Spokane Friends Meeting

John 13:34-35

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

According to John, at least in this moment, Jesus doesn’t tell his disciples to love their neighbors, Gentiles or Samaritans, victims or others.  Jesus tells his disciples to love one another – those who are already in the community of Christ. In the context of John’s church, this was important and necessary advice. In order to bring the good news of Christ to the nations, it was necessary that the followers of Christ take care of one another. In the midst of disagreements around the formation doctrine and struggles in establishing the church the disciples of Jesus needed to love one another. The politics of a world beset against Christianity required it.

The advice of the Jesus of John’s gospel continues to be excellent advice – setting aside all our differences, as disciples of Jesus, we are called to love one another. This is immensely more difficult than a proclamation that we love everyone and everything in God’s creation.

In the various forms and the various circumstances in which it’s found itself, from the beginning the church has been grounded in a vision larger than itself. For John’s Jesus, this was showing the world the Light – what it meant to be a follower of Christ. This is different from what Luke would have us hear from Jesus. Luke’s Jesus showed the world aid and concern – he helped victims, ate with those different from him, ministered to whole households, not just the men but slaves, women, and children. Being a disciple of Jesus in that context meant loving into community the whole people of God – not simply loving those with whom one was already in fellowship.

This text reminds us that love within intimate relationships is tougher than loving the stranger, offering shelter to the homeless and food to the hungry. A woman once confessed that “I love strangers… why can’t I find grace for my own parents?” Strangers are easy. Most of us are bothered when we hear the phrase ‘love the sinner but hate the sin’.

Some years ago there was a heavy weight discussion over Joe Fletcher’s book entitled Situational Ethics. It was his experience that with love, one size didn’t fit all. There was no set of absolute standards to define what is and what is not love.  Relativism was the charge made by many with in the religious community.  But here’s the problem.

For instance: A Romanian Jewish doctor aborted 3000 babies of Jewish mothers in concentration camps because, if pregnant, the mothers were to be incinerated. This means that the doctor actually saved 3000 and prevented the murder of 6000. Was this the loving thing to do​?

Another: On an episode of the TV series MASH Hawkeye smothers a crying baby to prevent the bus load of patients from be discovered and killed.

Love decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively. Love does not prescribe in advance what specific course of actions should be taken. Love operates apart from a pretailored, prefabricated list of moral rules. Love functions circumstantially, it does not “make up its mind” before it sees the facts in any given situation.

Most of us have made a valiant attempt to treat our children equally – even though they are different with different interests and desires.  On a very mundane level we function the way Joe Fletcher suggests.

The six fundamental principles

Only one thing is intrinsically good – love: nothing else at all.

The ruling norm of Christian decision is love: nothing else.

Love an Justice are the same, justice is love distributed, nothing else.

Justice is Christian love using its head, calculating its duties and obligations, opportunities, resources…(Justice is love coping with situations where distribution is called for.)

Love wills the neighbor’s good, whether we like him or not.

Only the end justifies the means, Actions only acquire moral status as a means to an end; for Fletcher, the end must be the most loving result. When measuring a situation, one must consider the desired end, the means available, the motive for acting and the foreseeable consequences.

Love’s decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively.

In the final analysis the goal is to do the most loving thing – the pain we feel comes from acknowledging that we well may be wrong.

Finish the work Jesus began

John 11:1-44

It may come as a bit of a shock but there is nothing innovative or uniquely Christian about belief in resurrection. It was well established in Jewish society in the centuries before the time of Jesus. In our story Martha responds to Jesus’ assurance that Lazarus will rise again saying “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

The main reason John tells the story of the Raising of Lazarus is Martha’s proclamation that Jesus is the long awaited Jewish Messiah.  Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” 

I guess Jesus could afford to be cavalier about death – undoubtedly he does not qualify as a first responder. According to John the evangelist Jesus had fled Jerusalem to where John the baptizer had been doing his thing on the east side of the Jordan River, a good days leisurely walk from where Mary, Martha and Lazarus lived just outside of Jerusalem.   That’s where he was when word came to him that Lazarus was ill.  We read: “…though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”

…after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews (that is those in Jerusalem) were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” So he dismisses them, cavalier about the threats on his own life saying: “Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.”

Jesus then plainly states, “Lazarus is dead. 15For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

Thomas wraps it up by saying to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” I guess that means that following Jesus requires a bit of the cavalier in all of us.

John tells us that by the time Jesus arrived Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days.  To understand what he is telling us we have to visit the ancient creedal statement that says of Jesus that on “the third day he rose from the dead.”

When most Christians recite the Apostles’ Creed and say, “the third day he rose from the dead,” most think that “the third day” refers to Easter Sunday following Jesus’ crucifixion. The problem with that is even children recognize that the forty hours between Jesus’ death and resurrection does not comprise three days. In first century Jewish culture a person was not considered to be truly dead until “after three days.” That is not really what the creedal formula is all about. The reality is that “the third day” is not a chronological measure, it’s symbolic.

None of the four Gospels use the formula “the third day” in their reports of the resurrection of Jesus. They say “the first day of the week” to describe when the risen Jesus appears. But older than the Gospels is the creedal formula found in Acts 10:40 and I Corinthians 15:4. Paul reports the tradition that “he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scripture” That is the language picked up and repeated in the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creed.

When we read the Old Testament we find few if any texts which seem to point to the resurrection of Jesus. Well, you can push the Hosea text but not so as to make any sense. So what’s this “in accordance with the scriptures” comment? The apostles were not scanning the Old Testament looking to proof text their message about Jesus. They were reading the Old Testament to discern how the God of Israel behaves. There are 30 places in the Old Testament where you find “after three days” or “the third day,” always the decisive day, the day when God acts and momentous events occur. The phrase is a way of expressing the anticipation of a turning point when a time of unfavorable things would finally pass and a new time of favorable outcomes would arrive.

This Scriptural tradition of the notion of “the third day” as God’s day of victory helps us to understand how Jesus viewed his coming suffering and made predictions of his passion reported in Matthew 16:21. As it became evident that forces were being arrayed against him, Jesus predicted the calamity that would befall him. Yet he had faith that he could rely on God’s “third day.” No matter what failure or suffering lay ahead, he trusted that God would have the last word on “the third day.”

Following the resurrection of Jesus, the apostles remembered Jesus’ own trust in God’s action on “the third day” and they searched the Scriptures and found promises of God’s ultimate victory “after three days” or on “the third day.” This motif provided the means for them to perceive how the new event of Jesus’ resurrection is anticipated in the Old Testament. They learned that God does not abandon the righteous ones but can be trusted to act on their behalf in the end, and that this confidence in God’s ultimate deliverance and victory acquired a rhetorical form as a promise of God acting on “the third day.” It is in this way that the formula appeared in the apostolic tradition that “he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.”

Before they ever left Bethany beyond Jordan told his disciples the brutal truth that Lazarus is dead. Martha knew that after four days entombed she didn’t want Lazarus’ body exhumed. Not just three days dead but four. This is a step beyond hope. At this point all human hope is superfluous. It is too late. Too late to fix, too late to call out, too late even to hope. It’s too late.

Have you ever felt how Martha felt? They had called for Jesus who was a days walk away, close enough to get to Bethany. Really close if your dear friend is dying! But Jesus, doesn’t seem too concerned. He sees a far bigger picture than those who are in a panic that he hasn’t yet arrived. Then suddenly, all too suddenly, it is too late.

He arrives on the fourth day. The day that is beyond all hope. Jesus arrives on the hopeless day, the fourth day.

He listens to  Mary and then to Martha, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!”  Am I the only one who reads a silent sub-text from Martha, “Where were you?” Jesus himself weeps at his dead friends tomb… John tells us “So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The dead man came out…

He called forth life and liberation from the hopeless hole, on the hopeless day, amidst a hopeless crowd. He called forth life in the midst of certain confirmed, putrefied and stinking death.

In the dark of failed relationships, failed programs for happiness, failed dreams of beauty and happy endings.  In the entombed hopeless reality of life’s darkness we can hear a voice that calls my name and yours.  Just like Lazarus, for me life and liberation comes through the tears of Jesus and the torment of my hopelessness.

It is then we can understand Lazarus’s name. It means “God has helped.”  That standing against all the odds, “God has helped. ” No one else could have helped, but God has helped. On the fourth hopeless day, God has helped.

his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

To those who observed this event which challenged everything they ever considered absolute – death itself  Jesus tells them that the work he began was theirs’ to finish.   Lazarus was now alive but he was still bound, hands and feet, in the shrouds of death in which  those who loved him most had wrapped him. “Unbind him, and let him go!” Jesus commands. Free him from the trappings of death, take off what holds him back. Set him free.

Does that continue to be our challenge, to finish the work of releasing from the constraints of the trappings of death those who Christ as brought back to life?

John 9

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.

8The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” 10But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” 12They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

13They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” 16Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. 17So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” 18The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” 20His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” 24So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” 25He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 26They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” 28Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” 30The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.

35Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.

39Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” 40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

According to John, Jesus is in Jerusalem walking with a group of people John describes as ‘Jesus’ learners.’ Clearly not just the twelve. He sees a man blind from birth. Later in the story John verifies that this man was known to the neighbors as a beggar and known by his parents to have been born blind. The encounter initiates a brief but serious colloquy.

“Rabbi”, they ask, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” The students view that those with physical disabilities were being punished either for their own sin or the sin of their parents was a common understanding for their time.  It was a fair academic question.  Today most introductory classes in the sciences are quick to point out that, “correlation does not necessitate causation.”  And perhaps the man’s parents were not the most exemplary human beings, we don’t know, but just because a man is born blind and his parents are sinners doesn’t mean that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between the two events.

Some have sought to strengthen the correlation between sin and disability with a particular reading of the Holiness Code in Leviticus chapters 17-26, where there is a frequent connection made between physical disability and impurity.  Jesus’ followers seem to be questioning him from this point of view.  Jesus listens to the question, then reframes the situation from a new angle.  He refuses to accept the false dilemma presented by his followers: Do you pick (a) this man is blind because of his own sin, or (b) this man is blind because of his parents’ sin?  If this were a multiple choice test, then Jesus did scribbled a third option in the margin and circling it: (c) “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.”  Then he offers another thought entirely, dangerous if taken as universally applicable to all who suffer disabilities, that this blind man in particular “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  For purposes of retelling this event John allows the reason for the man’s disability become a matter of promoting the importance of Jesus.  I doubt that Jesus would have seen a disabled person as an opportunity for self promotion.  I believe that instead of seeing an opportunity for enhancing reputation God weeps at other’s ills.  It’s Jesus’ act of compassion that storms through the narrative.  But the story does create an opportunity to consider how our understanding of the work of Jesus impacts the lives of people living with disability.

Nancy Eiesland who has been working on what she calls a “liberation theology of disability.”  writes: “Growing up with a disability, I could not accept the traditional interpretations of disability that I heard in prayers, in Sunday school, and in sermons. “You are special in God’s eyes,” I was often told, “that’s why you were given this painful disability.” Or, “Don’t worry about your suffering now—in heaven you will be made whole.”  This confused me. My disability had taught me who I am and who God is. What would it mean to be without this knowledge? Would I be absolutely unknown to myself in heaven, and perhaps even unknown to God? I was assured that God gave me a disability to develop my character. But by age six or seven, I was convinced that I had enough character to last a lifetime. My family frequented faith healers with me in tow. I was never healed. People asked about my hidden sins, but they must have been so well hidden that even I misplaced them. The theology that I heard was inadequate to my experience.”

For me it was good to hear Jesus rejecting the notion that a causal link exists between disability and sin.  Unfortunately that idea still seems to be in vogue. We find ourselves thinking that those for whom life has not gone well, must be, in some way, at fault, whether it is about a disability, unemployment or illness. There’s a comforting corollary that helps hold that notion in place: prosperous people are blessed; people who are blessed are good people. Other people are bad people.

It all ceased being a philosophical debate at verse 6.  I wonder what his students thought.  After an unmistakable declaration of his Messiahship Jesus spits on the ground and makes mud.   He didn’t ask whether the man born blind wanted to be able to see. He didn’t ask him so much as even for permission. And the act which brought about his healing occurred long before any statement of belief.  Jesus spread the mud on the man’s eyes and sends him to wash in the pool of Siloam.  He went. He washed and came back able to see.  And before he returned Jesus had absented himself.

The time of Jesus’ absence was no picnic for the man born blind.     In fact, the man born blind could have said understandably to himself more than once, “I never asked to be healed. If this is what it means to be blessed of God, I think I am willing to relinquish some divine favors.” No other story in the Bible so dramatically illustrates the truth that: God’s favor more often leads into than away from difficulties. People  who preach faith as the cessation of pain, suffering, poverty, restless nights and turbulent days are offering false comfort. Look at what happened to this poor man during Jesus’ absence.

First he tries to go home again but can’t.  So radical is the change in him that his reappearance in the old neighborhood generates no joy, no celebration, no welcome home, only questions and doubts. His insistence that he is the same man gains mixed responses. He was formerly well known among these people; his stumbling and hesitant walk, his dependence, his poverty were his identity, they defined his place in the community. Now he walks upright, assured of place and direction, quite independent, only to discover that he has no place anymore. Who are you? Who is this Jesus? Where is he? I do not know.

Then he gets hauled before the religious leaders. They are interested in all reported miracles, especially if performed by unauthorized individuals and most especially if done in violation of some law. Such is the case here; the healing occurred on the Sabbath. A quandary: if this man is truly healed, it was done by someone with the power of God, but if the healing took place on the Sabbath, then it was done by someone opposing God’s law. Are you sure you can see? Were you really blind? Who did it? Further investigation is needed.

Next his parents are grilled by the religious leaders. Yes, he is our son; yes, he was born blind; no, we do not know what happened; no, we do not know who did it. Whatever joy they may have had is drowned in fear. The prejudice was palpable.  The text says: for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.   Expulsion from the synagogue and social disgrace is a high price to pay for having a son especially blessed by God. They were unwilling to pay it.

One more time the man is grilled and this time more intensely. The authorities, faced with the irrefutable evidence of the healing, try to make the man denounce Jesus as a sinner. The poor man, armed only with his experience and sound logic, cannot believe a sinner could have the power of God. Anger and frustration rule: the man is denounced along with Jesus and expelled as a sinner.

First his life was blessed by Jesus and now his old friends disregard him, his parents reject him, and he is driven out from his old place of worship. What a blessing!

Jesus says:  “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”    The religious leaders gathered around him are incredulous:  “Surely we are not blind, are we?”  Jesus replied, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

This story is not just about a blind man being healed once upon a time in a land far away.  This story challenges us to recognize the ways in which we can be blind and unable to recognize our blindness — and the ways in which we are wrong about the blindness of others. 

Obsession with observance, the disabilitiy of the Pharisees, is a characteristic of religion which makes it very dangerous, as many forms of fundamentalism illustrate. Such rigidity at the expense of people is not, however, limited to certain widely acknowledged types, but can flourish among the biblicists and among those serving other ideologies. It is also at home where people read John and the Bible as vehicles for propaganda for their Jesus and their God, to ‘win’, instead of a testimony to divine compassion which puts people first. As the blind man might have said: ‘Well I don’t understand much about all of that, but I know when I see people getting helped I know God is at work in that!”

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.