Hold Everything: Last Sermon of Summer

Sermon for Proper 16B 2012: “Hold Everything”

(Based on 1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43 & Ephesians 6:10-20. Copyright Mainecelt 2012))

We had to stay awake. It wasn't easy-- most of us at the Conservation District meeting were farmers, and we'd been up since dawn for one reason or another: nursing a sick animal, repairing a fence, picking greens and packing them off for a long day at the farmers' market. But the District's monthly meeting was an important one. The hard metal chairs and the fluorescent lights would have to be endured.

Now, usually, these monthly meetings are pretty routine. Maybe a landowner needs help with erosion control, and the District's staff works with the board to develop a service plan. Or maybe a town has trouble with storm-water runoff and they ask the Conservation District to help with assessment and management. Usually there's great news from the one of the District's educators, who works with schoolkids on all kinds of projects, like local food lunches and hands-on science where they study the ecology of wetlands and streams. We hear the reports, smile and applaud, and go home feeling pretty good about all these good local efforts to care for our land and water.

But this time around, everything was different. After the usual reports, a new document was handed around, and the room grew quiet. When a copy reached my hands, I realized why. The title read, “Going in Reverse: The Tar Sands Threat to Central Canada and New England.” Nineteen different organizations had signed on, from the Maine Clammers' Association and the Appalachian Mountain Club to the Natural Resources Defense Council and Maine Interfaith Power & Light.

In twenty pages, it laid out the properties of tar sands oil, a type of bitumen: extra-corrosive, extra-acidic, extra-abrasive, and basically extra-everything-bad. There was a map of the 60-year old pipeline they want to send this stuff through, from Alberta, Canada, to Portland, Maine. It explored the potential harm to waterways and watersheds, from the Great Lakes to the Androscoggin, Sebago Lake and Casco Bay, if this bitumen ever busted through the aging metal anywhere along the way.

Turns out, the stuff is so heavy and thick they have to dilute it with lots of chemicals to make it flow at all. They have to pump it at higher pressure, and it tends to heat up as it flows. The more we learned, the more concerned we became. That 60-year old pipeline was built before they imagined pumping anything this thick. And because the pipeline was already built, the company could reverse the flow at any time, without even informing the public.

I lived in Alaska from 1989 to 1994. I knew what a regular crude oil spill could do to wildlife and fishing communities. But this stuff wouldn't just float on the surface and wash up on the beaches. Bitumen sinks. We don't have any containment systems designed for that. If the Conservation District was going to figure out how to serve the public in the event of such a disaster, it was going to require the wisdom of Solomon.

Unfortunately, Solomon had his own containment problem. His people had been on the move for so long, pushed from one place to another, caught up in conflict after conflict...and now that Solomon was king, he wanted to make good on his father David's promise: to raise up a temple with a solid foundation, to root God's people in one glorious place, to announce that God's favour had come to rest right here, right now, finally, in a purpose-built structure with the best materials and designs and craftsmen that royal money and influence could buy.

Solomon was probably a little bit stressed about this. His own route to the throne hadn't been particularly neat and clean. His older brothers had all been victims of wartime schemes, power-plays and horrible misunderstandings, until finally Solomon was the one left standing—the tenth boy-child of David, practically the last in line. And so Solomon prayed. He prayed not for riches or power, but for wisdom and understanding. And God heard Solomon's prayer and blessed him with that very gift.

Now, after all that, the big day arrived: the precious box of holiness that had rolled alongside God's people for so many years, that bouncing little God-buggy called the Ark of the Covenant, was carried up the steps by specially-selected priests, observed by the gathered elders of all the tribes of Israel. They proceeded to sacrifice so many sheep and oxen that the Bible says they lost track. Then the priests carried the ark into the inner sanctuary and installed in the newly-completed temple.

What happens next? A cloud of glory fills the whole temple. It knocks the priests to the ground and rolls through the corridors and seeps out of every possible crack and opening. The temple cannot contain the raw power and beauty and love of the Creator of the universe. Solomon has a serious containment issue. He cries out to God: “But will God indeed dwell on earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built. In other words, never mind the oil. This is a Godspill of epic proportions, and nobody makes clean-up gear or haz-mat suits for that.

Good thing Solomon prayed for wisdom. Wisdom tells him to open himself up to all God's glorious possibilities—and it tells him to keep praying. Pray he does—not just for his royal house, not just for the priests and the elders, not even just for the people of Israel. God is uncontainable. Solomon gets it. And so he prays for foreigners, for everyone beyond the circle of the chosen and the blessed. He prays that all the peoples of the earth may come to know the God who spills out everywhere, and that God would hear and answer even the prayers of the lost and wandering, the poor and the placeless.

Meanwhile, over in the New Testament, Paul is having some containment issues of his own. He's under a special kind of arrest, literally chained to a Roman soldier—sort of a living ankle bracelet for rabble-rousers. Waking and sleeping, he hears the clatter and clank of his captors' plate-mail, the iron rings rattling as they shift, leather bands creaking underneath. There's no ignoring the flash of the swords and daggers suspended from their wide copper-plated belts, or their bronze helmets with the long cheek-guards and wide brims, fancy crest-ornaments stuck on top for extra show. Every soldier's footfall rings on the tile walkways thanks to the iron hobnails on their leather boots. These sights and sounds, along with the clanking weight of his own chains, create the rhythm of Paul's days and nights.

Yet, somehow, Paul is allowed to write. Manacled and under watch, he is still allowed to compose and send letters that travel far. He knows his words may be carried from one household of believers to another, from one faith community to the next. And so, for the sake of his brothers and sisters in Christ, Paul has a little fun at the soldiers' expense. He suggests another dress code for followers of the Christ: not the gear of an imperial warrior, certainly not the gear of his Roman security guards: “ Put on the whole armor of God...fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” Shoes that make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace... Not Bean boots? Not Nikes? Not Crocs? What is Paul suggesting? He goes on with his list of recommended gear: a shield of faith. A helmet of salvation. And the only weapon in the list: “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

This is not, as some Christians suggest, battle gear for Armageddon or the Rapture. This is how we prepare ourselves for all the everyday temptations, all the subtle evils and seductive double-talk that bleed us, bit by bit, in our daily lives. It is gear for our efforts on the home front: gear that shores up the spirit, gear that keeps a heart from breaking in the thankless, exhausting work of care-giving, gear that keeps us engaged in community outreach, gear that helps us respond to those who fear disaster, gear that keeps us connected to the health and healing of our wider world.

The whole armor of God is a metaphor, a way of reminding ourselves that we cannot fight evil with its own weapons—we have to use something different. It is a reminder that God's loving, creative, redemptive power trumps all our clever human constructions, from fancy shoes to temples to pipelines and empires. It is a reminder that we are God's beloved family, bound into the same cosmic network of action and accountability.

Especially, it is a reminder that this work is not for superheroes in a galaxy far, far away. It is here, now, in our own time and place, that we must take on the work of living faithfully. It is here, now, that we shoulder the challenge of reconciliation and justice-making. It is here that we must learn how to walk, proclaiming with each step the Gospel of Peace.

We have to stay awake. Because, all around us, people are trying to shove and shoehorn God into boxes and temples, trying to blind us to the glory of God that seeks to bust out in our midst. They're trying to weigh everyone down with the heavy armor of empires, until our helmets cover our eyes and we trip over our own chains. But we serve the God of the foreigner, the God of royal wisdom and holy foolishness, the God of the last-in-line. We serve the God who longs for our wholeness— and the wholeness of Creation.

We serve a God for whom there is no containment system, and God's power and love spill out everywhere, transforming and healing each of us. This is the Good News. Thanks be to God!

Photo credits: Solomon's temple found here. Roman armour found here. Maine local lunch found here. Ruth Duckworth's "The Creation" found here. Sebago Lake map found here.

Crackpot Jesus and the Bottle-Diggin' Pig

Sermon for the First Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 10, 2012

(copyright Mainecelt 2012, based on Mark 3:20-34 & 2 Cor. 4:7-5:1)

Bridie, like most pigs, is a great digger. Ever since we expanded her fencing, our one-year-old Devon sow has been exploring her new digs—literally. Where once there was green lawn, there's now a lovely patch of dark, upturned earth punctuated by the portly form of a very happy pig.

The first day or two she was mostly concerned with digging up the sod. But midway through the week, one of our farmhands found her chewing on something that was definitely not a proper pig chew-toy, something that went “screek!” and “clink” against her sharp piggy teeth. We managed to distract her with some two-day-old baked goods and took the object inside and rinsed it off. It turned out to be a sixty-odd-year-old broken glass bottle, the words “Casco bottling company” still clear on the scratched and dirt-filled glass.

We were surprised—and we weren't surprised. Like most old farms, our land is littered with the detritus of generations. Each time we turn up new soil, we find all manner of broken bits and artifacts. Mostly, we find old leather soles from children's shoes—the legacy of the eleven Edwards orphans who ran the farm in the fifties,hardscrabble to the extreme. The next two most common discoveries are broken crockery—mostly bean-pots—and the glass shards of old bleach bottles.

The Edwards children became orphans during a hurricane, when their parents drove out through the storm and the floods to get some food. With the water over the road, they couldn't see that the bridge wasn't just covered with water. The bridge wasn't even there. Eleven children, motherless and fatherless, the secure structures of their family suddenly broken apart, and in the midst of their grief, forced to work the land all on their own, to feed eleven hungry mouths... sometimes we just stop and look around our land, our thoughts heavy with the memory of all that suffering.

Jesus understood what it's like when the strong walls, earthen vessel of family, begin to crack. In fact, his family had strong views about this idea as well, as we see in our Gospel lesson. Jesus is out there with the crowd, doing his thing, and his mother and brothers show up to bring him home and pound some sense into his fool head. They're pretty sure, based on reports through the local grapevine,that he's gone right off the deep end. One translation says, “they heard he was beside himself.” And the scribes who'd come down from Jerusalem—a group with a tendency to leap to conclusions—claimed Jesus was possessed by the Prince of Demons.

Basically, the word on the street was that Jesus was an absolute crackpot, and his family was determined to haul him home, even if they had to resort to hog-tying and carrying:

Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside,asking for you." And he replied, "Who are my mother and

my brothers?" And looking at those who sat around him, he said,"Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

They must have been some upset. There they were, trying to get their crackpot relative out of the public eye before he brought shame on the whole household, and what did he do when they called him out? Well, he turned right around and returned the favour, saying he wasn't much pleased to have them as kinfolk either.

See,the household was what they called the “primary social and economic unit” of the first-century Middle East. There was no escaping it. The household you were born into determined everything that happened to you for the rest of your life: your social position, your choices for work, the approved vocabulary of your speech, the cut of your clothes, the way you wore your hair, and—especially--the other sorts of people you could spend time with, who all had to be from the same sort of household as yours.

Now,on the surface, it's easy to take this story as the standard sharp-tongued retort of any rebellious young man. Nobody likes their mother—or their siblings—to embarrass them in public. We get that—and, if we don't, our young people are quick to remind us. But Jesus says something new, something different—something that proves to his birth family that he's a crackpot for sure. He redefines, completely, what a family can be.

For Jesus, a true family is not the household into which you're born, but a community of people united by the love of God, a community of shared purpose, dedicated to seeking and doing the will of God in the world. It is a gathering of cracked pots, people united by an awareness that the world is broken—and WE are broken—and God wants something different and more wonderful than anything the world's rules and powers have ever offered up.

It's a bit like the old story of the water-bearer:

Once upon a time, in a village in India, there was a man whose job was to bring water from the river to his Master's house. It had been his father's job, too, and his father before him—for he came from a servant class that was expected to spend their lives doing just this sort of heavy, repetitive labour. Now, this man, like his father and his father before him, was very poor. He had very little in the world besides the clothes on his back and the work-gear his father had left him: two clay water jars and a wooden yoke from which they hung, so he could carry them from the river to his master's house,over and over.

One of the clay pots was perfect in every way for its purpose. The other pot had once been just like the first one, but on the day the water-bearer's father died—when his old heart had stopped in the middle of his journey—the pot had fallen against a stone and developed a crack. Now, though the water-bearer had tried to patch it, the fact was: that pot leaked.

It leaked so badly, in fact, that no matter how the water-bearer hurried from the river to his master's house each day, he never successfully arrived with that pot more than half-full of the precious water on which the whole household relied. He couldn't run too much faster,or he might spill the water from both jars. So every day he worked as hard as he could, making trip after trip, always with the fear that his master might decide he was unfit and hire another water-bearer for the job. Every night he lay down, bone-tired, and worried. He was miserable.

Finally,one day, he mustered up his courage and went to his master. "Master,” he said, “I am so very sorry. I work hard, hard as I can. Yet, because one of my pots is cracked, I've only been able to deliver a portion of the water to your household, and you don't get all you deserve from my poor efforts."

The Master smiled at the water bearer, and invited him to go for a walk down to the river. “I know you work hard.” said the Master. “And because you try to make every step count, I know you watch the ground beneath your feet as you carry water to my house each day. Now, as we walk back from the river, I want you to lift your head. See what a beautiful place this is? People say my estate is like an oasis. Look around. Notice the lush greenery, the fragrant flowers."

Indeed, as they climbed the path from the river to the Master's house the water-bearer took notice of the sunlight touching the beautiful flowers along the side of the path, and he noticed how the winds were softened by the leaves of young fruit trees. But when they reached their destination, his sadness returned. "Master, thank you for the honour of your presence and for sharing the beauty of your estate,” he said, "But I still must apologize for my failure."

The Master said, "Dear water-bearer, you haven't understood what I was trying to show you. Did you notice that the flowers and trees only grew on one side of the path? That's because of your cracked pot. I planted flower seeds and saplings on that side of the path,and everyday as you walked from the river the water that leaks from your pot has watered them. I could have hired a new water-bearer, but I preferred to grow flowers and trees. With those flowers, I have perfumed and decorated many rooms, and these last few seasons the fruit of those trees has graced many tables."

We are all gathered into this community of faith as earthen vessels,each with our own rough edges, our chips and our cracks. As Paul says, in his letter to the Christians at Corinth,

... We have this treasure in clay jars ...We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.

“Yes,”he says, “we're all cracked pots.” We carry, in our fragile human bodies, both the death and the life of Jesus, and it shines through every crack and broken edge. For our lives, in faith, are formed from clay and fire, into something beautiful and broken that God can use for Glory.

So,this is how we show ourselves as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. We root around. We find the shards and jagged edges, the chipped and broken vessels, and we wonder whether they have any use in this world. And then we open ourselves in prayer, inviting God to use all this brokenness, inviting God's healing spirit to bless it and use it to make something beautiful.

We are all cracked pots, and we follow a crackpot Savior who challenged the structures of his day, busted the bonds of death and cracked open the gates of heaven. We are his family, each one of us broken, each one of us holy. Praise be to God!

(Thanks to Rev. Peter Heinrichs, from whom I learned the story of the water-bearer--and thanks to our WWOOF volunteers, who keep our livestock safe from sharp objects!)

Wild Beasts and Angels

Wild Beasts and Angels: A Meditation for Lent
(Based on Genesis 9:8-17 & Mark 1:9-15, common lectionary readings for the first Sunday of Lent, year B.)

Ten nights back, and the moon was still bright, just past its full, round glory, waning gibbous above the faithful remnant of snow. The wood stove had been well-fed, that night, and the warmth had poured up through the grate into our half-attic room. There, in the midst of February, the small room had become stifling. We opened the window half-way and settled in for the night, the bright moonshine spilling in over the sill.

For a while, all was quiet. Wrapped in the cares and business of the day, we gradually eased our whirring minds down into sleep. A truck went grumbling down the dirt road. Again, silence, then—blessed sleep, deep, restoring, healing sleep, peaceful oblivio—WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?

We struggled awake, sat up in bed, and strained to make sense out of the unearthly series of noises, the rising, dipping pitches, the staccato yips and echoing, resonant howls. “Ohhhhh. Coyotes.”

Once or twice a year, in the deep eroded stream beds that carve through the 30-acre woods behind our house, the coyotes gather. It's often more than one pack that converges, and the range of voices is eerie and amazing. Have you ever heard the coyotes when they gather and begin to sing? One wild call rises into the night, answered by another. Other voices join, and they go on for hours, vying for attention, trying out for solos, and then breaking out into a rolling, wild cacophonous chorus that goes on almost too long to bear, full of spell-binding syncopation, intense dissonance and hackle-raising harmonies.

We lay there, in the over-warm house, in the cold blue moonlight, trapped between the security of our blankets and the unleashed wilderness just beyond our half-open window. And that's as good a place to begin as any. No matter where you are, it's a good place to begin the season of angels and wild beasts, the season of Lent.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

Immediately. It's one of Mark's favourite words. He is so eager to get out the Good News, so hungry to share the power of this life-altering experience, this world-transforming story! Never mind the baby in the stable. The gospel leaps right in at the Jordon, with Jesus being baptised by John. And immediately, the heavens are torn apart, and the Spirit descends like a dove, and a voice names him as God's Beloved child! And before we even have time to figure this all out—before JESUS has time to figure this all out—he's driven, lobbed, forcefully flung right out into the wilderness.

What would have happened if the story took a different direction? “Jesus was baptised, and then immediately went back home.” No, that's not how ministry works. “Jesus was baptised, and immediately went into town.” No, town is for commerce, not transformation.

He had just been baptised. He had gone under the surface of the water. He had been submerged in the flood, a ritual drowning of all the old ways, and he had broken the surface and emerged into light and air and possibility again. He was the new Noah, water streaming off of him, there with a dove of promise and God's voice to declare a new covenant. And, like Noah, in a radically altered landscape, he had to figure out life all over again. Yes. Wilderness. There, with the wild beasts, tended by angels.

Because wilderness isn't just a place we go. Wilderness is something inside of us. We each carry, inside our hearts and minds, a bewildering landscape full of barren places and tangled thickets. It is full of strange characters: shadowy schoolyard taunters, lost and lingering loves, and other ghosts that haunt us, the harsh or compassionate faces of our ancestors, the sweet and frightening demons of our dreams.

We wake and walk with this, move through the world with this wilderness inside us. And, in the neat compartments of home and school and office, in the blind repetition of the daily grind, we cannot expect this wildness to make sense. The paved roads and square rooms—the ones that work so well for machines—do not work so well for our suffering, searching souls.

There's a reason seekers have gone into the wilderness—or created quiet times and sanctuary spaces—for century after century. Whether we hike or paddle into actual wilderness or simply set aside time to pray, meditate, and wander our inner wilderness in God's good company, these spiritual adventures feed our souls.

For the good of our souls, we need time and space away. We need stones under our feet. We need rough old trees. We need the purity of deserts, the rough angles of mountaintops. They help us unclutter our vision until we can see the wideness of God's love. They help us empty out all the competing voices until we can name our personal demons...and only those pure, elemental spaces can bring us the needed clarity. And we don't need to be afraid of this adventure. Remember what happened to Jesus when he went out:
...the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Yes, he faced temptation—really, more of a series of spiritual tests: hurdles to leap on a marathon journey of the soul. But Satan, the great tester, was not his only company. He was with the wild beasts, and angels waited on him. You see, they go together, those angels and wild beasts. God made the rainbow sign as a promise to all of Creation, every blessed thing that lives and breathes in that wonderful, fragile, ferocious, wild and wonderful community of life.

In the wilderness, Jesus was among his sisters and brothers—some furred, some leafy, some buzzing or burrowing, some smooth or scaled, some fringed, some feathered. There, with his wild kin, he was never isolated, not even in his deepest fear, rage, grief and anxiety. Tended by angels, he was shown the blessing of hidden springs and the beauty of unexpected wildflowers. His soul blossomed with them. And after forty days in such company, Jesus was ready to live into the promise of his baptism. He was ready to face the extraordinary work that God was calling him to do.

So, the adventure begins: immediately, whether we are ready or not. We can hide if we want to. We can pull the blankets over our heads or turn up the volume and stay hunched over our little glowing boxes. We can drive faster so we don't see the wild things moving beyond the pavement's edge. But the season of Lent beckons to our spirits, welcomes us into wider and wondrous possibility.

Listen: the wind is rising. Bulbs are starting to stir under snow and half-frozen mud, down in the dark earth. Listen: the stars are dancing above us, pulsing and shimmering to a celestial rhythm we were meant to notice, learn, and share. There are crows in the branches, throwing their glossy heads back with raucous laughter, joyfully urging us on with all their might. Listen: there are coyotes outside our windows, calling us out with their soaring songs.

Come, all you, baptised and blessed. Let us go, immediately, into this season of pilgrimage, these forty days of wild beasts and angels. Let us launch out, immediately, where our inner wilderness and God's creative wildness can meet!

In The Dark: A Celtic New Year Sermon

(I was invited to be a "guest preacher" last Sunday at my home church. It always seems a bit funny to serve the role of a guest when I'm already part of the family there! Since this month marks the start of the "dark half" of the Celtic year, and since one of this Sunday's lectionary readings talks a lot about light and darkness, it seemed natural to dwell on the interplay of shortening days and lengthening nights.)

Sermon for Proper 28A: In The Dark
(based on I Thessalonians 5:1-11, NRSV)

Every morning, as the light reaches in between the dark spines of the trees on the ridge, we watch and wait. First the rays of pale gold stretch across the dark hollow of our farm to touch the trees on Gloucester Ridge. Then, slowly, the angle of the light changes and dips down to gild the empty branches of the ash tree, the oaks, and the maples on our own land. Finally, the light spreads to the cold earth itself, and the hard edges of the frost begin to melt off the pasture grasses. One of us ambles down to survey the situation, then returns to the wood-fired warmth of the house. Every morning, lately, the other one asks the same question: “how many legs?”

We've been waiting for calves to be born. We know what day the bull arrived, but—I hope you don't think I'm being indelicate here—there are certain other details we seem to have missed. It's just as Brother Arnold warned us last year, when we went over to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community to discuss their own herd of Highland Cattle and get some ideas. We'd told him our tale of woe, about the challenge of finding and affording a vet who could work around those wild-looking, big-horned beasties of ours, to say nothing of the challenge of timing. Brother Arnold nodded his head knowingly. “You won't see many signs of readiness,” he said, “Highland cows are...well, they're very subtle.”

Subtle, indeed. So, here we are, ten months after the bull moved into the pasture. It takes nine months for a calf to be ready, just like a human baby. Ten months have past and our two round-as-a-barrel cows show no sign of imminant calving. So, we wonder. We worry. We ask ourselves what went wrong, and what could still go wrong now. Sometimes, we dream: a new calf could offer so much to our farm: the expansion of our herd, the proof of their capacity for new life, and the promise of another fine full-grown animal to transform into needed income or good, homegrown meat.

So, each morning, we cast hopeful eyes out towards the pasture, and we count legs, looking for a sweet gangly little body tucked alongside one of the cows. “How many legs? Still twelve?” “Still twelve.” There's nothing we can do to hurry it along, and—although there are signs we can watch for—there's no way we can predict the exact moment of the herd's increase. We're kept in the dark about it. It's subtle. We have to keep wondering. We have to hurry up and wait.

This morning's scripture comes from another bunch of people-in-waiting. Paul is writing to the fledgling church in Thessalonica. That little church was caught up in in the fashion and fervor of the day, waiting for the Rapture, the Day of the Lord. There were signs all around them: earthquakes, floods, plagues, riots in the streets, cities being destroyed, governments shifting and falling, and different religions battling it out, each claiming to have exclusive access to the “Truth.” Sound familiar? And if you weren't sure what to believe, there were street preachers to tell you where you'd go and street vendors to sell you just the right handbasket!

It's hard not to be afraid when everyone around you is talking like that. It's hard not to let all the fear-mongerers and doomers get to you. When the loudest voices cry out, “pain and suffering! Death and destruction!” no matter how much you try to laugh it off, it gets a little harder to sleep at night, a little harder to keep peace in your heart.

Remember how the Rapture was predicted by a radio preacher, who declared Judgement Day for May 21st, 2011? Did you hear about this? Did you find yourself checking your calendar? After the day came and went, he recalculated for October. When November came, did you breathe a sigh of relief, or did you get a little nervous, because now we're almost to December, rapidly honing in on the next big date for the End of the World...?

A good teacher once said, “What you contemplate, you imitate.” Whatever stories you tell yourself, whatever dramas or sitcoms you watch on television, whatever magazines you read, whatever ads flash in front of your eyes—all these things echo around inside you, the images shimmer and reflect, until it all becomes part of the way you understand the world. We can't help it—what we contemplate, we imitate. We tend to copy what we see and repeat what we hear. Now, that's one thing when you're a new Christian sorting through the competing tales of Roman politicians and travelling preachers. But there's a whole extra layer of difficulty in an age of mass-media and instant communication.

What if the stories we hear and and the images we see are mostly lies, carefully crafted by marketing experts? What if every commercial is a lie, a message that, by yourself, you're a weak, ugly nobody, but if you buy whatever they're selling, you could be SOMEbody, even somebody strong and beautiful? Bit by bit, the carefully-crafted lies eat away at us. The marketers sling mud until it covers our souls. We lose perspective. We give up our power. We learn to live in doubt and anxiety and fear. What you contemplate, you imitate. Little by little, we forget how to shine. We become children of the darkness.

Writer Jeffrey Pugh imagines a demon, writing a management guide from his basement office in hell. The devil explains his latest strategy:
“As part of my toolbox I’ve always used distraction to deter them from truly considering the world as our opponent wants it. I like it better when they become fascinated with the things that do not feed their souls. In the old days, of course, we had bread and circuses, but in the age of technology we have even more wonders at our disposal...We don’t want them to cultivate ways of living that bring them together. We want them torn apart, polarized, and at each others throats. Any question about how they should live needs to be buried under the scandal of the day... I want an entire planet entertaining themselves to death. No, seriously, I mean it. If they start to think seriously about the world they build and see the possibility that the world could be different, well, it’s time to Release the Kardashians!!”

Now, get that clever devil out of the spotlight and listen to the Good News:
But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake...

Children of the light: that is how God made us. There was a beautiful mystic tradition among the Jews and early Christians that God was the first, best and brightest light in the whole universe, and everything God made had God's light trapped inside: flowers, weeds, bushes and trees, rocks, rivers, snakes, salamanders, codfish, sharks, woodchucks, camels, even bugs—all just bursting with God-given light, full of sparks of divine fire.

That's true of people, too—not just the wealthy and powerful, but everybody: the bank president with the elegant shoes and the woman in scuffed sneakers at the laundromat. The construction foreman with the gleaming new truck and the greasy-haired guy who works nights at Gas-n-Go. We are—all of us—children of the light, all created with the potential to shine, to brighten the world with hope and healing, possibility and promise. Most of us maybe don't know it. Some of us start out knowing it, but we forget. We let our minds fall on other things. We dwell on failure and fear. We stop shining. We stop noticing all the other divine sparks around us. Our vision gets hazy. We get drunk. We fall asleep.

...we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

Do you hear that? Wake up! Listen up! WE—We, right here, all of us—are full of divine sparks, stuffed almost to bursting with God's beautiful, radiant, powerful light. Fear and anxiety are not our masters—God is! As soldiers discipline themselves for battle, so should we discipline ourselves for the challenge of making peace. Give the muscles of faith a workout. Build up the stamina of your hope. Get ready to love longer and harder and more deeply than you ever have before. Repent—change your ways—because the Beginning is Near!

For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ... so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.

As Paul says, “Build each other up.” In a culture geared to pettiness and appearances, it can be hard to make this change. I suggest an exercise, what they used to call a spiritual discipline: Turn away from the false and intoxicating lights of all the little glowing screens around us. Remember: what you contemplate, you imitate.

In this season of darkness, seek illumination from a different source. Light a candle. Sit with that small flame and pray. Reflect on the light. Make space for God's light to stir and shine within you. Wipe away the mud and clear away the debris until you find the deep smoldering goodness of your own soul. Breathe with it. Feed it. Let the wind of the Holy Spirit stir it, like a sudden gust across the coals of a campfire, until sparks catch fire and dance up into flame. Wake up each morning ready to search the landscape for signs of new life, ready to celebrate the wonders that may be born on this day of New Beginnings. We are Children of the Light. We are brothers and sisters of the Light of the World. Let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine!!!


(All images copyright Mainecelt 2011 except for Calvin, borrowed from here, and handbasket, borrowed from here.)

Bread and Salt

Some days are spent singing to seedlings, and some days are spent roping bulls. This day was one of the latter sort. The demands on our household included: a bagpiping gig for a Waldorf school's "May fair," a meeting of a church commission to address environmental and social justice issues, a half-shift of retail clerking in a British import shop, an evening of bull-wrangling and electric fence-troubleshooting, and an unfinished sermon that demanded completion.

The sermon is now complete, such as it is. It is based on one of this Sunday's assigned scripture readings: Luke 24:13-35, also known as "the Road to Emmaus."


BREAD AND SALT: A SERMON for the THIRD SUNDAY of EASTER

If they had had Twitter accounts, Cleopas and his companion would have used them. Like the rest of Jerusalem, they had thought of nothing else but the news and the prophecies, the wild rumours about the man just killed. For three days, the air around them had vibrated with dashed hopes and dangerous words, fearful whispers and mutterings of cynicism and despair. There were gamblers checking the odds of a miracle and prophets forecasting doom or resurrection.

If they'd had television, they'd have been glued to the screen, waiting for a hint or a sign. Or they'd have been on their computers, checking GoogleEarth, zooming in on Golgotha and the stone tomb. They'd be fact-checking the rumors on “Snopes,” the myth-debunking website. They'd be unfriending the women at the tomb on Facebook, because you can't have crazy people posting stuff like that on your wall.

Caught up in the terrible drama and distress of any publicised killing, amidst the desperation of any war zone, the scarcity and fear of any occupied territory, they'd tried to keep hope alive. They'd wanted to believe that this new prophet, Jesus, was different from those who had come before him. Hadn't he shown his wisdom and his power? Hadn't he healed the incurably sick and even raised some from the dead?They'd been drawn in by the stories about him and had come to believe he was someone extraordinary, like the prophets of old. They'd even—and they felt sick and foolish about it now—they'd even waited three days after the horrible humiliation of his crucifixion, just in case he might actually rise from the dead. But maybe that prophecy was just another crazy rumor, after all. Anyhow, Jerusalem was crawling with armed guards and angry crowds and people willing to turn anyone in for a few pieces of silver... it was time to get out of town, time to take a walk.

It was a seven-mile walk, but it might has well have been seventy. Their hearts were heavy and their feet felt like lead. Although the sun beat down, their minds seemed wrapped in a thick fog. Even though they fumbled and struggled to find words, they had a desperate need to talk, because the world they knew had just shifted under them and neither of them could make sense of it alone.

So they walked, bearing the weight of a thousand questions together. They told the story again and again—the parts that made sense and the parts that didn't. They puzzled over the wild tales of Simon Peter and Mary Magdalene, with their announcements of angels and empty tombs—or was it just the work of cruel, faithless people, grave-robbers for whom desecration was just a form of sport?
They hardly noticed the stranger at first. They hadn't heard his approach—they were too busy wrestling with all they'd seen and felt and heard. He seemed familiar, somehow, but they couldn't quite place him—and after all, there had been so many gatherings during Passover in Jerusalem, so many faces in the crowds. And then he asked them to share the story, share the news, as if he somehow hadn't heard?!? It was like he'd been in a cave somewhere, or just fallen out of the sky!

But the stranger listened in a way few people ever listened. Cleopas and his companion found themselves pouring out the whole story, complete with their deepest longings, their dashed hopes, and the despair that threatened to smother them. There was something in the gentle intensity of his gaze, his confident yet humble stance...he was so alive he almost seemed to give off sparks, and their own souls, dry as tinder, had leaned close and been set alight.

Still walking, still talking, their hearts began to burn within them. Who could he be? Where HAD they seen him before? He began to tell them their own stories, and the stories of their people, the holy stories of prophets and infidels, commoners and kings. The road unfurled beyond them like a Torah scroll, their own journey like the footsteps of countless generations. They were Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, Israelites in the wilderness, captives in Babylon—and every character, every chapter, in the stranger's words, pointed to a true Messiah and a new kind of liberation.

The sun dipped low over the hills. Birds flew back to their nests. Goats bleated in the distance, answering a girl's sing-song call as they pointed their nimble hooves toward home. The stranger seemed headed somewhere beyond, but Cleopas and his companion urged him—begged him—passionately insisted that he stay with them instead of travelling on. For them, sundown meant Sabbath. Even though they weren't sure anymore what it meant to keep the holy laws, even though they weren't sure anything could ever feel blessed again, they wanted to welcome this stranger, open their house to him. After days of fear and distrust, they felt moved to hospitality. They wanted to offer him nourishment—this stranger whose words had been like food to one starving.

And then he took bread, blessed it, and broke it. He gave it to them. And their eyes were opened. Their eyes were opened. I might as well say: Earth and Heaven spilled into one another. Creation heaved its sides and life was renewed. They saw the stranger for who he really was: God's own beloved child, Jesus, fully embodied, there at the table with them in full communion. What next? He vanished, but so did all the fears and doubts that had tormented them. They—two nobodies, two half-nameless bystanders at the edge of the crowd, had shared a journey with the Risen Lord and seen him in the breaking and blessing, in the giving of bread.

And where are we, in this story? Where are we, along the road? Do you seek a way out of the city? Do you head towards home? Are your eyes on the horizon, or focused on the dust at your feet? What weight do you carry on your own journey? What stories do you wrestle with over and over, trying to make sense when your world has been turned upside down? Is there any fire in your heart, or just the taste of ashes in your mouth?

The rumours continue to fly. The gamblers continue to make bets. The chief priests of modern media spin their webs, sending sticky strands through the air, hoping to catch us all in their intricate net. They bind our eyes and stop our ears until we stagger and stumble. We lose sight of love's transforming power. We lose sight of liberation.

But Jesus meets us where we are—wherever we wander, whatever path we claim, whatever road... Jesus walks with us—not virtually, but actually. He is right here. He does not appear at the comfortable center, but at the edges and the margins—and he appears not first to the wealthy and powerful, but to grief-stricken women and hot-headed men and weary travellers. He comes to you and to me.

When Cleopas and his companion understood—the Bible says, “that very hour,” they hot-footed it back to Jerusalem. Seven miles. On foot. In the dark. The hard road of that long afternoon was transformed by their joy. They carried The Light with them.

There is a proverb in Russia that says, “eat bread and salt and speak the truth.” Bread—the nourishing gift of Creation, tended and shaped by human hands—this is what matters. Bread is real. So is salt—elementary and basic, there in our very real tears and our honest sweat, in every ocean and every drop of blood. And Jesus is that close to us, that profoundly present. That is the gift of incarnation: that Christ walks with us, weeps with us, reaches out to us, offers us nourishment, and seeks always and everywhere to be revealed. He transforms our own stories and challenges us to broaden our vision. He shows himself wherever we walk together, wherever we invite others in, wherever we show others they are truly welcome at our table.

“Eat bread and salt and speak the truth.” The truth? Christ is risen! The truth? Christ is risen indeed, and he walks with us, all the way!

--copyright MaineCelt, May 2011

Time in a One-Toilet Town: #2

Last Saturday, we returned to Muscongus Island for a reprise of last year's preaching & piping gig. The Summer residents of this unelectrified and (mostly) unplumbed Maine island had just held their annual auction and the annual church meeting was scheduled to commence right after our worship service. The pressure was on to create a worship service that would adequately honour, foster and further this seasonal community's sense of...well, community.

Fortunately, it wasn't entirely up to me. I had two valuable colleagues along for the adventure: The Piper, who managed to share her musical gifts while complying with the island's rigidly informal dress code thanks to her recently acquired "instakilt," and Zoe, our farm dog, who endured the arduous multivehicular journey with grace, if not dignity, and channeled all her herd-dog talents into her new self-assigned role as church greeter and head usher. She gave a whole new meaning to "shepherding the flock."

We were able to stay on the island for two more days after the end of our official duties. Zoe, the Piper and I took several long walks, admiring the rugged beauty of the island, the hints and remnants of the island's once year-round community, and the weathered old houses, oddly bedecked with both seasonal ephemera and accouterments of sustainability. One particular walk to the island's main cemetery held a special poignancy. As we walked among the lichen-etched stones, we read the century-old names of young people lost in their prime to illness or the sea. I thought about my Grandmother, who died just a week before at the age of 87, and felt humble and thankful for her--and all the lives that have bridged the distance between other island hearts and mine.

Here is the sermon preached at Loudsville Church, Muscongus Island, Maine, on August 8, 2010:

ONE FOR THE BIRDS

I want to tell you about my Grandma Charlotte. I want to share something about her, because, while we worship together in this small island church, the rest of my family is just on the edge of waking up in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where they gathered yesterday for her funeral. She lived to be 87 years old, vital and joyful 'til the end. I miss her.

What I remember most about Grandma's house was the clutter. It was friendly clutter. It supported all manner of conversations. If we talked about crafts, Grandma probably had everything you needed in a drawer or a box...somewhere. If we talked about science, history, or culture, she would draw on her extensive collection of Smithsonian Magazines and National Geographics. Grandma was also a highly-skilled yard-saler. She and Grandpa would trundle around Colorado in their old avocado-green VW bus, finding the most astounding things and happily tucking them away for useful occasions. Each Christmas, our family would receive a large box addressed in Grandma Charlotte's handwriting. There would be at least three items for every single member of the family: at least two yard-sale finds, a fossil or mineral to add to our rock collections, and the annual renewal of our own family's subscription to National Geographic.

Grandma loved to find things, hold on to them a while, then pass them on. Other than rockhounding, it was her favorite sport. She was at once a magpie and a messiah, gathering bright, shiny objects into her nest, guided by a belief that everything was worth rescuing, worth saving. And she kept it all up for many years, still sending her famous boxes even when I was in college and grad school. But, as Grandma and Grandpa got older, they ventured out less and less. After Grandpa's death, it became too much of a chore to pack those heavy Christmas boxes and get them to the post office. We didn't mind terribly much. A card and a phone call were just as good, if not better. But, there in that modest little house in Boulder, Colorado, there was still all...that...clutter. She was tripping over it in the hallway. She was bumping against it on the stairs. Grandma got frustrated. She spent time almost every day sorting through it, but she couldn't bring herself to actually throw anything away. One pile would be sorted into half a dozen piles, and they would gradually shift and merge into other sorted piles, and then the mess would be in everyone's way all over again. The task absorbed more and more of her time and her failing energy.

I've been that kind of magpie messiah. Grandma taught me well. I've gathered plenty of bright shiny objects myself, and I've done my best to work them into my nest. I've rescued other people's discards, glued them back together, filed the rough edges, and claimed them as my treasures, additions to my collection. I've welcomed clutter as a rebellion against waste. I hate to throw anything away.

But that's not the kind of savior Jesus meant to be. He had a different message in mind: He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sew nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.

Consider the ravens. The raven is the bird of battlefields and garbage dumps, the eater of carrion. Shepherds and farmers were forever driving them away from potential sources of food. They were unwelcome, unwanted scavengers, trash-pickers, pests. They were unclean creatures and unfit for human consumption, according to Jewish law. Where I grew up, in the Pacific Northwest, Native people tell stories of Raven the Trickster, Raven the Traveler, Raven, the Creator's go-between, the bringer of news. In the story of the Great Flood, Noah sends out a raven before he sends out a dove, but then it disappears behind the curtains and the dove gets all the good press. Ravens are like flying shadows upon which we heap all the darkness of our imaginations.

And yet... have you ever watched ravens? Did you know that, if one young raven finds food—even the smallest bit of food—it will call out to all the other ravens around, inviting them to share it? Did you know that they mate for life, and that an older pair will take one or two younger birds under their wing—so to speak—and train them as nannies, teaching them to care for the newly-hatched young so that they'll be better parents when they're ready to hatch out their own? Did you know they often work in teams to drive off a threatening owl or a hawk? The Creator of both humans and ravens must have loved these “unclean” creatures very much to give them such gifts, for they have not only an abundance of food, but also an abundance of fellowship, an abundance of community.

For Grandma Charlotte, it was the abundance of her community that shook her loose from all her stuff. One by one, friends and family began to visit, to sit and soak up her stories, to laugh and chat—and to help her sort. Wealthy with companionship, she began to care for her “friendly clutter” less and less. Surrounded by loving support, she was able to start letting go. The recycling bins filled up rapidly. The hallway and stairs seemed to grow wider. You didn't have to think so much about where you might put your feet. Best of all, the burden of care was lifted. Grandma was free to devote her remaining energy to the things that made her thrive: relationships, learning, and the exercise of curiosity and delight that made her a true joy to be with.

“...And do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

What is our treasure? Not the clutter, the possessions that bind us and hinder us and weigh us down. You know that already, or you wouldn't have made the effort to carve out time to be in this place. And this “little flock” has already shown that you know how to sell possessions and give alms—yesterday's auction accomplished a bit of that, even if the possessions did just move on to somebody else. In fact, the more we keep things moving, the closer to God's community we'll be. This way, we defy the human powers that would keep us hoarding our petty treasures. This way, we create an economy of blessings and gifts, where the only real value of things is in the way they keep moving between us. We become richer and richer—as a community—the more gifts we share with each other.

Here we are, together on this small island. Here we are, blessed with a place of abundance. We can leave behind the fear-mongering headlines, the power-plays of the nations of the world. Instead, we can watch the ravens and sea-birds playing games with the wind, feasting on spare bits and scraps with joyful abandon. Here, we can study the lilies of the field, the trails bedecked with blooming plants and bushes laden with berries. Here, together, as we share meals and stories, as we greet each other on the paths and gently tend this beloved place, we are indeed striving towards God's kingdom. Here, we rest in the peace of wild things, learn to share our gifts, and let all of Creation teach us of faith, hope and grace.

Shell Game: Sermon with Chicken and Mushrooms

(This sermon was preached at a UCC church in Southern Maine on August 1st, 2010. It is based on the assigned lectionary readings for Proper 13C: Hosea 11:1-11, Colossians 3:1-11, and Luke 12:13-21.)

And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Yeah, maybe that was the reason they got mad at us, when I was fifteen, the Sunday they let our church youth group plan and lead worship. It wasn't so much the blacklight and neon draperies we put around the sanctuary cross. It wasn't even that liturgical dance we did during the introit, processing in with votive candles we waved in circles as we moved down the aisle. Looking back, I think I finally get what we did that upset everyone—I think it was during the offering. Maybe Pink Floyd's song, “Money”, with all its cash-register sound effects and crass, ironic lyrics, was not the brilliant soundtrack we thought it would be. And when we followed it with a recording of “Money Makes the World Go Round...” well, I guess we were kind of to blame for the fact that there was no “Youth Sunday” the following year.

“Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed...” I kind of get it. I mean, I know we're not supposed to eat too much, drink too much, buy too much, use more than our share...at least, I think I know it. Part of me knows it. The good part of me, the part of my brain that loves to be moral and true and exquisitely well-behaved, the part that's always trying to earn that halo and wings—it gets this. But then there's the soft, fuzzy animal part of me—the part that wants a full belly. The part that wants a cosy burrow. The part that gets scared really easily. It doesn't really listen when you tell it that wanting too much is bad.
And then there's the chicken part of me, that just wants to perch and stare, the part that reaches out to grab whatever edible morsel comes its way, the part that will take whatever it wants, because it can. That part of me doesn't get why greed is wrong. It doesn't get that the power of money is any different than the power of God. It loves treasure. It admires the glittering statues of Baal, the Wall Street Bull, and Mammon.

I admit it—I've bowed to these idols myself-- during those daydreams where life would be perfect if only we had a...fill in the blank. Our farm would be perfect if we had a terraced perennial garden with about 24 of those snap-together raised beds they have in the gardeners'' supply catalog, and a row of those solar path lights that look like copper and glass lilies weaving up the hillside path. And wouldn't the place be altogether great with one of those sturdy commercial greenhouses, the ones with the automatic temperature-sensing system of fans and heaters? Or, really, we'd settle for a decent mid-sized tractor--with just a couple of attachments...well, maybe three or four?--and things really would be so much easier with a bigger barn! Why, we could fill it with all kinds of critters and put up all kinds of food and just sit around all winter, feasting and telling stories and feeding the woodstove...

Perhaps this plays out in our church family, too: sometimes, the place we've got seems alright. We're good people, good at welcoming guests, good at running to help when one of us falls or suffers a setback and needs a prayer or a helping hand. And these are things to be celebrated. But when was the last time we got together—as a whole church family—not to cook a fundraising dinner, but to hear someone witness to the life-changing power of love or the challenge of working on God's behalf? Can you remember the last time we sent a team to work on a Habitat for Humanity house, the last time anyone went to a local or statewide church event and discovered all the amazing things our Church is doing in our communities and across the world? Do we spend time listening, each day, for our Still-Speaking God? Or are we just too worn-out from all our worrying and anxieties, too tired from all the fundraising it takes to repair the roof, clean the floors, fix the kitchen and fill the oil tank of this beautiful big... barn?

There are good reasons to want a barn. The disciples of Jesus may have been tent-makers, but we are not first-century people. We are anchored to this challenging time, this wild-weathered place. Long winters, high winds and damaging storms have a way of making us want to hunker down, to get everything under cover, to secure our stuff. The challenge is to keep from focusing too hard on the security of our stuff. There's a term for people who do this: “practical athiests.” We may say we believe in God, but if we're holding on too tightly to let God in—if we're driven not by hope and faith, but by our fears, then we are practical atheists. Instead of learning to soar, we spend our time building shells to crawl back into. Our way of living proclaims not the love of God, but our fear that “stuff” really is all there is, and we have no-one to call on, no-one to answer to, but our own selves.

When I read this week's gospel lesson, I hear a bit too much of myself. I'm with that guy in the parable when he longs to build something magnificent, fill his storehouse to the brim, then relax, eat, drink and be merry. But, meanwhile, I'm working three jobs to cover the bills. I'm laying awake nights, wondering how to hold on to everything we've got. During the day, I move from place to place in a cloud of anxiety, blind to the abundance of this place. I'm shutting out the birdsongs, the slow opening of blooms, the rising blush of the first tomatoes of the season. And I'm shutting out the friends I'm too busy to visit, the call to my folks I never quite manage to make, even though I think about doing it every day. I'm missing the gifts of Creation, offering themselves up on every side: the soaring hawk above the pine trees. The butterflies in the wildflowers along the road. The strange beauty—and free bounty—of wild mushrooms, quietly pushing up from the forest's damp earth.

Let me tell you about mushrooms and chickens. Our friend David, a self-proclaimed “foodie”, who lives to cook and eat, asked if he could learn to butcher a chicken. After years of enthusiastic meat-eating, he figured it was the honest thing to do. And so I shepherded him through the steps: the sharpening of the knife, the respectful, gentle handling of the bird, the actual butchering and feather-plucking and all the unglamourous messy bits. And David was grateful—momentarily sick to his stomach, but grateful—for the learning experience. He took the rooster home, and presented us that evening with a very tasty pot of coq au vin.

I had shared my knowledge, but there was something I wanted to learn, too-- our foodie friend is also a skilled mushroom forager. I've lived close to the woods most of my life, but I've always been afraid of mushrooms. I wanted to be able to walk in the woods and know more about the place. I was intrigued by the idea that shady, untended landscape, the opposite of my sunny garden, might contain some harvestable gourmet treats.

It took a while before I booked my lesson. I was too busy, too wrapped up in my fears and anxieties: refinancing the farm, paying the bills, selling and saving enough of the harvest... and, once I finally agreed to go, I wasted precious time fretting about all the gear I'd need. You could say I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off...well, that's not the way we butcher them, but you know what I mean!

Out in the woods, on the trail of wild mushrooms, the manufactured concerns of society fell away. Our feet fell into a different rhythm, followed deer paths, allowed ourselves to be led instead of pounding out my own agenda... my eyes learned to see in new ways, and then the unfettered joy of discovery: a free gift, a harvest that harms no-one, and a delicacy that awakens all my senses to the abundance of the earth!

Listen again:
The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

“The land of a rich man produced abundantly.” Oh, how worthy of celebration! In the time of Jesus, an abundant harvest was an occasion of celebration, a time to share one's bounty with the whole community, a time to recognize, publically, that the source of all goodness is God.

"And he thought to himself, what shall I do, for I have no place to store my crops? Then he said, I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and goods.” Do you see the man's self-deception? He tells himself he has no storage place, but to build it he has to tear down the buildings he already has! I fall into the same trap all too often. God lays out a feast in the woodlands, and I waste time stuffing my bag with stuff I might need on the trail, just in case. God carves a beautiful coastline and stitches it to the edge of the glorious ocean, and I can't go because I don't have the latest beach gear.

“But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Whose, indeed? I think of my Grandma Charlotte, who spent her last years sorting through a lifetime of stuff, getting rid of so much matter that really didn't matter at all, leaving us all the gift of freedom to remember her life instead of what she accumulated. Will we leave a legacy of stories that reflect the love of our creator, or will we leave a legacy of stuff over which our relatives will squabble? Will our possessions sing of the glory to God, or trumpet the glory of Bean's?

“So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich towards God.” What does Jesus mean, with this parable's last words? What does it mean to be rich towards God? I suspect it's about something different than tipping our wallets into the collection plate. Being rich towards God means training ourselves to reflect God's generous Spirit, not the false anxieties of advertisements. Being rich towards God means resisting a culture of fear & greed and idolatry of possessions. It means resisting the temptation to close our fists tightly, rising instead to the challenge of open hands and outreach. Being rich towards God means paying attention, sensing God's out-stretched embrace and returning it full-force! It means loving God so much, and believing in God so much, that we refuse to let out possessions restrict our lives like a shell, loving God so much that we try our own wings, work on becoming the healthy, curious, loving creatures God longs for us to be.

God calls us away from barn-building and selfish accumulation of cold, hard stuff, and into the wide world instead. God calls us to be children of wonder, practitioners of fresh vision, shivering with anticipation and awe. Possibility springs up all around us, like mushrooms after the rain, like strangers becoming friends, like friends becoming a community. Money doesn't make the world go 'round. God makes the world go 'round. And our links to each other, the connections we make with the rest of God's creatures, that is the source of our truest security: blessing linked to blessing upon blessing.

Text and images copyright MaineCelt 2010 except CommaWoman.

Rooting for Justice

(Note: Permaculture activist and Perennial Veggie Expert, Eric Toensmeier, planted the seeds that sprouted into this sermon. It is based on the true story of Nuestras Raices, a community garden project in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Any mistakes or inaccuracies are purely my own. The Lectionary texts on which this sermon was based may be found here.)

[A Sermon for Proper 10C, delivered July 11, 2010 at a UCC church in Maine]

They never meant to cause trouble. They never meant to agitate, to call attention to the sleeping giant sprawled in front of them. They'd spent their whole lives learning how to stay in the shadows, to say “yes, sir” and “no, ma'am.” They certainly never meant to start anything.

They were a bit like that Samaritan in the story—you know the guy, someone from “Away” with questionable morals and strange habits. You know the sort I'm talking about—they didn't talk right. They were probably even Yankees fans—well, know, I probably shouldn't go THAT far!

But you know the type—they stick out like sore thumbs when you drive into the city. They wear strange clothes—nothing like the locals. When you see two or three of them together, their voices rising and falling with those rapid-fire, unintelligible words, you can't help but feel suspicious. Are they just talking about the high cost of groceries, the poor job market, their efforts to get their kids in a decent school? Or are they looking back at us, talking about us, judging us the way we judge them?

Maybe they're like the prophet Amos. Maybe, like him, they never intended to come here, but something bigger than them was at work. Like Amos, the country bumpkin called by God to take a message to King Jereboam and his high priests. Amos understood cattle, but he didn't understand the ways of the court and the city. He knew how to take care of fruit trees, but he didn't know what to make of the city's power and wealth. He knew a bit about worship, but the city's shrines were full of perfumed prostitutes and the priests' robes glittered with gold. When God gave him the courage and power to speak out, the high priests didn't appreciate his prophecy. When he shared the vision of God's plumb line being held against the city, King Jereboam didn't appreciate the idea that his place didn't measure up... Hold on to that thought. Let me get back to my other story.

Anyone in Holyoke, Mass could have told you those Puerto Ricans didn't belong. Anyone could have told you the way trouble seemed to follow them everywhere, like one of the half-wild dogs that roamed the beaches of their island home, waiting for the tourists to drop a morsel, a crumb, anything that might send their hunger into some partial retreat. Or maybe it was them who followed trouble. I mean, look at the place: block after block of crumbling brick boxes to live in, factories mostly shuttered, jobs vanished almost overnight—for THIS, they'd been sucked in by the lies of the recruiters? For this, they'd left the poverty—and the beauty—of their hardscrabble farms in the warm, green island hills?

Their children were upset, too: sad, angry, confused. The schools didn't know what to do with them—how do you teach a kid to read when their parents can't read either? Never mind that they knew how to raise the best peppers and yams you ever tasted. Never mind that they knew how to slaughter a goat or a pig and use everything but the squeal. If you wanted to live in Holyoke, you had to work the jobs they had available and live where there was room. The city had standards to keep and these people didn't pass all their tests. Thanks to all these immigrants--unwanted, uneducated immigrants--the schools had some of the worst scores in the nation. And what with the crime rate, and the poverty, the urban blight and the poisoned river, well—anyone could guess where the town was going.

The Puerto Ricans knew they were unwanted-- like the English, the Irish, The French-Canadians, the Germans, the Poles, the Jews, and all the other immigrants brought in before them, lured with the same false promises of good work and decent wages. But there they were, stuck in a dead-end post-industrial Northern city, their resources all used up, nowhere else to go, nothing to count on, nobody to turn to. And really, they didn't really mean to start something...

Who can say how it happened? Somebody drew a line in the dirt of an abandoned lot. Somebody planted a seed in a paper cup. Somebody, bored and frustrated, laid off from his construction job, went out and laid into the dirt with a pickax. His neighbor looked out, curious, and brought out a shovel. Then one day they saw the little old abuela, the grandmother, struggling with gallon jugs of water, trying to get enough moisture around the plants to keep them green, maybe even help them grow a little bit. A shy, quiet man surprised himself--and everyone else--with a surge of courage, went to the landowner, and requested permission to use the spigot and bring in two rainbarrels. A jogger stopped to admire the neat little green rows in the abandoned lot and found herself two days later donating a sturdy garden hose.

More people came. The city gave official permission to use the lot, to put up signs and lay out plots and build protective fences. Muscles and friendships grew. Fresh food—good tomatoes and squash, beans and even bright red and yellow peppers to give their meals a taste of home. People with little or no money found themselves trading, bartering squash for tomatoes, peppers for cilantro. When some of the tomatoes went missing, they formed a council to govern the garden. They named their new organization, “Nuestras Raices / Our Roots.” They elected two people to coordinate the plots and watch over everything. The drug dealers didn't do deals in the lot any more; it was always so busy. More people got involved—even local businesses and nonprofits. Everyone wanted to have something to celebrate in a city full of too much bad news.

Nuestras Raices organized workshops on cooking and preserving food. They paired young people up with wise elders who had decades of gardening and life experience to share. As they realized the various needs in the community—and realized their own ability to take action—they began to offer literacy classes, financial planning workshops, voter registration, lessons in civics. As they learned to read and write and organize, they started businesses together. They put on festivals to help others understand and appreciate their foods, their music, their language, their culture.

Mind you, they never meant to start anything. But after five other abandoned lots turned into beautiful community gardens, the city sat up and took notice. “What else would you like to do?” they asked. “We want to be treated with dignity. We want safer places to live. We want our children to do better in school. We want to know why they can't swim or fish in the river. We want to know why they keep getting sick.”

The Mayor's office didn't see it coming. The Town Fathers were less than amused. Who did these people think they were, anyway? Did they even pay taxes? Did they even vote? It was one thing to get to show up for a nice ribbon-cutting now and then. It was another thing altogether to be asked to investigate toxic waste in the inner city. At first, the officials tried to ignore them, but the people wouldn't go away. They held more community meetings. They brought in outside help when they couldn't get answers from City Hall. They enlisted a team of high school students, with all the inquisitive passion of their age, and taught them how to collect scientific data with the support of the Environmental Protection Agency's “Environmental Justice” program. Here's a sample of what they found: between 1988 and 1999, more than 3.5 million pounds of toxic chemicals where released to the environment of Holyoke, mostly by industrial operations in inner city neighborhoods. The chemicals released were known to cause birth defects and learning disabilities in children, to damage lungs and kidneys, to destroy healthy blood cells and cause asthma and cancer, among other things.

The folks at City Hall didn't want to listen. The folks in the prettier, cleaner parts of town didn't want to listen either. Neither did the industry executives. How dare they hold up this kind of plumb line? But the people kept working, kept fighting to be heard, kept gathering allies and organizing. They had found their own voices and their own sense of justice. Their dreams of the past and their resentment of the present had given way to a clear vision of the future and a willingness to press forward together.

What does Holyoke look like now? Yes, there are still problems. But in the inner city, eight beautiful community gardens grow and thrive, tended by people of every age and every color, working together. The garden coordinators have become community leaders, listeners and advocates and problem solvers.

The youth program has grown by leaps and bounds. Now these young people paint murals together, help design and manage the gardens, continue their environmental justice research, and teach other kids how to work for change in their communities.

There is a women's leadership group too, and a green jobs initiative called “Roots Up” that teaches participants how to build and market solar hot water heating systems. There is a training institute that helps people learn what it takes to be successful entrepreneuers and project organizers. Oh, and then there is that land along the river—the place where the city wanted a riverboat casino. Now it has been christened “Tierra de Oportunidades, a community-designed garden and agricultural business incubator with 15 “new beginning” farms, public nature trails, an outdoor stage for concerts and festivals, tropical flowers and crops, a farm stand, and more.

No, they hadn't meant to start anything. Amos didn't mean to start anything either, but God called him from his orchards and his cattle: Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ When he answered God's call to become a voice for justice, he was led among high priests, prophets and kings. He was called to hold a corrupt city accountable—not just to human standards, but to a greater standard of justice and righteousness.

And like the Samaritan, unwelcome traveler, despised foreigner--all his days filled with the taunts, threats, and hurled insults of others—-he never meant to start anything either. Who knows what made his broken immigrant heart more open to God's call for mercy and care? What matters is that he WAS open. He was open and the Spirit moved him to action, perhaps at great personal risk. He accepted the risk, took action, and became a shining embodiment of God's own compassion. This stranger, this unwanted foreigner, reached out and saved a life when nobody in power would. Jesus knew it was a wild thing to suggest-- like saying that, in a neat orchard of apple trees, the best fruit grew on a weedy little grafted tree, a recent transplant with a label that said “mango.”

God never stops trying to surprise us, to shake us out of our sweet repose, to open us to the ongoing work of the Spirit. God never stops showing up in our midst, lonely and hungry, daring us to recognize each other as brothers and sisters of Christ. God is still speaking. Are you ready to listen with all of your being? Are you prepared to embrace your own blessed calling? Perhaps some of you are called to plant seeds of God's kingdom. Perhaps some of you are called to prepare the ground for those seeds. Some may be called to share, far and wide, the healing skill of your hands, the good fruits of your labors. Perhaps some of you are called to reach out, in compassion and solidarity, to those still feel rootless, cut off from justice or joy or peace.

We don't have to be afraid of starting something. We don't have to feel isolated. We don't have to worry ourselves about whether or not we belong. God is right here with us, sharing the work, holding us in a circle of loving accountability, giving us a taste of God's kingdom wherever hope, justice and compassion begin to blossom. And wherever these things blossom, we will all move together towards that wonderful harvest feast where everyone is welcome and we all—every one of us—belong.

Image sources: Puerto Rican farm, Holyoke Brickbox, Community Garden, Mango Tree.