared the gardens beds for winter so new life can burst forth with beauty and color again in the spring. 

The pandemic in many ways has helped us to stop the procrastination, the excuses, the covering up of the dirt, the ignoring of the dishes, the hoping that it will just disappear or that someone else will do it.

Actually, after 33 weeks, we have slowed down long enough that it finally is causing us to take some action.

If you haven’t caught on already, the pandemic has also afforded us the opportunity to take action and do some needed cleaning in our spiritual lives, as well. 

And in many ways it resembles the deep cleaning we are doing in our homes.

Remember folks…  

Only you and I can work on our “inner lives”. 

Only you and I can face our own troubling thoughts and struggles. 

Only you and I can begin to do the hard work of spiritually disciplining ourselves so that the “Light” can again be seen and felt inside of us! 

This week I returned to a poem by Anthony DeMello called “The Satellite.” I have found it a beautiful reminder during difficult times – when we are procrastinating the hard, inner work.  

In the poem, DeMello gives us both a reminder and another way of seeing the Love of the Divine – this time as gravity to keep us grounded.

If you have remember, over the last three weeks.

Spong said Love is the force that enhances life.

Weil said, Love is the vibration of the universe that we are experiencing all around us.

And now Demello, says that love is the gravity that keeps us grounded.

Just listen as I read this poem and allow it to speak to your condition and soul this morning. 

The Satellite by Anthony DeMello

I look at nature and reflect on the existence in it of a farce so silent and invisible that human beings were not aware of it till lately; and yet so mighty that the world is moved by it: the force of gravity. 

Because of it the bird flies in the sky, 

Mountains are held in place, 

Leaves flutter to the ground, 

Planets are kept in orbit. 

There is no better symbol of God’s power and presence. 

Scenes of suffering flash though my mind: 

Torture chambers;

Concentration camps;

The ravages of famine;

Scenes of war;

Of hospitals;

And of accidents;

And I see him there as silent and invisible as gravity. 

I conjure up a thousand painful scenes

From the history of my life:

Of boredom and frustration;

Of pain, anxiety, rejection;

Of meaninglessness and despair;

And in every scene I sense his silent presence. 

I see his power like gravity. 

In every nook and corner of the world:

No place in space,

No point in time

Escapes, for it is all pervasive. 

Then I see his love to be like gravity:

I hear Paul’s cry that nothing in creation

Can wrench us from God’s love (Rom. 8:31-39)

I remember with emotion

The times I fought his love

-- in vain, for love is irresistible! 

I see that God has never ceased to draw my heart. 

The pull, like gravity, could not be felt. 

But at some blessed moments

That I now recall with joy

The tug could not be missed. 

When was the pull last felt? 

Not yesterday? Why not? 

I end by letting go, 

Succumbing to this power of divinity, 

As my body does to gravity. 

Now, the reason I shared this poem is the fact that whenever you or I do some deep soul searching or what I am calling Spiritual Pandemic Cleaning…

…we feel the heaviness of our own struggles, our own difficulties, and even our own selfish ways -- as well as the weight of the world’s problems that are surrounding us on a daily basis. 

Let’s be honest, with the weight of the world currently, that alone, could leave us feeling like a poor, miserable, sinner. 

The reason any soul work can leave one feeling less hopeful and missing the fact that God is still at work in one’s life is because we love to dwell on all the bad things in and around us. 

But there is another side to soul work.   

In the poem, DeMello asked, “When was the pull last felt?” 

God’s Love is like gravity in our lives and the query for us to ponder is, “Do we sense it?” 

Do we sense the pull of God’s love in our lives?  

Paul in our scripture text for this Sunday wants to remind us that we are chosen, called, justified, and being made whole.

Paul wants to birth hope in our “poor, miserable,” lives by showing us where our hope comes from - the gravity that is drawing us in.  

Let me read again the text from Roman’s 8:35-39 - this time from a more modern translation: 

And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us! -- is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.

We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

If there were ever a set of Scriptures that identifies Paul as a Quaker - these are it. He literally gives us a set of queries to ponder the faithfulness of God and the gravity of God’s love. 

Let me break these down more simply for us to ponder:

1.   With God on our side like this, how can we lose? 

2.   If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition in Christ to face the worst of humanity, is there anything else that he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? 

3.   Who would dare tangle with the God of the Universe by messing with or pointing a finger at one of God’s chosen people?

4.   Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and God’s love for us?  

This is heavy stuff to ponder - but that’s just it - this is the gravity of God’s love for you and me.  

• Our troubles

• Our hardships (those hard times, that homelessness, that loneliness, that abandonment)

• Our persecutions (for who we are and who others think we are to be)

• Our famines (physically or spiritually or mentally)

• Our nakedness (our vulnerability, our bullied natures, our worn-down hopes)

• Our dangers or fears (our worst moments and failures)

None of these can get in the way of the gravity of God’s love that is pulling us back in. This is how “wasteful” God’s love is! God loves and then loves some more! 

All those things that get brought to the surface as we explore our souls or as we do our Spiritual Pandemic Cleaning, all that we trudge up, all that we don’t know how to name or figure out, all that we simply fail to understand about ourselves - none of it can become greater or get between us and God. 

Instead, it is the gravity of God’s love which roots us.

It brings stability and hope. It helps us see with new eyes. It reminds us that we are united with a God who overwhelms us and grounds us with LOVE WASTEFULLY…

…and then calls us to love wastefully in our world. Yet, before we can love wastefully, we must recognize God’s wasteful love for us and believe that it makes a difference in our own lives. 

Just maybe where we need to begin our inward journey is by asking ourselves one query: 

DO I BELIEVE I AM LOVED BY GOD?  

As we move into waiting worship this morning, let us ponder this query and begin our soul work or our Spiritual Pandemic Cleaning.  

10-18-20 - Love Wastefully, Part 2

Indianapolis First Friends

Pastor Bob Henry

October 18, 2020

Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV)

34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Last week, we talked about Bishop John Shelby Spong’s concept, “Love Wastefully” and it has prompted many thoughts and conversations this week. It also had me returning and digging a little deeper into the biblical concepts of love and how Jesus transformed the Jewish idea of love into a foundational aspect of our faith. 

For many of us, the passage Beth just read, is quite familiar. It is considered both a summary and a link that connects us to our beginnings. 

You may be unaware that those words are a continuation of what our Jewish sisters and brothers refer to as the Great Shema from the Torah, or more specifically Deuteronomy 6. 

If you are not familiar with the Great Shema from the Jewish faith, it is considered the centerpiece of the daily morning and evening prayer and is also considered by some the most essential prayer in all of Judaism. So much so, most Jews consider it a command.  

This means, to fully understand this text, we must see it through Jewish eyes. 

To a Jew of Jesus’ day when hearing the lawyer ask Jesus his question, they would have heard him ask it in the language of their culture, something of this nature: 

"Rabbi, what is your yoke?" or "Rabbi, what is your interpretation of Torah?" 

Basically, the lawyer wanted to know Jesus' "bottom line," his summary of the Torah. 

For us it may be like asking for 25 words or less on the overall theme of the Bible?    

In some ways, it was kind of a trick question - as a good Jew himself, Jesus would have been expected to answer with the Great Shema.

Which as I read it for you this morning, you will remember hearing it in Jesus’ answer. 

Here is how the Great Shema from Deuteronomy 6 reads: 

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.[a] 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem[b] on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

But Jesus didn’t leave well enough alone (as we say) - he went a little further and made a modification or actually an addition - he added to the Great Shema. 

This would have been quite problematic for the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and ours.  

Not only did he speak the familiar words about loving God, but he went on and added a second greatest commandment. 

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Now, that addition probably came as a shock to the lawyer.  He definitely got what he wanted -- but then got a little bit more. 

What Jesus did was not simply expand the Great Shema but make it more practical - more tangible.

Jesus’s answer to how the Torah is summed up is living a life loving God with every part of your being in response to God's grace.

And how is that love for God best expressed...in loving our neighbor!   

For those who appreciated the wisdom of Sesame Street, Jesus was saying... you can’t have one without the other. 

Loving our neighbor as ourselves is how we live out the love of God in and through our lives - and I would go one step further and say it is also how God loves us - through our neighbors.

This sounds rather Quaker-like – if we embrace that of God in our neighbor.

Ronald Rolheiser expresses this concept well, he says, 

“The God of the incarnation tells us that anyone who says that he or she loves an invisible God in heaven and is unwilling to deal with a visible neighbor on earth is a liar since no one can love a God who cannot be seen if he or she cannot love a neighbor who can be seen. Hence a Christian spirituality is always as much about dealing with each other as it is about dealing with God.”

And that is because when we are dealing with our neighbor – we are dealing with that of God in them. 

During these challenging times, I continue to return to the book, “The Rebirthing of God” by John Philip Newell.  This time, I found his chapter on “Reconnecting with Love” very insightful. 

In this chapter he introduces the reader to someone he considers one of the greatest prophets of love in the modern world, Simone Weil (said Veil).  

“She was a philosopher, mystic, and a political activist. As a French Jew, she saw the Nazi occupation of her homeland, fleeing Paris...only hours before German forces laid siege to the capital. Eventually, she set sail from the south of France to find exile in the United States and then in Britain.”   

Newell points out that “Weil believed that the universe is essentially a vibration of God. Drawing on her Jewish inheritance, she saw everything as spoken into being by God. At the heart of that divine utterance is the sound or vibration of love.”   

I know I have shared this before, but this week it seemed even more relevant as we explored “Loving Wastefully” which last week I said was to love and then love some more.  

This is what Jesus was trying to do when moving from the Great Shema to a more meaningful and fuller understanding of the importance of love for all. He was expanding the concept of love more broadly and fully.  

This vibration of God, as Weil describes it, allows us to see the universe as an “expression of love” and then everything in the “universe is essentially a means to love.” 

Now, stop right there.  Ponder that for a moment...The entire universe is a means to love - a sounding board vibrating God’s love to us at every moment.    

Now, some of you are saying...that is not my experience? The universe is vibrating all kinds of things back at me on a daily basis.  

But take a moment and think of it as Newell describes Weil’s understanding, 

“The rising sun is a means to love, as is the whiteness of the moon at night. Every life-form, the shape of the weeping willow by the distant pond, the song of the robin in the hedgerow, the light in the eyes of every creature -- all these are means to love. I am a means to love, as are you, your children, and your nation.” 

Spong said Love is the force that enhances life.  Weil says, Love is the virbration of the universe that we are experiencing all around us.

It may take some adjusting in our minds, but it was a Buddhist writer that helped me see my neighbor as not just the people who live around me or for that matter just people, rather our neighbors are all kinds of living beings - animals (domestic and wild), trees and plants, the food and animals we eat, our earth and atmosphere and ozone….etc… 

Boy, did that change and expand how I saw my neighbor being a means of love and enhancer of life.  

I have to ask myself, am I treating animals, my gardens, the spaces I occupy on this earth in a loving manner and I allowing them to be a means of love? Do I love them as I would want to be loved?   

We often talk about being stewards of the earth - but how are we really treating ALL of our neighbors.  Maybe the reason we are not experiencing the vibration of God in the world is because we are not loving God and his creation fully and especially not the way we, ourselves, want to be treated.   

And if we are only talking about our neighbor as people, maybe we are getting in the way of loving our neighbor. 

I am reminded of Nelson Mandela’s famous quote. 

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” 

Love was Jesus’ bottom line, because God’s bottom line is love, and as Nelson Mandela seems to imply - so is our bottom line. It is the force that enhances life.  It is vibrating around and from us.    

Just imagine...instead of the things we so easily get focused on in this world, what if we were looking for the love of God vibrating in our universe?

What if we were looking first at where God’s love was vibrating from us and back to us?  

Sadly, I often choose not to see or sense those “vibrations” in our universe.

Too often I focus on the distractions - those other things - and then miss the opportunities all around me to experience or even acknowledge that amazing love vibrating in my daily life from the people, creation, and universe I am surrounded by.   

This week I have been taking an intentional inventory of the places where I sensed these “vibrations” in my universe - where what I experienced was a means of love from God and I took a moment to snap a photo.  

To lead us into waiting worship, I want to share some of those photos in silence for us to ponder. I hope you will feel the vibrations of love and that it will continue to be a force to enhance your life. I believe the more we sense the power of love around us – the more we will be willing to “Love Wastefully!”

Enjoy these photos and I pray they will help you center down on the love surrounding you, today.

10-11-20 - Love Wastefully

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

October 10, 2020

Philippians 1:9-11 

So, this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.

During the first couple of weeks of the pandemic, I was voraciously reading books, creatively painting and drawing, and finding the slowing down of life really good for my soul.

Sadly, like many of you, much of that has worn off and more and more, it has become harder to read and be creative during this time.  

As I described to Beth on Monday as we attended a virtual Pastor’s Conference covering rather weighty issues in our country – “my mind seemed to be “swimming” with so much that it was hard to focus.”  

Later in that same conversation as we were exclaiming how sobering the conversation was and how much it lacked hope, Beth mentioned the missing piece of the conference was a perspective of LOVE. 

It seems when things get heavy and complicated – often the first thing to go is love. And if you haven’t noticed love is on the run currently with all that the world is throwing at us.

If you remember, last week in my sermon, I mentioned “letting go,” which I said begins when we start to cling or shift toward something else. In that case I said, “I believe it is God – or what I often simply call, Love.”

I have noticed that for many of us (including myself) instead of clinging to Love – we often take the easy route and let go of Love and then wonder why things have become more difficult.

I sense much of our world right now is focusing on anything and everything but love, and it is really taking a toll. 

Then I was reminded of a teaching that was speaking to my condition just a couple of weeks into the pandemic.

Ironically, one of those books I had voraciously read had me asking quite a few queries and challenging my own faith in these interesting times.  And I found myself in what we spiritually call a “dark night of the soul.”

Even though it was not the best book I had ever read, it piqued my interest long enough for me to get to the final two pages where like that conference on Monday I was longing for some love.    

I might say, those two pages were worth reading the entire book. In those final two pages of “Unbelievable,” Bishop John Shelby Spong, introduced me to a phrase or mantra that has continued to speak to my condition for months. The mantra is,

“Love Wastefully”

Love Wastefully – just sit with that for a moment.  Say those words out loud to yourself. Love Wastefully. What do you hear?

When I say those two words…

• What springs up inside of you?  

• How does that phrase make you feel? 

• What images does it leave in your mind?

Maybe it leaves you with a sense of uneasiness or wonder. Or maybe you do not like the idea of the word “wastefully” being used to describe love.

I will be honest, it stopped me in my tracks. I was winding down to the end, when it had me reading each word individually for the last two pages. It drew me in and now, I did not want the book to end. 

Just moments before, it could have ended and I moved on, but then those words leaped off the page – Love Wastefully!

It made me ask, why did he wait until the last two pages of the epilogue to the book to explain this?    

Well, when I was exploring the concept more deeply, I ran across Rev. Deshna Shine explaining Spong’s concept in greater detail.  She says, 

Spong believes that God is the source of all life, the Source of Love, the Ground of Being, and is present in every person and in all of Creation. [Doesn’t that sound rather Quakerly for a Progressive Anglican Bishop?]

For Spong, the only true way to worship God is by living fully, loving wastefully, and having the courage to BE all that we can be in full authenticity. [Let me repeat that.]

“…the only true way to worship God is by living fully, loving wastefully, and having the courage to BE all that we can be in full authenticity.”

By loving wastefully, which [Spong] likens to plugging the old sink in the basement, turning on the tap full force and allowing the water to overflow into every crack and cranny, never stopping to ask does that crack deserve this living water, we can be overflowing with love.

Loving wastefully means you love … and then you love some more.”

Rev. Shine goes on to say,

“We have an infinite well of love within that we can always fill ourselves up with. To love is to feel love and to love wastefully is to love without fear or expectation or need.

When we are tapped in to the Divine within us and to the Divine’s way of loving wastefully, endlessly and infinitely, we are not losing anything, in fact we feel fuller.

Yes, when we are loving wastefully, extravagantly, wildly, our lives our richer and fuller, and more complete!

I sense the reason so many of us are feeling empty, stuck, and even fearful is because we are limiting the experience of that overflowing source of Love in our lives. 

Let’s be honest…we are spending way too much time obsessed with politics, watching 24/7 news, worrying about Covid, isolating ourselves from others and also from what brings us life.

Folks, we can be safe as well as loving.  Actually, we can have a loving response to all of those mentioned obsessions.  

Spong says, “Love is the force that enhances life. If flows through the universe, finding expression in the care that nature, in all its living forms, gives to its young, but love reaches self-consciousness only in human beings”

That means you and I are the source of love. You and I are the source of love – just let that sink in.  

That means either we choose to share it, or we contain it.   

And this is evident because as Quakers we know – there is that of God in each of us. There is a glimmer of Love in the depths of every person that has the potential for the greater good – if we choose to share it. 

This means you and I have the potential to be a force that enhances life.

Just imagine that there’s a faucet that has been turned on somewhere deep inside of us and it is ready to overflow through our life and out into the world around us.

And when it is not used…I sense it begins to weigh us down. We continue to fill like a large balloon not able to react or move freely. 

Rev. Shine pointed something out from Dr. Vivek Murphy, in his book, Together, that I think is extremely relevant during the pandemic and unrest in our world.  She says,  

“…the vast majority of us feel lonely. Often, we feel lonely even if we are around people we love because we are not having deep connections at all of these three vital levels: with the self, in relationships, and in community.

We all seek deeper connections and we desire to receive more love. But we are afraid to give it. We are afraid of getting hurt. We are afraid of being empty, of losing love, we are afraid that in the act of giving love we are actually losing love.

When in fact, when we take time to look within, we find that there is this deep well of love bubbling up within us, an eternal spring of Living Waters. We can discover that the experience of loving fills us up with love just as much, if not more, as the experience of receiving love.

To worship God is to be love in this world and when you are overflowing with it, you are able to love wastefully.

I have a feeling Dr. Murphy is encouraging us to “let out the love” – just like that balloon over-filled with water – as soon as there is an opening…it is rather hard to contain the water that comes out. The same is true for us – the love begins to spew right out of us and on to everyone around us.

Or as Spong said so well, the love that comes out of us is

“the kind of love that never stops to calculate whether the object of its love is worthy to be its recipient.

It is love that never stops to calculate deserving.  It is love that loves not because love has been earned.

[And finally, he brings it full circle by saying] It is in the act of loving “wastefully” that I make God visible.”

It is love that sees beyond political parties.

It is love that sees beyond religious affiliation.

It is love that sees beyond social or financial status.

It is love that sees beyond race, ethnicity, sexuality, or gender.

It is love that sees beyond the veneer of our lives and gets to the love within each of us at our core. 

Our call to “love wastefully” must work to build and transform the world around us so that every person we come in contact with will have a better opportunity to live fully, love wastefully, and be all that each of them was created to be in the infinite variety of our humanity. 

This means, and Spong points out that…

“There can be no outcast;

There can be no one regarded as “unclean.”    

There can be no prejudices which are allowed to operate in this vision of Christianity.

The essence of Christianity…is that everyone is to be accepted “just as I am, without one plea.” And that everyone is called into the task of growing into all that each us of can be.

But folks – I sense we and our world are desperately seeking a model or example to live by – one who teaches us to love wastefully.  

Where do we look for an example of one who taught and believed this? – we look to Jesus Christ. A person who was so fully alive that we have perceived him as the ultimate Source of Life.

And as one who loved so totally, so wastefully, that we see him as the ultimate Source of Love.  

Or as Paul put it in Ephesians 5:1-2:

5 1-2 Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

That folks is what we will call “Love Wastefully!”

Now, let us take a moment to enter a time of waiting worship. I have prepared a few queries for us to ponder this morning.

1.     Where instead of embracing love, have I let go of love during these difficult days?

2.     Am I feeling lonely and not deeply connected to myself, my relationships, and my community?  How might I seek deeper connections?

3.     When this week will I take time to explore and observe the Love Christ has for me, and transform it into love for my neighbors?

10-4-20 - What Does It Mean to Be a Quaker, Today?

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

October 4, 2020

Psalm 46 (The Message)

1-3 God is a safe place to hide,
    ready to help when we need him.
We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom,
    courageous in sea storm and earthquake,
Before the rush and roar of oceans,
    the tremors that shift mountains.

Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
    God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

4-6 River fountains splash joy, cooling God’s city,
    this sacred haunt of the Most High.
God lives here, the streets are safe,
    God at your service from crack of dawn.
Godless nations rant and rave, kings and kingdoms threaten,
    but Earth does anything he says.

7 Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
    God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

8-10 Attention, all! See the marvels of God!
    He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
Bans war from pole to pole,
    breaks all the weapons across his knee.
“Step out of the traffic! Take a long,
    loving look at me, your High God,
    above politics, above everything.”

11 Jacob-wrestling God fights for us,
    God-of-Angel-Armies protects us.

I find it interesting that this year’s theme for World Quaker Day is both a question and a statement:

What does it mean to be a Quaker today? is the question and Living a Faithful Life in a Changing World is the statement.  

If there is one Question I am consistently being asked, it is “What does it mean to be a Quaker, today?” Most people sheepishly or quizzically make some statement like, “I thought the Quakers died off a long time ago.” And sadly, I sense many Quakers believe much the same today, as well.   

The reality is that there are 400,000 Quakers worldwide and about half of them live in Africa.  Even though we are one of the smaller societies or denominations – we do have a global impact. 

But let’s get back to that original query - What does it mean to be a Quaker TODAY?  And I emphasize TODAY.

From the gatherings and conversartion Beth and I have each Thursday with Quaker ministers across the country, we have found this both a relevant question and a challenging one. 

The current day is much different for Quakers than even in our more recent past. Especially, right now, as we continue to wrestle with a global pandemic and all the unrest that seems to surround us. 

Simon Lamb, clerk of the Friends World Committee for Consultation emphasizes this point by saying,

In these very unusual times where the global community is not only struggling with a debilitating pandemic which is effecting every one of us through its health, its social and its financial impact, we are also at the same time being challenged by the protests of many on the issues of long-entrenched patterns of cultural, racial and social inequities and the historic colonial values that underpin such ideas.

We are being limited in our capacity to meet each other face to face. Social distancing is becoming a very normal part of our lives in these abnormal times. We are learning new ways to communicate, to socialize, and even to worship.

This period of health crisis for almost every country on this planet and the impending financial disaster that it promises in the months to come for many of the world’s citizens, leaves Friends with the challenging question as to what we are able and what are we called to do.

Quakers have been at this precipice before on numerous occasions and each time we have risen to the occasion, found our voice, and sensed the call of what we were to do. 

But, this time around, there seems to be more going on than we can even wrap our minds around.  And the move to virtual spaces and the reliance on technology is taking a toll on an older society of Friends who for too long have not embraced change.   

At First Friends, I am pleased that we have embraced the changes, leaned into our call to continue forward, and have found ways to make a difference in our community and neighborhoods. But let’s get a bit more personal.

Let’s take one step further and explore how we individually may seek to answer the call of God in these times.  If there is one thing the pandemic and our world’s condition has done, it has returned us to our Quaker foundations. 

One of the most fundamental foundations in the Quaker faith is embracing silence and again seeking what our Christian scriptures say is the “Still Small Voice” of God. 

I find it ironic in many ways that during these difficult times we have been given time to slow down, to become silent, and listen, yet much of our time is spent wrestling with not knowing what we are able and called to do.

I wonder if that is because we still have not taken the time to slow down, to become silent, and to expectantly wait to hear what God is saying to us, TODAY.

I sense this pandemic is awaking us to the reality that we may have become a bit  stubborn or unwilling to enter the process fully to seek those answers.

Instead of slowing down and taking time to process and listen, we like most of the people in our country want or demand instant change, instant action, instant healing.

Almost like we are ordering through Amazon Prime getting one-day deliveries or at the drive-up at Starbucks getting a cup of coffee on our way to work. 

Let’s be honest…we have been trained to claim the “instant life.”

We want it now.

We want it our way.

And we don’t want to have to be silent and wait.

Ironically, it is everything that this pandemic and the condition of our world is challenging us with, currently. 

We want the pandemic to go away, now.

We want racial unrest to go away, now.

We want to get back to the way life used to be, now.

We want to be vocal and argue and tweet and have our own way, now.

But…this is the opposite of what it means to be Quaker at our core? 

This hit me rather personally this week while I happened to be in-line at Starbucks.  

That day, I was busily running errands and kind of in a hurry, but needed a caffeine boost to keep me going, so I stopped at Starbucks to get a cup of coffee.

I noticed the line looked rather long, actually it wrapped around the building and went through the parking lot – remember it is Pumpkin Spice Latte time…but really? Come on…a line around the building.   

At first, I grumbled and said, I have no time to wait and started to pass the Starbucks. But then a still small voice spoke to me and encouraged me to get in line.

As soon as I pulled in the parking lot, I sensed a calm come over me. I had been listening to “Tea for the Tillerman 2” the 50th Anniversary reimagined album by Yusef/Cat Stevens that had just been released.  

Not knowing I would be in line for almost 30 more minutes (yes 30 minutes), I slowed down long enough to hear both the words to the song I was listening to and that still small voice speaking to me.   

The words to Yusef’s reimagined version of “Wild World” spoke to my condition.  I heard…

You know I have seen a lot of what the world can do…

And its breaking my heart in two. 

If you gotta leave, take good care.

Cuz, Baby I love you.

Oh, baby, baby it’s a wild world

It’s hard to get by with just a smile. 

Now, some believe this song is about a breakup or a divorce, but it spoke to my condition in that moment regarding simply “letting go.”   

Folks, we all have seen a lot of what the world can do, lately. Maybe too much.  

You could definitely say, we are living in a “Wild World,” currently. 

And I sense deeply that for many it is breaking our hearts in two.

And yes, it is truly hard to get by with just a smile, these days.

But letting go (which I have talked about before during this pandemic, begins when we start to cling or shift toward something else. In this case I believe it is God – or what I often simply call, Love.

When we let go of the distractions, allow ourselves to get silent physically, mentally and spiritually, we are able to hear the Still, Small Voice that is speaking to us. It may come through many means, but it comes.  This is maybe the most basic and foundational aspect of what it means to be Quaker – especially today.

When we allow ourselves to become silent, center down, and stop demanding the “instant life”…

• We allow God to help move us toward love – for ourselves and others. This is another Quaker foundation of “seeing that of God in ourselves and our neighbor.”

• We allow God to help us experience genuine joy and see possibilities for hope.

• We allow God to ease the sinking feeling that something is always wrong and nurture a sense of safety and peace.

• We allow God to help us begin to unclench, release, let go, and ultimately relax.

• And hopefully we allow God to help us begin to experience clarity, relief, or what some might call an undeniable knowing – which then helps us respond in a positive and useful way.

This is what Beth read for us in scripture this morning from Psalm 46. This is what we hear God calling us to do, first and foremost.

I had Beth read a modern translation because I believe it speaks to our condition, today.

I love the way specifically verse 10 reads.

“Step out of the traffic! Take a long,
    loving look at me, your High God,
    above politics, above everything.”

That could be a mantra for our current times. It sums up what I was just describing in removing ourselves from “instant life” mode. 

I know I have returned to this scripture often this week as I have tried to refocus and return to my Quaker roots in moving toward the silence and embracing fully the love of God in my daily life. 

But if you read this scripture mantra in a more traditional translation you will find this to be a surprisingly familiar passage. One that as Quakers we return to again and again. It reads this way – I think you have probably heard it…

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
    I will be exalted among the nations,
    I will be exalted in the earth.”

So, living a faithful life in the ever-changing world TODAY begins with us embracing the tranquility, and listening to the still small voice of God.

Once we return to this Quaker foundation in our personal lives, it will begin to affect how we see and respond to the life taking place around us. But it has to start with you and me.

What does it mean to be a Quaker, TODAY? 

It means first transforming our own lives and moving into a place where we allow the clatter of the world to lessen (even if that means in the line at Starbucks).

Then it means, without distractions, listening for the “still small voice of God” within us to speak to our condition – to move us toward love, to experience joy and hope, to sense safety and peace within, to release us and relax us, and to draw us to a point of clarity on how we are to respond in a positive and useful way individually and together.

And once we have learned it, I believe we are called to teach this Quaker Way to others.

So, this week, I challenge you to seek places to become silent and hear just how God may want to live faithfully through you in this ever changing world.

This morning, instead of queries or even instrumental music, we are going to offer an extended time of silence. So, do not adjust your TV, phone, or computer.  The noise of the world is extremely strong – so if you have to close your eyes or put away your phone or go in another room, do that to find silence this morning. 

Let’s take this time to expectantly wait on the Still Small Voice of God.  

9-27-20 - A Special Prayer Service for Peace

Welcome:  Beth

This past Monday, September 21 was the International Day of Peace. It marked the 75th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations charter. On Monday, the Quaker United Nations Office led FCNL and more than 170 peacebuilding organizations from around the world in calling on the international community to recommit to the founding vision of the United Nations – which is a commitment to international peace and friendly relations among nations.

Today, we join in this recommitment to peace with a special prayer gathering. Instead of a sermon, we will spend time this morning praying, meditating, reflecting, and singing about our commitment and dedication to peace that is so central to our faith as Quakers. 

Will you join us now in an Opening Meditation for Peace - by Thich Nhat Hanh

As we are together, praying for peace, let us be truly with each other.

Let us pay attention to our breathing.

Let us be relaxed in our bodies and our minds.

Let us return to ourselves and become wholly ourselves.

Let us maintain a half-smile on our faces. 

Let us beware of the source of being common to us all and to all living things. 

Evoking the presence of the Great Compassion, let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Let us pray that all living beings realize that they are all brothers and sisters, all nourishes from the same source of life.

Let us pray that we ourselves cease to be the cause of suffering to each other. 

Let us plead with ourselves to live in a way which will not deprive other beings of air, water, food, shelter, or the chance to live. 

With humility, with awareness of the existence of life and of the sufferings that are going on around us, let us pray for the establishment of peace in our hearts and on earth.  Amen

Jesus’ Message of Peace: Bob

When it is hard for us to find peace in our hearts, peace with our neighbor or peace in the world, we turn to Jesus, known as the Prince of Peace, to show us the way. Let us take the next few minutes to reflect on Jesus’ message of peace.  Let us think about how Jesus calls us to live this message: by praying for peace, by working for peace and becoming makers of peace, as sons and daughters of God. 

Jesus, You said to Your disciples, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”  You know how much our world needs Your gift of peace, yet in so many places there is unrest, conflict, and war. Help us through the power of your Spirit to transform human hearts and give the people of the world a desire for peace as we pray:

Prayer: Beth

Loving God, conflict, unrest, and war destroy people’s lives. It is an expression of despair, a last resort, a dependence on violence to settle differences and disagreements. God of peace, you gave us Jesus to show us the way to a true and lasting peace. Help those who are in conflict and at war to long for peace.  Open their minds and hearts as well as our own so that all people might hear your message of peace and allow it to take root in our lives. Amen.

Reading: Bob                      

A Reading from Isaiah 2:2-5:                 

In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.  Many peoples shall come and say,

“Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” 

He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.  O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

Prayer: Beth.   (from the World Council of Churches)                    

You have called us to be one, to live in unity and harmony, and yet we are divided: race from race, faith from faith, rich from poor, old from young, neighbor from neighbor. O Lord…break down the walls that separate us, tear down the fences of indifference and hatred; forgive us the sins that divide us, free us from pride and self-seeking, overcome our prejudices and fears, give us courage to open ourselves to others, by the power of Your Spirit make us one. Amen.

Reading: Beth   Matthew 5: 1 – 11                              

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.  Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Prayer: Bob

Jesus, you said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Keep us from being preoccupied with money and worldly goods, and with trying to increase them at the expense of justice.

Jesus, you said, "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth."

Help us not to be ruthless with one another, and to eliminate the discord and violence that exists in the world around us.

Jesus, you said, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

Let us not be impatient under our own burdens and unconcerned about the burdens of others.

Jesus, you said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be filled."

Make us thirst for you, the fountain of all holiness, and actively spread your influence in our private lives and in society.

Jesus, you said, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy."

Grant that we may be quick to forgive and slow to condemn.

Jesus, you said, "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God."

Free us from our senses and our evil desires and fix our eyes on you.

Jesus, you said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."

Aid us to make peace in our families, in our country, and in the world.

Lord Jesus, you said, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for the kingdom of heaven in theirs."

Make us willing to suffer for the sake of right rather than to practice injustice; and do not let us discriminate against our neighbors and oppress and persecute them.

Prayer for Tolerance: Beth

Prince of peace! Grant that we might be peacemakers. You told us to love without exclusion. Grant that our Meeting might be disposed and available to know and appreciate the values of other religions, to dialogue with them and all men and women of good will, so that all nations and peoples will understand each other and work for peace.

We pray that we ourselves and all of our fellow humans might grow in respect for the dignity of the person and their inalienable rights.

God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the heart of our battles for justice and truth, not to confront each other in hatred and bitterness, but on the contrary, to work together in tolerance and respect.

Yes, Lord, imprint on us your love for those who are different from us. Amen.

Prayer for the Environment: Bob

God, Creator of the universe and all things, our profound peace also depends on the good management of our environment. You made us your partners and co-workers, trusting us and entrusting us with your creation. Give us wisdom and respect to use natural resources in such a way that nothing will suffer from our abuses and that creation will not turn against us by way of uncontrollable upheavals, but that as a result of good management, future generations might praise you for your goodness and the gift of creation. Amen.

Prayer for Inner Peace: Beth

Grant us your peace, not like the peace the world gives, but the peace that penetrates soul and spirit, joints and marrows, feelings and thoughts of the heart; the peace that shapes our intelligence and fills our thoughts with all that is true, all that is honorable,

all that is right,

all that is pure,

all that is kind,

all that merits approval,

that is virtuous and worthy of praise.

O Eternal One, fill our beings with the values that form the basis of true peace, genuine peace in the image of the Prince of peace. Amen

Queries: Bob

Now, let us enter a time of waiting worship. To help us center down American Friends Service Committee has provided a set of queries to ponder regarding our commitment to Peace:

1.     How can I nurture the seeds of peace within myself, my community, and the world?

2.     How can I work to eliminate hatred, injustice, and both physical and institutional violence?

3.     How can I be more open to seeking the goodness in people who act with violence and hatred?

4.     How can I work to settle disputes within the organization and the community with love and sensitivity for all involved?

5.     How can I increase my understanding of nonviolence and use it in all my interactions? 

Benediction: Beth  (written by Brian McLaren)

May we feel in our innermost being a beautiful and holy dissatisfaction,

a hunger and thirst for true aliveness.

May that holy dissatisfaction ignite in us a holy refusal

To remain stuck where we have been.

May that holy refusal break open our hearts to a holy hope,

So that the wind, wine, and fire of the Holy Spirit will fill us all.

May we learn to live in the way of love,

May we experience, enjoy, and embody God as Jesus did,

As the radiant light of perfect compassion for all creation.

And may we find or form our flocks,

And may ten thousand flocks and more arise together

In a great spiritual movement of justice, joy, and peace.

But first,

May we feel in our innermost being a beautiful and holy dissatisfaction.

Resources:

·         1www.mwc-cmm.org : Peace Sunday 2019 Worship Resources

·         Prayer Service for Peace Prepared by Pauline Krupa

·         https://www.afsc.org/testimonies/peace