Spokane Friends Meeting

Messages used in our Christmas Eve Meeting for Worship and for Worship the day after Christmas are offered together in this posting. 

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  I admire the way Matthew in his Christmas story gives us a glimpse of this man Joseph. Joseph in being righteous and caring for others gives us a timeless view of what love is all about. Like Hosea, he shows us love like God’s that comes without reservation, even when there is every reason to be suspicious. In his protection of Mary Joseph demonstrates how our response to God’s love is to embrace others in their vulnerability and need. The babe in the manger wasn’t his – at least by any natural means. But with a love that overcame the demands of the rules it was Joseph who steps us and claims the right to name this child, as if the child were his. Love is the principle of God’s action and our response. Who better to show us love than this simple but righteous man we know only as Joseph.

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On this third Sunday of Advent we look once again to the qualities that are present in the kingdom of God. Now, Quakers function with the uncommon understanding that the Kingdom of God, through the Holy Spirit isn’t a future event to be anticipated, like some second shoe to fall. According to our reading of the scriptures the Kingdom of God has come among us and within us. But, fortunately, that isn’t the complete story because we also hold to the idea that in our spiritual pilgrimage the Kingdom of God claims ever more territory as our lives come into harmony with God’s intention for all of creation. So the kingdom has come, the kingdom comes and the Kingdom is yet to be fully realized.

The Joy of Christmas is a gift that comes of opening to the work of Christ in our lives, making us into the person God intends us to be and then, against what’s popular and expected of us by our culture, being obedient to the concerns laid on our hearts to continue God’s efforts to restore creation.

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In the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, where the prophet first announces the advent of a new and perfect king, he says that such an ideal monarchy is characterized by a perfect and complete peace that extends throughout all of nature. This king will see to it that righteousness and justice shelters the poor and humble, the whole land will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord and all creatures, even natural enemies, will live together in peace.

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Advent 1, 2010

Among the Candles of Advent the First One is Called Hope –

Hope is an interesting notion. It has no substance. It is choosing to live with the assumption that your present situation will improve. And it evaporates when that which was so longingly hoped for materializes. It doesn’t deny how things are – quite the opposite – it takes the reality of the present moment as its base line. Hope expects a future but is grounded in the now, no matter how intolerable that seems to be.   One reason for hope to have become so illusive for us today is that instead of envisioning a better future our inclination is to identify who to blame for our present state of affairs: from the super wealthy to the undocumented alien; from the corporations to the government. We just aren’t interested in a better future.

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Luke was not written primarily for 21st-century Christians anxious about our future.  It was written for a beleaguered and persecuted minority under the thumb of Rome.  How were they to deal with this situation?  Luke says to listen for Jesus, trust in Jesus, and use Jesus himself as a model. Luke’s appeal is that as we live out of the wisdom which God gives, and not out of fear, we may let our responses to the hype and horror of accumulating disasters not be determined by the one-liners of media editors or religious demagogues, but by the same Spirit who is now the center of our lives.

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The story that the book of Haggai tells is the story of a second beginning of reconstruction. The first effort, under the edict of Cyrus had fizzled. Sanballet was correct in his assessment of the challenge, lack of resources and skills. The conditions faced by the returning ex-patriots in what was supposed to be a land flowing with milk and honey was disheartening at best. Their early good intentions were undermined by misfortune, bitterness, demoralization and, ultimately, resignation. What more would you expect of a people in survival mode?

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John 8: 31-36

³¹Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³²and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” ³³They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” ³⁴Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. ³⁵The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. ³⁶So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

One line of this passage has become the most abused and misunderstood line of all of scripture. It is the line that goes: “…and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The way it is used it is never a complete sentence. It has been ripped unceremoniously from its rightful place in John’s Gospel. James Garfield once said “the truth will make you free,

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Quakers have created for ourselves a difficult standard – we are expected to see ‘…that of God’ in others.  Sometimes it almost pushes us to the wall.  ….this week Spokane had some visitors from Topeka, Kansas.   The history of the Phelps family, law firm and the Westboro Baptist Church, founded by Fred Phelps, is an interesting story. At one time Fred was a courageous civil rights attorney.  Fred Phelps should be expected in our culture as the iconic prophet wearing a sandwich board saying the End of the World is Near! He looks at America and declares what most of us know in our hearts – America is an immoral place. His strong contention is that God hates. God hates unrighteousness!   And he has the Bible verses to back that up. It helped me to see Fred in terms of the pre-exilic Old Testament Prophets who warned the two Jewish kingdoms of Judah and Israel of impending destruction at the hands of pagan nations permitted by God for their failure to live up to the requirements of the Covenant with regard to how people were treated.

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Due to the sharing of our lives with each other in Meeting for Worship Sunday it seemed appropriate to only share a portion of the message I had prepared.  So for the adventuresome here is the whole thing…

A couple of years ago Susan and I drove up north to a community that had at one time been blessed with a productive mining operation. We were told how much ore had to be excavated to extract a very little gold.   That’s what my sermon preparation has been like this week. At one point I felt more like the Chilean miners but without the drilling team.

It seemed like two scripture texts, Luke 18:1-8 and II Timothy 3:15 were competing for my attention.

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