Spokane Friends Meeting

Ian Poulton of Leinster Ireland, beginning with Acts 1:21 where it says: “It is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time ” quotes George Bernard Shaw: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” What an interesting thought: all progress depends on unreasonable people. When you think back through history, when you think of explorers, and inventors and the scientists who made great breakthroughs, they were unreasonable people. Some just wouldn’t conform, some were eccentric, some were regarded as being quite mad. Had they been reasonable, they would have accepted the world as it was, they wouldn’t have questioned what was seen as being the way things were by everyone else.

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           Last evening, at the graduation celebration for Rachel and her room-mates, I heard the intentions for their futures shared by five young women. None had evidently pursued a college degree looking for a spouse. Each of them had next steps in mind toward advanced degrees and careers. None of the occupations envisioned would be considered traditionally for women: marketing, economics, computer technology, ocean biology… These women are the product of generations of liberation. It is something to behold. 

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In these fifteen verses of the fourth chapter of 1^st John the word love is used twenty-five times. That may be cause to challenge the 13^th Chapter of 1^st Corinthians for the title of the “Love Chapter” of the New Testament.   In these few verses we hear that God is love, that God loves us and that love is from God. We are encouraged, time and again, to love one another. It goes further than that – it is a mandate: “…those who do not love a brother or sister can’t love God –those who love God must love their brothers and sisters…” We learn that the only way we can love at all is because God first loved us.

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Today our understanding of the role of a gate is a bit eschewed. We’ve got gated communities where in some places a guard has to be given authority to let a specified visitor enter. We’ve made deliveries to military installations where the underside of our truck was inspected with mirrors. We just had a terrible tragedy in Florida when a neighborhood watchman took the life of a teenager thought to be where he did not belong. When we read this passage where Jesus says that he is the gate those are the images that come to mind. It shouldn’t be surprising then, that over the centuries and even today, many of us have come to view Jesus as the security guard at the gate of heaven. Heaven is often described as the ultimate gated community, and it’s a hard place into which to get. You don’t get past Jesus unless you are on the short list.

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Finding Faith

John 20: 24-29; Daniel 3:17-18; Hebrews 11:32-39

When our girls were little hearing departing sleigh bells as they awakened on Christmas morning provided adequate confirmation that Santa had indeed included them in his appointed rounds. Snow covered landscapes in Virginia and Indiana were no challenge to an Easter Bunny’s perennial visit. Even when they were a hundred miles from home living in college housing the Great Pumpkin found them. Do you remember the hope of anticipation, the joy at discovering mysterious gifts, the peace of “knowing” that such entities existed? Your early view of the world, like mine, was formed by such beliefs and the experiences that seemed to “prove” them. And as we matured and learned from practical life experiences our naturally skeptical minds demanded ever greater levels of verification. Failing that, my beliefs, and yours, changed. When my beliefs changed my world view changed–forever.

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The Seven Next Words of Jesus – a Red Letter Easter Message

John 20:1-23

John’s description of Easter morning is all about Mary of Magdala. It is quite unexpected and rather strange for her to be the center of such attention.  Luke first introduces Mary to us by name. She is just one of the women who followed Jesus during his traveling ministry in Judea. The next time we meet her Matthew, Mark and John all tell us that she was one of a number of women at the site of the crucifixion.  The other gospels tell that the women waited for sunrise to make their pilgrimage to the tomb. Not so with Mary. In John’s resurrection narrative, it is Mary who is first to return to the tomb.  It was still night time – not just before dawn – it was still dark – when she made her pilgrimage. It is she who finds the stone that had sealed the tomb moved away.  

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 In a past that is still part of many of our memories this particular Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, was reserved for the pageantry of Palm Sunday. Then there was a clear understanding that as the work week ended, on Friday, with the encouragement of their employers, people would participate in the somber worship experience that focused on Jesus’ crucifixion. Such a discipline, unfortunately, went out of practice. So, now, on this Sunday preceding Easter, we acknowledge what has become ‘the Triumphal Entry’ and focus our attention on the concluding events of Jesus’ earthly life. Otherwise, going from celebration to celebration we miss completely the passion of Holy Week. 

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Out of love for Israel God develops selective amnesia. The God of Israel, the One who neither slumbers nor sleeps, chooses to forget. What do you make of this? Is this a metaphor, a dramatic play of words? Has God really forgotten their sins? The whole “golden calf” incident, just forgotten? And the worship of foreign gods — entirely wiped clean? Can God really forget? And, if so, what else might God have forgotten?

It is a startling, unexpected, and even a somewhat uncomfortable way of talking about God.

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The briefest Gospel.

It seems that when you encounter the Gospel as it is presented today it comes shrouded in theories of atonement and tightly wrapped up in peoples’ world views and various ways of restricting God’s grace. Sometimes it comes as several things that one must do or not do or so many other things that one must believe or avoid all reflecting a specific theological orientation. Often it is presented as a choice to be made after a recitation and interpretation of a series of carefully selected Bible verses. It might come drowning in emotionality or presented as a series of irrefutable laws or the proposition of a logical syllogism. You can find Jesus being marketed as one would a commodity—with nothing of the context of his life or the content of his ministry and message. The good news is that when we intentionally look for it in Scripture we can find it; tucked away in Paul’s pastoral letters, in Luke presentation of the early church in Acts, and in the books we call Gospels.

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The third verse of the whole Bible begins “God said…” One of the truly great things about our God is that our God speaks. And when God speaks wondrous things happen – like creation.   In the sixth chapter of the Bible we read that God called Noah to build an ark and at the end of the chapter we are told that Noah did exactly as God had commanded.   The twelfth chapter begins “And the Lord said to Abram, ‘Leave your own country… and go to a country that I will show you’.” And then it tells us that Abram set out as the Lord had bidden him. The whole of salvation history is about people, like Moses, David, Micah, Peter and Paul who experienced God’s call on their lives and their efforts to live in obedience to that call.

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