3-20-22 - Emphasizing Behavior Over Belief

Emphasizing Behavior Over Belief      

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

March 20, 2022     

Good morning, Friends and welcome to Light Reflections. Today, I am giving the fourth sermon in the series “To Be Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022.”  Our scripture text for this morning is a familiar couple of verses – often referred to as the “Fruit of the Spirit” from Galatians 5:22-23

22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

As I have said on many occasions, I was not raised a Quaker.  When I was going through the age of accountability (12-14 years old) I had lots of questions and thought I was receiving lots of answers.  One of the debates we had, that really made me wrestle, was the idea of “faith without works is dead.”  I had been told so many times to not rely on my works - for my works would not “save me” – that I kind of threw them in the theological garbage can. 

The great reformer, Martin Luther, even had issues with the term “faith without works is dead” that he decided to tear out the book of James from his Bible.

Faith and works were to be a tight rope balance, but over time it has lost that balance in many religious circles.  Faith was to inform our behaviors and actions.

Instead, it has almost become two separate categories that do not co-mingle.  This change has been evidenced in the stark difference in Christian’s responses to the Bill Clinton Scandals of the 90s and the most recent Donald Trump Scandals. But let’s not get into politics.

To be a thriving a progressive Quaker Meeting in 2022, I believe we might need to lean a bit more heavily on our behaviors and actions to help get us back to, what I like to call, “the center of Truth.” 

To help us explore these ideas this morning, I want to start by giving us some helpful definitions – beginning with an important difference between belief and faith. 

Alan Watts, a 20th century philosopher of Eastern religions described them this way,

“We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. 

Belief, as I use the word here is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes.

Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.  Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. 

Belief clings, but faith lets go.  In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.”

To give a better illustration of Watts thoughts about faith and beliefs, he summed it by saying,

“Faith is like looking at the sky through a clear or open window, with an openness to accepting it as it is: blue or gray, light or dark, starry or sunny, rainy or fair. But beliefs are like blue paint that people decide to apply to the window glass to be sure it will always be the color they wish it to be.”

I sense American Christianity is applying a lot of blue paint in the form of creeds, statements of faith, mission statements, dogmas, and doctrines. 

And this is where I believe we as Quakers have work to do.  I believe in 2022, we are being called to be “blue paint scrapers” – or people who wrestle with questions of faith while also helping others question what they have learned to accept as beliefs and allow them to see the sky for all it has to offer. 

Let’s take a moment and reflect – I want to personally ask you some queries:

·        How many of you have held a belief you wished was not true? 

Maybe you were raised in a more conservative Christian background like I was.  At a very young age, I had what I would call, “a crisis of belief” over people I loved possibly being tortured in hell for eternity. 

·        Or how many of you were taught that sex was dirty and shameful? And it has continued to affect your relationships still, today?

·        Or how many of you have wrestled with a literal interpretation of scripture? One that went as far as to deny science?

Or maybe you have wrestled with these queries and know of people who are still stuck wrestling with them in their lives of faith.

I am sure if we took a real close look, we would find some beliefs we hold in Quakerism that we need to change or ultimately give up.  

Some people may even push back and say, but wait, Quakers have what they call Testimonies (which some call S.P.I.C.E.S.).  Aren’t those your beliefs. 

Well, our testimonies are much different than beliefs, instead they are principles that we work to embody and live-up to in all aspects of our lives.  Our testimonies effect our behaviors and actions and flow from our willingness and openness to the leadings of the Spirit in the present moment.

Instead of standing for “beliefs” that offer ways to circumvent death, escape sickness, stress, or poverty, or see our enemies get what we feel they deserve, Quakers center down and seek the Spirit’s leading to help us live a better life in and with our neighbors. 

As Quakers we seek a simple life, a life of peace, full of integrity, based in community, acknowledging equality of all, and seeking ways to sustain our planet and each other. These take being aware of our behaviors and actions, not just what we believe.

I sense Brian McLaren would label our Testimonies as “Belief Agreements” which he says “helps us fractious human beings get on with surviving and thriving together.” 

Do we all always live a simple life, peaceful, in community, full of integrity, equality and sustainability?  No. Rather these testimonies are what we are to strive for to make the world a better place.  What we believe about God and our neighbors should support our behaviors and actions.

I believe this is extremely important in the polaristic world we currently find ourselves in.  Brian McLaren in the book “Faith and Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It” says,

In times of instability and change, many people become especially anxious.  They need somewhere to belong.  They feel nostalgic for the certainty, clarity, and belonging that authoritarian groups provide.  These days, they quickly discover they don’t need to leave their homes and go to a church building or cult compound to gain the desired benefits of cult membership.  From the convenience and comfort of their own homes, they can tune into mass and social media channels that will reinforce their group’s beliefs 24/7, creating the perfect self-reinforcing bubble of confirmation bias, blurring the line between being a free consumer of media and a willing victim of brainwashing.  In these media bubbles, all windows show blue skies all the time…

The pandemic brought about a lot of instability and change and many people became extremely anxious and nostalgic in the way McLaren describes.  Sadly many also mixed politics with faith which created an ugly monster who full-time is “painting windows blue.”

Again, this is why we need to turn to our behaviors and actions, and seek to have conversations with our fellow human beings.  We need to present a whole new way of seeing and understanding faith and belief in this time.

If we take a moment and open up our bibles and look again with new eyes, we might gain fresh insights from Jesus, Mary, Paul, James, John, and the rest.

I love how Brian McLaren put it. Jesus never said, when asked what is the greatest commandment:

“You shall hold correct beliefs about the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: “You shall convert your neighbors who do not hold correct beliefs, and if they will not convert, you shall defeat them in a culture war.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.“  

Instead, he said this:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

And there is the kicker.  Love is the behavior. It is the action. It is the revolutionary part of faith. It is love beyond - a love that goes beyond myself to my neighbor, beyond the neighbor to the stranger, alien, other, outcast and outsider, beyond the outsider to the critic, antagonist, opponent, and enemy; and even beyond the human to my non-human fellow creatures.

In short it means Loving as God would love; infinitely, graciously, extravagantly and knowing the way we behave towards one another is the fullest expression of what we believe about God.

Instead of getting into trenches about our beliefs, maybe what the world needs right now is a people of faith who are willing to behave and act first out of God’s Love for the World. 

A few years ago, I said in a sermon that I rarely use the descriptor “Christian” to describe myself anymore. Some people took offense at that statement. Quaker seems to be a better descriptor for me. Yet some days I am more Buddhist in my practice, or Jewish in my questioning, or Hindu in seeing the greater network of all things, or simply atheist in my doubt.

What if the deeper question as Brian McLaren poses is not whether you are  Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, even Quaker, but rather, what kind of Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist or Quaker are you?

Are you living out our text for today, “The Fruit of the Spirit” which is the embodiment, behavior and action of living out this faith - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Are you a believer who puts your distinct beliefs first, or are you a person of faith who puts love first?

Are you a believer whose beliefs put you in competition or conflict with people of differing beliefs, or are you a person of faith whose faith moves you toward the other with love?

Let us end here today and allow these queries to help enter us into a time of waiting worship. A time where we can look at the sky through a clear or open window, with an openness to accept it as it is: blue or gray, light or dark, starry or sunny, rainy or fair. 

Let us take this time.

3-13-22 - Understanding the Poor and Oppressed

Understanding the Poor and Oppressed      

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

March 13, 2021

Good morning and welcome to Light Reflections.  This week I am returning to our sermon series, “To Be Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022.”  The scripture for this third installment is from Luke 4 verse 18.

 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to let the oppressed go free,

Back in Oregon, I used to have a book group at a local coffee shop in our town.  We met once a week for several years.  One of the last books we engaged was my friend, Phil Gulley’s “Living the Quaker Way: Discover the Hidden Happiness in the Simple Life.”  A book that is on the suggested reading list for this sermon series.

I was introduced to Phil’s writing and thinking several years earlier in my doctoral studies, but this specific book came across my desk due to Chris Smith of the Englewood Review of Books asking if, as a Quaker Minister, I would be willing to interview Phil for the Review.

I gladly accepted, received a pre-publication copy of the book, read it, and prepared my questions for what would be about an hour interview.  Phil and I hit it off wonderfully and after I asked all my questions, we had a really good talk about our lives.  I am excited that Phil is going to be with us here at First Friends to close out this sermon series on Sunday, April 10th.  That Sunday, Phil and I will be exchanging pulpits.

That being said, in his chapter on “Community” he says the following:

“To be a Quaker is to always see oneself in relation with the world, answerable not only to God but also to humanity and to history….

Quakers worry inordinately about how history will judge us and what generations might think of us.  We live in fear an injustice will pass unnoticed, so we appoint committees to read and study, then prevail upon legislators, presidents, and dictators to act justly.  Because we believe all are part of the human community, we have no qualms about speaking with anyone if we think good might result. “

Before I became a Quaker, I was on a search for a people of faith like Phil was describing.  A people who saw themselves in relation to the world, especially the poor, the neglected, the downtrodden, even the oppressed, neglected, or refused. 

I had decided I was tired of the religious country clubs, the clichés that you had to know the right passwords, wear the right clothing, or drive the right type of car to be part of, and the navel-gazing groups who only thought of their own needs and worshipped their “sacred cows” in their four-walled structures. 

But as I kept reading Phil’s book, He opened my eyes to the “something more” I was searching for and hoped I would find among Friends.  He said,

“Historically, there have been two churches. One church has used its power to oppress positive change. It has valued its own power over justice, freedom, and peace. It has enshrined the status quo with lofty proclamations, denouncing as heretical any challenge to its authority. 

This is the church that pits nation against nation, oppresses entire peoples, relegates women to a subordinate role, and works to deny homosexuals equal rights before the law. Though it claims the title of church, indeed often refers to itself as the true church, it has corrupted the gospel and damaged the human community, all in the name of God. 

Regrettably, this church transcends denominations. Its adherents can be found in every Christian tradition.  It is, in nearly every moral sense, the caboose on the train of history – the last to adopt positive change, especially when that change threatens its power.”

This was the church I grew up within, this is the church many of you grew up within. 

This described exactly the church I wanted to get away from –and it must not be what many are looking for today either, as the numbers at these types of churches continue to plummet. What Phil describes is the country club, cliché, naval-gazing church.  But thankfully, Phil went on to say,

But there is another church. It too has existed throughout history. It is found wherever and whenever peace, joy, and compassion carry the day.  Undergirding it, in the words of [Quaker James] Naylor, is “a spirit…that delights to do no evil.” 

It labors not for its own glory, but for the well-being of all people everywhere. It rejoices when the marginalized are included, when the slave is freed, when the despised are embraced. It sees in its fellow beings not sin and separation from God but potential, promise, and connection.

Wherever people love, it is there.  Wherever people join together in a spirit of compassion and inclusion, this church feels at home, for those virtues have been its priorities from its earliest days.  This church has existed since the time of Jesus, but its benevolent spirit predates the Nazarene.  It is not the province of any one denomination; its adherents can be found in every movement and every faith. 

While others bluster and rant, its members go quietly and cheerfully about their ministries, determined to bring heaven to earth.  This church seeks to learn, understand, and include.  It is of the world, loves the world, and welcomes all people as its brothers and sisters. 

Where borders separate, this community straddles the partition, refusing to let arbitrary lines rule their conscience and conduct. They are, in every sense of the word, members one of another.  Community and compassion are their bywords. 

When I read this for the first time, tears ran down my face. This was the church I had been searching for.  And just as Phil states, I have learned this way among Quakers – among Friends.  Because I believe that second description is what we are working to create here at First Friends.  That was the perfect description of what it means to be a Thriving and Progressive Quaker Meeting, and a goal for us, at First Friends, to work together to achieve.

I remember not long after reading this in Phil’s book, returning to the scriptures and homing in on the text for today from Luke.  The section I read from is often titled appropriately, “Jesus Rejected at Nazareth.” 

Remember what they used to say about Jesus, “Nothing good can come out of Nazareth.”  Jesus himself came from a poor family – that was evident when Mary and Joseph could only afford two small doves for the sacrifice at the temple. 

As well, he came from a people and faith who were oppressed and marginalized by the Roman Rule. 

Just before our text for this morning, Jesus has been teaching throughout the area and was gaining some notoriety. The scriptures say that “everyone praised him.”  His message was different, it was drawing everyone from the rich to the poor, the oppressed to the oppressors, and even the successful to the downtrodden. 

But the real test was going to come when he chose to return to his hometown in Nazareth.  It was a known fact that no prophet was accepted in his hometown.  And that would be the case when Jesus would use Scripture to announce what his ministry was all about. 

If you remember, Jesus unrolls the scroll and reads from the Prophet Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to let the oppressed go free…

As is the case often still today, many were wrapped up in the fact that Jesus was back home, that Joseph’s son was an eloquent speaker, that he could engage the crowd --- that they totally missed what he was saying. 

I am sure at some point, an elder of the synagogue leaned over to his neighbor and began to whisper questions, ”What did he say?” “What does he mean?” “Wait a minute, I think he is saying he wants us to do something?”

See, Jesus’ sermon after reading those powerful scriptures happened to be a little rant on how many of the prophets they looked up to had a message for a specific people or person, but meanwhile there were widows being overlooked, there were people suffering from famine, and there were lepers needing cleansed. 

The people of Nazareth would have thought he was pointing a finger at them, calling them out for focusing on the wrong things, worshipping the prophets, and not doing the hard work of helping the poor and oppressed.  

In many ways, what Phil Gulley described as the two churches was exactly what Jesus originally had come to point out. Jesus wanted to be the example, to show us a better way, to refocusing us on

Bringing good news to the poor.

Proclaiming release to the captives.

Giving sight to the blind.

And letting the oppressed go free. 

Or as Phil Gulley concludes,

To be a Quaker is to commit oneself to thorough and lasting equality.  It is to stand with the scorned, the powerless, the friendless, and estranged, especially when the world would turn from them.  An unswerving commitment to the Golden Rule is our goal: to treat others with the same dignity, compassion, and respect we wish for ourselves.  We believe Jesus Christ, in seeking out the marginalized and despised, exemplified the way of justice and equality. But not Jesus alone, for we have seen and know others who did the same.

So if we are to be a Thriving and Progressive Quaker Meeting and more in line with the second church that Phil described, then to thrive -“to grow or develop well or vigorously” and to progress or develop gradually or in stages” will mean we must seek to look outside of ourselves.  To help the poor and oppressed within and without our community. To let “community” and “compassion” be our bywords. To learn to be members one to another. 

Just take a moment and think about people you know who are poor or oppressed.  It doesn’t mean they have to be financially poor or in prison.  Many in this room or who have joined us virtually would consider themselves “poor or oppressed” for a variety of reasons. 

Well, I will let us ponder those thoughts as we enter waiting worship.

Here are some queries to ponder as we expectantly wait.

• Do I see myself in relation to the world, answerable not only to God but also to humanity and to history?

• Who are the poor and oppressed in my life that I need to reach out to this week?         

• How at First Friends might we lean more into that second description of church from Phil Gulley?

3-6-22 - Allowing Ourselves to Question

Allowing Ourselves to Question                      

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

February 27, 2022

Good morning and welcome to Light Reflections. We are on week two of our new sermon series, “To Be Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022.” Our scripture for today is Proverbs 2:2-5 from the Message Version.

1-5 Good friend, take to heart what I’m telling you;
 collect my counsels and guard them with your life.
Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom;
 set your heart on a life of Understanding.
That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
 and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
 like an adventurer on a treasure hunt,
Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;
 you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.

Last week we looked at moving from heaven to earth. Today, we will move to looking at another aspect of being Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022 – Allowing Ourselves to Question.

Back when I was still among the Lutherans and serving as a Director of Christian Education, I used to teach confirmation to the youth of our church who were, as we said, at the age of accountability – somewhere between 12 to 13 years old.

At the time I was serving a rather large church and we had about 100 youth in that age range who were wanting to go through our new confirmation program (very similar to First Friends’ Affirmation Program but in a Lutheran context).

Our senior pastor had created what he titled, “Wonderful Wednesday Workshop dot come” or www dot come for short - a play on this new internet thing that was taking the world by storm at that point. We had usually three workshops that met each Wednesday night covering a variety of confirmation topics. Also, unique to this program was that we required at least one parent or guardian to accompany their child to the workshop.

I had about 25 youth and parents in my first class. The topical focus for my workshop was the Holy Spirit – always a fun topic to try and wrap one’s mind around.

Well, after teaching an engaging lesson and working through the workbook pages, we came to a time in the curriculum for Q&A. What I was directed to do was ask the participants if they had any questions. Since we would be short on time, I would write down any questions people had and then begin the next session with addressing them.

So, I asked my group if they had any questions and directed them to raise their hand and I would call on them. Looking down at my paper, I waited a moment for what I thought would be very few questions. When I looked up from my paper, not a single youth had raised their hands, but ever parent or guardian in the room had their hands up.

Surprised, I kind of chuckled with a bit of anxiety, and called on the first parent with their hand raised.

She asked, “Why do people at the church down the street think they speak in tongues? And why don’t we?” Interesting question – I explained this was not something I planned to cover in this workshop, but I would write it down and bring an answer next week.

At this point things really blew up, the next parent asked, “Do people who commit suicide go to heaven?” What? I wondered where this was going to go...as I wrote it down.

And the questions kept coming, each a little more difficult and further off the subject we were discussing. Finally, I stopped them and said, “Where are all these questions coming from?” And I will never forget the answer.

A man in the back said, “No one every asks us if we have questions, most of the time we are told what to believe or given the answers.”

I wrote down the long list of questions and headed the next day to the senior pastor’s office. I assumed that since he wrote the curriculum that he had planned for something like this to happen.

I presented the list to the pastor, and to my utter shock and surprise, I was handed the list back and told “You can’t answer those questions. Just go back and skip that part next time and move on with the curriculum.”

What? I tried to explain how I had told my class that I would come with answers the following Wednesday and that these questions were from the parents, but he was not interested. Just ignore those and move on.

Well, I could not ignore these parents who were wrestling with their questions but was conflicted as to how to progress. The next Wednesday, I went back to the class and started the workshop as usual. Immediately, hands went up – parents were saying, “Hey wait, you said you were going to start with answering our questions.”

Put on the spot I did what should have been done a long time before this moment. I told everyone that the senior pastor has said we do not have time for these questions, but if you want to ask him, here is his phone number, write it down and give him a call this week with the questions.

At that point I realized a couple very important things – 1. People need to be allowed to ask questions for true faith formation and community to be built, and 2. Never give out the number of your senior pastor and tell people to call him to ask questions. He was inundated with calls and messages and he was not happy with me at all.

A few years later, I was introduced to the writings of Rachel Held Evans. I believe Rachel was a prophetic voice in our midst before her untimely death just a couple years ago. She wrote a book that intrigued me titled, “Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions.” (later this title was changed to “Faith Unraveled” and I have included it in our reading list). In this book she says,

“With the best of intentions, the generation before mine worked diligently to prepare their children to make an intelligent case for Christianity. We were constantly reminded of the superiority of our own worldview and the shortcomings of all others.

We learned that as Christians, we alone had access to absolute truth and could win any argument. The appropriate Bible verses were picked out for us, the opposing positions summarized for us, and the best responses articulated for us, so that we wouldn’t have to struggle through two thousand years of theological deliberations and debates but could get right to the bottom line on the important stuff: the deity of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, the role and interpretation of Scripture, and the fundamentals of Christianity.

As a result, many of us entered the world with both an unparalleled level of conviction and a crippling lack of curiosity. So ready with the answers, we didn’t know what the questions were anymore.

So prepared to defend the faith, we missed the thrill of discovering it for ourselves. So convinced we had God right, it never occurred to us that we might be wrong.

In short, we never learned to doubt. Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God.

The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice, the latter a virtue.

Where would we be if the apostle Peter had not doubted the necessity of food laws, or if Martin Luther had not doubted the notion that salvation can be purchased?

What if Galileo had simply accepted church-instituted cosmology paradigms, or William Wilberforce the condition of slavery? We do an injustice to the intricacies and shadings of Christian history when we gloss over the struggles, when we read Paul’s epistles or Saint Augustine’s Confessions without acknowledging the difficult questions that these believers asked and the agony with which they often asked them.

If I’ve learned anything over the past five years, it’s that doubt is the mechanism by which faith evolves. It helps us cast off false fundamentals so that we can recover what has been lost or embrace what is new.

It is a refining fire, a hot flame that keeps our faith alive and moving and bubbling about, where certainty would only freeze it on the spot.

I would argue that healthy doubt (questioning one’s beliefs) is perhaps the best defense against unhealthy doubt (questioning God). When we know how to make a distinction between our ideas about God and God himself, our faith remains safe when one of those ideas is seriously challenged.

When we recognize that our theology is not the moon but rather a finger pointing at the moon, we enjoy the freedom of questioning it from time to time.

 We can say, as Tennyson said,

“Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they.”

I sometimes wonder if I might have spent fewer nights in angry, resentful prayer if only I’d known that my little systems — my theology, my presuppositions, my beliefs, even my fundamentals — were but broken lights of a holy, transcendent God. I wish I had known to question them, not him.

What my generation is learning the hard way is that faith is not about defending conquered ground but about discovering new territory.

Faith isn’t about being right, or settling down, or refusing to change. Faith is a journey, and every generation contributes its own sketches to the map. I’ve got miles and miles to go on this journey, but I think I can see Jesus up ahead.”

About the time I read this, I was introduced to my first Quakers - who happened to be part of my doctoral program in Oregon. I remember over a meal at Cannon Beach learning about the fluidity of beliefs and openness to question Quakers practiced.

I was introduced to something I had believed, but never incorporated into my faith, that being the ongoing revelation of God (which brought many queries to my mind).

Being raised in churches that had fixed creeds, faith statements, and even volumes and volumes of explanations for each and every doctrine, I was pleasantly surprised, relieved even, to find Quakers not having any of these and instead embracing a desire to keep things open to continued dialog and learning.

Or like our scripture for this morning says – I love Eugene Peterson’s translation:

That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
 and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
 like an adventurer on a treasure hunt…you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.

Questioning and processing queries are like a prospector panning for gold or an adventurer on a treasure hunt. That to me is exciting. That keeps me thriving and progressing.

Faith then is an adventure, and ever-changing opportunity to experience the Divine in and through our lives in the present moment.

For us Quakers, queries can be questions that guide our personal and group adventure on how our lives and actions are shaped by Love and Truth.

Queries or questions are so important to our Quaker faith, we even make them part of every meeting for worship. I will never forget my first experience of this in Oregon, after our worship leader shared some thoughts on the scriptures, and even read a poem by Mary Oliver, he then said something that I say almost every week at First Friends,

“Now, let us take a moment to enter a time of waiting worship, where I have prepared a couple of queries in the manner of Friends for us to ponder.”

That first time, I thought, wait? Is he going to leave this open ended?

See, there was some anxiety rising in me…I remember being taught in other religious denominations that unless you “closed the deal” (as they said) and told the attenders that they need not wrestle with these things because Jesus has taken care of this and as long as you believe in him, then everything will be ok – just don’t give them wiggle room to ask questions or doubt.

Here I was learning just the opposite. Our leaders said, “I hope you wrestle with these queries throughout the week and that we can discuss them more as we live and work together this week.”

The emphasis is not on having the final answer, but more on how to live a life more completely aligned with the life of the spirit and our neighbor.

Queries or asking questions, even wrestling with my doubts have become a powerful spiritual discipline for me.

I have found that returning again and again to the same prompt for deep reflection can set the stage for new understandings, changes of heart, and a rising sense of loving action that needs to be taken.

What I have realized and even Mary Blackburn during waiting worship shared in vocal ministry last week, to be a thriving and progressive Quaker Meeting means we must be open to allow people to question the faith and what they truly believe. I agree with Mary that this is an extremely important aspect of what First Friends offers our world in 2022.

To Thrive or to grow or develop well or vigorously, as I introduced last week, takes us asking ourselves queries.

And allowing questions means we will continue to “develop gradually or in stages – step by step - overtime – or again like I introduced last week, progressively.

Or maybe we as Quakers could see this through Rainer Maria Rilke’s eyes, this is how he put it in his, “Letter to a Young Poet”:

…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Part of my most recent spiritual retreat I explored my own doubt and questioning. During the week-long retreat I read the book, “Faith After Doubt,” where Brian McLaren agrees with Rilke in the process. He says,

“Doubt [questioning], it turns out, is the passageway from each stage to the next. Without doubt, there can be growth within a stage, but growth from one stage to another usually requires us to doubt the assumptions that give shape to our current stage.”

That means Questioning, Queries, or simply doubt is key to us becoming a thriving and progressive Quaker Meeting in 2022.

Now, as we enter a time of waiting worship, let us ponder the following queries in the manner of Friends:

·      What questions or queries am I hiding in my heart? and why?

·      What queries do I need to engage and wrestle with throughout this week and possibly share with a fellow Friend?

·      How may my doubt and questioning help First Friends become a more thriving and progressive Quaker Meeting?

2-27-22 - Allowing Ourselves to Question

Allowing Ourselves to Question                      

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

February 27, 2022

Good morning and welcome to Light Reflections. We are on week two of our new sermon series, “To Be Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022.” Our scripture for today is Proverbs 2:2-5 from the Message Version.

1-5 Good friend, take to heart what I’m telling you;
 collect my counsels and guard them with your life.
Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom;
 set your heart on a life of Understanding.
That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
 and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
 like an adventurer on a treasure hunt,
Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;
 you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.

Last week we looked at moving from heaven to earth. Today, we will move to looking at another aspect of being Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022 – Allowing Ourselves to Question.

Back when I was still among the Lutherans and serving as a Director of Christian Education, I used to teach confirmation to the youth of our church who were, as we said, at the age of accountability – somewhere between 12 to 13 years old.

At the time I was serving a rather large church and we had about 100 youth in that age range who were wanting to go through our new confirmation program (very similar to First Friends’ Affirmation Program but in a Lutheran context).

Our senior pastor had created what he titled, “Wonderful Wednesday Workshop dot come” or www dot come for short - a play on this new internet thing that was taking the world by storm at that point. We had usually three workshops that met each Wednesday night covering a variety of confirmation topics. Also, unique to this program was that we required at least one parent or guardian to accompany their child to the workshop.

I had about 25 youth and parents in my first class. The topical focus for my workshop was the Holy Spirit – always a fun topic to try and wrap one’s mind around.

Well, after teaching an engaging lesson and working through the workbook pages, we came to a time in the curriculum for Q&A. What I was directed to do was ask the participants if they had any questions. Since we would be short on time, I would write down any questions people had and then begin the next session with addressing them.

So, I asked my group if they had any questions and directed them to raise their hand and I would call on them. Looking down at my paper, I waited a moment for what I thought would be very few questions. When I looked up from my paper, not a single youth had raised their hands, but ever parent or guardian in the room had their hands up.

Surprised, I kind of chuckled with a bit of anxiety, and called on the first parent with their hand raised.

She asked, “Why do people at the church down the street think they speak in tongues? And why don’t we?” Interesting question – I explained this was not something I planned to cover in this workshop, but I would write it down and bring an answer next week.

At this point things really blew up, the next parent asked, “Do people who commit suicide go to heaven?” What? I wondered where this was going to go...as I wrote it down.

And the questions kept coming, each a little more difficult and further off the subject we were discussing. Finally, I stopped them and said, “Where are all these questions coming from?” And I will never forget the answer.

A man in the back said, “No one every asks us if we have questions, most of the time we are told what to believe or given the answers.”

I wrote down the long list of questions and headed the next day to the senior pastor’s office. I assumed that since he wrote the curriculum that he had planned for something like this to happen.

I presented the list to the pastor, and to my utter shock and surprise, I was handed the list back and told “You can’t answer those questions. Just go back and skip that part next time and move on with the curriculum.”

What? I tried to explain how I had told my class that I would come with answers the following Wednesday and that these questions were from the parents, but he was not interested. Just ignore those and move on.

Well, I could not ignore these parents who were wrestling with their questions but was conflicted as to how to progress. The next Wednesday, I went back to the class and started the workshop as usual. Immediately, hands went up – parents were saying, “Hey wait, you said you were going to start with answering our questions.”

Put on the spot I did what should have been done a long time before this moment. I told everyone that the senior pastor has said we do not have time for these questions, but if you want to ask him, here is his phone number, write it down and give him a call this week with the questions.

At that point I realized a couple very important things – 1. People need to be allowed to ask questions for true faith formation and community to be built, and 2. Never give out the number of your senior pastor and tell people to call him to ask questions. He was inundated with calls and messages and he was not happy with me at all.

A few years later, I was introduced to the writings of Rachel Held Evans. I believe Rachel was a prophetic voice in our midst before her untimely death just a couple years ago. She wrote a book that intrigued me titled, “Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions.” (later this title was changed to “Faith Unraveled” and I have included it in our reading list). In this book she says,

“With the best of intentions, the generation before mine worked diligently to prepare their children to make an intelligent case for Christianity. We were constantly reminded of the superiority of our own worldview and the shortcomings of all others.

We learned that as Christians, we alone had access to absolute truth and could win any argument. The appropriate Bible verses were picked out for us, the opposing positions summarized for us, and the best responses articulated for us, so that we wouldn’t have to struggle through two thousand years of theological deliberations and debates but could get right to the bottom line on the important stuff: the deity of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, the role and interpretation of Scripture, and the fundamentals of Christianity.

As a result, many of us entered the world with both an unparalleled level of conviction and a crippling lack of curiosity. So ready with the answers, we didn’t know what the questions were anymore.

So prepared to defend the faith, we missed the thrill of discovering it for ourselves. So convinced we had God right, it never occurred to us that we might be wrong.

In short, we never learned to doubt. Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God.

The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice, the latter a virtue.

Where would we be if the apostle Peter had not doubted the necessity of food laws, or if Martin Luther had not doubted the notion that salvation can be purchased?

What if Galileo had simply accepted church-instituted cosmology paradigms, or William Wilberforce the condition of slavery? We do an injustice to the intricacies and shadings of Christian history when we gloss over the struggles, when we read Paul’s epistles or Saint Augustine’s Confessions without acknowledging the difficult questions that these believers asked and the agony with which they often asked them.

If I’ve learned anything over the past five years, it’s that doubt is the mechanism by which faith evolves. It helps us cast off false fundamentals so that we can recover what has been lost or embrace what is new.

It is a refining fire, a hot flame that keeps our faith alive and moving and bubbling about, where certainty would only freeze it on the spot.

I would argue that healthy doubt (questioning one’s beliefs) is perhaps the best defense against unhealthy doubt (questioning God). When we know how to make a distinction between our ideas about God and God himself, our faith remains safe when one of those ideas is seriously challenged.

When we recognize that our theology is not the moon but rather a finger pointing at the moon, we enjoy the freedom of questioning it from time to time.

 We can say, as Tennyson said,

“Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they.”

I sometimes wonder if I might have spent fewer nights in angry, resentful prayer if only I’d known that my little systems — my theology, my presuppositions, my beliefs, even my fundamentals — were but broken lights of a holy, transcendent God. I wish I had known to question them, not him.

What my generation is learning the hard way is that faith is not about defending conquered ground but about discovering new territory.

Faith isn’t about being right, or settling down, or refusing to change. Faith is a journey, and every generation contributes its own sketches to the map. I’ve got miles and miles to go on this journey, but I think I can see Jesus up ahead.”

About the time I read this, I was introduced to my first Quakers - who happened to be part of my doctoral program in Oregon. I remember over a meal at Cannon Beach learning about the fluidity of beliefs and openness to question Quakers practiced.

I was introduced to something I had believed, but never incorporated into my faith, that being the ongoing revelation of God (which brought many queries to my mind).

Being raised in churches that had fixed creeds, faith statements, and even volumes and volumes of explanations for each and every doctrine, I was pleasantly surprised, relieved even, to find Quakers not having any of these and instead embracing a desire to keep things open to continued dialog and learning.

Or like our scripture for this morning says – I love Eugene Peterson’s translation:

That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
 and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
 like an adventurer on a treasure hunt…you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.

Questioning and processing queries are like a prospector panning for gold or an adventurer on a treasure hunt. That to me is exciting. That keeps me thriving and progressing.

Faith then is an adventure, and ever-changing opportunity to experience the Divine in and through our lives in the present moment.

For us Quakers, queries can be questions that guide our personal and group adventure on how our lives and actions are shaped by Love and Truth.

Queries or questions are so important to our Quaker faith, we even make them part of every meeting for worship. I will never forget my first experience of this in Oregon, after our worship leader shared some thoughts on the scriptures, and even read a poem by Mary Oliver, he then said something that I say almost every week at First Friends,

“Now, let us take a moment to enter a time of waiting worship, where I have prepared a couple of queries in the manner of Friends for us to ponder.”

That first time, I thought, wait? Is he going to leave this open ended?

See, there was some anxiety rising in me…I remember being taught in other religious denominations that unless you “closed the deal” (as they said) and told the attenders that they need not wrestle with these things because Jesus has taken care of this and as long as you believe in him, then everything will be ok – just don’t give them wiggle room to ask questions or doubt.

Here I was learning just the opposite. Our leaders said, “I hope you wrestle with these queries throughout the week and that we can discuss them more as we live and work together this week.”

The emphasis is not on having the final answer, but more on how to live a life more completely aligned with the life of the spirit and our neighbor.

Queries or asking questions, even wrestling with my doubts have become a powerful spiritual discipline for me.

I have found that returning again and again to the same prompt for deep reflection can set the stage for new understandings, changes of heart, and a rising sense of loving action that needs to be taken.

What I have realized and even Mary Blackburn during waiting worship shared in vocal ministry last week, to be a thriving and progressive Quaker Meeting means we must be open to allow people to question the faith and what they truly believe. I agree with Mary that this is an extremely important aspect of what First Friends offers our world in 2022.

To Thrive or to grow or develop well or vigorously, as I introduced last week, takes us asking ourselves queries.

And allowing questions means we will continue to “develop gradually or in stages – step by step - overtime – or again like I introduced last week, progressively.

Or maybe we as Quakers could see this through Rainer Maria Rilke’s eyes, this is how he put it in his, “Letter to a Young Poet”:

…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Part of my most recent spiritual retreat I explored my own doubt and questioning. During the week-long retreat I read the book, “Faith After Doubt,” where Brian McLaren agrees with Rilke in the process. He says,

“Doubt [questioning], it turns out, is the passageway from each stage to the next. Without doubt, there can be growth within a stage, but growth from one stage to another usually requires us to doubt the assumptions that give shape to our current stage.”

That means Questioning, Queries, or simply doubt is key to us becoming a thriving and progressive Quaker Meeting in 2022.

Now, as we enter a time of waiting worship, let us ponder the following queries in the manner of Friends:

·        What questions or queries am I hiding in my heart? and why?

·        What queries do I need to engage and wrestle with throughout this week and possibly share with a fellow Friend?

·        How may my doubt and questioning help First Friends become a more thriving and progressive Quaker Meeting?

2-20-22 - Moving from Heaven to Earth (Part 1)

Moving from Heaven to Earth (Part 1)

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

February 20, 2022

Good morning and welcome to Light Reflections. Today, we begin a new sermon series. Our scripture reading for this first installment is from Matthew 6:9-13. A very familiar set of words from Jesus. 

9 “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,[a]
    but deliver us from the evil one.[b]’

A few months ago, when we came back together in-person for worship, we simplified our virtual presence and created this format called “Light Reflections from First Friends.” As part of that change, we included a voice-over which Beth Henricks reads at the beginning of these videos that describe our meeting. In that voiceover she says,  

“First Friends is a thriving, progressive Quaker Meeting in the city of Indianapolis, Indiana.”

When I wrote this descriptor, I had chosen these words very carefully, because I believe First Friends has historically been a thriving and progressive meeting from its earliest days. I am sure some people would like to debate this and even say we should not use these words.

A church of about 300 people would not be “thriving” by many people’s standards, today, especially in the Midwest and even here in Indianapolis - which is known for its mega-church mindset and many mega-church ministries. 

And obviously in the political arena in which we find ourselves, especially in Indiana, the use of the word, progressive, must be stripped of its politicized and often negative connotation and returned to its proper place in our Quaker vocabulary to be fully understood.

So, let’s start this 7-week series, “To Be Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022” with some basic definitions. 

What do I mean when I say we are “thriving and progressive”?  Well, the dictionary says that to thrive means,

“to grow or develop well or vigorously”

And to be progressive means,

“happening or developing gradually or in stages – step by step.”

As Beth shared last week in our “Adult Affirmation Program” Quakers have been known for our “splits” or as we say in the church, “schisms.”  Now, that does not seem like thriving. 

As well, Quakers are not that big of a religious society throughout the world and we have greatly declined in numbers over the years.

But again, I want to clarify, I am not saying Quakers or the Religious Society of Friends, or even Western Yearly Meeting are thriving and progressive.  

I am saying we, here at First Friends are growing and developing well and I believe vigorously.  The ministry opportunities, the worship experiences, the small groups, the children and youth programming all are thriving at our meeting. If you don’t think so, you must not know what is going on at First Friends and its impact throughout Quakerdom.

As well, we are what I have called a “slow church” or “slow meeting” – we are developing gradually and intentionally, or we could say in stages – step by step.  This is where I would say we are more similar to the greater Quaker world. Quakers or Friends have always been progressive in this form. 

We have always been willing to expectantly wait, seek the Spirit’s guidance, and together affirm our fellow sisters and brothers.  Because we have been “progressive” we have responded often quite differently, even at times radically, to our world, to the neighboring theologies, to even our understanding of Scripture.  

So, in 2022, I think if we at First Friends want to continue this beautiful tradition, we are going to need to lean into the fact that we are a thriving and progressive Quaker meeting in the city of Indianapolis. 

Now that being said, I want to begin this series with looking at a shift that, I believe, Quakers have been trying to make from early on.  It has been sidetracked, confused, even at times lost among Quakers. For us to be a thriving and progressive meeting in 2022, I believe it will take a shift from being heaven focused to becoming earthly focused.  

During our visit to the mosque a week ago, one of the young Muslim girls made a generalization that most religions believe in a heaven and hell.  I know many people in our meeting and in many Quaker circles who do not believe in a physical heaven or hell – and for a variety of reasons – but this is not what I want to focus on this morning. 

Instead, I want to look at our focus and what it means to move from a heavenly trajectory to an earthlier one.  That will take us learning how early Quakers viewed scripture and how it moves us away from a transactional to a more transformative way of living and being.

As I said in the promotion of this series, I will also be providing a “reading list” which you will be able to find in our weekly newsletter, Friend to Friend and on our Facebook pages (this list will most likely be updated as we move through this series). 

T. Vail Palmer Jr. in his book “Face to Face: Early Quaker Encounters with the Bible” helped define how early Quakers utilized the Bible. 

For Palmer, he had to go on a journey of discovery and step out of his many engrained views of early Quakers to finally see what other educators and historians had come to understand. 

And what Palmer found was that it came down to “empathy” – yes, I said empathy.   

Since George Fox and Margaret Fell were both pioneers of narrative theology, and they both read the Bible in personal, rather than legalistic terms, thus they both engaged the scriptures by empathetically identifying with the characters of scripture. This may be a new concept for some, but let me explain.

Palmer says,

“…most Christian theologians, ministers, and moralists, have looked to the Bible as a handbook, a collection of resources and guidelines for salvation and Christian living…or they regarded the Bible as a legal constitution, not subject to amendment as the American Constitution is. George Fox…and Margaret Fell turned that approach upside down.”

Unlike theologian John Calvin who was a lawyer and used that discipline to approach his understanding of scripture, George Fox and Margaret Fell instead took an empathetic view. 

One great example of the difference this approach makes is with the role of women in the church. 

Calvin saw women in a scriptural legal system, and he deducted that women have no authority in the church – and especially not to be preachers or pastors. 

George and Margaret taking an empathetic view retold the stories of women in the Bible and empathized with their condition – thus they came to see women as having the full right to teach, preach, and exercise authority in the church.

Even Scottish Quaker and Apologist, Robert Barclay even understood this empathic view, when he wrote the following:

“God has seen meet that herein we should, as in a looking-glass, see the conditions and experiences of the saints of old: that finding our experience answer to theirs, we might thereby be the more confirmed and comforted, and our hope of attaining the same end strengthened; that observing the providences attending them, seeing the snares they were liable to, and beholding their deliverances, we may thereby be made wise unto salvation.” 

Sadly, for a long time in history, Friends did not embrace this empathetic view.  But Michael Birckle at Earlham School of Religion reemphasized and pointed out the resurgence of this empathetic approach in the ministry of John Woolman.

Birckle stresses how Woolman had a “near sympathy” with the biblical prophets which opened a way for his “near sympathy” with Native Americans and black slaves.  Woolman took an empathetic view of the biblical prophets and it led him to respond in a similar way to the oppressed of his day.  

Painter shows that it would be Thomas Kelly who would reintroduce us to this empathetic reading of scripture in our modern day.  Kelly wrote in Reality of the Spiritual World of

“…the Fellowship and Communion of the Saints, the Blessed Community. We find a group answer in the Scriptures. For now, we know, from within, some of the Gospel writers, and the prophets, and the singers of songs, or Psalms.  For now, they seem to be singing our song, or we can sing their song, or the same song of the Eternal Love is sung through us all, and out into the world.

What this means for us today, is exactly what Michael Birckle comes to proclaim, that

“The story in the Bible is our own story, it is relived in our own lives” “The sense of connectedness that we may come to feel with biblical stories and figures through meditative reading can grow to be applied to wider life. As we come to see that the biblical story is our personal story, we may also come to see that others’ stories can in some sense become our own story.”

So, what does this approach mean for us today?

First, I believe it takes our focus off where we are going when we die and trying to understand and relegate mysteries beyond our comprehension.  And it grounds us again in the present moment here on earth.

Taking an empathetic view of the bible, like our earliest Friends, has us entering into an exercise in character formation with the lives of these biblical persons. 

As we identify with Mary, with the apostles like John and Paul, with the great Old Testament prophets – even with Jesus himself – we share their compassion (as I talked about last week) for the poor, for persons not protected by the structures of their society, for foreigners, we empathize with these people and cross boundaries into the fellowship of outsiders – or as it says in the book of Hebrews, the “strangers and foreigners of the earth.”   

Second, when making our focus all about heaven, it draws us to want to make “cookie-cutter” followers that all look and believe like us. It also leads us to draw lines with who is in and who is out and to attempt to control that division.

Yet when we empathize with the characters of scripture, we see many different approaches and outcomes and that more people than we might expect are accepted – much like our Quaker founders.   

Painter concludes,

“Is it not true empathy to recognize that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus? (Galatians 3:28). The great mission of the church, the people of God, is to be an ever-widening covenant community in which all hostile groups come together – Jew and Gentile, black and white, gay and straight, American and Middle Eastern – because

Christ Jesus is…our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us,…that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups in one body through the cross…you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens of the saints and also members of the household of God. (Ephesians 2:13-16, 19)

To me, this empathetic view makes sense to how the early Quakers could thrive and progress.  How they could be radical and uniting in such a divided and turbulent time. How they could embrace those that others wanted to oppress, ignore, or separate from.  And how they could find hope and peace in that struggle. 

They were able to embrace our scripture for this morning where Jesus says to pray that God’s kingdom comes, and God’s will be done, [and here it is] on earth as it is in heaven.”

May we too empathize with the characters of the Bible and respond to our condition in the present moment.  May we turn our focus off of the future or the eternal and make a difference in the now.  This will help us become more thriving and progressive Friends, today.

And like Lucretia Mott suggested, if we take this empathetic approach, we may find our own testimonies and lives becoming the continuing volumes of the scriptures in our present day.

Next week we will talk about an important aspect of helping play out this empathetic understanding by allowing ourselves to ask questions (or as we say, queries).

Until then, let us enter waiting worship and ponder these queries:

·        How might I need to move from a heavenly focus to an earthlier one?

·        What characters in the bible do I need to see through a more empathetic view? And how might that change my response to my world?

·        In what ways do I see First Friends as a thriving and progressive meeting in Indianapolis?

2-13-22 - Something Worth Seeing

Something Worth Seeing

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

February 13, 2022

Philippians 2:3-5

Always consider the other person to be better than yourself, so nobody thinks of his own interests first, but everyone thinks of the other people’s interests instead. In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus.

Last Saturday, Sue and I were blessed with two tickets to The Lume, the digital experience of Vincent van Gogh’s work at Newfields. I have to be honest, I had mixed feelings about the experience since it seemed like a marketing and money-making gimmick. And there were times when I did feel like I was experiencing something at Disney World more than at an art museum. Yet once we found a place to sit and take in the entirety of the presentation, I felt a deep spiritual connection that I was not expecting.

A couple of years ago, on his departure from a visit to our home, my friend, John Pattison from my previous Meeting in Oregon left our family a gift. It was the book, “Learning from Henri Nouwen & Vincent van Gogh: A Portrait of the Compassionate Life” by Carol A. Berry. I was intrigued by the book since I have always found Nouwen’s writing and van Gogh’s art speaking to my condition. Thanks to Carol Berry, here they were both interacting in one volume.

As I sat on the floor in the Lume taking in a visual and musical parade of van Gogh’s works, I was taken back to a quote Carol included in her book from art critic Maurice Beaugourg who said,

“One shouldn’t look at just one painting by Mr. Vincent van Gogh, one has to see them all in order to understand. “

These days, unless you go to the van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands you may at the most see one or two of his works at a time. A great deal of van Gogh’s collection has been spread out for more people to experience.

One of the beautiful aspects of The Lume, which I was not expecting, was how the viewer is invited on a journey through the life of van Gogh both in a chronological order of his paintings, as well as the places in which he lived. More in the way that Maurice suggested to get the full van Gogh effect.

I found myself mesmerized as they presented everything from the early sketches depicting the rural and urban poor, the somber interiors of peasant cottages in Holland, the individual tender portraits of the people in his town, the static bouquets of flowers, to the sundrenched landscapes created in the south of France.

Henri Nouwen believed that viewing van Gogh’s work in a sequential course would reveal the artist’s attempts at developing an art that spoke, that communicated, and that would touch people.

Nouwen also believed, “Vincent offers hope because he looks very closely at people and their world and discovers something worth seeing.”

That is exactly what I was experiencing. Yet it was clear, if you didn’t know van Gogh’s story, this would not have as much meaning. The emotion, the passion, even the struggle would just be strokes of paint or markings of charcoal. My wife, Sue leaned over at one point and commented, “I wonder how many of these people know van Gogh’s story?” I said, “Sadly, probably very few.”

The world has spent so much time exploring the life of Vincent van Gogh from an art history and psychoanalytical view, they have totally missed the deeply spiritual man behind the brush.

Van Gogh was a compassionate man who had a sincere love and care for the poor. Henri Nouwen explained this well, when he wrote,

“…when you realize that you share the basic human traits with all humanity, when you are not afraid of defining yourself as being the same and not different,” you have reached a place of commonality, a place where the burdens of life can be shared. The word compassion means “to suffer with.”

Van Gogh was a person who confessed his part in the suffering human condition and was willing to recognize that the anchor hold of their identity is in the common experience of being human.

Whether he lived in an urban or rural setting, van Gogh sought out the poor, the downtrodden, the less-fortunate, even the outcasts. He developed a solidarity with them. Vincent’s life was about taking Paul’s words from our text today literally. Listen as I read it again:

“Always consider the other person to be better than yourself, so nobody thinks of his own interests first, but everyone thinks of the other people’s interests instead. In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus.”

Van Gogh was known to ask the peasants in the countryside and poor of the city’s almshouses to stop for a moment and allow him to spend some time with them while he sketched them. This artistic pause connected him in a deep way to his subjects. Together they experienced kinship and companionship – and Vincent’s compassion and solidarity grew – because he took time to understand their condition, their perspectives, and what was on their hearts.

Vincent hoped that one day his work would be able to express to the greater world the deep feelings, concerns and needs of his subjects - that it would ultimately give them the voice that they could never have.

I became emotional and even held back tears as variations of the peasants, potato farmers, weavers, miners, and sowers in the fields slowly paraded past me on the walls of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I no longer could see them as just historical depictions of people. These were people that van Gogh had compassion on and whom he built solidarity with and wanted to represent and allow their story to be remembered.

The irony that we, 150 or so years later, would be paying money to go see renditions of their faces, their conditions, their lifestyles – and to think, most of these works of art are considered priceless.

I wonder if in another 150 years, we will be missing the point of what we are seeing at some art museum, with paintings of the homeless living under a overpass, migrant farmers working in our fields, minors in sweat shops making our name brand products, refuge families with multiple generations living in one bedroom apartments, elderly black people displaced because of gentrification…and the list could go on.

Even though Vincent had an on-off leaning to a career in ministry, he never seemed to embrace it fully -- or did he in a way we may not have expected?

Often Vincent would write to his brother, Theo and explain in depth what he was experiencing, painting, and feeling. On one occasion he wrote,

“Happy is he who has faith in God, for he shall, although not without struggle and sorrow and life’s difficulties, overcome in the end. One cannot do better than, amidst everything in all circumstances, in all places and at all times, to hold fast to the thought of God and strive to learn more of Him; one can do this through the Bible as well as through all other things.

It is good to go on believing that everything is full of wonder, more so than one can comprehend, for that is the truth; it is good to remain sensitive and lowly and meek in heart, even though one has to hide that feeling sometimes, because that is often necessary, it is good to be very learned about the things that are hidden from the wise and the educated of this world but are revealed instinctively to the poor and simple, to women and babies.

For what can one learn that is better than what God has put by nature into every human soul, namely that which in the depths of every soul lives and loves, hopes and believes, unless it is wantonly destroyed?”

Van Gogh is a remarkable theologian, pastor, even example for us today, as well as an artist. Yet it is no wonder people thought he was crazy. People in our world still think those who try to help the poor, the oppressed, the neglected, are crazy. I hear people say all the time, “They have all the same opportunities we have, let them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. They don’t need our help.”

But the reality is when we say these things, we are missing the point. It is lacking compassion – especially the part where we “suffer with.”

Over and over in scripture, we skip right over the phrase that starts almost every encounter Jesus has with the people he was ministering to…

·        “He had compassion on them,”

·        “He had compassion on her,”

·        “He had compassion on the multitude.”

·        “He had compassion on the city.”

Until one enters another person’s condition, we really can’t say they need to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”

Much like the Pete Rollins’ story from last week or the earlier quote from Henri Nouwen, until we realize that we share the basic human traits with all humanity and are not afraid of defining ourselves as being the same and not different, we will not reach a place of commonality, a place where the burdens of life can be shared.

When we look at our less fortunate neighbors, our suffering neighbors, our oppressed neighbors, our addicted neighbors…do we simply turn our heads, avoid them, and maybe hope we didn’t see their condition?

Or maybe we hope to comfort them by writing a check or making a donation to an organization that will help them.

Henri Nouwen taught,

“Those who come together in mutual vulnerability are bound together by a new strength that makes them into one body. Comfort does not take our suffering away, nor does it minimize the dread of being. Comfort does not even dispel our basic human loneliness. But comfort gives us the strength to confront together the real conditions of life, not as an unavoidable fate, but as an inexhaustible source of new understanding.”

What if we sought “something worth seeing” in each of our neighbors?

What if we took the time to sit with them and just listen, to understand their condition, to take the time to paint in our own minds a picture of their tender souls? An exhibit that would run through our minds as the paintings of van Gogh passed before me at the Lume.

And since in our world, we often assume because of our great wealth and privilege that we are to be the “saviors,” what if we stopped and entered into a conversation with a pallet of compassion – a willingness to “suffer with” our neighbors. How might that change things?

Henri Nouwen called it joy, but not how we might think of joy. He says,

Joy is hidden in compassion…It seems unlikely that suffering with another person would bring joy. Yet being with a person in pain, offering simple presence to someone in despair, sharing with a friend times of confusion and uncertainty…such experiences can bring us deep joy. Not happiness, not excitement, not great satisfaction, but the quiet joy of being there for someone else and living in deep solidarity with our brothers and sisters in this human family. Often this is a solidarity in weakness, in brokenness, in woundedness, but it leads us to the center of joy, which is sharing our humanity with others.”

So this week, as we enter a time of waiting worship, I ask you to ponder the following queries.

·        Where am I discovering “something worth seeing” in my neighbors?

·        To whom do I need to have more compassion – a willingness to suffer with?

·        How might I truly find joy in sharing my humanity with those around me?

2-6-22 - What Are You Looking For?

What Are You Looking For?

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

February 6, 2022

Good Morning and welcome to Light Reflections.  Today’s scripture passage is from John 8:31-32 from the Message version.  

Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. “If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.”

As I spoke of this week in our weekly newsletter’s opening article, “As Way Opens,” each January I set aside some time for personal reflection.  Part of that reflection as a Quaker is asking myself some basic queries. 

In the “As Way Opens” article I spoke of the query “Who am I?” and how I must cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of, what Howard Thurman called, “the genuine” inside myself so I could truly make a difference in the world.

Today, I want to move to another query I asked myself during this time and share some of the insights that were raised by several different teachers as I processed this query. 

The query I would like for us to consider is “What are you looking for?”

Just sit with that one for a moment.  “What are you looking for?”

This is not a new question – since the beginning of time people have been looking for something.  The Bible also is clear that the Hebrew people were looking for something – they had been looking for what they called a messiah, one who would come and save them from the injustices perpetrated by their enemies or the suffering in the world.  

I believe people are still seeking messiahs today – some person or divine being that will come and relieve them of their struggles and suffering.  All we have todo is watch the news and we will find someone wanting to be saved from Covid, from injustice, even from the stupidity or insanity of our fellow neighbors or family members.   

Many of the Hebrew people in Jesus’ day believed that they’d found the kind of savior that they were looking for in Jesus. 

But in a weird twist of events, Jesus refused to be the kind of messiah that they were looking for. Jesus refused to lead them in an armed revolt against the Romans.  Instead, Jesus called them to a new journey or what the Bible labels a new “way.” 

Like I spoke of a few weeks ago, Jesus entered a world that was embracing Empire by bringing a message that renounced empire, violence, hatred, and greed; a path that demanded non-violent resistance, love of enemy, and care for the poor and marginalized among them. 

Actually, Jesus’ way for many would not be an easy journey – even Jesus said one would have to count the cost of living this message in the world.

Thus, in the Gospel of John we see early followers of Jesus, retelling the story of Jesus in ways that recast him into the role of the Messiah that they preferred. 

Isn’t this just what we do still today, we like to create God in our own image to make it easier to swallow the message.  We twist stories, seek different angles, even conform to specific doctrines or creeds to make our neighbors fall into order with us – if everyone believes and acts the same way it must be easier, right?

Again, I ask, “What are you looking for?”  

Rev. Dawn Hutchings, a progressive Christian pastor and writer says,

“Jesus refuses to be the kind of messiah that we want. Jesus calls us not to believe in him, but follow him, follow him to passionately non-violently resist injustice, follow him by loving our enemies, follow him to care for the poor and the marginalized among us…Jesus lived and taught a way of being human that spoke directly to our common humanity and called us to walk a path that would lead humanity to a new way of being in the world. 

But what are we looking for? Are we looking for a different kind of Messiah than one who will not save us from our troubles?”

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to hear author, philosopher, and radical theologian, Peter Rollins tell a story which I believe illustrates this longing very nicely. Pete told of an 

“Old Buddhist parable that tells the story of a young woman who gives birth to a beautiful baby girl. But after only a few weeks the child dies and the woman is distraught.  She wraps the child’s body in linen and then she wraps the child’s body to her own, and she goes in search of someone, of anyone who could resuscitate her child. She goes to faith healers, and witch doctors.  She talks to the tribal elders. But nobody can help.

Finally, one of the elders says, “You know it’s rumored that high up in the mountains, away from everyone, there’s a holy man who is so close to the DIVINE that he can even raise the dead. 

Now perhaps this is a myth, or maybe he is long since dead, but there’s no one here who can help you. If you are that desperate, maybe you need to go in search of the holy man.

And so, she does. She packs a few provisions, and she goes up into the mountains to find the Holy Man. After a few days, she comes across a small hut in the middle of nowhere, beside a crystal-clear lake. She knocks on the door. 

After a couple of minutes an old man comes to the door.  She begins to weep.  She says, “I don’t know if you’re the one they talk about and I don’t know if you can help, but my child is dead, and I must have her back.”

Well, the old man takes pity on her and he says, “I am the one you’re looking for and I can help. But I need to concoct a potion and the potion requires ingredients and one of those ingredients is a handful of mustard seeds taken from a home that has not been touched by the black sun of suffering that has scorched your life. Go down to the village, find me the mustard seeds, and then return.

And so, she does, she goes down to the village and she goes from house to house. But she cannot find one family that has not been touched by suffering, death, and loss. Yet, as she listens to the stories of other people’s suffering and as she’s able to speak of her own, she gradually comes to terms with the loss of her child and is able to bury her in the Earth.”

The Holy Man never offered the woman salvation from her troubles, but neither did he send her away without hope, instead the Holy One creates a space where the woman is able to engage other people’s stories and is able to speak her own until she is able to mourn and to let go and to heal. 

We all want to escape our suffering and our difficulties; we all want to be saved from the ups and downs of life in this world. But if we want to find freedom, to find joy, to find love, to find life, we must engage our humanity.

Folks, I am going to be really honest, Jesus is not what we are looking for if we are looking to escape our humanity. 

If anything, Jesus leads us into a DEEPER humanity.

When we reflect upon Pete Rollin’s story, we see ourselves carrying around our own treasured images of the DIVINE. We see ourselves holding on to the God of our own creation, hoping against hope for a Messiah who will breathe life into the lifeless image that the god of our childhood has become. 

How many of us have spent years looking for the magic mustard seeds, so we don’t have to give up our illusions? 

I ask us again, “What are we looking for?”

So many of us are just looking for “salvation” from life – what I like to call the Calgon Theology (it may date me a bit – but most will remember the commercial – “Calgon, take me away!”)

Jesus isn’t about escapism. Nothing he did was about escapism. Instead, Jesus is a savior who leads us into life with all its various twists and turns.

Instead of the magic that most religions today are trying to sell, Jesus is offering us life itself.

So again, what are you looking for? 

Do you want to be saved from life in the world or do you want to live life? 

I have come to realize that Jesus is the kind of savior who sends us out to look for mustard seeds in the midst of the living. We may not find what we are looking for. But what we do find empowers us to let go of our illusions and live fully, deeply, and completely.

Jesus’ way of being in the world was not an easy path to walk, there is no salvation from our troubles, only hope, hope that as we journey together, we might find LOVE. 

The LOVE which nourishes, grounds and sustains us in this marvelous life that each of us has been given.  And that is a message and life we can embrace!  

Now, as we enter waiting worship, I want us to spend some time with the queries presented in this message. Ask yourself?

·      What am I looking for?

·      Am I looking for the “magic mustard seeds,” so I don’t have to give up my illusions? 

·      Do I just want to escape this world, or learn to really live in it?

1-30-22 - Do We Need More Love or More Wisdom?

Do We Need More Love or More Wisdom?

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Associate Pastor Beth Henricks

January 30, 2022

24-26 He told another story. “God’s kingdom is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. That night, while his hired men were asleep, his enemy sowed thistles all through the wheat and slipped away before dawn. When the first green shoots appeared and the grain began to form, the thistles showed up, too.

27 “The farmhands came to the farmer and said, ‘Master, that was clean seed you planted, wasn’t it? Where did these thistles come from?’

28 “He answered, ‘Some enemy did this.’

“The farmhands asked, ‘Should we weed out the thistles?’

29-30 “He said, ‘No, if you weed the thistles, you’ll pull up the wheat, too. Let them grow together until harvest time. Then I’ll instruct the harvesters to pull up the thistles and tie them in bundles for the fire, then gather the wheat and put it in the barn.’”

I was taken by a post of Richard Rohr near the end of 2021.  He wrote “On the last day of the year, I generally withdraw to pray. A few years ago, I asked myself: What should I pray for this year? What do we need in these turbulent times? Naturally I was strongly tempted to pray for more love. But it occurred to me that I’ve met so many people in the world who are already full of love and who really care for others. Maybe what we lack isn’t love but wisdom. It became clear to me that I should pray above all else for wisdom.

We all want to love, but as a rule we don’t know how to love rightly. How should we love so that life will really come from it? I believe that what we all need is wisdom. I’m very disappointed that we in the Church have passed on so little wisdom. Often the only thing we’ve taught people is to think that they’re right—or that they’re wrong. We’ve either mandated things or forbidden them. But we haven’t helped people to enter upon the narrow and dangerous path of true wisdom. On wisdom’s path we take the risk of making mistakes. On this path we take the risk of being wrong. That’s how wisdom is gained.”

This really set me back as I often pray for more love in our world, more love for our community, our families and friends, more love for our enemies.  Jesus said that we must love our enemies as ourselves.  I’ve always looked at this as a commandment to embrace self-love and compassion because if we don’t have this, we can’t love anyone else.  And I still believe that.  Self-love is crucial in our journey. 

But maybe even more than love which seems like it could be a more fleeting emotional response, we need to pursue wisdom.  Wisdom within ourselves as a way to deeply experience God, our neighbors and our world. 

When we are children, we usually don’t think our parents are very wise.  We feel like they are old fashioned and out of date and their words of wisdom seem limiting in how one wants to pursue life as a young person.  But as each of us lives through the pain, the heartbreak, the joy, and the fullness our parents words often echo back into our minds, and we realize the depth of wisdom that they had.  

How do we acquire wisdom?  I’ve asked a number of folks and I hear the words time and experience again and again.  We need to go through a lot of experience, pain, heartbreak, joy, darkness and light though our years to come to a limited place of wisdom.   But does age dictate experience?  I have experienced much younger folks that have great wisdom – and some older folks that don’t seem to have much wisdom at all.

Both the Old and the New Testament offer great wisdom for us to explore and embrace.  The book of Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes and Job include kernels of wisdom and guidance to shape our lives.   The great rabbis of the Jewish community spend a lifetime reading, reflecting and experiencing to share the wisdom of the truths held in the Bible.  I’ve become a fan of Dwight Wilson, Quaker writer, minister and activist.  He has a book called Modern Psalms in Search of Peace and Justice and he gives his own version of Psalms of wisdom, and I share Psalm 40 from the book :

On my road to nowhere, I turned back.

In the moment of enlightenment, You were there.

As I matured, I realized that during my lost period You had been within,

Calling in a still, small voice unrecognizable by those who choose not to hear.

Forgive me my overbearing pride even as you forgive those who learned self -hatred,

thus despising gifts that You had awarded.

Society teaches that one from my background is best seen as an outcast.

Thank You for your unedited praise messages far beyond pages, screens, factories, offices, shelters, courtrooms and prisons.

I hear them validating my essence, clearing the way for each wounded return.

Of course, the greatest wisdom teacher in all of the Bible was Jesus.  Rohr shares that “Jesus came to teach us the way of wisdom. He brought us a message that offers to liberate us from both the lies of the world and the lies lodged in ourselves. The words of the Gospel create an alternative consciousness, solid ground on which we can really stand, free from every social order and from every ideology. Jesus called this new foundation the Reign of God, and he said it is something that takes place in this world and yet will never be completed in this world. This is where faith comes in. It is so rare to find ourselves trusting not in the systems and -isms of this world but standing at a place where we offer our bit of salt, leaven, and light. It seems so harmless, and, even then, we have no security that we’re really right. This means that we have to stand in an inconspicuous, mysterious place, a place where we’re not sure that we’re sure, where we are comfortable knowing that we do not know very much at all.”

Cynthia Bourgeaut describes how Jesus guides us to wisdom through Metanoia in her book, The Wisdom of Jesus.  “Metanoia, usually translated as repentance literally means to go beyond the mind or into the larger mind.  It means to escape from the orbit of the egoic operating system, which by virtue of its own internal hardwiring is always going to see the world in terms of polarized opposites and move instead into that nondual knowingness of the heart which can see and live from the perspective of wholeness.  This is the central message of Jesus.  This is what his Kingdom of Heaven is all about.  Let’s get into the larger mind, he says.  This is what is looks like.  This is how you do it.  Here, I’ll help you….” (pg 41)

This idea of Metanoia and moving out of our ego minds into the knowing of our heart and living in wholeness seems to be a key to wisdom.  And the path to this knowing is by kenosis which is emptying ourselves of our ego and embracing the Divine that brings a completeness to our being. I think much of Jesus’s target of his wisdom is not the Pharisees as we usually believe but it’s our own ego mind.  When Jesus was tempted in the desert by the Devil at the start of his ministry, he had to face his own ego and took the path of kenosis and emptied himself completely to God.     And became our wisdom teacher.

There is so much wisdom in Jesus’ teachings and parables.  Take some time this afternoon to read through the Beatitudes again in (Matthew 5:1-12).   It is chock full of wisdom and really turns around the system of opposites, rewards and punishments and how we set our goals and intentions for each one of us.    There is also such wisdom in his parables.  Parables are proverbs but even more than that in the way Jesus utilizes them.  Bourgeult shares  “His parables are much closer to what in the Zen tradition would be koans – profound paradoxes (riddles, if you like) that are intended to turn the egoic mind upside down and push us into new ways of seeing.” 

The parable that we read today is an example of this paradox.  A field of wheat was planted but an enemy came and sowed weeds in the wheat field.  So, when the plants grew there was wheat and weeds together.  When the slaves that worked the field asked if they should pull up the weeds the owner said no because in pulling up the weeds there was no way to not pull up the wheat also.   Let both of them grow together until harvest.  Jesus is describing this as the kingdom of heaven.  Sounds like the wheat and the weeds live together.  We have both wheat and weeds inside each of us.   Another paradox that turns my ego brain upside down.

I have been participating in the gathering on Thursdays each month that reflects on the gnostic gospels and discussing these writings that were part of the early Jesus followers. We have started to review some of the gospels like Thomas, Mary and others that are not included in the closed Biblical canon that we read.  It’s been fascinating to consider these other writings.  As preparation for the class, I have also started reading the book After Jesus Before Christianity by Erin Vearncombe, Brandon Scott and Hal Taussig for The Westar Christianity Seminary.  These authors explore what the early followers of the Anointed One were called in the first and second century.  The early followers were not a monolithic group but a significantly diverse group with different practices, stories, organizational structures and beliefs.  They did not call themselves Christians which is a term that came later likely to brand them as threats to the Roman Empire.  For most of them Jesus was a teacher, and they became students. “Drawing on this association, he is also called Wisdom, because he personified the wisdom characteristic of teachers.  This identification is also more nuanced and more clever than being smart, but it also names a divine figure  in Israel’s holy writings.  Sophia in Greek can mean a wise divine figure as well as the quality of being wise.  The Greek noun Sophia is also feminine, opening up other ways of imagining Jesus.  Calling Jesus Sophia, a feminine divine term, is very different from the patriarchal vocabulary normally applied to Jesus.  Likewise, the followers of Jesus, the wise teacher, are the “wise ones” or potentially the “wise women”, given Wisdom’s gendered identity.” (pg 26)

The Gospel of Thomas is an interesting book that has 114 short sayings, not much of a narrative but  offers much wisdom to us. I share the 22nd saying from the book with you:

When you are able to make two become one, the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, the higher like the lower, so that a man is no longer male, and a woman, female, but male and female become; when you are able to fashion an eye to replace an eye, an form a hand in place of a hand, or a foot for a foot, making one image supersede another – then you will enter in.

How do Quaker’s practice wisdom in their faith communities and their spiritual journeys?  I have observed many wise people in this Meeting and in other Quaker circles and one of the most important aspects to witnessing wisdom is by listening.  I think for Quaker’s wisdom begins with silence. First, we listen for that still small voice of God inside us and then we listen to each other.

Quaker wisdom is also about letting our lives speak. 

I appreciate Robert Lawrence Smith, the longtime head of school at Quaker Sidwell Friends in Washington DC writing a great little book titled A Quaker Book of Wisdom.  In the opening chapter he describes his dad’s writing of 4 generations of Quaker that were physicians in small towns in New Jersey.  “There were no Nobel laureates in my mother’s family.  Although generation after generation of the Stokes family produced doctors, there were no secretaries of state, five-star generals, literary luminaries, glamorous movie stars, bank robbers, long-distance swimmers or counterespionage agents.  No one the media would consider newsworthy….Rather my father was providing a record of men and women who lived active, useful lives, and who gave to their nation and their communities the best that was in them.” (xi)  Sounds like men and women living lives  of wisdom, consistent action, nothing earth shattering or exciting but letting their life speak.

I invite you to enter a time of reflection and unprogrammed worship.  Please consider the following queries:

How can I follow my path to more wisdom?

What wisdom can I receive from unlikely places? 

Where do I need to empty myself to allow more of the Divine wholeness inside of me?

1-23-22 - In the Beginning Was the Conversation!

In the Beginning Was the Conversation!

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

January 23, 2022

Good morning and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning our scripture text is a familiar one from John 1:1-5:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

As I mentioned in “As Way Opens” a couple of weeks ago, I started 2022 reading devotionally the book, “Church of the Wild” by Victoria Loorz.  There are many great things that I could preach on from this book, but one chapter specifically struck me and had me rethinking and even deconstructing some of my former theological understandings. 

It is not too often these days that I read something that has me engaged in the way that Chapter 6, In the Beginning was the Logos, has had me these first few weeks of 2022.

In this chapter, Loorz is focusing on the phrase, In the beginning was the Word. This is a statement we have all read or heard for most of our lives from the very beginning of the Gospel of John.

I have taught on this poetic text, preached sermons on it, even spent hours writing papers on the theological constructs that come from the idea of Jesus being the “Word” or as in the Greek it reads, “Logos.”

Where it hit me was when Loorz began her research on the word Logos.  I love doing research on words and phrases, part of my education has been all about this research as it is very important work for pastors when trying to interpret the wisdom of the scriptures. 

Yet, what I had been taught all my life, I have realized had taken, somewhat, for granted.  If there was one interpretation that I accepted as true without researching, it was “In the Beginning was THE WORD.”  “The word” was the given and proper English translation of the Greek word Logos – at least that is what I thought and had been taught for most of my education.   

Loorz helps give some background to the origin of the word logos and its interpretation over time. She says,

“Logos was first used in a cosmological way by Heraclitus of Ephesus, a Greek philosopher in the 15th Century BCE.  He used the word logos to articulate a kind of intelligent life force embedded in and interconnecting all things, ”a divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning.”  

Loorz points out that Heraclitus developed one of the most revolutionary concepts – the idea that all things are one – or what they now label “unitary Nature” or an indwelling unity behind the diversity in existing things.”

“Logos is the principle or power that shapes all and creates all things, immanent and embedded in all that exists…[It is] the relationship between all things, holding them together.”

She points out that this is a concept that many great thinkers throughout history have connected with – just calling them by different names.

Thich Nhat Hahn calls it “the web of interbeing.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer calls it “sacred reciprocity.”

David Whyte calls it “the conversational nature of reality.”

Quantum scientist David Bohn calls it “implicate order.”

Even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a way of describing this logos.  He called it an inescapable network of mutuality, which he said was tied in a single garment of destiny – meaning whatever effects one directly, affects all indirectly.

And not only great thinkers but all the great philosophies of the world utilize this idea of logos.  From the Stoics to the Chinese, to even the Persians – this concept of logos is a universal concept that almost all philosophies teach and embrace. 

So…what about the Christian faith of which we ascribe? 

I remember when I was in undergrad college in River Forest, Illinois.  Sue and I would frequent a store in Oak Park, Illinois (which has since sadly closed). The name of that store happened to be Logos. It was an eclectic store – filled with Bibles, Christian Contemporary Music CDs, and religious trinkets. 

In many ways, it was very much like the old Family Christian or Lifeway Stores, but there was a difference. Mixed in among the books on the shelves were books from other religious philosophies and trinkets from other religions. 

On occasion, the students at our Christian college would get upset and seek ways to question the owners for their confusing selection of items. I remember one student even saying, “The store is called Logos – it is clear that it should be all about Jesus – because Jesus was the Word.”

Until around the fourth Century, most theologians and translators translated the Greek work logos into Latin not English, because Latin was the official language of the church at the time.  Logos in Latin was translated as sermo. 

Here is the surprising thing.  When you and I hear the word sermo – we immediately think of the word sermon.  Thus, it is easy to think why they would translate it into English as “word.” 

Yet, the reality is that sermo does not mean word, but rather a manner of speaking back and forth – or simply a conversation. 

Sermo’s root is sero which means to weave and join, it is the intimate living of life together, living among, and all in intimate conversation.

The Apostle John wanted to connect to this understanding when he wrote his unique and much more metaphorical and poetic gospel.  Many believe John was trying to be culturally relevant in how he saw Christ. He wanted to identify Jesus with the logos – this divine indwelling through which all things were made.  

Early theologians and philosophers would have understood what John was trying to do saying logos had a relational dimension or force.  It was a metaphor or descriptor for the embodiment of Christ’s work – not the person of Jesus himself.

This is more like when we distinguish between the President of the United States and the Office of the President of the United States. One is about the man, Joe Biden, and the other is about the actions, the work, the impact, the legacy of the position.

I consider Logos for us to be like the Office of the Greater Conversation Relationship with our neighbors, the divine, even the natural world around us. When describing Margaret Wheatley’s idea of “turning to one another” and embracing the need for and conversation with each other, I was inviting us to tap into this greater office of conversation and relationship.

This means logos is bigger than just the person, Jesus.  It is more about the title we give Jesus, that being, the Christ.

In Seeking Friends we have been wrestling with Richard Rohr’s latest work, “The Universal Christ.” Where he speaks directly to the difference between Jesus and the Christ. Rohr says,

“Christ, as such, is not precisely a religious principle…but a life principle – the ubiquitous confluence of matter and spirit.”  Christ is not Jesus’ last name, but the title for his life’s purpose.”

What Rohr and Loorz help us see is that Christ is about radical solidarity. Christ is the conversation happening between everyone and everything.  Christ is not the word, but the conversation. 

Just listen again to our text from John 1 which I read earlier – but this time let me replace “word” with conversation.

In the beginning was the Conversation, and the Conversation was with God, and the Conversation was God. This was with God in the beginning. Through this conversation all things were made; without it nothing was made that has been made. In this conversation was life, and that life was the light of all mankind…

The conversation became flesh and made its dwelling among us. 

Just let that sink in for a moment.

Christ is the sacred conversation that links everything together.

I once taught a class to mostly freshmen at Huntington University.  It was an Introduction to Christianity class and a required course.  As part of the curriculum I included a talk by Rob Bell, who many of my Evangelical students considered a heretic. Ironically, this talk was more a science lesson than it was a religion or theology lesson.

During Rob’s talk he shares about how everything is made up of smaller and smaller things.  All which must be in relationship with one another. This he says is the interconnection of all things. 

At our molecular or subatomic state we are made of particles that have to be in relationship, or as some scientists say, in an ongoing conversation with one another to survive. Conversation and relationship is literally what we are made of.  

As we would watch Rob’s talk many lightbulbs would began going off in the heads of my students.

Hmmm…they would wonder…then begin to make the connections first in the scriptures. 

·        Where two or three are gathered – there I am in the midst of them. 

·        A cord of three strands is not easily broken.

·        Three is the magic number… (well, you get it). 

When we “turn to one another” as I said a few Sundays ago and strike up a conversation with each other, our conversation becomes as Loorz points out, “a holy space of exchange: a space in which I release some of what I used to think and be, in order to include you. And we both are changed.”

As Quakers we can embrace this understanding because when the God in me, meets the God in you, we two are changed.  It is when we don’t acknowledge the God in our neighbor that we begin to break down the relationship and stop the vital communication.

So why do we not translate logos as word, today, instead of conversation?

Because since the 4th Century, the Patriarchs have been intentionally translating it to the Latin word verbum instead of sermo. Verbum is a noun meaning word, where sermo is a verb meaning conversation. 

Since language not only describes things, but also produces culture, the Patriarchs decided that controlling the religious world meant defining it by nouns or what we would call things. Soon a successful life was about the pursuit of things.  This is known as empire.

It is into this male dominated empire of things that Jesus of Nazareth is born.  A man who comes with a revolutionary message that was all about resisting empire.

Jesus came from the Hebrew people whose language is verb-based and who focuses in great depth on the relationships between all things. The Hebrew people were not about trying to define the substance of God – instead they were more about relating to and pleasing God. 

Actually, God was considered a verb to the Hebrew people – “I am who I am” (or as it should be more appropriately verb-translated “becoming which will be becoming.”

As Loorz put it, “God is BEING, not A being.”

Most of American Christianity today is all about defining nouns.  We have lost the conversation.  Even me giving this sermon – from the Greek sermo – should actually be about a conversation with you – not just a lecture of sorts. 

That is why I try to offer queries that will continue the conversation throughout the week. To help us engage our religious faith in a way that taps us into the greater conversation we are all a part of – the logos. 

As Quakers, we speak of being Light Bearers, carriers of the Logos, the Tao, the spark of Divine love within us.  And as Loorz points out, “when we engage one another [when we choose to turn to one another] – the conversation between us becomes the manifestation of the sacred, moving us forward to the ever-evolving kin-dom of grace – that is the Wild Christ.”

I pray we at First Friends will work hard on embracing this logos or sacred conversation.  That we will seek to be verb-people instead of noun-people. That as we have these sacred conversations we will see the manifestation of God in our midst, in our lives, within each of us. 

It might just be a wild and unexpected ride – but first we must “turn to one another” and start a Divine conversation!

If you want to continue to learn more about this, I highly recommend you pick up “The Church of the Wild” by Victoria Loorz – It would be a great way to continue the conversation.  I am sure I will sharing more from this book in the future.

Now, as we enter waiting worship, I want to utilize some queries Victoria Loorz poses to conclude this sermon.

·        What would a Wild Christ – a Conversation who is the intermediary of love between all things…evoke in our world?

·        Is it possible to imagine the worldview of kingdoms and empires transforming into a wordview pf kin-dom and compassion?

·        How might Christianity be different if it could become a place for sacred conversation: a place to explore possibilities and express doubts and disagree, and encourage voices on the edges?

1-16-22 - Martin Luther King Jr Day Sermon by Jill Frame

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Jill Frame

January 16, 2022

Good morning, Friends. Instead of scripture today, I’d like to read to you an excerpt from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

There is something about history that conveys a feeling of inevitability. 

So, it is easy to look back at Martin Luther King Jr. sitting in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, in April 1963, pencil stub in hand, and imagine him confidently writing what he knew would be a work for the ages, words that would propel one of the most successful social justice campaigns in history and be proclaimed by presidents, recited by elementary school students, emblazoned on billboards and greeting cards.

I read some of those words to you today from King’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” to remind us that the truth is far different. In fact, the 34-year-old preacher who landed in a bleak cell on Good Friday was unsure whether the act of civil disobedience that brought him there – trumped up charges of violating a parade ordinance – had made any difference at all.

The Civil Rights movement was still young and had turned to its most ambitious target yet. Bombingham- a moniker for Birmingham at the time- was a contradiction: a fast-growing city and a town where racial segregation and the indignities of Jim Crow laws were locked in tight. Even though steel-working wages paid to blacks were half those paid to whites, they offered the best jobs around, and few were interested in rocking that boat.

Still, in January 1963 as Governor George Wallace was declaring “segregation now, segregation forever” in Alabama, King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference- or more commonly known as the SCLC- decided to target Birmingham with an economic boycott during the Easter shopping season. *Few* joined in. In fact, many middle-class blacks and about three-quarters of black clergy joined most of the whites in opposing the protests, arguing that the city should be given a chance. After all, they argued, a new mayor had just been elected and they wanted to give him some time to make changes.

According to Jonathan Rieder, a Professor of Sociology at Barnard College, and author of “Gospel of Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter From Birmingham Jail and the Struggle That Changed a Nation,” It was while sitting in solitary confinement, without food, and with very little community support, King was at one of his lowest points. 

King was panicked -- and for good reason. Three years prior, King had been jailed without other SCLC leaders in Atlanta. At one point during his imprisonment, King was put into a straight jacket and driven through the dark of night to the Reedsville prison. During the 3.5 hour drive, King was convinced he was being taken to an unknown location to be killed by the Klu Klux Klan. Now, here he was in Birmingham, once again jailed without other SCLC leaders. He was scared that the same fate awaited him in Birmingham that had in Atlanta. 

King was also depressed. One day while in jail, a trustee snuck in the Birmingham newspaper for him. King read the front-page column which was written by eight prominent (and very moderate) Alabama clergymen- comprised of a priest, a rabbi, and six protestant ministers. These clergymen might be called in today’s parlance, “white allies.” They appealed for calmness and forbearance and accused King of violence. 

After reading the column, he fell into a spiral of despair and a crisis of Spirit. 

So, let’s pause a moment and consider that appeal, framed as it was in such reasonable language. 

“Let’s just calm down now. I’m sure we can work something out.”

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Nobody likes conflict. We all want to get along, to resolve things. And that’s good.

But what happens when what appears to be “reasonableness” is just a way of masking obstruction, a way of sweeping under the rug valid complaints of injury and oppression, a way of discounting the felt experience of people who see no hope of remedy?

It’s a problem stated perhaps most famously in that ancient Hebrew scripture, the Book of Jeremiah, where the prophet complains, “I have given heed and listened, but they do not speak honestly; no one repents of wickedness, saying ‘What have I done?’ All of them turn to their own course like a horse plunging headlong into battle. . . . They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 8:5-6, 11)

TRUE THAT Jeremiah! There comes a point when we must pivot from the response that is reasonable to the one that the writer Cornell West calls, “radical,” a solution that goes to the root of the problem, that questions the most fundamental assumptions and argues for new ways of looking at the world, West argues that now nearly a half-century after King’s death we have lost sight of the radical edge of his work, of all the ways that his work questioned fundamental structures in American society and called us to larger lives.

We find the ground laid for that radical King in the “Letter from Birmingham City Jail.” And who knows? But for that front-page appeal from his critics, King may not have had the occasion or impetus at that point in his life to gather his thoughts in that way. We know he was depressed from the lack of response to the protests, editorials from national newspapers criticizing his action, and President Kennedy’s resistance to requests to help him. He was also sad at being away from his wife, Coretta, two days after the birth of their daughter, Bernice.

Ultimately though, that column ignited a fire in King, and he began writing so feverishly that some of his supporters worried for his state of mind. Wyatt Walker, a close friend, and ally went to visit King four days after he was arrested. WALKER later reported being perplexed after his visit. He couldn’t understand why King was so angered by the column. He wondered to himself, “Why is he so upset at these white preachers? This is exactly what we expected of them. We’ve got to get protests going! Let’s start focusing on liberating blacks! Why is he worried about these guys?”

All alone, King began scribbling on the edge of the newspaper, then when all the empty edges of the newspaper were depleted, he moved on to using sheet after sheet of toilet paper. His writings were smuggled out of the jail by a friend, Clarence Jones, who stuffed the writing down the front of his pants. King’s toilet paper and newspaper writings were then passed on to his 17-year-old secretary, who did her best to decipher his handwriting. For all of King’s dreams, this Letter starts out in a cry of pain and anger. 

It is here amid personal reflections on his family’s experience with racism and musing over passages of scripture that he lays down how he understands his calling to a radical activism, non-violent but centered in a love that refuses to see the separations that Birmingham’s laws enforce. You know the words: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he writes. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

He acknowledges that the purpose of his action is not to make peace but to stir things up: “To create such a crisis,” he says, “and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”

Those words may sound shocking, he says, but he makes no apologies: “There is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth,” he says, and “now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

King was released from jail on April 20th. Nothing much happened to the letter right away. It was released to the press and few newspapers were interested and it was pretty much ignored. Further, its addressed recipients never saw it until it was published months later. King’s friend, Wyatt Walker, was concerned at the lack of press attention that the Letter got, so he went to the American Friends Service Committee and they were the first organization to publish it at the end of May as a pamphlet. Christian Century published it June 12. And finally the New York Post published it. 

Today, we aren’t recalling Dr. King’s life from cradle to grave, or to discuss him preaching about the meaning of his dream. 

Today, I thought it was important to spend time really focusing on the story behind Dr. King’s now-famous letter. Let us not forget that the letter was written while King was in utter despair and was terrified for his life. He was able to hold on to the painful tension- of feeling his fury and anguish all the while refusing to create a movement. He found a constructive way to channel those feelings into this now famous letter. Let us not forget that parts of the letter had their humble origins on the edges of a smuggled newspaper and pieces of prison toilet paper. That only a small audience at first appreciated its importance. While it becomes a great document in retrospect, the circumstances of how it came into being were anything but! 

On the day that King received the Nobel Prize, the head of the Nobel committee referred to this letter specifically. He channels King when he stated, “These are words delivered to mankind. These are words for global injustice. These are words that arise from a context but they are universal.” 

Outside of the time and place in which he lived, his words stand the test of time. I hope you will take a few minutes tomorrow to read his Letter. To ask yourself how they might inspire you to take action. His words stand the test of time. 

When Dr. King was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for participating in a civil rights demonstration, he laid out what was necessary for people to do to live in this new day and BE the new day: To reject the myth of time. I’ll give Dr. King the last words today: “It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills… We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men and women willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.” 

As we prepare for waiting worship, let’s ponder these queries together: 

How have you allowed the myth of time- the “strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills” to impede you from action?

Have we spent much time contemplating something “radical,” i.e., a solution that goes to the root of the problem, that questions the most fundamental of our assumptions?

How are you personally inspired by Dr. King’s dogged commitment to the writing of this letter in the direst of circumstances? How can you take action?