Home Blog

un-euphemistic faith

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

It was a Communion Sunday at our church this past week, and it was also the Sunday after the shooting in Georgia. Here’s what I said in that intersection. The scripture was James 2:1-8, 14-17.

_________________________

Sometimes we speak in euphemisms, that is we say things we mean, but we don’t intend for them to actually be acted upon.

For instance, if someone comes to my house I might say, “Make yourself at home,” I mean make yourself comfortable, but if the person were to begin to rearrange the furniture or take pictures off the walls so they felt more at home, I would probably move fairly quickly to clarify what I meant.

If we were to distill our passage for this morning down to one sentence, it would say, “We can’t live out our faith euphemistically.” We need to live into our words. James offered a couple of specific examples to make his point.

First, he said, don’t say everyone belongs and then be impressed by money and power. Make room for everyone equally. Don’t play favorites. His second admonition is even more pointed: Don’t just say the right words, live them out. If we see someone who is hungry and cold, do more than say, “Be warm and eat well.” Feed them and clothe them.

As our translation puts it, “Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it?”

We can’t live out our faith in euphemisms.

That sounds fairly simple, doesn’t it? Let your actions speak as loudly and clearly as your words. Put your money where your mouth is. Don’t say one thing and do another.

It becomes more layered when we apply his words on more than a personal level, when we look at the systems we are a part of. It matters that we bring food to put in the plastic crates in the Parish Hall so Leon can take them to the Hamden Food Bank. That food feeds people. We are doing more than saying, “I hope you find a good meal.”

And—not but—AND those cans of tuna and vegetables don’t change a broken system that makes it hard for many people to live sustainable lives.

Yesterday, Ginger and I participated in an event for Raise the Roof, which is a nonprofit on the Shoreline that raises money for Habitat for Humanity of Greater New Haven. Each year they have a kind of “Dancing with the Stars” gala that raises the bulk of their money. This is the tenth anniversary of the gala and they have funded over twenty houses in New Haven.

It is a wonderful event and a wonderful organization, and—not but—AND part of the reason they fund houses in New Haven is the land in Guilford or Madison is too expensive and the towns have regulations that make that kind of building difficult, even though actual affordable housing would be both meaningful and beneficial to those communities—to any community.

We have to continue to work to live out our faith on both levels, personal and systemic. We can’t do it all. We can’t meet every need. And we can do something. We can meet the need in front of our faces and we can find ways to do the longer work of changing our systems.

I know a big part of the reason systems have been on my mind is the school shooting in Georgia this week. Once again, we are all disheartened by the horrible news and still as a nation we have done very little to make it more difficult for people—for children—to get assault weapons. As a nation—as a system—our words and our actions don’t match. We could change things, but we keep choosing not to do so.

I know that is a brutal example, and it matters that we figure out how to talk about the systems we are a part of, that we could change. I spent a good bit of time this week deciding, first, if I was going to mention the shooting and second, how to talk about it because I know it’s not an easy fix. I know it means we have to be willing to have hard conversations.

And then I decided to say it out loud as an invitation to hard conversations. We can begin to change systems by learning how to have hard conversations. As I have said before, one of the best ways we can change the world around us is to be willing to really listen and talk to each other right here in this congregation. We don’t all think alike, or feel the same way about what is happening, and yet, we do—if we are willing to listen and risk with one another.

Let me tell you why I feel so deeply about the school shootings. I was a high school English teacher in Winchester, Massachusetts when the shooting at Columbine High School happened. One of my favorite things about my school, which demographically was a lot like Columbine, was the big pile of backpacks in the hallway outside my room. For me, it was a huge monument of trust: no one worried about something getting stolen, no one worried about something bad being in them, they just pulled their books out and stacked them up.

After Columbine, one of the first things my school did was to ban that stack of bags—not because they found anything, but because they chose fear over trust. And the school became less safe and less hopeful.

We are eight weeks from an election that shows deep divisions in our country, particularly if all we are looking for are deep divisions. What if we don’t look for divisions? What if we lean into our shared humanity? Jesus called us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. That means I have to understand that you are as human as I am. We all belong to God.

Saying we are going to agree to disagree is kind of like saying, “Be warm and have a good meal,” to someone who is hungry and cold. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t deepen the trust between us—and the world, our country, our town, and our church need us to grow in our trust and love for one another.

We deepen our trust and love when we bring food for the food pantry, or we trust each other to bring enough lunch for our potluck, or gather to make prayer shawls, or play in the bell choir. We do it when we attend to the details of one another’s lives, remembering significant moments and checking in when we are sick or struggling. We are extending our reach by welcoming the Liberian choir in a couple of weeks.

One of the continuing ways we live out our trust and love, both for God and for one another is sharing this sacred meal together. We pass the bread and the cup from person to person as a clear symbol of our connection to one another in Christ. And so we come once again to the table, bringing our fear and our trust, as we share this meal . . .

Peace,
Milton

first, listen

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

For the month of September I am preaching from passages in the Letter from James, a small book towards the end of the New Testament that is an exercise in practical theology. This week’s sermon drew from James 1:17-27.

____________________________

One of the things I remember about the beginning of the pandemic when we were in lockdown was how much I detested being on Zoom. And I couldn’t figure out why. I am an off-the-charts extrovert (you probably didn’t know that), so I imagined having the chance to see and talk to others from our separate isolations would be a good thing, but it wasn’t.

After a couple of weeks, I came across an article that talked about people’s struggles with Zoom and it listed my problem. It said the reason we were having trouble was we were not used to seeing myself on screen. I know didn’t like seeing my facial expressions as I was making them. I felt disembodied somehow, even as I was trying to participate.

In natural conversation, we don’t see ourselves as we talk to others. Our expressions come from the inside out. With Zoom we were, quite literally, beside ourselves—or in front of ourselves, actually—which made us self-conscious; I realized that’s what made me uncomfortable.

It also offered a solution by showing how to turn off “self-view,” so that we only say those we were talking to. That little tip saved me from my frustration. I don’t need to see myself while I’m talking to other people. I do, however, need to remember I’m on camera and that others can see me.

Even though the writer of the letter attributed to James had no concept of being on a Zoom call, he did know something about how we look at ourselves, and he knew that it takes effort and intention for us to remember who we are as we move through the various situations that come our way.

A mirror was technology he understood, when it came to seeing a reflection of ourselves. We don’t have to stand in front of a mirror to remember what we look like; if we did, we wouldn’t get much done. But, he said, someone who describes themselves as a follower of Christ and still lashes out in anger, or makes damaging statements about others, or does things that take advantage of others is like a person who can’t remember who they are if they aren’t staring at themselves.

One of the first thing that comes to mind for me are those moments from time to time when someone in the public eye is caught on an open mic making a racist, or misogynist, or homophobic statement. Almost every time, part of their apology is to say something akin to, “That’s really not who I am.”

And yet, it is in some way. They said and did those things. They need to go back to the mirror and check in.

But let’s not talk about them. Let’s talk about us and how we remember who we are. Theologian Katie Van Der Linden wrote,

When you walk away from a mirror, you can still catch glimpses of yourself in windows and other reflective surfaces. So don’t forget who you are. You are a faithful follower of Jesus, whether you’re stranded on a desert island or you’re in the middle of Manhattan. Faith is about what God sees and what the world sees; they are not separate. Hear the word, do the word, follow the word, alone in your car or on a crowded bus. The journey is yours, but others may notice.

Who do we see when we catch a glimpse of ourselves?

Are we being the people we think we are? Do our lives reflect the image of God that lives in us?

The way to answer those questions affirmatively, our passage says (and I love our translation this morning) is to

Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. Human indignation doesn’t accomplish God’s justice.

In a way, that sounds like what we learned as kids: stop, look, and listen.

Listen first, then speak—when we have something to contribute—and leave our outrage behind. And hear the last sentence again: “Human indignation doesn’t accomplish God’s justice.”

“My life was changed by someone shouting at me or by a long rant on Facebook” is, I feel fairly confident, a sentence that no one has ever said. Anger is part of who we are, and it is an appropriate response when we have been hurt or someone we care about has been hurt. Outrage, on the other hand, is not useful in building relationships, even when we’re right.

Hearts and minds are changed in conversation, in relationship—by listening and speaking and standing up for and with those who far too often get shouted down. God’s justice is accomplished, our verses say, by reach out to the homeless, lonely, and loveless in their plight, and guarding against corruption.

Listen, then talk. Don’t use outrage as a motivational tool. Take care of those who need to be taken care of. This little letter attributed to James is full of accessible wisdom. It holds a unique place among New Testament books for its practicality. He offers theology with skin in—stuff that changes the way we think about everyday life. We are going to keeping reading this letter throughout September.

This morning, James asks that we look at our reflection to see how much the image of God shines through. We were created to incarnate love to one another. Is that who we see when we look at ourselves? Amen.

Peace,
Milton

creative tension

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

My sermon is a day or two late making it here because I was a part of the New England Songwriters’ Retreat, which was a transcendent experience for me. (If you would like to read more about that, please subscribe to my newsletter.) The retreat was close by, so I was able to slip away Sunday morning for a “preach and run” at my church. The passage was Ephesians 6:10-20.

         _____________________________

One of my favorite phrases is “creative tension.”

The idea is to take two things that appear opposite or contrary to one another and, rather than think of them as offering an either-or choice, to hold them both in a way that we can see greater options.

The phrase came to mind as I reflected on our passage for this morning because one of the fundamental truths of life, for me, is that responding to violence with violence is never an enduring solution and I am preaching from a passage that uses war as a spiritual metaphor.

Hence, a creative tension.

The only fight I ever had was with Johnny Pike. That is, unless you want to count the time when I was five and my brother was three and we were supposed to sing “Jesus Loves Me” before my dad preached at a church in Conroe, Texas. Miller hit a wrong note and I laughed. He punched me and we started wrestling to the point that they had to pull us apart.

So, I’ve been in two fights and the second one was with Johnny Pike.

We were both in the sixth grade at Hubbard Heights Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas, and we got into an argument over a science project that escalated to agreeing to meet on the football field across the street from my house after school. My parents said my brother came running home and slid under his bed, yelling, “Milton’s gonna get killed!” Johnny and I scrapped for a bit until we both were starting to cry; I tried to throw a punch and Johnny’s big brother jumped on me and held me down while Johnny ran away.

I am not a fighter. I don’t think violence is redemptive. One of my least favorite hymns is “Onward Christian Soldiers.” And I wonder if I would feel that way if I had spent my life in Kabul, or Darfur, or Somalia, or Gaza.

As I was preparing for this sermon, I read something written by a pastor named Austin Crenshaw Shelley who told of a time when she was in seminary and expressed her dislike for war metaphors in the Bible. Another student who was a Coptic Christian from Ethopia and whose church had been the target of a terrorist bombing said, “You prefer verses about peace because you have never needed a warrior God.”

We have to hold both ideas in creative tension as we look at these verses and listen to his metaphor.

Paul was writing to folks who were oppressed. The government was after them. They were considered dangerous, rebellious, incendiary. The lives they lived were not safe. War was a reasonable metaphor for their lives. The verses we read were the closing words to his letter. He had spent a significant part of his writing challenging them to relate to one another with kindness and love and integrity, as we have seen in the passages we have read over the past couple of weeks. As he brought the letter to a close, he told them to be strong in Christ and then used the various pieces of armor worn by Roman soldiers to describe what he meant. Once he had that picture of the soldier in their minds he said, “Our enemy is not physical,” and he talked about spiritual forces.

In other words, Johnny Pike is the least of our problems.

When I think of spiritual forces the words that come to mind are things like despair, shame, hopelessness, abuse, oppression, and prejudice. Those are all things that are larger than one person or one country; we could add to the list, I’m sure. In the face of all that, Paul said, be strong in the boundless resources of God.

When I was in college I heard my father preach on this passage and his words stayed with me, in part I think, because his whole point had to do with a preposition, and I didn’t think he had ever paid that much attention to prepositions.

He said that when we read “the armor of God” we tend to think of is possessive–that the armor belonged to God and God handed it out to us to get us ready to fight. He said the better way to read it was to hear the preposition as descriptive, which is to say the armor was God. To put on the armor of God was to wrap ourselves up in God—to be strong in the Spirit.

When God is the armor, we get a different view of the metaphor. Look at the verbs: resist, stand your ground, pray, keep alert. Paul never said anything about attacking. He talked about preparing and persisting, and then he asked them to pray for him while he was in prison that he would not lose faith.

As I thought about how to close this sermon, my first instinct was to point to people like Mahatma Ghandhi, Rosa Parks, or Martin Luther King—people who have stood strong and persevered by wrapping themselves in the armor of God. And then I thought of Ivor and June Mitchell, two people I cooked with this summer in Ireland, who have lived in Belfast their whole lives working for peace. They gave me a deeper understanding of the complexity of all that had happened, as well as how tenacious and compassionate we must be to foster justice and community.

Then a quote came to mind that I learned, first, from Ginger, but dates back to the days of the ancient Greek philosophers—“Be kind for everyone is fighting a great battle”—and I thought about people I know, and millions more that I don’t, who struggle daily to survive for any number of reasons, many of which feel like forces beyond their control.

The truth is we are all fighting great battles, often within ourselves. I then get this image in my mind of people putting on the armor of God—enveloping themselves in God’s tenacious and unfailing love and keeping on. To put on the armor of God is not a call to violence, but to love and faithfulness to God and it is also a call to carry on together.

And that takes me to one final thought. In every movie I have seen where a character has to put on some kind of armor, someone helps them get dressed. They can’t put it on by themselves, which takes me back to the quote: “Be kind because everyone is fighting a great battle.”

We all need help putting on the armor of God in the middle of our creative tensions. We can’t put on the armor of God alone. We all need help being reminded that we are wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved. We need help to remember that responding to violence with more violence is not a solution. We need help remembering we what we bring to the struggle are peace, hope, truth, trust, and love.

May we be armor-bearers for one another so that we all may know what it feels like to be loved and protected. May we be those who trust that love is the best armor of all. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

 

all together

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

We read Paul’s writings as theological texts instead of letters much of the time. The passage for today from Ephesians gives me the feeling that Paul was writing to remind folks of what they already knew about life together more than he was trying to lay down the law. And his words helped me remember words and music written by old friends and sung with so many people down the years.

_______________________

“So be careful to live your life wisely, not foolishly. Make the most of every opportunity because these are desperate times.”

That’s the first sentence of our passage for today, which lets us know we came in on the middle of the conversation. Paul had been admonishing the recipients of his letter to be aware, to courageous, to be intentional in all sorts of situations, and then he boiled it down to say, “So be careful to live your life wisely, not foolishly. Make the most of every opportunity because these are desperate times.”

If we were to update the last sentence into a more contemporary phrasing, we might say, “Seize the day because it’s all we have,” or “Live like there’s no tomorrow,” but how do we live into those words in ways that make them more than a good slogan?

Let me ask my question another way: What is the difference between wise and foolish?

Wisdom is more than being smart or educated or clever. We talk about the owl as a symbol for wisdom, though I’m not sure why other than they have the sense to pay attention and not say much. When I searched for why the owl is considered wise, I found that the explanation went all the way back to the goddess Athena who saw wisdom in the owl because of its big eyes and solemn appearance. But there’s more to wisdom than looking the part.

The Hebrew notion of wisdom was the ability to function well in life and in relationships. It carried a sense of discernment and hospitality. A wise person was one who had a sense of themselves and how they were connected to everyone and everything around them. “Work,” he said, “to understand God’s intent for our lives.”

I’ll come back to that, but first, I want to notice that the root of the word fool can also mean a blacksmith’s bellows, as in a wind bag. To be foolish is full of hot air, if you will, or blown by the wind without any sense of intention or grounding.

Paul then went on with a couple of other comparisons. Along with being wise and not foolish, he exhorted his readers to be intentional rather than careless and filled with God’s spirit rather than being drunk. All three contrast those who look to live as though they are a part of a larger whole with those who are self-absorbed.

Now let’s go back to what it means to understand God’s intent for our lives. When Paul told people to be filled with the Spirit of God, he said it happened in three ways: by speaking to each other in a melody of love, singing songs that draw us together, and being grateful in the midst of our circumstances, all of which lead us back to the sense of wisdom as hospitality.

God’s intent for us is to live as though relationships matter most—and we live into that intention when we speak and act with love, trust, joy, and gratitude.

I imagine that when he wrote those words, Paul knew he was not telling the Ephesians things they weren’t already aware of, just as I know I am not talking about things that already happen here. When I think of how we speak to one another in a melody of love I think about those of you who gather on Wednesdays to make prayer shawls and other things, and those of you who come on Fridays to play music together. I think of those who lead our music in the summer so Linda can have her time away. We speak the melody of love when we volunteer to usher and host coffee hour, or the way Anna and Bill share their vegetables.

My favorite example is Anna’s response to the email thread among our church leadership about housing a Liberian children’s choir in our fellowship hall in September. “Of course we should do it,” she said. “That’s what Christians do for each other.”

And we then we actually sing together each Sunday. I am always happy when we select a hymn that evokes a story from you. A lot of hymns do that for me. And, even though we don’t always pick winners, I like it when we sing hymns that are not in our usual repertoire, as Lynda calls it, because they ask us to stretch and learn together.

Since it’s summer and I have my guitar, lets learn one now. Don’t worry—it’s just a chorus that was written by some friends of mine. It is called “All Together,” which feels appropriate for this morning.

all together, sing the song
all together, everyone belongs
together, a family
we are all, all, all, all together

The last thing is to be grateful in the middle of our circumstances. That is easier some days than others, and it is also something we can choose to do. What are some of the ways you cultivate gratitude in your life? Who is this room are you thankful for and why? If we are going to make the most of every opportunity in the short time we walk the planet, letting people know why we love them and are thankful for them ought to be on our list every day.

Let’s sing one more time:

all together, sing the song
all together, everyone belongs
together, a family
we are all, all, all, all together. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

comfort instead of correct

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

I spent some time with the prophet Elijah this week, remembering we all need to be nurtured.

__________________________

From time to time, it is good to remind ourselves that our Bible is not a single book, but more like an anthology, or collection of books wrapped in a single cover—sixty-six of them, in fact. Like any good anthology, the Bible contains a variety of literature: narratives like the Gospels, songs and poetry like the Psalms, wisdom literature like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, correspondence like the letters to the early churches, and histories like the passage we read this morning from 1 Kings.

1 and 2 Kings tell the history of the Hebrew monarchy from David forward, including the years when it was split into two nations, Israel and Judah. Like history books you may have had in school, these books are full of wars and blood and what we today would call geo-politics. Some chapters read more like movie scripts than what we might expect of scripture. The chapters that precede the verses we read this morning have that kind of cinematic feel.

They tell the story of the prophet Elijah, who lived during the reign of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, monarchs of Israel who used their powers like weapons and treated people like disposable resources to be used up. They were not nice people, to put it mildly, and Elijah sent word to them that God had had enough of their wickedness.

Elijah then had a huge showdown with the prophets of the pagan god Baal, whom Ahab and Jezebel worshipped. Elijah challenged the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal to a contest to see whose deity would send down fire on their respective altars and prove their supremacy.

Once the two altars were prepared, Elijah let the others go first. When no fire appeared, Elijah mocked them. When it was his turn, he got a little cocky and has his helpers douse the altar with water three times—so much water that it ran off the sides and filled the trench around the altar. When he called down the fire from God it came so fiercely that it incinerated everything on the altar including the stones. And then he rounded up all the prophets of Baal and had them executed. (Like I said, more cinematic than spiritual.)

It seems as though Elijah thought that people like Ahab and Jezebel who abused power for their benefit would repent if they faced greater power, but he learned quickly that responding to power or violence with greater power or violence is not a lasting solution—not for long, anyway.

In her anger, Jezebel responded with more violence and sent her soldiers to find him and kill him. In a flash, Elijah went from being a confident conqueror to becoming a frightened fugitive. He ran into the desert and prayed for God to kill him because he felt so alone and defeated. Finally, when he thought he was out of the range of his suitors, he collapsed in exhaustion.

And God sent a messenger who woke him up and gave him food and water.

The messenger didn’t ask, “Why did you run away instead of staying and trusting God to take care of you?” or “This isn’t that big of deal. God will protect you.” or “What did you do to make Jezebel so mad?”

The messenger woke Elijah and said, “Get up and eat,” and offered the prophet freshly baked bread and water. Elijah ate and then went back to sleep. The messenger came a second time with the same message and the same meal, except this time they added, “You have a difficult road ahead of you.” Elijah ate and then went on his journey.

Elijah, as both a prophet and a person, had things he did with confidence and things that paralyzed him. He knew how to call down the presence of God in public places, but when he was by himself he couldn’t stare down his fear.

I have been thinking about him all week, and I even had a pretty good draft of a sermon, but that changed yesterday morning when I took Ginger to the Goose Lane Clinic for her to get her blood drawn. Because of a horrible childhood hospital experience that left her traumatized, Ginger has a deep fear of needles. She had not had her blood drawn in ten years.

I watched and admired her as she prepared for the visit. Over the past couple of weeks, she consulted a counselor who gave her practical exercises to do unfolding her arm to help desensitize her. She went to the clinic and asked to see the room where she would be and talked to them about the person who would be best to do the procedure.

Gil Spencer tells me that I mention Ginger in most every sermon I preach. I know I talk about her a lot. You probably feel like you know her even though she doesn’t get to Hamden often. From the day I first time I met her, I have been impressed by her confidence and forthrightness. This a woman who went to Nigeria to work in a leprosy village as a college student. I have never thought of her as one who carries much fear. But, just as the Bible is an anthology of different kinds of writing, she, like the rest of us, is a multi-layered person who is made up of more than one story.

Over the course of our marriage, I have not always said or done the right thing to help her in moments when the fear is palpable—and I have worked to learn from my mistakes. As we planned out our trip, I thought of the messenger coming to Elijah—“Get up and eat.”—and I tried to pay attention to how I could best support her. As she walked to the car, I had the song she had chosen blaring on the stereo. I went with her into the room with the nurse and handed her a congratulatory fun-size Snickers bar when it was over. And I took her to breakfast, like the messenger said: “Get up and eat.”

You see, this is not a fear I share. I don’t get anxious if I have to have my blood drawn. But just because it is not my fear does not mean it’s not significant. And just because Ginger is confident by nature does not mean she should be able to conquer her fear easily. Life is not that simple; neither are people.

I would not have been much help if I had said, “Oh, it’s not that big of a deal. People get their blood taken all the time.” The best thing I did was to take her seriously—to pay attention before I took action or said anything.

As I watched her get through the morning Elijah’s story took on some new layers for me, particularly in what God’s messenger said and did. When we see someone else who is hurting, or frightened, or depleted by life, we do our best work when we don’t see those moments as teaching moments, but as nourishing moments instead. When we are worn out or anxious, we don’t need advice, we need companionship. We don’t need people to tell us what to do, we need people to listen rather than dismiss, who nurture instead of discount. People don’t become less afraid or less exhausted because they were told to get over it.

In the anthology of stories that make up our lives together, we all have a difficult road ahead. May we look at one another through God’s lens of love so that we, like the messenger, offer compassion and care that comfort rather than correct. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

morning by morning . . .

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

The story this week was the Hebrew people complaining about life and God answering with breakfast.

__________________________

Yesterday marked eleven years since my father died.

There are ways in which it feels like yesterday and then ways in which it seems like so much life has gone by between then and now. In his honor—well, because he gave me a good excuse—I had a hot dog for lunch. I also loved that as I was working on this sermon one of the jokes he told (and retold) came to mind. In his honor, I will offer it to you.

A young man felt a calling to join a monastery and pledged himself to a life of silence. He was only allowed to speak once every five years when the Abbott called him in for a conference, and even then he was only to say one sentence.
At five years, the Abbott asked him if everything was alright and the monk said, “The mattress is lumpy.” So they gave him a new mattress. At ten years, when asked about his life, he said, “My sandals are worn out.” So they gave him new sandals. At fifteen years, he said, “My room is cold,” and the Abbott replied, “I think we are going to have to let you go. All you have done since you got here is complain.”

Thanks, Dad.

The writer of Exodus makes the Hebrew people sound like that monk. After being freed from generations of oppression, rather than singing songs of joy and gratitude, they complained about their conditions, mostly because they were hungry. Desperately hungry, it seems—to the point that they said, “Maybe we would have been better off dying as enslaved people in Egypt. At least there we had something to eat.”

They were so focused on their hunger, on their desperation, on the reality that they were on a journey without a map, that they starved their gratitude.

I say they, but it wasn’t as if everyone was saying the same thing. Assuming that groups of people speak in unison is not only inaccurate but a little dangerous as well. We must keep reminding ourselves that groups speak with more than one voice. We open ourselves to misunderstanding if we think Democrats think this, or Republicans think that; Israelis all say one thing and Palestinians all say something else.

But there was discord in the community. What people shared in common was that they were struggling. Life wasn’t going the way they wanted, or the way they had hoped. And they were still new at being free. They had only been gone from Egypt for a month. Even though scripture refers to them as Israelites, they were years away from becoming an actual nation. They didn’t even have the Ten Commandments yet. In this part of the story, they were people united in their faith and frustration, and the frustration had the upper hand. They couldn’t see beyond where they were and what they did not have. What they could do was complain.

And God heard their complaints and responded by sending that word through Moses and Aaron to say exactly that: “Tell them I have heard their complaints.” Not tell them I’m tired of hearing about it, or tell them to count their blessings, or tell them they are in big trouble. Just, “Tell them I have heard them.”

Then God responded those complaints by saying, “Every morning it will rain bread and every evening birds will just come and sit in the camp so that everyone can eat. But,” God said, “I want to see if they can follow instructions.” Those were that each person or family should only collect what food they needed for that day and trust that there would be more to come.

That evening, birds settled in the camp and provided meat for dinner. The next morning, the ground looked like it was covered with a heavy dew, but then that evaporated leaving thin flakes of something that turned out to be bread, but bread like they had never seen. They tasted it and asked each other, “What is it?” Turns out the Hebrew word for that question is manna.

Moses answered them by saying, “It’s what God has given you.”

The daily routine did two things. First, it fed everyone—it answered the complaints. Second, it redirected the vision of the people.

They had gotten in the habit of complaining to the point that they couldn’t see beyond their circumstances. They were only a month away from having been enslaved and they had gotten to the place where they woke up every morning and all they could see was what was wrong—and there was a lot wrong. They had good reason to complain. The problem was they couldn’t see anything else.

When God said, “I’ll test them to see whether or not they follow my instruction,” perhaps it wasn’t so much that God wanted to see if they would be compliant, but that God wanted to change the way they looked at their lives one day at a time.

Though the story is told as though this was one incident, the bread and birds continued until they were ready to enter into Canaan and settle down. For years they woke up and looked out to see the ground covered in grace, and each evening they closed out their days with the same message. They were still in the desert, they were still without a permanent home, they were still struggling, and, as we will sing in a few moments, morning by morning new mercies they saw—if they were willing to see them as they traveled.

Poet David Whyte has a poem called “Learning to Walk” that gives a glimpse, perhaps, of what it was like to step out and see the ground covered in grace.

Walked out this morning
into a broad green garden
with the rising sun in my eyes
and the first hint of the day’s
heat touching my face,
feeling as broad as the garden
and young as the day
and soaking up the heat
in my black tee-shirt,
walked straight forward
out of the gate,
through the wood,
along the river,
toward the mountain
and thought of the future
I could make in the world
if I walked toward it
like this,
with my face toward the hills
and my eyes full of light
and the earth sure
and solid beneath me,
walking on
with a fierce anticipation,
and a faithful expectation,
with the sun and the rain
and the wind on my skin . . .

We may not be stuck in the desert, but we are susceptible to what we allow to dominate how we see our world and ourselves. Hear me clearly: I am not talking glass-half-full or glass-half empty. Optimism and hope are not the same thing. Things don’t always work out. Pain isn’t always resolved. Life is hard and it hurts. And, if we wake up looking for grace, there’s a good chance we will find it, even in the middle of the hard stuff.

Morning by morning new mercies we see. May we think of the future we could make in the world if we walked toward it like that. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

how do we get through this?

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1

I preached this sermon at the end of a long week and the stories wound together.

_____________________

A couple of weeks ago, Ginger was helping Lizzy!, our little blind Schnoodle, find her way outside from our kitchen. Lizzy! got down the stairs to the patio on her own, but then she had to turn either right or left to find a way around the small stone wall that separates the patio from the back yard. She didn’t turn. As she got close to the stones, Ginger yelled, “Walls,” and Lizzy! turned away, only to almost walk into another section. “More walls,” Ginger yelled, and she and I both started laughing. Then Ginger said, “Well, that’s going to show up in somebody’s sermon.”

When I got to this scripture about the wind blowing so hard that the disciples couldn’t cross the lake, I knew she was right. I pictured Jesus walking toward the little boat yelling, “Wind!”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We have spent the month of July reading through Mark 6 together. We started with Jesus and the disciples returning to his hometown of Nazareth where people were astounded at first, but then became belligerent and unwilling to let him grow up. Then we saw how Jesus sent them out in pairs to build relationships wherever they could and to move on from the places and the people where they could not. Last week we read the story of Jesus’ big garden party—a meal for over 5000 people that started with the disciples saying they didn’t have eight months of wages to cater the dinner and Jesus showing them there was enough to go around.

They were tired. Jesus was tired. He wanted some time to himself to pray and reflect and he wanted them to get some rest, so he told them to take a boat back to the other side of the lake and he would meet them there. When they finally got in the boat and out in the water—a place they knew well—the headwinds were so strong that they spent all night rowing and couldn’t get to the other shore. It was getting close to dawn. The disciples were working hard. They were doing what they knew to do. Several of them had fished for a living. They knew about boats and wind and water, but on that night it didn’t matter. They were stuck. And tired.

When I imagine the conversations that might have taken place that night, I hear at least one of their voices asking, “How are we going to get through this?”

Perhaps I pictured them that way because it is a question I have been asking this week. I told you a couple of Sundays ago that my audiologist had recommended I pursue a cochlear implant because of the severity of my hearing loss. Ginger and I met with a surgeon who concurred. I have felt hopeful about this process, even though it is going to be a significant change. It seems like that offers me a chance for life to be very different that it has for the last twelve or fourteen years.

Last Wednesday I went for another battery of tests that were the penultimate step before we meet again with surgeon to set the date for me to get a new ear.

For about two hours I repeated words and sounds and sentences as best I could. After the test I learned I had done too well. It wasn’t so much that my hearing had improved as it was I figured out a lot of the sentences from the context, so I scored too high for my insurance to approve the implant. I was devasted. I felt like I hit a wall of wind like the disciples.

I was immobilized by my despair for most of the day wondering, “How am I going to get through this?”

I understood what it felt like to be in that boat. But then something happened to them that did not happen to me. They saw someone walking toward them on the water. He was not bothered by the wind. He didn’t even seem to be coming to where they were. They thought it was a ghost at first and screamed, and then realized it was Jesus and called out in fear and desperation.

Jesus got in the boat, the wind died down, and they got to the other side. The disciples were amazed, but still confused. The gospel writer said they still didn’t understand about the loaves even though they had gotten through it.

The Lesson of the Loaves was not a parable Jesus had told. Jesus never said, “Here’s what the loaves mean,” to them or to us. But look back at the story again. Jesus told them to feed the people and the disciples said, “We don’t have enough money to do that,” which I hear as another version of “How are we going to get through this?”

And Jesus asked, “How many loaves do you have?”

They gave him the loaves that they had and when the meal was over there was more than enough for everyone. They had gotten through it.

As for me, late Wednesday night I sent an email to all three of my doctors telling them how I felt about what had happened with the test. It didn’t change anything, but it at least gave me something tangible that I could do. Thursday afternoon I heard from my audiologist saying she understood and asked me to come in for more testing this coming week. It doesn’t mean I am going to get the implant, but it does mean the story is not over.

I got through it. I found enough to keep going. I felt like I had to learn the lesson of the loaves.

Let me be clear: I don’t mean the lesson of the loaves is, “Just hang in there and everything will work out for everyone,” because everything doesn’t always work out. Sometimes the boat sinks. Sometimes people go hungry. I still may not qualify for my implant.

I am not saying that when God closes a door, God opens a window. Sometimes doors close because they need to be shut, and most of the time God is not the one closing them. God didn’t make those people get hungry in the middle of that pasture or set the wind against the disciples just to teach them a lesson, any more than God inflicted me with profound hearing loss.

And that brings me to Gladys Knight and the Pips. (I mean, the connection is obvious, don’t you think?)

Last Sunday evening when word came that President Biden was not going to seek reelection, I was stunned by his news, but what disheartened me was how some of his political adversaries responded with attacking words rather than show the slightest compassion for what must have been a difficult decision. That was another night that I asked, “How are we going to get through this?”

I kept hearing an old song by Gladys Knight and the Pips. The opening lines say,

I’ve just got to use my imagination
to think of a reason to keep on keeping on.

Maybe Motown is not where you look for inspiration, but it spoke to me, in part because when I hear the word imagination as a sibling to the word image—as in the image of God in which we were created. The Spirit of God is imagination: the eyes to see beyond the limits and fears of the moment.

Can you see the imagination of Jesus in response to the disciples saying the had no money? He took a sack lunch and started sharing and invited a hillside full of people to join the party. And then he came walking across the water because his disciples still couldn’t hear the music.

We have so much inviting us to despair. I’ve already mentioned our political climate. Friday I saw the video of a police officer shooting a woman named Sonya Massey as she stood in her kitchen. The death toll in Gaza is almost 50,000. The people of Ukraine and Sudan are suffering from wars in their countries. And those are only three of the almost one hundred wars around the globe. We have all kinds of reasons to keep yelling, “Walls!” and putting up our defenses.

So, how do we get through this?

How do we imagine life beyond our fear and pain, beyond our confusion and concern? How do we trust the lesson of the loaves—trust that God is with us and we are with each other and that is enough, even when things stay tough?

We live in important days, days that feel critical, maybe they even feel like the world has never been this bad. May we be imaginative enough to remember that we are not the most important people who have ever lived, or the most troubled, we are just the latest ones. I am not the first one to ever have been denied medical care because my insurance wouldn’t cover it any more than the people on that hillside were the first to be hungry or the disciples were the first sailors to get caught by the wind.

We belong to a legacy of love, a lineage of people who got through it because they trusted that the love of God never let go, of people who imagined that love was enough—and got through it. May we go and do likewise. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

join the party

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

My sermon this week looked at a very familiar story—Jesus feeding over five thousand people with a sack lunch—and what new things I noticed in it.

_________________________

One of the (many) books I have on my shelf is one called The Art of Noticing by a man named Rob Walker, and it is exactly what the title says: it is a book about learning how to notice things, how to pay better attention. Most of the book is filled with exercises designed to help you notice what you might not have seen before, and often those exercises have to do with paying attention to the things that you see and do over and over.

One exercise says to take the same walk every day for at least a week. Go down the same streets, make the same turns, but focus on something different each time. Look at the differences in the barks on the trees, and then notice the cracks in the sidewalks, or the front doors of the houses you pass.

That particular exercise fascinates me because of how often I see something and I think, “I’ve walked by that place and I’ve never noticed that before.” When was a youth minister in Texas I walked into our church sanctuary one day while the organist was practicing. She had been at the church for over twenty years at that time; the sanctuary was only a decade old. She motioned for me to come over and she pointed to the large stained glass window in front of her.

“What do you see?” she asked.

I stared at the window for a couple of minutes, knowing I was supposed to notice something unusual. Finally, in the top bar that ran across the window, I saw a roll of painter’s tape sitting on its side.

She smiled and said, “That’s been there since the first Sunday we moved into this room and I’m the only one who has ever noticed it.”

Well, my experience with this week’s scripture was a little looking at that window. I have both heard and preached a number of sermons on what we have come to call the Feeding of the Five Thousand. It is the only story of Jesus’ life that shows up in all four gospels, outside of those events leading up to his crucifixion, which means it shows up in every lectionary cycle, which means you’ve probably heard a bunch of sermons, too.

In the years since my father died, I have read it mostly as a grief story, or I should say a story that takes place in the wake of grief. Right before Jesus fed the crowd, John the Baptist was beheaded. Jesus kept trying to get away by himself and the crowd kept following to the point that they needed to be fed. Jesus was caught in the tension between the death of someone he dearly loved and the needs of those around him. From that angle, the story has been a meaningful one for me.

Mark tells about John’s death in the verses right before the ones we read this morning, but he doesn’t say anything about anyone telling Jesus what had happened. Instead, he says the disciples returned from their paired-up journeys with stories to tell. Jesus invited them to get out of town for a little rest and relaxation, so they took a boat across the Sea of Galilee.

The ”sea” was small enough that the crowd following them could run around the edge and meet them on the other side, which they did, but that meant they were all on the other side of the lake from the more inhabited parts, out in the middle of a field. Jesus was enjoying the chance to teach them because he could tell they were kind of lost trying to figure out how to deal with life—like a sheep without a shepherd, Mark said.

The disciples were more concerned with it being dinner time and they didn’t know where the food was going to come from, much less how they were going to pay for it, and they made that known to Jesus. He asked what food they could find and they came up with five loaves and two fish. (No little boy in Mark’s version.) And then comes the part I had not noticed before.

Jesus told them to tell the people to recline like they were getting ready for dinner, that is dinner inside. To act like they were settling in at the dinner table. Except they were in the middle of a field of green grass—which is the second thing that struck me: they weren’t out in the desert; they were in a rich pasture. And then he told them to get in groups of fifty or a hundred. The Greek word there has to do with being at an outside party or banquet.

All the language abounds with hospitality in response to the disciples’ sense of scarcity. They were holding five loaves of bread and a couple of fish and Jesus was saying, “Tell everyone to get ready for a big garden party.”

What Mark described in a couple of sentences had to have taken a while. The disciples moved through the crowd telling the people to group up because the party was about to start. I wonder if that is what set the miracle in motion. Jesus blessed the food he had and the disciples started handing it out, but after noticing all the different ways Jesus talked about hospitality, I wonder if folks began pulling out what they had to share and the party really started. Whatever happened, everybody ate well and they even had leftovers. I have always noticed that part because I was raised to notice meal time.

Right before my family moved back to the States from Africa permanently, my mother said, “Our lives are about to change dramatically. What is it about what we do as a family that you would most want to keep when we get to America?”

My brother and I both said, “Having dinner together.”

My mother made a big deal out of any meal. If we were having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, she would take the time to scoop the stuff out of the jars and into a serving bowl and invite us all to the table. Even a quick snack could be made memorable.

When we got to Houston and my brother and I immersed ourselves in American high school life, my mother worked around schedules so we all sat down to eat together. In my twenties, when I felt distant, even estranged, from my parents the leftovers of those meals were the memories that kept me connected, even when I didn’t know how to say so.

Eventually, we found our way back to each other and the stories around the table continued.

One of the ways to notice the words we say at the Communion table—“As often as you do this, remember me”—is that Jesus wasn’t just talking about the sacrament but meant anytime we gather to share food we put ourselves back together in Jesus’ name. We are invited to hear Jesus’ words of invitation and anticipation—act like it’s about to be a banquet—whether we are sharing Communion, eating lunch at Luce’s, enjoying our snacks at Coffee Hour, or heating up leftovers.

Remember that the disciples had just come back from their travels where Jesus had sent them out and told them to stay where they were welcomed and to move on if they were not. And now they stood in the middle of a green field watching Jesus tell five thousand people they had a place at the table, even when it looked like there wasn’t enough to go around.

There’s always enough love to go around.

I hope we keep noticing that—and joining the party—over and over again. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

just stand there

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
0

The passage that informed my sermon this week tells of Jesus sending his disciples out in pairs, rather than just following him. It was their first such venture, and it still speaks.

___________________

When I was a high school English teacher, I did an exercise with my ninth graders where they had to write instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I had all the elements out on a table: jars of peanut butter and jelly, a couple of knives, a loaf of bread still in the wrapper, a plate. One of the main reasons behind the activity was to get them to understand the importance of details, so I told them to make sure and write down every little thing you had to do to make a PB & J.

What I didn’t tell them was the was that the way the assignment would be evaluated was how well one of the other students could make a sandwich by following their directions because they could only do what was written on the paper. It became apparent rather quickly that no one had thought of details like open the bag and take out two slices of bread, I gave their instructions back to them for revision.

We all learned that directions are hard to write.

Whenever we come across a passage where Jesus gives instructions to his disciples, it is tempting to read his words as though he was offering a sort of User’s Manual for all of us. There are parts of scripture that read that way—the Ten Commandments, for instance—but even they don’t have all the details for exactly how we live out those ideals.

In our passage today, Mark recounts the first time Jesus sent his followers out on their own. Remember, this is a continuation of the scene we looked at last week when Jesus couldn’t get his hometown folks to take him seriously. He decided to move on to other places and he told his disciples to do the same, except to do it without him.

And he gave some instructions, which we read a few moments ago. I want to read them again, this time from The Message translation:

“Don’t think you need a lot of extra equipment for this. You are the equipment. No special appeals for funds. Keep it simple. And no luxury inns. Get a modest place and be content there until you leave. If you’re not welcomed, not listened to, quietly withdraw. Don’t make a scene. Shrug your shoulders and be on your way.”

The reason Jesus’ words reminded me of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches is because I found several sermons that tried to turn his words into a little instruction book. One preacher made a connection to Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten. Remember that book? The author took things we learned as kids and talked about how they applied to our lives, such as, “Share everything. Play fair. Put things back where you found them. Take a nap every afternoon. And when you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.”

Those words hold a lot of truth, and I am a huge fan of naps, but life doesn’t come with easy-to-follow instructions when it comes to how to live meaningfully—or perhaps it’s better to say the instructions are a starting point.

Jesus does give instructions, as did our kindergarten teachers, but he wasn’t offering a step-by-step manual of how to change the world, or even how to be a disciple. He was inviting them into a deeper understanding of what it means to love one another, whether those one anothers were people they knew or people they had just met. And so he told them to put themselves in positions where they needed the help of others, even as they were going out to try and help; to live within their means; and to meet people on their terms. If they didn’t want to engage, then give them space and move on.

He challenged them to be guests rather than experts, to act just as he had just done in Nazareth. Instead of a list of instructions, he told them to go and build relationships, to engage other people on their terms.

That’s as close as you can get, I suppose, for instructions on how to love someone: meet them on their terms and offer what you have. As The Message translated it, “You are the equipment.”

Those words made me think of the Platinum Rule, which I learned about from Ginger. The Golden Rule, as most of us have been taught, is to do to others as we would have it done to us. The Platinum Rule says do to others as they would have it done to them. Use them as the reference point rather than ourselves. Listen to them before we decide what they need.

Perhaps that is doing as we would have it done to us, in a way, since we would like to feel listened to and regarded.

Theologian Sam Wells says that often, when we think about how to care for others we think about what we can do for them. “And,” he says, “those gestures of ‘for’ matter because they sum up a whole life in which we try to make relationships better, try to make the world better, try to be better people ourselves by doing things ‘for’ people.”

But for is not the key word in the way God relates to us. When the angel tells Joseph what to name the child, they say to call him Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” “’With’,” says Wells, “is the most fundamental thing about God. . . . It is the word that describes the heart of God and the nature of God’s purpose and destiny for us.”

Jesus sent the disciples out to be with people, not just to go do stuff for them. And with is harder than for. We want to feel productive and useful, to be able to see how we helped. But sometimes the best thing we can do is to follow what the White Rabbit told Alice in Alice in Wonderland: “Don’t just do something, stand there!”

I first heard that line from my supervisor when I was a fresh-out-of-seminary hospital chaplain intern at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas. I had gone from the classroom to being in hospital rooms with dying patients and families. I didn’t know what to do and my supervisor reminded me I couldn’t do anything but stand there. Just be with people. Even when I couldn’t fix it, I could choose to stay. That is true beyond the hospital. Even when we can’t fix it, we can choose to stay. We can choose to be with each other, no matter how much it hurts and how helpless we feel.

But I am not telling you something you don’t know.

As I thought about Jesus sending out the disciples, I kept thinking, “That is kind of what we do every Sunday. We got out from here into the lives of those around us to see how we can be with them, and then we come back here to remember we are with each other.” You have been with each other for a lot more Sundays than I have been here.

I’m not telling you something you don’t know, but it’s worth being reminded that the way love changes lives is in our being with one another, is in our being together. God is with us and we are with each other. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

room to grow

By
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
3

In Robert Frost’s poem “Death of the Hired Man,” one of the characters says,

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.

That line came to mind as I read about Jesus’ return to Nazareth, his hometown, and left me wondering how we make room for one another to grow and change.

____________________________

One of the things in my life with which I have a mixed relationship is the autocorrect on my phone and my computer. Maybe this happens to you as well. I send a text message only to find out—after I sent it—that what I thought I typed and what the computer predicted I really wanted to say weren’t the same thing. Sometimes it’s a funny mistake, sometimes it might be a little embarrassing, and most of the time it doesn’t make sense.

The technology is designed to recognize patterns in my words. It thinks it knows what I want to say and doesn’t make room for me to say something different. That’s not always helpful, but it does offer a good metaphor as we look at the scene from Jesus’ life that we just read together.

On the heels of healing the woman who had hemorrhaged for twelve years and raising a twelve-year-old girl from the dead, Jesus went back to his hometown of Nazareth, where he spoke in the synagogue. We don’t know how fast news travelled back then or what folks had heard, but it doesn’t appear that a big crowd had followed Jesus home. Just his disciples.

Mark, Matthew, and Luke all offer different accounts of Jesus’ return home. In Luke, it happened immediately after Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. Matthew describes the scene happening after Jesus had told several parables. Mark places it after Jesus had raised the little girl. What the three accounts share is that the people in Nazareth responded in two ways: first, they were powerfully struck by what (and who) they were hearing, and then they fell back into their preconceived notions of who Jesus was: “Isn’t he the carpenter’s boy? When did he get to be a big shot? We know his family.”

(Mark also gives us a brief glimpse of Jesus’ family. He identifies four brothers and then says he had sisters, so Jesus was the oldest of at least seven. They don’t show up anywhere else.)

Mark’s order of events is interesting because Jesus had just come from giving two people new leases on life, offering them the chance to see possibilities, only to have the people in Nazareth confine him with their assumptions about who he had become because of their memory of who he was.

They couldn’t let Jesus grow up, or. perhaps, they wouldn’t. As a result, Mark says, Jesus couldn’t do much. The gospel says he was amazed at their lack of trust.

The whole scene creates a picture kind of like going back to a high school or college reunion where who we were then is not who we are now. Maybe we heard an old nickname that we were happy to discard or were reminded of things we did that we have outgrown.

Or maybe it brings to mind a situation where we felt trapped in a job or a responsibility because people put us where they thought we belonged rather than asking, or we were never considered for the promotion because “we were so good right where we were.”

Maybe it’s not quite that dramatic, but we wish people would look beyond the person they think they know and give us a chance to paint a fuller picture of ourselves. You might be surprised to know, for example, I am an award-winning dancer.

(I’ll be you didn’t see that coming.)

A few years back, Ginger and I were asked to be a part of a Gala of Stars: Dancing for a Cause for Raise the Roof, a nonprofit on the Shoreline that raises money for New Haven Habitat for Humanity. We won the fundraising award and placed second in dancing; we lost by a point. Therefore, I am an award-winning dancer.

One of the reasons I love coffee hour is we get to hear each other’s stories; we have a chance to be amazed by each other as we learn things we didn’t know. The people in Nazareth asked lousy questions in response to being struck by Jesus’ sermon. Rather than asking, “Isn’t that the carpenter’s kid?” they would have done better to wonder what had happened to him since they had seen him last—and not just because he might have been able to do miracles, but also because they could have helped him feel at home.

When I was teaching high school English in Winchester, Massachusetts there was a boy who sat on the back row and never said a word. He did his work, and he didn’t cause trouble, but he seemed disengaged. I tried several things to connect, but they were my ideas; I didn’t ask him much of anything. One of his classmates invited me to watch the lacrosse team play and it was there I learned he played also—and he played well. He was a leader on the field, vocal and passionate. When the game was over, I went up to him and said, “I don’t know who the guy is that sits in the back of the room, but I would love for you to come to class. You’re amazing.”

And he did.

When I was willing to see him differently, I gave him a chance to be different.

I realize that story makes it sound as though I have had more training and teachers who helped me evolve more than the people of Nazareth, but that is not my point. I also have stories of situations where I was not quite as aware, and they remind me that, though Mark’s account makes them easy to criticize, we might do better to ask ourselves what we share in common with them and how we can grow.

How are we making room for one another to show sides of ourselves no one is expecting? Are we creating a community that gives people a safe place to be themselves? Since many of you have known each other a long time, those might sound like odd questions, but sometimes those with whom we are most familiar are the hardest ones to see with fresh eyes. We tend to autocorrect each other if we are not intentional about how we listen to and learn about how we are all growing and changing.

One of the roles rituals play is to remind us that we are still growing. Think of the shared meals at this Communion table like pencil marks on the doorframes of our lives, as we come each month to re-member ourselves in Jesus name. Who were we when we last gathered? What has happened? What new sorrows have shaped us? What new joys have found us? What has changed our view of the world and who we are called to be in it? How are we going to go from this place to help each other grow in love in the days to come? How will we grow in our trust in God and in one another?

Let us hold these questions as we keep the feast. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

123...241Page 1 of 241

EDITOR PICKS

POPULAR POSTS

POPULAR CATEGORY

©