A Pastor's Ponderings and Such

Artificial Legitimacy

October 20, 2022

Written by pastormak

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Biblical Witness 1 Samuel 16:1, 4, 5b-13
God said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” Samuel did what God commanded, and came to Bethlehem. He sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. When they came, he looked on Eliab, Jesse’s oldest son, and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” But God said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for I do not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but I look on the heart.” Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. God said, “Neither have I chosen this one.” Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And God said, “Neither have I chosen this one.” Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “God has not chosen any of these.” Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” Jesse sent and brought him in. Now David was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. God said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

Contemporary Witness

Before I begin the contemporary witness, I’d like to tell you a bit about the author of the poem I’m going to read. Her name is Ofelia Zepeda. She is a Regents’ Professor at Arizona University in the Department of Linguistics and American Indian Studies. She has a long list of credentials as an academic. Amoung them is the text book she wrote: “A Tohono O’odham Grammar” (first printing, 1983). It is one of the first grammar books on the O’odham language, which is the language of her people.

An article about her in American Indian Magazine says this, “Zepeda is a co-founder and longtime director of the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI), whose annual summer programs train American Indian teachers in language instruction and developing materials for children and adults. Zepeda has worked with more than 2,000 students, most of whom return to their tribal communities.

As an activist, she played a key role in getting Congress to enact the Native American Languages Act of 1990 (a year after Congress established the National Museum of the American Indian). The Act also gave Native languages official status in tribal government business.

Zepeda’s poems provide all of humanity with evidence of the need for linguistic diversity to fully understand the human experience and the world we inhabit.” These were all quotes from the online article from American Indiana Magazine.

This is whose voice we are listening to today. And here is her poem,

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“Birth Witness” by Ofelia Zepeda
My mother gave birth to me
in an old wooden row house
in the cotton fields.
She remembers it was windy.
Around one in the afternoon.
The tin roof rattled, a piece uplifted
from the wooden frame, quivered and flapped
as she gave birth.
She knew it was March.
A windy afternoon in the cotton fields of Arizona.

She also used to say I was baptized standing up.
“It doesn’t count,” the woman behind the glass window tells me,
“if you were not baptized the same year you were born
the baptismal certificate cannot be used to verify your birth.”

“You need affidavits,” she said.
“Your older siblings, you have some don’t you?
They have to be old enough to have a memory of your birth.
Can they vouch for you?”
Who was there to witness my birth?
Who was there with my mother?
Was it my big sister?
Would my mother have let a teenager watch her giving birth?
Was it my father?
I can imagine my father assisting her with her babies.
My aunts?
Who was there when I breathed my first breath?
Took in those dry particles from the cotton fields.
Who knew then that I would need witnesses of my birth?
The stars were there in the sky.
The wind was there.
The sun was there.
The pollen of spring was floating and sensed me being born.
They are silent witnesses.
They do not know of affidavits, they simply know.
“You need records,” she said.
“Are there doctor’s receipts from when you were a baby?
Didn’t your parents have a family Bible, you know,
where births were recorded?
Were there letters?
Announcements of your birth?”

I don’t bother to explain my parents are illiterate in the English language.
What I really want to tell her is they speak a language much too civil for writing.
It is a language useful for pulling memory from the depths of the earth.
It is useful for praying with the earth and sky.
It is useful for singing songs that pull down the clouds.
It is useful for calling rain.
It is useful for speeches and incantations
that pull sickness from the minds and bodies of believers.
It is a language too civil for writing.
It is too civil for writing minor things like my birth.
This is what I really want to tell her.
But I don’t.
Instead I take the forms she hands me.
I begin to account for myself.

Reflection “Artificial Legitimacy”

There’s a whole lot about life that is just made up. Who gets to be important and why. The value of money. What jobs are deemed essential. Humans create boundaries around land as if the land itself is going to obey. We create documentation about those boundaries and money and birth and death and jobs. We argue about what needs to be documented and controlled and what doesn’t.

In her poem, Birth Witness, Ofelia Zepeda reveals the ridiculousness about requirements to document and prove the obvious – her existence. We can get so caught up in the system of requirements that we lose the point of what we’re trying to keep track of and why.

As a Christian, why do we care about these things? There are some things about life which are just the systems we create and we go along with them because it’s a way for things to get organized. It doesn’t matter. There’s a story about Jesus being confronted about paying taxes. In a part of that story we hear Jesus say, Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God. Jesus had a practical nature. For him, life was bigger than the systems that we create. Unless … the systems interfered with life.

Some systems are designed to do just that. They are meant to get in the way of the life of some people so that they can’t participate. Gerrymandering does this with voting. The requirements of many different kinds of public assistance get in the way of people being able to get off of assistance in a meaningful way. I could easily get in the weeds about intrusive rules and documentations which stop people from moving forward, but I bet I’ve said enough to bring to mind the ones which cause you aggravation already. Not just petty annoyances, but real life-stoppers.

Jesus was ridiculed for healing on the Sabbath. His opponents deemed his miracle a kind of work that was forbidden on the Sabbath. There were hand washing rules. Rules about who he should and shouldn’t be talking to. He pushed against the rules that were there to be stumbling blocks and taught that setting up stumbling blocks for others was a great offense against God and people.

This is why, as Christians, things like what gets documented and for whom should matter to us. It isn’t that there shouldn’t be systems. Organization can be very helpful. But systems for the purpose of controlling others is grievous to God because it reduces the value of life itself.

I included the Biblical story about Samuel’s job to find the new king as a way to talk about expectations about people. Samuel knew God’s anointed was going to be one of the children of Jesse, but he didn’t know which one. As he looked over the ones presented to him he had expectations that it would be the oldest son. If not the oldest, then the strongest or the best looking. God told him, he was using his human systems to make his determination. We use our human systems of determining things all the time and most often, it works. That’s okay when the systems are benign. But when they’re designed to be stumbling blocks, we have to take notice. David was the youngest. He wasn’t even called in to be considered. We don’t know exactly why, but there was an expectation that it couldn’t possibly be him. David was the archetype of the underdog. It’s a classic trope in hero stories. It’s a way to remind us to get out of our expectations, to get out of our ruts of thinking and doing. It’s a reminder to re-prioritize.

Tropes of stories are one thing. Real life is another. Ofelia Zepeda’s poem is about real life. The expectations put on her to validate her existence did not match with her lived experience. What was normative to the clerk behind the counter with her forms was not normative to Ofelia Zepeda’s life. Furthermore, the lack of compassion or even the inability to hear from another’s experience creates an even greater stumbling block. Going deeper, I see not only the resistance to listen and understand, but also an expectation that the person the clerk is meant to serve should be regarded with suspicion.

As Christians, why should we care about things like this? Because whole groups of people are being invalidated and treated with suspicion. These are stumbling blocks to living. Jesus cared about that. Our faith teaches us to take notice of the forgotten child in the field or the adult who is given a requirement for validation that over burdens their life.

Today, with Ofelia Zepeda’s guidance, let’s look beyond the human structures which give credence to our existence. She lists the real witnesses to her birth. Not just the humans who might have been there, but creation itself. She celebrates these deeper witnesses which have memories and futures far beyond ours. She talks about the language of her family being much too civil for writing and documenting. Instead, the language she knew and used was meant for deeper meanings.

Who or what are the real witness which celebrate your life and being? What season was it when you were born? Where was the sun and the moon situated? Who held you, smiled at you, breathed on you with kisses and sighs when you were first experiencing the world?

In what way do you use language that holds deeper meanings? What non-words help you express your deeper truths. How do you connect with the mystery that is creation?

Stripping off the veneer of artificial validations, how do you authenticate yourself? What I mean is, what do you know in your knower about the truth of you? Of your goodness? What can no one take away, even if they tried?

One thing that I have learned in my friendships with those who walk a faith path based on their indigenous heritage is that everything is connected. We are connected to each to each other and to creation. All that we see and experience is woven together and sacred. When we forget this simple truth, and begin to think that the systems we’ve set up are the truths to be followed, we lose out on the deeper meaning of what it means to be alive.

I am grateful for the teachings of people like Ofelia Zepeda who point us toward real life. While we live our lives within a system, it isn’t the system that validates or authenticates us. We are already centered and grounded in that truth. When we know that for ourselves, the next level we can go is to experience each other in the same way. To remove the expectations of who we think each other should or could be, just as we have removed those expectations from ourselves. In this way, we remove the weights that keep us from life. I think that if there’s anything that makes God smile, it’s when we remove the weights that hold us down from experiencing the amazingness of life that has been created for us. When we remove the stumbling blocks that have been set up to limit not just ourselves, but the abundant life meant for others, we are truly doing the ministry that Jesus taught. We are then the bearers of good news and agents of liberty for those in bondage.

The systems we have are only tools. They’re useful when they help to enliven us and connect us. They’re weapons when they limit our connection and make us suspicious of each other. Our faith decides how we design our religion, and it’s usefulness to us. This is our higher calling. It draws us to connect our souls and hearts. We become each other’s witnesses to this life, celebrating each other and learning how to share a language that draws the sacred to us, grounding us and making us whole together.

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Bullying, Christian

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Grief Pause

October 13, 2022

Written by pastormak

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On September 26, 2022 a dear friend suddenly died in an accident. Peter Shetler. He was an amazing person, a wonderful friend to many, and an influence on not only the town of Goshen, IN where he lived, but also as a global citizen. The shock of his death hit many very hard. More 1,000 people attended his memorial service the following week. I’m grateful to have been one of them.

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It’s still hard to believe that he isn’t just across the street from where my beloved lives. Harder still to remember that his beloved wife isn’t sitting across the table from him at dinner. A dinner that he cooked with such loving care and enthusiasm.

I am grateful to have been able to go to Goshen the next day and stay there a week. Things have been a bit blurry. Well, there was a blurriness that week to be sure, but also even still. There’s was and continues to be an ache in my soul as well as a numbness.

I was away from church that following Sunday, so I sent in a recorded sermon. I will post the written version of it here. I will also post my previous sermon, the one from Sept 25th, the day before Peter died. Eventually I will get to the one from this past week.

As people say in times like these, hold your loved ones close. Tell them how much you care. Speak your language of love to them and let them speak theirs to you. All of that is true and good and important.

I would add, take time out to find joy and beauty. Seek it out like the treasure it is. When all is bleak around you, breathe deeply and listen for laughter. It may be in the voices of children. It might be in the wind, the sunrise or sunset, the call of birds, or many other surprising places. Don’t limit laughter, joy, and beauty.

At the same time, don’t be afraid to cry and mourn. Be angry when that’s the right response. Just don’t let those things consume. Don’t let them be your foundation. When bad comes to worse, and sometimes it does, be in the middle of it. We have to attend to what is before us.

Grief will make us pause. Even then, there is something stirring to help you through it. Seek it out – the beauty and wonderment of life.

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Grief

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People Matter

September 22, 2022

Written by pastormak

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Biblical Witness: Ecclesiastes 1:4 – 7

A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow.

Contemporary Witness: Article excerpt from apomm.net – The words of; Álvaro Enciso

Well, when I first moved here, I saw this map of all the casualties of the immigration policy. And it’s full of red dots of locations where bodies were found. They tried to reach someplace here in the U.S. and died in the desert from lack of water, too much heat and too much sun. But also in the winter from hypothermia, you know, you freeze to death.

So a lot of people die from heart attacks, busted ulcers, all kinds of things. And a lot of people get hit by cars and some people get killed by who knows who.

I’m a migrant. I came here from South America in, in the sixties. I came here with all the papers in order, by plane. And, I came looking for the American dream, like everybody else. An opportunity to be somebody. To improve your quality of life. To find a future that looks a little bit brighter than what you had back home. So for years, I always wanted to connect in some way with my roots, with who I am.

Because despite all the time that I’ve been here, I’m still a Hispanic man and a Latino man. And people always remind me of that. You know, they don’t want to let me forget that I’m a pseudo gringo. And somehow you get this idea that you are an outsider and that you don’t belong here. Even though I’ve spent most of my life here.

So I wanted to find a way to connect with my migration, sort of be one of them. So I started hiking to the sites where a body had been found or human remains of some sort. I went to stand there and see if there was anything there, a vestige of what happened there, the suffering and the disappointment and the failure and everything.

Immigration is a two-part thing you know. The person who leaves to come here and the people who stay behind, and I was trying to connect all of that. But, you know, I’m not really an activist. And I wanted to treat this thing with some sort of a separation because I didn’t want it to get too sentimental. So I was trying to find a way to document those deaths, you know, over 3000 of them.

One of the ideas about contemporary art, or at least my way of thinking about it, is making the invisible visible. So I needed to give these people presence. I needed to mark the locations somehow.

So I started going to these sites. I will go there sometimes by myself and I will just go flat on the ground and hoping to find some epiphany or some sort of revelation, some cosmic message. This was going to be the project that had a lot of meaning and purpose. I was even thinking that this was going to be my legacy. You know, that it’s a beat up old guy putting crosses out in the desert.

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Digital photograph. Alvaro Enciso
From the multimedia project “donde mueren los suenos”(where dreams die).
Cross for an unidentified male, whose skeletal remains were recovered in 2005, in Southern Arizona.

The cross connects, a lot of things. It’s a symbol of death. It’s a symbol of finality. You know, the Catholics didn’t invent the cross. They appropriated the cross from the Roman empire. The Romans used to make the crosses, big ones, to kill people. They used to hang them there. You know, common criminals, enemies of the empire, false prophets. And they hang them there for three or four days without any water under the sun until they died. Which is exactly what it was happening here.

So the cross was beginning to make sense, but I was a little reluctant because I didn’t want to be seen as some kind of Christian fanatic putting crosses out there. So I decided that this cross was going to be not a religious cross, that it didn’t have any Christianity in it. It was a universal symbol. It was nothing more than a geometric equation. You know, a vertical line on a horizontal line. The vertical line means that you’re still alive, that you’re walking. And the horizontal line means that you’re dead. That you are flat on the ground, that this is it. And where those two lines meet, that’s the point where the tragedy took place. Where the story of David and Goliath in this case, Goliath always wins, you know, because the poor person from Mexico or from Guatemala cannot compete with all the technology and all of the hate and all of the things so that he, he or she always loses at that encounter.

Reflection:        “People Matter”

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Alvaro Enciso ~ photo taken by Stefan Falke

A few years ago when Marcia and I went to Tucson, we met Álvaro Enciso and spent an afternoon talking to him about his work of paying respects to those who have died crossing the desert from Central and South America to seek a safer life. Can you imagine risking death to seek safety from the danger you’re leaving behind? Sit with that a minute. A lot of these people are seeking asylum for various reasons. If they live through crossing the desert, what awaits them here all too often is imprisonment in an ICE Detention Center with a ridiculously high bail set for them and lots of prejudice that they have come to the States to abuse our hospitality.

Our Ecclesiastes reading today reminds us that the world, creation, and life goes on and on. It has been going on before our generation and will go on after. Depending on how we respond to our current climate crisis, human life may not go on for as many generations as we think, but after creation gets rid of us it will heal itself and something else will happen. It’s funny how God isn’t mentioned in this reading. While I believe that God set the system in motion and set up the parameters of what works and what doesn’t – in essence that God created the physics that governs our world – what we do with it, what we learn and how we respond, is up to us. The one called The Teacher, who wrote Ecclesiastes, tells us that life is cyclical. We’re a part of it for awhile. How then shall we live?

Álvaro Enciso made a life-changing impact on me with how he has chosen to live. The deaths in the desert that he documents by marking their place of dying with his crosses are people that other people loved. Each one is someone another person or group of people wonders what happened to. His is a quiet mission. He does this without fanfare.  Some have tried to stop him. Others have desecrated the crosses he’s placed. I won’t go into detail about what people have done, but it’s ugly, vile, and brutish. His persistence that each one deserves proper recognition is as much a part of his legacy for me as is the work itself. I can’t think of anything that anyone could do that is more important. In my words, from my tradition, I believe there is nothing more sacred and holy than what he is doing.

Let me tell you about these crosses. In the interview we read he said, that the crosses are a universal symbol, nothing more than a geometric equation. Quoting the interview, he says, “You know, a vertical line on a horizontal line. The vertical line means that you’re still alive, that you’re walking. And the horizontal line means that you’re dead. That you are flat on the ground, that this is it. And where those two lines meet, that’s the point where the tragedy took place.” Do you remember the red dots he mentioned that are on the maps marking where migrants died? Here is that red dot, right at the intersection where the tragedy took place. All of what he adds to these crosses he found in the desert. Remnants of the migrants making their way across. A pop can here and there. A water bottle. There are few things that they carry in order to survive; when they don’t, it all gets left there. He uses what he finds to add to the cross, to remember them and honour their lives.

What I want to say next may seem painfully obvious. But I think it’s something that gets forgotten or maybe misplaced. It’s the whole point of this though and what was life-changing for me. While this is something that I knew and have known all my life to one degree or another, what I learned that afternoon talking to Álvaro Enciso was that people matter. More than anything else, people should be what matter most. More than money. More than rules. More than religion. And people who are most often dismissed by others as not mattering – matter more and deserve more of our attention, respect, and actions.

This is the reason our faith compels us to action. It’s why we resist laws that are unjust. Whenever a practice or conversation diminishes another person’s value, we have to push against it. People matter too much to ignore violence against them – whether it’s political violence, social violence, emotional, physical, or spiritual violence. That’s why we do what we do, pray the way we pray, and reconsider our faith practices when we find out they are ways to prop up power rather than build up communities.

While we’re here, spinning on this globe with the seasons moving from one to the next, the wind blowing around and the streams flowing, we make our mark. What will be our legacy? Let’s make it happen, together.

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"isms", Bullying, Class, Grief, Race, Sermon

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Forward

September 15, 2022

Written by pastormak

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Biblical Witness

The story we’re about to hear is sometimes read during lent. It talks about Jesus being whisked away by Spirit to be tempted. A variation of this story is in all three synoptic gospels. We understand this to be a parabolic telling, not a literal one. The devil is mentioned as being Jesus’ adversary. This character can be thought of as the personification of struggle. I think it’s a more accurate interpretation rather than imagining them to be an evil mystical equivalent, or near equivalent to God.

The Gospel Of Matthew 4:1 – 13

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ” Jesus said to the tempter, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

Jesus said, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only God.’ ” Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali.

Contemporary Witness

“I Was My Own Route” (“Yo Misma Fui Mi Ruta”), by Julia de Burgos;
translated from the original Spanish by Jack Agueros

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I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:
an attempt at life
a game of hide and seek with my being.
But I was made of nows,
and my feet level on the promissory earth
would not accept walking backwards
and went forward, forward,
mocking the ashes to reach the kiss
of new paths.
At each advancing step on my route forward
my back was ripped by the desperate flapping wings
of the old guard.
But the branch was unpinned forever,
and at each new whiplash my look
separated more and more and more from the distant
familiar horizons;
and my face took the expansion that came from within,
the defined expression that hinted at a feeling
of intimate liberation;
a feeling that surged
from the balance between my life
and the truth of the kiss of the new paths.
Already my course now set in the present,
I felt myself a blossom of all the soils of the earth,
of the soils without history,
of the soils without a future,
of the soil always soil without edges
of all the men and all the epochs.
And I was all in me as was life in me…
I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:
an attempt at life;
a game of hide and seek with my being.
But I was made of nows;when the heralds announced me
at the regal parade of the old guard,
the desire to follow men warped in me,
and the homage was left waiting for me.

Reflection “Forward”

Who is Julia de Burgos, the author of the poem we just heard? There’s a lot about her online, and I encourage you to look her up. The basics though are that she was a Puerto Rican of African descent. She was an activist, poet, and teacher. According to the New York Times, “Her work explored issues like the island’s colonial past and the legacy of slavery and American imperialism.”

juliadeburgos.org says this about the poem.
“In the first stanza we learn that society may impose many labels or standards and that no one should be subject to hide or negate their talents, abilities, and aspirations just to “fit in.” In the second stanza she describes the demoralization of acting or being different in an intolerant society. Julia moves on to affirm her decision to become free of the stigmas and forge a new beginning regardless of the implications. She exemplifies bravery, decisiveness, and commitment to her individualism. In the fourth stanza, she auto proclaims herself not only as a symbol of marginalized woman, but a symbol of all social groups that have being enslaved by limiting ideals. Julia declares the joy of living purposeful. She ends the poem with conviction that homage will remain waiting.”

The struggle she describes reminded me of the story of Jesus’ temptations because of the inner nature of the struggle. We face similar dilemmas. These aren’t the superficial decisions of which car to buy or what neighborhood to live in. With these readings we are faced with paradigm shifting kinds of decisions.

Eternal questions of meaning and living are held in these words and stories. What do we put our energy into? Who are we in the world? What should we emphasize in life? What should we resist?

There are no easy answers to these kinds of questions. And no answer we may have on any given day is constant because core value questions like these depend on context. Both of these writings stir within me the wondering of what brings life to any given moment.

Thankfully, we aren’t required to face these kinds of pivotal concerns every day. But there are periods in our lives when there are big decisions to be made. And we think and think and feel and wonder what it is we’re to do. In those times, I think that a meditation on what offers the energies of life helps to center and ground our internal conversation.

Jesus rejects his adversary’s manipulative tactics to circumvent his path toward fully understanding his next steps and the big picture of his goals. His internal struggle seems to be focused on whether he will choose to be self-centered or self-revealed. The distraction to be self-centered is evidenced by the adversary’s temptation toward grandiosity and testing God’s devotion to him through extreme measures. There’s a sense of being tempted to prove who he is for the purpose of being acknowledged by others. Through his rejection of these temptations, Jesus comes to terms with who he is for himself, without needing external acclaim or validation.  

I’m not saying that sometimes we don’t need someone to give us feedback. This is what makes the temptations so … tempting. We do need each other. It’s important to see ourselves reflected through responses from each other. It’s a matter of degree. Jesus was being tempted to see himself as better than and entitled. Instead, Jesus chose to be fully himself for the simple sake of being fully who he was.

Julia De Burgos writes about her struggle in a different way. Here she is experiencing the temptation to fit into a social space less than who she knows she is. Doing so would require her to diminish her understanding of who she knows she is. She resists the pressure to be less than because she sees the danger in it. The danger of less-than-life. Instead she moves forward, into her life. She blossoms where she was told not to grow. A place where there was not history and possible no future. I place beyond time and space. She says, “And I was all in me as was life in me”

I am fascinated that while her stated movement is forward, she is also grounded in what she calls, “now.” She repeats the phrase, “I was made of nows.” That’s what the future is built on. A series of “nows.” 

If we let others describe us to ourselves in lieu of experiencing our own unfolding, we stop moving forward. We stop building our own future. Jesus rejected how the adversary defined him. Julia rejected how society defined her. They both marked out their own paths based on their own revealed nature to themselves and how they felt called to interact with this world. Instead of focusing on themselves in a self-centered way, they lived possessing their values as fully as they knew how.

I remember a time when I was vexed with decisions I had made that I regretted. I talked to my pastor about it and after listening patiently for some time she told me that I needed to repent. I was stymied. I told her that I had repented. She smiled and said that I didn’t need to repent of what I regretted. I needed to repent of how much I was focusing on myself. She said, “It doesn’t matter if a person believes the best or the worst of themself. Either way, they are focusing on themself only. That’s ego. Stop focusing on yourself and move on.”

Possessing ourselves is different than focusing on ourselves. When we experience a blossoming, as De Burgos calls it, we are possessing ourselves, living in the now, and moving forward toward the future.

While this idea sounds pretty big, we can have these kinds of experiences in smaller ways that are just as meaningful. We make decisions everyday. It isn’t unusual to feel pressure to think of ourselves the way others want us to. And, to put others in boxes of our making as well. Living in the nows of life and moving forward is a daily opportunity. It doesn’t have to be all about the big revelations of who we are. It’s rarely that we have a divine or mystic moment or internal struggle. They happen and can be pivotal. But also can the moment to moment decisions of who we want to be.

We strive to follow God the best way we know how to be the person God created us to be. Living in now and not compromising on moving forward toward a full life is one way to imagine being centered and grounded for the purpose of following God and being who we understand God is creating us to be. It’s not something that happens all at once. Little by little we are revealed to ourselves by Spirit and have the choice of what we reveal to others. We get to be in control of our own moments of blossoming as we journey together, moving forward, and living this life.

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Encountering Sacrilege

September 8, 2022

Written by pastormak

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Biblical Witness
The Gospel Of Mark 13:5 – 11

Jesus began to say to Peter, James, John, and Andrew, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

“As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.

Contemporary Witness

            Before the reading of our contemporary witness which is an excerpt of a sermon by Archbishop Óscar Romero from the mid 1970’s, I want to offer some context. Archbishop Óscar Romero is a name every progressive Christian should know. The context around the sermon excerpt can be understood from a scene in a movie entitled, “Romero.” The setting is a simple village church that the government seized for use as a barracks. Soldiers had taken control of the inside and are armed with machine guns. The people from the village, members of the church, were standing outside. Archbishop Romero enters the church simply to retrieve the Eucharist – for non-Catholics, the hosts that are used for communion. When Romero told the soldiers that was all he came for, one of them took his machine gun and shot up the high altar, the holy place which contains the Eucharist. Romero is told to leave. He does, and then seeing the people outside he returns and picks up some of the pieces of the host which were shot and scattered. Another spray of bullets warns him and he leaves again, changes into his priestly garments and returns with the people following him.

Sermon at Church in Aguilares: 66:45 – 67:43; Archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Romero

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We are here today to retake possession of this church building and to strengthen all those whom the enemies of the Church have trampled down. You should know that you have not suffered alone, for you are the church; you are the People of god; you are Jesus, in the here and now. He is crucified in you, just as surely as He was crucified 2000 years ago on that hill outside of Jerusalem. And you should know that your pain and your suffering, like His, will contribute to El Salvador’s liberation and redemption.

Reflection      “Encountering Sacrilege”

These are hard readings today. Hard for you to hear, I’m sure, because they were hard for me to choose. When I think about Hispanic leaders, the first person that comes to mind is Óscar Romero. He was assassinated while officiating communion on Monday, March 24, 1980. He has become a kind of unofficial patron saint of Liberation Theology. He did not claim Liberation Theology for himself, just as Jesus didn’t claim Christianity for himself. But as we have grown in this theological practice and movement, his leadership is one of our primary examples.

He taught and preached about preferential treatment for the poor based on the good news of the gospels and the teachings of Jesus. He stood up to those who were oppressing workers and their families. He spoke out against violence and encouraged soldiers to follow the law of God’s peace rather than obeying orders to kill. His ministry followed closely how Jesus lived and served. This is in part because of the context he was in. There were people to speak out on behalf of. He could easily have been an oppressor, as many of the religious leadership at the time were. He learned about what the people were going through. Instead of being complicit with the violence around him, he stood against it.

A few days before he was assassinated, Archbishop Romero told a journalist, “I need to say that as a Christian I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the people of El Salvador…If they manage to carry out their threats, as of now, I offer my blood for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. If God accepts the sacrifice of my life, then may my blood be the seed of liberty and the sign that hope will soon become a reality. May my death, if it is accepted by God, be for the liberation of my people, as a witness of hope in what is to come. You can tell them that if they succeed in killing me, I pardon and bless those who do it. A bishop may die, but the Church of God, which is in the people, will never die.”

These are the words of an anointed one. Like Jesus, he saw his calling beyond his earthly life and understood resurrection and redemption through liberation of the people and the priests he served.

In our gospel reading from Mark, Jesus tells Peter, James, John, and Andrew, “Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.” This truth has been born out generation after generation in the Christian church. When there is a schism we can all point at each other and at each other’s leaders and quote this. How do we know who to follow … who is right?

A little further on in the teaching, Jesus says to his friends, “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; Mark 13:14

In other words, get out. Make haste. That’s the kind of danger you don’t want to be involved in. What is the desolating sacrilege? Well, the writer of this gospel added a little tip by saying, “let the reader understand.” So in our generation, what do we understand as sacred and how is it being desolated?

I interpret desolating sacrilege as the moment when the soldier trained his weapon on the high altar where the communion was kept. Any time that violence is enacted in a church, in a school, or anywhere that is meant to be a place of safety and peace, a sacred place has been desolated. According to Jesus’ teaching, we should head for the hills when stuff like that happens.

But Jesus didn’t. Archbishop Romero didn’t. Maybe, as Jesus said to his friends, we are still in “the beginning of the birth pangs.” And it’s time to hold fast for what we believe in; for the right to liberation for those in the most powerless positions in our society. The right for a woman to have autonomy over her body. For people to create families that are right for them. For workers to earn a living wage, to have reasonable hours, and to not be judged as quietly quitting simply because they want a life outside of work.

What I understand about desolating sacrilege is that the goal is to dishearten and break the souls of those for whom the sacred was desecrated. When Romero went back in to the village church, crossed in front of the soldiers with their guns, and picked up the shattered hosts, he was showing them that there was nothing they could do that would desecrate that holy place or those holy elements.

Is there harm that can be done? Yes. Pregnant people have died because of laws and policies which forbid doctors to act on their behalf to terminate the pregnancy that put them at risk. Our youth who identify outside of heteronormative structures are at risk in many ways. I can share a long list of who is in harms way because of ruthless leaders who claim they are following God’s voice. Maybe that is the most desolating sacrilege that there is; claiming God’s voice while commanding the injury of others.

When we encounter sacrilege, what should we do? How should we think? There might be a time when it’s right to run for the hills because the momentum of evil is too strong, but now is not that time. We need to remind ourselves and each other that what is holy and sacred can never be desecrated at its essence. We need to see beyond what we see, into what we know. The truth that we know, we need to speak and act on.

Christianity will not be taken hostage. Freedom and liberty, political or religious, will not be subverted by ideologies of bullies who play the victim for personal gain. We just won’t let that happen. While we are not at the point of what was happening in El Salvador during the time of Romero, and whatever Jesus was talking about is only still in the birth pangs after 2,000 plus years, there’s still a lot going on that needs our attention. Don’t lose sight of what’s really sacred. In this way, we will not be led astray. We are retaking possession of Christiantity and of faith. Now is our time to fight for what is holy and sacred. Encountering sacrilege doesn’t diminish sacrality at its essence. It’s important to grieve and mourn such acts. It’s equally important to remind ourselves and each other that what is of a holy nature can never be corrupted. Our sacraments, our holy places, and our holy selves are all kept in the love, mercy, and grace of God. Of that, we can be assured.

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“Replacing The System” 8-21-22

August 22, 2022

Written by pastormak

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Biblical Witness
The Gospel Luke 1:46 – 55
Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of this servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name. Mercy is for those who are in awe of God from generation to generation. God has shown strength with their arm; has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. God has helped their servant Israel, in remembrance of mercy, according to the promise made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” 

Contemporary Witness
“Christian Responsibility” excerpt by Linda Jaramillo published on 9-23-15
As far back as I can remember my Mom and Dad were engaged in public life, taking their civic responsibilities seriously. I can still hear my Mother, who came from a community cloaked with injustice, calling on people to step out and speak up. At the same time, our family was active in the Roman Catholic Church. As a child, I did not connect our faith with public responsibilities, but I suspect that my parents did. Time passed and generations evolved; however, those teachings remain imbedded in values that drive my belief that people of faith must be part of social engagement dedicated to the common good. As I grew into adulthood, it became clearer that my faith was inextricably linked to my passion for justice and equality. 

After years of social activism in the community, I needed to add my voice to the masses, fearfully I might add. So, when I joined the United Church of Church of Christ nearly 35 years ago and I learned that the Bible was the very basis for our prophetic witness. It was as a laywoman in the pews of my local church that I learned to shout out with courage. It was in the pews that I have heard the scriptures read claiming that God is a God of justice. It became vividly clear to me that every single person’s dignity must be respected and restored.    

A question often arises – what business does the church have in this anyway? As Christians, we have the responsibility to influence our social culture rather than being a product of it. As followers of Jesus Christ, we have no choice but to take His message of love, justice, hope, and reconciliation inside and outside of our churches far beyond Sunday morning. The church is the place where God’s justice, God’s peace, and God’s powerful and unconditional love should be made markedly evident through our actions. The church, indeed, has some business in all of this.

Reflection “Replacing The System”

On the one hand, religion and politics have a natural affinity. What we believe to be true is influenced by our faith and influences our faith. And what we believe to be true also influences our politics, what laws we want to be made and enacted, which morals to be uplifted by our policies, what the government should prioritize with our money, and so much more.

On the other hand, we value the separation of church and state because when one dictates the other it’s dangerous. A theocracy is when government leaders are considered divinely inspired. This leads to all kinds of self-interested political power plays. There’s no room for protest or even conversational differences.

However we come to the morals and truths that we have – whether it’s through faith, common sense, experience, or education – they rightfully influence how we want to see the world work. When our government leaders, or even our religious leaders, are elevated to God-status, inequity is sure to follow. This is true too of our laws and policies. When these are believed to have descended from the heavenly realm, they become immutable. What gets lost is the important value that faith is a guide not an imperative.

Today we heard the words of Mary, Jesus’ mom, when she was just a few months pregnant with him. She was visiting her cousin Elizabeth who was nearing the end of her pregnancy with John the Baptizer. Mary declares the promises of God that the lowly will be lifted up and the powerful brought down from their thrones. The hungry would be filled and the rich would be sent away empty. It reminds me of a passage from Isaiah 40 where it declares, “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” 

The uneven ground will be made level. That’s what Mary’s talking about. Not a role reversal where those oppressed become oppressors. As Rev. Melissa Florer-Bixler writes in her book, How To Have A Enemy, “As Jesus’ life unfolds, God’s purpose is not to install a new regime, to turn the tables so that now the rich are made the servants of the poor. Instead, Jesus will remove the mechanisms of this order entirely.”

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The goal of social justice from a faith perspective is this – to remove all oppressive mechanisms. To replace the system entirely. This isn’t something that people in power often understand. It’s inconceivable that there wouldn’t be oppression. Inconceivable that those who have been under the thumb don’t want to become the thumb-pressers. But that’s not the goal. The reason that the rich are turned away with nothing is because they already have enough and more than enough. They don’t need more. The powerful are brought down from their thrones and the lowly are lifted up to level things so everyone can start over.

In Rev. Linda Jaramillo’s article, “Christian Responsibility,” she talks about her family’s history of social justice advocacy and how their faith and public responsibilities were connected. She says, “As I grew into adulthood, it became clearer that my faith was inextricably linked to my passion for justice and equality.” She is resolute that the church has an important role in this work.

One of the aspect of Christ’s ministries that she points to is that of reconciliation, which she lists along with love, justice, and hope. For me, reconciliation is a cornerstone of social justice. True reconciliation has a cost. The powerful have to let go of their power. It isn’t just the responsibility of those injured to forgive. In fact, I submit strongly that the pressure on those who have been injured to forgive is often just another tactic of the oppressor to further injure and keep in line those they are oppressing. If reconciliation doesn’t include those in power letting go of their power, there is no reconciliation.

The system can’t be changed if everyone doesn’t change.

I don’t want to live in a theocracy where the leaders of the land are considered divinely inspired and their decisions are unquestioned. I do want to live in a way where those of us who happen to enjoy a life of faith use our faith, and the value system that comes with it, as motivation and inspiration to create a new system where, as Rev. Jaramillo puts it, to assure that every single person’s dignity is respected and restored.

When the Christian faith became the dominant religion, that was the worst thing that could have happened. With that, the institution of Christianity became more important than the teachings of Christ. This too is a system that needs replacing. I don’t worry too much about the church dying because I believe that when we band together through Christ’s teachings of love, justice, hope, and reconciliation that we become the church that we are truly called to be. It isn’t about how many people come to the sunday service or how many programs we organize. It’s about engaging our faith to make the world more just and the people reconciled. The church will become what it needs to become as we follow in the mission and ministry of Mary’s son, the one who levels the field so that everyone has enough, no one has too much or too little, and mercy is held in higher honour than power.

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Make Today The Future – Aug 14, 2022

August 20, 2022

Written by pastormak

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Last week we celebrated Blessing of the Backpacks for students, teachers, and anyone who works for a school. We blessed whatever they brought.  The service had several kids leading in various ways. During the sermon, I had a conversation with a couple of our kids, so I don’t have something entirely written out to share. However, I’ve included a few of the questions we talked about so you can ponder them for yourself and/or with some kids in your life. I have also included my summation.

1st Biblical Witness
Deuteronomy 10:17 – 19
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 

The Gospel Of John 13:12 – 17
After Jesus had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord — and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one anothers feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. 

Contemporary Witness

I Dream A World by Langston Hughes Recited by Timothy Eatman

Dialogical Sermon: “Make Today The Future”

“By acting compassionately, by helping to restore justice and to encourage peace, we are acknowledging that we are all part of one another.” — Ram Dass

We’re talking about social justice this month.

In your words, what does social mean? What does justice mean? 

Can you tell me a story about a time when you saw something done that was fair?

What is social justice?

In what way are we part of one another?

What’s the most important thing to you about people?

What does justice and fairness have to do with each other?

What’s the difference between equal and fair?

How does God ask us to be fair?

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Today we are going to be blessing backpacks, or whatever it is that kids and adults use at school. A blessing is a way of sharing good wishes. But more than that. Good energy. It’s like a prayer, but it’s actually more like a gift. How can you imagine this gift might be helpful to have for what you carry around?

Why would we bless? 

How can you bless others? Does it have to be with words.

How is social justice a way of blessing?

Is the church a good place to offer the blessing of social justice?

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. What you think and your experiences are important to us. I want you and all the other kids here to know that this is your church as much as the adults. Your participation matters and makes us better. 

I named this moment “Make Today The Future” because I want us to think about our kids not only being the future of the church, but also the present of the church. How we do church has been shaped by the generations who came before us as well as our ancient traditions. Sometimes we get it in our minds that none of this can be reshaped. But as societies change, our traditions have to change as well. In spite of what we might think, they have been shaped and reshaped again over the past 2000 years. 

We can take the intent of the ritual – the goal of the practice – the “why” – and reshape our “how” based on our context. The pandemic pushed us forward into technology but the truth is that those of us who hadn’t voluntarily ventured in that direction were already behind when the need presented itself.

Our kids face some of the same social justice issues that we faced as kids, no matter how old any of us are. Some of what the stuff that have to make decisions about is different. The core values remain the same, but the applications of those values have to be looked at through a different side of the prism.

How can we be there for our kids? We will continue to look at what’s true for their growing years. Our readings today remind us that this faith of ours is grounded in being or creating support systems and a sense of community. This is a form of justice work. What we build today, how we reshape for the future, will be how we grow not only in numbers, but in depth of our faith, today. Blessing these kids, today with their backpacks but really every time we have the opportunity to build our relationships with them, will result in creating the future we want right here and right now.

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“Do Unto Others”  Aug 7, 2022

August 18, 2022

Written by pastormak

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Blogging weekly clearly does not come natural to me. Once again I am behind. But … here is my sermon from August 7th.

Biblical Witness

Today’s Biblical Witness has a lot of Jesus teachings. It is jam-packed. And, they aren’t the kind of teachings that are easy to hear. Not the kind you lean into and feel like you’ve just been given a hug. They’re meant to challenge. Social Justice, one of our four voices here at Plymouth, is meant to challenge as well. If there was nothing to address, we wouldn’t need social justice activism.

As you listen to the reading, hold it lightly, but also seriously. Think about where this might apply to you individually or to the systems we confront. Try not to grab on to one or two ideas and take it personally, getting bogged down with guilt or shame. I am always teaching against shame. Shame attacks who we are. Blame addresses what we’ve done.

Go ahead and listen for the moments you may feel like you’re being challenged to do better.

To give you context, this passage is toward the end of what we call in Matthew the Sermon On The Mount. That’s because he speaks to the crowd on a mountain. He begins this teaching with what is popularly called, The Beatitudes. That starts in chapter 5. Between that and this, he says a lot. This is kind of his wrap up, although I didn’t take it all the way to the end.

The Gospel Of Matthew 7:1 – 14

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“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

“Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.

“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Divine Parent in heaven give good things to those who ask!

“In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

I want to emphasize something in the last paragraph. The crux of the teaching. Jesus said, “In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”

If we can experience everything else that was said through this motivation, it will help to shape our understanding and practice of our faith, especially as we hold these specific teachings in our hearts.

Ancient Witness: Tao Te Ching; trans. by J.H. McDonald
Chapter 8
The supreme good is like water,
which benefits all of creation
without trying to compete with it.
It gathers in unpopular places.
Thus it is like the Tao.
The location makes the dwelling good.
Depth of understanding makes the mind good.
A kind heart makes the giving good.
Integrity makes the government good.
Accomplishments make your labors good.
Proper timing makes a decision good.
Only when there is no competition
will we all live in peace.

Reflection                         “Do Unto Others”                                                              

The song that Mark sang points to Holy Love as our ultimate point of reference – this is true for our faith, our activism, our relationship building, and our hope. When thinking about faith-based organizing for social justice, this should be square one. Why are we motivated to do good in the world as people of faith? If it’s because the calling we experience comes from the heart of Holy Love, we will perform our activism with humility and well as confidence; listening before we speak or make decisions, reflecting before we take action.

While this is important for any social justice activism – the listening and reflecting part – I think it’s even more crucial for people of faith. For people who are involved because we believe we are doing something God has called us to. Here’s why. The idea that God has called and we are answering, might just give us the idea that we’re right and that others are wrong. We might start to think that we have the answers that no one else has. That we know the way that others do not. We might start to believe that God is on our side and forget that we believe that everyone is made in the Divine Image. We might end up thinking that what we do and say is justified, no matter what it is or how it turns out.

Having God as our justification can be dangerous. God as our point of reference for reflection and hope gives us perspective instead of justification. The list of teachings from our passage in Matthew is a way of reminding us that we make choices in our lives that can be helpful and life-giving or destructive. Taking the log out of our own eye helps us see more clearly to do the work we feel called to. Asking for what we need rather than expecting others to know what we need or going without because we don’t think we deserve what we need. This kind of self-knowledge and reflection Jesus calls the narrow gate. It’s harder to look at the big picture. It’s easier to jump to conclusions. The wide gate is the one you fling open, not considering context and assume you know the right thing to do and how to fix everything.

Jesus said, “In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” This is the narrow gate, to think about how you want to be treated and treat others likewise.

Chapter 8 of the Tao Te Ching is about letting go of competition. Does that mean I’m going to stop going to Astros games? Probably not. That’s not the kind of competition the Tao is talking about. Life competition is different. Remember what Jesus said about the log in our eye vs the speck in our sibling’s? The narrow gate of considering how to treat people as we would wish to be treated? In a sense, the wide gate is that of life competition. So many people are willing to sacrifice others for their own benefit. That’s the wide gate.

The Tao says that the supreme good is a benefit to all creation. “It gathers in unpopular places.” In other words, it’s available to all without exception. Living in peace requires us to consider each other; to make room for each other. Not in spite of anything. Not begrudgingly. Not to get the upper hand. We are to simply put down our tools of life competition and stand before each other as equals. Simple, right?

Social Justice, as I interpret and enact this call, takes the competition out of life. With it we challenge the idea that some should have more and others less simply because they can. We also challenge the idea that some people are better than others based on a contrived notion of status quo or so-called divinely ordered privilege. “The supreme good is like water, which benefits all of creation without trying to compete with it.” “In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you.”

We begin our month focus of social justice not on a cause that needs attention, although there are many. Not on any of the injustices that needs challenging. First we focus on our motivation and our goal. We think about our methods and our assumptions.

Do we feel called by God to this work? I know that I do. What voice of God is calling us? For me, the voice I trust more than an external voice that comes from the heavens is the sacred voice from my siblings calling out truth against the injustice they are experiencing. It’s the holy voice of the earth itself showing us the devastation being wrought by our human practices. Jesus said that when we are generous and fight on behalf of the most vulnerable of our siblings we are generous and fight on behalf of him. These are the voices which give us our holy task of following our faith into action.

Today we celebrate the feast of our communion table. A spiritual feast of bread and drink. Simple foods, whatever is at hand, that we can share with each other. Our symbols of the life of Christ and the love of God are small and of themselves meaningless. We share them with intention to remind ourselves that we are more than what we eat or drink; more than what we can afford to eat or drink. What we share today is the voice of the Anointed One calling to us to join in the spreading of the Supreme Good like water flows, everywhere and with everyone equally. The bread and cup symbolize equal distribution and our willingness to participate in the dismantling of competing from basic needs and rights. We say yes to Jesus’ teaching of generosity and giving the benefit of the doubt.

At this table, everyone who wishes to join may join, with whatever beliefs or understandings we have about what this means or who God is. This is an open table. Members. Visitors. Friends. Strangers. All are welcome.

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“Weightier Matters” July 31, 2022

August 5, 2022

Written by pastormak

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Biblical Witness: The Gospel Of Matthew 23:16 — 24
“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.’ How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel! 

Contemporary Witness:
UCC Daily Devotional, July 23, 2022; “It’s Around Here Someplace” by Mary Luti

The disciples woke Jesus, saying, “Teacher, Teacher, we are going to drown!” He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. He said to them, “Where is your faith?” The Gospel Of Luke 8:24 — 26

It’s around here someplace, Jesus. I’m trying to remember the last time I had it, give me a minute. Maybe St. Anthony can help. He found my glasses last week. He’s good with wallets, too. Parking spaces, not so much.

Where did I leave it? Maybe on the shelf where I stashed my hope after the last school shooting. Or in that box of unused things, like my voice. Or in the drawer of shiny gadgets meant to make life a breeze, like thoughts and prayers and a sense of my own innocence.

By the way, thanks for asking. I might not have realized it was missing otherwise. I’ve gotten used to doing without it, accustomed to the upset of storms, waves of dread and panic, outrage and blame. I still shake you, “Do something!” But I don’t expect rescue.

I tend to lose it a lot, as you know. It’s small. Breaks easily, too. All that exposure to corrosive elements. If it turns up, it might be just flecks and traces. I’d like to think that’s enough. You’re so kind. Mustard seed, you said. Even the smallest.

Still, I promise not to be so careless going forward. Well, I’d better not promise. I can be careless with promises, too. Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I’ve seen an unbroken one around here anyplace. Maybe there’s one on the shelf, next to my faith?

Wait for me, Jesus. I’ll go check. I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief. 

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Reflection: “Weightier Matters”

Justice and mercy and faith. These are the weightier matters. They take priority. Not the beauty or value of the sanctuary or church. Not the gifts we give; money or otherwise. Justice. Mercy. Faith.

Let’s put this into perspective. Jesus isn’t talking about the money you give for the running of the ministries. Jesus isn’t saying not to take care of the building and grounds where we meet for service or from which ministries are organized.

Jesus is talking about giving in order to assuage guilt. Giving to be seen as a giver. The opulence of the space as a means to its own end. None of these things, or things like them, are spiritually significant. He says to those he is reprimanding, justice and mercy and faith is what you should be practicing without neglecting to also offer your gifts and sharing your wealth. The easy one, giving of gifts and wealth, does not let you off the hook of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with your God.

In this teaching, Jesus is expressing a more progressive type theology than the leaders of his time. He wants people to think about the weightier matters of life. What’s inside the actions we take. What’s our motivation? What inspires us to do what we do and think what we think.

Is it justice? Is it mercy? Is it faith? These aren’t to be separated. Justice without mercy and faith can become harsh, vindictive, and retributive. Justice in this case isn’t talking about punishment. We’re talking about living justly – with a sense of community and fairness. Mercy isn’t sentimentality and going soft on a wrong-doer. Here we’re talking about solidarity and caring for others. Faith is about connection to The Divine. Being inspired by Holy Love. Believing in something that can’t yet be seen and acting in accordance with that hope.

In our contemporary witness, The Rev. Dr. Mary Luti talks about her faith. Says that she’s lost it. Who is Mary Luti? She is a retired seminary professor and United Church of Christ pastor. She’s someone who knows something about the pursuit of The Divine and living a life in accordance to that pursuit. Here she says that she can’t find her faith. She didn’t realize it was missing. That it’s small and breaks easily, especially with exposure to corrosive elements.

One of the things I value the most about our way of practicing religion is that questioning is part of it. Faith isn’t certainty. Questioning is a part of our expression of faith. Even questioning the presence of faith itself. We question because we’re devoted to the weightier things. We don’t take for granted that we understand God or the pursuit of the sacred. Or holy ways. Or holy actions. Our faith is manifested in our questions, even when, or maybe especially when, our questions are about our faith. 

I don’t know if Rev. Luti would agree with me or not. I don’t know her. This is my meditation on her words alongside this progressive teaching of Jesus. In her meditation I hear the grief of the unchecked violence around us; the superficiality of a consumerist culture. She questions the weightier matters based on her experience of the world. 

From there, I ask my own questions. Where is the justice? Where is the mercy? Without seeing those, is my faith becoming translucent? Is it cracking? Fading? Lost? I want the whole package – I want my faith to produce works of justice and mercy. I want our faith to produce works of justice and mercy. I believe these are the values Jesus was teaching in our passage today.

That’s what Jesus was addressing. He was questioning the values of those he was talking to. He corrected them for valuing the gold of the sanctuary over the point of the sanctuary itself which was the gathering of community to have a God-ward experience. He chastised them for valuing their gifts of gold on the altar rather than the altar symbolism of humility and generosity. He wanted to remind them that there was a deeper purpose to their actions, but they had forgotten. Don’t just do the actions, but at the same time, don’t not do the actions. Do them for the deeper reasons, not for the actions themselves. 

These deeper actions aren’t to please God. They aren’t to gain points with God or to keep out of trouble with God. Justice, in the form of living in a just and fair way, is for the sake of community – for people. Mercy, being compassionate, seeking solidarity, and living in kindness is also for community – for people. These aren’t things that an all powerful God needs. It’s what God wants for us to experience with each other to expand our understanding of things like goodness as we become more fully human, which is a sacred and holy journey.

There’s a lot wrong in our societal systems. A lot of abrasiveness. Where does faith belong at times like these when it feels like we’re fighting an uphill battle without the tools we need to confront the enemy or the needs of our time? For me, faith is the impetus for action. It reminds me that I believe in hope. That there is something bigger than myself. Yes, God. But also, us. The connection between us is real. It’s as much my spirituality and my understanding of Holy Love as any individual experience of God that I’ve had. If that, or something like that is also true for you, how then should we act? What should we prioritize … value? 

Each other. We should prioritize the rightful treatment of each other. We should value the compassion and connection we share. This is what I see in Jesus’ progressive theology – the God-ward understanding that he was teaching. Our gifts, our ministries and actions, undergirded by the weightier matters which motivate us, bring us closer to Holy Love while they connect us together. In this way let us look forward to a brighter tomorrow. Maybe finding our faith as small as a mustard seed. Maybe seeing our faith reflected back to us in our actions of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.

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“Were They Or Weren’t They?” 7-24-22 Sermon

July 29, 2022

Written by pastormak

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1st Biblical Witness: Ruth 1:15 — 19a
So Naomi said to Ruth, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” But Ruth said, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die — there will I be buried. May God do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her. So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem.

2nd/3rd Biblical Witness: 2 Samuel 1:25 — 27
How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan lies slain upon your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!

The Gospel Of John 13:21 — 26
Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, “Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking. One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining next to him; Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?” Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.”

Reflection: “Were They Or Weren’t They?”
What was going on in the relationships in these stories? If they weren’t in the Bible, how would you imagine them? Because they’re in the Bible, how does that shape your imagination of who these people were to each other?

As always, a caveat. There’s no perfect answer to these questions. Not only were these stories written between 2 and 3 millennia ago, additionally, they were never meant to be taken as historical fact. They’re moral stories. There are historical events within them, but the tellings have been embellished for the purpose of the writer and for the story-telling. They all have more than one way of being understood. That’s true then and now.

Ruth and Naomi. We know they were mother-in-law and daugher-in-law. It’s been suggested by some doing queer theology that they might have become more like partners. We aren’t to know. Is it possible? Sure. What’s more important to me though is that they were close. Ruth was not going to let Naomi go back to her homeland alone. With all of Naomi’s losses, being vulnerable and alone, which for a widow at that time had serious implications, Ruth was going to stay by her side. Support her. Love her. 

Why? The love must have been reciprocal. Over the years, they must have developed a bond. Possibly thru their shared losses. Naomi and her husband, along with their two sons, left their homeland because of the famine and moved to Moab. Not long after, her husband died. Still, she and her two sons were settled there, so they carried on with life. The sons each married Moabite women. The story says “When they had lived there about ten years, both of her sons, Mahlon and Chilion, also died. Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.”

She decided she would return to her homeland, Bethlehem in Judah. She told both of her sons’ widows to go back to the homes of their mothers. One returned. Ruth, stayed. Her devotion to her mother-in-law has been talked about ever since. Her words of commitment are used in wedding ceremonies, because that’s the kind of devotion we equate with this story. Complete and undeniable heart-to-heart love. Were they partners? I would have to say yes because their lives were intermingled, and we see their constant commitment to each other throughout the story. But there are lots of ways to partner in life and any assumptions we make about them is pure speculation. The depth of their commitment to each is clear and that beauty alone is enough for me.

From 2 Samuel, we read a very short portion of the story about Jonathon and his father Saul being dead. The excerpt was from the long poem or song which David is said to have written, extolling the virtues of Saul and Jonathon, and David’s grief over their death. 

In other places in the stories about Jonathon and David we know that they were extremely close. Earlier in the story we read that “Jonathan loved David as his own soul.” A little later the story says, “Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.”

Later still, when Saul was angry with David and wanted to murder him, David hid and waited for a coded message from Jonathan. After he received the bad news that Saul wanted him dead it says, “David rose from beside the stone heap toward Jonathan. He prostrated himself with his face to the ground. He bowed three times, and they kissed each other, and wept with each other; David wept the more. Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, forever.’ ” David got up and left; and Jonathan went into the city.”

Who were these men to each other? Were they lovers? From their story it certainly seems possible. Even likely to me. The way that we’ve structured love and intimacy hasn’t been a constant over the ages. Or even over the miles of our global existence. There’s a story that Bishop Flunder tells about her visit to a village in one of the countries of Africa. As a lesbian, she was wanting to know if there were lesbians there, where she was visiting. How she asked the question though, and how she received the answer were two different things. She must have asked if the women had sex with each other. The women she was talking to said, “No. We have sex with the men to make the children. We make love with the women.”

They didn’t have the same structure to their relationships that we do. And to be clear, ours isn’t the right way and theirs the wrong way. There’s just different ways. That was likely true of Jonathan and David. Their devotion to one another is clear. Their intimacy is described for us in the story.

I get incredibly frustrated, angry even, when people make broad statements of judgment against types of relationships that aren’t like theirs. Whether it’s cisgender straight people railing on about queer love and identity or monogamous people sitting in judgment about polyamorous relationships. Sometimes it has been a judgment about two siblings who have grown so close that they are basically each other’s partner, because they have gone through life together. Maybe it’s a multi-generational family who do everything together. To be a part of the life of one you get the whole package. For some reason, when people live their lives in a way that has different kinds of intimacy, it can feel threatening to others who are absolutely certain that there’s only one way to identify or to have relationships that are moral, ethical, and godly.

The third Bible story we read was from the 13th chapter of the Gospel of John. Jesus and his disciples, who were his friends, were all sitting at the table. It was the night he was about to be betrayed. In the Gospel of John, there is no “last supper” ritual enacted. The account mentions that they had supper, but it’s afterward that the story really picks up – with Jesus washing everyone’s feet. After that, they return to the table and Jesus explains what he just did. Then he makes his remarkable and stunning declaration, that someone whose feet he just washed, with whom he already had supper, is going to betray him.

Peter whispers to the man that the story calls, “the one whom Jesus loved,” and asks him to find out who the betrayer is. I think we can read what we want to in this phrase. I honestly don’t think Jesus would be offended if we decided that he and this man were partners or that they weren’t. What we learn here is that there was a special bond between Jesus and this other man. Who are we to decide what they shared? After Jesus’ declaration that someone around the table would betray him, I imagine everyone defending themselves and maybe asking others if they would dare betray Jesus. I’m betting it was loud with people’s voices overlapping with each other. Meanwhile Peter quietly asks this man who Jesus loves to find out the truth of who it is. Because of the intimacy of this man and Jesus, it doesn’t take too many words for Jesus to understand his question. Jesus confides in him by whispering “watch who I give a piece of bread to.” Simon Peter knew that this was the one person to talk to if there was something personal about Jesus to know.

There’s a book by Ted Jennings called “The Man Who Jesus Loved.” Maybe we should read it in book study. He makes the argument that they were indeed partners, romantic intimate partners. He explains why that’s a really cool thing.

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I don’t know what kind of partnerships that Ruth and Naomi; David and Jonathan; or Jesus and this man he loved had. What I want to talk about is intimacy. How many wonderful different kinds there are. How they’re all holy and sacred when they are experienced and shared with an open heart. We do ourselves and others a disservice when we try to define others by the structures we have decided are normative. 

That’s what’s happening politically and socially right now with all the dissension we’re experiencing. Some people are watching others experience intimacy and deciding if it’s moral or holy. That’s none of their business. The judgment about abortion being based on a conservative Christian notion that personhood begins at conception is not based on a balanced Biblical understanding of the subject. I think it’s very fair to say that if your religion requires you to not have an abortion, you shouldn’t have one. But you can’t legislate others according to your religious beliefs. That right there is the whole point of the separation of church and state. The same is true about same gender loving relationships. Or gender nonconforming identities. 

One helpful way to read the Bible, in order to let go of certain prejudices that we have about what the Bible is supposed to be saying, is to read the stories as if it they weren’t in the collection we call the Bible.

If someone is known to me as a man that another man loves, what kind of relationship do I think they have? David said that the love he had for Jonathan surpassed the love that he had for women. What should we make of that? 

I named my reflection, “Were They Or Weren’t They?” because that’s so often the question. This is true of gender as well. Are you a man or a woman? You’re not either? Well, I need you to be one or the other so I know how to talk to you. What kind of malarkey is that? You talk to a human the way you talk to a human. Why does gender determine the scope of your conversation? 

The name of my sermon is a rhetorical question. I ask it because we’re used to asking it. We’re used to wondering. And trying to figure things out. When I say “we,” I’m not really talking about “us.” I’m thinking about all the people who are feeling threatened because their structures of identity, expression, love, family, and relationships are not as centered in society as they used to be. People are going to be greatly harmed, and even die, because of this wave of conservatism that’s crashing down on us defining when life begins and what makes a family or person moral or legitimate.

This is why Plymouth and faith communities like ours is important. Every time we lift up our voices or take actions as a people of progressive faith, we lift up the people who are being knocked down, even when it is us who are being knocked down. We have the power to question the conservative religious base from a faith-based perspective that counters their own. We use the same sacred writings, reading them differently. Teaching them differently. Telling the stories differently. Using them as springboard rather than a rule book. We recognize that what was written then was for their time. There are core values we can ascribe to, but the specifics must be interpreted with the new information that we have that they didn’t. This isn’t being “of the world” as some conservatives might accuse. It’s just taking the stories in context to what we have learned about what it means to be human.

We have a job and a calling, my friends, to counter this wave of conservatism with the wind of Spirit, speaking truth to power. We have to deflect the superficial questions like, “were they or weren’t they?” with more substantial questions like, “If they were, what makes you so afraid,” or “why do you feel entitled to be the judge of another’s life.” 

There will always be people in leadership, whether it’s our country, the church, corporations, or the local councils, who want to be in control because they like power for power’s sake, rather than wanting to do good. Right now, we’re saturated with this kind of leadership.

We need to keep asking the more substantial questions about what’s going on. As our voice grows louder, others who didn’t know they had a people like us will be inspired to raise their voices as well. I believe God is grieved at how people are being treated. At times like these I kind of wish I believed that God was a puppet master and was going to set all these things to rights. But instead, I think it’s up to us to use our understanding of who Holy Love is and to return dignity and integrity to the people who are being violated and minimized because of who others think they are or what they do; what it means for people to be partners in life, to love one another, and to make choices for their families. That’s what our faith leads us to do.

No matter who you are. No matter where you are on life’s journey. However you name yourself or your loves. Even if it confuses others. You deserve respect and dignity. You deserve to be celebrated, comforted, and loved. You deserve the kind of intimacy that makes you feel whole.

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