…grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seeking a Quaker Advent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discovering An Advent In Our Own Tradition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 8, 2013  Spokane Friends Meeting

27 And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king’s counsellors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men; the hair of their heads was not singed, their tunics were not harmed, and not even the smell of fire came from them. 28 Nebuchadnezzar said, ‘Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him. They disobeyed the king’s command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God. 29 Therefore I make a decree: Any people, nation, or language that utters blasphemy against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins; for there is no other god who is able to deliver in this way.’ 30 Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon. Daniel 3:27-30

John Allen, a U.C.C. Pastor in Residence, writing in Political Theology Today says that it is rare to hear a story of such instantly successful civil disobedience. Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego refuse to participate in religious devotion that they find blasphemous, they are sentenced to death, God intervenes saving their lives, and King Nebuchadnezzar declares that anyone who blasphemes against the God of Israel will be “torn limb from limb and their house laid in ruins.” This is a sweeping and clear victory.The problem is that Nebuchadnezzar’s decree indicates that he has not been changed by God’s miraculous intervention. Instead, the king resets the stage for the same story to play out with another marginalized group. He rearranged which group were the new holders of power but the bigotry remained. Violent death is still the price for blaspheming against the state’s new chosen God. It is chilling just how quickly the previous victims become part of the system that sought to kill them once it orients its violence toward a new group. The outcome indicates that God’s presence hasn’t engendered any profound change in the course of human affairs. Instead, familiar power dynamics are rearranged with a few new participants.

It feels like our own political landscape. Moments and movements that seem to usher a sea change that feels like a victory are simply incorporated into a broken system that remain essentiallyunchanged by the minor disruption. God’s message was lost when Nebuchadnezzar “promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abedego.” The king relinquished none of his own power. Nor did he dismantle the political system that nearly led to their deaths.

Advent is supposed to be about God coming to live in and change the world. God’s legacy was to usher in a new way of living with the potential to profoundly disrupt the normal rhythms of business. In reality it shows up in a marginalized and impoverished body in a backwater town and was never integrated into the structures of economic and political structures. Advent is not about elevating different people to power, but learning to seek power at a different elevation. Emmanuel, God with us, comes not as a new leader to be fitted into our normal way of living, but as an interruption to our customs.

Advent is an invitation to seek that newness in unexpected places. Dare I suggest that where we might begin to look for the one who brings new and promising changes to our lives and in our world is within our own tradition where the foundation is personal and corporate obedience to the ever present living Christ.

A recent analysis of the State of the Society by the Earlham School of Religion says that by any measure Quaker contributions to the development of civil society over the past three-and-a-half centuries have been impressive.

In the 17th century, Friends made seminal contributions to the advancement of religious toleration.  In the 18th century, Friends established a lasting social and political order in America based on the fundamental principles of freedom of conscience and equality of individuals. In the 19th century, Friends advanced the cause of equality by decisively contributing to the abolition of slavery. In the 20th century, Friends went on to establish and nurture a wide range of organizations that have successfully advanced Quaker principles of peace and justice in the world at large.

The fruits of the Quaker family tree, both in America and abroad, have been rich and abundant over the past three-and-fifty years. You could argue that if Quakers were to die out tomorrow, our presence would continue to be felt for centuries to come. However the health of the tree that gave forth that fruit now finds itself in serious jeopardy. The numeric loss of almost a quarter of membership over the past thirty years presents a rather gloomy picture for the future for the Religious Society of Friends in North America. Despite this rather pessimistic assessment you can find glimmers of hope and signs of strength. In many cases, the primary weaknesses of Quakers can also be our greatest strengths.

The Quaker emphasis on a personal relationship with God has been a continuing source of division within the Society of Friends. On the other hand this relationship has also given rise to a group of people with an extremely well developed sense of individual responsibility.

The lack of internal unity within the Society of Friends is not only a weakness, but also a potential source of great strength. There is, perhaps, no other single religious denomination in American society today that so completely encompasses the entire spectrum of American religious experience. This diversity of theological perspective, in combination with the Quaker openness to continuing revelation, gives Friends great potential for defining a religion of the future that is capable of appealing to large segments of the population.

At a time when each day brings a fresh scandal to light in the business world, never has the Quaker testimony of honesty and integrity been more relevant or needed.

At a time when human over-consumption is putting increasingly deadly stress on the biosphere, never has the Quaker testimony of simplicity been more relevant or needed.

At a time when over 15% of the total population, has no health insurance, never has the Quaker testimony of equality been more relevant or needed.

At a time when the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with over 2 million of its citizens languishing in jail, never has the Quaker ideal of justice been more relevant or needed.

At a time when the “war on terror” is increasing society’s levels of suspicion toward minority communities, in all their manifestations, never has the Quaker ideal of tolerance been more relevant or needed.

While Quakerism still bears abundant fruit in term of its activities in the world, E.S.R.’s analysis says that Quakers seem to have made little or no progress in terms of “saving themselves” by nurturing the vine that gives forth the fruit.

In an anonymous essay by a British Friend on the future of Quakerism, the author acknowledges that Quakers have had an influence far beyond our small numbers yet believes that Friends are, for all practical matters, invisible to the general population. He also goes on and points to the wonderful gifts Friends have to bring to the world and asks how we can find the energy to expand to meet our own needs and those of more and more seekers in a troubled world? How can we, he asks, affirm, articulate and act upon our faith so that the Quaker way has more meaning for more people?

Spokane Friends Meeting shares both in that great heritage and is experiencing the same retrenchment as the Society of Friends as a whole.

Very recently a person who has been part of this Meeting for quite a few years told me that they were leaving because they came to the realization that they were not a Quaker. The person wanted “to go to church, be fed and then go home and live … life.” I was, of course, disappointed. But, as I began to think seriously about the future of our Meeting it occurred to me what this person actually said. Spokane Friends Meeting is a Quaker Meeting. We are who we say we are – with all the pluses and minuses that goes with that. Such a self selecting process is healthy.

Another individual offered an analysis of why Spokane Friends wasn’t doing so well financially. From their perspective there are three kinds of people in a congregation. There are a few who are productive people who can contribute generously, there are a middle group who meet their own needs but have little left over to contribute and then there are the needy ones. Evidently we’ve given too much attention to the needy and the barely adequate producers and not as much to the producers. In retrospect I found this another testimony to the Quakerliness of our Meeting.

The author of Quakers: A Spiritual Community for our Time? wrote that the Quaker way is not simply an hour of worship once a week; it is about learning, creating, sharing and praying together. It is about faith and practice being interwoven and our whole lives being sacramental. It is about teaching and learning alongside one another, supporting and encouraging one another and loving one another, despite our differences. Then the author asks whether we have the capacity to integrate it more fully into our lives or do we have too many competing interests and demands on us?

In order to ‘grow’, he writes, we need to be clear about our core identity and at the same time be open and flexible. It is his suggestion that renewing our spiritual life together will opoen the gate to new growth and movement. And we shouldn’t approach that in haste but in innovative ways with discernment. Energy for change will come when we start with our center and move out as we are led.

So where do we start? There is a revered piece of Quaker advice that says: take heed…to the promptings of love and truth in our hearts. Our journey starts there – along the path of love and truth, listening to the Spirit’s promptings in our hearts. George Fox had a message for all times. In two passages from his Epistles he speaks of the power of belief in a loving God who directs and supports us.

‘in the presence of the living God be patterns. that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people… then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.‘

and:  ‘the Lord showed me … that I should have the sense of all conditions and in this I saw the infinite love of God, I saw also that thee was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And n that I saw the infinite love of God and I had great opening.

When Fox spoke about being patterns it had been his experience that energy flows out from us and creates more of the same. Just as fear and violence breed more fear and violence, so love and truth encourage more love and truth. War does not lead to peace, whereas kindness and respect may well open doors to new understanding. When George Fox spoke about an ocean of light flowing over an ocean of darkness, he knew that the power of love can overcome the power of fear.

Thanksgiving 2013

I know when Thanksgiving as we knew it ended.  It was in 1993 when the last turkey day football game between the University of Texas and Texas A&M was played.  Since 1901 the game between these two rivals was typically played on Thanksgiving Day.  And now that A&M has joined the Southeastern Conference the 118 year rivalry has come to an end.  However, there is a bill currently languishing in Texas’ General Assembly to require that the two teams meet each other annually, not that it would occur on Thanksgiving Day.

Now some are saying that Macy’s Department Store, famous for the nationally televised Thanksgiving Day Parade has decided to open its doors to shoppers at eight p.m. on Thanksgiving Day “It is the death of Thanksgiving.”  Of course Walmart, Target, and Toys “R” Us launched special deals on Thanksgiving last year – But Macy’s!

The truth of the matter is that if no one wanted to shop on Thanksgiving, then no stores would be open.  The true killers of Thanksgiving are those who leave the table to head to the mall.  What is that telling us about thanksgiving, not just the day we call Thanksgiving but the very act of giving thanks itself in our society and in the church.                                                                                            Is gratitude is being replaced by good deals? Are shopping sprees winning out over family meals? As we take gifts of life and health for granted we concentrate on shiny and expensive material gifts. Having the power to buy in our pocket books has become a common place compensation for a sense of powerless in so much of the rest of our lives.  We could call it “retail therapy.” So how is Thanksgiving faring ?

When Paul penned his letter to the Colossians, a group of Christians living along a main roadway in Asia Minor — what is now modern Turkey this question was evidently on his mind. The people of the meeting in Colossi were pulled between the values of their faith and the values of their culture.  We kind of resemble that remark. Paul warned them, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8).

These words ring true today.  We know the philosophy of trying to spend ourselves out of economic troubles. The empty deceit of a sales pitch. The human tradition of making the holidays an orgy of consumption. The elemental spirits of the universe that lure us away from Jesus Christ.  Paul asked the Colossians, and us, “Why do you live as if you still belonged to the world?” (2:20). It’s a good question, one that we should ask ourselves on Thanksgiving Day, and every day.

But Paul isn’t  trying to make us feel bad about ourselves. No, if anything, Paul is the apostle of gratitude, with the phrase “be thankful” as one of his recurring pleas (3:15). New Testament scholar David Pao points out that the New Testament has 62 mentions of thanksgiving, and Paul is responsible for more than three-quarters of them.

In Colossians Paul begins with an outpouring of thanks, He starts: “In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints” (1:3-4).  After affirming the good work being done by the Colossians, he writes, “May you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light” (1:11-12).

As the human tradition of holiday shopping tries to crowd out Thanksgiving, we are able to “endure everything with patience” because our joy comes from the gifts of God instead of from conspicuous consumption.  Notice how the letter to the Colossians does not assume that we show gratitude only when everything is perfect. Instead, Paul knows that there will be much hardship to endure at the same time that we are giving thanks.

Holding thanksgiving and hardship together is a spiritual challenge. We struggle to give thanks after the death of a spouse. We try to be grateful when a child is sick. We do our best to count our blessings when we lose a job, fail a class, suffer an injury, or experience a crushing disappointment.

Fortunately, many people find a way to do this. In on-the-street interviews when asked about being thankful, few people bring up about material gifts. Instead, they mention the gifts of God that sustain them through the struggles of life: Children, friends, partners, good health, kindness, generosity, knowledge … plus the gift of life itself.  George Niederauer, the Archbishop of San Francisco, adds to this list: “God’s gifts of artistry, imagination and creativity; his gifts of dedication, fidelity and perseverance; his gifts of strength, acumen and skill.”

Those gifts you cannot buy at Macy’s, Target, Walmart or Toy R Us or Costco whether they are open on Thanksgiving or not.

Paul concludes today’s passage by inviting the Colossians to give thanks to God for what God has done for us.  First, we can be grateful for his forgiveness and acceptance as presented to us the in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. To Paul’s mind God “has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (1:13-14). No matter how many times we stumble, Christ is present to pick us up.

For Paul Jesus is at the center of creation, holding everything together. “He is the image of the invisible God,” says Paul, “the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers — all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (1:15-17).

Jesus Christ is the one who is at the center of everything that is precious to us: Children, friends, partners, health, kindness, generosity, knowledge, artistry, imagination and creativity. In Christ, all things hold together.

Finally, we can be grateful for the presence of Christ in the community of faith.  “He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.

Whenever two or three are gathered, in church or around the Thanksgiving table, Christ is present. The love of Christ shows us the fullness of a God who loves us so much that he sent him into the very middle of human life, to do the work of making peace.

Is Thanksgiving dead?  Not as long as Christ Jesus is alive among us, at the center of creation and the community of faith. But it is our job to respond by giving thanks for the gifts of forgiveness, for the gifts of the world, and for the gifts of the church.

Let’s do this on Thanksgiving, regardless of when or whether the stores open their doors.

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Since the earliest days of Christendom, the faithful have gathered to give thanks for the life and ministry of the saints – women and men whose witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ has been a blessing in every generation. The witness of many of these blessed women and men – such as Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Theresa of Avila or Saint Augustine of Hippo – are well known. Their writings have become popular.  Their deeds inspire us to name hospitals and schools and churches for them, and their service to the Church is taught to the faithful in every generation. Yet, for others – such as Saint Simon or Saint Jude – little is known beyond their names.

Regardless of how much or how little we know about these faithful witnesses, one thing is certain: their life and ministry richly blessed the world. Of course, by worldly standards, it would appear that saints don’t know much about blessings. Few knew anything about wealth.  Most lived all or part of their lives in poverty. Notions of status and power couldn’t be more foreign to them.   Few ever knew high-paying or revered jobs, choosing instead to work for little or no money at all, serving the poor and the helpless. And far from instilling fear or subordination, many saints were hated and met untimely deaths precisely because of the faith they so boldly proclaimed.

Of course it wasn’t on worldly standards that saints patterned their lives. They lived by Jesus’ standards revealed in Matthew 5 and Luke 6. And as the Gospel of Luke tells us, Jesus’ standard for what constituted a blessing is radically different from the standards to which the rest of the world is accustomed,

“Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says, “for yours is the kingdom of God.” “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.”
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.”

Poverty, hunger, mourning, hatred, exclusion, revilement and defamation – these things certainly don’t seem like blessings to me! But Jesus is convinced that they are. And most shocking of all, Jesus says that these are the sorts of people to whom the Kingdom of God is entrusted.

In 1772, at the end of a 39 day ocean crossing, John Woolman, the simple tailor from Mount Holly, West Jersey, contracted small pox and died, in London. In his last hours we are told his mind was full of ‘the happiness, the safety, and the beauty of a life devoted to following the Heavenly Shepherd’.

Jay Miller, in a review of Geoffrey Plank’s book John Woolman’s Path To The Peaceable Kingdom, makes a favorable comparison of John Woolman with Dorothy Day the twentieth century writer, social activist and founder of the Catholic Worker Movement who died in 1980. Despite that she was alleged to have said “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily” the case of her beatification is currently open in the Catholic Church. Plank writes that “(t)he effusive praise Woolman has received, both as a saint and as a pioneering opponent of slavery, has unfortunately impeded our ability to comprehend his engagement with other Quakers,” and “the secular currents of eighteenth century life.”  Plank’s book seeks to help us better understand Woolman as a complete person thoroughly embedded in the context of eighteenth-century American Quakerism and the British imperialism.

Plank writes: “Woolman saw the imperial economy as a machine, and… the various parts of the British Empire served specialized functions that supported one another. He argued that purchasing the products of slave labor promoted slave-raiding and warfare in Africa and that concentrating wealth in the hands of the landed elite on the American east coast had the effect of pushing landless whites onto Indian lands in the west. He therefore saw from his home in Mount Holly nearly all the evils of the far-flung empire around him.”

Woolman grew up as one of thirteen children on the family farm in West Jersey surrounded by other Quaker families and meeting houses, a legacy left by earlier Quaker settlers. He went to school with other Quaker and native American children. Industry was beginning to change the agricultural character of the Delaware Valley, diversifying the economy, bringing in non-Quakers to the iron works and creating new wealth. He sought out the affirmation and approval of trusted Friends and their oversight. Our image of him has been created by our learning only of his persistent focus on eradicating slavekeeping among Quakers. The reality is that he was took an active role in the life of his Meeting. He engaged in the concerns of Quarterly and Yearly Meetings across the colonies. He helped maintain the meetinghouse, delivered books and pamphlets to local meetings, mediated disputes between debtors and creditors, counseled young men contemplating marriage, served on clearness committees who met with people interested in Quakerism and more.

In 1746 he traveled some 1,500 miles as far south as North Carolina in the company of Isaac Andrews, speaking with slave-owners about the evils of slavery, but as tradition tells it, “so gentle was his personality that he convinced without offense. Always his hearers felt that he appealed to consciences rather than giving blame.”

Being troubled by the wars between the English and the French and the continual threat of wars with native Americans he made a difficult and dangerous trip into the north-central part of Pennsylvania. He stayed for four days among the Minesink tribe, feeling, as he says, “the current of love run strong.” At one point he poured out his heart in prayer, disregarding his translators. When he had finished, the tribe’s chief, Papunehang, put his hand on his own breast and said, “I love to feel where words come from.”

We’ve learned that for a while Woolman was engaged in selling pork to the Caribbean through a Philadelphia broker. His ledgers show that this business stopped abruptly, raising the question of whether there was some connection between it and the slave trade. His business interests then began to be more locally focused as he grew grain and did tailoring for his neighbors. It must have been difficult for his contemporaries to understand this man who wore conspicuously white clothes rather than use dyes which had to be produced by slave labor. But most of all it was his writings which made a larger social critique of the luxury experienced by some at the expense of others’ labor that truly set him apart.

This fuller picture of John Woolman, seeing him in the context of his home, of the politics and economics of colonial America, his concern for humanity regardless of race and even his grasp of the consequences of the most simple of choices, requires us to re-frame our understanding of sainthood, not as the endeavor of a few who transcend but the real vocation of all who follow the path of Christ.

So who or what is a saint? Paul often addressed his epistles to “the saints” of a particular city as in Ephesians 1:1 and 2 Corinthians 1:1, and Luke in Acts 9:2 talks about Peter going to visit “the saints in Lydda”. The Greek word hagios means “to set apart”, “to sanctify” or “to make holy.” It gets translated into English as the word saint. It appears 229 times in the Greek New Testament in which it refers to persons who are “in Christ” and in whom Christ dwells. The assumption is that women and men who follow Christ have been transformed so that they are now somehow “different” from others, set apart for the work of the Kingdom and are thus considered saints. In his book, Making Saints, Kenneth Woodward writes: “A saint is always someone through whom we catch a glimpse of what God is like—and of what we are called to be. Only God “makes” saints, of course. The church merely identifies from time to time a few of these for emulation. The church then tells the story. But the author is the Source of the grace by which saints live.

I still like the story which I’ve told before of the little girl from a rural Friends Meeting who visited a grand cathedral in the big city and was mesmerized by the stain glass windows. When she got home she said that she now knew what a saint was. It is someone through whom the light shines.

Does that come as a challenge to you? I know it’s a tough call and humility and integrity might cause you to refrain from answering but, what kind of saint are you?   In a Mennonite church members of a men’s group decided that they needed to find a way to be accountable to each other. They did their taxes together. When one of them was asked about whether he was a follower of Christ his response was – don’t ask me ask the other members of the men’s group. Has the presence of Christ in your life transformed you? The work of building the Kingdom isn’t easy. But then again, as Jesus reminds us in Luke’s gospel, life with God isn’t easy, either. Life with God means that we will know what it is to be poor, hungry, sorrowful and cursed. Life with God means that we will know what it is to be unpopular – to be discounted and overlooked. And life with God means that we will know what it is to be hated.

But the Good News is that the Kingdom of God is built – brick by brick, stone by stone – by common people : people who know what poverty and hunger and sorrow and being cursed looks and feels like. People who know how it feels to be overlooked and discounted. People who know what being hated feels like. The challenge is to begin to live by a different set of standards. Instead of worldly standards, let us begin seeking to live by the standards of the Kingdom. It starts today. It starts by loving our enemies. It starts by showing kindness to people who don’t deserve it. It grows into the ability to bless those who curse us; to pray for those who mistreat and take advantage of us. It manifests itself in the ability to listen and show honor to those who are forced to beg. It is lived out in our homes, places of work and play and everywhere we encounter the poor and the hungry and the sorrowful and the hated; because, after all, the Kingdom of God belongs to them.

Ephesians 1: 11-19 Paul writes: In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, 12so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. 13In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

15I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.

Near the conclusion of Second Timothy Paul acknowledges that he is about to be ‘poured out as a libation” and that ‘ the hour for my departure is upon me.’  It is where we find the familiar quotation of Paul’s that “I have run the race, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.’ (4:6-7).  Everything for Paul seems to be coming to its end.  He laments that Demas has deserted him, Crescens has gone to Galatia and Titus to Damatia.  Somehow even the coopersmith has done him harm. He reports that when he was taken to trial there was no one was there to support him….He writes: “Everyone left me in the lurch…”.  I think I can understand when he writes that he wants his warm cloak and his notebooks.

To get a handle on the conclusion of 2^nd Timothy we need to start with the introduction, chapter  1:1-14.  It reads: Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, ²To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. ³I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. ⁴Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. ⁵I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.

⁶For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; ⁷for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. ⁸Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, ⁹who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,¹⁰but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. ¹¹For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, ¹²and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. ¹³Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. ¹⁴Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

We know from the Book of Acts that Timothy was the child of a Jewish mother and a gentile father. He had shared in the task of proclaiming the Christian gospel. From I Corinthians 4 we know that on at least one occasion Paul sent him to clear up some problems within another worshipping community. In the introduction to this letter we learn that evidently Paul knew Timothy from a child.  He knew his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice.  As I’ve read and re-read this passage I can’t help but wonder whether the tears of Timothy’s to which Paul refers were those of an infant who defied consolation.

It is to this child of the faith, a faith Paul firmly believes was instilled in his holding Timothy as an infant, that he pens this “last will and testament”.  Paul desperately wants to see Timothy one more time before his death.  He wants to make sure that the gifts that God had given Timothy wouldn’t go to waste.  But it strikes me, as I read this letter, that Paul wasn’t so sure and is seeking assurance.

We put a lot of stock in the last words people utter, especially when they have played an important role in our lives. Quakers hold the words spoken by James Nayler on his death bed and those of Mary Dyer before here execution and the those of the last of the Rhode Island quietist leaders, Job Scott, as a precious testimony indeed.  So try to put yourself in Timothy’s shoes and ask yourself how you would deal with this letter, were it written  to you?

I love how the letter starts: ²To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.  How more personal can it get?  It’s like Quaker plain speech when in the language of affection a parent addresses his or her child as “thee”, second person singular instead of the more inclusive ‘you’.  And then in verse three, Paul makes a point. He tells Timothy ³I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did.  Paul makes no bones about the fact that he still considers himself a Jew and for that he is grateful but more importantly he persists in the tradition of the generations before him.  He desires the same for Timothy.  Be grateful to God for who you are and don’t fail to continue the faithful tradition you have received from your grandmother and your mother. 

The whole passage is rich.  There are at least three specific encouragements Paul gives to Timothy.  (1) Rekindle the Gift; (2) Don’t be Ashamed; and (3) Guard the Treasure.

The Greek word for “rekindling” is wonderfully picturesque.  It is formed by a preposition which means “again,” then a word which means “bring to life,” and concludes with a verb which means “to light a fire.” Thus, the combinations in the word, which only appears here in the NT, urge Timothy bring a certain fire back into his life, a fire that apparently once was blazing brightly. We aren’t privileged to why Paul is under the weight of this concern.  Were you to say that to me I’d have to assume you think that what was once a blazing fire in me had gone out.  To rekindle isn’t merely stirring old ashes, it requires a re-supply of flammable material.  Paul in v. 7 helps to illuminate what he has in mind.  He wrote ⁷for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. 

The important point here is that Timothy needs to rekindle a gift. Why would someone’s gift lie dormant? We could probably come up with a list of why we don’t exercise our gifts. Sometimes we are simply overwhelmed by life’s realities. We seem to have no time or energy to put our gifts to work. Occasionally, we squander the gifts, either by inattentiveness or pursuit of paths we know are not helpful to ourselves or the kingdom. Other times we just draw back from life.

Jeff Davis, President of the Confederacy, spent eight years of his life as a recluse after the unexpected death of his first wife Sarah. Both had contracted malaria. She died from it. For the next eight years he secluded himself studying government and history, and engaging in political discussions with his brother. When he was elected to Congress from Mississippi the entire tenor of his life changed. He emerged as a statesman of significant dimensions. Even though he has been vilified in American history because of his position as head of the Confederacy, he possessed skills and insight that helped galvanize millions of people for several years.  But my point is that Davis, like others, retreated from life for a while not knowing how he would “re-engage” with life after his enforced time of self-exile.

In the movie “Get Low” a man late in life played by Robert Duvall engaged the local funeral director in planning his own funeral complete with a party.  No one understood why the man had lived the life of a hermit.  At the end it was revealed that he felt responsible for the death of the woman he loved though it was the violence of her husband that brutally killed her and burned down the home in which she died. His isolation was a prison he constructed for himself. It ended with his plea for forgiveness.

Other examples aren’t hard to find. Indeed, many of us retreat from the steaming cauldron of life’s battles for a variety of reasons.

            But among the last words of the Apostle to Timothy were to rekindle the gift, to not let it lay unused forever. Now may be the time for you or others you know to rekindle a gift they have. You will not live a satisfied or fulfilled life in faith if you continually ignore the inner tuggings of your heart to (re)kindle gifts you know are yours. Are there  voices you are trying to tamp down? Are there interests you’d like to explore? Which gift do you need to rekindle today? The world will be grateful for your expressing the gifts you know are yours–and you will feel a deep and abiding sense of personal satisfaction.

Next Paul tells Timothy: Don’t Be Ashamed, don’t be ashamed of the Gospel. From word one from the mouth of Jesus, consistent with the words of the prophets who preceded him, Paul fully understands that the message of the Gospel contradicts the values of that which is characterized by the phrase “the world”.    When we live kingdom values “the world” challenges our very existence.  Others try to “help” us feel ashamed, too, through their comments about our appearance, our past, our being a “loser,” our being “worthless” or unpatriotic or even ‘un-American.’  Make no mistake about it, these experiences of shaming make us a little less hopeful and require us to carefully consider what living with integrity means for us.

The Apostolic advice is for us not to be ashamed. I wonder if this is easier said than done? Certainly the point is the goal to which we aspire, but shame tends to cling to us like mold to a bathroom wall, like plastic film that sticks to our fingers and we can’t shake off. According to Paul, the solvent that removes shame is knowing “the one in whom I have put my trust” (v. 12). Christ, then, is the great shame-remover. Acknowledging Christ in our lives frees us to not only “rekindle the gift” but to feel that the shame that so long has bound us need no longer control our destiny.

Lastly Paul tells Timothy to “Guard the Treasure.” The purpose of rekindling the gift or emancipation from shame is not simply to have a “gifted” and “unashamed” person running around on the earth. The purpose is to guard the great treasure that is entrusted to us.  This image is found in II Cor. 4. There Paul wrote: “For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” And then Paul becomes quite eloquent as he writes “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies”.  Certainly for Paul the act of having the treasure is all the more reason to guard this treasure.

When I was responsible for the financial dealings of F.C.N.L. I was told by members of wealthy families that the one unbreakable rule is this: “Never touch the principle”.  Now that didn’t mean you dig a hole and bury it somewhere. Not at all.  It means that you only use the income produced by wise investing, putting the principle to work for maximum yield.  You guard something precious by being present with it, keeping it in eye sight, and putting it to work.

Paul, in his last will and testament tells Timothy “Rekindle your gift”, “Don’t be Ashamed”, and “Guard the Treasure.”  What wonderful words to live by.

A Growing Chasm

Luke 16:19-31

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’  Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”  Luke 16: 19-31

Alyce M. McKenzie, Homiletics Professor at Perkins School of Theology, says that the background for this parable is a tale from Egyptian folklore about the reversal of fates after death. It reflects a Greek notion that souls go to the underworld for punishment at death. Rabbinic sources contain seven versions of this story. Some rabbinic tales feature Eliezer, which in Greek is Lazaros, walking in disguise on the earth and reporting back to Abraham on how his children are observing the Torah’s prescriptions regarding the treatment of the widow, the orphan, and the poor.  We only find it in the Gospel of Luke.

The idea of the poor waiting for crumbs at the doors of the rich is a detail taken straight from first century village life. This one does not stay in the realm of first century. It invades our comfort zone.  What is realistic about it is its portrayal of the vast gap between rich and poor. The reversal of fortunes it depicts contradicts the popular notion that wealth was a sign of God’s favor and poverty a sign of sin.  It is clearly consistent with Jesus penchant for turning things on their heads.

Wealth isn’t intrinsically evil. It is definitely dangerous. In helping the poor we acknowledge that riches can hinder our own salvation. We admit that we are susceptible to its seduction. 1 Timothy 6 describes the realm of riches as fraught with arrogance, traps, temptation, harmful and foolish desires, ruin, destruction, grief and wandering from the faith. The tragic realization of Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s “Christmas Carol” comes to mind: “These are the chains I forged in life.”

On the other hand disparaging the super rich might make us feel good, but that is a sign of sanctimony. Thank God for the wealthy women who supported Jesus, for the rich man Joseph of Arimathea who tenderly buried him, and for all the wealthy saints today who follow their footsteps.

The story of the Rich man and Lazarus is a three act play. The first act portrays the earthly contrast between a person of wealth and one of poverty. This is Jesus’ story-telling at its best, with Lazarus in such a grotesque and pathetic state that dogs are licking his open sores. When we see someone begging like poor Lazarus, it makes most of us feel uncomfortable or we have to step back because of the stench. The rich man’s sin was not that he was rich, but that, during his earthly life, he did not even “see” Lazarus, despite his daily presence at the entrance to his home. The first time the rich man ever really sees Lazarus is when, from Hades “he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side” .  In that way he is like those who pass by the man in the ditch in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. They “see” and cross the road. The Samaritan is the only one who “sees,” “has compassion,” and crosses the road to help the wounded man.

This sequence of seeing, having compassion, and acting is a common one in the Gospels. In Luke 7:13 Jesus “saw” the woman weeping at the death of her only son, he “had compassion for her” and brought her son to life. When the father “saw” the prodigal son “still far off… he was filled with compassion” and ran and embraced him (Luke 15:20) Matthew and Mark repeatedly tell us that Jesus himself, when he “saw” the crowds, had compassion on them and healed, fed and taught them.  In the parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25 what makes some blessed is the fact that, though they didn’t realize it, in seeing the poor and helping them they saw and helped Jesus. By contrast others never really did see Jesus suffering and in need because they never really saw the poor. What is it that causes some people to have something or someone in their line of vision and yet not really see them? And what causes others to both have someone or something in their line of vision and to really see them?

The second act of this parable describes the reversal of their conditions in the afterlife. Even enduring torment in Hades the Rich man doesn’t get it.  He understands the message about wealth and the poor, but he approaches Abraham as if Abraham were his peer. Lazarus remains an inferior who can be “sent” to comfort the Rich Man or to preach to his ancestors. The parable turns from the changed fortunes of the Rich Man and Lazarus to the question of people who do not get the point. Surely Moses and the prophets supply enough reason to treat other people with dignity. If people still do not repent, even Lazarus’ miraculous return will not convince them.

The third act depicts the rich man’s request to Father Abraham for a sign so that those still living can avoid his torment, a request that Abraham refuses. Luke’s readers would see the reference to one rising from the dead as an unmistakable reference to Jesus’ resurrection. The rich man’s request is refused because even a miracle such as that cannot melt unrepentant hearts or bring sight to eyes that refuse to recognize any needs beyond their own.  Am I the only one who is a little gratified that Abraham does not grant the rich man’s request to send Lazarus as a messenger to his brothers? His refusal affirms the abiding power of the Old Testament prophetic witness in Jesus’ ministry as Jesus himself does earlier in Luke 16:16. “They have Moses and the prophets. They should listen to them.” Listening to them would impel someone to “see” the suffering of another and take action, for this social compassion is at the heart of the law and the prophets. We are to show mercy as God shows mercy.

The kingdom of God shows up when and where we least expect it. We don’t expect it to show up in the gap between the bearable, even pleasant, or luxurious living condition of some and the unbearable, inhumane living conditions of others. We don’t expect it to show up in the offer of the ability to see that gap and move from seeing to active compassion before it is too late. But we ought to have learned by now that the kingdom of God is not a prisoner to our expectations. The implication is that the end of our stories have yet to be written.  The rich man ignored the pleas of Lazarus the beggar, and now he is the one begging for a sip of water and is denied. As a master teacher, Jesus told stories like this to awaken longing in his listeners, to help them turn the switch, to desire to be people who see the beggar at the gate and to embrace the miracle of love.

The dismal prospect that people may reject the word concerning wealth and poverty poses a difficult problem for us. The parable calls us to confront ourselves and our communities concerning our own practices, but do we really change? What is the value of holding up this message if people don’t act on the word they already know? Should we simply dwell in the hope that we might repent before the great chasm finally divides us. It does happen.

Just this week I again heard on the news of the growing gap between the rich and poor. There are important disagreements about the causes, consequences, and solutions of radical inequality, but the reality of it is undeniable. In his book Who Stole the American Dream?  Hedrick Smith argues that in the last thirty years “we have become Two Americas.” A “gross inequality of income and wealth” has demolished the middle class dream. This wasn’t inevitable, says Smith. It’s not the result of “impersonal and irresistible market forces.” Rather, it’s the consequence of government policies and corporate strategies.  Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist for the World Bank, came to similar conclusions in The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (2013). He writes, “The top 1 percent of Americans gained 93 percent of the additional income created in the country in 2010, as compared with 2009.” Like Smith, he says this didn’t have to happen.

The issue here isn’t one of envy. Rather, Stiglitz fears that gross inequality threatens the very nature of civil society — our politics, health care, education, housing, employment, legal system, and more. Problems are worse in the rest of the world. According to the World Bank, in 2010, 2.4 billion people lived on less than $2 a day. The bitter irony here is that there’s been significant progress in the reduction of global poverty in the last thirty years. But look at the yardstick — $2 a day!  These people suffer the catastrophic consequences of poverty as measured by a broad array of indices — access to safe and dependable water, life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, literacy, and so on.

But tragedy isn’t a necessity. The chasm isn’t yet fixed. We read in 1Timothy 6:6-12  “Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment;⁷for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; ⁸but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.⁹But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. ¹¹But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. ¹²Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

By sharing generously and being rich in good deeds, we “lay up treasure for ourselves as a firm foundation for the coming age,” and “take hold of the life that is truly life.”

Ovid, a poet of ancient Roman and a contemporary of Jesus, relates that once upon a time…the gods were quite concerned that they were being ignored. So Jupiter, who was the chief ruling god of thunder, and Mercury, who was the messenger god, visited humanity disguised as poor, beggarly travelers. The idea of gods visiting earth disguised as poor, unknown visitors is quite common among differing cultures and religions. In our own tradition the unknown visitors are most often identified as being angels. In the Book of Hebrews we are strictly cautioned to be kind to strangers because we may be entertaining angels unaware.  They quickly discovered that no matter on what door they knocked the people living in the home abruptly and rudely turned them away.  Eventually the two gods came upon the ramshackle hut of a poor, elderly couple and although they were incredibly poor they welcomed the two strangers into their home and shared what little they had with the visitors.

The next day, Jupiter and Mercury revealed to the couple who they were. Grateful for being welcomed into the elderly couple’s home, the gods rewarded the old couple with one wish. Much in character, the humble couple’s only wish was to be allowed to stay together until death and also beyond.

Jupiter and Mercury granted the couple’s wish. Instantly the ramshackle hut was transformed into magnificent temple where they lived out their lives. The kindly couple died at the same time and were transformed into two trees standing side by side. The trees stood so close to one another that their branches were entwined in an eternal embrace.

What happened to all the many people who’d refused to extend hospitality to Jupiter and Mercury? They were drowned in a great flood and thus repaid for their behavior.

From Erasmus’ relating the story told by Ovid, over the door way to his home renowned Psychotherapist Carl G. Jung place these words: Called or not called, God is there… And he said the question is: Will you welcome the god or turn the god away?  He wrote: “I have put the inscription there to remind my patients and myself: that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

Marie-Louise von Franz said “It seems to me to be one of the greatest contributions of Jung and his work is that it taught us to keep our door open to the “unknown visitor.” He also tried to teach us an approach through which we can avoid the wrath of this visitor, which every frivolous, haughty, or greedy host in the folk tales brought down on himself. For it depends only on ourselves whether this coming of the gods becomes a blessed visit or a fell disaster.” “Called or not called, God is there”.

In Genesis 28:10-19 we read that: Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. ¹¹He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. ¹²And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. ¹³And the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring;¹⁴and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. ¹⁵Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

¹⁶Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” ¹⁷And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” ¹⁸So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. ¹⁹He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

Our reading puts us right in the middle of the long and fascinating story of Jacob who later will be named “Israel” following his wrestling match with an unnamed assailant at the Jabbok river.  He came into the world gripping his brother Esau’s heel. In fact in Hebrew his name in its verbal sense means “to follow” or “to come behind” but as a noun it means “heel.” Our first encounter with Jacob as a young man suggests that he was suitably named.

You remember the story.  Esau returns, famished, from a long day of hunting, the conniving Jacob persuades his hungry brother to exchange his birthright for a bowl of stew.  Then with Esau’s birthright in hand, Jacob and his mother devise a more audacious scheme. Disguised as Esau, wearing his brother’s clothing and attaching animal skins to his arms and neck, Jacob provides a “counterfeit” meal for his blind father to replace the one that Esau was supposed to prepare. He then announces to his blind father, “I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, so that you may bless me” (Genesis 27:19). While Isaac isn’t entirely convinced that he’s blessing the right son, he goes ahead and gives Jacob his blessing. Later Esau alludes to yet another meaning of Jacob’s name when he says, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright; and look, now he has taken away my blessing.” Jacob might also mean “someone who cheats.”

Now just in case you are upset by the conniving and unethical behavior of Jacob and his mother Rebekah I want to remind you that despite the elaborate deception to gain Isaac’s blessing, Jacob never rules Esau.  It inaugurates twenty years of flight, exile and servitude for Jacob and loneliness for this mother who never again sees her favorite child.  Those who live by deception suffer by deception.

So, fleeing his enraged brother Jacob left Beersheba for his mother’s homeland in Haran. On the way he has a strange experience at a “certain place.” Resting from his flight from Esau, he spends the night, using a stone for a pillow. In his dream he sees a “ladder set upon the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven.  This is no common extension ladder it is a ziggurat stairway or ramp, connecting earth with sky. This is one of the most famous visions in the Bible.   Jacob then hears God, who is “standing beside him,” make a declaration of commitment to the covenant. The God of Jacob’s fathers will be with him as God had been with them; God will grant Jacob the Promised Land and abundant descendants to inhabit it and will provide protection wherever he goes. However lonely and afraid Jacob feels, his own brother seeking to kill him, and alone in the darkness, with only a stone for a pillow–God assures him that he need not fear, because God’s protective presence will not waver and God’s promise of a robust future will not go unfulfilled.

Wait, after all isn’t this Jacob, liar and trickster, fresh from clever use of a brother’s gullible hunger and a father’s aged blindness. Wouldn’t you think that God might have something to say about such a blatant disregard for basic rules of family life and sibling care? Might God not have said, “Just who do you think you are, you little lying twit! Do you think you are so clever as to get away with such nasty tricks; do you think that you can deceive me as you deceived your dying father?” Some sort of divine displeasure wouldn’t be out of place. But not here. The great promise and blessing are given without question or remonstrance.  Does that give you some hope?  It does me.

What do you think is the meaning of the ladder?  What is Jacob supposed to learn from it? Who are these angel-messengers, and what does their movements signify?  One of the greatest of the Hasidic masters suggests that, presumably, the ladder is intended to represent human beings in this world. Like the ladder, each of us is firmly planted on earth—flesh and blood individuals with bodily needs and earthly desires.  But through entering into a heart felt relationship with God, doing God’s will, and becoming the kind of human being God asks for we are capable of “reaching upward”.

But our text goes much further than merely telling us that we can live on earth and still touch heaven. According to another rabbi the ascent-descent of the angels suggests that even the heavens are affected by our actions.  It was his idea that when we are obedient to God’s will for his creation we effect a form of cosmic repair thus sending angels upward.  And conversely, tragically, when we violate God’s will, we do damage to the very cosmos—we force angels downward and “shrink the heavenly hosts.”

However you might want to understand this interpretation, the thrust of it is clear: God, too, is affected by the choices we make. It seems beyond question that the quality of human life on earth is deeply impacted by the decisions we make and the course of action we take; the daring of this bit of Jewish theology is that the quality of God’s life is impacted. In Abraham Heschel’s memorable terms, the God of Judaism is not Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover but rather the Torah’s radically affected “Most Moved Mover.”  So, accordingly, seeing the ladder and the angelic motion taking place on it, Jacob learns his own potential and of its potential cosmic repercussions.

Another early Hasidic Master offers yet a different way of understanding Jacob’s dream. The ladder filled with upward and downward motion is a metaphor for the religious life of any human being here on earth. There are times when we are in “expanded consciousness” and feel a deep connection to God and God’s will and, in those moments we are “ascending the ladder”. But there are also times when we are afflicted by “contracted consciousness” and feel far away from God and then we are “descending the ladder”.

There is nothing wrong with this up-and-down process. It is an inherent piece of the spiritual life. In fact, it is crucial that we understand that our descents make possible fuller and richer ascents. Just as in a human relationship, distance or crisis in the moment can often lead to a more profound sense of connection and intimacy later; so in our relationship to God, a period of descent can culminate in a more genuine connection to God. This, the old Rabbi tells us, is “descent for the purpose of ascent.”

You might want to notice that God shows this to Jacob precisely at a moment in which he is alone and afraid. It is as if God seeks to reassure him: “This very sense of alienation and dis-connection you feel may yet lead you to find Me in entirely new ways.”

When Jacob woke from his dream, not only the place was changed by God’s presence, he is a changed man. Professing God’s presence in this rather ordinary place, Jacob builds an altar, converting his stone “pillow”into a memorial that marks a life-altering encounter with God.  He calls this place “Bethel” — house of God, professing that God is here, on the way right there where Jacob finds himself.

God’s interruption of Jacob’s anxious journey, which displays God’s renewed commitment to Jacob in his own right, does not contain a single word of judgment regarding Jacob’s prior actions with regard to his brother and his father. Rather God’s address to Jacob contains one unconditional promise after the other. In this grace-filled encounter, we see how God can transform an ordinary stone and an ordinary place into something special; a place where God’s presence has made a home in the world. Similarly, this trickster who has deceived his father and brother, and who since birth has lived in strife with the people around him can be transformed by God into a richly blessed person who serves as a source of God’s blessing to others.

The lyrics of U2’s song “Yahweh” offers an intriguing perspective on this ability of God to transform ordinary things, people and places into something special:

“Take these shoes; Click clacking down some dead end street; Take these shoes; And make them fit.

Take this shirt; Polyester white trash made in nowhere; Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean; Take this soul Stranded in some skin and bones;

Take this soul–And make it sing”

The good news—bidden or unbidden God breaks into our world of fear, terror, and loneliness. Jacob’s dream, which he dreamed somewhere in the middle of nowhere, opens to him a whole new way of being in the world.  Finding oneself encompassed by God’s presence transforms our world.  So there it is – bidden or unbidden, in the most fearsome and lonely places of our lives, God is there and not with judgment or condemnation but with promises and protection.