A couple of pictures from the 2017 Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, NC:
Main Stage…
We were camped next to the French Broad River…
Category: Spiritual Page 5 of 8
With a week left to my sabbatical, I’ve obviously not reflected here on my blog like I originally wanted. The first month of my sabbatical was spent relaxing, finishing up some book details, going to the Festival of Homiletics (a preaching conference), along with some traveling and visiting friends. The second month was taken up with moving and the third month has been settling into my new apartment and attending the Wild Goose Festival. Both of the “festivals” I attended have been inspiring. I’ve already talked a little about the Festival of Homiletics. I certainly think that experience can make me a better preacher and Christian, more focused on what’s important not only to our spiritual life but our future as a human community. Perhaps I better say that by better Christian, I should say I mean more focused on loving relationships and helping build a more just world (i.e. following Jesus’ teachings rather than church dogmas).
Wild Goose was also inspiring with lots of focus on justice issues. I’m not sure I learned “things” but I did come away motivated. Some of the speakers there included William Barber, Otis Moss III, Nadia Bolz Weber, Diana Butler Bass, and Frank Schaeffer. All of them passionate speakers who made me want to be more passionate. Of course the trick is to turn that into something substantive. There was also lots of good music. I was especially taken with Tret Fure. Here are some links to explore:
Repairers of the Breach (William Barber): http://www.breachrepairers.org
Frank Schaeffer: http://frankschaefferblog.com
Tret Fure: http://www.tretfure.com
When I started my sabbatical my main goal was to spend time with the question of who I am and where I’m called at this point in my life. While I haven’t addressed that question in conscious reflection like I hoped to, I do feel confident I’m where I’m supposed to be. I’m feeling affirmed in my pastoral identity and look forward to continuing this journey of personal spiritual growth while accompanying others on their life journeys. So, with a week left in sabbatical my conclusion for this time off is kind of boring: to keep on moving forward, putting my trust in the Divine Presence to lead me where I need to go.
What does it mean to call yourself a Christian? A month or so ago this question came up in a couple of different conversations in the span of a few days. In one of those conversations I was a little surprised when a person who has been around progressive Christianity circles for many years answered the question in a very traditional way. For them, to be a Christian meant to believe the right doctrines – to believe in and accept Jesus as a personal savior who died for our sins to save us from hell and to believe in teachings such as the virgin birth and bodily resurrection. Unfortunately, this definition of Christian that they were taught as a child was so deeply ingrained in their psyche that they couldn’t see past it nor live up to it. I believe that this is a common experience in our world today and, as a Christian minister for whom this path has been incredibly meaningful, it saddens me.
This and other conversations got me to thinking once again about what does it mean to be a Christian.
When the religious leaders ask Jesus to tell his followers to quiet down (Luke 19:29-44), he responds that “if they were to keep silent, the very stones would cry out!” What is so important that nature itself demands it be said? The disciples are shouting a message of peace. What’s so bad about that? Well, the real problem is that they are referring to Jesus as “king.” Not a good idea in an occupied city overloaded with religious pilgrims and political tension. Jesus and his followers were challenging the injustices of their time by declaring that our loyalty should belong to God’s way of Love (as revealed to us in the life and teachings of Jesus) and not Caesar.
This is the story that must be told: God’s way is better than Caesar’s way – love wins over hate; compassion wins over oppression. This is still true today. This is a story we must still tell. We don’t have a Caesar today but patriarchy still looms large and sexism is still the rule in our culture of power and greed. The would-be kings of our modern world must not go unchallenged. When the world tries to force their kings upon us we have a choice to make. Do we go along with their corruption, their lying and false promises, their scapegoating of other religions and immigrants or do we choose love and compassion? Do we choose justice?
Today, we are still called to declare that our Caesars are false leaders and that God’s love is our only true guide, our only true hope. This is the story that must be told. The disciples shouted their hosannas and they were cautioned to be silent. Where and why are the oppressed being told to be quiet today – or else? We should always remember the hosannas, the calls to love and action. They, I believe, will keep us from turning to shouts of “crucify him” and call us to justice and compassion in response to the world’s cruelties. With the stories of despair that need to be told, there is one story that must also be told or even the earth will shout it out: the light that Jesus brought into this world cannot be extinguished. God’s love cannot be defeated.
(I originally wrote this short reflection for my church’s newsletter. It was inspired by my sermon from Sunday, April 9, 2017. The church’s website is http://www.phoenixchurch.org)
In Luke 18: 31-19:10 Jesus is traveling the road to Jerusalem and he knows things are going to get real when he gets there. He tries to warn his disciples but they don’t understand. Maybe they have plans and desires of their own. Like many of their day maybe they foresee themselves as a movement to liberate Israel from Roman oppression and they can’t see past their own hopes. Perhaps they are having a hard time understanding that our hopes and plans aren’t necessarily in line with where the Divine would lead us. Whatever the reason, Jesus tries to interrupt their lack of understanding and wake them up.
Often, we get so focused on one thing that everything else gets blocked out until something happens to interrupt us, to wake us up to what is happening around us. How much of life seems like an accident? We make plans and then the plans go in unexpected directions. Some of the most important things that happen in our lives are not planned but are unexpected. These are often life-changing, unexpected interruptions in our lives. Sometimes they’re difficult and sometimes they’re joyous, but they wake us up in some way. In other words, being interrupted or woken up from the hum drum routine of our lives often leaves us stopped in our tracks and not knowing what comes next. These times, and perhaps this is the really sacred part, ask us to be mindful of the opportunities we might have at that point in our lives.
Jesus on the road to Jerusalem could be seen as a metaphor for our own spiritual journey to realize God’s Kin-dom, where in the end God’s ability to create life and love wins over the worst that human tyrants can come up with. But on that journey, Jesus is constantly providing interruptions for people and being interrupted himself. For example, the blind beggar interrupts Jesus with his shouting and Jesus interrupts the beggar’s life by healing him. This was a momentous event and completely unexpected. And just imagine what new opportunities then awaited. Likewise, Zacchaeus, who as a tax collector and therefore a colluder with Rome is despised by his neighbors in Jericho, climbs the tree to see what’s happening and when Jesus notices this guy up in a tree, he’s interrupted. He in turn stops to talk and eat with Zacchaeus and his family, interrupting his life and reminding him that he too is loved by God and thereby opens him to new opportunities, to new and better ways of living.
Jesus is still trying to interrupt us today, to wake us up, asking us to be mindful of the opportunities that life gives us in unexpected events and encounters. Perhaps when something stops us in our tracks we should imagine ourselves as Zacchaeus in that tree and Jesus has just stopped to say “come down, I have a surprise for you.” The Divine wants to wake us up, interrupt us, but we have to open ourselves to those interruptions. We have to do some interrupting of our own. The sick man has to go outside, the beggar has to shout, and Zacchaeus has to climb a tree. We too need to open ourselves to sacred moments that ask us to slow down, listen, and remember the holy in our lives, to stop and ask what new life, what new opportunities we might find as we journey together on our own spiritual roads toward the kin-dom just as Jesus walked the road to Jerusalem with his disciples.
(I originally wrote this short reflection for my church’s newsletter. It was inspired by my sermon from Sunday, April 2, 2017. The church’s website is http://www.phoenixchurch.org)
In the tenth chapter of Luke’s gospel, Jesus agrees with a religious expert that to have eternal life we must love God with our entire being and love our neighbor as ourself. But what exactly does it mean to have eternal life? What if eternal doesn’t necessarily mean a time that doesn’t end (i.e. a life that goes on forever even after death) but instead implies a transcendence of time, a life that is beyond time? What would that mean? For one, it would mean that an eternal life isn’t something that happens after we die, but it can happen right now! Second, the Divine Presence is the only force we know of that can transcend time so to have eternal life is to be in union with the Divine Presence, to live in harmony with the sacred, to speak and act and move in sync with love. If we are created from the Spirit of God as our creation stories tell us, then to find eternal life is to return to what we were created to be: of the Spirit of God, sacred, holy, and loving. To find eternal life is to live an authentic life of pure love.
To be united with the Divine is to live in love, love for God as well as love for ourselves and for our neighbors. But, the religious expert asks Jesus, who is my neighbor? Jesus, being Jesus, doesn’t give a straight-forward answer but responds with the story of the Good Samaritan and then asks who was being a neighbor in that story? Of course, it was the Samaritan who showed compassion. So, is our neighbor, the people we are supposed to love, the ones who show us compassion? If someone is nasty to us does that mean we don’t have to love them because they’re not being a neighbor? Well, Jesus concludes by telling the religious expert to go be like the Samaritan. In other words, it doesn’t matter so much how people act toward us. We love our neighbor by being a good neighbor ourselves – without worrying what we’re going to get out of it!
To love our neighbor is to build relationships, even with those we despise, because that person, no matter what we might think of their politics, or religion, or how they live their lives, is also a child of God created out of God’s loving spirit. When we build relationship with each other, we’re also building relationship with the Divine Presence in our lives. We are drawing ourselves closer to the sacred and moving toward the eternal life, authentic life that God wishes for us. We begin to move in harmony with the Spirit of Love within us and begin to grow into the people God created us to be. How we can be good neighbors in a divided world so that world may be healed, coming closer to the Divine, closer to each other, that we all my find the love we need?
(I originally wrote this short reflection for my church’s newsletter. It was inspired by my sermon from Sunday, March 5, 2017. The church’s website is http://www.phoenixchurch.org)
The early church used the 40 days of Lent, which we have now begun, to prepare new converts for baptism, to prepare them for their new lives as followers of Christ. Today, we often use this sacred time to work on our spiritual lives, to prepare ourselves for the new and renewed life in Christ that we celebrate at Easter, which marks the end of Lent. There is a Rumi poem that invites us to “be empty of worrying” and “move outside the tangle of fear-thinking” as we “flow down and down in always widening rings of being.” I think this idea of ever-widening rings of being makes a lovely image for Lent as we take time for spiritual preparation and turning to God.
The common Lenten act of giving something up is one way we practice emptying ourselves of things that get in the way of a full life so we can make room for Christ’s new life. Once we’ve quit letting little things like chocolate and coffee rule our lives, perhaps we’ll have the confidence to put our complete trust in God and move on to bigger things such as giving up the the chronic worrying that Rumi talks about. Or instead of, or in addition to, giving something up maybe we’ll try this Lenten season to go beyond fearful thinking and begin a new spiritual practice or maybe volunteer in some way that benefits the marginalized of the world.
Both of these ideas, emptying ourselves and moving past fear-thinking, are ways of opening our hearts to let the love within us continually encompass more and more until we come to understand how interwoven we are with each other and with the wider world. This is so important right now when the predominant messages of our current governmental leaders tell us to close ranks and think only of ourselves. Policies being talked about and implemented regarding health care, immigration, etc. are all about being self-centered and not worrying about anyone but yourself. They’re about treating everyone else as an enemy when Jesus tells us that God’s way is about creating a Kin-dom where loving our neighbor is the foundational rule of law.
The transfiguration of Jesus, where he is seen on a mountain top with Moses and Elijah (Luke 9:27-36), tells us that the glory of God is found in the ministry of Jesus, the work of healing and justice. When God’s voice is heard on that mountain, it is to tell us to “listen to him.” Coming in the middle of the gospel story, the transfiguration represents the bridge between Jesus’ birth as the incarnation of God’s love and the promise of new life found in his resurrection. That bridge is the Kin-dom of God, it’s the glue that holds the Good News of God together. God’s love born into this world and the promise of new life only matter if they affect this world here and now through the building of the Kin-dom, which requires us not only to realize our inter-connectedness but build relationships of hope, peace, and justice in ever-widening rings of being. In this season, how can we practice opening our hearts so that our love will continue to expand into a world that desperately needs healing?
(I originally wrote this short reflection for my church’s newsletter. It was inspired by my sermon from Sunday, February 26, 2017. The church’s website is http://www.phoenixchurch.org)
In Luke 7, when John the Baptist starts to have doubts about Jesus, he must have had all kinds of questions: Am I following the right path? Am I putting my trust in the right person? Is Jesus really the one I should be following? What does it even mean to call him the chosen one? Are my expectations of him really what he’s all about? Part of the problem for John seems to be that Jesus’ ministry wasn’t exactly what John expected. John, like many of his day, may have been hoping for direct confrontation with their oppressors but Jesus was instead resisting through messages of healing and love.
These questions of who we should follow and why are questions we still ask ourselves today, not only in our spiritual lives but we see them reflected in our modern day myths such as the Harry Potter movies or the Matrix movies. To get some of these questions answered, John sends his followers to ask Jesus if he’s really God’s Chosen One. Jesus doesn’t answer right away but spends time healing the people that had gathered before responding. When he does respond, he doesn’t refer to scripture or suggest some contest to prove his power. He tells John’s followers: report what you’ve seen and heard. He simply says this is my ministry, this is what I’m doing. See, hear, and experience what it means to challenge the powers of the world with love and healing instead of weapons and then report your experience to John. That will have to be enough.
We aren’t told what John thought of this answer, but we might reflect on our own reaction. What have we seen and heard on our spiritual journey? How have we experienced God’s presence in our life? Through healing, acts of love, community? When life isn’t going as expected, can we put our trust in this way of God, this way of love? And are we willing and able to report what we’ve seen and heard? The world desperately needs more love, more deep connection, more compassion. The world needs to find healing and wholeness that we may live together in peace and mutual support. Are we willing to try this way of love and then share it with others, even invite them to walk with us?
(I originally wrote this short reflection for my church’s newsletter. It was inspired by my sermon from Sunday, February 12, 2017. The church’s website is http://www.phoenixchurch.org)
We’ve all had the experience of being too busy in life, trying to catch up to some goal such as wealth, happiness, wholeness, or even God, only to have it continually elude us. But what if, in our busyness, we’ve actually been running from what we want and not toward it? In Judaism and Christianity the idea of Sabbath is to take a regular day off from our busyness and “work” to devote to God and our spiritual lives while we rest and reenergize ourselves. It reminds us how important it is to slow down so that our blessings can catch up to us. Sabbath is a gift from God that allows to reorient ourselves away from the demands of a culture centered on greed and power and renew our love and compassion for life.
Especially in this time when our world seems even more chaotic and our busyness continues around the clock seven days a week, it is important to take time to stop, rest, and open ourselves to the presence of the Spirit. It’s critical for our spiritual health to be able to renew our energy and make sure we’re on the right path in life, to take the time to ask “who am I” in this time and place. Sabbath time in our lives hopefully means regularly attending worship to be in community with other seekers so that we can support each other, but it might also mean spending time in prayer and meditation, taking walks in the woods, or even just finding quiet time to sit and let your mind go. Whatever you find reenergizing and spiritually uplifting might be part of your personal sabbath time.
Sometimes we may also need longer periods of rejuvenation. I thank the church for allowing me such an opportunity this year as I go on sabbatical from May through July. During this time I will be attending a couple of conferences as well as hopefully spending time traveling and doing reading and writing in addition to just resting as I engage that Sabbath question of “who am I?” This is also a time that the Phoenix Church Community might want to take some time to look for new energy and ask “who are we?” A time of sabbatical can be filled with excitement and anxiety, hope and fear, for both the pastor and the church but it is also critical for our spiritual health to take this time to stop and rest, letting the Spirit guide us as we look forward to a renewed ministry together post-sabbatical.
Whether we it be a Sabbath day or a longer period of Sabbatical, we all need to allow ourselves time to open ourselves to Spirit and heal from the chaos that constantly batters our souls. Never forget to slow down once in a while so your blessings can catch up to you.
(I originally wrote this short reflection for my church’s newsletter. It was inspired by my sermon from Sunday, January 29, 2017. The church’s website is http://www.phoenixchurch.org)
In the story of Simon’s call in Luke 5:1-11, Jesus sees a hidden potential in the fisherman Simon, an unlikely candidate for the role of disciple. Jesus sees past the clutter of stereotypes, past any gruff exterior, past Simon’s protests of being a sinner, of not being worthy and sees the potential that lies beneath. He believes Simon can unlock that potential in his service for God. Perhaps that’s what discipleship is. Yes, it is an invitation to follow God through Jesus, but maybe being a disciple also means unlocking our own potential and becoming who God has designed us to be.
Simon moves from his familiar life into an unknown future because of this Jesus guy who sees something in him and tells him not to be afraid, not to fear letting his potential out. Of course, call stories always beg the question: is Jesus calling us too? Does Jesus see some potential in us that we’re too afraid to let out, that we keep cluttered and covered with the activities of everyday life?
We all have potential, but one thing that stands out for me about Simon is that he seemed willing to trust. After Jesus is done teaching, he asks Simon to pull his boat into deeper water and cast his nets to catch some fish, despite the fact that Simon had been fishing all day and caught nothing. Simon doubts and complains but does it anyway. He’s willing to do what Jesus asks even if he doesn’t think it’s going to work. Simon’s journey to unlock his potential, to become a follower of Jesus, begins with a simple act of trust, that act of getting back in the water even though it didn’t make a lot of sense to him.
That small act of trust is rewarded with an over-abundance of fish in which Simon gets a glimpse of the Divine breaking into the world. Simon’s reaction, however, is to become scared and overwhelmed and he tries to send Jesus away. We often get scared when something good happens to us because we wonder “what’s next?” and aren’t sure if we’ll be able to handle it, whatever it is. In a way, Simon was right to be scared because Jesus was about to ask Simon for an even bigger act of trust: to let go of his fishing business and follow him in his ministry to help the poor and the oppressed.
Although it was Simon’s story, to be called by God doesn’t necessarily mean we have to drop everything and become an itinerant preacher. So what does it mean to be called, to become a disciple? I think it at least in part means, like Simon, being willing to:
* unlock our potential, even in the face of our fears of what might happen next
* step out in trust, even when we have doubts about whether its going to work
* try again if we fail; to get back in the water and cast our nets again
* un-clutter and let go of what is hiding our potential, like Simon did with his fishing career
We might begin with small acts of trust to start unlocking our potential, getting our feet wet before moving to the deep water. We might begin by asking God and ourselves some questions through prayer, meditation, and discussion with others: What are our talents? What are our passions? What gets us excited and feeling full of life? And, then: How does God call us to use those talents and passions? How can we use them to follow Jesus? How can we use our talents and passions to make the world a better and more loving place?
With Simon, God took an unlikely person and started doing unexpected things because Simon was willing, despite his doubts and fears, to trust what Jesus was asking him to do. Despite having already failed at catching fish that day, Simon was asked to get back in the water, to trust and try again. May God give us the courage to get up and follow as well, that we may clear the clutter away and realize the talents and passions God has given us, that we may unlock the potential of the love that God has filled us with, that we may weave that love into a world of hope, peace and justice.
(I originally wrote this short reflection for my church’s newsletter. It was inspired by my sermon from Sunday, January 22, 2017. The church’s website is http://www.phoenixchurch.org)