6-12-22 - Let Us See What Love Will Do - Shawn McConaughey

“Let Us See What Love Will Do”

June 12, 2022

1 John 2:9-11

Shawn McConaughey

Good morning, Friends.

I was reading some of the history of Western Yearly Meeting. WYM is the group of Quaker Churches that formed in 1858 and which still exists today. Indianapolis First Friends is a part of that.

I was happy to note that when this group of Quaker churches officially formed WYM, they established 4 committees. Quakers can’t do anything with committees. Nothing has changed. 

I digress, the list is not anything like our committee list today, any guesses as to what the 4 committees were?

Books and Tracts

Indian Civilization

Education

Concerns of People of Color (this included abolition efforts, education, and lobbying efforts).

In time an orphanage was established that served more than 3000 African American children. Of course, John Williams’ bequest for his estate to go to this effort and the faithfulness of Quakers for more than a century gets us to this point.

I was reflecting about what might have caused Quakers in the 1800’s to make this such a high priority. That their actions and concern would carry through to today. These scholarship recipients are an on-going testimony to that concern.

What is it that leads a group of people to go to such lengths and risks as the underground railroad, setting up schools and educational experiences, to help freed men find their way? 

I think it was love. 

Love is sort of a smarmy concept. Why not justice, or peace, or liberty? Those things seem more righteous. But all of those concepts are encapsulated in love. I’m sure it was far from perfect with motives that were not always pure. 

But I can’t get away from this idea that obedient love really played a role in this effort. Now obedience does not sound much like a word that describes love. It sounds like work, it sounds like duty, it sounds like risk. We prefer to think of Love as free flowing, emotional, and makes us feel warm inside. Right?

Jesus is asked, “what is the greatest commandment?” 

We read of his reply in Matthew Chapter 22. He responds, “you shall love 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 a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

A command to love? We might say, “I can’t just love on command?” But any of us who have moved beyond the initial flirtations of attraction to a deeper relationship based in love, know that often it is a daily decision to love. It is to act in loving ways, to put the other’s needs ahead of our own, to serve even when there is no promise of love returned. Truly loving our neighbor is often not easy but it is the center of anything good in our world. 

Jesus makes this concept even more outrageous by stating that love is not just reserved for those we like but even for our enemies. 

Jesus keeps on with this kind of talk. He tells ludicrous stories of the scum of the earth, who in the minds of his listeners is someone no better than a dog, who dares help his bitterest enemy after he gets jumped by thieves. In this “love story” the concept of love gets turned upside down.

Jesus tells of a disrespected Jewish father that is so foolish as to give his son his inheritance. The son in turn goes and wastes it on a lifestyle that would make good Jews blush and turn their backs. But this father, this distinguished father, does not even wait for his bedraggled washed up, spent out son to stagger up the driveway on his knees. No, he gathers up his robes and runs, not to hurt his son, not to scold him, not to disown him but to throw his distinguished arms around his son in a fools embrace. 

You must understand that to his hearers, Jesus’ stories were ridiculous. We think of them as a story that challenges our spiritual life. No one talked like this, especially the religious. Jesus was so over top. Most were left picking their jaws up off the floor. I’m sure that some stormed out in a rage, (quiet pause) but some…well some were strangely drawn to this absurd love that was so profound. I am sure that amidst the skepticism, many were attracted to this love. They were warmed by it, ached for it. Especially those who were the outcast, the spat upon, the bottom rung of society.

You see, this kind of nonsense had the power to completely upset the political and religious power structures of the day. This kind of talk….. well this kind of talk could get you crucified…….

Jesus then has the audacity to not only say these kinds of things, but to say them out loud, in the public square where everyone could hear, and then, maybe the most radically of all- he then goes about living his life according to this absurd, dangerous kind of love.

Friends, the times we live in are no different. There is still a maddening scramble for the top, to be in charge, to rule, to have power, to only love those who deserve it. It’s not just people out there, sadly it's people who call themselves Christians, who get into bed with the temptation to power. The culture wars are doing great damage and unfortunately some of it is being done in the name of God. The weapons of this war are fear-mongering, disinformation, shouting others down, rancor, ridicule, homophobia, racism, sexism…..all the isms.

Friends, it is my desire this morning to urge you to set aside the scramble to the top that tramples all over one another? To set aside these weapons of war. See all of these will never ultimately win. They may for a time, but they will rot your soul in the meantime. 

I’m not suggesting that we should not stand up for justice, or for what is right that is part of love. We should do our best and strive to succeed, be a bright light in our community, but as the apostle Paul reminds us.

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mystery and all knowledge, and have great faith so as to move mountains, If I give away all my possessions, and if I sacrifice my body… so that I may boast….If I have all of this but do not have love- I gain nothing, I am nothing.”

Love is work Friends. Should we decide today and tomorrow to live out Love, we must recognize that this love is often upside-down from the way our world describes it. Love, like so much of the Kingdom of God, is so opposite from what we are bombarded with. Love involves sacrifice, turning cheeks and patching up our enemies. Praying for our persecutors. Love is not necessarily meant to be a martyrdom unless that is what is required, loving is not worm-theology or self-hatred. Love rejoices in truth, it bears, believes, hopes and endures all things. 

It is choosing daily how to respond amid a darkened world that longs for the Light. Jesus describes both himself and his followers as the Light of the world. To be able to truly love we must reflect the Christ-light. We cannot love most completely without knowing the one who is the light of the world.

I pretty much think that anywhere in the NT where the word light is used, we could replace it with the word love, especially in Jesus’ words. “You are the Love of the World. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket. But on the lampstand, and it gives light/love to all in the house. In the same way, let your love shine before others….”

I am imagining each of you as the bright light that you are and that you will become. Light guides us, Light warms, Light exposes Darkness, Light Heals, Light Purifies, Light draws us, Light makes it possible for us to see, Light gives life. Will you be that?

Where is God calling you to be light to demonstrate this love? Do you consider how you reflect this Christ-light into your circumstances? Where in your life are those who need guidance, warmth, healing?

Friends, In the beginning God spoke Light into being. May we live into the calling to be the Children of Light. Let there be light in the homes, neighborhoods, schools, and jobs where we find ourselves.

In the words of Quaker William Penn, “Let us See What Love Will Do”.

1. What Light/love does my own heart and soul need right now? 

2. Where in my life am I seeing the Light/love shine most brightly?

3. Into what darkness might God be nudging me to shine Light/love?

6-5-22 - God the Nonbinary

God the Nonbinary

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

June 5, 2022

Palms 139:1-18 (New Revised Standard Version)

 You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
 You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
 You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
 Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.
 You hem me in behind and before,
    and you lay your hand upon me.
 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too lofty for me to attain.

 Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
 even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

 For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
 My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
 How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
 Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.

Wednesday, June 1st marked the beginning of Pride Month and this morning, I want us to focus on what that means for us at First Friends.  We are blessed to have many in our midst who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ Community and find this place welcoming and their spiritual home.  As well, many of us are parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, and relatives trying hard to create welcoming opportunities for those we know in the LGBTQIA+ community.

I will never forget my first day on the job at First Friends. Sue, Sam, and I attended Shawn and Brett’s wedding – the first same-sex marriage to take place in this Meetinghouse. That day I knew, with standing room only, that First Friends had opened the doors and their hearts to the LGBTQIA+ community. 

Over the last several months when I have had the privilege to attend the New Attender Dinners put on by Connections, that openness has been clearly affirmed by those attending who are looking for a church. I just heard last week several of our new people exclaiming this is why they are at First Friends, and that makes me happy that we are communicating this welcoming spirit.

Now, please understand, this does not mean we at First Friends have this all figured out, and that on occasion we may stumble, or need to learn more. You and I must see this as an ongoing and evolving subject covered with a lot of humility. And that means every so often we are going to need some reminders, teachings, or even specific days to celebrate ALL of God’s family.  

That is why this morning, I am considering this Pride Sunday, even though as Quakers we consider all days the same, it seems important to embrace our LGBTQIA+ Friends and Family and take a moment to teach more about it.    

To focus our attention today, I am going to take a slightly different approach, not a political, social, or even activist approach – but rather as a pastor, I am going to take what comes natural – a biblical approach (or maybe I should say a “God approach”). Either way, I think the approach will include some fresh, new ideas for us to ponder.

As I was preparing this message, I came across a teaching by Rev. Whitney Bruno of the United Church of Canada.  As I read and then listened to his words – the teaching seemed almost poetic and prophetic in nature.  Rev. Bruno took me back to the Genesis story of creation to emphasize something I had not considered – that being the non-binary nature of God.

Not only did it open my eyes to things I had never noticed, but it also gave me a new appreciation for the great diversity that God embraces and uses to create in our world.

So, with a little help from Rev. Bruno, this morning let’s go back to the beginning, when God was creating the heavens and the earth – as in ALL that is above, and ALL that is below. ALL things.

The scriptures say that in the very beginning the Spirit of God, the wind of God, danced over the waters and God spoke – God sang – God created with a word – word and deed being one – and there was light.

God judged this new creation.

God declared it good.

Not perfect.

Not unchangeable.

Not immutable. But GOOD.

And God created more.

Now from light and darkness.

Now naming these things.

Now time itself.

You and I have heard this beautiful, wonderful, story. We know how plants and animals, waters and mountains, birds and fish are called into being by God.

But it makes one wonder, when did God make dawn and dusk? Have you ever thought about that?

It’s not specifically named, but we assume dawn and dusk are there, on that first day of creation, since light and dark, day and night, are made.

What I find interesting is that by naming opposites, a storyteller can say they include everything.

Rev. Bruno points out that, we know when Amazon offers everything A to Z, it means they also offer items beginning with BCD and WXY and all the other items that begin with the other letters in between.

When God declares “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End” We know that means God is also in the in-between times. The now times. The present.

When scripture says God made day and night, we know that means God also made the hours between day and night.

Do you see where Rev. Bruno is leading us with this thought process?

When God made humans male and female… doesn’t that mean God also made all humans who are the shades between male and female?

We in our American culture want nice, neat categories from “Macho Men” to “Dainty Ladies.”  But like with many other things, we can’t put everyone in just two categories.  There are all kinds of people or as Rev. Bruno states – all different shades between male and female.

So, I am going to make a logical, but also important claim.  I believe opposites are named to affirm a God that includes and makes, ALL.

And to us, human creatures, is gifted the image of God (the Imago Dei). This is not just an image, but a form. The form of God.

What is this form? Rev. Bruno says it is creativity.

You and I are being called to take part in creating the wealth of plants and animals and life.

We are gardeners. From Eden to all the earth.

We are stewards. Being wise, just, gentle, and faithful stewards of the many lives we are entrusted to by God.

What is the image of God within us? It is power…SHARED.

Creativity to make good and very good things.

It is relationships and that means it is also Love.

When God sees all of this… the opposites and all the in-between, the diversity on land, in the air, and in the ocean, and in the ground, and even in space… God over and over declares it VERY good in the scriptures.

This means that if we look really close in Genesis, we hear of a God who won’t settle for two – who won’t settle for binaries.

Instead, we hear of a God who wants every hue of color between dark and light; every creature between germ and killer whale; every human diversity between and including male and female.

Rev. Bruno then turns to the quintessential aspect of this passage from chapter 2 – that being Adam and Eve.

The story is told over and over, and this time, God makes “adamah” – the Jewish word for dust, soil, dirt.

This living dirt is lonely, and needs a co-worker. Much like God wanted a co-creator.

But the living dirt turns down every other living thing God makes and brings before it.

Finally, God separates the living dirt into two living dirts – and now, with something in its own image, the living dirt is happy.

Hawwa in Hebrew, Eve in English means breath and Adam means dirt, and combined breath and dirt make life.

This is a way of explaining how we live. We are dirt and breath combined. Breath or Spirit and the dust of the cosmos that is who we are.

·        Nowhere is this a story saying who can, or cannot, get married.

·        Nowhere is this a ranking of love from pure to impure.

·        Nowhere is this a statement that *only* men who romantically love women, and women who romantically love men are correct.

No, this is actually a story about where we come from – God.

Who we look like — all of us — God.

Rev. Bruno says, “This is a story that we are made with intrinsic value. That we each matter. That we are worth love. Worth a good life. Worth belonging to community. Worth loving relationships. Worth shelter, food, water, health care, education, and security. We are worthy of being part of this very good creation.

This is a story about the common lot of being human. The common thread, common condition, of finding ourselves in the surprising state of being alive as us. As humans.

Why are we here? What are we supposed to do?

To create. To live together. To be good stewards. To make community.

So again, this is a story about how we are made…” which the Psalmist in our text for this morning sums up even better, he says, we are “…fearfully and wonderfully made. Knitted in our mother’s wombs, woven out of that living dirt from the depths of the earth” — those same molecules and atoms and star dust God has been breathing life into for trillions of years — and seen by God before even fully formed.

We are made with God hemming us in – being around us on all sides. Above and below. Behind and before. And all those other areas between the opposites.

Genesis is a story of how our God, who transcends gender and sexuality and IS all genders and sexualities, makes us just who we are.

Straight.

Bisexual.

Homosexual.

Asexual.

And more.

Intersexed.

Female.

Male.

Transgender.

And more.

Gay.

Lesbian.

Feminine.

Masculine.

And more.

Hemmed around on all sides, we are surrounded by the Divine who calls us, as we are wonderfully made, part of this very good earth.

Such knowledge is too wonderful not to proclaim. Our minds cannot fathom the depths of all the colors of the rainbow; nor the breadth of all the life forms on earth; nor the depth of the stars and distant galaxies.

We simply must say… how wonderful.

So today as we ponder all that God has created, the many varieties of people, plants and animals surrounding us, let us not look with binary eyes, but rather with the beautifully diverse, multifaceted, and creative eyes of the God within each of us.  And just maybe we will see, acknowledge, and affirm ALL the Friends of God around us.

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

·        In what ways am I too binary in my view of others?

·        How might I more deeply see with the diverse, multifaceted, and creative eyes of God?  

5-29-22 - Sometimes the Wilderness is What We Need

Sometimes the Wilderness is What We Need

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Beth Henricks

May 29, 2022

Our scripture today is from the Old Testament.  Exodus 13:17-18 and 16:10.

Exodus 13:17-18

17 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer, for God thought, “If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.” 18 So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness bordering the Red Sea.[a] 

Exodus 16:10

10 And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. 

I always like this holiday because there is no pressure for gifts or decorations or fancy dinners or being with a lot of people.  It seems more about casual dining with family and friends,  or spending time in quiet solitude, or outdoor barbeques, and the welcome of summer and a different pace of life for a couple of months.  It is also a weekend that we reflect on those we miss and treasure and remember with joy and sadness those that have touched our lives and also those that have sacrificed their lives for our country and for our democracy.

I can’t share a message today without  mentioning the devastating event that occurred this week in Texas where 19 children ages 7-9 years old (and some adults) were gunned down in their school.  I can’t express my grief, sadness  and tears that this tragedy occurred.  I know you share in the horror of hearing about this and learning some of the details and hearing about these beautiful children of God.  The anguish we feel can turn into despair when we watch these horrific acts occur and as a country, we seem to be doing nothing to prevent these tragedies.  Mass shootings are occurring on a regular basis and my heart continues to break again and again every time we hear news like this.  I know God is weeping with us today.  I pray we take some kind of action to help prevent these tragedies. I also believe deep in my heart that God is at work in these darkest moments.  

My message today is about the wilderness.  Recently Bob suggested I read a book called Church of the Wild, and I read this narrative in fascination about this new type of church being created across the country that worships outside with an emphasis of how we are connected  to God through creation and nature.  But the chapter in the book that really struck me was one that focused on being in the wilderness. 

When many of us hear the word wilderness we think of a place that is barren, without life, a place of wandering without direction and something to avoid.  I have heard many talks about “wandering in the wilderness” that denotes a period of loss, being alone, losing one’s groundedness, not feeling centered and feeling abandoned and rudderless.  I have heard many sermons in my life talking about the wilderness as a place where God takes things away to teach us to appreciate God’s gifts or a place for us to receive the refining that we need  to receive God’s blessing.  From all these accounts, the wilderness I is not a place that I want to be.  I want to feel the opposite of these emotions  and  work hard to try to avoid these barren times of life or times of distance from God. 

This book turned the idea of wilderness on its head for me.  Rather than being a place of punishment or abandonment, sometimes the wilderness is what we need to bring us into wholeness.  The scripture I just read is a story that I have heard my whole life.  God frees the Israelites from Egyptian control, and they are no longer slaves.  God has promised them a land of their own and this is now their opportunity to be free.  But through a series of events that highlights their fear, their complaining, and their lack of faith, I always heard that God punished them by not taking them directly to the promised land but sending them into the wilderness for 40 years.  This seemed like a punishment because of their lack of faith.  It was their actions and their attitude that sent them into the wilderness, and they had no idea how they were going to survive. 

The author of Church of the Wild, Victoria Loorz offers a different interpretation.  She said “rather than simply a harsh  backdrop for a human drama, like we often portray the site of forty years of wandering, the wilderness as a place that speaks, completely changes the tone of the story.  What if Moses and his traumatized people were sent into the wilderness not as some sort of intense punishment or intense object lesson?  What if the wilderness was instead the place to listen to the sacred speaking through the voices of burning bushes, calling humans to remember that they belong to a greater story?” (pg 62)

This had me really examine all my perceptions and preconceived  ideas about wilderness.  I have always found God in nature and one of my favorite things is to get up early and sit on my back porch to hear the many birds, watch the leaves change and feel the gentle breeze through the branches.  I love to take walks and experience creation in this way.  But this doesn’t feel like wilderness – wilderness is where wild animals are and where my fear of the unknown rises.  But what are we afraid of in the wilderness?

Loorz suggests, “ From Moses to Jesus, and from Hagar to Isaiah to Paul, the uncompromising directive from God to enter the wilderness at a pivotal moment in history had to mean something more than internal wrestling with ego or demons.” (pg 52)  Maybe the physical dirt, the heat, and the wild creatures are part of our development in our journey to God.  Maybe this is the place that we need to go for healing during a period of trauma in our life.  Maybe its the place we face our life and our death?

In the Hebrew scriptures the word midbar is usually translated as wilderness.   But it also listed in the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon as a noun meaning mouth, the organ of speech.  This gives a different context to the word wilderness and suggests something that is alive, that gives breath and speech and expression.  It whispers, it shouts, it speaks tenderly and lovingly.

When Jesus went to face his shadow self, his false self he didn’t go to the Temple to pray but he went to the wilderness and stayed there for 40 days.  He faced his life and his death in the wilderness and lived among the stones, the wild animals, and his demons.  It is here that he heard the call of God and wrestled with his calling.  I think the wilderness was more than a setting but a character in this story that brings Jesus into his true destiny.  He experienced the intimacy that the wilderness can bring to us. It was a place of connection, hearing and seeing God through this wild place.

My son Greg has introduced me to the Welsh poet, philosopher and writer David Whyte.  I listened to his story of an encounter with a black hawk in the Galapagos Islands.   David was trained as a marine zoologist intent on subduing nature and classifying, organizing, and naming species in the Galapagos Islands where he was stationed.  One day he comes upon a black hawk at eye level on a branch staring intently and deeply into his soul.  This was a rare bird in the Islands and one that David was wanting to identify.  David stares back.  In that moment David had a revelation that he was staring into the essence of this hawk and that this hawk was so far beyond his naming or categorizing.  David’s body was unraveling within this insight.   He realized there is no language to describe the interconnectivity to what he was witnessing in the wilderness, and it changed him forever.   He set aside his scientific training and become his true calling of poet and philosopher.

Here is a poem by David called Sometimes

Sometimes

If you move carefully

Through the forest,

Breathing

Like the ones

In the old stories,

Who could cross

A shimmering bed of leaves

Without a sound,

You come to a place

Whose only task

Is to trouble you

With tiny

But frightening requests,

Conceived out of nowhere

But in this place

Beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

You are doing now,

And

to stop what you

Are becoming

While you do it,

Questions

That have patiently

Waited for you,

Questions

That have no right

To go away.

The wilderness is interconnected with how I face my shadows and my false self and is part of my journey to allow my true self to begin to emerge.  It is a place that I need to visit to go beneath my surface, to face my fears, to move beyond my ordinary life and gaze deeply into the hawk’s eyes and understand that my naming, identifying, categorizing, aligning with my tribe is not who I really am and it’s not who you really are.  I need to enter the wilderness to become that which God is calling to me to out of my soul.  The wilderness brings me into the intimate love of God.    The wilderness is not a place of punishment and abandonment by God but a place of love.

I have always appreciated the quote from Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak.  He shares of entering the wilderness and the wild animal through silence.  Silence and respect of the soul.  Our soul is like  a wild animal. 

“The soul is like a wild animal, tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient and yet exceedingly shy.

If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out.

But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of the tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wilderness we seek.”

Friends, I feel a strong sense that we need to spend more time in our unprogrammed worship or Quaker communion today, as we all wrestle with so much inside of us.  Here are a few queries to consider but I know each of you have the questions that you need to wrestle within for our time together. 

Am I afraid of entering the wilderness?

What do I need to face in the wilderness?

What in my soul needs to quietly emerge?

5-22-22 - Learning the Unforced Rhythms of Grace

Learning the Unforced Rhythms of Grace

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

May 22, 2022

Matthew 11:28-30 (Msg)

28-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

It is clear from our scriptures this morning that God is concerned about rest.  Actually, Jim Smith author of The Good and Beautiful God says, “The number one enemy to our spiritual formation is exhaustion.” 

As a long-time student of spiritual formation, that bold proclamation grabbed my attention. Exhaustion is an enemy to our soul.  Just sit with that thought for a moment. Anyone feeling exhausted, worn out, burn out, and needing a rest?

Today, marks our entry into the summer months hear at First Friends. The choir takes a break, Sunday School takes and break and during the summer months we give space for some needed rest for our souls.

I like to think of this time as a sabbath for our corporate soul and for our individual souls.

Honestly, in my years as a pastor I have often heard people exclaim, “I am exhausted by my church.”  This is usually due to over-programming, a lack of volunteers, or not having a clear vision for the future.

Burnout has become one of the key reasons people simply up and leave the church, today, often after being extremely involved.

Sadly, I continue to watch many churches run people into the ground by ignoring the importance of rest. And therefore, I do not want that for us at First Friends.

As well, many currently in the helping professions (educators, medical professionals, social workers, etc.), suffer from exhaustion and lack of rest – especially as we continue to try and come out of this ongoing and evolving pandemic. 

Then there is our obsession with technology and social media which has added to this exhaustion 3-fold.   

It has become so bad, that we now must set limits for screen times and set reminders to exercise. We even must be reminded by our technologies to have interactions with real human beings to avoid isolation. The latest commercials of apps are helping you schedule mindfulness experiences or naps into our workday. 

Naps are not something new for many cultures outside of the US. 

People head home from work in Spain for a siesta. And in Italy they take a riposo. And in China workers break after lunch and put their heads on their desks for an hour-long nap (it is a protected right by their constitution).  This is something we in our driven American culture could learn from.  

Some major corporations in America have realized this and just before the pandemic had added Nap Rooms to their office spaces and tech companies.

The pandemic offered this opportunity in new ways as people were forced to work from home. Statistics showed that one of the major factors for quality production levels rising during the pandemic was directly due to people getting needed rest.

Matthew Walker, who has studied our need for sleep says, “…sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day.”

Sadly, I don’t think the struggle for rest is something new in our world, and it is evident from a simple glance at our bibles. Even people 2000+ years ago dealt with the lack of rest. You might be surprised at how many times the bible talks about people needing rest. Just Google it sometime – you might be surprised at how much the Bible has to say.   

Even when drafting the original 10 Commandments – rest was a key component.

“Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work.” (Exodus 20:9-10).

When I was in my doctoral studies, I was challenged to find what our Jewish friends consider sabbath rest. 

Sabbath comes from the word shavat which means to “cease” or “desist.”  The main observance of shavat was from sunset on Friday to nightfall of the following day.

Now, Quakers consider all days equal which can confuse this needed opportunity for rest. It also may at times create a lack of trust with rest or resting, making people feel as though they must be literally worn out for God’s purposes.

Thus, I think it is important that we consider rest not so much about day but instead about a discipline.      

Richella Parham, in an article posted by Renovaré titled, “The Spiritual Discipline of Rest” points out,

“…the way the human body functions has not changed much in the years since God commanded his people to observe a day of rest. The amount of time generally set aside for sleep has shrunk, but the need for it has not. In these days filled with artificial light and late-night opportunities for work and play, we must now be very purposeful in the pursuit of physical rest.  

I think we often fail to consider that we must choose to rest or else we’re likely to have rest forced upon us when we are exhausted to the point of physical, mental, or emotional distress.”

Ask yourself this morning, Have I ever found myslef forced to my bed after pushing myself too hard?

I know I have been in this place on many occasions. Ministry while trying to raise a family can be life-draining and exhausting at times. Statistics show that most pastors struggle with burnout on a regular occasion in ministry and the pandemic took those statistics to a point that found pastors fleeing from ministry, retiring at record rates, and finding new careers.

I know I must protect my time of sabbath rest.  So, don’t think I am rude if I do not answer a call or respond to an email on Friday, this is part of my discipline and hopefully makes me a better pastor.  I know that when I do not protect it, I start to feel sick, or on edge, and quickly find myself forced to rest.  

And folks, I’m also not just talking about students cramming for finals who need more rest, rather I am talking about retired folks who have schedules fuller now than before they retired – you know who you are out there.

We have busy lives – all of us – and we need to pay attention.

I had a friend once who would say, “My getting sick is God’s way of slowing me down.” 

Please understand, I don’t think we should buy into blaming this on God, but rather we need to become more aware of our own lives, our own body’s needs, and about how much we are able or trying to do.  That is what Parker Palmer was talking about last week in the pieces of the commencement speech I shared.

This is where, I believe, Jesus is very helpful.  I consider him a great example of one who understood the need for rest. There are plenty of places in scripture that show us his discipline of rest.

Often, we get so caught up with other aspects of the stories that we quickly read over or completely miss the more human aspects to which we can relate that often speak directly to his need for down time. For example:

Mark 1:35 But after this one day, “very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place and there he prayed.”  

In this moment Jesus secluded himself so much that his disciples could not find him, and they had formed a search party. 

Or after John the Baptist’s death, Jesus said to the disciples,

“’Come away by yourselves to a quiet place and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.” 

This reminds me when our boys were young, and they would play all day and come to the dinner table and suddenly, the head-bobbing would begin. Sometimes even with a spoonful of food in their hand. On occasion one of them would just fall head-first into their plate completely exhausted.  

In Matthew 11:28-30 it clearly shows that Jesus understood the importance of rest. He incorporated rest into his life and his teaching.  I love how Eugene Peterson translated it in our scriptures for today,

“Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

I think that may be one of my favorite phrases in scripture: to “learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”  I need to make a sign with this phrase for my house – because it is so important. 

But probably the story I love the most is found in Mark 4.  Most of us are probably familiar with this story.  Jesus and his closest followers set out across the Sea of Galilee by boat. Exhausted and spent from his day of ministry and teaching, Jesus falls fast asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat. While Jesus is “sawing logs,” major storms blow in and fear sets in on everyone else aboard the boat. 

In Mark 4:38 we find everyone a bit upset at Jesus and they shake him awake saying angerly, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

Now, you must remember that many of Jesus’ disciples were fisherman and knew just how dangerous the Sea of Galilee could get when a storm would arise. So, if they were frantic during a squall or storm of this nature – that was a big problem.

Yet Jesus shows us that even in the literal storms of life, rest is vital to building our trust, confidence, and definitely our peace.

The reason I love this story so much is because it is just how it seems to be. You finally decide to nap, rest, take a day off, or make some time in your schedule and then someone comes and says, “What are you doing? You don’t have time to rest.” 

Folks, there will always be another emergency, more work to do, someone to help, something to fix, but sometimes to help us be better people in our world, more understanding, clearer about our decisions, we are going to need to say, “I am taking a rest, because that is more important at this time.”   

And when you and I are in the thick of the storms of life, do we take Jesus’ advice or simply push on? 

Do we find a quiet place to rest? 

Do we intentionally find time to recover and renew our life? 

Do we, while everyone else is frantic around us, have the personal awareness and fortitude it takes to find a place stop the madness around us and really rest? 

Ask yourself, am I in need of rest, today?

Would my week start better if I rested today?

If I allowed myself to slow down and pause for a while, might I be able to center down and worship in a more meaningful way?  

As we enter the summer months, I want to challenge you to consider your own discipline of rest and what you need to do in the coming weeks and months to help you truly rest.

Many consider Waiting Worship a time to “rest in the presence of God.”  I pray as we enter this time, you may center down and begin a time of needed rest for your soul today. 

When I am in the thick of the storms of life, do I take Jesus’ advice or simply push on? 

Do I find a quiet place to rest? 

Do I intentionally find time to recover and renew my life? 

Do I, while everyone else is frantic around me, have the personal awareness and fortitude it takes to find a place stop the madness around me and really rest? 

5-15-22 - Open to the Grandeur and Glory of Life

Open to the Grandeur and Glory of Life

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

May 15, 2022

Our scripture for this morning comes from 2 Corinthians 9:8-11  and I will be reading it from the Message version.

8-11 God can pour on the blessings in astonishing ways so that you’re ready for anything and everything, more than just ready to do what needs to be done. As one psalmist puts it,

He throws caution to the winds,
    

giving to the needy in reckless abandon.


His right-living, right-giving ways
    

never run out, never wear out.

This most generous God who gives seed to the farmer that becomes bread for your meals is more than extravagant with you. He gives you something you can then give away, which grows into full-formed lives, robust in God, wealthy in every way, so that you can be generous in every way, producing with us great praise to God.

At this time of year, I find myself reflecting and reminiscing about my own graduation ceremonies over the years.  My high school graduation was held outside at Zolliner Stadium in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The graduates sat in full sun in the same place where the Zolliner Pistons (who became the Detroit Pistons) played professional basketball outdoors back in the day. We moved back to this location at the last minute after a brief storm came up which made it miserably hot in the sun.  Most of what I remember is sweating a lot. I also had to leave immediately after my graduation party that day to get to the camp where I was to become a camp counselor – the same camp where one year later I would meet Sue. 

My undergraduate college commencement at Concordia University in River Forest, Illinois was interesting as well. Our commencement speaker was the Mayor of Gary, Indiana. They went all out. He had graduated from my college and was doing some great work in cleaning up the city of Gary.  Earlier when I started college, I remember watching on the news military tanks being moved into downtown Gary as the violence in the town had escalated.  Things have changed immensely in Gary since that day, greatly due to my commencement speaker. 

When I received my Master’s Degree, we were all lined up in the basement of the Library at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois awaiting our processional.  Our commencement speaker had been kept a secret until he arrived to greet us all in the basement. Later, we found out this was mostly due to his controversial status with people at the time. But it came as a surprise as the political advisor to Richard Nixon, Chuck Colson, made his way through the graduates, shaking our hands, and looking for a table to sit at to cut down his message.  See, he was told he had 15 minutes, but his speech was almost 40 minutes.  I was standing nearby as he argued why he deserved more time.  It was awkward.

My doctoral hooding ceremony with George Fox Evangelical Seminary in Oregon was probably the most beautiful of my graduation experiences.  Our speaker was one of my professors, Len Sweet, who not only challenged us but spoke a charge to us to step up to the challenges of our world with being like Christ. My family, along with many from my Quaker Meeting came to celebrate the occasion in Beaverton, Oregon.  It was a beautiful and memorable event. 

Over the years, I have often thought what I would say if I was asked to give a commencement speech.  And immediately my mind goes to the many commencement speeches that have lived on after they have been given, such as

Chadwick Boseman’s speech at Howard University in 2018 when he said, “Purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history.”

Or there was Steve Jobs’ speech at Stanford University in 2005, where he said almost prophetically, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet – keep looking.”

Or how about the speech Oprah Winfrey gave at Harvard in 2013 where she said, "Learn from every mistake because every experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are. And then figure out what is the next right move. And the key to life is to develop an internal moral, emotional G.P.S. that can tell you which way to go."

Or one last one from David Foster Wallace speaking at Kenyon College in 2005 where he said, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated.”

These were all in the top 15 of all-time commencement speeches in history, but the one that I believe speaks to our condition whether graduating or not and continues to make the list of top commencement speeches is from Naropa University in 2015.  Where Quaker Parker Palmer gave the commencement address.  Many consider it the best commencement message every given.

This morning, I want to share some of Parker’s words. These are not words just for those graduating – these are pieces of immense wisdom that we can all take with us and work to develop in our daily lives.  Palmer labeled them “The 6 advices for living with wholeheartedness.” He starts by saying, 

Be reckless when it comes to affairs of the heart.

What I really mean…is be passionate, fall madly in love with life.

Be passionate about some part of the natural and/or human worlds and take risks on its behalf, no matter how vulnerable they make you.

No one ever died saying, “I’m sure glad for the self-centered, self-serving and self-protective life I lived.”

He goes on to say,

Offer yourself to the world — your energies, your gifts, your visions, your heart — with open-hearted generosity. But understand that when you live that way you will soon learn how little you know and how easy it is to fail. 

To grow in love and service, you, I, all of us, must value ignorance as much as knowledge and failure as much as success…Clinging to what you already know and do well is the path to an unlived life. So, cultivate beginner’s mind, walk straight into your not-knowing, and take the risk of failing and falling again and again, then getting up again and again to learn - that’s the path to a life lived large, in service of love, truth, and justice.

Palmer’s second point of advice speaks to the difficult art of living with opposite truths and speaks of inner wholeness. Palmer says,

As you integrate ignorance and failure into your knowledge and success, do the same with all the alien parts of yourself. Take everything that’s bright and beautiful in you and introduce it to the shadow side of yourself. Let your altruism meet your egotism, let your generosity meet your greed, let your joy meet your grief. Everyone has a shadow…

But when you are able to say, “I am all of the above, my shadow as well as my light,” the shadow’s power is put in service of the good. Wholeness is the goal, but wholeness does not mean perfection, it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of your life.

As a person who…has made three deep dives into depression along the way, I do not speak lightly of this. I simply know that it is true.

As you acknowledge and embrace all that you are, you give yourself a gift that will benefit the rest of us as well. Our world is in desperate need of leaders who live what Socrates called “an examined life.”

In critical areas like politics, religion, business, and the mass media, too many leaders refuse to name and claim their shadows because they don’t want to look weak. With shadows that go unexamined and unchecked, they use power heedlessly in ways that harm countless people and undermine public trust in our major institutions.

In Parker’s third piece of advice, he calls for extending this courtesy to others and treating them with the same kindness that we do our own:

As you welcome whatever you find alien within yourself, extend that same welcome to whatever you find alien in the outer world. I don’t know any virtue more important these days than hospitality to the stranger, to those we perceive as “other” than us.

The old majority in this society, people who look like me, is on its way out. By 2045 the majority of Americans will be people of color… Many in the old majority fear that fact, and their fear, shamelessly manipulated by too many politicians, is bringing us down. The renewal this nation needs will not come from people who are afraid of otherness in race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

Palmers fourth piece of advice addresses the small-minded lists and unimaginative standards that measure all the wrong metrics of “productivity” and “progress.” Palmer urges:

Take on big jobs worth doing — jobs like the spread of love, peace, and justice. That means refusing to be seduced by our cultural obsession with being effective as measured by short-term results. We all want our work to make a difference — but if we take on the big jobs and our only measure of success is next quarter’s bottom line, we’ll end up disappointed, dropping out, and in despair.

Our heroes take on impossible jobs and stay with them for the long haul because they live by a standard that trumps effectiveness. The name of that standard, I think, is faithfulness — faithfulness to your gifts, faithfulness to your perception of the needs of the world, and faithfulness to offering your gifts to whatever needs are within your reach.

The tighter we cling to the norm of effectiveness the smaller the tasks we’ll take on, because they are the only ones that get short-term results… Care about being effective, of course, but care even more about being faithful…to your calling, and to the true needs of those entrusted to your care. 

You won’t get the big jobs done in your lifetime, but if at the end of the day you can say, “I was faithful,” I think you’ll be okay.

In his fifth point of advice, Palmer echoes Tolstoy’s letters to Gandhi on why we hurt each other and offers:

Since suffering as well as joy comes with being human, I urge you to remember this:

Violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering.

Sometimes we aim that violence at ourselves, as in overwork that leads to burnout or worse, or in the many forms of substance abuse; sometimes we aim that violence at other people — racism, sexism, and homophobia often come from people trying to relieve their suffering by claiming superiority over others. 

The good news is that suffering can be transformed into something that brings life, not death. It happens every day.

Parker says, I’m 76 years old, I now know many people who’ve suffered the loss of the dearest person in their lives. At first they go into deep grief, certain that their lives will never again be worth living. But then they slowly awaken to the fact that not in spite of their loss, but because of it, they’ve become bigger, more compassionate people, with more capacity of heart to take in other people’s sorrows and joys. These are broken-hearted people, but their hearts have been broken open, rather than broken apart. 

So, every day, exercise your heart by taking in life’s little pains and joys — that kind of exercise will make your heart supple, the way a runner makes a muscle supple, so that when it breaks, (and it surely will,) it will break not into a fragment grenade, but into a greater capacity for love.

In his sixth and final piece of wisdom, Palmer quotes the immortal words of Saint Benedict — “daily, keep your death before your eyes”— and, echoes Rilke’s view of mortality, by counseling,  

If you hold a healthy awareness of your own mortality, your eyes will be opened to the grandeur and glory of life, and that will evoke all of the virtues I’ve named, as well as those I haven’t, such as hope, generosity, and gratitude. If the unexamined life is not worth living, it’s equally true that the unlived life is not worth examining.

Folks, what Parker Palmer was addressing was not just a set of graduates from Naropa University, but he is sharing wisdom with us all for life in this present moment. This is timeless wisdom that I hope we take in and make part of our lives. I believe we all need this message, today, and as Parker said, may our eyes be opened to the grandeur and glory of life!

Now, as we center down and enter waiting worship, let us take a moment to ponder the following queries:

·        Am I passionate and falling madly in love with this life?

·        How might I introduce myself to my “shadow side” this week?

·        In what ways do I need to work on embracing “otherness”?

·        How am I transforming my suffering into something that brings life?

5-1-22 - To Be Jesus to the World

To Be Jesus to the World

Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting

Pastor Bob Henry

May 1, 2022

Good morning, Friends and welcome to Light Reflections – this morning we return to the post-resurrection stories by looking at John 20:19-29 from the New Revised Standard Version of scripture.  

19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin[a]), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

“Now, what are we to do?”  That must have been the question running through the disciples and followers of Christ’s minds.  

“Now, what are we to do?”

Today, we heard in our text of the disciples cowering in fear behind locked doors.  Fearing not only the Roman Empire, but also the religious leaders of the day.  No one was safe at this time.

I believe the disciples were in fear just as many of the people in Ukraine or Palestine are today.

The disciples knew that the religious and state authorities had found a way to have Jesus crucified, and they knew they were already on the trail to find and do the same thing to them and the other followers of Christ.

Let’s be honest, religious and state authorities don’t often like the followers of blasphemous, rogue teachers, who want to make their leaders out to be martyrs. 

No, they would want to eliminate any possibility of this happening and do everything to keep their religion and state pure. This is sadly true of many religious and governmental groups in our world, still today.

Change is hard, and prophetic voices are those usually rallying for change.

It is one thing to watch someone die for a cause, but when you find out that the attention has turned on you because of your followership of this person, ANXIETY, FEAR, the NEED TO HIDE quickly overcome you.

Your mind flashes with visions of you being tortured by the authorities, carrying your own cross through the city of Jerusalem, and being hung to suffer the agony of public execution on a cross. These would have been vivid images in the minds of the followers of Christ at that time.

The process the disciples were running through in their minds was, what I would call, a personal incarnation.  They were beginning to incarnate (becoming a living embodiment of) what Christ had just gone through.  And the disciples were left to answer that big question,

“Now, what are we to do?”

Jesus never really taught about Part B…and let’s be honest, the disciples hardly understood Part A – let alone having a plan for after Jesus was gone from their presence.

You may be thinking this is hard to relate to – but just ask yourself:

·        When have you said, “Now, what are we to do?” or “Now, what am I to do?” in your own life. 

·        What was your difficult situation?

·        Have you ever been gripped by fear wondering what was going to happen?

·        Have you ever felt like you had no plan B – that life was at a dead end?

Just like where we find the disciples this morning, it is often in our lowest moments, when our plans, our ideas, our hopes, our beliefs are stripped away, this is often when the presence of Jesus is felt and made known – or maybe it is in these times we finally recognize that God has been with us all along.

The text says that Jesus was literally “standing among them” and they didn’t even realize it.  How long was he standing there before someone noticed? 

Isn’t that how it is for us, often? The presence of God is in our midst, or even in our own hearts, and we don’t recognize or acknowledge God.

Folks, we are Quakers, the ones who are always to look for that of God in those around us.  How often has the presence of God been in our midst in the likes of a friend, a parent, a child, at teacher, even a complete stranger, and we totally missed it?

And then comes those famous first words from Jesus, “PEACE BE WITH YOU.” The scriptures have recorded for us several other times when Jesus used those same words. Each time the disciples heard them he was using them to calm their lives. 

If you remember, it was these words that Jesus used to calm the storms on the water as their boat was violently shaken by the storm and everyone was in fear.  The disciples would have known these words to be an acknowledgment and reassurance of God’s presence in the storms of their lives.

Yet, with all that they had been through during the last several days leading up to their best friend being executed in front of them, they still showed doubt this time.  This time they had been so shaken that he had to prove to them who he was so that their joy and peace would return. 

The disciple, Thomas, even must go one step further – I think you and I might have been the same. Thomas needed a hands-on-experience before he could believe. 

Sometimes our lives are in such tumult that we need something a bit more tangible – a real-time, real-life experience.

Sometimes we need a physical – incarnate – experience.  We need to hear a parent’s voice, sometimes we need a hug, sometimes we need a physical connection. I think Thomas has been shafted by history. 

Beyond needing proof, beyond assurance, beyond even finding inner peace, Thomas needed a physical connection as he tried to wrap his mind around that question, “Now, what are we to do?” 

And that physical connection again takes the shape of incarnation – embodying flesh or taking on flesh. Thomas was understanding the deep need for incarnation at this moment – he needed flesh to come to grips with what was going on.

I think too often the reason we cannot relate to Jesus, is because we cannot truly see him as a human being – with flesh. He was no different than any of us in this meetinghouse.  He had skin and bones, aches and pains, he bled…no different.  And what we need to realize is that Jesus showed us how with these fully human, fleshly bodies to truly live! 

He taught us how to forgive, how to bring hope, how to reconcile, how to “incarnate” his life and ministry to our neighbors and to our world in this present moment. 

Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said it so well, “What Jesus wants from us is not admiration, but rather imitation.” 

It wasn’t just about the incarnation of Jesus, folks – no, it’s also about OUR incarnation. This is what Jesus was getting at in our text.

“Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you!’ As the Father has sent me, I am sending YOU!”

You and I are now the incarnated Christ to our world.  We are the light-bearers being sent into our world.

I know I mentioned this two weeks ago in my Easter message, but have you ever thought about the fact that the gathered meeting (or the universal church) was considered or called “The Body of Christ.”  We are the official incarnation of Christ to our world.  Let that sink in for a moment.

St. Teresa of Avila prayed a prayer that speaks to this incarnation – it went like this:

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands but yours,

No feet but yours,

Yours are the eyes through which

Christ’s compassion must look out on the world.

Yours are the feet with which

He is to go about doing good.

Yours are the hands with which

He is to bless us now.

We are the incarnation of Christ – We are the light bearers.

What we are being called and sent to do is be Jesus and live as he did in our world.  We are filled with his light and love.  We are to take our inner light into our world and become the presence of Christ to our neighbors. 

To sense God’s peace, forgiveness, his love  - we must embody and live it in our world.  We must take on the attributes of Christ. 

Yet along with this call naturally comes fear, as is illustrated well by the disciples cowering in the upper room in our text this morning. Fear is real for most of us. 

Being a peacemaker, standing up for what you believe, seeking justice and mercy, even asking or giving forgiveness are not always easy and often they cause us to fear living out the life God is calling us to. 

Fear translates to hiding and worrying about what others think of us.  It leads us to cower, to isolate, and even build walls.  

Sadly, a great deal of our politics, our military, our economics, our sports, our parenting styles, even much of our religiosity is based on fear and fear tactics.

But God is sending us into a world – not in fear – but rather in peace.  Filled with God’s spirit and light to offer forgiveness, to reconcile, to heal and bring harmony.  We are to offer the attributes of Jesus Christ – Grace, Mercy, Justice, and Peace.  But sadly, it is our own fears that get in the way...

It’s like what Quaker Gene Knudsen-Hoffman wrote,

Fear which lingers,

Fear which lives on in us,

Fear which does not prompt us to wise remedial action,

Becomes engraved upon our hearts,

Becomes an addiction, becomes an armor which encases us.

This fear guards and guides us and determines our action.

It leads us directly toward that which we fear.

We can’t let our fear keep us in a tomb of death. 

We can’t let fear keep us worried or fretting about what is going to happen. We can’t let fear keep us hiding and avoiding and not acting.

That I believe is the case too often with the church, today. 

People who take up the mantle of Jesus Christ – people who incarnate Christ in their own lives.  People who live out of peace, forgiveness, grace, mercy and love have learned to embrace their fears and step out in faith.

Fear is a major issue, but I think there is another. Let’s be honest, many people have given up on Jesus and his ways in our world.  For many the followers of Jesus that the world sees portrayed in the media and on T.V. no longer represent Christianity or for that matter Jesus – and many see them as an embarrassment and have a real fear of being misrepresented. Blogger and commentator, John Pavolitz, addressed this in one of his blog posts. He says,  

The Jesus I knew as a child and came to aspire to in adulthood is still here, and it is the heretics who are preserving him.

It is the maligned backsliders, the Godless heathens, and the derided social justice warriors who are replicating his compassion for hurting people, his welcome for foreigners, his generosity toward the hungry, his gentleness for the marginalized.

I’ve been visiting these local Progressive faith communities every week, and they are doing joy-giving, life-affirming, wall-leveling work—alongside people of every color, orientation, and nation of origin.

They are providing Sanctuary for refugees, making meals for multitudes, offering embrace to the estranged, standing between the vulnerable people and the opportunistic predators around them—you know, like Jesus would.

And in our gatherings, Atheists and Muslims and Jews and Agnostics have stepped into these communities and found something they have not found in the counterfeit Christianity so loud in this country: they have found welcome.

It’s all been fully and beautifully surprising, to see this Jesus still alive here in these people.

You may have given up on a Christianity that resembles Jesus, and I can’t blame you. The people claiming his name right now who have the microphone, the platform, the headlines, and the legislative pull—are providing good reason to lose hope, ample cause to imagine Jesus’ extinction, great evidence that this thing is devoid of goodness.

But there is a quieter, more loving, less self-seeking, less headline grabbing expression of faith in this country, that is everything Jesus said he would be: good news to the poor and the disenfranchised, hope for those feeling tossed by the storms of this life, refuge for the oppressed—and trouble for the wolves who come to devour them.

In these progressive Christian communities all over this country, the peacemaking, neighbor loving, foot washing, leper-embracing Jesus is not only still present, but being multiplied by kind people determined to perpetuate him here.

There is a Jesus here who invites women into ministry, who feels compassion and not contempt for the poor; one who calls disparate people to join him, one who destroys all barriers.

There is a Jesus here of justice and mercy; one championing diversity and equality, one committed to altering the planet in a way that gives voice to the voiceless and resistance to the hateful.

This Jesus is here, and he will never be driven to extinction so long as there are heretics, heathens, and backsliders who refuse to let him die simply because religious people have no use for him.

These people are still reaching out a hand to this hurting world because they are compelled by their faith to do so.

If you are a person of faith and you’re exhausted from a Christianity of cruelty and malice; if you’ve given up on finding anything more redemptive or anything worthy of your presence and time, seek out a Progressive faith community this week—and allow yourself to be beautifully surprised by a radically loving, lavishly welcoming, compassionate activist Jesus you thought was gone for good.

Be encouraged.

So folks…Now, what are we to do? 

My hope is that we here at First Friends would see ourselves as one of those Progressive Faith Communities that radically love, lavishly welcome, and are compassionately activist.  That we would be known by incarnating the true Jesus that the world needs.  That, I believe, is what we are to do! 

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

·        How am I incarnating Jesus to my neighbors?

·        What fears are getting in my way? 

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?