| Title | Author |
|---|---|
| Launching Points for Sermons | Michael Cobbler, Amy Plantinga Pauw, Barbara Daté, Joanna Adams |
| Scriptures Pertinent to Growing | Compiled by Lani Wright |
| Hymns | Compiled by Lani Wright |
| Prayers | Lani Wright, Max Coots, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Heifetz |
| Full Sermon | Gayle Hunter Sheller |
Key ideas:
For through the power of God, we are enriched to shape community. A community that is built on the love of God that manifests justice instead of “just us.” That looks after people of low degree instead of profiling people of high degrees. A community that is shaped by the one who calls us to community every day. I know a number of places that are working mightily to be like that. It can be here too.
Summary of a sermon by Michael Cobbler, based on Nehemiah 5:1-13. Full text of this sermon may be seen at www.practicingourfaith.org.
Key ideas:
Summary of a sermon by Amy Plantinga Pauw, based on Jeremiah 31:7-14. Full text of “Status: Delinquent” may be seen at www.practicingourfaith.org.
Henri Nouwen, the Dutch theologian, in his book Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, eloquently reminds us that God invites all Christians to offer open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and be welcomed as fellow human beings. In other words, God asks us to convert hostis — the enemy, the outsider, the stranger — into hospes — a guest, a friend — where brotherhood and sisterhood can be fully experienced.
This notion of hospitality is one of the richest biblical terms. Bible stories not only point out a clear imperative to foster hospitality in ourselves, but they also reveal that guests may be carrying precious gifts with them, which they are eager to reveal to a receptive host.
However! The motive of the host is not to change people, but to offer them friendly and safe space where change can take place. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the lifestyle of the host, but a gift, a chance for the guest to find his or her own life. It is like becoming part of a family where members feel safe to reveal their talents to each other, and support each other in their common struggles to live and discern God in their lives.
In Nouwen’s native Dutch, the word “hospitality” (Gastvrijheit) picks up this nuance of openness. It means, literally, “freedom of the guest,” and in German, Gastfreundschaft is “friendship of the guest.”
But the rich meanings of hospitality do not mean it is an easy calling, especially when we ourselves are also struggling. We are predominantly a culture that respects and promotes activity, outcomes, productivity, making things happen. Providing the hospitality that Nouwen describes — that the Bible describes — might seem to be the opposite: emptiness, space, withholding activity, a safe vacuum.
How do we create that hospitable space? When I am asked to identify only one skill that would be the most caring skill, I inevitably end up saying, “Learn to be a good listener.” It is a powerful behavior that conveys understanding, concern, caring and nurturing.
Listening is in some ways the easiest thing to learn, in another way, the hardest. You can teach a three-year-old how to listen by paraphrasing, but to paraphrase well, especially in difficult situations, is one of the most strenuous tasks and gifts you can offer another human being.
We know what Prophetic Speaking is. Elise Boulding and Jean Zimmerman have coined a new term “Prophetic Listening” which is listening in such a way as to be a catalyst to a person(s) sharing things, gifts, that he or she may not have even known were there for the sharing.
I have a very nice sofa in my living room, and when guests come over, I like to have it available to sit on. If someone unexpectedly drops by, it might be covered by newspapers and clean laundry waiting to be folded. So I have to go over and scoop up the items and dump them somewhere else if I want to make an empty space that is open and welcoming to someone to sit down comfortably.
So I want to enlist you to become like a sofa, welcoming, hospitable, creating a cleared space for hospes.
Barbara Daté, Eugene, Ore.
One day, certain of the brethren said to Abba Anthony:
Summary of sermon by Joanna Adams, based on 2 Corinthians 5:16-21. Full text of this sermon may be seen at www.practicingourfaith.org
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Isaiah 58
Micah 6:8
Matthew 18
Matthew 25
Luke 4:18-19
Luke 22:24-27
John 3:16-17
1 Corinthians 13
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The following hymns are from the Hymnal, A Worship Book:
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Gathering Prayers
God of nimble fingers,
at the flowering of creation
you took a mess of mud and shaped it
into your image:
male and female.
So take this ball of heaving, resisting clay —
this messy clay of all of us together,
and fashion of it a living table
where all may gather, be fed, and tell stories.
Craft it for long wear more than beauty.
Mold it for health more than power.
Set this table with space enough for elbow room
space for talent
space for guests.
Shape our feet of clay
into dance;
Shape our knees
into bending;
Shape our hands
into clasping;
Shape our water-logged lungs
into chorus;
Shape our chins
into upthrust resolve;
Shape our lips
into smile.
Take this ball of clay,
and fashion of it a living table
to which the dinner bell calls, we eat, and tell how things are.
Craft it for sturdiness more than smoothness.
Mold it for hosting more than for herding.
Set this table with just enough space for brushing skins
space for accepting gifts
space for the Guest. Amen.
Lani Wright, Cottage Grove, Ore.
Let us give thanks [for all the quirks that make up a faith
community]:
For generous friends … with hearts as big as hubbards and
smiles as bright as their blossoms,
For feisty friends as tart as apples,
For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep
reminding us that we’ve had them,
For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible,
For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as
elegant as a row of corn,
And the others, as plain as potatoes and so good for you,
For funny friends, who are as silly as brussel sprouts and as
amusing as Jerusalem artichokes,
And serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate
as onions.
For friends as unpretentious as cabbages,
As subtle as summer squash,
As persistent as parsley,
As delightful as dill,
As endless as zucchini,
And who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the
winter,
For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time,
And young friends coming on as fast as radishes,
For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold
us, despite our blights, wilts, and witherings,
And, finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that
have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that we might
have life thereafter.
For all these, we give thanks. Amen.
Max Coots, minister emeritus of the Canton, N.Y., Unitarian Universalist Church
Some years ago a famous novelist died. Among his papers was found
a list of suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently
underscored being this one: “A widely separated family inherits
a house in which they have to live together.” This is the
great new problem of [hu]mankind. We have inherited a large house,
a great world house” in which we have to live together —
black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic
and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in
ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live
apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.
Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?)
Just as social systems organize themselves in relation to a structure of authority, focusing attention at the head of the table, our social commentators do so as well. Leadership may more often emerge from the foot of the table, but that is not where we spend most of our time looking.
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By Gayle Hunter Sheller
Text: I Corinthians 12:4-26 (John 3:1-12)
My father, who was a Brethren pastor in Idaho and California, is a New Testament preacher to this day. He is fond of Paul’s letters, in part because Paul never addresses an institution, but always a people, very real, struggling human beings who are trying to be Christ’s body to the world. It is in Paul’s letter to the Christians in Corinth that he most clearly defines this new metaphor for the church: The living Body of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit to do the work of Christ in the world. This is an organic understanding of church, one that we anabaptists have more and less lived out. Radical discipleship and priesthood of all believers follows naturally from the understanding of the church as Christ’s living Body. But sometimes our fear of the world, our inability to deal with our own brokenness, our denial of our own wounding, sometimes the very human nature of our Body has kept us withdrawn and closed off from the world, and indeed, from one another.
I want to name two implications in Paul’s understanding of church: The Body is created by Spirit and the Body is organic.
1) The Body is created by the Holy Spirit. I have for many years been in some contact with the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. Founded by Gordon and Mary Cosby and a handful of friends just after World War II, I often say that these folks are a 20th century emergence of anabaptism. Elizabeth O’Connor, until her death a few years ago, was the storyteller for the Church of the Saviour, writing about their work and their very organic life together. In one of her earliest books, Journey Inward, Journey Outward, she wrote that the New Testament is concerned with people who had a life together, who were called on a pilgrimage together. She quoted Gordon Cosby, who says being church together “is a commitment to a group of miserable, faltering sinners who make with me a covenant to live in depth until we see in each other the mystery of Christ himself and until in these relationships we come to know ourselves as belonging to the Body of Christ.” O’Connor then addresses the struggle we have accepting this Body that the Holy Spirit creates. She wrote, “They are often not our idea of the ones God should be using to proclaim his Kingdom. Even when we finally get hold of what the Church is all about, we struggle for a long time with pride. At the Church of the Saviour we are aware of this when Christian brethren visit from other churches and ask to meet the members, like people asking to meet spiritual heroes. Under the pressure of wanting to live up to their expectations, we confess our feeling is often, ‘Someone, quick, hide the rolls!’”
We are a Body, then, created by action of the Holy Spirit, and we will be tempted to withdraw, especially when there is turmoil or when there is desert … and we will want to believe that the grass is greener somewhere, anywhere, but here in this group of faltering, prideful, or wrong-headed people. But O’Connor reminds us that Christ’s presence among two or three does not mean “choosing a few kindred friends with whom to pray. We gather in that Name,” she wrote, “when with other faltering, estranged persons we agree to live a life in depth, which means learning something about forgiveness and what it means to be forgiven.”
One of my dear, departed elders is an example to me of such commitment to a people. Don Weller was a prankster, someone we counted on to keep us on our toes and usually laughing. Pity the women who worked in the kitchen if Don happened to find a dead mouse somewhere in the church. Placed with care, the mouse would probably be found peering from the edge of a cupboard shelf as some poor woman opened the door. Don had gone through many changes in the congregation where I met him. He’d seen pastors come and go, the congregation’s size swell and shrink, and yet he remained faithful to the church even when he disagreed with it. I asked him once what kept him so willing and so active through thick and thin. His response? “Pastors come and go, carpets change from green to red to blue back to green, but this is always my church.” God had led him to this place, to this people, and Don claimed it with his whole heart, life and strength. So, the Body of Christ is given to us, created by the work of the Holy Spirit, and all we are asked to do is accept it.
2) To say the Body is organic is to acknowledge that each congregation has a life cycle as all living organisms do. This means we are continually pruned, both so that those branches that have stopped bearing fruit might be burned and returned to the soil, and so those branches that bear fruit might bear more fruit. Pruning, we must remember, is always for life. It is not about punishment, but about making room for fruit! Pruning is something we all need to learn to do, prayerfully, consciously, in our daily lives and in our community life. The need for pruning, and whether it happens to us by circumstances of our living, or whether we must choose where it needs done, pruning is an issue that deserves more time than I have at this time. But it is a necessary part of healthy life, as Jesus so well understood.
So the Body is created by the Holy Spirit, and it is organic, meaning that because the church is a people, it will thrive and it will suffer. But God’s intent is always for Life.
Now I want to turn to how we understand the work of the Holy Spirit, particularly in this wonderful encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus, the doubter, the Pharisee, slinking around corners in the night to the house of the “enemy” to ask questions because something so real was happening with this man, Jesus, that Nicodemus had to talk with Jesus in person. It is in this dialogue that Jesus speaks most eloquently of Spirit as wind, blowing where it will. And it is here that Jesus is clear that the commitment to living by Spirit is a commitment to transformation, to rebirth, to letting go and trusting clear down to the bottoms of our feet.
Spirit transforms, something different from simply change. Jesus says we are reborn, and the water of our birthing will take us where it will. No birth comes without pain. Richard Rohr, in his book Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount, wrote:
Do you know how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly? Do you know what happens in that cocoon? I always thought the little caterpillar just somehow lost its hair and its feet turned into wings. My daughter-in-law biologist taught me differently. If you were to open a cocoon while the caterpillar is in transformation, all you would find is a goo, a dark, ugly goo. The caterpillar has disappeared, and what emerges when the process is done is this beautiful creature with wings! But if the caterpillar knew what it had to risk, and wasn’t so sure about the outcome, you think it would ever spin that cocoon?
At the very least, transformation requires letting go of “how it is supposed to be” so that what might be has a chance to live. Such work in life, whether personal or communal, is never easy. Coming together as a faith community is a mere merger of believers, but more of a marriage. Marriage is the rule that proves one plus one does add up to more than two! And when we marry, we are taken into one another’s pain and brokenness. Jesus tells us the Spirit comes into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved. So Spirit breaks down the very gates of Hell, and takes us where the Light is made visible, into the heart of our darkness. Our “marriage” means we didn’t just take on the best of one another, but the difficulties and failings as well.
Pain is not something to be avoided, but rather a place of work for the Holy Spirit. Church of the Saviour Wellspring Retreats that I’ve attended always begin with this question: “Name a point of joy and a point of pain in your life at this moment.” Like the Psalmists who cover ecstasy and deep grief and all the ground in between, Church of the Saviour folks have the sense that it is often in the place of tension between our pain and our joy where call resides. This place where our pain and joy meet can be the creative place of spiritual growth and maturity, or if left to fester, the source of deep bitterness and loss. Our pain may be, in fact, a precious gift of the Holy Spirit. Dr. Paul Brand, a pioneer in working with leprosy, wrote a book on the Gift of Pain, reminding us that it is the inability to feel pain that disfigures leprosy patients, not the disease itself.
I’m not distinguishing between physical and emotional or spiritual pain, since I think they are all of a piece. How many times does personal or community crises result in physical illness in members of the body? At the very least, a headache? How much do we have to learn to live in the moment when we live with constant physical pain? We always make pain worse by fearing the future. And avoiding pain can lead to any number of greater losses: the loss of mobility, the loss of health, the loss of life itself.
A member of my congregation, Dr. Karyn Angell, a psychologist whose specialty is helping women live with breast cancer, tells me there are two types of patients, the “do-ers” and the “be-ers.” Doers want to fix things, to make the cancer go away, to get at life, almost anything to not face the mortality that the cancer might mean, to not face their fear of pain and of their own mortality. Be-ers, on the other hand, face their pain, look their own mortality in the face, and with great courage, encounter their own fears. Without fail, Karyn says, those who confront their pain, the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, really live with their cancer in such a way that it is not the focal point of their lives, but a teacher. Those who want to ignore the pain, to do anything but sit and face their fears, let cancer have their lives, not because it ends their lives, but because they spend their lives running from the cancer. An interesting comment, and one instructive for the Body of Christ as we decide whether to face our own pain.
So how might a healthy congregation attend to the pain in its life? First, we need to name it, to own it, to not be embarrassed by it. We need to name the pain in our lives as clearly as we can, without blame or judgment. We need to tell one another where it hurts. The very act of naming the pain helps us become vulnerable to healing. Second, we need to give ourselves time and permission to do the work of healing. Transformation is not instantaneous, and the work can be sweaty and uncomfortable. Birth takes work. Labor is just what labor means … work! Healing takes work. Ask any heart-bypass patient about the ups and downs of getting well. It is not a smooth, or even clear, road. We do the work of facing our pain, then, with patience and love. Third, we need coaching sometimes to go through pain to life. We need to let the skills and wisdom of the Body address the pain. In Quaker circles, we would speak of discernment. Sometimes the pain just needs to be lived with, since not all sources of pain can be fixed. But the Body can bear scars and still be healthy, so we surround and love one another until the scars strengthen and we can go on. Sometimes we need to do something differently so that the pain doesn’t disable us, and this may mean anything from radical surgery to simply changing our position. Pruning is a kind of surgery, and sometimes we need to allow separation. Some church splits, if done more honestly and with more confession, might actually be the birth of two healthier, more fruitful bodies. We do it to bulbs and plants all the time to give them room to grow in their own ways. Why can we not do such work in congregations without bitterness and blame? And finally, we need to listen to every part of the Body to discover ways to live beyond our pain. No solution to our problem, no offer of counsel should ever be scoffed at or minimized. After all, it was a child Jesus placed in their midst. Sometimes the very wisdom we need is shut off in those we have silenced by our judgment. The Holy Spirit does work where it will!
No birth comes without pain. It is the way of this world. Gordon Cosby, in a sermon titled “Calling Forth Gifts,” preached:
What a precious vision of the church, tender-hearted, no longer afraid of the more vulnerable dimensions of our lives, and therefore able, by the Spirit’s power and God’s love, to be in the world fully alive to all the risks and adventures of Life. I believe, with Gordon Cosby, that the church is meant to be generous, broken-hearted, life giving and lively.
I have faith that God never abandons us. I may lose sight of God. The Body may feel ripped apart by pain, lost in darkness, but God refuses to be absent. Howard Thurman, grandson of slaves, chaplain for many years at Howard University, a writer and wonderful preacher and founder of the Church of All Peoples in San Francisco, spoke at a conference my husband, Hal, and I attended years ago. Afterward, Hal asked, “Dr. Thurman, you say God is central to my life. But what if I make something else central and God peripheral?” Dr. Thurman smiled softly, looked Hal in the eyes, and quietly said, “Hal, you may decide that God is peripheral, but God won’t peripherate.”
No where does Jesus promise us that we live without pain. In fact, he and the evangelist Paul were familiar with pain. It is not necessary to pretend that pain isn’t present among us in order to claim to be a healthy church. No. Rather, the Spirit asks us to examine our pain, to face it, to surrender it, and then the Spirit will be free to help us walk with the pain, walk through the pain to new life, walk perhaps as people who limp, but walk most certainly as people who live. And when we are alive, the Spirit is free to transform us, to make us whole again, scars and all.
Gayle Hunter Sheller, an ordained Church of the Brethren minister, pastors Eugene (Ore.) Mennonite Church and is a member of the ABC Board.
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