4-24-22 - Earth Sunday & the 20th Anniversary of the Meditational Woods

Earth Sunday & the 20th Anniversary of the Meditational Woods

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Guest Speaker Mary Blackburn

April 24, 2022

Good morning, Friends! Bob asked if I knew of anyone who could speak about Creation Care, and when my CTS professor was already booked, a little small voice within me said, “Mary, you know enough to share with the meeting” and so, I volunteered to share my testimony with you today.

My belief is that caring for God’s creation is not something that divides us but unites us with a consistent message throughout scripture that resonates within my being.

As a child, I found two sacred places: the interior of a quiet church and in the outdoors. My mother would name the wildflowers and gather cattails for household decorations. Betsy Lawson, a dear departed member of First Friends, was my Campfire Girl leader and she would take us for walks through Holliday Park and on camping adventures in Bradford Woods and state parks.

When the wind kisses my face, or when I watch the hummingbird moths gathering nectar from the beebalm in our wild and crazy pollinator patch, I am filled with joy. Being with the giant Sequoias of the Sierra Nevada fills me with awe inspired by their size, bark and ancient age. I ponder the thousands of years that they have survived, even back to the time of Jesus.

On family trips to our national parks, I would always seek out a place with a special feature, such as a babbling brook, an overlook or a place filled with the fragrance of the conifer forest and say, “Let’s stop here and have unprogrammed worship together.” Together, we would be still and listen for God’ voice in the creation. These are special family memories.

Can you recall a time of feeling God’s presence through God’s creation? I will pause for a moment, so you can remember.

When I was young, the bird song called “The Morning Chorus” could wake me up at dawn. During a summer’s evening, the backyard was full of lightning bugs which we would capture in glass jars, poke holes in the metal tops and watch the bugs underbellies flicker on and off in their search for a mate. Now the morning chorus is no longer a mighty call to arise and celebrate the day, and our children search in vain for a backyard full of lightning bugs.

Advice comes from the book of Job 12:7-13 in the Message

“But ask the animals what they think- let them teach you;

 Let the birds tell you what’s going on.

Put your ear to the earth-learn the basics.

 Listen- the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.

Isn’t it clear that they all know and agree

 That GOD is sovereign, that he holds all things in his hand-

Every living soul, yes,

 Every breathing creature?

Isn’t this all just common sense,

 As common as the sense of taste?

With the pandemic, we have learned that we are an interconnected world. Not only do we have a global supply chain for manufactured goods, we have a supply chain for interconnected species and we humans have been the main beneficiaries. Without care for the entire creation, the world that we know, and love may not continue to exist and many of God’s creatures will perish because of our choices and lack of mindfulness.

My intention is not to be gloomy but to remind us that this concern is a spiritual matter. Let me read Day 3, 5 and 6 from the first creation story in its beautiful poetic form to remind us of our ancient call.

God spoke:” Earth, green up! Grow all varieties of seed-bearing plants,

Every sort of fruit-bearing tree.”

 And there it was.

Earth produced green seed-bearing plants, all varieties,

And fruit bearing trees of all sorts.

 God saw it was good.

It was evening, it was morning- Day Three

God spoke: “Swarm Ocean, with fish and all sea life!

 Birds, fly through the sky over Earth!”

God created the huge whales, all the swarm of life in the water,

And every kind and species of flying birds.

 God saw that it was good.

God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Ocean!

 Birds reproduce on Earth!”

It was evening, it was morning- Day Five.

God spoke: “Earth, generate life! Every sort and kind:

 Cattle and reptiles and wild animals-all kinds.”

And there it was:

Wild animals of every kind,

Cattle of all kinds, every sort of reptile and bug.

 God saw it was good.

God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature

So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,

 The birds in the air, the cattle,

And yes, Earth itself,

 And every animal that moves on the face of the Earth.”

God created human beings;

 He created them godlike,

Reflecting God’s nature.

 He created them male and female.

God blessed them:

 “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!

Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air.

 For every living that moves on the face of Earth.”

Then God said, “I’ve given you every sort of seed-bearing plant on Earth

And every kind of fruit-bearing tree,

 Given them to you for food.

To all animals and all birds,

 Everything that moves and breathes,

I give whatever grows out of the ground for food.”

 And there it was.

God looked over everything he had made;

 It was so good, so very good!

It was evening, it was morning- Day Six.

Within this scripture is the query for us all: “How are we being responsible for everything that moves and breathes?”

One action First Friends took over 20 years ago was transforming an acre of grass and converted it to an urban woodland habitat. The meeting had been offered a fair market price by a retirement facility, which the Monthly Meeting declined. Our former pastor, Stan Banker, observed the weekly grass mower going back and forth and back forth from the office window, and after visiting New Harmony had an inspiration to create a quiet reflective retreat. Because I love trees and gardens, Stan asked me to clerk a committee to oversee the design and funding of the work. As you read the names on the memorial plaques, you see members who contributed to this big project. Friends donated trees, shrubs, structures and have given their time to maintaining the area. Several scouts have added their efforts to earn their Eagle Scout with projects enhancing the Woods. Brad Jackson comes regularly to monitor our bird populations and has identified over 60 species of birds that are nourished and protected in our woods. Insects seek out nectar and pollen from our native plantings. Neighbors are so grateful to stroll in our little refuge. Couples have celebrated weddings in our meditational circle. Friends have scattered ashes of their beloved ones in a place that is dear to them. This place of beauty is the result of a choice and then action by our community.

Friends, we have taken steps together and now it is time to take God’s instructions seriously: How are we keeping the garden in order, as God commanded the man to work the ground and keep it in order in Genesis 2:15?

We have reached the tipping point to mitigate catastrophic warming of our shared home, Planet Earth. As one FWCC Friend recently said, “There is no Ark”, this time. Our planet is warming quickly and will alter the delicate balance in which we and our fellow creatures thrive. How are we being responsible for the care of things that live and breathe?

We are grateful for all the wonderful comforts that fossil fuels have provided: warmth, transportation and industrial progress. We are in a new epoch, and we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Wars are fought over fossil fuel resources. Let us be peacemaker and move to energy efficiency in our cars, our homes and our businesses. We can advocate for smart energy policies, support new job skill training to prepare those whose jobs will change and restore the health of those communities polluted by industry. It has been done in the past and we can do it again. 

We can use the power of the sun with solar panels and wind turbines. We can tap the energy of the earth with geothermal heating and cooling and change to energy efficient heat pumps. We can mitigate flooding by appreciating and protecting wetlands and woodlands. Regenerative farming practices can improve soil health and keep our valuable topsoil in place and not wash away with every heavy rain. Regenerative farming also reduces the amount of fertilizer and insecticides required to increase crop yields. We can stop applying unneeded fertilizer and chemicals on our lawns that overload our streams and stormwater with nitrogen contributing to harmful algal bloom in our lakes, reservoirs and streams. Better yet, we can reduce the size of our lawns and plant native shrubs and grasses to create habitat for birds, butterflies and moths that control our mosquito population. We can stop hiring mosquito spray companies that are harming the innocent bystanders: our birds, butterflies and lightening bugs. There is hope for the future and your actions will make a difference.

Before we go out to bless our Woods, I ask each of you to consider these questions:

What can I do in 2022 to keep God’s Garden in order? As we consider the children in our meeting, what will you do to protect their futures?

4-17-22 - What Is the Meaning of the Resurrection? (Easter Sunday)

What Is the Meaning of the Resurrection?

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

April 17, 2022

Good morning, Friends, and Happy Easter! I bring greetings from Fairfield Friends Meeting where I preached last week on Palm Sunday. They are a wonderful gathering of Quakers in Camby, Indiana. I also had an uplifting report from Phil Gulley after meeting for worship last week. Thank you for your hospitality and welcoming spirit. I pray Phil spoke to your condition.

Our scripture reading for this Easter morning is Luke 24:1-12 from the New Revised Standard Version:

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

Today, I want to briefly return to just after Jesus’ crucifixion on what we call Good Friday. I sense the same followers of Jesus in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday began wrestling with some difficult choices after the events of Good Friday – actually, I believe they were probably wrestling with a few queries (I like to think of them as good Quakers). I can imagine them pondering deeply the following:

·        Could they forgive Jesus for not being the “Superman Savior” who would drive the Romans out of their land?

·        Could they forgive God for allowing their beloved Rabbi to be murdered?

·        Could they begin to understand God as Love instead of as an omnipotent Ruler of the Cosmos?

·        Would they scatter and skulk and whine about the horrible things that happened that week?

·        Or would they get up, dust themselves off, gather together, forgive without forgetting, remember the divine Love that flowed from Jesus, and redouble their commitment to living it out as a community?

Folks, at Easter, we celebrate something much more significant than a supernatural miracle. We celebrate the decision of Jesus’ followers to be what early Quakers referred to as “the living body of Christ” or the Church – to stick together in the community of compassion in which we gather this and every Sunday. That’s what it means for us Quakers to say Christ lives within us and in our midst.

But to understand this significance, we must venture away from the typical American Christian understanding of this day being seen only through physical lenses.

The reality is that the resurrection of Jesus is about way more than an event that happened 2000+ years ago to Jesus’ corpse.

If you take a moment to read further on after the resurrection story in scripture, you read a series of reports that describe Jesus appearing in ways that transcend the physical.

In John 20:19 Jesus appears to the disciples in a locked room by passing through walls.

In Luke 24:13-35 Jesus appears as a stranger to two of his disciples who do not even recognize him for several hours, and when they do, he vanishes.

In John 20:14 Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene who does not recognize him and thinks he is the gardener.

And even beyond the Gospels, Jesus appears to Paul in a vision a few years after the crucifixion. And according to Paul, there were many of these visions and encounters.

The reality is that what happens after Jesus dies transcends our normal physical understanding.

Actually, these reports are more like what I hear from people in my office, or for that matter they are more like those that I have experienced, myself. They are very personal, but almost unexplainable. Jesus comes in a cryptic manner, maybe through nature, or a book, or even through another person.

So instead of focusing on some spectacular event or even trying to piece together the probability of a physical resurrection, maybe today, we need to take a different approach.

I would like to recommend with the help of theologian Marcus Borg that instead of trying to figure out “what happened” we should be asking a different query,

“What is the meaning of the resurrection in the New Testament?”

What did it mean for his followers in the first century to say that God raised Jesus from the dead?

This approach helps us all, no matter our beliefs about the resurrection, to get on the same page. Whether you believe Jesus physically rose, or you are skeptical, or you completely don’t believe in Jesus’ resurrection, this approach offers us a starting point that may be much more helpful.

Marcus Borg points out that if we start with the Gospels and the overall New Testament, we will find two primary meanings of the resurrection – 1) Jesus lives, and 2) Jesus is Lord. But this might not be how we were always taught or have believed.

It is clear, even in our Quaker history, that Jesus is not just a figure from the past, but Jesus continues to be experienced as an abiding reality still today. We, Quakers, speak of the “Presence in the Midst,” “Christ the Inner Light,” and yes, many Quakers have had nudges and visions from what we call, “Christ our Present Teacher.”

It was my mentor and doctoral supervisor, Colin Saxton who said about Friends,

“Christ is real to us, present in our midst, and at our best it has profound implications for us, not only in our personal life but as we live in community. It is what makes us unique or distinct in the way we worship…allowing the Spirit to lead and guide us to do things that we might not expect.”

Many Christians – even non-Christians have had visions, mystical encounters, and personal moments of unexplained experiences with Christ. Most of these encounters transcend the physical but point to the fact that Jesus still lives on.

Also, for many Jesus is not just a continuing presence, but also, what we may call a “divine reality.” Borg points out in scripture that they use the term “Lord” which means “one with God” to describe Jesus. They did this so the post-Easter Jesus would be distinguished from just anyone who had died at the time.

Throughout my 27 years as a pastor, I have had many people share with me vivid experiences they have had with a deceased loved one or spouse. These experiences always have them wondering if the person is still alive in some way, but it does not have them concluding that the person was Lord or God. They may be angelic, a spirit, or god-like in nature, but most do not see their loved ones as divine in the way Jesus was seen.

To say Jesus is Lord has even greater meaning for us today. It means that the Lords of Jesus Day – the empire that put him to death, as well, the empires of our world, are NOT supreme. Just like Rome was not supreme in Jesus’ day, neither is Russia or even America today.

Jesus’ example of love, non-violence, and counter-cultural approach is the supreme example for us. His ways were of God – they were Divine.

So, Easter is about much more than a spectacular miracle, or surviving death, it is about proclaiming that God and God’s ways were revealed in the person of Jesus.

Thus, this is the example for those of us who believe as Friends say “That there is that of God within everyone” or the “Light of Christ” resides within me.

This means that you and I are carrying on the life and ministry of the resurrected Christ within us. Jesus lives on through each and every one of us.

Trying to figure out the empty tomb today can be a real distraction or reduce the meaning of Easter to simply an event in the past – making it irrelevant, trivial, or simply a debate.

Marcus Borg suggests that we take another look at the Easter story, but this time as a parable or metaphor. If we do, it may allow us to expand our understanding, because parables and metaphors are always about meaning. When Jesus wanted to help us understand the meaning of something he shared a parable, so it makes sense.

The story of the empty tomb has a much deeper meaning when we look at it this way – it means that death could not hold Jesus, it could not stop what he had begun.

Even the empire of his day tried to seal and guard the tomb, but Jesus continued to be known and his ways continued to be lived out.

Those two disciples on the road to Emmaus were experiencing a stranger until they broke the bread.

Thomas who longed to have his own personal experience with the risen Christ allowed all of us who have not had that same experience to believe while having legitimate questions and doubt.

Yet, each time Jesus’ charge was the same to those he encountered – you are to “feed my sheep” – you are to “follow me” – you are to be me to your world.

As I said at the opening of this message, at Easter, we celebrate something much more significant than a supernatural miracle. We celebrate the decision of Jesus’ followers to be what early Quakers referred to as “the living body of Christ” or the Church – to stick together in the community of compassion in which we gather this and every Sunday. 

The Risen and Present Christ is still meeting us, charging us to feed his sheep and follow him and work to live the counter-cultural life of compassion that he lived in the face of the empires of this world.

As we recognize that Christ Light within us, and the Christ presence in our midst may we be people who bring true resurrection and hope to our ailing world.

Now as we enter a sacred time of waiting worship, let us take a moment to ponder the following query:

After all that I have been through these past couple of years, how might I dust myself off, gather again together, forgive without forgetting, remembering the divine Love that flowed from Jesus, and redouble my commitment to living out the resurrection life of Jesus in my community?

4-3-22 - Finding the Unity in Community

Finding the Unity in Community

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

April 3, 2022

1 Corinthians 12:25-27 (New Revised Standard Version)  

25 …that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 

Today, I am concluding our sermon series, “To Be Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022.”  Just a reminder that next week, we will welcome author and pastor Phil Gulley to our pulpit and I will be filling the pulpit at Fairfield Friends. 

To begin the final sermon of this series, I want to do a little review of where we have been over the last seven weeks. 

·        In my first sermon we looked at turning our focus off the future or the eternal and making a difference in creating a shift which I labeled “Moving from Heaven to Earth.”

·        In the second sermon I looked at the need for us to embrace questioning, queries, and even our own doubts to help us grow spiritually and move forward.

·        In the third sermon I encouraged us to look outside of ourselves and to help the poor and oppressed within and without our community while learning to be members one to another.

·        In my four sermon I suggested instead of getting into trenches about our beliefs, maybe what we need right now is to be a people of faith who are willing to behave and act first out of God’s Love for the World. 

·        And last week, I encouraged us to take the three-fold approach to Compassion – to have the courage to see, to feel, and to act courageously by taking responsibility for those who suffer.

To conclude this series, I think there is one more aspect to being Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022 that I would like to emphasize and that has to do with, what I will call, finding the unity in community. 

I enjoy reading the blog of Quaker Wendy Swallow of Reno Friends Meeting.  She opened up one of her recent blog posts on “Seeking Unity” with this thought-provoking query.  She said,

Unity, the idea that we should seek consensus in our collective decisions, is a central testimony…of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).  In this fractious time, however, it often seems the goal of unity has been nearly forgotten. Everyone seems to have differing views and fears and concerns, many of them deeply held. The anxieties of our age have taken a toll on our ability to talk with each other. In such a climate, unity feels nearly impossible to achieve. If so, does unity still matter?

Does unity still matter?  Now that is a query to ponder.

All we need do is turn on the news, go to a school board meeting, engage on social media, even sit in front of our T.V. and simply try and watch the Oscars, and unity will be questioned.

And clearly among Quakers unity has taken a hit as more Quaker Yearly Meetings have split or fractured over the last 20 years than at any time in Quaker history. 

So, Wendy’s query is, I think, appropriate.  Does unity still matter?

I have to agree with Wendy when she responds to her query, “Does unity matter?” with, “I believe it does; in fact, I would argue that unity could be the antidote to our societal divisions.” 

If we are wanting to be thriving and progressive Quakers in 2022 and again make a difference in our world, then we are going to have to address what unity means and its function in our faith community.

Sadly, when I turned to our Western Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice and did a search for unity all that came up was a section titled “Lack of Unity” spelling out our early schisms in Quakerism.  So, this morning I will turn to the Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice where they explain unity among Friends in this way:

“Friends believe that it is possible for the human spirit to be in direct communion with the Divine. Seeking God’s will together, we believe (the) way will open and unity will emerge. Working together to discern and serve God’s will both nourishes and benefits from unity. This unity grows from trust in one another and readiness to speak out, confident that together, Friends will find the truth.”

Our founder George Fox made a bold statement that we cannot take lightly in 2022.  He said,  “Let your lives speak.”  And I think what he meant was what I have tried to explain in a couple of the sermons in this series about how our beliefs and convictions can only be communicated through our willingness to act. 

Folks, it is what you and I do that matters, not what we say or profess.

If you take a look again at our Testimonies (or S.P.I.C.E.S.) – Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, Stewardship – I think it is easy to see how our testimonies rest on the fundamental value that actions matter most.   

To act simply, to act with peace, to act with integrity, to act within community, to act with equality, and to act in good stewardship to our neighbor and all of creation, is so critical to making a difference in our world.   

Just like I said last week, it is easier to have the courage to see or the courage to feel, but it is harder having the courage to act upon what we see and feel.  This is why Quaker unity is so important to helping support our action.  

Just as the statement from Pacific Yearly Meeting read, “This unity grows from trust in one another and readiness to speak out, confident that together, Friends will find the truth.”

Whether it is during waiting worship in Meeting for Worship, or during unprogrammed silent worship, or even during a small group or book study seeking unity together through thoughtful listening and discerning of God’s will is paramount.

And this might come as a surprise – I believe seeking unity is most valuable when we disagree or have differing or even diverse perspectives.  This is very different than many Christian and religious groups who simply want conformity or what I call “Cookie Cutter” followers. 

Our differences are what give us strength and help us find new ways to act upon our testimonies and values. 

Just think about it - If everyone did see, look, and act upon the same things and in the same ways – we would make very little impact on our world.

Quaker Os Cresson explained this in his Friends Journal article on Quaker Unity when he said,   

“For Friends, unity is not usually unanimity, which is agreement without dissent.  Unity is more often agreement that acknowledges dissent, staying together despite differences, and moving forward with guidance from our common values.”

Folks, unity can be a challenge, as Quakers can hold a plethora of different beliefs and differing ideas of how we should act.  But since, we believe that each person has that of God within them and is on their own spiritual path, it is more important that we are seekers of the truth than that we all arrive at an agreed-upon destination of belief or action.

And this is where I cannot agree more with Cresson.  He believes that this is what we as Quakers can offer the world in this time of disunity and tension.  He says,

“The embrace of religious diversity in our midst can be our gift to the world…. Let us be patterns of living together and loving each other, differences, and all. Let us openly and joyfully celebrate our peculiar combination of Quaker diversity and Quaker unity.”

When you and I seek to listen and come together at First Friends with an open heart, truly honoring what others bring to the discussion, and respecting each other and acknowledging those who think or believe differently than we do, we are modeling for our neighbors, family, and friends a better way. 

Unity then is not conformity which many Christians today seek. But instead we find unity emerging within community when we are open to and able to allow it to develop.  

Or as Quaker Parker Palmer put it so well,  

“Friends are most in the Spirit when they stand at the crossing point of the inward and outward life. And that is the intersection at which we find community. Community is a place where the connections felt in the heart make themselves known in bonds between people, and where tuggings and pullings of those bonds keep opening up our hearts.”

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, actually I know there are some who disagree with this very sermon series, but my hope is that as members of this special community called “First Friends,” we will seek first to listen and come together with open hearts. That we will truly honor what our fellow friends, guests, and weighty Friends bring to the conversation.

To find unity within community means respecting one another as equal.  If we model this in our daily lives, in our worship lives, in our families, in our work places, and in our schools, I have faith it will make a difference and begin to change the dialogue in these places.

This morning I want to close with a poem by Derrick Jones titled,

The Common Unity of Community

Alone we suffer
Together we can endure 
Stronger when we are tethered
That I can ensure

Connected together like birds of a feather
We can weather the weather whether we face hell or heaven 
We can resonate and instigate a state of inspiration
We can rest and equilibrate, share a respiration

Forming a superorganism, we transform 
No longer lost in this chaotic storm
We take shelter in love, sharing security 
Surging electricity sparked by common unity
Purging our anxiety, embark on a new odyssey
I’ll help you up and you’ll help me see
See how great this life can be

Now as we enter a time of waiting worship, I ask you to ponder the following queries:

·        Does unity still matter to me? 

·        How might I build trust with my neighbors and fellow Friends that I disagree with?

·        Where do I need to seek to listen better, have an open heart, and truly honor what others bring to the table?  

3-27-22 - When Compassion is the Key

When Compassion is the Key    

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

March 27, 2022                             

1 Peter 3:8 (Message)

8 Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions.

Too often in our world today, we confuse the concept of compassion with empathy. In reality, there is something deeper, something even more profoundly powerful, in compassion. 

Just before this sermon series, I gave a sermon about compassion where I talked about the origin of the word. I believe it helps us grasp the true breadth and significance of compassion.

As a refresher, in Latin, ‘compati’ means “suffer with.” So that means, compassion is when someone else’s heartbreak becomes your heartbreak - another’s suffering becomes your suffering.

True compassion changes the way we live.

I have found the Buddhist tradition helpful in getting to the depths of compassion.  In Buddhism they speak of the compassionate way as:

The Courage to See

The Courage to Feel, and

The Courage to Act

So first, to live compassionately is to courageously SEE the connection between us and those who suffer. Not only do we SEE the connection and become aware of it, but we allow ourselves to FEEL it. 

And finally, it is not just to SEE and FEEL the connection, but also to ACT on it – to courageously take responsibility for those who suffer. For many to ACT is where we draw the line. 

To act may mean defending the rights of someone else, or to provide opportunities for health and happiness.

Yet, to move beyond just seeing and feeling, we may need to develop or grow our own personal compassion. As Quakers that may mean spending time meditating in silence to help cultivate and fine-tune our consciousness to those around us. 

Let me take a moment and ask you a query - How do you see human life?  Just ponder that for a moment.

Is human life “infinitely precious” to you?  How about people in other nations, other communities, or how about people in other families, are all other people as precious as your own?

Our true connectedness is not with just our own.  We are bigger than our nations, communities, and even families. 

As Americans, we are quick to have pride in our country, to pray for our country, and — especially — to work to make America a better, more just society.

But when we begin to presume that God holds America in special regard, or that God plays favorites when it comes to the nations of the world then we begin to lose our connectedness.

Or more appropriately, how do we see Russia, currently?  Are all Russian people bad?  Beth Henricks wrote beautifully about this in our “Friend to Friend” newsletter a couple of weeks ago. 

Many of us were raised to see certain groups of people as bad.  For me growing up, I was led to believe Russians (or at some points even people who don’t speak English), other Christian denominations, other religions, even people of different skin or hair colors, ethnicities (I don’t know how many times I heard and sadly repeated a Pollock or Blonde Joke).  Some of it may have been innocent ignorance, but I sense it was more a huge lack of awareness.     

This narrow thinking and speaking happens whenever we decide to draw lines, categorize people, and make it about “us vs them.” 

What if we could take the higher road and find another way of approaching this? 

As people who look to Jesus Christ and follow his example, what if we approached it with Christ’s compassion.  I sense we might sound more like how Brian McLaren states it (I remember the first time I read this and just wanted to shout an “Amen” afterwards). McLaren says,

“Because I follow Jesus, I see you as my neighbor and I love you, as I love myself, whatever your religion.

Because I follow Jesus, I believe God loves you and accepts you just as you are.

Because I follow Jesus, I believe that the Holy Spirit is active throughout the world and that the light of Christ has already shined on you and is at work in and around you.

Because I follow Jesus, I believe that God has a special concern for the marginalized and the weak, and so I refuse to use a position of privilege, especially as a member of the world’s largest, richest, and most heavily armed religion, to harm you.

In fact, I want to be your servant, your friend, and your neighbor—to love you as God in Christ has loved me.”

That, to me, is a very strong identity; it gives me a good reason to be a Quaker or a Christian, and it promises blessing to others, not a threat.

You see, compassion frees us from the burden of our ego, whether our individual ego or that of a family, religious group, community, or even a nation. To want to be able to see, feel and act for the needs of others is a blessing. It frees us from our narrow self-interests and helps us see with the compassion of Christ. 

But folks, this is not always easy – actually, it rarely is.  The challenge for us is to see our connection with those who seem different than us, the nation that does not share our vision, the people whose lifestyle we can’t fully understand or embrace, and the people who down right threaten us. 

Often because we don’t take time to make connections or learn, we develop within us a hatred for these people.  But over time, I have learned that it is not as much hatred as it is our habitual patterns of self-interest that get in the way of connecting. 

As John Phillip Newell says in “The Rebirthing of God,”

“It is a way of seeing in which we pretend that we can be well simply by looking after ourselves. Or we pretend that our nation can be safe simply by focusing on the protection of our nation, even at the expense of other nations. Such patterns of narrow self-interest become the norm, accepted and sanctioned at times even by our religious traditions. We become blind to the courage to see.”  

In the New Testament when talking about Jesus’ compassion, the Greek word used goes much further than just seeing, it says we are moved in our guts – or as the translation says, “the bowels of compassion.” 

We as Quakers can relate to this feeling.  It is like when you feel led to say or do something and often it is described as butterflies in the stomach, an uncomfortableness, even a physical quaking. 

I remember one Friend saying to me that they were so uncomfortable in waiting worship once that they had to get up and move around, they almost felt like they were going to get sick if they didn’t respond or speak out.  I don’t know how many times I have heard this and even felt this myself. 

The courage to feel leads to action – or what I will label “Engaged Quakerism” or “active compassion.” 

Folks, if we are to be a thriving and progressive Quaker meeting, we must have the courage to see with new eyes, feel at the depths of our bowels, and ultimately engage in active compassion.

To close my sermon this morning, I would like to share the story of Prudence Crandall – a woman who I believe embodies this three-fold understanding of compassion. Since it is still Women’s History Month, I sensed Prudence’s story to be inspiring and a nice illustration of one Quaker who had the courage to see with new eyes, feel at her depths, and engage in active compassion for those less fortunate.

Prudence was born to a Quaker family on Rhode Island in 1803. At the age of 10 or 11 she moved to a farm near Canterbury, Connecticut. She was sent to Moses Brown’s New England Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island, where she learned the same broad range of subjects that the boys learned, exceling, and even teaching the younger students as she grew older. She was a born teacher! Moses Brown was an abolitionist, so Prudence early came to see slavery as a sin. She, however, had little contact nor few encounters with blacks and thus knew little about their lives and struggles.

That was to change in 1831 when, after gaining a positive reputation as a teacher at a female academy in Plainfield, Connecticut, she was invited to start a similar school in Canterbury. With $500 down and a $1500 loan from the village leaders, she bought a large house facing the village green and opened her school for young white girls.

Her sister Almira came to help her teach and a young black woman who had lived with her family since she was nine, Mariah Davis, came to be her assistant and manage the household. Prudence had high standards and expectations for her students. The students responded quickly and well to the sisters’ helpful instruction and loving ways. The house was filled with purposeful learning and varied activities. The village was well pleased.

One day a young black woman and friend of Mariah’s, Sarah Harris, came to see Prudence and asked to enroll as a day student. She assured Prudence that her father could pay the $25 per quarter tuition.

Sarah had finished the local district school but wanted to learn more to start a school for children of color. At first, Prudence put her off and went about her teaching. Mariah was disappointed as she knew how deeply Sarah wanted to teach. Her friend’s father was a successful black farmer who believed education was important for all young people, but especially those of color.

He distributed “The Liberator,” William Lloyd Garrison’s newly published anti-slavery newspaper. Mariah was in love with Sarah’s brother Charles and read the paper whenever a new issue came out. She brought the most recent copy to Prudence in support of her friend.

As so often happens among Quakers, God moved in mysterious ways. A village leader came by and treated Mariah impolitely. Prudence was so annoyed, she sought out the newspaper and read straight through the night. She was moved by its stories of the brutality, injustices, and horrendous struggles of blacks, both slave and free. She turned to her Bible and was led to the verses of Solomon about the call to be a “comforter to the oppressed.”

Prudence was in a struggle with her conscience. She realized during this struggle that she held a prejudice against people of color despite her Quaker upbringing. It was a humbling experience, one that led her to want to do something for these people. But what? She had no great wealth, but she could teach! She must be obedient to this call.

She would enroll Sarah Harris in her school. Some of her students knew Sarah from the district school and had found her smart, kind, and helpful. Most of them welcomed her and looked forward to the help she could give them in their studies. Their families were not pleased at all. Some even threatened to “destroy” the school.

Thus began a two-year battle between Prudence and her allies and the village leaders and theirs. It began with the villagers not wanting their daughters going to school with a young black woman, no matter that they had done so as children.

Prudence was stubborn. She was being obedient to her call and would not back down. The school was hers. She had paid off the loan and was educationally and financially successful. When it became obvious that an agreement could not be reached, Prudence came up with another idea. She would close her present school and open one exclusively for “young ladies and little misses of color.”

The villagers were irate. They had lost their school of good reputation and now all their fears and dislikes of blacks surfaced. They believed that more blacks would come to their village, their habits and behaviors would lower their real estate values, bring crime and even social mixing. Besides, they said, weren’t blacks socially and intellectually inferior?

Prudence went to Boston to see William Lloyd Garrison and gain his support. With his help and support, she travelled to Providence, New York City, and Philadelphia to meet black families and recruit students. A chance encounter with Arthur Tappan, a wealthy silk merchant and philanthropist, led to much needed financial help. When the townspeople sought to use an old vagrancy law and then new legislation, the Black Law, against her and her students, Tappan provided bonds and lawyers. The Black Law made it illegal to teach black students who had not come from Connecticut.

Clergymen in nearby towns came to her aid. Samuel J. May, a Unitarian minister, and Levi Kneeland, a Baptist pastor, were ready to help with strategy and offered friendship.

In April, 1833, she opened her school with only two students but soon had 17. When the villagers refused to sell her supplies and fouled her well with manure, her family supported the school, bringing barrels of water, food, and other supplies from nearby towns.

Even threats of fines and destruction of their property did not stop them. Keeping her school going required courage and commitment of Prudence, Almira, and the students. They displayed it time after time. The villagers waged a campaign of harassment, insults, egg and rock throwing, and even a fire set one night and blamed on an ally of the school. Prudence was arrested and jailed, accompanied by her friend Anna Benson.

Even though Rev. May and George Benson bailed them out the next day, the action brought much publicity and support from other U.S. and foreign cities.

Three trials were held. Prudence and the townspeople were frustrated by the results: the first ended in a hung jury, the second in a guilty verdict, and the third in a dismissal of the guilty verdict on a technicality. The school stayed open.

Prudence married a Baptist minister and supporter, Calvin Philleo. Her friends and family were glad for her, but some were not in tune with her choice. The townspeople, thwarted in their legal attempts, took matters into their own hands. In September 1834, a mob came in the night, broke ninety windows, destroyed furniture, scattered debris about, and frightened the household.

Prudence was done. She did not have money for repairs that might be needed over and over again, she did not want to see any of her family or students hurt. She had tried to be obedient to the call.

Prudence had stepped out of her comfort zone, been faithful in her action, and led members of her support community to work for justice and equality, and she had tried so hard to forgive and love her attackers. Calvin encouraged her to sell the school and move. Two days after the raid, the school was closed.

Prudence Crandall was only 32 when she left Canterbury, but she was obedient to the call in so many ways for another 55 years. Along the way, Prudence remained loyal to her friends and former students. She kept in touch with them, recommended books for them to read, and encouraged their service and action in the world.

She taught people of all colors, opened schools, worked for temperance, women’s rights, and peace. After Calvin’s death, she moved to Elk Falls, Kansas to live in a small log cabin she built on land given her by her brother Hezekiah. She loved the beauty of the Kansas prairie. Four years before she died in 1890, the people of Canterbury, some of them relatives of her opponents and ashamed of the town’s past behavior, petitioned the state to grant her an annual pension of $400.

Their petition was supported by Mark Twain, then a resident of Hartford, Connecticut. Prudence did not see this as charity but a just payment for the debt she incurred. She wrote to Twain to thank him and asked for copies of his books and his picture. He gladly sent them.

At 87, she was still seen going to meetings and urging actions to help others. She was no more afraid to die than she was to live. It was January 28, 1890 when she was laid to her final rest in the Elk Falls Cemetery.

Prudence Crandall was the embodiment of Christ’s compassion.  May we as we ponder our own compassion this morning be inspired by her story and work to see, feel, and act in compassion to those less fortunate around us. 

As we enter waiting worship, please take a moment to ponder the following queries:

·        How often do I see and feel, but neglect to act? 

·        In all human life “infinitely precious” to me?

·        How might I take the “higher road” of compassion this week?

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?