Water Words

Easter Morning

2007-04-07T08:47:00.000-07:00

“On Sunday Morning”
Rev. Carolyn Waters
Easter Day, April 8, 2007
CCUM

What is the meaning of your life?

Some people have literally driven themselves crazy asking that question. Others seem to float through their existence never pausing to wonder.

But it seems like on a day like this, on a day in which we gather to celebrate “the risen Christ” with high energy, triumphant song, and shouts of Alleluia---it’s appropriate to stop and ask……… “what is the meaning of all this”----------and from that question, for me the next question is “what is the meaning of all this!” (Pointing at myself)

Purpose would be an easier focus. The purpose of my life could be directed at a goal, a service, relationship with others, a contribution to society through work, research, writing, or even discovery. If the purpose of one’s life was only to raise a family, that contribution alone is enough to potentially change the world.

Purpose is focused on what I do “out there”…………. What others can see and observe. Meaning, on the other hand seems to be an inside job. Purpose is what you see in me, meaning is what I live with.

I have a clear and convincing picture, at least for myself, about the purpose of Jesus life. When I am most confused about who Jesus was or is, I can always settle with saying his life served as a clear example of how to live and be in relationship with people and creation. That’s when I am most confused about Jesus. But when I am most confident and strong in my belief, I say the same thing. Jesus is the one whom I call “teacher” for living my life. It’s the word on the window behind us, “Rabboni”, teacher………the way Mary addressed Jesus in the garden after he had been in the tomb and then appeared to her. Upon recognizing him, she called him “Rabboni”.

Isn’t that enough? To find one’s teacher for life! To discover a “teaching” that serves to challenge and engage one throughout life, isn’t that enough?
To be the source of that teaching, as Jesus was for Mary, for most of you, and for me is certainly a clear and worthy purpose!
So why did the story add this resurrection piece? What was God thinking in allowing such a strange thing to happen? Good grief, look at how confusing things become when we start to untangle the resurrection. But on the other hand, look at how wide open the interpretation of our faith becomes when the resurrection is a part of our story.

Jesus lived his life with clear purpose. Jesus was crucified, died, was buried………and on the third day……….his life had meaning. In the act of his death, his life moved from purpose to meaning.

And what is that meaning? Well, have you found the answer to my first question? What is the meaning of your life? Somewhere hidden in the way we answer that question for ourselves is the answer for the meaning of Jesus life. It’s the flow of his words when he said “I am in you and you are in me. The Creator and I are one.”

I turned 54 years old yesterday. Those of you, who know me well, know that I always love a good party. My mother said that when I was a little girl “party” was one of my favorite words! Easter Sunday seems to be a really good reason to have a birthday party and wake up and smell the flowers, see the sunshine, and celebrate life kind of day! Even if I couldn’t stay up late last night!

If I follow the pattern of both parents, I have about 40 years of living left. And if the path I have ahead of me is anything like my parents, my mind and my body will serve me well.

40 years is a lot of living left to do. I’m confident that I’ve found a very good life purpose. Not only do I love my work, there are days that my work makes a clear difference for someone else. It is good to be alive! I celebrate life!

But I always ponder the meaning of it all. I’m always searching for something to explain “all this.” I often wonder, stand bewildered at the messes made in our world, hurt by the depth of despair and even hopelessness in some places and situations. When I am willing to really open my eyes and my heart to God’s creation, sure I see the beauty of the Rockies and the wonder of a tulip! I see the joy on the faces of the incredible kids in this church. I see the expectation in your eyes. But I also see changing of the earth from our own indulgences and wonder how long the tulips will bloom. I see the faces of the soldiers being killed, the innocent victims in Iraq, Afghanistan, starvation in Darfur……….and I ask “what is the meaning of it all?” Where is the resurrection?

Perhaps the meaning of the resurrection is about the journey we each take toward our death. The way we take that journey impacts the meaning of our death. Even more important, the way we take this life journey……impacts the suffering of our world, or not. Jesus had his eyes open to the suffering around him, and did all he could to alleviate that suffering. And his death had meaning. Jesus took every opportunity presented him to party and give thanks, and his death had meaning. Jesus considered the lilies of the field and could bask in their beauty, and his death had meaning.

Esther de Waal in her book The Celtic Way of Prayer says “the Celtic understanding of journey is in itself so rich and so significant. It is peregrination----seeking, quest, adventure, wandering, exile----it is ultimately a journey to find the place of my resurrection, the resurrected self, the self that I might hope to be, to become, the true self in Christ.”

I may have another 40 years to figure this out. To find that self, my true self………the one that helps me understand the meaning of my life……which is my true self in Christ. Or I may not have 40 years, or if I’m too distracted by my purpose I may never discover my meaning.

What are you banking on for the rest of your life?

A few weeks ago I heard Catholic Priest Father James Martin being interviewed on National Public Radio. (3-14-07) He said “Easter is harder to tame than Christmas.”

May you go into the world and have an extravagantly wild Easter day. May it in fact be so wild that something gets your attention, and changes the way you live the rest of your life.

Palm Sunday

2007-04-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

Palm Sunday
“The Journey Home”
April 1, 2007
CCUM Rev Carolyn Waters

Luke 19:28-40
28After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” 32So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34They said, “The Lord needs it.” 35Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” 39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” 40He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Jesus set out on the road to Jerusalem on this day we have come to call “Palm Sunday” with a clarity of purpose and vision that could not be stalled or stopped. How else could he have entered Jerusalem, knowing in his deepest self what was to happen in the days to come?

I have been doing this “Holy Week” thing with some kind of intentionality for over thirty years. The Holy Week being the days between Palm Sunday and Easter Morning, a journey so to speak with Jesus from the Parade to the Cross, to the Tomb, to the Resurrection. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but we do know how the story goes……..and really cannot ignore the ending even though we are at the beginning of the week.

So this year, I’m approaching this “Holy Week” in a new posture. How do we begin this very significant week in our faith story, knowing the ending? The question causes me to ask the same of the man Jesus. How did you, Jesus, ride the humiliating little donkey into the city of all cities while some people shouted Hosanna and others laughed? How did you, Jesus, participate in the drama of a mock trial knowing its ending? And how did you, Jesus, allow yourself to walk into the ending of your life as you had known it?

Esther de Waal in her book The Celtic Way of Prayer speaks of the Celtic understanding of the word peregrination…………which she says roughly translates as “journey” but means so much more than simply going from one place to another. In the Celtic tradition………pilgrimage or journey is a life long spiritual quest of finding one’s place or home with God. The peregrinatio, journey, or pilgrimage is very connected to the earth, the landscape, the vista or vision of what is in front……….out ahead…….while still bringing along and being with what is inside. As de Waal refers to it in another of her books, the landscape around us begins to reflect itself in our interior inscape, what is inside of us.

A person who is truly on “the journey” poses an attitude of being “ready to go wherever the Spirit might take them” (p. 2) and understands themselves as “guests of the world.” She says that when we are on such a journey what we are seeking is the place of our resurrection, the resurrected self, the true self in Christ, which is for all of us our true home.” (2)

Her words have caused me to reflect on how Jesus was able to enter Jerusalem. How he was able to embrace and receive the shouts of hosanna and praise on one day and several days later be humiliated by sneers, laughter, beaten and killed.

How do you enter such a week? Many of us have lived through what we would have thought to be “impossible weeks.” The operable words in that sentence are “lived through.” What seems to be an absolutely impossible situation to withstand………..and then finding ourselves on the other side having lived through……..must be the grounding that gives one the ability to live and the ability to face death with humility and grace.

No doubt there is the “something more” that Jesus represents for us, but in this week of the waving palms, the secret last supper, the pounding of the nails into the cross………………the man Jesus had to have been grounded in his very deepest self about the reason he was alive……….

All of his ministry, he seemed to be on a pilgrimage, his own peregrinatio, ready to go where the Spirit would take him, knowing that his ultimate “home” the destination of the journey……….was and is to be at home with God.

How else could he have entered Jerusalem?

Esther de Waal speaks of Christ himself being “the Way” and we as followers of Christ are people of the Way. I like that.

The “Way” is a particular path we walk as we go through life. Sometimes parallel with other spiritual paths, sometimes contrary to cultural paths, sometimes the “Way” we take has cobble stones that hurt our feet and cause us to stumble………just as the small donkey would have entering Jerusalem……… but always the “Way” is a journey that leads us home to the heart of a loving God, ever ready and willing to receive us in loving arms………..no matter the kind of week we’ve had, or the mistakes we have made along the way. Our life is a journey, a peregrination seeking that place where we are at last “at home” with ourselves, and “at home” with the one who created us. Dag Hammarskjold once said: “The longest journey is the journey inward.”

This Holy Week, as we all journey in our different ways toward the sacred table set for Maundy Thursday, or as we journey in our own different ways toward the darkness of Good Friday, or as we wake to the mystery and wonder of whatever the resurrection means to us…………let us not simply retell a story from our Christian history, let us not simply rehearse a tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation………..rather let each of us take our own journey…………and dare to take an inward journey………..and ask the question that Jesus must have found the answer for………. “What is it that God wants of me?” I believe in asking that question and seeking the answer…….it is there that we find our home with God.
Celtic Saint Columbanus once said in a sermon: “the end of the road is the end of our life, the end of our roadway is our

"The Right Stuff"

2007-02-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

“The Right Stuff”
Rev. Carolyn Waters
Jeremiah 17:5-10 & Luke 6:17-26
February 11, 2007 CCUM
My father was a simple man that I found to be a very complicated person. Of course, I had to live a few years and gain a few grey hairs to appreciate the complicated part of him!
I started thinking about some of my father’s “simple wisdom” this week when I saw a person that reminded me of someone from my adolescent and teenage years. It was so haunting seeing this man that I almost went up to him and ask if his name was Jimmy. But I choose to take the path of least embarrassment and just continue to wonder if “that man” might have been Jimmy Hollis.
Jimmy Hollis. Born in 1952, class of 1970, one year older than me. His father owned the “local telephone company” back when such a thing was possible. They had a lot of money! From grade school on, Jimmy was always the one in the middle of trouble.
The older I got the more exciting Jimmy’s behavior looked! So one of my high school evenings I joined a small group taking a ride with Jimmy. In Hinton, Oklahoma everything was a ride in the country so to say that would be redundant!
Well the car quit running. I don’t remember why. I do remember the car. It was a big old station wagon. I remember that because when the car stalled, we put down the tail gate, the three or four of us took off our shoes and splashed our feet in the water on the road and listened to the frogs. I can still hear the frogs, I can still feel the warm water on my feet, and I can still see the anger in my father’s eyes when I finally got home that night.
There was absolutely nothing wrong about any part of the evening, except that I was in the company of Jimmy Hollis. The words I remember my father using to justify the reason for my grounding were: “Jimmy Hollis is not made of the right stuff, you are not to be around him, do you understand?”
Nothing very complicated about that parental commandment. As was the case for most of my father’s instruction to his children, everything was very clear, to the point, cut and dry…………no room for misinterpretation or areas of grey to weasel around in!
“Jimmy Hollis is not made of the right stuff.”
Even though a part of me knew perfectly well what dad meant, there was also a part of me that thought Jimmy was one of the coolest guys around. He was also on a fast track to destroying himself.

Not made of the right stuff. How does one get made of the right stuff or what happens that the stuff one gets made of turns out to not be right.
Aren’t we all made of the same stuff? What, does some stuff get more attention that other stuff? Is some stuff worth more than other stuff? Does some stuff have more potential that other stuff? Don’t we all have the opportunity to take the stuff we’re made of and make something of it?
From some stories I’ve heard, before my father married my mother there could very well have been some fathers and mothers that said of Russell Hofman, “stay away from that young man, he’s not made of the right stuff!”
I still think Jimmy was made of the right stuff. It’s just that his stuff got a little out of order for awhile in his teenage years. Now I wish I would have gone up to that man I saw this past week and asked his name. If would have been such a joy to find out that his name was Jimmy.
People not made of the right stuff must be the one’s who end up being cursed or wowed! You know, from Jeremiah 17:5&6 “Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes.” Not very appealing.
Then there are the woes in Luke 6, “woe to you who are rich, woe to you who are full, woe to you who are laughing, woe to you who have a good reputation…..” Kind of takes the fun out of enjoying life, just like my dad seemed to take the fun out of being a teenager!
God knew Jeremiah had been made of the right stuff and hoped that Jeremiah would live a life reflecting the right stuff when he offered Jeremiah the blessing that comes from trusting in “the Lord.” (Jer 17:7&8) “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust in the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it doesn not cease to bear fruit.”
And what is the difference between the cursed and the blessed? It has to have something to do with the heart. The cursed turn their hearts away from God. The blessed, have their hearts searched by God and God finds within the heart of creation places of goodness, places of generosity, places of compassion, places of empathy, and places of self-less-ness. And in those places of creation, God turns and calls them blessed.
They are the people who have taken the stuff they were made of and turned it into what is good.
There are not people who were made of the wrong stuff. But there are people who have taken the stuff they were made of and turned it into what is selfish, destructive, materialistic, and everything of this world.
I’m not convinced that I want to be blessed all the time, or maybe even very much of the time. Listen to what constitutes being blessed: “Blessed are you who are poor, blessed are you who weep now, blessed are you when people hate you.”
I don’t know if I’m made of the right stuff to be such a person. It’s not the way the world operates. At least in Jeremiah the blessing comes in the form of fresh water and a live oak tree. Wouldn’t you rather be a live oak tree with roots planted deep into the rich soil by a wonderful stream of water than a poor, hungry, crying person hated by others?
Something is twisted here. Maybe that’s why my father didn’t like going to church.
And maybe when my father did go to church he wasn’t paying enough attention to the complicated simplicity of it all. Because now I believe my father was wrong. He was wrong about Jimmy. He probably wasn’t wrong about my needing to hang out with a different group of people at the time, but he was wrong about Jimmy not being made of the right stuff.
The last I knew Jimmy Hollis was heavily into drugs, had been through several marriages, and had used up most of his inheritance.
As I reflect on these words of blessing and curse, blessed and wowed, if Jimmy has had the hard life he is apt to have had, he understands more about being blessed than I do. My guess is that he has had far more occasion to touch the places of emptiness that equate themselves to being poor, that he has found himself in crowds of strangers with no place to go, and that his reputation has kept anyone of stature from claiming he was made of the right stuff.
But there was something else about Jimmy that most people didn’t take the time to see. He had a glisten in his eyes, a kind and gentle smile, an edge of creativity to make or fix anything.
Maybe, if he was able to escape the social structure of a small Oklahoma town, he lived his life out of the woes into the blessings that were in store for him………
Because, you know……….we are all made of the right stuff.

The Presence of Christ

2006-04-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

“The Presence of Christ”
Rev Carolyn Waters
April 30, 2006 CCUM

Luke 24:13-49
13Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. 18Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” 19He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” 25Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. 28As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” 33That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
36While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43and he took it and ate in their presence. 44Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
The week following Easter, the UCC church on 6th avenue had on it billboard in the front: “Easter! Wow! That was fun! Let’s do it again.”

I don’t think so!

I think once in a lifetime is enough for a crucifixion, and that’s what precedes Easter. Remembering Easter once a year, recalling to mind the promise and new beginnings of life….now that’s a good thing. Perhaps there would be some wisdom to “doing Easter again”. Certainly there is more to Easter than can be grasp in one Sunday, or one telling of the story.

We are, finally Easter People. People who live in the hope of new life, the forgiveness of sins, and the promise of resurrection.

But to say, WOW, that was fun!

The only time I experienced Easter as FUN was when I was a kid and got to hunt Easter eggs in the greening wheat fields of spring.

There were some parts about Easter Sunday this year, and past years that far exceed the typical Sunday in the life of the church. That a good thing, something to celebrate…………..but Fun?

“Gee…that was fun!” were not the thoughts running through the minds of the two people on the road to Emmaus.

Going back to their regular life, these two people were remembering and retelling their experiences of the past several days when a stranger started walking with them. Not an uncommon thing. In conversation the two realized the stranger didn’t seem to realize what had happened in Jerusalem with Jesus of Nazareth.

You know how the story goes. Jesus asks questions, they answer………..finally Jesus sheds light on the meaning of it all………..they listen………..they are intrigued………invite Jesus to their house for dinner…and while breaking bread and drinking wine………they realize the stranger in their midst is the Christ.

The story in Luke goes on to another setting with more of the Disciples, where once again Jesus shows up………….in his physical form, and is recognized by the Disciples. He challenges them to touch his side and hands in order to believe that it is him.

“Their eyes are opened” to the meaning of the scriptures, to the point and purpose of the resurrection.

I think that most of us today tend to think of Jesus in almost entirely spiritual terms. Nevertheless, in this scripture passage from Luke we cannot help but see him in physical terms, risen in flesh and blood, in hair and bone, brain cell and vocal cord. I have to admit that this part of the story is not what persuades me in my Christian faith to believe in the Christ. BUT today we find Jesus coming to reveal that his body, as every human body, is a place where God exists and reveals all that is holy. That part I can accept. That part makes sense to me.

If we believe that Jesus risen in his body means that our human bodies can carry the very existence of God and can hold the presence of God's spirit, then the resurrected life is a life we live in the presence of God as God is in our presence. As Jesus' body took on new life through God's power in the giving of the life of Jesus for the world, then through the offering of his body, now risen, we can come to see in our bodies the same possibilities for new life. AND even more important I think, there is the opportunity to witness the presence of God through the spirit of Christ, living in others.

The resurrection story says not only that Jesus rose from the dead, but also that his body could never again be taken away from his followers, could never again be taken away from the world.

How can this be true? It is true because the Body of Christ is us. The church is the continuation of Jesus. We are the Body of Christ. We are Christ's hands and feet, arms and legs, eyes and mouth, and Christ's check book. We are everything Jesus is in the Gospel, for we are his body. Or at least, that is who we are challenged to be.

In the last ten days I have had the opportunity to be in a car for two hours with George McGovern, watch Ann Lamott work a literary crowd at Tattered Cover, and sit in meditation for an afternoon with Fr. Thomas Keating and Ken Wilber.

All of these people embody the presence of Christ.

For me, all of these people are living icons that give an open window to the holy, the mystery of life.

I don’t always know what to do with “the rest of the Easter story!” You know, the parts that come after Easter. I don’t think it’s a simple, WOW that was fun!

I struggle with the meaning. I easily follow and believe in the teachings of Jesus as a sane, sound, and meaningful way to live my life. But what of this resurrection stuff?

Finally this resurrection stuff is only as meaningful as it is able to manifest its meaning in your life. The resurrection stuff is only as powerful as I am willing to open myself to God’s presence within me, showing forth as the spirit of Christ in my life.

And that only makes as much sense as you are able to see and observe, much the same way the two on the road to Emmaus were able to recognize Christ in the stranger that was with them.

The living icons of my world live in the presence of Christ, and the presence of Christ lives in them. It is proof for me of the resurrected life. It is meaning for me of the presence of God within.

The greatest wonder of all is that we need not be a famous politician, a famous writer, a living saint of a monk, or one of the world’s greatest philosophers to embody the resurrection.

The spiritual truth that comes from the story is that the Good News of Jesus Christ is not about who we are, but about who God is.

The point of the resurrection is not about what happened to the body of Jesus, but the point of the resurrection is about what the body of Jesus became for the sake of the world………………..an incarnation of forgiveness and love for anyone that is willing to receive the gift.

This Most Amazing Day

2006-04-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

Easter Sunday
“This Most Amazing Day”
April 16, 2006 CCUM
Rev Carolyn Waters

THE SUNDAY of the Resurrection is not only the greatest day of the church year; it is also the only one that is set by the moon. Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. As complicated as that sounds, it makes ancient sense, since it means Easter coincides with the greening of the earth. Christ is risen and the whole world comes to life. Sap rises in dormant trees, spring peepers start their peeping, and the smell of tree blossoms fill the air. The connection is a happy one, surely guaranteed to renew our faith in the creative power of God.

I spent two days this week working in my yard. The difference I could see in the greening of life between Wednesday and Friday was amazing to me. It happens every year! I know this! But I have been so aware of it this year. Perhaps because I’m in a new yard or maybe it’s because I’m paying more attention.
Life comes to life. That’s what spring is all about. Life coming to life.
I want to imagine that is also what Easter can mean for us. That the life we have, often stagnant or stuck or speeding way too fast down a dead end road, that with spring, with Easter, with an understanding of the resurrection…….that life comes to life.
I imagine that all of us have at one time or another struggled with the meaning of the resurrection. If you’ve been paying attention to our Christian story, or really listened to the Gospel message I expect that you have questioned or doubted or at least wondered about the reality of the resurrection. I wonder about the historical reality of the resurrection, but I have little trouble understanding the meaning of the resurrection, if nothing else it is God’s continuing gift of love for us.
Don't we discover the resurrected Christ in those we love and who love us? Haven't we known the love Christ showed for us from the cross in the loving sacrifices others have made for us? Since childhood, haven't those who loved us and taught us our faith, opened a path for the resurrected Christ to enter our lives? We have no more "proof" of the resurrection than those disciples who peered into the empty tomb. But love has stirred our hearts and that love has enabled us to believe that Christ is risen and alive for us. At this point in the resurrection narrative we are reminded that one way the Easter story of Christ's resurrection is made known to us is through love. If others are to come to the faith we celebrate today, or are to be strengthened in their faith as they stare into the tombs and dead parts of their lives, then we will have to reflect for them the risen Christ by our love for them---whether they are family, friend or stranger.

John B. Cobb, Jr., is Professor Emeritus of Claremont School of Theology asks the questions:
Do we affirm the resurrection because of our experience of the resurrected Christ? Or is it important to believe that the New Testament accounts of the resurrection are based on historical fact? Christians disagree on this.

Cobb continues:
There is, in any case, one important difference between Easter and Christmas. The rise of the resurrection faith involved the belief that Jesus had appeared to his disciples after the crucifixion. It is probable that without some experience of the risen Christ, however we are to think of it, the disciples would not have initiated the movement that became Christianity. Whether or not they are important to us today, historically they were of great importance.
That God raised Jesus from the dead does not mean that Jesus was or is a supernatural being. It does mean that death does not have the last word, that reality is far richer than our small minds can realize. In the context of the whole story, it means that God affirmed Jesus’ message and the mission for which that message called. It means that in Jesus we find a clue to who God is. It means that Jesus’ call of the original disciples to mission is a call to us as well. It means that following Jesus is no guarantee of earthly success but that it does ground our hope of ultimate salvation through everlasting life with Jesus in God.

So the celebration of this Easter Day is an invitation to each and every one of us to at least examine our lives and open ourselves to God’s presence being in the darkest and most destructive places within us, to willingly pronounce death upon those places and open ourselves in this Easter time, this spring time to new life.

Paul Tillich once said that “new life would not really be new life if it did not come from the complete end of the old life.”
(Sermon Nuggets, 4-16-06)

Those are difficult words to accept whether speaking of change here and now, or accepting the reality of death. But through both our living resurrections and our resurrection in death, we are offered the opportunity of a new beginning. A new beginning that comes only with the cost of leaving the old behind.

In the story of the resurrection, Jesus did not continue to carry his cross. Many of us go through life carrying a lot of stuff on our back. Far too many of us hold on to the suffering and pain that has been a part of our lives for far too long. Easter is the invitation to let that go, to lay aside the heaviness of life and be invited into a new day, and new vision, a new opportunity to see the wonder, the beauty, the awesome gift of life.

Easter gives us the opportunity to recall
that people who are really willing to live in the light of the resurrection
are willing to live life as God sees and wills it,
not as we see and will it.

This is a most amazing day. This day is amazing because life is amazing. Life is amazing because the nature of God is such that love wins out over all else. Love is the strength of the universe because all other forces remain in the dark places, in the tombs.

The tomb had to be empty, because life if filled with light. Jesus came to show us how to live, and that lesson is one that continues even into death.

So on this grand day of green grass, clear skies, excited children, abundant tables, and an invitation to lay aside the heavy things you carry;;;;;;;;;;

Why not join with ee cummins and say:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Lost In The Dark

2006-04-02T09:01:00.000-07:00

“Lost in the Dark”
John 12:20-36
CCUM April 2, 2006
Rev Carolyn Waters
Sermon Notes
John 12:20-36
20Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
27“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Holy God, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 O God, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. 34The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of All must be lifted up? Who is this Son of All?” 35Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. 36While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.” After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.

Poem from “The Termacollective”……a group of people putting together a spiritual project called “The Box”

What in your life is calling you?
When all the noise of silence, the meetings adjourn, and the lists laid aside

And the wild iris blooms by itself in the dark forest.
What still pulls at your soul.

In the silence between your heartbeats hides a summons…..
Do you hear it?
Name it if you must
Or leave it forever nameless,

But why pretend it’s not there?

What pulls at your soul?

No one can give a definition of soul. But we know what it feels like…The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it---to remain children of the light.
Albert Schweitzer, Reverence for Life

In John Gospel Jesus is to have said: If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. 36While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.

I venture to say that when we have lost touch with our soul…we walk in the darkness. When we have communion with our soul, we live in the light.

Story of 2 Year Academy for Spiritual Formation:

Covenant Group, Don Eddy, Petoskey MI

Suicide note Don left:
Never miss an opportunity to ask a friend or colleague “How is it with your soul.”

It’s a question John Wesley always ask of anyone in any group setting.

“How is it with your soul?”

Martin Buber & Aubrey Hodes
Martin Buber
No encounter with a being or a thing in the course of our life lacks a hidden significance … the highest culture of the soul remains basically arid and barren unless, day by day, waters of life pour forth into the soul from those little encounters to which we give their due.

The “little encounters” with one another. The “little encounters” with life.
The “little encounters” that make us flesh and bone.

RUMI Poet Persia

We began as a mineral,
We emerged into plant life
And then to the animal state,
And then into being human.
And always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring
When we feel the slight recall of being green again.

That’s how a young person turns toward a teacher,
That’s how a baby leans toward the breast without knowing the secret of its desire
Yet turning instinctively

Human kind is being led along an evolving course
Through this migration of intelligences
And though we seem to be sleeping
There is an inner wakefulness
That directs the dream.
And that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.

And just what is the truth of who we are? How far do we have to wonder from our own truth before we suddenly realize the darkness that surrounds us is so dark we can never imagine seeing the light again? How much of “the truth of who we are” do we connect with the image of who God created us to be? How much of our “truth” is in the “light” of who God is.

The inner wakefulness that directs our dreams and startles us back to the truth of who we are is the indwelling presence of God. The spirit of life and light. The essence of our soul.

Mary E Carreiro
The Psychology of Spiritual Growth

The soul is the life force---the only “permanent” part of a person. Evolution is a process of being lifted, by the soul, out of human pain and suffering…Spiritual will means a person uses her energy on behalf of the soul rather than on behalf of the human personality.

So the significance of soul is in the connection with spirit, not self. Or self in relation to spirit not personality?

It can all become rather confusing. I just know the reality of joy and the reality of depression and real forces that make for life and death. Jesus is always on the side of life and the side of joy…………….living in the light.

Our own train wrecks, deep seeded pain, trama, abuse of all kinds……..can easily turn our paths toward total darkness. In those times and in that place of darkness life is hell.

We are invited to live in the light. But we do not simply live there by declaring ourselves followers, by declaring ourselves Christian, or by self determination.

We move from places of darkness to places of light by invitation. The invitation from others inquiring about the state of our souls, by the invitation of Christ in offering forgiveness, by the invitation of a good therapist in healing old wounds, by the invitation of God in opening arms of love. We move from places of darkness to places of light by being people of faith.

Rumi
No one knows what makes the soul wake up so happy! Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil from the face of God.

(Rumi)
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell.
We must get up and take that in,
that wind that lets us live.
Breathe before it’s gone.

Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.

Whole Lotta Love

2006-03-27T10:04:00.000-08:00

“A Whole Lotta Love”
John 3:14-21
March 26, 2006 CCUM
Rev. Carolyn Waters

14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

Odds are that if you were anywhere near a Sunday School class when you were between 8 and 10 years old, you memorized John 3:16. If you know any verse in the scriptures by memory, it’s most likely John 3:16. The verse in and of itself is….simply………..enough.

God so loved the world! That stands on it’s own.

God so loved the world that God sent/gave God’s only Son!

God so love the world that God sent God’s only Son that whosoever believes in him, shall not parish but have everlasting life! Makes for great poetry and not bad theology!

Except that I’d just as soon stay with the God so loved the world part………leave it there. Nice and simple, profound and complex in and of itself enough.

If you are scratching your head and trying to remember who sang “Whole Lotta Love” it was Led Zephlen. The lyrics to that rock song from the 70’s aren’t something to be quoted in a sermon, but the title has a nice ring and came back to me when considering what I wanted to focus on this morning.
Just how much love does it take to love the whole world? So much that only God is capable of such love. What does the statement that God so loved the world imply? And incredible amount of tolerance, forgiveness, and acceptance of the behavior of God’s children! Both when Jesus was credited with speaking the words and our reciting of the words from childhood memory and adult hope.

God so love the world that……….

In loving the world God offered the best gift possible to represent that love.
We attempt the same when we share ourselves with others in ways that go beyond the routine of daily relationships. There are times and situations in which we want to give the very best of what we have or who we are to another because of who they are for us or what they mean to us.

But almost without fail, no gift we give ever fully communicates our love or appreciation. If lucky the gift giving brings the hoped for joy within the spirit of the one we care for.

My mother turned 93 yesterday. She didn’t answer her phone in the morning, which brought worry to my mind as I always call her on Saturday morning and she always answers the phone. I found out later that she was in the community room of her senior apartment building eating birthday cake. She was too busy to sit around waiting for phone calls!

My brother that lives in the community where Mom lives threw a little birthday party for her Wednesday evening. Apparently it was quite the deal. Marti Gras beads, balloons, cupcakes and take out Chinese food. Of course Jacob the 21/2 year old grandson made the party real. My brother Jack and I conspired to give Mom a parakeet and habitat in which to live. We thought it was a safe gift as parakeets were not unfamiliar to our life when growing up. We also thought it would give her some company and something “alive” to talk to. The parakeet is green. Mom ask grandson Jacob what to name the bird to which he immediately said, “Go.” Everything in his world that is green is called “go.” Everything red is called “Stop.” So the bird is called go-go. And mother couldn’t be happier. She said she was so excited Wednesday night she couldn’t sleep.

What do you give a 93 year old mother that doesn’t need anything? You give her a parakeet and a roll of stamps. Why do you give her anything? Because you love her, because and even if she is your mother.

The giving and the loving doesn’t even begin to compare to the depth of love God has for this world or the gift of the person Jesus to show us how to live in relationship with one another and in relationship with God.

The greatest love you have for the one, two, five, or ten most important people in your life doesn’t begin to compare or measure to the depth of love God has for you or for me……………for the whole world.

That’s a whole lotta love!

The joy you offer to those you love or the joy you experience from their gift of life offered to you…………..doesn’t hold a candle, doesn’t even begin to offer a spark of a giant bonfire when compared to the joy God has in the gift of all creation and each and every human being on this earth.

That’s a whole lotta joy!

But as much as I want to simply rest in that vast ocean of love or luxuriate in the depth of that joy………….I can’t.

It’s not enough to simply give a birthday gift and feel good about it.
It’s not enough to realize God’s love for us and feel affirmed and accepted.

If that’s as far as the loving goes, then God’s love is lost on thankless children.

This well known scripture verse follows Jesus encounter with Nichodemus and his confusion about being born again. One can only assume that Jesus was doing his best to explain to those listening the depth of God’s love. In believing the depth of God’s love, transformation occurs for the believer. One is “born again” in spirit, in focus, in intention for living and believing.

When an understanding of that love occurs, an understanding of the representation of that love also occurs. The representation of God’s love is found in the person of Jesus. It is through his life, his ministry, and the way he died and lived beyond death that we see the image of who God longs for God’s children to be. And it is through the representation of God’s love found in the person of Jesus that we see what God expects of us.

Being loved goes a long way. Believing that we are loved is the foundation to our core personality and character. But being loved is not enough. Unless we figure out how to return that love, to respond to that love, then we haven’t fully realized the gift of the love we are offered.

My mother has loved me since her first awareness of me in her womb. I have absolutely no doubt of that. My mother loved me through my stubborn teenage years, my obstinate young adult period, the poor decisions I made in my 30’s and the trials and triumphs I have experienced the last 20 years.

But I didn’t always love my mother. In fact, for a number of years my prayer was that my mother would live long enough that I could learn to love her.

It’s happened. And in loving her, I have a greater appreciation of her love for me.

It makes me think of a couple of Charlie Brown comic strips:
Lucy once said to Charlie Brown, "Discouraged again, eh, Charlie Brown?" "You know what your whole trouble is? The whole trouble with you is that you're you!"
Charlie asks, "Well, what in the world can I do about that?"
Lucy answers, "I don't pretend to be able to give advice...I merely point out the trouble!"
Perhaps the greatest insight of this passage from John is to realize that we are part of the problem and God offers to whatever our problem is, the person of Jesus……….that through his life we can begin to see some solutions to our problems.
However, another conversation between Lucy and Charlie Brown indicates another part of the problem/solution.
Lucy speaks, "You know what the whole trouble with you is, Charlie Brown?"
Charlie answers, "No, and I don't want to know! Leave me alone!" He walks away.
Lucy shouts after him, "The whole trouble with you is you won't listen to what the whole trouble with you is!"
The solution begins with listening. .Perhaps if "you" are the problem, "you" can't be the solution. The solution has to come from outside ourself..
If loving isn’t a two way street, then the power of love, the gift of love, the sacrifice of love has little meaning.

If we are not able to see “our stuff” in the challenge of loving, we seldom reach the grace filled space of realizing the “gift of love”.

Hear again the last three verses of today’s lesson:

19And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

If we dare to be children of the light, children of the love of God, children who see a vision of what life can be and what love can be and what relationships can be when lived in the embrace of God’s love for the world……..

If we dare these things………..not only will our lives be different, but the world will be a different place because of our response to being loved.

Upside Down

2006-03-19T08:22:00.000-08:00

“Upside Down”
John 2:13-25
March 19, 2006 CCUM
Rev Carolyn Waters

Read: Exodus 20:1-17
John 2:13-25
13The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
23When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. 24But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.

The giving of the Ten Commandments is included in the lectionary readings every Lenten season.

(Following are selections from: Rev. Ben E. Helmer http://www.episcopalchurch.org/6087_72521_ENG_HTM.htm)

The Commandments need to be seen in a larger context, as part of God's covenant with God's people. The passage in Exodus that I just read is the conclusion of God inviting Moses up to the mountain and then agreeing to address the people of the Exodus directly, albeit cloaked in thunder, fire, and smoke.

Even amidst the noise and fear of God's speaking, the reader is struck by how passionately God cares for the people and how much God's desire to have a relationship with them shapes the giving of the Commandments. These aren't just the house rules of a stern parent, they are the terms of relationship for God's people who are loved and cared for by their creator. It's almost as though God is saying, "Look, I know what will make you miserable, and here are ten things to avoid that will keep you from misery."

By the time of Jesus' ministry, a whole system had been put in place to uphold the Law and help people who break it find a way back to a right relationship with God. The faithful loved God's law, recited it and its application night and day. In addition, a sacrificial system had been developed so people can offer the proper sacrifice at the Temple and have their relationship with God restored.

Part of that sacrifice involved purchasing ritually clean animals. Since Roman currency was considered idolatrous because it was stamped with the image of Caesar, one had to exchange Roman currency for Temple money to purchase the sacrificial offerings. Anybody who has traveled and changed currency knows the moneychangers always get a fee, and that was exacted on the Temple steps.

Jesus saw this practice for what it was: an unnecessary barrier between God and the children of God. He saw the poor having to borrow money in order to purchase the animals of sacrifice. He heard the arguing and fretting over whether the moneychangers were charging a fair exchange. And he'd had enough. He singled out a table or two, and drove out the dove sellers and the moneychangers. Two interesting points: One, Jesus didn’t get arrested for doing this; and two, in John's account this event took place at the beginning of his public ministry, where the other Gospels place it at the end.

Regardless of placement in the Gospels, the results are the same: controversy. Commentators remark that Jesus wanted to eliminate the system that kept God and the people of God apart, while enriching the pockets of some at the expense of the poor. The new temple will be the spirit of Christ, the presence of God with us, who will replace the building and its sacrificial system. People will no longer need to rehearse sacrificial piety in order to be in a good relationship with God. Jesus, as the new temple, will make that possible forever.

So, the link between the giving of the Ten Commandments and Jesus' passionate love for the people of God is a covenant relationship, one in which God desires to show us love and makes it possible for us to be in a loving relationship with our creator. The giving of the Commandments and the cleansing of the temple are both acts of love that remove barriers we create between God and ourselves.

Today as we worship in places that are deeply special to us, we might reflect on the barriers we have created that could separate people from God in worship. Is our church welcoming? Barrier free? Do we offer hospitality to guests and strangers? Do we take strangers to the coffee hour and make sure they are introduced? In what ways might we better become a place where anyone seeking God might feel they are welcome, safe, and free to enter?

Over the next six weeks you will be receiving information about what it would mean for our congregation to identify itself as a “reconciling congregation.” In so doing, we would be clearly communicating to Denver and to the denomination that we do truly are an “open” place……..for all people. Standing up and stating that we are “reconciling” means that we turn the tables of the General Church over in regard to its discrimination against gay and lesbian people.

DeWitt Jones, a photographer for the National Geographic produced a motivational film a few years ago called “Celebrate What’s Right with the World.” Using his well known skills as a photographer, he approaches what we see in the world with our eyes and hearts and shows that we can look at something and see even more beauty in it if we simply change our perspective. With the slightest adjustment in the way we look at “things”………..life can be very different.

I think that’s what Jesus must have been doing that day. He was able to see beyond the acceptable practice of the people to something greater and more meaningful in our relationship with God. But before he could get others to see what he could see, he had to turn everything upside down.

Hear these words from Jack Johnson’s current hit song from Curious George!

Upside Down

Who's to say
What's impossible
Well they forgot
This world keeps spinning
And with each new day
I can feel a change in everything
And as the surface breaks reflections fade
But in some ways they remain the same
And as my mind begins to spread its wings
There's no stopping curiosity

I want to turn the whole thing upside down
I'll find the things they say just can't be found
I'll share this love I find with everyone
We'll sing and dance to Mother Nature's songs
I don't want this feeling to go away

Who's to say
I can't do everything
Well I can try
And as I roll along I begin to find
Things aren't always just what they seem

I want to turn the whole thing upside down
I'll find the things they say just can't be found
I'll share this love I find with everyone
We'll sing and dance to Mother Nature's songs
This world keeps spinning and there's no time to waste
Well it all keeps spinning spinning round and round and

Upside down
Who's to say what's impossible and can't be found
I don't want this feeling to go away

Please don't go away
Please don't go away
Please don't go away
Is this how it's supposed to be
Is this how it's supposed to be

Jesus Calls Us

2006-03-12T09:09:00.000-08:00

“Jesus Calls Us”
Mark 8:31-38
CCUM March 12, 2006
Rev Carolyn Waters

31Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
34He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
There are so many significant words attributed to Jesus in this passage from Mark that are foundational to meaning of calling oneself a “follower” of Jesus Christ.

I’ll begin this morning with my ending! Claiming the “Christian Faith” as one’s practice means you are a different person because of claiming that identity than if you didn’t claim it.

Now let me twist that for a moment. How are you different and how is your life different because you claim the Christian faith as your religion?

Because you claim Christianity, it implies that you “follow Jesus”.
What is that all about?

The role of a “follower” is to fulfill the tasks requested by the leader.

What is there about your life that is different because you follow the leader?

Most of us are better at giving directions than receiving them!

And then there is the part of the passage about denying self. What’s with that? It may be one of the most counter-cultural challenges we could be given.

My current favorite New Testament Scholar, Wm Loader offers these words for reflection:

These verses have caused considerable confusion in Christian spirituality. Who is doing what? Which self am I denying? With which self am I doing the denying? Is it a matter of not doing what I want to do – for a while, perhaps during Lent – only then to return to myself? Is it saying I need to hate myself or, at least, constantly put myself down – or, if I want to make a good impression, keep doing so when others are listening. It is little wonder that many people have been confused by the rules of the game.
Loader continues:

Clearly we are being offered an alternative model of being. It is for our gain, in our interests, to consider it. That is the appeal. So there is no thought of our abdicating responsibility nor of our being asked to do what we do not want to do. We are being challenged to want something different. Instead of thinking only of ourselves and believing that it is to our good to gain wealth and avoid any path which leads to suffering, we are being challenged to be generous, giving of ourselves, even when it may mean suffering. The first image of ourselves and our good is to be set aside; instead we are to embrace the way of Jesus, of self giving love. Then we will find ourselves, our true selves. The merging of our will and being with God’s will and being, and therefore with love which cares for others as well as for ourselves, is the way of discipleship. It is also the way to real humanness - and the way of Jesus, and ultimately also of God!

The commitment of responding to our individual and unique “calls” to follow Jesus results not in self-sacrifice but in finding self. In finding self, grounded in the spirit of God’s love, one is most able to sacrifice self, to “give it up” for others.

In denying self, following a call, carrying our own cross (which I take to mean our individual purpose in life)………….we find ourselves.

When our life is spend in indulgence, selfish decisions, insular living, cocooned and living under the illusion of protection and safety, according to the “teachings” of what we believe………..in such an approach to life we in fact have no life.

Spiritual writer Henri Nouwen has these words to say about this passage from Mark:
The great paradox of life is that those who lose their lives will gain them. This paradox becomes visible in very ordinary situations. If we cling to our friends, we may lose them, but if we are nonpossessive in our relationships, we will make many friends. If fame is what we seek and desire, it often vanishes as soon as we acquire it, but if we have no need to be known, we might be remembered long after our deaths. When we want to be in the centre, we easily end up on the margins, but when we are free enough to be wherever we must be, we often find ourselves in the centre. Giving away our lives for others is the greatest of all human acts. This will gain us our lives.
Bread for the Journey p. 138

I struggle with “my call”……….. “my cross”………. “my purpose”.

I do not struggle with whether or not I am “called” to ordained ministry. That has always been a clear discernment and decision for my whole adult life. But I do struggle with what I am to be doing with my life as an ordained person. I struggle with how I live out my faith. I struggle with how I witness my belief through my decisions about how I live………what I do with my time, what I do with my money……….what I do with my abilities to lead, to follow, to serve. I constantly struggle.

I so intended and wanted to join the small group for the mission trip to Mississippi in a few weeks. But realized this past week that if I stepped aside from doing that, someone else that wouldn’t get to go if I did, would have a wonderful opportunity and experience. Sometimes we are called to do things, sometimes we are called not to do things.

The “One Book, One Church”…….theme for Lent is Ending Hunger Now by George McGovern, Bob Dole, and Donald Messer. We began a 4 week study last Wednesday night, we will have a church wide discussion of the book on April 23 with one of the authors, Donald Messer. I challenge you to buy the book and read the book. If half of this congregation reads this book it will change who we are as a church. We cannot be reminded enough about how so many people in this world suffer because of hunger.

p.2 Every day 30,000 people die of starvation
That’s 1,250 people every hour
20 people every minute
1 person every 3 seconds

852 million people are hungry right now

From chapter 1 of the book: “There is not a lack of food in the world, but a lack of political will and personal compassion.” (p.3)

“We hear the numbers, but they have no names. Statistics are what Africans call ‘numbers without tears.’ It is only when we experience a hungry person or embrace a starving child that we see the reality behind the statistics.”

I yearn for us……..as a people and as a congregation to have passion for something beyond ourselves.

There are many places of need, there are many voices crying for help.

Following Jesus is about responding to those places of need and those cries for help.

Look again at the call to worship:
Opening:
Jesus calls us To leave the past JESUS CALLS US TO HOPE

Jesus calls us
To travel lightly JESUS CALLS US TO FAITH

Jesus calls us To live fairly
JESUS CALLS US TO JUSTICE

Jesus calls us To risky living JESUS CALLS US TO LIFE

And the question for reflection:
What in you is dying/being born? What in our congregation is dying/coming alive?

Who is Jesus calling you to be?

Where is Jesus calling you to go?

What is Jesus calling you to do?

The Beloved

2006-03-05T06:41:00.000-08:00

The Beloved
Rev Carolyn Waters
Mark 1:9-15 Lent I
March 5, 2006, CCUM

Author Mark McMinn in his book, Finding Our Way Back Home: Turning Back to What Matters Most, says “Remembering is a spiritual endeavor. In remembering we create space for God to meet us on our journey, and we allow our lives to be centered in the security of God’s love.” Remembering is a theme in Scripture, especially throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament. There, we are constantly reminded to remember the faithfulness of God, which is almost always in contrast to the forgetfulness of God’s people. I believe it is the spiritual endeavor of remembering that we are about when we observe the season of Lent. It is a time when we remember who we are and whose we are. So even more so than during the rest of the year, during Lent we focus on remembering who Jesus was. This morning’s Gospel lesson from Mark is a good place to begin.

In today’s lesson we learn some very important things about Jesus. He was baptized, and at his baptism God proclaimed, “You are my beloved”, and then Jesus immediately went into the wilderness where he was confronted by evil and wild beasts, and where angels waited on him.

What we get from these verses may be a mixture of awe and disbelief! We have difficulty relating to the life Jesus lived because it’s focus was so very different from anything we know. Trying to figure out exactly what it means to be a “follower of Jesus Christ” can be a bit confusing if comparing our life to his. What does it mean to follow him if we can never believe we can live as he lived? It can get even more confusing for us when we read in the Gospel of John that Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and, in fact, will do greater works than these….” Can any of us, even begin to say, “We can do greater works than Jesus?” Actually if anyone claimed to be able to do so, we’d turn the other way! What was Jesus saying about who he was and who we could be as his followers? I think the key is that who Jesus was and what his life was all about had to do with his relationship with God, who he knew himself to be in God’s love.

According to Mark, when Jesus was baptized to begin his ministry, he heard God saying he was God’s beloved son. He was loved and blessed by God and it was only after that pronouncement, that affirmation that he began to live out his calling. In remembering this moment in Jesus’ life, can we connect that to our life and who we are?

Henri Nouwen, priest and prolific writer on the subject of spirituality said this about our connection to this moment in the life of Jesus. “….the spiritual life is a life in which you gradually learn to listen to a voice that says, ‘You are beloved and on you my favor rests.’” (Or as in today’s translation, “with you I am well pleased.”) “That is where the spiritual life starts, claiming the voice that calls us the beloved.”

Can we even go there? Can we really comprehend God’s love for us in such a personal way? Henri Nouwen was so convinced of our need to understand this passage of scripture as the foundation for our spiritual life that he wrote a book entitled, “The Life of the Beloved.” In this book he describes what he learned about being loved by God from living in a community with persons with profound physical and mental disabilities, persons who often feel unlovable. He tells the story of a severely handicapped woman named Janet who came up to Henri at worship service one day and said, “Henri, can you bless me?” He then made the sign of the cross on her forehead. And she said to him, “Henri it doesn’t work. No, that is not what I mean.” Henri was embarrassed and said, “I gave you a blessing.” And she said,“No, I want to be blessed.” He could not understand what she meant. He turned to all of the other people at the service and said, “Janet wants a blessing.” He had on a long robe with long sleeves and all the liturgical vestments that would make him viable as someone who could bless someone but he did not know what to do. At that point she again said, “I want to be blessed”, and put her head against his chest. He said he spontaneously put his arms around her, held her, looked into her eyes and said, “Blessed are you, Janet. You know how much we love you. You know how important you are. You know what a good woman you are.” She looked at Henri and said, “Yes, yes, yes, I know.” Henri said he could see all sorts of energy coming back to her. She seemed to be relieved. She realized again that she was blessed. She was loved. And she immediately went back to her place. Then other people began to say, “I want that kind of blessing too.” Henri said, “All these people came to me and I found myself embracing people….and then one of the people in the community who was a staff worker who assisted the handicapped came up to him and said, “Henri can I have a blessing too”? And Henri recalled the powerful moment of looking into the eyes of this big guy, a football player who was not handicapped in the same ways as the others, but how much he still needed the assurance of being blessed, being loved. So Henri put his hand on John’s shoulder and said, “John, you are blessed. You are a good person. God loves you. We love you. You are important.”

Nouwen asks, “Can you claim that and live as the blessed one?” We need that connection, that assurance, that like Jesus, we are known, we are loved, we are chosen, we are blessed by God. That is the beginning point for all that follows in our life and in our discipleship.

As we journey through Lent together, remembering the life and teachings of Jesus, I would like to challenge you to contemplate what it might mean to connect with your faith and the author of that faith from your heart and not just your head. I really believe if we remember Jesus and try to understand who he was and is only from an intellectual perspective, we will never have the courage, the heart, to live as he lived.

But, when we begin to understand what moved him, how he responded to being a beloved child of God and how his courage, his heart could withstand any danger that could come to him in the wilderness, we too can live being beloved by God, knowing we can withstand even times of wilderness.

The ancient poet Basho once said, “I do not seek to follow in the footsteps of those of old. I seek the things they sought.” I do not think as followers of Jesus we are asked to follow him in his footsteps and to live his life. I do believe we are asked to seek to know his heart, and to remember that like he, we too are the beloved children of God.

On The Mountain Top

2006-03-01T17:03:00.000-08:00

"On The Mountain Top"
Mark 9:2-13

"Together with Peter, James, and John, Jesus climbs the mountain, away from the world in which they lived, with its business, its quarrels, its competitions, its jealousies, its sacrifices, and its strange list of priorities. They climbed out of it all, higher and higher, until they were at the top. Then Jesus, who marched them out of the old into the new, started to shine, brighter and brighter, like the moon, like a start, and in the end, like the sun."

This quote from Joseph Donders "Praying and Preaching the Sunday Gospel" calls us up to the mountain top with all the wonder and beauty of any great "religious experience." Up on the Mountain Top where all the cares of the world pass away! Up on the Mountain top away from everything! A time to reassess and reprioritize our life list!

Do you have a life list? A priority list for your life? Mountain Top experiences are a great awakening for shifting what is most important to the top or bottom!

Joseph Donders refers to such a list as strange. At least our priorities show as a strange list compared to the list of needs and priorities of the world. At any rate, Peter, James and John took a weekend holiday, perhaps to reflect and review their life. Their spiritual guide was with them. Jesus may have even directed them to the top of the mountain.

We call it "transfiguration Sunday" because for some reason while there on the top of the mountain, on the holiday or retreat, resting, Peter and the boys saw Jesus in a new way, from a new perspective, from a different angle or direction or with new eyes.

We've all had such moments. Those perfect moments. And if we can't make them last, we at least try to hold on to them so they will never leave us, or we try to reinvent them so we can have the special feeling again.....though it never works.

Peter, James, and John wanted to put up tents for the men of honor and just keep them on their mountain.

It was as if the three disciples had finally figured out what Jesus and the prophets were all about, how beautiful life is or could be, and they wanted to keep it for themselves, or at least keep it in such a way that it might last forever. To stay on the mountain top, a perfect life.

As Colorado residents, you know nothing grows on the top of the mountain! You have to go down into the valley to find the growth that makes a difference, that feeds, waters, and nourishes our lives.

God knew that. God has always known that! You can't just put up an alter and stay put and make life work. Life is about moving on, getting off the mountain tops, murking it thought the valley, and growing.

But what do we know with our strange list of priorities. Our casual thought out life list of goals. Our casual day-timer of activities that keep us on the move, on the go, in the car, with the kids, the culture, the social plans. What do we know, about murking it through the valley and growing?

Well, some of us know a lot. And with time, all of us know more than we want to know.

With time, we all experience the valley. And with confidence and hope, we all have mountaintop experiences to remind us of the brightness, the goodness of life that carry us through the valleys.

My friends Ed and Mary Bonneau from Nebraska know about the mountains and valleys. Ed is a clergy colleague now serving First United Methodist Church in Lincoln.
He ask if I was preaching on the transfiguration story this morning! Believe it or not, when clergy get together we often compare notes and stories.

He said, "I've got a great transfiguration story!" And started talking about January of 2001 when he, wife Mary and their 2 adult boys were out here skiing. The particular day he was remembering, he and Sam his youngest son of 20, were at Winter Park. Ed said it was a perfect day. At one point in their going up and down the mountain, Ed and Sam stopped at the top....stood in the sun....and said, "It doesn't get any better than this."

Then as Ed continued to tell his story his way, he said, "Little did I know that less than 2 months later Sammy would be dead. Hit and killed by a bus while crossing the street in the crosswalk on a green light."

Then Ed said, "that's what the transfiguration is all about.

It's about being up on the mountain, and knowing that you have to go back down into the valley to live. But because you've been on the mountain, you know you can live through the valley, because that's what faith and hope are all about."

Peter wanted to build a tent and keep life safe, comfortable, secure, perfect, on the mountain top.

But a voice came and said: "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!"

It's important that we take the time to go to the top of the mountain. That we take the time to stop, to reflect, to provide some open-space in our lives, and perhaps during that time of open-space we encounter the mystery of life. The power of life, the brilliance of the sun that shines in such a way that we wonder, could this be what it means to see Jesus?

We must take that time. It's giving our attention to God, and to God's life list for our life.

God is constantly asking for out attention! Listen!

But in the experience of the encounters that God puts on our path, daily we have to listen.

Listen! Not to our own voices, not to the voices and demands of the world around us, not to everything and everyone else, but we have to listen..........

Yesterday as I drove across Nebraska and the Platte River valley God yelled for my attention for almost 50 miles as the Sand Hill cranes were doing their annual spring dance through the sky for as far as the eye could see in any direction the eye could look. It was so beautiful I cried. Then the cell phone rang and brought me back to earth and reality. It was a mountain top experience in the plains of the heartland.

God cried out to us to listen. If we slow down enough and notice God calling we will hear.

Are you listening? Are you listening in such a way that when life throws the hard balls, when the valley's become the valley of death, will you be able to keep walking?

Will you still have faith?

Are you going to remember that the mountaintop of light, is for the purpose of moving on, not for the purpose of keeping everything just right?

"All Things to All People"

2006-02-05T08:43:00.000-08:00

“All Things to All People”
Rev Carolyn Waters
CCUM February 5, 2006

1 Corinthians 9:16-23
16If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! 17For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. 18What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.
19For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. 20To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. 21To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. 22To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. 23I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

Paul was under fire by the locals. Not that unlike the way many people often feel about Paul today, his contemporaries were critical………..not just of the things he said, but the way he lived out his faith.

I’ve always liked Paul, a lot! He has some of the deepest wisdom for living a passionate Christian life of any of the Epistle writers. Of course, Paul has more pages attributed to him in the New Testament than any other individual so one would hope that here and there would be pearls of wisdom!

But one can also expect that someone so passionate will often say things that others disagree with, or that Paul might have even regretted speaking. I know there are several passages I regret Paul having spoken!

But this passage from Corinthians, gives ample opportunity for question and discussion.

“All things to all people!” What kind of clarity does that communicate about a conviction of belief? When with the Jews, be as a Jew? When with the Gentiles, be as a Gentile? Follow the law with those who follow the law, and then go outside the law with others? Be weak when others are weak, strong with others are strong.

Where is the clear and convincing behavior that identifies Paul as an apostle if he comes across so wishy washy?

Paul defends himself by proclaiming in verse 23 “I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings”

Does that justify the lack of clarity in his stance of what it means to live out one’s faith?

From my current favorite New Testament scholar Wm Loader comes these words: (http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/BEpEpiphany5.htm)

“Paul is eager to point out that he does not mean anything goes. This had always been the accusation: if you drop some parts of the Law, don't you invite lawlessness!? Fundamentalists have the same fear today about dropping any part of the biblical law. For Paul, the law of Christ demands much more than the biblical law, but it is also able to relate to new situations more flexibly, because its starting point is not rules but a central principle and relationship. Paul is arguing for flexibility. Notice that the underlying motivation is love. Paul puts it in terms of preaching the gospel and gaining people. His evangelism is not a numbers game, but one of drawing people into a relationship with this God who loves, and produces in people the fruit of the Spirit, which is love.”
Those are some thoughts worth thinking about!

The law of Christ demands much more than the biblical law.

The law is also able to relate to new situations with more flexiblity, because, because the starting point of the law is not rules but a central principle and relationship.

Paul,listen to this, PAUL is arguing here for flexibility.

The underlying motivation………for Paul, and he says for the Christian is love!

And then the gem of what Loader says is this:
Paul’s “evangelism is not a numbers game, but one of drawing people into a relationship with this God who loves, and produces in people the fruit of the Spirit, which is love.”

Thus the source of his words, “I have become all things to all people.”
I hesitate to pretend that I can do that. In healthy psychological terms I quickly think of the danger of co-dependency, taking care of the world, or pretending to take care of our little corner of the world. Too much! There are boundaries to respect, there are great concerns for safety, there are issues of dependency that prevent independence.

I can’t be in my living day to day, all things to all people. And in reality, Paul couldn’t either.

But in my belief system? In the things I hold as essential to my faith in God and my belief in humanity might there not be room for my heart to be big enough to attempt to understand those things I don’t understand. Might there be room enough in my heart to know that others have a story and a history and wounds too deep for words that make them the people they are. And in opening myself to the memory of kindness and gentleness, to the underlying motivation of the Christian faith which Paul says is Love, by rehearsing in my thoughts and actions that loving is more important than the laws or the rules or the tradition.

Might not Paul’s wisdom once again prove valuable by reminding us to remain flexible as we work on this vision of God’s Kingdom on Earth, of God’s presence among us and in us.

Might not I be challenged to be willing to be all things to all people in order that I might understand the presence of God within them, not just within myself?
Paul is sneaky! I think he’d be the first to be thrown out of the church today for disobeying the law.

He might even be one of the clergy brought up on charges for performing weddings that are against the law!

Gosh, I bet he would have gone to see Brokeback Mountain.

And I believe he would have been on the congress floor crying for peace.

Paul, in his being all things for all people in order to see the vision of God’s love in this world would have been a great panel member of interfaith discussions.
But finally what Paul was doing then, and what Paul challenges us to do now, is to see the world and its people through the eyes of God………….not through our own distorted and clouded eyesight.

To see beyond our assumptions, our prejudice, and our limited understanding of what is right and wrong. To be flexible with our ridged places, and generous with our love.

"Who Is This Man?"

2006-01-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

“Who Is This Man?”
Mark 1:21-28
Rev Carolyn Waters
CCUM January 29, 2006

Mark 1:21-28
21They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 23Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” 25But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” 26And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 28At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
This is the word of God for the People of God!
Thanks be to God!

Those of you close to my age, give or take maybe 10 years!!!! May remember from your early days getting home from school and turning on the TV about 4:30 in the afternoon and there in bold black and white were “Tonto and The Lone Ranger!” Every afternoon, without fail, they would arrive at the very moment of great need to assist someone in distress or avert acts of injustice. With an amazing sense of timing, it never took more than thirty minutes to save the damsel, or prevent the bad men from taking the town people’s money. And always, always before Tonto could mount his horse The Lone Ranger would ride off into the sunset always leaving a small group of kind act beneficiaries scratching their heads and saying, “Who was that masked man?”

Everyone always knew who Superman was! The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, never identified himself except by his own deeds, and then there was the mask!
There must have been some of the same confusion about Jesus. The crowds were at the synagogue to observe the Sabbath and receiving teaching from the scribes. It was a holy day like any other holy day until one teacher began to speak with a kind of authority that was unlike that of the non-tenured professors. Some were astounded by the words of this man. Others were enlightened in a way they had not been enlightened before. But one, the one that always challenged the teaching assistants at the synagogue raised his voice and tried to distract from Jesus teachings by challenging his authority to teach, and proclaiming before Jesus was ready to have the words spoken that Jesus was the “Holy One of God.” It was as if the mad one, the one with “unclean spirits” was trying to discredit Jesus by naming his source of authority. It would have been the same thing as taking the mask off the masked man.

New Testament scholar Wm Loader says this about Mark’s passage:
"Jesus silences the demon and demands he depart. The demon does so, but not without yelling at the top of his voice. The exorcism is achieved. The demoniac has been liberated. For those of us brought up with strict scientific methods such accounts of exorcism call for more informed explanations. They feel so strange that we may want to avoid them altogether. It is then very hard to appreciate Mark who has made them so central. There are ways of slipping the awkwardness we feel. The trouble is we may end up slipping past the message of Mark. However we understand exorcisms, those reported from the ancient world or from present day cultures unlike our own, something real is happening. People are being set free. Physical contortions and hugely dramatic moments will occur in many different therapies, whether the frame of thought is demonology or modern psychotherapy. "

"The important thing is liberation, setting people free. This is an essential component of the 'good news' of God's reign. It is a demonstration of what is meant when John predicts that Jesus will baptize with the Spirit. For Mark exorcising unclean spirits is a primary function of the Holy Spirit and the key element one should recognize in what Jesus is doing."

Well, Jesus started out teaching, dealt with the interruption, and then continued his teaching.
Teaching about what? We really don’t know. Actually it’s a challenge to figure out exactly what Jesus primary theme is, other than his focus on the Kingdom of God, AND his theme of liberation……….setting people free.

He was actually quite good at being who he needed to be, depending upon the situation and what was called for. Whether it was compassion for the woman at the well or a challenge to the church officials, inviting himself to eat with the tax collectors or avoiding the trappings of popularity with the masses, Jesus was able to show up and do what was needed, then move on.
Not that much unlike the Lone Ranger! He left people scratching their heads and asking “who is this?” “What exactly is going on here?” But unlike the Lone Ranger, he was not afraid to identify himself as the “Son of the Living God.” And unlike the Lone Ranger, he still leaves me scratching my head and asking “Who exactly is this man?”

Loader makes a wonderful statement at the end of his commentary on Mark 1:21-28. He says our challenge is to create the space, the ‘synagogue’, "where our madness can come face to face with the holiness of Jesus. That also means coming to terms with our own madness."

In other words in order to consider the depth of Jesus teachings and actually receive something significant from them, our own madness must come to the surface and encounter the holiness of who Jesus is. Loader says that means we must “come to terms with our own madness!” Wait just a minute. Do I really want to go there? Isn’t it much easier to have an understanding of a Jesus who rides in on a beautiful horse and takes care of the sins of the world, then rides off into the sunset leaving me to benefit from his having been here?

What about this Jesus that might challenge me to face my “own madness?” What am I to do with this Jesus that challenges me to look at myself and my part in the brokenness of my world and the world about me?

Just in case you are having trouble identifying any brokenness in your world hear this true story as told by Diane Carman in her column last Friday in the Denver Post:

By virtue of her age and her diminutive stature, 85-year-old Ellie Lindecrantz surely qualifies as a little old lady. Nobody would dare call her that, though. She's made of tougher stuff.
Still, occasionally everybody needs help, and on Monday it was Ellie's turn.

She had arrived at Denver International Airport about 1:30 p.m. to catch a 3:09 flight to Florida. She has serious coronary artery disease and has found that spending a few months of the year at sea level works wonders. Her husband had driven their car down and planned to meet her at the airport when she arrived.

Ellie had requested a wheelchair to take her to the gate and was waiting under the arrival/departure screens when she started to feel chest pains. "I hurt a lot," she said. "I knew I needed help."

A young man stopped to look at the screens overhead. "I said I had severe chest pains and really needed some help," she said. "The man said, 'I hope you feel better,' and walked away."
Ellie had four nitroglycerin tablets in her pocket. She took one, but the pain continued.
She called to another person nearby asking for help. She just needed to get to the airport urgent-care facility, she said.

The woman kept walking.

Ellie took another nitro.

The wheelchair still hadn't arrived, she was still hurting, and she was getting scared, so Ellie took a few steps toward a woman wearing a uniform and monitoring the lines at the ticket counter. "I said that I really needed somebody to help me," Ellie said.
The woman looked at her ticket and said, "You should ask American Airlines to help you."

Ellie sat down. She took another nitro, but the pain was severe and she was beginning to panic, so she called her daughter, Greta Lindecrantz, on her cellphone.

Greta was in her car, driving to Golden, but she dialed 911 immediately. The Lakewood dispatcher picked up the call and patched it through to Denver, which transferred her to DIA dispatch.
"I told the person where my mother was, that she was having heart pain and that she needed help," Greta said. "He said, 'We haven't had any emergency calls.'
"This is an emergency call," Greta told him. "My mother needs help."
"What do you want me to do about it?" said the call-taker.

In the meantime, Ellie, alone in a crowded airport, had taken her last nitro. She still had chest pains. It had been nearly 30 minutes, and she was frightened.

Finally, the wheelchair attendant arrived.

"I told him that I needed to go to the medical part of the airport right away," Ellie said. But he didn't understand. The attendant didn't speak English.

He could tell that something was wrong, though, so he took her to another airport worker, a friend who could translate for them. As soon as he knew what she needed, the attendant sped her through the crowds to the infirmary, where she was stabilized and dispatched by ambulance to the hospital.

"It was not a good experience," Ellie said later from her bed at Exempla St. Joseph Hospital.
The worst part for her was the sense of abandonment.

The throbbing swarm of human activity was devoid of humanity. Ordinary people looked the other way as she pleaded for someone to help save her life.

They were in a hurry.

They had planes to catch.

"Everybody is very busy," Ellie said. "I realize this. But we're not people anymore. We don't have time to be people."

In a culture obsessed with time, the airport scene rises above ordinary punctiliousness. It is the pinnacle of self- important, buzzing, on-time activity.

And it's the pits of human kindness.

Ellie will be back there soon. She hoped to be released from the hospital late Thursday, and when she gets the OK from her doctor, she'll try again to fly to Florida.
But this time she'll take a friend with her all the way to Fort Myers. It's the only way she can be sure someone will be there who's not too busy to care.

“We’re not people anymore. We don’t have time to be people.”
Maybe this man Jesus, can once again teach us how to be people.

A Little Get Up And Go

2006-01-22T08:53:00.000-08:00
“A Little Get Up And Go”
Mark 1:14-20
January 22, 2006 CCUM
Rev. Carolyn Waters

Don’t you think it would have been exciting to have had the opportunity to have actually been one of the guys out fishing that day, doing their usual tasks of making their living, working as on any other day, chatting about the weather, the pending rain storm or the upcoming Broncos game………..and out of nowhere, completely unexpected comes this stranger that’s been the talk of the town, walks up to the guys with their fishing nets and says, “come with me! Leave all this behind. Are we ever going to be in for a ride! This is something you really won’t want to miss out on, come, follow me.”

Wow! Talk about a life changing experience!

Really, think about it. Wouldn’t it have been an amazing thing to have actually had the real life experience of being approached by the man Jesus and invited to join in on his little escapade. You would not have had any idea what would happen. You would not have known that where you were going to eat, or sleep, or what you were going to wear. You would not have know what you might experience or what history you would be making.

You would have simply been invited to take a pass for the day on mending your nets and going out later in the night to fish and swat mosquitoes!

Would you have gone? Or is it easier to just fantasize about what it might have been like to be invited!

I’ve always been one for taking adventures. I’ve always been one for doing things that other people don’t do. That’s probably why I played trombone in Junior High and High School band. One of two girls in a sea of football players at the district band events! But the two of us who were not football players always won out for first part, ahead of the football players. And then there was the bus-driving career I had the last two years of high school. It’s the way the busses got driven in my small town, but again it was usually the guys. This particular year three girls went to bus-driving school. We were the only three out of 200 high school guys on the college campus for two weeks being trained and laughed at. We passed in the upper 5%…..1/3 of the group failed. We drove the buses!

And then there’s the whole chapter of going into ministry when “women” just didn’t do that. There were times in the past 30 years that I thought I should have listed to that warning, and taken another path………..but in the current analysis of my life, I’m glad I didn’t.

In many ways it feels like my life had been one adventure after another. Moving from state to state, place to place, congregation to congregation, football team to football team………..constant change, constant growth, lots of adventure, a number of bad mistakes, and many opportunities.

Would I have gotten up from my comfortable position as first part fisherwoman net repair person and followed Jesus?

Well, let me think about that one for a moment!

What did this guy look like?

What kind of job security did he offer?

How was the pension fund doing in the current market?

Did his Masters of Divinity come from an accredited institution of higher learning?

Were the other followers intelligent people?

Had he made a fool of himself in public places?

By the time I finished checking his references, my guess is that he would have passed me by and gone down the fishing bank to more willing listeners and potential followers.

I’d like to imagine that I would have followed reckless abandon and just gotten up and walked. No questions asked.

An adventure of a lifetime I think…. it would have been.

William Loader, one of my favorite NT scholars, says that “the calling of James and John and Simon and Andrew to leave all and follow……….function as a protest not against life at home, but more generally against societal structures which simply perpetuate the past and trap people into the service of the status quo and its gods. But Jesus’ socially disruptive call upset the system not only for those called but also for those left behind. It called for a new way of looking at life, wherever you are. There is a new set of priorities. This means changed values, but it is more than that. It means a new god, or better, a return to the God of compassion and justice.” “That,” Loader says, “will make a huge difference wherever we are.”

So my own answer to my pondering about whether I would have gotten up and gotten on with following Jesus is that either way, I would have been changed because of who Jesus is. Whether I followed him then or stayed behind, whether I follow him now, or stay behind………….I am not the same person and the world is not the same place because he was.

And because he was, I am a different person than who I might have been had he not been.

So in my pondering if I would have followed if invited, the answer seems obvious that I have, that I am, that I did.

And you? What about you?

Did you, are you, have you followed? Or have you been invited to follow?

Follow what? In the footsteps, in the intention, giving up anything at all or choosing in any way to live your life differently because of who this man was……………do you follow this person?

Dallas Willard is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and author of a popular book about four years ago, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God says of discipleship or following:

“A disciple or apprentice is simply someone who has decided to be with another person, under appropriate conditions, in order to become capable of doing what that person does or to become what that person is.”

Ok, so I’d follow this man Jesus in order to do what he does? I don’t know about that. Don’t know that I’d be interested in that job description! Don’t think I like the retirement plan.
What else does Willard say about discipleship and following Jesus?
Hear his words continue:

“How does this apply to discipleship to Jesus? What is it, exactly, that he, the incarnate Lord, does? What, if you wish, is he "good at"? The answer is found in the Gospels: he lives in the kingdom of God, and he applies that kingdom for the good of others and even makes it possible for them to enter it themselves. The deeper theological truths about his person and his work do not detract from this simple point. It is what he calls us to by saying, "Follow me."
Ok, let me re-think this for a moment or a life-time. What Jesus does is that he lives in the Kingdom of God, and following him is about my learning how to live in the kingdom of God. That might be a life description that I can accept. So following Jesus and doing what he does is about living in the Kingdom of God.

What else? What about me?

Willard says:
“Another important way of putting this is to say that I am learning from Jesus to live my life as he would live life if he were I. I am not necessarily learning to do everything he did, but I am learning how to do everything I do in the manner in which he did all that he did.”
That a nice fresh twist on WWJD. Rather than pretending to live out “What would Jesus Do,” I live out what will Carolyn do learning from What Jesus Did?” WWCDLFWJD! Think it could catch on? Except that you have to put your name in there, not mine!
Willard continues:

“So as his disciple I am not necessarily learning how to do special religious things, either as a part of "full-time service" or as a part of "part-time service." My discipleship to Jesus is, within, clearly definable limits, not a matter of what I do, but of how I do it. And it covers everything, "religious" or not.”

Just wondering, does anyone have the energy, or the time, or the interest….or the desire….To Get Up and Go?

"Anything Different?"

2006-01-08T08:08:00.000-08:00
“Anything Different?”
January 8, 2006 CCUM
Rev Carolyn Waters

Welcome back! It’s really good to see you! It’s really good to be here!

Welcome back! Back from the holidays! Back from trips here and there! Perhaps back from taking a little time off from the regulars of your life…………..Welcome back!

But especially I say welcome back to the routine, to the things in your life that are regular!

If there is such a thing!

It’s January, a good time to lie dormant and reflect on what is. A great time to finish up indoor projects, an appropriate time to hope for a snow day. In the tradition of the church year, or the liturgical calendar, we are in Epiphany! The season when we remember the light of the star that guided the Wise One’s on their new spiritual path. The season when we rehearse the baptism of Jesus and are asked to remember our own baptism. And its just early enough in a new calendar year to be challenged to set new goals for ourselves or to make changes for the year ahead. I like this month more and more.

Last week I went to get a new driver’s license. As I was answering those familiar questions of height, weight, eye and hair color something happened to me that had never happened before. I’m not talking about a sudden desire to tell the truth about my weight, rather the shock came when the young woman behind the counter ask for hair color. I said brown. Then I said, “or is it grey?” She just looked at me and smiled! Then I said, I’ve never put down grey, what do you think?” She smiled again and said with a sheepish grin, “I think maybe it’s grey!”

Great! Now I have grey hair instead of brown! I still think I have a long way to go to catch up with some of the rest of you, but it’s a significant change for me!

If change and transformation are not a part of what pushes or pulls you into a new year, then you are missing a wonderful opportunity for self-assessment and reflection.

In the reading from Acts Paul questions the disciples who are with him and asks: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” A number of things can be read into that question, but the one that I think makes the most sense to reflect on would be this, “Since you became believers, is anything different?”

Paul was checking out the source of their baptism or the point of their becoming believers, to make sure they knew about Jesus. And further, he wanted to make sure that if they were baptized, then something about their life had changed. It would not have been possible to have “received the holy spirit,” and stay the same person as you were before receiving the holy spirit.

The question I take from Paul’s encounter with the followers is simply, “Is anything different?” Is anything different about your life now than it was before? Is anything different today than it was a year ago? Is there any part of life that because you say you believe in Christ, has changed?

In a scene from “Walk the Line” the current film portraying the life of Johnny Cash; young Cash goes into a small recording studio in Memphis a shy young man with a dream to sing but with little confidence or passion about life. The experienced recording producer, that has young Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Louis pictures on his wall, listens to JR Cash sing an old gospel tune. He stops Cash and asks if there is anything else he could sing. Johnny is offended that the man doesn’t want gospel music. The producer says, “you have to sing it like you believe it.” Johnny was insulted again, feeling this man was accusing him of not believing in God, which may have very well been the case. The producer kept pushing Johnny, “sing me a song and make me believe you believe what you are singing.” And then he said something to the effect of, “It doesn’t matter if you believe in God, what matters is whether or not you believe in yourself.”

Cash was angry, and he started to sing. He started to sing with passion, with conviction, with a purpose and meaning. On that day, he recorded his first record.

I have always believed that life lived without passion is flat, kind of like the absence of the Holy Spirit! And I also agree that the content of our belief is not the most important aspect, rather the importance of our belief has to do with the extent to which our belief shapes and changes us, transforms us into “new beings” or grounds us in our own convictions. And from that grounding place, from that baptismal place, what we say we believe is reflected in who we are………………and who we are is reflected in whether or not we believe enough in ourselves to live out the unique spark of who God created and gifted us to be.

So my question to you; is there anything different about who you are since the last time you said that you are a believer?

Much like the question Paul asked the disciples, is anything different, has anything changed, have you received the Holy Spirit? Or are you in the process of undergoing transformation? Is you hair getting grey?

A book called Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman the ever-popular author of the children’s book More Spaghetti, I Say! is a delightful read about her life path taken after a divorce in her 40’s. For the past eighteen years she has lived as a nomad in the world without a permanent address and no more possessions than she can carry on her back. Midway through her story she says this:

"As a kid I sought spirituality in the synagogue, but I found words, music, social events, and fundraising. The rituals, the social stuff, and the camaraderie were great, but I never felt spiritual."

"I have also looked in Protestant, Catholic, Unitarian, and Quaker church. I looked in Nicaragua at the First Communion of Marco’s daughter. The setting was right: the chapel was dimly lit, the voice of the priest was soothing, and the sun-illuminated stained-glass windows told me that this was a holy place. But I didn’t feel anything spiritual. Not inside or outside. Any my Israeli experience wasn’t even close."

"In Palenque, considered by many to be a particularly spiritual place, I felt the presence of the ancient Mayans, but it was the dramatic history of the people that set off my imagination, and not really anything spiritual."

"Little do I know, as my plane flies over the Pacific Ocean, how deep and intensely spiritual my Bali experience is going to be."
p. 136-137

Rita Gelman tried to find spirituality in all the right places, but finally found her spiritual life deep within herself, with the help of a wise teacher that taught her how to look, to listen, to reflect, and to be open.

I tremble with trepidation at the thought of being responsible for your ability or inability to touch the holy that is all about you. I also tremble with the responsibility as a pastor and preacher to do the best job I know how to awaken and open you to what is already in front of you.

Paul asked his disciples if they had received the Holy Spirit. I ask you if your faith journey has made any difference in your life, if you are living in a world of change and transformation from the inside out.

What are you living for? What are you moving towards? How do you love? In what ways do you give? How have you changed? What have you learned? What difference does your life make? And is there any desire within you, to see beyond this day to something new, something challenging, and something that will awaken your soul, a journey that could change your life?

Who will go with you? Who are the people who you will tell your story to and create new chapters with?

It’s a new year. Is anything different?

Fron Darkness to Light

2005-12-11T08:40:00.000-08:00
“From Darkness to Light”
John 1:6-8, 19-28
Advent III December 11, 2005
Rev Carolyn Waters CCUM

I confess to being a bit of a “sentimentalists” when it comes to Christmas lights. For me the main reason to have a Christmas tree is in order to put lights on it and then take a good portion of the evening to sit in an otherwise dark room and just stare at the tree. Even goofy looking trees are beautiful when you put a few lights on them.

I’ll even admit to having oddly strung lights on trees in my front yard, one of those reindeer that has a head that moves, and a specially designed swirl tree from Target.

I don’t have a train with moving light wheels, or a blown up anything. That just doesn’t seem natural to me, but I suppose if there were little people living in my house I might succumb to almost anything to brighten their imagination or tweak their curiosity about the magic and the mystery of Christmas.

The presence of light coming into our darkness is much of that magic. The wonder of hope being born in the midst of despair is much of the mystery.
The shadows of the not-so-late afternoon are cutting down on the warmth and the strength of the sun. We know from last weeks record low temperatures that we don’t have to wait for the winter solstice to have winter……and cold……….bitter cold temperatures that chill to the bone
Maybe I harbor secret desires that the lights of trees, outdoor displays will do away with the darkness that surrounds us. It seems for a while to cause us to want to be helpful to those who are hurting, the present-less, the homeless. More than coins hit the kettles of the Salvation Army collection tripods. Yet we know that next year the same problems, well, you don't have to wait until next year at Christmas, by January the old, the homeless, the hungry, the needy, the present-less will still be there.
So let’s just turn up the volume and put a few more strings of lights in our little corner of the world so there is a place that shines a little brighter in the beginning days of a cold, dark, and lonely world.
John knew about darkness and despair. John was a nobody in a land of political oppression with a people who had little to expect let alone hope for.

John spoke of the light coming into the darkness of the lives of the people then and his words still speak of light coming into our darkness.

The darkness for us is not as obvious, not as visible as the darkness of the street person, or the unemployed single parent, or the family that has just received news of tragic loss.

Our darkness, while not as visible, is still darkness. That’s why it’s not visible! I don’t know the dark corners of your world, and unless I am willing to share them, you don’t know mine. My guess would be that even if we had the courage to speak of our dark corners, that there are still places so dark that even though they are our corners, we still cannot see into them.

Despair and depression grow from such places. Loneliness and heartache feed such places. Spiritual wastelands lead us to such places of darkness and desert highways that we may be left to wonder if life will ever be different, if the light of day will ever come over the wasteland of despair.

I have known several people who have chosen to end their life by suicide.
I cannot imagine a place of more darkness than the corner from which you cannot escape, the corner of darkness from which you can see no light or hope.

I have watch families bear the shock of unthinkable news of tragic death. It takes years and then sometimes never to recover from the words of a coroner at your door or the voice of a Chaplin on the phone, or the military officers words.

Or there is the slow suffering that comes from illness, disease, depression, and oppression leaving one to plead with God; “Would somebody please turn the light on.”

Bishop Will Willimon tells the story of Rabbi Hugo Grynn who was sent to Auschwitz as a little boy. In the midst of the concentration camp, the death and horror many Jews held onto whatever shreds of their religious observance they could. One cold winter's night Hugo's father gathered the family in the barracks. It was the first night of Chanukah...the feast of Lights. The young child watched in horror as his father took the family's last pad of butter and made a makeshift candle using a string from his ragged clothes. He then took a match and lit the "candle". "Father, no!" Hugo cried. "That butter is our last bit of food! How shall we live?" "We can live for many days without food! We cannot live for single minute without hope. This is the fire of hope. Never let it go out. Not here. Not anywhere."
http://home.twcny.rr.com/lyndale/Advent%203B.htm

John the Baptist acting like a fool in the wild places says the light will come, the light will be turned on, the trees will be lit, there will be a path that you can see to take and know where to go.

Someone will come and show us the way about how to live this life. Someone will come and show us the way about how to get through those days that seem as if they will never end and tomorrow will never come.
Someone will come and show us the way that leads to a place in our soul that will give us the spiritual depth to believe that even when our world is dark, even when we are enveloped in darkness…………light will come. Light will come because nothing remains the same, change is only one breath away, the energy of the universe is focused on life, not death.

Maybe I like the lights on the trees and the buildings and in the yards because they makes me notice things I don’t usually notice. They help me to see things I haven’t seen. They show me the obvious in a new way.

The light that is offered to us in the coming of a “savior”………..is a light that shows us the obvious in a new way. The light of “life” that we call the Christ Child is the birth of human possibility, a gift of God to God’s children to show us what we had not realized about our own lives.

And that is, that in the dark places, a light can shine that gets us through the wilderness. The coming of a “child”; the light of “life” brightens those places we think impossible, and they are impossible if we attempt to survive them on our own.

In an Advent book of readings John Heagle is quoted as saying: “ In an age which offers a variety of escapes from the human condition, Christians are more than ever a sign of contradiction. They continue to believe that the search for God must begin with the acceptance of the human. They believe this because it is in the stable of humanity that God has come in search of us.

In the human experience of Jesus, Heagle says, God became available to us as the depth of human life. Thus, a Christian believes that the experience of ultimate meaning comes not from a leap out of the human condition, but a journey through its dark waters.” (p. 66 Advent)

The light comes and shows us what we had not seen. The light shines and reveals what we have turned away from. During a time of the longest days of darkness, there is a word slowly appearing, seeping into our darkness to say “yes.”

“Yes” there is hope.

“Yes” there is light in the midst of darkness.

“Yes” no matter how dark it gets or how impossible it feels, there is reason to go on. There is reason to look ahead; there is reason to believe.

Standing on the Promises Advent 2

2005-12-04T08:52:00.000-08:00
“Standing on the Promises”
Isaiah 40:1-11
Rev Carolyn Waters
CCUM December 4, 2005 ADVENT I

The words of Isaiah ring familiar beauty to our ears. I would assume that most of you are reminded of the beautiful selection from Handel’s Messiah………….Comfort Ye. Words written in 1741 and first performed in 1742, during a time of Handel’s life that one would have thought his career to be over, ending pretty much as a failure. And as so often happens in the world of the artist, his best and most famous work came toward the end of his life. Perhaps that is why Handle understood the words so well and could give them voice through his music.

This passage from Isaiah couldn’t be more perfect as we prepare for the “savior” of the world. As we anticipate that God will come and be with us in the midst of all the craziness of life, in the midst of war and pain, brokenness and separation…in the midst of poverty and oppression, these words of comfort come once again as they have for generation after generation to promise the presence of God in the wild places of the world.

Ralph Klein of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago says that in this passage God is speaking to the divine council or angelic attendants “telling them to reassure Jerusalem that her hitch in captivity is over, that she has already suffered twice as much as she deserved.” The voice is crying, in the wilderness……….to get ready for God’s presence, to prepare a highway for God. To Preach it! To believe that God will come and care for God’s people, that God will come and comfort the afflicted, the broken, the lost, the hurt, the lonely.

Klein says that the important message of this passage is to remember, “While everything in the world is transient and fickle, God’s word of promise is always sure.”
http://www.textweek.com/prophets/isaiah40a.htm

Our world and our lives are transient and fickle…God’s word of promise is sure.
We do a little grumping now and then about the meaning of Christmas, or the lost meaning of Christmas…I participate in it as well. But I’m aware in the light of this reading from Isaiah that the intention of Christmas may even be lost on we Christians who grump about the secular celebrations.

My stance this year on the secular celebrations, is that at least there is a time in the year that some attention is brought to the Christ story, no matter how commercial or artificial………..at least it’s an opportunity for some child to innocently ask “Who is Jesus?”

But deeper than that, hear again the words I used in speaking of who God is in this passage from Isaiah, as we anticipate that God will come and be with us in the midst of all the craziness of life, in the midst of war and pain, brokenness and separation…in the midst of poverty and oppression, these words of comfort come once again as they have for generation after generation to promise the presence of God in the wild places of the world.

To believe that God will come and care for God’s people, that God will come and comfort the afflicted, the broken, the lost, the hurt, and the lonely.

From time to time that may include us. At some point in our life it will include us. Most likely it will be in those moments of touching our mortality, or walking the journey of death with those we love. Most of the world lives in emotional and physical places of brokenness and oppression day after day.

And we say, in our rehearsal of the story of a savior being born, that God will come and give comfort to our hurting world.

We believe that. We believe it and have stood on that promise year after year all of our lives in the same way that Comfort Ye has been sung year after year since 1742, in the same way that the birth narrative of Jesus has been told year after year for at least 1900 years……….We believe the promise of God to be with us.

Paul Tillich, from The Shaking of the Foundations: 1955
“The words of this great chapter sound like the rising and falling waves in a turbulent ocean. Darkness and light follow each other; after the depth of sin and punishment, the prophet announces forgiveness and liberation. But the wave falls, and the prophet asks himself how he could have made such an announcement, when all the goodness of mortal men is as the flower of the field, which fades because the breath of God blows upon it. But he does not remain in the depths of his melancholy: Over against human mortality the word of God shall stand forever. There is something eternal to which we can cling: Be not afraid, the Lord God shall come with strong hand. So the wave rises, and then again it falls: The nations are as a drop of water and a piece of dust; all the nations are as nothing before Him, they are counted as less than nothing. Again the wave rises: God stands above the circle of the earth, above all created things, above the highest and the lowest! And when once more the wave falls and the servant of God complains that he does not receive justice from God, the answer is that God acts beyond human expectation. (God) He gives power to the faint and to (the one) him that hath no might (God) He increaseth strength. (God) He acts paradoxically; (God) He acts beyond human understanding.”

Tillich goes on to say that it is our human situation that we suffer. But that the prophet knew the meaning of our suffering beyond the moment, beyond the history, looking to the ultimate power and meaning and majesty of being.

Tillich said: “He knew two orders of being: the human, political, historical order, and the divine, eternal order. Because he knew these two orders, he could speak as he did, moving continually between the depth of human nothingness and the great height of divine creativity.”

“The human order, the order of history, is primarily the order of growing and dying.”

“The order beyond the order of history is the divine order. And it is paradoxical: men are like grass, but the word of God spoken to them shall stand forever. Men stand under the law of sin and punishment, but the divine order breaks through it and brings forgiveness. Men faint, falling from the height of their moral goodness and youthful power, and just when they have fallen and are weakest, they run without weariness and rise up with wings as eagles.”

“God acts beyond all human assumptions and valuations. He acts surprisingly, unexpectedly, paradoxically.”

Wow! Wow! God acts beyond anything we can imagine!

We have trouble imagining a virgin birth! God acts beyond anything we can imagine!
We have trouble accepting the contradictions of holiday celebrations and the Gospel story. God acts beyond anything we can imagine!

We wonder where the cold will sleep and the hungry will eat. God acts beyond anything we can imagine!

We question war and injustice and political oppression. God acts beyond anything we can imagine!

And even though we sometimes forget that promise, when we remember the promise of God being with us, we stand there. We stand on that promise with hope and trust that it is true. We stand on the promise of God with us because if we were to try to stand alone, our lives would be futile, empty, barren and without hope.

So whatever it takes, for the world to remember that God is with us, and God will continue to come and make a place in this world to be known, whatever it takes for people to hear the story and remember the promise……….bring it on. Let the story be told from generation to generation that God is about to do a marvelous thing.

"Let the Waiting Begin"

2005-11-27T07:58:00.000-08:00
“Let The Waiting Begin”
Advent I
Mark 13:24-32
Rev Carolyn Waters
November 27, 2005 CCUM

It’s the first Sunday of Advent! Do you know what you are waiting for?

Wait you must, for the next four weeks. Wait you will, whether you want to or not.

Waiting is the single most word that describes these four week of our liturgical year. It has become a helpful way to “countdown” 4….3…..2…..1…..Christmas!

According to an article Ben found in an old Christianity Today, the tradition of Advent began in the 4th/5th Century of Spain as a preparation for Epiphany! The time we celebrate the baptism of Jesus, the visit of the Magi! The Romans took over Advent in the 6th Century, linking it to the “coming” of Christ. “Coming” was not about the birth, but about the “second coming,” thus the scripture today from Mark warning listeners to be alert and awake for we do not know the hour or the time that Christ will come. By the middle ages, Advent focused on the “birth” of the Christ Child, but not without the mixture of the second coming theology. (Advent---Close Encounters of a Liturgical Kind<” by Chris Armstrong. Dec 6, 2002 Christianity Today.)

So today we begin the process of liturgical waiting, anticipation of getting from this day, to the 25th day of December.

A story is told about a little boy that could not wait to get to high school. The high school kids seemed to have so much fun. Once he got to high school however, he noticed that the people, like his sister, who had gone off to college were having more fun than he was. He could not wait to get to college. But college seemed to drag on after a time and he was tired of all the homework. He couldn’t wait to get out of school, get a job and make some money. When he got his first job, it seemed as though people who were really happy were the ones with a wife or husband, a couple of children and a home with a back yard – maybe even a family dog. But once he was married and had two children and a mortgage and a dog, he envied those couples whose children had gone away to college. They had so much more time for each other. Finally his children had left for college. But now the burden of a mortgage and tuition for two children was very heavy and he couldn’t wait to be out of debt, pay off his house and retire. Then he could have some real fun like all those people who move to Arizona and play golf every day. Then one day – in the early winter of his life – standing at the tee of the 18th hole of the golf course near his home in Phoenix –– he thought to himself, "What’s the point?"

Our senses are often numbed by the Christmas season. We look around and go “What’s the point?” We may step aside from the hustle and bustle, declaring it all too commercial or far to full of simple consumerism mentality. But often in doing so, the cynic is alive and well in our attitude and even the spiritual aspect of the season is lost, forgotten, or simply ignored.

What is the point? Well, if we can’t enjoy the waiting………..we miss the experience and the expectation. If we can’t live in the midst of the unknown, the not knowing, then our dept of faith is wanton and shallow. Whether we are waiting for new life, or waiting for the announcement of death, we are living in the mean time………..we are living in the moment of the experience, we are living with the known and the unknown.

What we know is that God will show up again and again and again. What we don’t know is exactly how or when God will show up. So in the mean time we rehearse a story that has come to be so meaningful that nothing else can replace it. We rehearse a story for 4,3,2,1 weeks that opens our hearts to the possibility of beauty and love coming into the world over and over again. The already and not yet nature of God with us, but we are waiting for the already and not yet presence of God to return.

Part of the reason we can wait is because we know what we are waiting for. Part of the reason we can wait is because of the anticipation of a surprise that we know nothing about. We wait with patience because we know the wait is not forever, we wait with impatience because we just can’t wait to find out what God is going to do next.

Jenee Woodward, is the pastor of a local church, and shared her “Advent Waiting” story three years ago with her congregation. Her son Phil has autism. At the time she told her story he was 10 years old. He is severely handicapped by his disability. The family learned to slow down at Christmas a number of years ago when Phil was unable to tolerate *any* of the celebration. “He could not handle the changing scenarios - the twinkling lights, the changes in grocery store displays, the changes in the sanctuary at church, presents appearing under the tree, the tree ITSELF, and the moved furniture. He would fall on the floor and scream, unable to move, afraid to open his eyes, almost constantly from Thanksgiving until well after Christmas when it was all over.” His parents carried him through that time his head covered with his coat so they could get through the grocery store, or sat they with him huddled in his room, carefully ordered EXACTLY the same since summer, with no Christmas trappings.

Their neighbor across the street was one of those folks who bought every new outdoor Christmas display. Phil slept on the sofa in the living room for two Decembers, trying to stay awake so he could make sure that all of the lights across the street (on the whole block!) were functioning correctly. If one went out, or if the lights came on or turned off outside the proper times, he would scream and cry in panic until it was fixed.

Worship on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day was over-crowded and yet hushed, not a good combination for an autistic child. Christmas celebrations at home were a nightmare. Phil would scream and cry as each package was moved and (gasp!) unwrapped. As frightened as he was when each new thing appeared, he was equally frightened when it changed or disappeared. The family would try to find him a present he'd enjoy, but he'd merely scream and cry in panic at the intrusion on his carefully ordered world, and the gifts would sit ignored until he outgrew them and they gave them to some little boy who could appreciate them.

He wanted nothing. He would look straight at toys his parents thought he would like, and he would not react at all. He asked for nothing. He anticipated nothing. He just screamed and cried at all of it. His mother Jenee said in her story that “it is no bliss to have a child who doesn't get it - who doesn't want anything and doesn't want to have anything to do with Christmas commercialism - or it is only bliss in some romantic fantasy. In real life it is a surreal nightmare.”

Three years ago, right around Thanksgiving, one more time they asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas. Their 14-year-old daughter sat down and made out her list. And Phil, their 10-year old son, for the first time in his life, answered the question. "PlayStation 2," he said. "I want PlayStation 2 Christmas." She says they just about fell over. His sister gave him a piece of paper. She wrote "Phil's Christmas List" at the top. He wrote, "PLAYSTATION TOW" under her heading. "At Sam's," he said. "Go to car."

So, they drove to Sam's right then. Phil had never looked at anything there, never seemed to notice that Sam's had anything he might want. But he led them right to the PlayStation 2 sets, picked out the bundle he wanted and put it in the cart. "Open at Christmas," he said. He watched gleefully as they wrapped the package, and then he solemnly placed it under the tree. So, a PlayStation 2 game set sat there, wrapped, with his name on it, and he waited to open it. "December 25," Phil says. "Open PlayStation 2 December 25."

One night during Advent the family returned from yet another Christmas rehearsal with at church, Phil found a Best Buy ad in the paper and turned immediately to the PlayStation games. He circled "Harry Potter" and "John Madden Football", handed the ad to his dad, and said, "I want Christmas." There were tears in his mothers eyes. Jenee says of this moment: “It's was such a small thing, but such a truly amazing thing. It was one more bit of hope that Phil will be able to function in some semblance of society as an adult one day - that he might be able to live just a BIT more independently, and one day want the things he needs to survive enough to work for them. His mother says “consumerism might be ‘the enemy’, but a kid who understands none of it is only a hero in a Chicken Soup For The Soul story.

Jenee ended the story of Phil’s advent this way: “This Advent season I am grateful for being able to appreciate what complexity and miracle is involved in such small "selfish" acts as wanting something for Christmas and expressing those wants to another person. I'm grateful that my son is able to enjoy all of the commercial cultural trappings of the holiday this year instead of running from them screaming. I'm grateful for the many ways Phil helps me stop and look again, even at my most ‘Christian’ conclusions. And I'm especially grateful that my son helps me see Christ's humble birth, over and over again, even in the midst of nightmares and worries I could not have imagined 10 years ago, even in the midst of Advent.”
(http://www.textweek.com/advent_story.htm)

After I read that story several weeks ago I e-mail Jenee Woodward and thanked her for sharing her life with thousands of would be strangers on the Internet. She responded saying that Phil is 13 years old now and enjoys the preparations for Christmas more and more.

Phil’s story reminds me that even when we know what we are waiting for, we can do so with joy and expectation. And Phil’s story reminds me that even when we know what we are waiting for, we can do so with anticipation and wonder. No matter how much we think we know about what we are waiting for, we are still caught in mystery and darkness and not knowing. Jenee and Phil both knew what was under the Christmas tree, but neither of them knows what the future will bring.

We know most of what we expect will happen in this time of Advent as we prepare for our individual celebrations with family and friends. But there is always space in the stolen moments of darkness that surprise us. Not all of the surprises are filled with joy. Many of them are filled with great sadness.

Some people wait to be able to return to their home, after almost four months of homelessness. Others wait to return from war. Some familys wait for a doctor’s report or text results, others may have to wait for endless hours in a surgery waiting room.

Whether we wait for the known or the unknown, whether we wait for the expected or unexpected, whether we wait for the good news or the hard news, we are invited to wait for it with patience, and we are invited to wait for it with God. If we wait all alone, it’s chaos and terror, like a neighborhood full of lights to an autistic child. If we wait for the unexpected with God, then we wait with hope, knowing some of how the story goes, but also knowing that in God’s universe the unknown holds the deepest mystery of expectation and grace.

We can wait, because we know what we are waiting for. We have to wait, because we really have no idea what God is going to do.

From Rev Claire Childress

2005-11-21T09:07:00.000-08:00
With Claire's permission I share the sermon she preached on November 6th, 2005 at First United Methodist Church in Boulder, Colorado.

Oil Reserves
Matthew 25:1-13 November 6, 2005

A father was driving his daughter to a dance lesson early one November morning when out of the blue she asked, “Daddy, why are you wearing that flower?” It was a simple question, and all she wanted was a simple answer, but in the silent moments that he took to respond, wrestling to find the right words, many thoughts came to his mind.
Some of his friends had stopped wearing the poppy, because it was linked for them with the glorification of war, and he wasn’t wearing it out of a sense of national pride or valor. Remembrance Day ceremonies at his daughter’s school were days to sing and talk of peace; the days that formerly had led students into active military service had long passed. He himself had been born a decade after the last World War ended, and he certainly wasn’t wearing a poppy because he had personal memory of friends who had never returned. So why was he wearing the flower?
And then the words came. “I wear this flower every November because it reminds me of the people who died in wars.”
“That’s sad,” his five-year-old said.
“You’re right. It always makes me feel like crying.”
“Then why do you wear it, Daddy?”
“Because I don’t ever want to forget to cry.”

I like this story for this morning for several reasons. First, the remembrance of all who continue to die in wars. Next, our love and grief for those whom we especially remember today on All Saints Sunday. And also, sadly, for what has occurred in our denomination this past week.

As some of you know, The United Methodist Church’s Judicial Council – the equivalent of the Supreme Court – handed down two grievous decisions early this past week. One of them was expected – the final removal of the clergy credentials of The Rev. Beth Stroud, a gifted and beloved pastor who has been fighting to hold onto her ministry since she came out as a lesbian living in a long-term committed relationship. That one was pretty much expected.

What has stunned nearly everyone is what the Council did in a case few of us even knew about until this week, involving a pastor in Virginia who late last year denied church membership to a man because he is a practicing homosexual.
When that happened, his Bishop, district superintendent, and all but twenty of over six hundred pastors voted to remove him as leader of a congregation. The pastor then appealed that decision to the Judicial Council, who this week ruled that he was within his rights, and that pastors can exclude anyone we deem inappropriate for membership in our churches. This is frightening.

There has been a firestorm of protest, which I hope will only grow. In Denver, a prayer vigil at Iliff and conference offices took place on Thursday, along with a media statement and plans for an ad in The United Methodist Reporter.

The Council of Bishops has issued a pastoral letter which they request be read or distributed in every congregation, stating that homosexuality is not a barrier to membership and urging all pastors and laity to make every congregation a community of hospitality. Copies are available on the table by the main doors.

The Board of Ordained Ministry of the Baltimore Washington Conference has passed a resolution asking the Council of Bishops to call for a special session of General Conference to be held as soon as possible to clarify the authority and accountability of pastors, cabinets, bishops, Boards of Ordained Ministry and clergy sessions as to whom may be received as member of our churches.
Two former Judicial Council members, including Sally Geis of Denver, have formally requested that United Methodist Communications withdraw all references to the current slogan “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors,” since the Judicial Council decision makes the statement untrue and obviously false advertising.

St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Indianapolis has e-mailed a petition addressed to the Judicial Council urging reversal of this decision. That is also in the narthex for any of you who wish to sign. It’s at the welcome table.

Don Messer, former Iliff president now an activist for AIDS awareness, cautions that reconsideration of this action will take months and that the composition of the Council would make a reversal a miracle. Instead, he finds hope that even in Virginia – far from the most liberal of conferences – only a handful of pastors thought this was okay, and that the overwhelming majority of United Methodists nationwide will be ashamed of this action and want to reaffirm our church’s open membership. The Judicial Council does not speak for the church, he insists, and reminds us that Bishop Melvin Wheatley used to always encourage us never to surrender the church to the right-wingers, and to affirm that it is our church regardless of those who seek to exclude us.

Likewise Ron Hodges, Director of Mission and Ministry for this conference, writes that when the many lay friends who are asking him why they should stay in the United Methodist church when the Council’s decisions are so foreign to their personal beliefs, he says this: “You need to stay because your witness is so much greater from within the church than it will ever be from without.”

Which brings me to the gospel lesson for today. (Matthew 25:1-13) This is the lectionary text; I didn’t select it. It’s perfect, though. Here’s why.

Most scholars consider this text to be an allegory – each major element is a symbol for something. The wedding banquet, for example, is a symbol for the kingdom of heaven; the long-awaited bridegroom clearly is the expected Son of Man, Jesus Christ.

[I need to stop here for a minute and tell you about this word “kindom.” I learned it from Cal McConnell. It’s in your bulletins twice this morning, not a misprint, but a word to use instead of “kingdom,” which can have connotations of male domination, hierarchy, and other things we don’t associate with God’s realm. If we leave out the “g,” and make it “kindom,” the word more accurately reflects what we imagine – the family of God, humankind, related to one another, connected in the Spirit.]

The strange midnight arrival of the bridegroom underscores the expectation that the messiah will come an unexpected time, like a thief in the night, and the cry of the foolish bridesmaids, “Lord, Lord” evokes the sad response of the groom, “I do not know you . . . .” It all echoes the judgment in Matthew Chapter 7 where “not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” and Christ will turn away from evildoers with a dire “I never knew you.”

This judgment stuff is hard for us – after all, we’re hurt and angry that some of our brothers and sisters have been judged unfit, so how can we do the same thing? I have a big struggle here, but what I can get into is this odd business of who is wise and who is foolish, and what having enough oil has to do with it.

Why is having an extra flask of oil the characteristic that distinguishes wise from foolish in this parable? Is it that the “wise” bridesmaids have enough oil to work through the long night of waiting for the bridegroom, doing the will of God without ceasing while the realm of God is delayed?
Sounds good, but there’s a problem. None of the bridesmaids not even the wise ones, actually worked through the night. They all slept, wise and foolish.

The wise bridesmaids are described as “those who were ready.” For what? We imagine it to mean ready for the bridegroom, but so were the foolish ones – all of them were eager for his arrival.

What were the wise ones ready for that the foolish were not? THE DELAY!!!!!
Bringing along an extra flask of oil signals that they are ready for the bridegroom to arrive early or late. If he had arrived on time, all the bridesmaids would have greeted him and waltzed merrily into the banquet.
But the groom, like the kindom of heaven, did not arrive promptly. He was delayed, and some two thousand years later, the kindom is still delayed.

The wise ones in the church are those who are prepared for the delay; who hold onto the faith deep into the night; who, even though they see no bridegroom coming, still serve and hope and pray and wait and work for the promised victory of God.

In the contemporary words of a good pastor friend who e-mailed me this week, “What distinguished wise from foolish is that the wise were prepared for the delay, were prepared for some stupid decisions from on high, were prepared for discouragement, were prepared to know that simply because some dumb judicial agency makes a foolish ruling, this cannot, cannot, keep the bridegroom from coming. And this bridegroom who comes is for mercy, righteousness, and peace. And those who try to keep gays and lesbians out of the kingdom are going to be off at the oil shop when the bridegroom comes.

‘Lord, didn’t we pass legislation that honored you?’ they will cry. ‘I never knew you,’ will come the awful reply.”

Regardless of our sexual orientation, any of us, or our theology, or our politics; whether we are proud of being a Reconciling Congregation or wish we had never heard the term, I solemnly hope that all of us are profoundly and personally offended by what the Judicial Council has done. I call on us, every one, to respond in some way, according to the Spirit’s leading.

It seems to me there is no more fitting way to honor those who have gone before us, giving so much of themselves to this church, and those who will come after us, that these doors will be open to them, whoever they are.

I’ll close with these well-known words by The Rev. Martin Niemoller, written in 1945. You’ve heard them:

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

A Big Enough Table

2005-11-21T08:45:00.000-08:00
“A Big Enough Table”
Matthew 25:31-24
Rev Carolyn Waters
November 20, 2005 CCUM

Mark Twain
“It is not those parts of the Bible that I do not understand that bother me. It is the parts of the Bible that I do understand that bother me the most.”

The gospel lesson this morning is quite clear and to the point! Take care of the people who need help and you’re a sheep! Enter the kingdom of heaven with no risk or question! On the other hand, if you turn the other way in the face of injustice, you’re a goat! No amount of barter or begging or bribing will make a difference. The goat’s are history, be gone from here, there is simply no hope.

But wait just a minute. Before we too quickly assume that we are in one animal pen or the other, lets take a minute to look a little closer at what happened for the surprised righteous ones who were welcomed to God’s kingdom, and the shocked ones likened to goats who were turned away.

In our liturgical calendar, this is the last Sunday of the Christian year, commonly referred to as “Christ the King” Sunday. In effect, this is the day that would make the most since for people to “join” the church or confess their faith. It is the day that we use the scripture to ask the question, who wants to be a part of this party? Who wants to go for this ride? Who, by the way they are living and the decisions they are making, are living lives that reflect the Kingdom of God in our midst.

Perhaps that would make a really good question at the time of joining the church. “Are you living a life to reflect the Kingdom of God in our midst?”

Reinhold Neibuhr in his work Beyond Tragedy, published in 1937 and therefore a little dates with language, speaks directly to this scripture passage:
“On the one hand it is true that it makes a difference whether men are good or evil, loving or selfish, honest or dishonest. It makes a real difference, that is, an ultimate difference in the sight of God. On the other hand it makes no difference. No life can justify itself ultimately in the sight of God. The evil and the good, and even the more and the less good are equally in need of the mercy of God.”

“The difference between good and evil in history is an ultimate difference, which transcends the relativities of history. The love shown to "one of the least of these my brethren" is love to God Himself. That is, the "good" deed, which in the gospel is always a loving deed, is one which enters into the very texture of eternal reality. Yet on the other hand eternal reality is determined by God and not by man. And it is revealed in the divine mercy, which overcomes the evil in man and therefore the distinction between, good and evil in man. It makes a difference. It makes no difference.”

“Love is the law of life and not merely some transcendent ideal of perfection. All men may violate the law of life but there is a difference between those who seek to draw all life into themselves, and those who have found in God the centre of existence and through loyalty to Him have learned to relate themselves in terms of mutual service to their fellows.”

(Beyond Tragedy was published in 1937 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. This material prepared for Religion Online by Harry and Grace Adams.)
http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=436&C=335

In other words it makes a difference, it makes a difference to the world, it does matter how we live and how we relate to others. It is a reflection of God in and through us. On the other hand it doesn’t make a difference as to God’s reaction to us in our need of God and our own brokenness.

The sheep are separated from the goats. But according to the rest of our biblical story, God still loves the goats…………even though frustrated by them!

The great Catholic Social worker Dorothy Day once said: “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least."

Another of our spiritual leaders John Wesley once said: “One great reason why the rich, in general, have so little sympathy for the poor, is, because they so seldom visit them.”

It’s appropriate to have this challenging scripture just before we celebrate our own “national” Thanksgiving Day. And it is appropriate to have this scripture passage just before we begin the Advent and Christmas season.

We really have little to no trouble doing for ourselves in these coming weeks. But we all need to be challenged to do for others in the same breath that we “take care of” our own.

How big will your Thanksgiving table be this week? How large can your spirit expand in the next 30 days?

Anthony B. Robinson, senior minister at Plymouth Congregational Church in Seattle (Christian Century Nov 3 1993) tells about the ministry of a clothing bank in their church. One couple in particular gives themselves to its upkeep and availability to the community. Robinson says,
“I don't know if the clothing bank was effective. But, then, in the parable of the last judgment Jesus did not say anything about effectiveness. He only asked, "Did you feed the hungry?" "Did you clothe the naked?" "When I was in prison did you come to me?" It is good to know that, whether or not you can change the world, you can still be faithful. When you're not wielding a lot of power, it's easy to say, ‘What difference does what I do make?’ But maybe those who seem to be in charge are not as powerful as they appear. Jesus only asks us to be faithful.”

“Goodness is not planned. It is not a heroic decision or clever calculation. It is an expression of who we are.”

“The fact Jesus was pointing out to them was a fundamental rule of Kingdom living. We are the Body of Christ - and so, deeply united in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. What we do - one for another - heals and builds up the Body of Christ. What we do not do - one for another - weakens and diminishes it.”
From Weekly Wellspring…..Nov 20, 2005 http://www.wellsprings.org.uk/weekly_wellsprings/year_a/sunday_34.htm

In the current issue of Homiletics, the story is told of an experience theologian/philosopher Parker Palmer once had.

“Palmer was a passenger on a plane that pulled away from the gate, taxied to a remote corner of the field and stopped. You know the feeling: The plane stops and you look out the window and see that you’re not on the runway and the engines wind down and your heart sinks. The pilot came on the intercom and said: ‘I have some bad news and some really bad news. The bad news is there’s a storm front in the West, Denver is socked in and shut down. We’ve looked at the alternatives and there are none. So we’ll be staying here for a few hours. That’s the bad news. The really bad news is that we have no food and its’ lunch time.’ Everybody groaned. Some passengers started to complain, some became angry. But then, Palmer said, one of the flight attendants did something amazing.

She stood up and took the intercom mike and said, “We’re really sorry folks. We didn’t plan it this way and we really can’t do much about it. And I know for some of you this is a big deal. Some of you are really hungry and were looking forward to a nice lunch. Some of you may have a medical condition and really need lunch. Some of you may not care one way or the other and some of you need to skip lunch. So I’ll tell you what we’re gong to do. I have a couple of breadbaskets up here and we’re going to pass them around and I’m asking everybody to put something in the basket. Some of you brought a little snack along---something to tide you over---just in case something like this happened, some peanut butter crackers, candy bars. And some of you have a few LifeSavers or chewing gum or Rolaids. And if you don’t have anything edible, you have a picture of your children or spouse or a bookmark or a business card. Everybody put something in and then we’ll reverse the process. We’ll pass the baskets around again and everybody can take out what he or she needs.

‘Well,’ Palmer said, ‘what happened next was amazing. The griping stopped. People started to root around in pockets and bags, some got up and opened their suitcases stored in overhead luggage racks and got out boxes of candy, a salami, a bottle of wine. People were laughing and talking. She had transformed a group of people who were focused on need and deprivation into a community of sharing and celebration. She had transformed scarcity into a kind of abundance.”

After the flight, which eventually did proceed, Parker Palmer stopped on his way off the plane---deplaning, that is----and said to the her, ‘Do you know there’s a story in the Bible about what you did back there? It’s about Jesus feeding a lot of people with very little food.’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know that story. That’s why I did what I did.’ “

As we enter the holy day and holiday seasons of Thanksgiving, Advent, and Christmas………

May we all remember that we have enough, there is more than enough to go around.

Not just enough food for the table, or enough money for more gifts for more people………..

But we have enough time, for the things that need our attention.

We have enough vision, to see those who have needs.

We have enough patience for the impatience of children.

We have enough heart, to listen to the hurting hearts of others.

We have enough clothes, to shed some and give away.

We have enough spirit, to lift up the downtrodden.

And we have a big enough table, providing room for any who are hungry.
And that my friends, is what the Kingdom of God looks like, enough………….more than enough to go around.

"Using the Most for the Best"

2005-11-15T10:10:00.000-08:00
"Using the Most for the Best"
Matthew 25:14-30
November 13, 2005
Rev Carolyn Waters, CCUM

There was a 20-dollar bill and a 1-dollar bill on the conveyor belt of the downtown Federal Reserve Building. As they were lying there side by side, the 1-dollar bill said to the 20-dollar bill, "Hey - where have you been? I haven't seen you in a long time?" The 20-dollar bill replied, "Oh, I have been having a ball! I‘ve been traveling to distant countries, going to the finest restaurants, etc... etc. After describing the great travels, the 20-dollar bill asked the 1- dollar bill, "What about you? Where have you been?" The 1 dollar bill replied, "Well, I've been to the Baptist church, the Methodist church, the Presbyterian church, The Episcopalian church, the Catholic church and to the United Church of Christ..." "WAIT A MINUTE! " shouted the 20-dollar bill. "What's a church?"

Tempting, as it may be to use this scripture to talk about giving, I’m not going to do that! First of all, I hope you have already turned in your pledge card! But primarily the reason to not use this parable to talk about giving your money to the church is because that’s not what the parable is about!

In Jesus day, a talent was around 6000 denarii. One denarius was about a day's living wage. So what the first servant was given translates into 30,000 denarii. 30,000 work days! If you’re making a denarius a day then you are in the upper crust of employment which means that you would have at least a four week vacation time every year……leaving 240 work days a year. It would take over 125 years to make 30,000 denarii. But of course that’s without taking into mind wise investments. In other words, 30,000 was a lot of money! What would it convert to in terms of a day's wage? Maybe $5mil? Having the landowner come up to one of the employees and offer so much would be like winning the lottery. IMPOSSIBLE!

From William Loader: *
“Talent has so much become part of our vocabulary as a term for natural abilities, that we usually miss the point that the parable is talking about money and what you can do with it. The ancient world did not have our complex finance markets, but it knew about investments and profit. Many of Jesus' parables reflect economic practices of the day and how they affected people. People would know what you could do with such a sum. Money was powerful then, too.”
“In this parable, the money is an image for what is potent in the kingdom and for the kingdom. It may also be seen as a way of talking about the Spirit or at least about the life of God within us. It is slightly missing the point to think it is talking about how we use our various natural abilities (talents in the modern sense). It has more to do with how we allow the life of God to flow through us - because it is powerful- like money!”

Loader continues: “Fear of being abandoned seems to motivate burying the talents. Matthew's community might think of the controversy over the expansion of the gospel into the Gentile world and the refusal of some Jews to accept that the doors should be flung open so recklessly. God is misbehaving again and they cannot believe it and refuse to support the adventure. In typically Matthean style the text promises only damnation for such lack of trust.”

Damnation for lack of trust in God. Not damnation for sin…..we can be forgiven for that. But damnation for lack of trust, believing in the possibilities of God’s intervening presence in life.

The parallel with the recent Judicial Council decision 1032 of the United Methodist Church, which gave authority to a pastor of a congregation in Virginia to deny membership (entrance through the doors) to a gay man simply because he is gay is all too obvious! Attempts to control the gracious redemption of a loving God who is at work in the world have never been successful! Hear again Loaders words: “God is misbehaving again and they cannot believe it and refuse to support the adventure.”

“They” have become the establishment. “They” have become the “institutional church”. They too quickly become Us!

Loader goes on to say:
“The parable challenges us not to sit on the life of God in us.”

“If the modern use of talents has any relation to the text, it is at the level of allowing God's life to do its adventures with us and putting our talents (our natural abilities) at God's disposal. The talents of the parable are really about God's life and power, not about our natural abilities. But the appropriate response is to allow God's investing hand to employ our abilities.”

Given the climate in main-line denominations around the issue of homosexuality it a wonder that any of the gay and lesbian community dare set foot in any church. Between the people who are afraid of the presence of diversity in the pews or are convinced that God will damn the individuals and their supporters, and thus leave places such as this congregation primarily out of fear………………AND the community of those who find the behavior and exclusion of our denomination toward gay and lesbians intolerable, and therefore may also leave the church……..we are left with the remnant of the rest of us that keep imagining that someday things will be different. That to leave is to give up. And to stay is to have hope.

Not hope in the institution, but hope in the mercy of a loving God who works in this world despite the institution.

William Loader goes on about this morning’s text from Matthew with words exactly to the point:
“The tragedy is that many people are afraid of losing or endangering God and so seek to protect God from adventures, to resist attempts at radical inclusion that might, they fear, compromise God's purity and holiness. Protecting God is a variant of not trusting God. Matthew wants his hearers to share God's adventure of inclusiveness. God is bigger than our religious industry”

Spiderman once said: “with great giftedness, comes great responsibility."

The gifts or talents entrusted to us give us the ability to do great things. In our personal lives and in our lives together as a community of faith, I believe that the gathering of people here at Christ Church are gifted beyond measure. We are gifted because God has invested in us. We are gifted beyond the 125 years of resources needed to equate 30,000 denarii to $5 million. We have been given much in terms of our openness to one another, our vision of what the world could be, and our desire for the body of Christ to be REAL in the world.

With those gifts comes responsibility. With those gifts comes the expectation from GOD to act in the world according to the measure of the gifts we have received. With those gifts comes the expectation that we will not be silent in the face of injustice; that we will not be complacent in the atmosphere of judgment; and that we will not be afraid because of the risk of losing numbers or money.

Those who do not speak, lose their voice.

Those willing to risk nothing actually risk losing everything.
Life is a risk.

Fr. John J. Boll says of this scripture passage: “the faith we have is not fragile, it is a rich and an effective treasure and need not be handled with kid gloves. If we don't take risks with it, how can we say we have faith?”

Actually, the third slave acted as he was probably taught. In first century CE, Jewish culture taught that if one was entrusted with something of great value, one should bury it in the ground for safekeeping.

But we are living in a different world. To bury your valuables would be foolish. To leave all of your financial resources in CD’s would give reason to pause for question.

Chose any issue that brings passion to your heart. Chose any social concern that screams for God’s intervention. Pick any headline that reminds you of the hurting world. And listen to the places where God is begging you to invest yourself for the sake of mercy in the world in which we live. Lay aside the “risk” and take on the challenge to live out what we say we believe in.
Our issues need not be the same issues, but our hearts must come from the same place if our lives are to be counted for much of anything. When our hearts and our spirits come together we do begin to “count” and make a difference. When we stand up, even one at a time, others notice and begin to stand along side.

The greatest tragedy of our convictions is not conflict; the greatest tragedy is apathy or fear.
The person given much, who does little to nothing with the resource, is the greatest disappointment to God.

God challenges us to use the most of who we are for the best of what the world can be.

God challenges us to use the most of what we have for the best of what the world needs.

God calls us to be the most of who we have been created to be for the best of who God is in us.
Are you willing to spend your life living the most for the best?

*references from William Loaders web site: http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MtPentecost26.htm

Some of God's Children

2005-11-08T13:37:00.000-08:00
Some of God’s Children
All Saints Sunday
I John 3:1-3
CCUM November 6, 2005
Rev Carolyn Waters

John Steinbeck wrote the following in his epic novel East of Eden:
"It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world."

In all my years of ministry, there was only one funeral that I experienced as a celebration by six people who were relieved the person had died. Not because of her suffering, but because of the suffering she inflicted upon those who knew her.

It seems to me that God is quite gifted at creating a good percentage of saints to mix in with the rest of us!

The people who show up on our pathway and make walking the path more manageable. The people who always know how to offer words of hope in situations that seem hopeless. The one’s who always have time to listen, to help.

They are the saints of our lives; the saints of our churches; the saints of our culture.
We all know some of them. We have all participated in their lives and missed them in their deaths.

They are the great cloud of witnesses that guide us beyond our own abilities and wisdom to continue walking on the path that is about justice and righteousness, forgiveness and love.

Saints are people who know something profound about love, that suffering is connected with it. They learned the path of sainthood is not one of accolades but accusations. They were charged with demanding change because they wanted people to know more about God than others could stand to have revealed. They challenged governments and leaders who were exploiting others. They worked to bring justice to those who were ground down by unjust systems. And in their dedicated work, they were jailed, beaten, and sometimes murdered.
Other saints are the simple less famous ones. The teacher that took the time to listen, the neighbor that was always near when needed, the patient friend that could listen for hours.

We are pilgrims of the saints. We become a reflection of who has reflected the face of God to us. We become the children of the children of a living God because of the memory of those we have known or the memory of the history we are told. We honor them by the decisions we make and the way we live. People we call saints; have given us unique insights into what it means to live a life in relationship with God.

It is not hard for me to name the saints I have known. The church can be quite good at growing its saints. Some of them are grown in order for others of us to be tolerated! We’ve said good by to some very important saints in our congregation this past year. Last week we said goodbye as a nation to Rosa Parks, an unassuming black woman who’d had enough.
Hopefully our main task is challenging one another to live into our own sainthood. Not to be presumptuous, but what a difference it would make if we all considered ourselves to be in training, to someday be called a saint by another person.

Every death that is a part of my life makes me reflect on my own death.
Every birthday that puts me closer to a bigger number, gives me pause to ask what am I doing with my life.

We remember the saints today, both those of church history and those of our own community, because we honor them. But we also remember them because we need to be reminded of our own mortality, and reminded that the way we live our lives, does make a difference to others.
God has set into motion the possibility of individual greatness. It has nothing to do with what we gather in our granaries………..it has everything to do with the list of people we give ourselves to, and the efforts we make to make a difference.

Ole Anthony, is founder and president of the Trinity Foundation, who has what we might consider a fairly radical approach to Scripture. Ole Anthony has either reached out and embraced the poor, the hungry, and the weeping, or they have found him. He lives in a community that follows a vow of poverty. In the community he lives in there is at least one formerly homeless person in each house. His community fights the corruption of televangelism in a David and Goliath-like battle. And, he is smart enough to figure out that the war against homelessness requires more than a pot of gold. It requires us to do "to others as [we] would have them do to [us]."

"All theology and doctrines are meaningless unless you lay down your life to meet
the needs of those around you who are hurting."
And,

"It is not the function of the Church 'to change the world.' It is the function of the church to have community -- not just have it, but live it."

Christ church is a community of believers both living and dead that reflect the image of God in the world. We are Children of God……….only some of God’s children……….seeking to empower the saints among us!

Madeleine L’Engle wrote:
“We do not convince others by telling them loudly how wrong they are and how right we are. We convince them by showing them a light so lovely they will want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

A Reflection of God

2005-11-08T13:36:00.000-08:00
“A Reflection of God”
I Thessalonians 2:9-13
CCUM Rev Carolyn Waters
October 30, 2005

Verse 12 of our reading from Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica is enough of an attention getter, and good works challenger to fill the morning!

Hear the words again: (We were) urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into God’s own kingdom and glory.

“Lead a life worthy of God.”

WOW. Not pleasing to God, but worthy of God.

It’s a phrase that brings me face to face with my own stuff as I reflect God in the world.

NRSV translation says: Lead a life worthy of God.
Another less reputable translation says:
Walk in a way worthy of God.

Either way, for me it’s a challenge to imagine that my life might be a reflection of God’s presence in this world.

In other words, I think that Paul thinks that I should live in such a way that God would be living through me.

I think that’s what he means. Challenging, as it is to live in such a way that God is living through me………through you.

My 92-year-old mother Lucile had her gall bladder taken out last Thursday afternoon. She was sick when I visited her last week. She told the doctor she had been sick for several weeks, but a funny thing about communication, unless you do it doesn’t! Because she hadn’t told any of us she had been sick, she almost got too sick for anyone to be helpful.

So, having been sicker than she needed to be, after the surgery went well, and she didn’t die, her old self kicked back in. (by the way she spoke to me on the phone Thursday morning you would have thought it would be the last time I’d ever talk to her.)

And this is how the old self goes for my mother: when she isn’t in control she’s a mess. When she is hungry she’s a triple mess, and when she isn’t in her own space she is impossible.

Friday morning, once again talking to her one the phone……….she was being a real grump. Now I visit a lot of people in the hospital. Sometimes you have good reason to be a grump…………..but even when that is true, being a grump produces less attention from those who need to care for you.

It would be in my mother’s best interests to treat the people caring for her in a kind way. She will get far better results in being cared for. I know from my own experience that when my mother is a grump (there are other words I might use for this behavior!)………I have absolutely no desire to be around her.

So, I said to my church going, Baptist upbringing, and Southern Methodist mother…………… “Mom, how about if you act like the next 4 days of how you act will determine how you are treated once you get to heaven. Nothing else up to this point matters, it’s only about how you treat others for the next four days.”

Silence……………total silence. She knew exactly what I was talking about.

Then she started laughing and said, “You’re just trying to get me to be a nice person!” And I said to her, “Isn’t that what life is all about?”

One evening an old Cherokee chief told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.”
“The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee chief simply replied, “The one you feed.”

We feed what we live on. Too often we are feeding a part of our spirits and souls that produce the very opposite of what we desire from others and ourselves. Too often our choices keep the evil wolf alive inside of us.

--Philip Yancey wrote an article called: Humility's Many Faces, in Christianity Today, December 4, 2000
He used this illustration:

For most of his life Albert Einstein had the portraits of two scientists, Newton and Maxwell, hanging on his wall as role models to inspire him. Toward the end of his life, however, he took them down and replaced them with portraits of Albert Schweitzer and Mahatma Gandhi. He needed new role models, he said -- not of success, but of humble service.

When I think of what it might mean to be intentional bout reflecting the presence of God in the world, my whole demeanor changes. The challenge is that I so often forget. I get caught up in the daily, the ordinary, the pushes and pulls………..or buttons get pushed and not unlike my mother I can become grumpy………..it’s hereditary you know!

But then a passage like this shows up in my reading and I’m reminded about what’s most important.

Of all the character attributes we might give God, the primary one I would give is God’s persistence at loving. God seems to never give up on us. God seems to show up again and again through our recorded religious history, and in our contemporary lives. Whether it’s pushing the people through the Promised Land, staying with the stragglers after the crucifixion, birthing a church in a climate of conflict and religious intolerance………..God is persistent with loving, God seems to never give up on us.
For the past 6 or 7 weeks our choir has been singing “Bambelela” as a choral introit.

I don’t know what that arrangement does for you, but I can tell you what it does for me. It wakes me up in the middle of the night. Really! I can’t make up stuff like that.

At three in the morning I’ll be laying in bed wishing I could go to sleep and all I can hear is Bambelela, Bambelela, Bambelela, Bambelela.

I told Ben he was haunting me in the middle of the night. Then he told me the story of Bambelela. I want him to tell you that story.

(Ben’s story and sing)

To lead a life worthy of God is to never give up on God’s presence with us.

To lead a life worthy of God is to never give up on the possibility of hope for those in our world who need so much.

To lead a life worthy of God is to recognize that God is forever waiting for us to notice that God in with us in everything we do, every person we meet, every decision we make, every choice that goes wrong.

To lead a life worthy of God is to rest in the desire that we recognize there is something beyond us that is more important than we are, that there is something within us that brings out the best of who we are, and that there is something among us that keeps us together as a community of faith.

To lead a life worthy of God is to believe in the stories of old that tell us over and over again that we will not be abandoned, that we are not alone, that God is with us and that God never gives up on us, even if we have given up on ourselves.

And finally, to lead a life worthy of God is perhaps to be haunted by God’s presence in the middle of the night…………saying, “Never give up!”.