Out of the believers hearts shall flow rivers of living water…

John 7:37-39

37On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, 38and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” 39Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

All life began in water as indeed all life does to this very day. Water is one of the Great Bible images. In the beginning of creation God’s Holy Spirit brooded upon the face of the primeval waters and God separated the waters above the firmament from the waters below the firmament. God shows us his salvation to righteous Noah through water; Abraham swears his oath to Abimelech at the well of Beer-Sheba; God causes a spring of water to gush out for Hagar and Ishmael; he parts the waters of the Red Sea; he brings water out of the rock at Meribah; Jonah’s right journey of soul is through water; Jesus is baptized in the waters of the Jordan and filled with the Holy Spirit goes into the wilderness. The prophets speak of water as new life — especially Ezekiel who in that marvelous passage recorded for us in the forty-seventh chapter tells us that the water flowing from the Temple threshold in Jerusalem will make a great river that will sweeten the great Dead Sea and irrigate the desert region of the Arabah.

Thirst for the living water has been an aspect and indeed is an aspect of all time pilgrimage. In Samaria Jesus enters into debate with the common people at the well about the nature of that living water. He walks upon water in Galilee and of course he changes water into wine at Cana. He heals the paralytic man by the pagan well near the sheep gate in Jerusalem.

In Jesus’ day, to avoid becoming putrefied by the blood from the animal sacrifices, the Temple in Jerusalem required water, lots of water.  And the Temple was atop a high ridge under which no water was to be found.  Water was brought to the Temple Mount by the aqueduct Solomon had constructed almost a thousand years before.  It brought water from pools some twelve miles away to away the blood and supply the city with the water it needed as well.

John seven tells the story of how Jesus issued the most astounding invitation imaginable.  It was the last day of the great Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, when the priests were pouring purifying water from golden pitchers on the altar and the choir was singing the words of Isaiah 12:3 “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.”  Suddenly Jesus cries out to all those gathered “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the Scripture says, streams of living water will flow from within him.”

Water is the symbol of spiritual life. Think back to the time Israel wandered in the wilderness. They were roaming the desert without water, in rebellion against Moses and Moses was crying out to God for water. Only the direct, miraculous intervention of God — through the ministry of Moses — kept them from certain death. God provided water and the people lived. For you and me, the wilderness is more an inner condition than an outward one. The thirst may not be physical nor physically life threatening — but it is soul threatening. Water is life. Without water there is no life. Water surely is God’s gift. Water everywhere is promise of new life because of the profound unusual symbolism of this element. Man shall not live by bread alone… humanity shall not continue to exist on this planet without fresh water. The potency of his words were not lost on the crowds that had gathered to participate in the feast. They understood Jesus to be talking about much more than physical thirst. The promise is even more dynamic than comes across in most English translations. The text actually reads something like, “As for the one who is continually trusting in me — rivers of living water will flow from within them.” The language suggests that the person who has a continuing relationship of trust with Jesus Christ will experience a fountain of life coming from within.  “Flowing water” is an abundant supply of water such as could sustains life in the wilderness. It brings the joy of a suddenly discovered oasis in a “dry and thirsty land…” Jesus’ promise is that when we have an ongoing, trusting relationship with him, we will experience a life giving, Jesus is saying to them and to us, “If your life is empty and without meaning — come to me — you will find what you are looking for!”

John then adds an editorial comment. Jesus, he points out, was referring to the work of the Holy Spirit within the lives of his followers when he spoke of these “rivers of living water.” The promise comes to fruition in the present in our lives when we hear and response to the invitation, “Come to me.” The moment we recognize our spiritual thirst and decide to take that thirst to Christ, we open an inner faucet which allows the “water” to flow. It is important to note the RSVP in Jesus’ invitation and subsequent promise. The formula goes something like,  “If anyone is thirsty…. let them come and drink… and then rivers of living water…” will bubble up within.

It’s not, “If anyone is thirsty, I will give them water…” It is, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come and drink.” And when we decide to respond, a wonderful transformation becomes possible.

Jeremiah 2:13 speaks of the emptiness of the people of God without a relationship with God.  ‘for my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.”  There is an ‘emptiness – fulfillment” theme here.  As a thirsty person comes to Christ to drink,  the Spirit who will be given will produce “rivers of living water” from within the believer

But this water is not for us only. ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ Jesus said. Maybe it should be a Query for each of us to consider: “Out of your heart do rivers of living water flow”. If we are to continue to proclaim Good News to the world we must be prepared to confront the evils that beset society in our own age. The list isn’t hard to compose. They are the issues of justice, of the conservation and preservation of the natural environment; issues of extraordinary profligacy — wastefulness, misuse of the natural resources; issues of trash, garbage of all kinds, from cigarette butts to nuclear wastes; issues of recycling waste; and the issue of racism which seems to be alive and well. In so many parts of the Christian world the voice of Christian witness is stagnant water, unfiltered water, water muddied by intolerance, and unreflected bias and bigotry, water choked by the minerals of prejudice and polluted by privilege and un-thought-through inheritances. The clear word of truth must be spoken. This must happen everywhere if our children are to survive without war.

This passage speaks to me especially when I think of those whose personal expression of Christian faith is negative, judgmental and wearisome. If there is not joy flowing out of our lives and within the community of faith then there is a need for renewal and a new infusion of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps a genuine Pentecost for some would be an outpouring of the Joy of the Spirit of God in the midst of the people of God.

O Lord of life, the sometimes hectic pace of our living, the demands of the
daily grind and the struggle to make ends meet, often leaves us empty.
It sometimes feels as though our lives are living us instead of us living
our lives. It is so easy to loose sight of the things that truly count.

We come before you dry and thirsty hearts today. O renew us Lord. May
we experience the joy of the “rivers of living water” your Son Jesus offered
to those who would trust in him. Let the peace of your Holy Spirit calm our
hearts, strengthen our tired spirits and soothe our anxious minds.

O Holy Spirit come to us and fan the flames once again!
Bring new life to our faith, renew our vision and energize our mission
for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Out of the believers hearts shall flow rivers of living water…

John 7:37-39

37On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, 38and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” 39Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

All life began in water as indeed all life does to this very day. Water is one of the Great Bible images. In the beginning of creation God’s Holy Spirit brooded upon the face of the primeval waters and God separated the waters above the firmament from the waters below the firmament. God shows us his salvation to righteous Noah through water; Abraham swears his oath to Abimelech at the well of Beer-Sheba; God causes a spring of water to gush out for Hagar and Ishmael; he parts the waters of the Red Sea; he brings water out of the rock at Meribah; Jonah’s right journey of soul is through water; Jesus is baptized in the waters of the Jordan and filled with the Holy Spirit goes into the wilderness. The prophets speak of water as new life — especially Ezekiel who in that marvelous passage recorded for us in the forty-seventh chapter tells us that the water flowing from the Temple threshold in Jerusalem will make a great river that will sweeten the great Dead Sea and irrigate the desert region of the Arabah.

Thirst for the living water has been an aspect and indeed is an aspect of all time pilgrimage. In Samaria Jesus enters into debate with the common people at the well about the nature of that living water. He walks upon water in Galilee and of course he changes water into wine at Cana. He heals the paralytic man by the pagan well near the sheep gate in Jerusalem.

In Jesus’ day, to avoid becoming putrefied by the blood from the animal sacrifices, the Temple in Jerusalem required water, lots of water. And the Temple was atop a high ridge under which no water was to be found. Water was brought to the Temple Mount by the aqueduct Solomon had constructed almost a millennium before. It brought water from pools some 12 miles away to wash away the blood and supplied the city with the water it needed as well.

Our reading from John seven tells the story of how Jesus issued the most astounding invitation imaginable. It was the last day of the great Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, when the priests were pouring purifying water from golden pitchers, and the choir was singing the words of Isaiah 12:3, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Suddenly Jesus cries out to all those gathered, On the last and greatest day of the Feast Jesus stood and said in a loud voice “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the Scripture says, streams of living water will flow from within him.”

Water is the symbol of spiritual life. Think back to the time Israel wandered in the wilderness. They were roaming the desert without water, in rebellion against Moses and Moses was crying out to God for water. Only the direct, miraculous intervention of God — through the ministry of Moses — kept them from certain death. God provided water and the people lived. For you and me, the wilderness is more an inner condition than an outward one. The thirst may not be physical nor physically life threatening — but it is soul threatening. Water is life. Without water there is no life. Water surely is God’s gift. Water everywhere is promise of new life because of the profound unusual symbolism of this element. Man shall not live by bread alone… humanity shall not continue to exist on this planet without fresh water. The potency of his words were not lost on the crowds that had gathered to participate in the feast. They understood Jesus to be talking about much more than physical thirst. The promise is even more dynamic than comes across in most English translations. The text actually reads something like, “As for the one who is continually trusting in me — rivers of living water will flow from within them.” The languages suggests that the person who has a continuing relationship of trust with Jesus Christ will experience a fountain of life coming from within.  “Flowing water” is an abundant supply of water such as could sustains life in the wilderness. It brings the joy of a suddenly discovered oasis in a “dry and thirsty land…” Jesus’ promise is that when we have an ongoing, trusting relationship with him, we will experience a life giving, Jesus is saying to them and to us, “If your life is empty and without meaning — come to me — you will find what you are looking for!”

John then adds an editorial comment. Jesus, he points out, was referring to the work of the Holy Spirit within the lives of his followers when he spoke of these “rivers of living water.” The promise comes to fruition in the present in our lives when we hear and response to the invitation, “Come to me.” The moment we recognize our spiritual thirst and decide to take that thirst to Christ, we open an inner faucet which allows the “water” to flow. It is important to note the RSVP in Jesus’ invitation and subsequent promise. The formula goes something like,  “If anyone is thirsty…. let them come and drink… and then rivers of living water…” will bubble up within.

It’s not, “If anyone is thirsty, I will give them water…” It is, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come and drink.” And when we decide to respond, a wonderful transformation becomes possible.

Jeremiah 2:13 speaks of the emptiness of the people of God without a relationship with God.  “…for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.” There is an “emptiness — fulfillment” theme here. As a thirsty person comes to Christ to drink the Spirit who will be given, will produce “rivers of living water” from within the believer.

But this water is not for us only. ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ Jesus said. Maybe it should be a Query for each of us to consider: “Out of your heart do rivers of living water flow”. If we are to continue to proclaim Good News to the world we must be prepared to confront the evils that beset society in our own age. The list isn’t hard to compose. They are the issues of justice, of the conservation and preservation of the natural environment; issues of extraordinary profligacy — wastefulness, misuse of the natural resources; issues of trash, garbage of all kinds, from cigarette butts to nuclear wastes; issues of recycling waste; and the issue of racism which seems to be alive and well. In so many parts of the Christian world the voice of Christian witness is stagnant water, unfiltered water, water muddied by intolerance, and unreflected bias and bigotry, water choked by the minerals of prejudice and polluted by privilege and un-thought-through inheritances. The clear word of truth must be spoken. This must happen everywhere if our children are to survive without war.

This passage speaks to me especially when I think of those whose personal expression of Christian faith is negative, judgmental and wearisome. If there is not joy flowing out of our lives and within the community of faith then there is a need for renewal and a new infusion of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps a genuine Pentecost for some would be an outpouring of the Joy of the Spirit of God in the midst of the people of God.

O Lord of life, the sometimes hectic pace of our living, the demands of the
daily grind and the struggle to make ends meet, often leaves us empty.
It sometimes feels as though our lives are living us instead of us living
our lives. It is so easy to loose sight of the things that truly count.

We come before you dry and thirsty hearts today. O renew us Lord. May
we experience the joy of the “rivers of living water” your Son Jesus offered
to those who would trust in him. Let the peace of your Holy Spirit calm our
hearts, strengthen our tired spirits and soothe our anxious minds.

O Holy Spirit come to us and fan the flames once again!
Bring new life to our faith, renew our vision and energize our mission
for the sake of Jesus Christ.

A great deal is going on in the 6^th chapter of John’s gospel. It’s an interesting exercise just to outline it. It starts with Jesus trying to grab a few moments to himself after miraculously healing people. Rather than rest, he was inundated by five thousand people all of whom he miraculously feeds with a few barley loaves and a couple of fish. This time he his attempt to escape the press was successful, so much so that when night fell and he hadn’t come back his disciples take a boat across the Lake to Capernaum. After what for the disciples was a stormy crossing Jesus meets them, miraculously walking on the water, just as they arrive.

In the morning the crowd commandeers boats that had blown up on the shore during the night and begin the hunt for him. When they find him they attempt to make this new found miracle worker King. Next he deals with the religious leader of Capernaum. Then, in the synagogue itself, he meets with his disciples and finally the small group which John calls the twelve.

It was because of his healing ministry and the barley loaves and fish that the masses followed Jesus. He was for them a miracle worker to whom they could look to put food in their stomachs. They asked for a sign. He told them that the bread that God gives comes down from heaven and brings life to the world. He told them that he was the bread of life and that he had come down from heaven to do God’s will. It is my Father’s will, he said, that everyone who sees the Son and has faith in him should have eternal life. They couldn’t grasp what he tried to tell them but thought he’d make a pretty good king.

What he told them riled up the community’s religious leaders. Despite the miracles he did, how could he be the Messiah? Their tradition said that the Messiah was to come on the clouds – Jesus grew up in their community. They knew his father, his mother—the whole family. When Jesus told them that he was the bread of life that came down from heaven and that he came to give his own flesh for the life of the world they could not understand. He said that whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood will live. That’s the English translation of a Greek attempt to capture what someone helpfully suggested was an equivalent phrase to our ‘heart and soul’ to help us have a better sense of the phrase the word we’ve translated as ‘eat’ isn’t the Greek word for eat at all – it means to gnaw on. I think the sentence that reads “whoever dwells in me and I in him” will live is a much clearer statement of the meaning of Jesus’ message.

Regardless, it contradicted the Jewish leader’s pre set notions of how the Messiah would come – and it most certainly couldn’t be that kid that grew up in the neighborhood.

He then meets with those John calls his disciples, students who followed an itinerant teacher in the Capernaum synagogue. They were serious scholars who followed Jesus to learn what he knew. When they heard him speak of eating his flesh and drinking his blood they knew that Leviticus 17 absolutely forbade the consuming of blood – period, no exceptions. They could listen to him no longer, it was more than they could stand. He tried to tell them that it was the spirit that gives life, that the flesh could achieve nothing and the words he spoke were both spirit and life. John tells us that from that moment many of Jesus’ disciples withdrew from him and no longer went about with him.

He turns and asks the Twelve “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answers for them all. He asks “Lord, to whom shall we go? Your words are words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are God’s Holy One.”

Let me tell you how important is this moment in the life of the church. Before Jesus’ arrest and trial, before his crucifixion and before his resurrection. Before the conversations in the upper room and before Pentecost, before meeting the little band of committed followers on the Galilean shore and before his ascension we have the beginning of the church. It is the proclamation ‘we believe and know that you are God’s Holy One’ where the church begins.

When what appeared to be the tragic end of the life of a prophet of God, despite the crucifixion, these closest to Jesus did not succumb to the persecution and propaganda directed against them, they boldly withstood wickedness and lying and after a short period of being paralyzed by sheer terror they bravely set out to make known the teachings of and reclaim the abandoned inheritance of their Lord.

To the crowd Jesus said that all who the Father gives him would come to him and anyone who comes to him he would in no way turn away. To the Jewish leaders he said that no one comes to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me. To the scholars he said no one comes to me unless it has been granted him by the Father.

Coming to Jesus for the goodies, like the crowd, or trying to understand Jesus out of one’s religious tradition, or even following Jesus because he seems to have the best way to live life might all be first steps but unless the Spirit of God draws us we will find reasons for refusing the life giving invitation to life as intended for us by God.

Simon Peter’s poignant question to Jesus comes back to me again and again – if not you Jesus, than to whom shall we go?

Kitty Bendixen-park Worship Leader 2/9/2014

Friends, have you ever been flat out on your back, sick, and uncertain, paralyzed in fear, resigned in your depression? And who carried you then? Who picked you up in love and faith and ushered you into a whole new order of being, who took you to the feet of the healer and held your hand when grace swept over you? Who in your life has done this holy work, pushing past your passivity, past your grief, and your woundedness?

And what about you? Do you not have strong arms? Who have you carried in the act of faithing? Who in your life have you loved past their feelings of hopelessness?

Are we not all gathered here today because there are those who carried us in faith to this moment in time, to this manifestation of the beloved community? And in our still, quiet moments in prayer, in worship, do we not hear a call to pick up and carry others, to be radiant in our faith—to be agents for life? (Reading from the book: Practicing Peace: a devotional walk through the Quaker tradition ed, by Catherine Whitmire, Sorin Books, 2007. This entry, pp. 85-86, was written by Beckey Phipps, 2004.)

We are called to give ourselves to others in ways that matter. Giving ourselves away has never been about being successful or self-important, Jesus calls us to be faithful. When Jesus called his first disciples, they gave up everything, their occupations, their possessions, some their families, and went with Jesus to learn what God’s kingdom was all about. And so did Paul. He gave up a successful career, as a rabbi, in order to go traipsing around the ancient world teaching and preaching the Good News of God.

But these were not the only people to give themselves to the ongoing practice of listening and opening themselves to following God’s leading. The author of Hebrews has a whole list of people who lived faithful, though far from perfect lives. Chapter 11, reminds us that we cannot expect faith to be much more than “an assurance of things hoped for” and a “proving of things not seen.” We’re not to expect miraculous interventions and huge cash inflows, because faith is a pilgrimage, a journey not of arrival and status, but of an active encounter with the Living God moment by moment along the way. And it may not lead to success and fame. Many who gave themselves faithfully to God were tortured, mocked, flogged, imprisoned, stoned to death, slaughtered by the sword and sawn in two, the text says. Now this probably won’t happen to us as we learn to give ourselves away to God’s leadings.

But the author of Hebrews reminds us that plenty of faithful people were homeless, jobless, outcasts, refugees, just plain destitute. The lives and ministries of these faithful people were not successful by modern standards. They took great risks, and found no quick fixes, many of their lives did not have happy endings. All these faithful people “died in faith without cashing in on the promise.” And yet, they teach us that listening to God’s calling is always an act of faith. Lasting faith and authentic spirituality is not easy, sensational or fleeting, but rather long and drawn out. You see we do not quickly conform ourselves to God’s ways. Giving ourselves away is a spiritual exercise of non-attachment. It involves the steady discipline of listening, discerning and then taking risks of faithful, holy obedience. The kind that Jesus modeled and calls us to follow.

This Meeting is already involved in self-emptying ministry and there are endless ways to give ourselves away. We give ourselves away by giving our time and energy when no one else will. We give ourselves away by loving those who are forgotten and forsaken when others don’t. We give our strength and labor when that is what is needed. We give our money and resources to make sure things happen that need to happen. We give ourselves away when we welcome the poor, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, encourage the sick, visit the imprisoned. When we stand up and advocate for those who cannot speak for themselves, we are giving ourselves away. We give our prayers, our gifts, our service, our presence and the witness of our testimonies.

Fifty years ago, someone from this Meeting gave themselves away by leaving a box of groceries at the door of a family living on Dalke, about three houses down from Pam and Bill Emery. The father was out of work at the time, laid off, there was only bread in the house to eat. But a seed was planted that day, a hope restored, a mother’s prayer answered, a sign given that somebody cared. Fifty years ago, I was six years old, and someone gave themselves away, so that I could have something to eat. I think I know who she was. She ministered to both me and my family. She did not know what would become of the seed that she planted, but she risked planting it anyway. She listened, she followed her awakened heart’s leading. And I am here today to bear witness that giving ourselves away matters. It matters greatly. I was a life that was changed.

Fifty years ago, it was another group of people in this Meeting who shouldered the responsibility of bringing the Good News of God to our neighbors and community. Now, it is our season to shoulder this responsibility. Now, it is our turn to be a light in the darkness. It is not by accident that God has gathered each of us here today, at this particular moment in history, this particular configuration of people. There is a reason, there is a purpose, and our job today, and every day frankly, is to listen to God, to discern the Spirit’s leading and to faithfully obey. Even if it costs us, remember Hebrews 11. This is our time, it stands on our shoulders to keep the fire burning, to keep our doors open, to be caretakers and stewards of the gifts and resources God has so generously given to each of us.

We celebrate the lives of those who have gone before us in this Meeting, and I especially. Those who faithfully listened and risked following the Spirit’s leading in their time. And while we are not beholden to them, to doing things the same way they did, we are connected by the convictions of our faith, by our shared Quaker heritage and by our desire to follow with integrity wherever we discern that God is leading our Meeting, today.

Kitty Bendixen-park 2/9/2014

Nick Block 2/92014

Paul wrote in Philippians 3: Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

I saw Russell Wilson, the Seahawks young quarter back, interviewed the other evening.  He is an impressive young man.  He repeated in the interview how, growing up, when an opportunity arose, his father would ask him, “Why not you?” And then how, as this last season began, he asked the whole football team, “Why not us?” being the national football champions.

For any of that to have happened in his life, first it required that Russell was given the sense that he mattered, that he was valued for who he was.  His identity was instilled.  You can’t make anything of yourself if your self doesn’t exist?

Most of us have raised children, matter of fact all of us at some point in our lives were children.  We can each recall specific moments in our growing up. I remember, in Cub Scouts, learning to tie a tie.  I remember getting my drivers license.  I also remember getting my first traffic ticket and my father’s admonition that if I couldn’t pay it myself I could work it out on what was then called the “P” farm,  that is the prison farm.  I remember buying my first car, a rusted out 1947 Chevy, and then having to replace the axle after popping the clutch.  For some reason High school graduation isn’t as keen a memory as turning seventeen.  We all recall such moments of new found maturity, each such moment challenging us to be more grown up.

Immaturity in individuals, unfortunately, is easier to identify than maturity.  Don Smith, evidently a student of Bowen Family Systems Theory, says that being an authentic adult is hard work and a never completed task. The pathway to maturity is paved with difficulty and challenge.  To become an adult, he says, every person faces the task of the differentiation of self.  This might be helpful: to not differentiate is to fail to become a separate person.  As a non-person we simply blend in with the masses, place responsibility on others for the situations or predicaments in which we find ourselves and even the hurdles we face – literally for the way in which our lives develop or not. Don Smith listed 18 ways to describe self differentiation – I’ve listed just a few.
I think the first maybe: Being willing to say clearly who I am and who I want to be while others are trying to tell me who I am and who I should be.  Next is :Intentionally developing autonomy and intimacy. As I develop autonomy I set myself towards achieving my dreams and ambitions. As I develop intimacy, I allow those close to me to see and know me as I really am.  Another is: Learning to live from the sane, thinking and creative person I am, who can perceive possibilities and chase dreams and ambitions without hurting others in the process.
Then there is the need to become aware of where controlling emotions and highly reactive behavior have directed my life, then, opting for better and more purposeful growth born of creative thinking.  It requires giving up the search for the arrival of a the proverbial Knight in Shining Armour who will save me from the struggles and possibilities presented in everyday living.
Leaving the need for “instant” gratification and choosing to engage in a process when it comes to love, miracles, the future, healing and all the important and beautiful things in life.
There is also deciding to enjoy the water rather than praying for it to be wine; learning to swim in it rather than trying to walk on it. Of course that’s all about growing up, the putting away childish things like going with the latest fad, swallowing whole the most recent book on how to be more religious. One of the surest signs of immaturity is a closed minded, confident, arrogant certainty.

Maturity is about accepting yourself as God accepts you: a person with certain God given characteristics which are advantages, no matter how much they may seem like disadvantages in the moment. These characteristics include your physical appearance, your temperament, your family and ancestry, and your mental endowments. Having all these characteristics you learn that you are a dearly beloved child of a loving God who through the presence of the Holy Spirit patiently leads, guides, comforts and teaches you

God’s design for the church is that we should relate to one another honestly yet lovingly. As we carry out our mutual truth in love ministry the result will be that choices and decisions will be made with harmony throughout the church. If the world wasn’t such a broken place the end result of such church harmony would be that because of the church’s clear witness to the world people would be attracted, numbers would increase and the body would be strengthen spiritually. That may be the world’s definition of success.  The more important element is that there be a clear witness made because it is to that we are called.

It takes a Spirit-led blend of courage and compassion to speak the truth in love. Others in the body of Christ are God’s chosen instruments as well.  It’s not wise to reject God’s instruments! God knows what we need better than you do. You are where you are because that is where God wants you. God put you with those around you because they are the people you need and you are the kind they need. They may be rather prickly and thorny and hard to live with–and they may think of you in cactus-like terms as well! But they are what you need at the present time, and you are what they need.  It takes a willingness to accept others, forgive others, forbear with others, and compromising on secondary issues so that our primary issues of our unity, our love, and our witness–may never be compromised.

The apostle Paul gives us the ultimate goal of the life of faith. It is the measuring stick by which we can judge our progress as individuals and as a community.  In verse 13 he says it is “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” And in verse 15 he urges us to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” He puts it also in a most descriptive phrase, “mature manhood”! That means God wants you and me to fulfill our humanity, the design for us that God intended when He created the first man and the first woman.

But today we are going to talk about how that relates to being a faithful community.  Does a community have an identity.  Is a community of faith an entity beyond being a gathering of individual persons?

Maybe some of those standards of self differentiation identified earlier should be held against our Meeting.

The first is our willingness to say clearly who we are and who we want to be while others are trying to tell us who we are and who we should be.

We spoke of the need to pair autonomy with intimacy.  What does that look like in the context of a community among other faith communities. The Meeting develops a sense of autonomy as we set ourselves towards contemplating and then achieving dreams and ambitions for ministries. The intimacy piece of that is allow others to see and know us as we really are.

It’s interesting to imagine an organization learning – but I want to point out to you that we’ve seen it.  I don’t think Mary and Judy would mind me using them as an illustration or the Eastern Washington students who introduced to the concern for the transgendered.  Our Meeting has demonstrated the capacity to learn.  And when learn to trust the community’s capacity to be lead by Christ’s spirit to perceive possibilities, entertain dreams and articulate ambitions the ministry that can be achieved is far beyond what any one of us could manage.

Yes, the community needs to be aware of where controlling emotions and highly reactive behavior have directed our corporate life in the past. That opens us up to opting for better and more purposeful growth in the future.

To live with the hope that there might come a Knight in Shining Armour who will save us from our struggles and challenges we face as community is simply trusting in that which is other than God. As Paul told the Corinthians, they already had everything necessary to be the church God intended them to be, to do the ministries God intended for them to undertake.  Our recent experience is responding to challenges God puts, quite unceremoniously, on our front porch.  That’s God’s challenge to us.
Nothing happens worth while that doesn’t cost something.  As individuals must be mature enough to give up the allure of instant gratification our community must understand the need for the sometimes painful and lengthy process of discernment that leaves no one behind when it comes to the working out of love, miracles, the future, healing and all the important and beautiful things that God puts on our plate.

Don Smith, in his list of marks of the self differentiated life speaks of the need to decide to enjoy the water.  It is water, don’t expect it to be wine.  Don’t try and walk on the water, maturity involves recognizing our limitations. Rather he suggests that we should enjoy swimming in it, knowing full well that we aren’t responsible for success, only for making a valiant effort to respond to God’s call on our Meeting.

God’s overarching goal is to produce a community of faith, consisting of women and men  who personally and corporately demonstrate the character of Jesus Christ. God does not necessarily want a church filled with white-robed saints. I don’t think God is interested in a church filled with theological authorities or cultured clergy persons. God wants a church which lives out the extraordinary integrity, temperament, wholeness, compassion, individuality, boldness, righteousness, earnestness, love, forgiveness, selflessness, and self giving faithfulness of Jesus Christ!

Paul wrote in Philippians 3: Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

I saw Russell Wilson, the Seahawks young quarter back, interviewed the other evening.  He is an impressive young man.  He repeated in the interview how, growing up, when an opportunity arose, his father would ask him, “Why not you?” And then how, as this last season began, he asked the whole football team, “Why not us?” being the national football champions.

For any of that to have happened in his life, first it required that Russell was given the sense that he mattered, that he was valued for who he was.  His identity was instilled.  You can’t make anything of yourself if your self doesn’t exist?

Most of us have raised children, matter of fact all of us at some point in our lives were children.  We can each recall specific moments in our growing up. I remember, in Cub Scouts, learning to tie a tie.  I remember getting my drivers license.  I also remember getting my first traffic ticket and my father’s admonition that if I couldn’t pay it myself I could work it out on what was then called the “P” farm,  that is the prison farm.  I remember buying my first car, a rusted out 1947 Chevy, and then having to replace the axle after popping the clutch.  For some reason High school graduation isn’t as keen a memory as turning seventeen.  We all recall such moments of new found maturity, each such moment challenging us to be more grown up.

Immaturity in individuals, unfortunately, is easier to identify than maturity.  Don Smith, evidently a student of Bowen Family Systems Theory, says that being an authentic adult is hard work and a never completed task. The pathway to maturity is paved with difficulty and challenge.  To become an adult, he says, every person faces the task of the differentiation of self.  This might be helpful: to not differentiate is to fail to become a separate person.  As a non-person we simply blend in with the masses, place responsibility on others for the situations or predicaments in which we find ourselves and even the hurdles we face – literally for the way in which our lives develop or not. Don Smith listed 18 ways to describe self differentiation – I’ve listed just a few.
I think the first maybe: Being willing to say clearly who I am and who I want to be while others are trying to tell me who I am and who I should be.  Next is :Intentionally developing autonomy and intimacy. As I develop autonomy I set myself towards achieving my dreams and ambitions. As I develop intimacy, I allow those close to me to see and know me as I really am.  Another is: Learning to live from the sane, thinking and creative person I am, who can perceive possibilities and chase dreams and ambitions without hurting others in the process.
Then there is the need to become aware of where controlling emotions and highly reactive behavior have directed my life, then, opting for better and more purposeful growth born of creative thinking.  It requires giving up the search for the arrival of a the proverbial Knight in Shinging Armour who will save me from the struggles and possibilities presented in everyday living.
Leaving the need for “instant” gratification and choosing to engage in a process when it comes to love, miracles, the future, healing and all the important and beautiful things in life.
There is also deciding to enjoy the water rather than praying for it to be wine; learning to swim in it rather than trying to walk on it. Of course that’s all about growing up, the putting away childish things like going with the latest fad, swallowing whole the most recent book on how to be more religious. One of the surest signs of immaturity is a closed minded, confident, arrogant certainty.

Maturity is about accepting yourself as God accepts you: a person with certain God given characteristics which are advantages, no matter how much they may seem like disadvantages in the moment. These characteristics include your physical appearance, your temperament, your family and ancestry, and your mental endowments. Having all these characteristics you learn that you are a dearly beloved child of a loving God who through the presence of the Holy Spirit patiently leads, guides, comforts and teaches you

God’s design for the church is that we should relate to one another honestly yet lovingly. As we carry out our mutual truth in love ministry the result will be that choices and decisions will be made with harmony throughout the church. If the world wasn’t such a broken place the end result of such church harmony would be that because of the church’s clear witness to the world people would be attracted, numbers would increase and the body would be strengthen spiritually. That may be the world’s definition of success.  The more important element is that there be a clear witness made because it is to that we are called.

It takes a Spirit-led blend of courage and compassion to speak the truth in love. Others in the body of Christ are God’s chosen instruments as well.  It’s not wise to reject God’s instruments! God knows what we need better than you do. You are where you are because that is where God wants you. God put you with those around you because they are the people you need and you are the kind they need. They may be rather prickly and thorny and hard to live with–and they may think of you in cactus-like terms as well! But they are what you need at the present time, and you are what they need.  It takes a willingness to accept others, forgive others, forbear with others, and compromising on secondary issues so that our primary issues of our unity, our love, and our witness–may never be compromised.

The apostle Paul gives us the ultimate goal of the life of faith. It is the measuring stick by which we can judge our progress as individuals and as a community.  In verse 13 he says it is “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” And in verse 15 he urges us to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” He puts it also in a most descriptive phrase, “mature manhood”! That means God wants you and me to fulfill our humanity, the design for us that God intended when He created the first man and the first woman.

But today we are going to talk about how that relates to being a faithful community.  Does a community have an identity.  Is a community of faith an entity beyond being a gathering of individual persons?

Maybe some of those standards of self differentiation identified earlier should be held against our Meeting.

The first is our willingness to say clearly who we are and who we want to be while others are trying to tell us who we are and who we should be.

We spoke of the need to pair autonomy with intimacy.  What does that look like in the context of a community among other faith communities. The Meeting develops a sense of autonomy as we set ourselves towards contemplating and then achieving dreams and ambitions for ministries. The intimacy piece of that is allow others to see and know us as we really are.

It’s interesting to imagine an organization learning – but I want to point out to you that we’ve seen it.  I don’t think Mary and Judy would mind me using them as an illustration or the Eastern Washington students who introduced to the concern for the transgendered.  Our Meeting has demonstrated the capacity to learn.  And when learn to trust the community’s capacity to be lead by Christ’s spirit to perceive possibilities, entertain dreams and articulate ambitions the ministry that can be achieved is far beyond what any one of us could manage.

Yes, the community needs to be aware of where controlling emotions and highly reactive behavior have directed our corporate life in the past. That opens us up to opting for better and more purposeful growth in the future.

To live with the hope that there might come a Knight in Shining Armour who will save us from our struggles and challenges we face as community is simply trusting in that which is other than God. As Paul told the Corinthians, they already had everything necessary to be the church God intended them to be, to do the ministries God intended for them to undertake.  Our recent experience is responding to challenges God puts, quite unceremoniously, on our front porch.  That’s God’s challenge to us.
Nothing happens worth while that doesn’t cost something.  As individuals must be mature enough to give up the allure of instant gratification our community must understand the need for the sometimes painful and lengthy process of discernment that leaves no one behind when it comes to the working out of love, miracles, the future, healing and all the important and beautiful things that God puts on our plate.

Don Smith, in his list of marks of the self differentiated life speaks of the need to decide to enjoy the water.  It is water, don’t expect it to be wine.  Don’t try and walk on the water, maturity involves recognizing our limitations. Rather he suggests that we should enjoy swimming in it, knowing full well that we aren’t responsible for success, only for making a valiant effort to respond to God’s call on our Meeting.

God’s overarching goal is to produce a community of faith, consisting of women and men  who personally and corporately demonstrate the character of Jesus Christ. God does not necessarily want a church filled with white-robed saints. I don’t think God is interested in a church filled with theological authorities or cultured clergy persons. God wants a church which lives out the extraordinary integrity, temperament, wholeness, compassion, individuality, boldness, righteousness, earnestness, love, forgiveness, selflessness, and self giving faithfulness of Jesus Christ!

Ground Hog’s Day is the very depth of winter.  It is half way between the winter solstice, where we’ve place Christmas and the vernal equinox when we celebrate Easter.  It’s become nearly impossible for some of us to think about Ground Hog Day without connecting it to the voices of Sonny and Cher singing the last stanza of “I’ve Got You Babe” followed by a radio announcer at precisely 6:00 a.m. saying “It’s cold out there.” 

The movie is about Phil Connors, a Pittsburgh TV weatherman. For the fourth year in a row he’s having to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney.  So beneath his dignity is this assignment that he flaunts his distaste for the story and wants to escape this ‘hick town’ as soon as possible. But a blizzard thwarts his plans, shutting down the highway.  He and his crew have no choice but to spend the night and that’s when his real nightmare begins.

At precisely 6:00 in the morning he is awakened by the clock radio only to have to re-live Groundhog Day and this happens over and over again.  Each day he would see the same people doing the same things at the exact same moment.  At first it was a novelty that he exploits to its fullest. He comes to realize that he is doomed to spend the rest of eternity locked in this seemingly hopeless cycle.

Finally he chooses to take advantage of his situation.  It is only after his heart changes and he matures from evaluating everything based on its usefulness to himself and chooses to give his heart to another that the cycle is broken.

This I found fascinating. The movie, which broke into our consciousness in 1993, has been the basis of innumerable messages, sermons and homilies by Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and even leaders of twelve step programs each holding it up as a clear reflection their own views on the meaning of life and salvation.   What is so important in this movie that it has become such an icon is that it demonstrates the need to see what living in the world is all about.  The experience changes a hopeless, manipulative cynic into human being able to give himself away in love.

The Apostle Paul begins his letter to the Corinthians by telling them that though torn apart by partisan quarrels and divisions there was not one essential gift they lacked to be the church in the world.  But what they had missed was the fact that they we relying on worldly wisdom.  But of course, why wouldn’t they?  It’s like an accountant who had spent years working in the for profit world and then trying to understand the values, goals and standards of a not for profit organization. 

1 Corinthians 1:18-30

¹⁸For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” ²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.²⁶Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, ²⁹so that no one might boast in the presence of God. ³⁰He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, ³¹in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

In the first chapter of 1^st Corinthians Paul confronts two things: the adulation of knowledge and its fancy forms, and the obsession with power. This attack of Paul’s is not on the value of being wise; he is, in fact, appealing to a new profound wisdom. His attack is on the abuse of knowledge and its forms as power. When knowing more is a way of winning it is abusive. Such ‘wisdom’ must be subverted. To Paul, God has always sought to undo such pretensions. So we have the words, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” And then they and us are forced to face the bloodied figure on the cross.  A mutilated human body impaled on the arms of a Roman cross to normal human sensibilities is a repulsive sight. But, of course, we’ve gotten used to it.  We’ve dressed it up.  We’ve coated it in gold, made it ‘nice’, turned it into jewelry.

Paul points out that ‘the Jews’ were looking for signs, especially miracles as proofs of God’s support. They will be winners because God, the winner, the magician is on their side. Paul is not against miracles and would have been had far less difficulty with the notion of miracle than most of us today. But he refused to make such miracles the foundation for his theology, which would be to make a power-model the framework for this thinking about God. Against this he sets the powerlessness of the cross.

He says “the Greeks’, that is the sophisticated and proud, are looking for wisdom, probably impressive displays of knowledge. Against those who made the sensational central, or who made knowledge power central Paul affirms the contradiction of the cross.  Power matters, as does wisdom. But for Paul it is the power and wisdom evident in the cross. Real greatness is the life poured out in love. That is also the heart of the real God. God’s kind of foolishness is wiser and God’s kind of powerlessness more powerful than these other schemes. Paul later bolsters his argument by noting that the people who have really grasped this are more often the simple people,  people without great claims to wisdom and lacking the skills of the great orators. Such people expose the emptiness of those who climb the rankings of power in the usual ways.

Out of character with both the secular and religious standards of his day, Paul’s preaching raises up a suffering Jesus, who embodies a new kind of wisdom, a contradictory wisdom and a new kind of power, which is love broken and poured out for all. He not only proclaims this Jesus he also understands his own life in its terms. He is not bent on making a slick impression or astounding people with feats, or offering other worldly promises, but simply on embodying this kind of love. Like the cross and Jesus himself, Paul too, becomes an embarrassment, because he falls so far short of what others apparently consider success. Paul sees all this not as a matter of technique or style, but of theology. That is, he sees it as a matter of understanding the way God is. God’s way of being and doing confronts the pretensions of human expectations  of greatness, wisdom and success.

With this, Paul is addressing those of the Meeting of Followers of the Way in Corinth who have so obviously gotten it wrong.  Not that it has ever been easy to get it right. Our preferred theological constructs and our considered positions on issues of the day seem not to be cruciform but rather elevations of the high and mighty, partly because we are bent on giving and receiving honors and rewards according to the value system which ultimately crucified Jesus.

Christ embodies for us the true reality of God and in him we find that God is way ahead of our manipulations and strategies of self promotion. In Christ God declares that we already have the wisdom that matters before God; we don’t need to impress. We already have standing before God through grace; there is no additional righteousness to be attained. We already have an invitation to share God’s holiness; we don’t need priestly manipulations to become holy. We already have liberation; it is there for us in God’s generous love waiting to help us be transformed. So Christ is our wisdom and righteousness and holiness and liberation. The crucified Jesus is also our model and our mentor for living life as God intended.

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.²He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” ³Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” ⁴Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? ¹¹“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹²If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. ¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. John 3:1-17

Now that is a great text. Every phrase has been the basis for lengthy dissertations.  The setting is a late night discussion between Jesus and a leader among the Pharisees. The Sadducees were ‘upscale’ includconsisting of the priestly and aristocratic families.  The Pharisees, not so much. They  were a political party and a social movement among the general population.     They were more likely to be of the common class. The Sadducees were literalists, recognizing only the written Torah. The Pharisees on the other hand acknowledged the oral tradition which had much broader implications for how life was to be lived.  Later, after the Temple was destroyed, in the year 70, they would become the liturgical basis for Rabbinic Judaism.  This leader among the Pharisees, John calls Nicodemus, a Greek name that means ‘victory of the people’.

What Nicodemus said he knew was that Jesus was a teacher who had come from God.  He said that Jesus couldn’t do what Jesus had been doing without the presence of God.  That was pretty astute.  Nicodemus was being true to his Pharisaical understanding of how God works in the world.

What Jesus went on to tell him wasn’t new to him either.  Though Nicodemus wrestled with the metaphor of birth, being of both physical birth and spiritual birth was was part and parcel of his studies of the patriarchs and prophets and the Psalms.   Not being a physical entity, God’s self is thus manifested in the world as spirit,  to be more precise the spirit of holiness. Jesus actually questions Nicodemus, how as a teacher of Israel he didn’t know these things.  Of course he did. He understood that God’s creative spirit couldn’t be contained –at all. Jesus had said  The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  Everyone who is born of the Spirit shares that experience. 

Think back to the Biblical story of creation and how the Spirit of God hovered and ultimately brought life.  Recall how the wandering Hebrews were lead in the wilderness. Think back to the patriarchs being lead by the spirit.  Think back to Moses distributing to the Judges of Israel his portion of God’s spirit.  Think back to the Prophets having words put in their mouths by God’s spirit.  Nicodemus knew those stories better than do we.  Jesus called him to take what he knew and employ it in his discernment of Jesus and Jesus’ ministry. 

Jesus posed a rhetorical question to Nicodemus ““Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? And of course Nicodemus understood but was resistant to the  implications for his life.  Jesus poses a similar question to us.  It’s Jesus’ contention that it is true for all who are born of the Spirit.  God’s spirit, Christ’s Spirit, is ‘blowing where it will’, in and through us.  The challenge to us is how we pay attention.

It was under pretty well accepted that God spoke to us until we were brain washed by dogmatic and materialistic science.  You contain something beyond your own consciousness.  And, especially in the middle of our fast paced world, we have to make the effort to be still, listen and look within.   We can’t discover much about the world of the Spirit until we take the time to be silent, quite ourselves and look within.  For some it may require paying attention to our dream life. For others it may entail exercising the patience of settling down into a time of quiet mediation, in a private or corporate setting. I think you will be amazed what you will discover about yourself.

The Biblical record emphasizes that God’s spirit has been actively seeking the attention of human beings since the beginning of time.  Some embraced the call, others like Jonah resisted, at least for a while. That Nicodemus already knew. The hard part for Nicodemus was to acknowledge that he too could be included in the phrase ‘So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’  So you too.  Find the time, make the effort.  Be still and be amazed at what God has in store for you.

 For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; Isa. 55:12

When Cardinal Bergoglio (bear go leo), a South American Jesuit priest, was elected Pope last year, Christians around the world were shocked that something so unexpected had happened. The writer of Second Isaiah expresses this same kind of amazement at an unexpected, but promising, turn of events. For more than two generations, since Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians, the elite of Judah had been living in exile. While there they had maintained their identity as Jews telling stories to their children and grandchildren of the glory that had been Jerusalem. When Babylon itself fell the Persians the Persian king, Cyrus, allowed the Jews to return to their homeland. To the prophets mind it was, unquestionably, God who had worked all this out. It was to the grandchildren of the exiled generation for whom this poem was composed.

The trouble was that by the time of Cyrus the exiled Jewish community was fully integrated into Babylonian society. They had jobs, owned homes, and even lent money to others. They were free to worship Yahweh in their synagogues and suffered no coercion to recognize Babylonian gods. Furthermore, the cities of Mesopotamia were the financial, commercial, and cultural centers of that part of the ancient world.  Few Jews living in Babylon had little interest in living in Jerusalem.  Jerusalem was now only a small settlement where the city had once stood, so the elite would have had to build houses, city walls — in fact, build a whole new infrastructure to support the standard of life to which they had become accustomed. There were no prestigious jobs for skilled laborers. It was not an attractive prospect for a generation who had no personal experience of the old city. Isaiah 40-55 is call to the grandchildren of the exiled generation to re-populate the land promised by God to their ancestors and lost by the failures of their grandparents.

The poems of this major section of Isaiah promise that God will cause even the desert to bloom if they return. Listen to these words of promise God speaks to them through the Prophet. The language is full of metaphors. It speaks of mountains singing and trees clapping. Listen: “You shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”

Christian Psychologist Paul Tournier was once asked how he helps his patients get rid of their fears “Oh, I don’t,” he answered, “that which does not frighten does not have meaning. All the best things in life have an element of fear in them.” Following God’s leading can be a pretty fearful adventure. Noah built himself an ark when skies were clear and neighbors mocked. As he close the door he had to trust the boat would float and trusting that eventually God would provide a way through the waters to dry land… Abraham and Sarah were called to step out by faith. God basically said, “I’ll provide a way, but you’ve got to do the walking.” God provided a way for Moses and the children of Israel. The seas parted, but they had to do the walking. David surely took a risk when he stepped up to Goliath, and later God provided a way to the throne of Israel, but David had to do the walking. Yes, he stumbled here and there but he kept walking.

One way to understand the days that followed David is that Israel stopped risking for God. God’s people chose the comfortable path. That path lead to destruction. Their lack of faith, their unwillingness to risk for God, that God would provide a way; this lead them to Babylon, into exile, into captivity. But as our text today points out, even there God provided a way. The children of Israel were set free and called to step out, to risk returning and rebuilding. But, as always, they were the ones who had to do the walking. Few wanted to go. They were satisfied with how things were. Life was comfortable. “Why should we risk leaving behind a life we know, confining, yes, but comfortable. Why should we risk leaving all this to move on into a future that is at best uncertain.” There were those who took the risk, and stepped out in faith, just like Noah, like Abraham and Sarah, like Moses with all God’s children, like David. Listen again to these words of promise God made to them “You shall go out in joy, & be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, & all the trees of the field shall clap their hands…”

Going out, stepping out in faith, this is what brings joy and peace in life. We are led to believe that joy and peace are what we have when finally we have arrived at a place where everything is comfortable.

Geoffrey Durham is known to Quakers internationally for his work with his effort to make Quakerism accessible to a new generation of Britain’s population called Quaker Quest.  He is better known there as ‘the Great Soprendo’, a comedic magician and actor. In a recent presentation to Britain Yearly Meeting he related how he happened to come to the Religious Society of Friends.  He said: I was going through quite a difficult patch in my mid-40s, and rediscovered a religious dimension which hadn’t been there since I left school or even before – so I needed a place to be. I went back to the Anglican church of my childhood, but decided it wasn’t quite it. I tried Buddhist meditation classes, but decided – quite reluctantly – that that wasn’t quite it either.  Then I found myself staring at this Quaker poster in a traffic jam every day for three weeks: “Peace is a process to be engaged in, not a state to be reached”. The only attribution on the sign was the one word “Quaker”.  He made to effort to learn of Quakerism

This passage from Isaiah tells us that joy and peace are a part of risking for God. Joy comes in going out. Peace is given in being led forth by God. God provides a way of joy and peace, not a way to joy and peace. Living in relation to Christ does not mean that we will lead safe, comfortable lives, but that we will risk, that we will step out in faith. “He who would save his own life will lose it, but whoever would lose his life for my sake shall save it.” That’s what Jesus said. A life of faith is a life of creative risk. Now, the world is full of uncreative, destructive risks. The church of Jesus Christ is supposed to model another way, not a way of comfortable sitting and waiting for joy and peace to happen someday, but a way of stepping out in faith, creatively, constructively risking for God today. Going out in joy. Being lead forth in peace.

John’s birth narrative, so much different from that of the other Gospels, his account of the Word being made flesh confronts us with the idea that something bigger is going on here. As we consider the consequences of Jesus’ birth we need to ask how to best understand Isaiah’s promise that we ‘shall be led forth with peace’? What sort of world is it into which the Word comes ? What sort of world is it into which Jesus is born? John tells us: it is a world that does not know its maker and a world in which conflict in rampant. “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” In these words we hear that we live in a world where peace seems a pipe dream; to be something beyond us. We are not at peace with the one who made us and we are not at peace with one another.

Today hundreds of thousands of displaced people languish on the borders of Syria. Pipe bombs, assault weapons and armed drones have become parts of people’s lives. Our lack of peace is palpable.  The inability of people to love one another results in such tragic scenes around the globe including here at home. We cover our trees in tinsel and our houses with lights, but we also block the seekers at our borders.  Our festivities may bring us happiness but peace for all who God love, not so much. It is easy to distance ourselves from global affairs and the difficulties of many closer to home at Christmas until we remember those fateful words “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”

Civil war, broken relationships, tensions, mourning, and illness all hang as specters lurking beneath the surface of our celebrations. How can we be led forth with peace?  Not just a personal sense of peace but a peace which embraces all people everywhere, a peace which speaks of  bigger more wholesome hope.

The birth narratives say “he came”!  Instead of remaining aloof from the problems of the world and its opposition to God and our opposition to one another “he came”. God entered into the midst of our lack of peace and God shares in the experience of life. In his coming Jesus became a refugee, an outcast, a political and religious troublemaker. He associated with prostitutes and tax collectors. He searched and served among the least and the lost. And he knew what it meant to enter into the space where peace seemed a forlorn hope: he endured suffering and degradation and the cross. If there is any sense of peace that we can find today it is not in a Santa Clause God who simple gives us random gifts but a God who shares the fullness of life and when it is done says that the lack peace, the absence of hope is not all there is.

If we are to be led forth with peace, if we have anything to say to the world, it is that God does not shun the disputes of our lives but shares in the suffering and recreates them in and through Jesus, the Word made flesh. Whether you have a sense of peace in your own life and relationships on this day the hope of “the Word made flesh” is a hope which transcends our current lives and says there is more. Joy and peace do not come when finally we arrive. Joy and peace are gifts given along the way of creative risking for God – what we call faith. We are saved by God through Jesus Christ, not that we will lead safe, comfortable lives, but that we will risk, that we will step out in faith. Rooted in who were are in relationship to God, we can risk, creatively.

That’s what the early church did. They risked their lives and many lost. That’s what early Quakers did, they risked the loss of their property, imprisonment, severe beatings and even their lives. They experienced much greater hardship than we can imagine. But they had that Joy and Peace in the going out with the good news, their being led forth even to the coliseums of Rome or the commons of Boston. We would not be here today had not they risked by faith and became the very hands of God here on earth. The promise remains for those who risk: “We shall go out in Joy and be led forth in peace, the mountains and the hills before us shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. “That’s the promise of creative, constructive risking for God, the promise of faith now.

…grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

15(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) 16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. John 1: 1-18

Maybe it’s all the lights on the Christmas trees or the candles that proliferate at this season but it all helps us consider Jesus, the light of the world. The backstory to that is this prevailing view of the world, of creation, as a dark, dangerous and fearsome place. In the classic Bible commentary, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, we find this description: “in this dark, fallen world, or in mankind ‘sitting in darkness and the shadow of death,’ with no ability to find the way either of truth or of holiness. In this thick darkness, and consequent intellectual and moral obliquity, ‘the light of the Word’ shineth.”

Jesus is God’s candle that chases away the darkness and makes it possible for humanity to see the corruption of their culture and the palpable darkness of thier lives. That might suggest that, adequately informed, humanity might do something to clean up their act. Hadn’t happened yet.

For most persecuted peoples, persons brought against there wills to lives of servitude or people like early Quakers who were persecuted for their challenges to cultural norms, developing themes of overcoming the darkness, a messianic hope that might not come until sometime after their own demise, Jesus offers hope in this thick darkness.  George Fox wrote: Sing and rejoice you children of the day and of the light; for the Lord is at work in this thick night of darkness that may be felt. And truth flourishes as the rose, and the lilies do grow among the thorns, and the plants atop of the hills, and upon them the lambs do skip and play.

What could be a more appropriate message for the winter solstice? For untold thousands of years human beings have lived by observing the changes of nature. The mound builders who populated our continent and whose identity is lost in pre-history invested much time and effort to build structures to help them survive the changes of seasons by observing the movement of the lights of the sky. Like the builders of stone-henge who made visits to that site both in mid-summer and during the winter solstice when the sun would set between the largest of the central arches. How appropriate for us to connect the birth of Jesus to what the ancients understood to be the rebirth of nature.

As satisfying as that may be for persecuted people or for people who have no notion of how our solar system operates for those of us who expect to have ripe tomatoes and cantaloupe in winter and who don’t let winter weather slow our economy and who are not being persecuted for our race, gender, or faith I believe there is a more apt metaphor lying dormant in this forward to John’s gospel.

Imagine Jesus, the Word, as God’s love song, singing life into the world’s babble, chaos and anxiety. John’s description of Jesus in the Prologue is poetic, even lyrical speech. It is an echo of or response to God’s love song, which is Christ. Maybe you can hear the plain song hymn “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” as you meditate on John’s words. We might imagine the proclamation of the good news as a Christmas carol — more evocative than explanatory — because this is in keeping with the reading’s genre and because most of us as we approach Christmas aren’t thinking logically. It’s better to inspire than inform.

John sings that Jesus is the Word of God become flesh, who from all eternity was with God, and actually is God. While we think of “word” as something written or printed, the word John uses to describe Jesus means first of all something said. In Luke’s Christmas story, angels bring the good news of great joy. In John, Jesus has been singing love and bringing life from the beginning – from the very beginning of creation.

Genesis tells us that God said, “Let there be . . .” and there was. God spoke day and night, heaven and earth, land and sea, plants and animals, and us into being. Jesus is that utterance. Jesus is God’s eternal speech, which existed before anything else and called everything else into being.

John regards both law and grace as God’s life-giving, world-changing speech. As the law was given through Moses as the Word of God, John says, so grace and truth are given to us in Jesus Christ. This figure of speech, God’s eternal expression, was articulated within our world and within human history in a particular person. Jesus, then, is “God’s sermon preached to us in the living out of a human life.” Jesus became the en-fleshment of what God says to us.

And what is God saying to us? First, God says, “This is who I am!” God speaks in Jesus as in no other way; not as in the Bible, not as in nature, not as by human reason or accomplishment, not as by listening to inner voices. Jesus tells us who God is. In Jesus we hear that God heals, forgives, embraces outcasts, and prays even for those who hurt him. In Jesus we hear that God understands betrayal and denial, suffering and pain, humiliation and death. Jesus tells us that God knows that, both as individuals and as a world, we need a Savior; and Jesus is that Savior. In Jesus we hear that God brings victory over despair, defeat, destruction, and death; and God wills and shares that victory with us, with humanity, with creation.

The Christ who comes to us not only tells us who God is; Jesus speaks God’s power into our lives. John writes, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12). What phenomenal good news! That “all who” is you and me. Jesus can do this because Jesus has power to create, power over all creation, power to restore us to what God wants us to be, and to give life everlasting.

As God’s Speech, Jesus is able to do as he wishes; and what Jesus wishes is to give to men, women, and children the authentic, abundant life of the children of God by breathing the Holy Spirit into us.

God is not unknown to us. John says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” I might say, “Though other voices strive to drown it out, God’s Love Song is not silent.” All that we could possibly know in this world about God is disclosed as fully as possible in Jesus Christ. John writes, “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made God known.”

In response to God’s Love Song, we echo Luke’s angels and sing, “Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth!” John’s Hymn of Praise is different. John glorifies God with another hymn:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace.”

Although we may not be singing these exact words, Jesus, God’s Speech made flesh, sings them into our hearts so that we know who God is. Knowing who God is, we know who we are. And we sing.

Seeking a Quaker Advent

George Amoss, who blogs at Postmodern Quaker, wrote that the first Quakers were truly apocalyptic.  In the phrase “Christ has come to teach his people himself…” those first Friends experienced the Second Coming of Christ in discovering the Spirit of love within the very heart of their being. It transformed their world; they lived in what Jesus had called the Kingdom of God. Mystically, they were one with God by virtue of love’s identity. From the moment of “visitation,” when love re-created them, Friends knew themselves to be the Word of God in human form, the body of Christ in the world. Prophetically, living in the Spirit in which Jesus had lived, they shared the compassionate awareness and urgent concern for equality, justice, and peace that had characterized Jesus’ life’s work. This is what true Advent is about, living in that life and power, discovering the spirit of love at the heart of their being.

With the first Friends, Christianity itself was reborn from a superstition-laden religious system of personal salvation from the wrath of a displeased god into a living expression of love in the world. Through the awakening of the compassionate heart within them, early Quakers redeemed the Christianity of their day and led their society closer to the vision of Jesus. As Quakers today, we are heirs to their experience. We are in a to distinguish the wheat from the chaff in Christian tradition and practice, as we seek to discover and live from the heart of compassion, the Spirit of Christ within us. In a time when mainstream Christianity is too often a force against human welfare and liberty, we, like those first Friends, can offer an experience of the living Christ that breaks apart the prejudices and constraints of common religious forms while appealing to the love and beauty from which those forms devolved. By way of our words and our lives, we can demonstrate the love through which Jesus and the early Friends exploded superstition, challenged oppression, and witnessed effectively to liberty, justice, and peace.

Coming to that place either as individuals and as a faith community is truly a challenge. For British Friend, Harvey Gillman, it is the image of Jacob struggling with the angel recorded in Genesis 32 which speaks most to him. You remember the story. God had instructed Jacob to return to the country of his family’s origins. He knew that would mean facing Esau whom he had defrauded. He sent messengers to tell Esau that he was bringing him a tribute. When the messengers returned to Jacob they brought this report “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.  Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed…” As Esau was expected to meet him soon he got up in the night and escorted his wives, eleven children and the domestic help along with all he owned across the river Jabbok between himself and his adversary.

The story continues: Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” 29Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” 31The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

Of this text Harvey Gillman wrote: We struggle with the mystery on the bank of a river, at the crossing of a threshold. We struggle all night; we demand to be blessed by the angel at the threshold of a new territory; we will not let go even when we are rendered lame by the angel; but at the end we are transformed; we change from Jacob to Israel; we find in the dignity of the search for meaning a new deeper self. To hear and heed, to know and to follow the truth which reality discloses to us — that is the quest. Not with certainty, not a truth better than that of other people, but the truth which is revealed to us in our life and to which we try to come to terms within the community of seekers in which we find ourselves.

Spirituality in this way is perceived as a deep attending to and communion with the Spirit, fleshed out, embodied, incarnate even, in this beautiful, sacred, scarred and polluted reality of which we ourselves are a part. Spirituality is beholding with love this world in which we find ourselves. To talk of the spiritual life without an ethical dimension and in contradiction to scientific exploration is a futile endeavor. We explore together our spiritual insights, give form to the search in our corporate worship, and live out our findings, experimentally, in testimony.

The great Quaker insight and challenge is that “we answer that of God in everyone.” In a recent correspondence in the British weekly, The Friend, there was a discussion as to what was meant by “answering.” Someone pointed out that George Fox’s basic idea was that there was a seed or a light from God in each of us. But actually that seed often lay dormant; the light was dim. The role of one human being for another was that we help the seed in each other to grow. We call out the divine in each other. This is in fact the basis of our testimonies. But before we can do that we must actually see each other. We must give each other attention as each is a unique, precious,  child of God. The first challenge of the spiritual life is that of seeing, of attending, of witnessing.

And while we desire to build relationships we are severely limited until we first recognize that uniqueness, that preciousness that is ourselves. We need to attend to ourselves, see ourselves, warts and all, darkness and light. This is a real challenge. It needs eyes to see, and hearts to attend. The light of Christ shows us our darkness, but it gives us energy to overcome the ocean of darkness and leads us into community with those who also seek, and then perhaps with those who cannot seek, or those who can no longer seek, and those who are too afraid to seek.

In a sense, our corporate worship is our exercise of seeing, of listening, of beholding. It is where faithfulness is practiced. Of course, there are times when God is there, but we aren’t. There are times that we see the light in others but not in ourselves. There are times when we are too busy saving the planet to behold the details of the world that encompasses us with its small beauties and its troubles.

A deepening of the spiritual life of the group arises from the sharing of story. In many traditions there is a common story, a given theology into which we are born and to which we have to give assent to find whatever salvation is offered. Friends start the other way round. Part of our recognition of our self — and we cannot recognize others, without some recognition of our own self — is the ability to delve into our own experience and to try to hear what our lives are saying to us. And isn’t it fascinating that we can only do this when we have others to listen to us, and our listening to the stories of others. This will help us reflect upon our own story. From the particular details of these stories we can begin to understand the human story. And this is certainly good news. It leads us to understand the divine story.

And the stark reality is that the story isn’t stale or stagnant anymore than is water gushing from an artesian spring.  This week, on the Yearly Meeting’s Facebook page, a middle school science teacher and a member of West Hills Friends, shared a thought from her life. She had just started a unit about how astronomers have viewed the solar system.  Her sixth graders loved the story of how Copernicus spent his life watching the stars,  trying to make sense of what was going on in this big crazy world.  After years of watching Copernicus realized that what he observed didn’t fit with the story he had been taught.  For over a thousand years western culture had been certain that the earth stood still in the center of the solar system and the rest of the heavenly bodies moved around it.  But Copernicus’ data just didn’t fit that model.  He had to change his story to make sense of his observations.  That’s worth saying again.  He had to change his story to make senses of his observation.  His new information didn’t fit with the old story.  He most likely felt the excitement of his discovery but probably also felt confused, insecure, anxious and maybe even more intense emotions like fear, dread, sadness or grief.  She said that Piage, the child psychologist, recognized that when human beings get new information they can either ignore it, assimilate it seamlessly into their old story or reshape their understanding.  Fundamentalists, hack scientist and addicts of all kinds are examples of the ignoring strategy, of which we too are all guilty at times.  Piaget, recognizing how uncomfortable and complex is the reshaping approach, called it disequilibrium.   The good thing about disequilibrium is that is can be a motivator for intellectual growth and creating new understandings that are more adequate for dealing with reality.  I think it true of spiritual reality as well. Though it might leave me anxious, uncomfortable, upset, scared or sad to make sense of what I am observing, hearing, listening, of some new thing rising, it may require that I change my story, how I understand the world,  the people around me and even myself.

I wonder how we live this out in our meeting. To do this we need to overcome fears about ourselves and suspicions about others; we need to have time and patience; we need to be able to deal with difference as there will be elements in each other’s stories that are alien to our own experience. Even the language of the other’s story may be very different from what we might use. We live in the realm of Spirit; it is the glue of the universe; it nourishes all life; it gives whatever meaning there is to our fragile existences; it gives us the connection with all life, if we attend to its promptings. It leads us beyond our individualism into an oasis where we can meet together before the next part of our journey.

Most of us are called out of the solitariness of our private deserts into the bustling market place among the traders, the shakers and the movers; among the beggars and the broken. And it is there that we are called to answer that of God in everyone. It seems to me that the very core of the spiritual journey is that we look, we behold, we wonder at, we respect, we affirm; we do this as individuals, in communities, in our daily work, and in our worship. Our attempts to establish a vision of peace, justice, equality, respect for creation, are all aspects of this spiritual vision. Indeed our testimony in the world is the proof of the depths of the vision we have been granted. When I am overwhelmed yet again by what I hear in the news, by the almost unrelieved darkness of so much in national and international politics, it is this amazement that gives me hope. When confronted by the fact of my own mortality and that of all I love, it is this that gives me the confidence to cherish the fragility of things.

The experience of a Quaker Advent, is to experience the Second Coming of Christ in discovering the Spirit of love within the very heart of our being, engaging is the process of letting it transform our world and our lives and beginning to live in what Jesus called the Kingdom of God.

Discovering An Advent In Our Own Tradition

As we mentioned last Sunday, Advent is supposed to be about God coming to live in and change the world – your world, my world. Rightly understood Advent is about God ushering in a new way of living with the potential to profoundly disrupt the normal rhythms of life, of business, of politics. Advent is an invitation to seek that newness in unexpected places. I suggested that we might discover true Advent within our own tradition as Quakers.

Unless and until you are convinced of the truth of a matter you are unlikely to make changes in your life.  For the earliest Quakers, convincement was much more than rejecting old beliefs or accepting new beliefs in their place. Even the powerful personal experience of the Light of Christ in one’s life was only a starting place to become a convinced Friend.  Marcelle Martin recently wrote in her blog that early Friends had to learn how to allow the Light of Christ to be an active and growing force in their lives.  After turning their attention to the inward presence of Christ who became their teacher and guide, they were shown startling and uncomfortable truths about the nature of their society and their inner selves.  They saw that they had been conforming to deceptive and oppressive social behaviors.  Painfully, they recognized that they had allowed subtle inward negative forces to separate them from God. The Light revealed this to them and changed their lives—from the inside out.  It was like learning that they had not been fully alive.

For those of you who know the movie the Maxtrix – the analogy is surprisingly accurate. The movie depicts a dystopian future in which reality as perceived by most humans is a technologically induced dream world created by sentient machines to subdue humanity while using their bodies’ heat and electrical activity as an energy source. From conception to death a person in the matrix was, for all practical purposes, a single cell in an array of batteries. A computer programmer learns the truth of his captivity and is helped to escape the dream world of the Matrix and experience what it means to be fully human.  The movie dramatically treats the fact that some prefer the dream world for reality.

For early Quakers, cooperating as God melted away inner impediments to a life of Truth and faithfulness, they relinquished themselves to the spiritual fire of purification.  Some Friends described that experience as the terror and power of the Spirit. The person they had been before this change was called “the old man.”

Through the process of surrendering everything to the transforming power of the Light, the image of God within their humanity was restored.  The “new man” or “a new creature” was born, a son or daughter of God, a person willing to “crucify” personal desires and pleasures, when necessary, in order to center his or her life around God and God’s loving and radical purposes.  They called this process “regeneration.”  They were transformed into a new kind of being.  They changed their clothing, their speech, their social mannerisms, their business practices.  They stopped complying with unjust social norms and laws, accepting the loss of social status and sometimes imprisonment that followed.  They supported one another to be faithful and to endure persecution by forming close networks of community.  Their spiritual rebirth involved a great deal more inward and outward change than is demonstrated by those today who claim to be “born again.”

Marcelle Martin who is a relatively new and delightfully insightful interpreter of Quaker spirituality, shared that her initial introduction of Quakerism came through reading about early Friends and their times, piecing together her own account of the beginning of the Quaker movement. She was fascinated by their collective experience and the powerful way so many early Friends ventured into the world proclaiming the radical message of the Light of Christ within, challenging oppression of all sorts. Their stories were dramatic, heart-wrenching, and inspiring. More recently, in looking more closely at the nature of their spiritual experience, she asked herself: What, exactly, was the transformation they underwent that enabled them to become such bold witnesses to the truth they discovered?

The transformation early Friends experienced was a process of rebirth: a diminishment of the self-centered will–a kind of death–and the awakening of a being given over entirely to doing the will of God. They called this the New Birth. In his Apology, Robert Barclay wrote: “For those who do not resist the light, but receive it, it becomes a holy, pure, and spiritual birth in them. It produces holiness, righteousness, purity, and all these other blessed fruits that are acceptable to God. Jesus Christ is formed in us by this holy birth, and by it he does his work in us.” Through this spiritual rebirth, early Friends became “partakers of the divine nature,” as promised in 2 Peter 1:4. It required giving everything to God; in return, one gradually became wholly united with the fountain of God’s love and transforming power.

Marcelle Martin has conducted workshops on what she characterizes as elements in the early Quaker spiritual journey. They aren’t to be confused with stages of a spiritual journey, like one would think of rungs on a ladder.  She says that they are more like strands that weave through and which may unfold or become prominent in various stages of the whole process.

She says these earliest followers of the way began with Longing–a desire for greater intimacy with God. This longing is experienced in many different ways, often as a heartfelt yearning for connection with God, or the need to be obedient to the divine will. Sometimes it manifests as dissatisfaction with the religious beliefs or practices in which one has been raised, or in dissatisfaction with the ways of the world. More generally, one might simply feel a longing for the way of truth or love.

Longing eventually causes Seeking. Initially, most seeking is outward.  It may involve attending lectures, reading spiritual books, discussing scripture or matters of religion, trying out other forms of spirituality or joining a new spiritual community. Seeking may lead to new understanding and to growth in faith, but innate spiritual longing cannot ultimately be fulfilled through outward means.

It is Turning Within which is the essential element of the Quaker spiritual journey. At some point, the seeker discovers that God—Christ, the Light, the Holy Spirit–has been dwelling inside all along, inwardly present in a quiet and humble way that was often easy to dismiss or ignore.

Early on, one did not become a Quaker merely through seeking, or even through discovering the indwelling divine presence. Three more elements of the journey would come into play in the process of convincement. She identifies these as: Openings, The Refiner’s Fire, and Being Gathered into Community.

Openings include a wide range of divine revelations and direct guidance of the Spirit of Christ within. Openings can be dramatic, but are more often subtle impressions upon the inward, spiritual senses. By “minding the Light,” over time one becomes more sensitive to divine openings, and more responsive. For many early Friends, revelations came in the form of “openings in scripture,” fresh understanding of the meaning of particular Bible passages, with relevance to their lives. Spiritual guidance often came through an inward hearing of certain scriptural phrases or verses.

The Refiner’s Fire is a difficult and usually painful element of the spiritual journey. This biblical metaphor was used by many early Friends to describe the process by which the Light of Christ reveals and melts everything within us that resists God and God’s ways. Gradually sin, temptation, and disbelief are cleansed away, as well as overriding cravings for comfort, pleasure, and social status.

Being Gathered into Community is the third essential element in the process of convincement as a Quaker. The community helps its members to stay faithful to God’s transforming work among them, help that is especially needed when one encounters inward and outward resistance. The “corruptions of the world” lose their controlling power and, with the assistance of the community, one becomes increasingly dedicated to God’s purposes. Gradually the faithful person discovers that he or she is bonded with the community in deep, spiritual ways, no longer a separate being but part of the body of Christ.

As God becomes more clearly the center, individuals and communities receive Leadings of the Spirit that are about doing God’s work in the world, in matters both small and large. The divine presence within provides guidance about how to live in accordance with God’s will; this often involves doing things differently from the cultural norms. At first this guidance is primarily about specific aspects of personal and communal life. Responding to leadings brings us up against both inward and outward resistance. What God asks involves a sacrifice of time and energy on behalf of others, with diminished gratification of creaturely desires and personal preferences. Something inside us groans at the things to which the Spirit leads us. Giving witness and taking up counter-cultural ways of living also elicits resistance from others. Those who are faithful sometimes lose social status, or experience persecution. Obediently following the leadings of the Spirit leads to what early Friends called Living in the Cross, or the cross to our wills.

In the experience of early Friends that this work in their lives was not something they did, it was Christ within who carried out the leadings of God’s Spirit and enabled them to bear the sacrifices and suffering that often ensued. God’s power enabled them to be faithful, and they experienced God’s love flowing from within, moving them to risk difficulties for the sake of others. Marcelle calls this element of the spiritual journey Abiding in Divine Love and Power.

Early Quakers, like many other Christians before them, understood that the transformation to which they were called led to a state of spiritual maturity called Perfection. It is a state of being able to live perfectly in accordance with God’s will, without any resistance or sin. Perfection is not a static state. Once in it, a person can continue to grow, endlessly, but its’ important to know that we can also fall out of that condition. Friends recognized that people are given different “measures” of the light, and that there are degrees of perfection. As one is faithful to the measure one has received, more is given.

Advent – a spiritual adventure that awaits each of us as we open ourselves to the work Christ wants to do in our lives. In the next few weeks we will be exploring these elements of Quaker spirituality.

December 8, 2013  Spokane Friends Meeting