Monthly Archives: November 2014

The Attitude of Gratitude

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Yesterday I read the most wonderful thing about gratitude. It was on the heels of spending time this weekend with my dearest friends giving thanks and enjoying a fabulous meal together. It was on my way to being with my family to celebrate this holiday called Thanksgiving.  Nearly all of my favorite people in this whole wide world gathered together with me at some point in the week!  How could one not be grateful?  Add to it all a beautiful sunrise walk with my sisters on the beach — glorious blues I never have seen on one pallet before!   What a great day!!!  
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So here is part of what I read from Convictions:  How I Learned what Matters Most, by Marcus J. Borg, 2014:

“Gratitude is both a feeling and an awareness. . . . As an awareness, gratitude is the realization that our lives are a gift. None of us is self-made. We did not create ourselves. We and all that we have are a gift, even if we may also have worked hard for what we have. But even our ability to work hard is also a gift. For those who have prospered in this life, gratitude is the awareness that we did not do it by ourselves. How much of who we have become is the product of our genetic inheritance of intelligence and health? Of the family into which we were born and their values? Of teachers or others we met along the way? Of decisions made by others over which we had little or no control? Gratitude as an awareness is a posture toward life. It is the opposite of feeling entitled.

“Gratitude cannot be commanded. You feel it or you don’t. The words ‘you should be grateful’ have seldom if ever made anybody feel grateful. Gratitude is the fruit, the product, of being aware that our lives are not our own creation. It is thanksgiving.

“Though we do not commonly think of gratitude as an ethical virtue, it has ethical effects. When we are filled with gratitude, it is impossible to be cruel or brutal or judgmental. Moreover, as an awareness, it leads to a very different attitude toward those whose lives are hard. The familiar saying, ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ is true—but it should not be understood to mean that God decided to grace me but not those with difficult lives. Rather, gratitude as an awareness evokes compassion and a passion for helping the ones who have to live those lives.

“Imagine that Christianity is about loving God. Imagine that it’s not about the self and its concerns, about ‘what’s in it for me,’ whether that be a blessed afterlife or prosperity in this life. Imagine that loving God is about being attentive to the One in whom we live and move and have our being. Imagine that it is about becoming more and more deeply centered in God. Imagine that it is about loving what God loves. Imagine how that would change our lives. Imagine how it would change American Christianity and its relation to American politics and economics and our relationship to the rest of the world. Imagine how it would change our vision of what this world, the humanely created world, might, could, and should be like.” (Excerpt From: Marcus J. Borg. “Convictions.” HarperCollinsPublishers. 2014.
iBooks.)

As we come to the close of this Thanksgiving, may we each be growing in our awareness of gratitude. May we be acutely attuned to the amazing gift of our lives and who we are to be in this world thanks to such a great gift!

Thanks be to God!!!
-RevJule

One Life

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16 November 2014 sermon — Matthew 25:14-30

DISCLAIMER: I believe sermons are meant to be heard. They are the word proclaimed in a live exchange between God and the preacher, and the preacher and God, and the preacher and the people, and the people and the preacher, and the people and God, and God and the people. Typically set in the context of worship and always following the reading of scripture, sermons are about listening and speaking and hearing and heeding. At the risk of stepping outside such boundaries, I share sermons here — where the reader will have to wade through a manuscript that was created to be spoken word. Even if you don’t know the sound of my voice, let yourself hear as you read. Let your mind see as you hear. Let your life be opened to whatever response you begin to hear within you.

May the Spirit Speak to you!
RevJule
______________________

Click here to read scripture first: Matthew 25:14-30 (NRS)

Several years ago I sat through a long and arduous meeting across from a woman wearing a t-shirt that I couldn’t take my eyes off of. It really was so alarming that I found myself deep in thought rather than paying attention to the agenda for which we were gathered. The t-shirt read: “You have one life. Do something!” . . . “You have one life. Do something!” . . . Wasn’t that the message we heard a few weeks ago on All Saints’ Sunday as the chime rang for each loved one we named? Isn’t that the silver lining of the dark cloud of death? Every time we come face-to-face with the loss of a loved one, at the same time, we come face-to-face with the reality of our limited time. Our days are not infinite – not in the life we know now as human beings. . . . Sure we have the promise and hope of life everlasting with our God. But here and now, we only have one life. It is expected that we do something!

Jesus might as well have been wearing the very same t-shirt as he talked to his disciples that day. Mind you – according to the gospel of Matthew’s telling of the story – these words come just two days before the drama of Christ’s final Passover. They’re in Jerusalem – well, right outside on the Mount of Olives, actually (Mt. 24:3). And certainly at least one of the twelve was intuitive enough to know the tension is mounting. The one who’s been busy giving away his life each day for the life of the world is about to face his riskiest investment yet. He’s about to march right into Jerusalem, and though he doesn’t want to swallow the biter cup of suffering – as his prayer in the garden reveals (Mt. 26:39), still: he’s willing to keep himself open come what may. Even if the outcome is death, he keeps his trust in his father: our God of Life. . . . This one, who is on his own high-risk adventure, is the one who tells the story we heard today as recorded in Matthew’s gospel.

It’s like three people, Jesus says. Maybe we should start it the way we love all stories to start. Once upon a time there was an extravagant owner. He wanted to see how his folks would do. So he called them together and gave to each way more than any could imagine. He was careful to consider what each might be able to handle, so as not to overwhelm. Yet lavish, immense amounts were granted. . . . According to Jesus’ telling of the story, one was given the equivalent of 75 years of a day laborer’s earnings. One 30 years of a day laborer’s earnings. One 15 years of a day laborer’s earnings (Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 4; Lindsay P. Armstrong, p. 309). . . . They really weren’t given any instructions. Just entrusted with such enormous gifts. I guess the owner figured they all knew each other really well: out of love for the one freely giving, the three would know just what to do. I mean, love begets love. Generosity evokes additional generosity in open, pure spirits. So, of course, the owner simply trusted they would not squander the gift.

Perhaps the owner forgot that fear is powerful. Fear gets its fangs in us and before we know it, we’re stuck. Immobilized. . . . How often has Spirit come to us with grandiose ideas? Crazy thoughts about things like starting over. Or trying something new. Opening ourselves to the person in need before us. Or investing more of our time and energy that another might grow. Spirit nudges us all the time into the ways that lead to life. And when we’re listening; if we’re paying attention; too often fear gets at us before the new thing even is given a chance to begin. . . . Now what if that would have been Christ’s approach? Where would we be – where would the fate of God’s entire creation be – had Jesus allowed fear to get the better of him that week in Jerusalem as he faced all that lie ahead? . . .

Once upon a time, one who was given an extraordinary amount went out in fear. He dug a hole. Not wanting to lose or waste or take any sort of risk whatsoever with what of his master’s he’d been given; he buried in the ground that which had been entrusted to him. He allowed fear to rob him of the opportunity to know great joy. . . . As one commentator has written, he played it safe, which is “something akin to death, like being banished to the outer darkness” (Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 4; John M. Buchanan, p. 312).

We have one life.

Of course, there are other ways to understand this story. There’s always more than one way to understand whatever we hear. One preacher questions why we always relate the master of this parable of Jesus with the big M Master of the Universe. (Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Parable of the Fearful Investor,” Nov. 13, 2011: http://chapel.duke.edu/worship/worship-services/sermons-bulletins/2011-sermons-archive). Reading from another angle, she wonders if this third slave wasn’t the hero of the story. The whistle-blower of sorts who refused to participate in an economic system, like the one of Jesus’ day, that was eating up the simple people of the land while more fully filling the deep pockets of those profiting from the way it had come to be. Might Jesus have meant the master of this parable was a lower-case m master who just was trying to get more for himself in the end – no matter the cost to those hurt by it all. If we read it that way, this parable becomes a code to Christ’s disciples that refusal to participate with the powers that be will lead to the wrath of those powers coming down upon our head. As he’s about to experience in Jerusalem, do something as rash as not perpetuate the unjust system and the system will ensure we are put out. Taken away the little that we might have and thrown out into utter darkness as one totally worthless in a world set up to take more and more for themselves. . . . The truth remains: We have one life. And just wait until we hear the parable Jesus is about to tell next – at least according to the gospel of Matthew! Come back next week for that one.

Maybe you’ve heard the brilliant words of the poet Mary Oliver. In a poem entitled “The Summer Day,” Oliver writes, and I quote: “Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean — the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down — who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.” Oliver writes: “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me,” she writes, “what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” (Mary Oliver, The House Light Beacon Press Boston, 1990 on: http://www.bemindful.org/poems.htm).

We have one life: one wild and precious life. An amazing gift to us from God.

One thing we might commit to do is invest a little bit more of it in the mission of God. If you were here last week then you might have heard the Minute for Mission in which one member said that she gives of her time, talents, and money because she wants to be a part of this church. She wants to be involved in the ministry this church is doing – things that she knows matter to God even more than they matter to her. . . . Many of you already are investing in God’s work through this church by participating in bible studies and Sunday School and other opportunities to shape your heart and mind a little bit more into the heart and mind of God. Some of you are around here a lot: fixing what’s broken, listening to the need of a struggling stranger, welcoming whoever enters into our fellowship hall or food bank or sanctuary. Most all of you are giving financial offerings each week that go to pay the electric bills of this church, and ensure we are inspired by beautiful music, and even have a pastor to call upon when you need someone to help you sort through what God is up to in your life. I wonder if each of us could step up a little bit more. Maybe increase our financial pledge by just one small percent in the year ahead. So that if you have been giving $2,000 this year, increase it one percent to $2,020 in 2015 – that wouldn’t be too harsh of a stretch for most of us, would it? If you only have been attending worship, try getting involved in one additional ministry of the church – not necessarily to be in charge of it, but maybe just show up to be present next year in one more way. If you have been great among us at using your talent of organizing, maybe begin to utilize your talent of encouragement too. You get the idea. What if every one of us invested a little bit more of who we are and what we have for the work of God through the ministry of this church? . . . We only have one life: one wild and precious life.

So: hide it? We cannot. Play it safe? We cannot. Risk it all, invest it lavishly like our Lord, in absolute trust of the abundantly, Life-giving Master? I know it may not sound very prudent – or even very Presbyterian. Nonetheless, here and now, we’ve got just one wonderful life. . . . For the life of the world, why not risk it all? In the end we too might hear: “Well done good and faithful servant! . . . Enter into the joy of your extravagant master!” (Mt. 25:21).

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2014 (All rights reserved.)

An Unpopular Topic

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I realize the following thoughts may send some over the edge: freedom to self-defense, right to bear arms, and all that jazz.

HOWEVER: too late for my sister the other night, I got a phone call. “I’m a panicked momma,” she said. My only, precious, fabulous nephew had called her from a rehearsal at a local high school to let her know a shooter was nearby outside and the police were not allowing them to leave the building. This was in a small, rural county in the Mid-West, BTW: not somewhere like South Chicago and the like.

I have to admit that the gravity of the situation didn’t sink in at first. Which probably was good (at least I hope so, sis, so that you were able to calm down a bit as I mindlessly rambled on!). She cut off our conversation when she was getting an incoming call. And she didn’t call or text me back for the next hour. Of course, I was the least of her worries. She finally told me long-version the next day of how she mysteriously shifted into Momma Bear mode. She had to wake my dear neice — which didn’t go all that well. What we understood the next day was that my neice thought the shooter was in the school and that her older brother would never be walking out of there alive.

Of course she did. She’s trying to grow up in a world where it seems she sees such reports every few weeks. All ended up ok — at least for those in the high school that night. But are any of us really ok about all this? I can’t imagine what was, and is, going on in the heart and mind of that young man who took out the weapons. Certainly his family hurts for him. I can’t imagine how the teens locked-down in the high school that night sleep void of nightmares and wake to go about their lives each morning. I can’t imagine a cicrle of parents and aunties and friends being ok with the scares and scars such situations create. Not to mention the wounds that never heal in the places where it does NOT turn out ok.

I realize guns always will be among us — as will be the causes that make a person take up one to threaten themselves or others. But I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to be ok with it and neither do any of us.

I long for the day when all are healed and peace is all that’s left among us. Some say it never will be. I say: what can I do in my lil circle today?

O Holy One, save us all!

2 November 2014 Sermon — All Saints’ Sunday

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The Saints of our Lives

DISCLAIMER: I believe sermons are meant to be heard. They are the word proclaimed in a live exchange between God and the preacher, and the preacher and God, and the preacher and the people, and the people and the preacher, and the people and God, and God and the people. Typically set in the context of worship and always following the reading of scripture, sermons are about listening and speaking and hearing and heeding. At the risk of stepping outside such boundaries, I share sermons here — where the reader will have to wade through a manuscript that was created to be spoken word. Even if you don’t know the sound of my voice, let yourself hear as you read. Let your mind see as you hear. Let your life be opened to whatever response you begin to hear within you.

May the Spirit Speak to you!
RevJule
______________________

2 November 2014 – All Saints’ Sunday
Hebrews 11 (various verses) — 12:1

Click here to read scripture first: Hebrews 11 (NRS)
Hebrews 12:1 (NRS)

I wish we could be in a great big circle today. We could sit with each other to swop stories of the saints of our lives. . . . I know it’s important for us to be familiar with the giants of the church. Those saints like Francis of Assisi. What a remarkable man! Son of a wealthy Italian cloth merchant, Francis spent the early days of his youth living it up. He always was the center of the party and really wanted nothing more than to win himself glory as a valiant knight. At the age of 25, he finally set off on the Fourth Crusade of the early Thirteenth Century. But he never made it. After a days’ journey, Francis had a dream in which God told him he had it all wrong. This wasn’t the purpose of his life. He was to return home immediately. . . . Little by little Francis took to prayer. There are stories of him kissing the hand of a leper, which he later considered to be a test from God. And selling his father’s cloth to rebuild an ancient nearby church, only to end up denouncing his son-ship and hefty inheritance. Instead Francis took to living simply. Begging for garbage to eat, preaching about returning to God, and literally giving away anything he and his growing followers had. This is the Francis who is rumored to have preached to hundreds of birds about being thankful to God for their beautiful cloths – with not one of his listeners flying away until his sermon was all done. Francis considered all of creation a part of God’s family. He even intervened between a village and a wolf that had been killing villagers. Convincing the wolf not to kill again, Francis turned around the fear of the villagers by teaching them how to feed and tend the wolf so that they began to live alongside one another in peace. He is a remarkable saint of the church who even went to Syria on the Fifth Crusade to ask the Muslim sultan to stop the fighting. Known as the founder of the Franciscan Order, he gladly gave up his position of leadership to live out his final days as a regular ole’ brother alongside the others. Dying at just 45 years of age, Francis grew more in his faithfulness in just twenty years as a Christian than many do in an entire lifetime. He’s a great saint of the church who’s witness can inspire us to the joy of simpler living in union with God and all God’s creation (www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=50).

Many of us probably know a bit about Mother Teresa of Calcutta: the Roman Catholic sister of the 20th Century who set off from her home in Albania to India. Eventually she founded the Missionaries of Charity among one of the poorest urban populations of the world. There she and fellow sisters compassionately cared for lepers and other medical outcasts despite any risks to their own health. She tended the wounds of the dying and was a kind of a moral compass throughout her lifetime. She urged us all to follow the voice of Jesus to serve the poor, a message she heard early in her life during a time of prayer. She’s on her way to official sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

Another one is the remarkable Saint Hildegard of Bingen, the German mystic of the late Eleventh and early Twelfth Centuries. She was a woman way ahead of her time as she not only was an abbess for a Benedictine order of sisters, but was a remarkable poet, composer, artist, scientist, biblical exegete, writer, preacher, herbalist, and more. Her lectures on the spiritual life are said to have drawn large crowds of listeners from all over Europe. Throughout her long life she experienced these remarkable visions – or times of deep union with God. In fact, it’s said that her family witnessed her in such experiences when she was as young as three years old; and by five, she was aware that these visions were of God. Another deep lover of God’s entire world, a great gift from Hildegard’s wisdom is veriditas. Veriditas is the understanding of the greening of all creation. Something like the life-force of God living in it and us all (www.greenflame.org). She often called it the green flame of God’s Spirit. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI (16th) named Hildegard a doctor of the church – a designation given in the Roman Catholic Church to those believed to have contributed significantly to the theology of the church – a distinction only 4 women in all of history have obtained (www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=3777). Indeed Hildegard is an incredible saint of the church!

But today isn’t just about those giants – the Francises and Teresas and Hildegards of the faith. For Protestants especially, All Saints’ Sunday is about the regular ole’ faithful folks of our lives. Those who have lived among us to witness directly unto us. . . . If we got together today in that big circle to swop tales of our saints, I wonder how many of us would tell of grandmothers who lovingly told us the stories of Jesus. Or grandfathers who first taught us how to pray. Who of us could speak of fathers or mothers who tenderly held us in their arms as they brought us forth for the sacrament of baptism; then took us home to teach us how to live out Christ’s love each day in our families, neighborhoods, and world. I’ve heard some of you talk about dear friends – of the church or otherwise. People who really went above and beyond the call of duty to be with you in your times of great difficulty. And those who taught you how to celebrate your successes. For some it’s been spouses or siblings or children who have loved you as unconditionally as God. Mentors on the journey in Sunday School classrooms or committee meetings or mission projects. Take a moment right now to call them to mind: those saints of your life who showed you the way of Christ in all the covert and overt ways the saints of our lives do so. Bring their faces to your mind. Remember them now in the quiet of your hearts. Go ahead. I’ll wait for them all to come flooding to your memory.  . . .

Jim W. might be one of them for some of you. His tenure among this congregation goes back many years. I’ve been told Jim loved being a deacon: caring for those in need. A World War II vet, Jim became a traveling salesman and absolutely loved meeting people. When he wasn’t enjoying life among people, Jim was busy bringing beauty to this world by getting down there in the dirt – willing things to grow in his yard at home or out here on the church grounds.

Others of you might be remembering Betty E. Betty had been retired for something like 30 years, but she still talked like it was yesterday about the students she taught in one of the rougher neighborhoods of Nashville. Every day for so many years she went not just to teach the subject matter of a certain grade. She went to give possibility to classrooms full of children who had all the racial and economic strikes against them.

Melissa M. was a daughter of this church; one some knew only by sight. Remember how she devotedly cared for her mother? Some of you remember celebrating life with her and her father in serious games of cards. Melissa gave so much care to so many people – her parents and husband and children and grandchildren. She was a great sister to her brother too. She’s a saint of the church who was grateful for God’s shepherding and joyous about Christ’s birth in this world!

Some of you fondly remember Fred W. Life-long Presbyterian, Fred sought out this church when he and his wife retired to Nashville from North Carolina. He was a faithful servant – even in his aging years. He gave of his time and of the wisdom of his business experience to be a part of our session. He continued to want to learn and found a home among you in Sunday School and in worship.

These are just a few ways those of this congregation who have died this past year have lived out their Christian discipleship. They have witnessed to us and to the world of God’s great love for all. They may never have done the kinds of stuff that would get recorded in a letter like that of Hebrews. That like Abraham and Moses and Rahab. Or, for the sake of God, those who were tortured and mocked and wandering in deserts. That might not be the story of anyone of the saints of this church. It probably won’t be the story of any one of our lives either. Which actually is just fine. Because all that really matters is that each disciple of Christ seeks to follow according to the gifts of who we are. How God made each one of us to be.

Spurred on by the witness of all the saints, in great gratitude; let us run the race set before each one of us. Let us become the saints of others’ lives.

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2014  (All rights reserved.)