The Word is Love

The Word is Love
Rev. Alan Claassen
Psalm 119:105-112 Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
July 13, 2008

Prayer before Sermon
Gracious God, May more light and truth break forth in our lives today from your Holy Word in ways that transform us and influence the world around us. Amen.

Can you tell I’m excited?

I am excited. And remembering my sermons back in May, I might even say that I am enthused this morning. It’s summertime, the time of the summer vacation, cross country trip,to see relatives or cross continent trips to see some foreign country such as Italy, the Netherlands or Costa Rica.

But the trip I am enthusiastic about is not back to Tulsa, Oklahoma or Amsterdam.

I am thinking about this journey that I have decided to lead us on this summer. This journey that begins in Genesis and ends in Revelation. This journey that will be filled with stories to tell when we get back home. In fact, that is one of the main stories of the Bible, leaving home, living away from home, living in a strange land and making it feel like back home, seeing our land as our home, and seeing strangers as our own family.
There will be stories about creation and creativity, there will be stories of being lost and found in the wilderness, of corruption and courage, there will be stories of wise men and women and children, there will be stories of dying and living.
Can you see why I am excited?
Now I am know that some of you are thinking that you have been to these places before. You know these stories. But I am not worried about you. You know that these stories are worth seeing again. You might say that you will be seeing them again for the first time.
You know that as you open up these stories they open you up, they open up your heart, your strength, your soul. No, I am not so worried about you all.

I am concerned that some of you might need persuading that this is a journey worthy of our excitement. And I understand that. And so does our tour guide, Marcus Borg, who has written our travel itinerary.

And so let me take just a moment to talk to you folks who are not persuaded that the Bible is not the best place to go on a summer vacation.

Marcus Borg sees three reasons why the Bible, at least as it was taught to most of us when we were growing up, is no longer persuasive.
One of the reasons is because “We are aware of the world’s religions in a way that most people have not been for most of human history. We are now global citizens. Either through the Television series by Joseph Campbell or Huston Smith, or just meeting some of our neighbors we are coming to some level of familiarity with the world’s religions and wisdom traditions. And so many find the exclusivist claims of Christian tradition impossible to accept. Some of us know that there are others ways to God than the way that Jesus taught. And if the Bible is used to say there is only one way then some of us are likely to go another way.
A second reason why some find the Bible no longer persuasive is that we are aware of the influences of cultural relativity; “that how people think is shaped by the time and place in which they live, as well as by their social and economic class. Our concepts, images, language, knowledge, beliefs, are all profoundly shaped by culture.” And so when the Bible is used to say that the ideas of some middle eastern men are true for all time and all people some people are likely to go look elsewhere for meaning and truth.
A third reason that people have been turned off rather than excited about reading the Bible is that we are modern people, influenced by science. Much of what we know to be true is based upon knowledge gained through experimentation and not revelation. And so when the Bible is used to give scientific explanations for the creation of the universe we are likely to say, “You must be kidding.”
The sad thing is that many people leave the church not knowing that the church has been living quite well with this knowledge of the wisdom of the world’s religions, the influence of cultural relativity, and the gifts of science for decades. In fact, applying the techniques of what in seminary is called “historical criticism” has brought the Bible back into play for many people. When the Bible is not taken literally, but is taken seriously, as a way to transcend our self-centered egos and see ourselves, our neighbors, and our planets from the perspective of our God-centered selves we experience the charity, compassion, loving-kindness that is the core of all the world’s religions.
My own father is the perfect example of this. Both my Mom and Dad were active in church when I was growing up. They taught the college age group at church when I was in grade school. They were loving kind people. But my Dad always, trained as a lawyer, also felt a little disconnected from what was often taught in church. A few years ago I began sharing with my Dad some of the books that I was excited about, including books written by Marcus Borg.
After he read a few of them he was upset. He asked me, with an equal measure of frustration and disbelief, “Why didn’t you ministers tell us about this 25 years ago?”
I noticed a similar experience last Fall when a small group of us studied Marcus Borg’s book, The Heart of Christianity.” Several in the class commented that the ideas that Borg was sharing were ideas that they had already, or questions that they had already been asking, but that they didn’t know it was OK.

Now the gift of a scientific approach to reading the Bible has given us a new appreciation for how the Bible came into being. Rather than thinking that it was written by God and is so holy that we cannot touch it, the results of approaching the Bible as a historian, a cultural anthropologist, a linguist, enables us to see the human beings who wrote the Bible. It enables us to see what made the Bible sacred, what gives it authority, what makes it a sacrament, a bridge between us and God that carries us to the promised land of compassion, tolerance, and caring for the earth.
So I hope that I have persuaded some of you reluctant ones to go on this journey with the rest of us. And if I made those of you were already excited, a little nervous, remember one the core ideas that you learned from your study of the Bible. Be not afraid.

Now I would like every to listen to this. What does it mean to refer to the Bible as sacred Scipture. We say that the Bible is the Holy Word. We say that the Bible is the word of God. But we don’t say that God wrote the Bible. Another way to say that is that Bible is not the words of God, it is the word of God.
“The Bible is a collection of divinely inspired written clues that by the power of the Holy Spirit reveal mysteries about God's nature and intent to real people. It was written by real people struggling to understand "God," --real people who became holy reflections and human witnesses of Divine intention.” (Ron Bufford)
As your tour guide let me share with you the first interesting fact of this journey. It took a long time for the Bible to be considered sacred. “The first five books of the Hebrew Bible, which we commonly refer to as the Old Testament, were regarded as sacred by the Jewish community around 400 years before Christ. But some of the writings and stories in those first five books of the Bible are approximately 4,000 years old.
The second part of the Hebrew Bible, the Prophets achieved sacred status by about 200BC. And the third part, the Writings, which include the Psalms, Proverbs, and Job became considered as sacred by the community 100 years after the birth of Christ.
For the 27 books of the New Testament the process took about three centuries. Though most of the books of the New Testament were written by the year 100 the first list that mentions all 27 of them as having special status is from the year 367.” Pg 29
The Bible became sacred, not because it was thought to be written by God, not by its origin, but because over time people treated certain documents differently in study and in worship.
This gives us an awesome responsibility. What is sacred for us in the Bible? On what basis can we say that a passage is no longer meaningful for us today? Can we just pick and choose which passages we like and leave out the rest? How do we decide?
There are certain sections of the Bible that we no longer consider as valid for our time.
Many of us enjoy eating pork and shellfish. Why did the Jewish community write into its laws and Scriptures that the eating of shellfish is an abomination?
According to the Book of Timothy in the New Testament some in the early church thought women had no place in the church. Women were not allowed to speak. Certainly not be lay leaders, or serve communion. I am sure there are many in this sanctuary who remember a time, not so long ago, when women did not serve in worship. How did we come to the conclusion that we could disregard this section from Timothy?
The women told us to.
In our class sessions on the book reading the Bible again for the First Time we have the benefit of short guest lectures by Marcus Borg on DVDs. In the presentation we heard last week Borg said that Adult Theological Education is the most pressing need in the church today.
The Bible shapes us, is our foundational document, our moral compass. And so it is vitally important that we know, both how it was written and what it means for us today. It is a living word, not a dead one. And that even though we are not to take it literally, we are to take it seriously, if we are to call ourselves Christian. Being a human document written in response to God we are called in our day to let it be a bridge between us and God. But all bridges need inspecting. There are some planks that need to be replaced. The plank that says women are inferior is one that in most, but not all, churches has been removed.
So we are almost ready to get begin our journey into the stories and the history of the Bible. In fact, the one thing remaining before we depart is to understand that in our journey we will be seeing history and story, fact and metaphor, two ways of telling the truth of God’s presence in our lives, the reality of love.
I am excited to be at the beginning of this journey. I have done a few sermon series in my ministry but never one on the Bible in 9 weeks. I am excited to see what is familiar, and I am looking forward to making connections I have never made before. After last week’s sermon someone came up to me after church and said that they were going to go home and read their Bible. Now that made me feel real good.

This coming Wednesday evening some of us will be discussing a book written by Eckhart Tolle called a New Heaven. I recently learned that Mr Tolle took the first name of Eckhart after discovering an entirely new approach to Christianity through the writings of the 12th Century monk, Meister Eckhart. A New Heaven is filled with Biblical references and through Eckhart Tolle we are invited to read the Bible again for the first time.

Meister Eckhart said that every creature is a word of God. I’d like to close with this poem by Meister Eckhart. I’d like to dedicate this to Clarissa, Murphys’ town burro..
LOVE DOES THAT

All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.

Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,






he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears

and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,

because love does
that.

Love Frees.

~ Meister Eckhart ~

That’s what the Bible tells me.
Love frees.

Blessed be the gospel that unbinds
our hearts and sets us
as a community
free.

I Am A Wright Brother

A Wright Brother
Rev. Alan Claassen
March 30, 2008
In response to the treatment of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Trinity UCC in Chicago.
Written before the interview with Bill Moyers
and the appearance before the National Press Club

It is has been a quiet week on Lake U.C.C.
Actually I have been so busy with Holy Week and the lecture by Michael Dowd that I have not had time to watch TV, see the repeated soundbites of Rev. Jeremiah Wright damning America or hearing Barack Obama’s speech on racism. But I have had time to do a little research on our ucc.org web page and I would like to share with you what I learned from others about my colleague and our brother in Christ, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the church that he built from 87 members to over 1,000 members.

J. Bennett Guess March 14, 2008

“In the wake of misleading attacks on its mission and ministry, Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ is being lauded by United Church of Christ leaders across the nation for the integrity of its worship, the breadth of its community involvement and the depth of its commitment to social justice.

Located in the heart of Chicago's impoverished Southside, Trinity UCC's vast array of ministries include career development and college placement, tutorial and computer services, health care and support groups, domestic violence programs, pastoral care and counseling, bereavement services, drug and alcohol recovery, prison ministry, financial counseling and credit union, housing and economic development, dozens of choral, instrumental and dance groups, and diverse programming for all ages, including youth and senior citizens.”

The Rev. Steve Gray, the UCC's Indiana-Kentucky Conference Minister, describes Trinity UCC as a "jewel."

"It's everything a Christian community is supposed to be," says Gray, who has been working with Trinity UCC for the past three years to develop a new UCC congregation in Gary, Ind. "Trinity has given well over $100,000 in support of its partnership with us, and in 15 months of regular meetings with Jeremiah Wright, we always found him to be a man of gracious hospitality, humor, generosity, who paid attention to detail but also a man who does not call attention to himself."

Gray, a member of First Congregational UCC in Indianapolis, has worshiped several times at Trinity UCC and is most impressed by the overflowing sense of welcome it extends to visitors.

"When you're Euro-American, the people [at Trinity UCC] are so exceedingly gracious, warm and welcoming. They hug you and say, 'Welcome to our church!'"

The Rev. Bennie Whiten, retired Massachusetts Conference Minister who prior served for 15 years as associate director of Chicago's Community Renewal Society, says, Whiten, a member of Pilgrim UCC in Oak Park, Ill., is especially taken with Trinity UCC's commitment to the need and importance of quality theological education. More than 60 members of Trinity UCC are currently enrolled in seminary and pursuing masters-level degrees. Moreover, the congregation pays for students' tuition costs.

"They firmly believe in the UCC's commitment to an educated, seminary-trained clergy," Whiten said, "and they have probably had more people feeling the call to ministry than any other church in the denomination."

The Rev. Susan Thistlethwaite, president and professor of theology at UCC-related Chicago Theological Seminary
"Another thing I really appreciate about Trinity is that its ministries are always directed both inward, toward the congregation itself, and also outward in supporting other congregations ecumenically and supporting community organizations that are dedicated to lifting up the wider society," Thistlethwaite says. "We have had so many fine students come through Chicago Theological Seminary who were helped to discern their call to ministry through this church's dedication to serving the wider church."

The Rev. Kenneth L. Samuel, pastor of Victory UCC in Stone Mountain, Ga.,
While Trinity UCC is the denomination's largest congregation, Samuel's 5,300-member church is the UCC's second largest. Founded in 1987, it joined the UCC in 2004.

"Trinity was really one of the churches that inspired me to want to affiliate with the United Church of Christ," Samuel said. "My church was originally National Baptist and Southern Baptist, but it was the critical-thinking that [Trinity] brought to this work, the justice work, that helped me to want to become a part of the denomination. I have no regrets about that."

Carol Brown, national president of United Black Christians and a member of Cleveland's Mt. Zion UCC for more than 50 years, describes Trinity UCC as "the flagship church of the United Church of Christ."

"I think it's very interesting that a minority group within a denomination can have the largest church, support the most ministries and give the largest number of OCWM [mission] dollars," Brown says. "That speaks well for us as an accepting, open and affirming denomination. Especially, as a justice-oriented church, [Trinity UCC] sets a standard for all the denomination that all are welcome."

The Rev. Dr. John P. Gardner is senior minister of Plymouth Congregational Church of Fort Wayne, United Church of Christ, Fort Wayne.
How ironic that a pastor and congregation which, for forty-five years, has cast its lot with a predominantly white denomination, participating fully in its wider church life and contributing generously to it, would be accused of racial exclusion and a failure to reach for racial reconciliation.”

m
By JEFFREY WEISS / The Dallas Morning News

“More than two dozen well-known black preachers and scholars, in Dallas for a long-planned conference, offered unequivocal support Friday for one of their number who was not there.

“The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, now world-famous as the former pastor and spiritual mentor of presidential candidate Barack Obama, was to be the guest of honor at the Black Church Summit held by Brite Divinity School. Amid the recent controversy about some of his sermons, Dr. Wright decided not to attend, but the summit started Friday as scheduled.”

Most of the event was not open to the media, but several of the scholars and preachers spoke at a news conference. They said that Dr. Wright's sermons fit into a long-standing black tradition of prophetic preaching – one that the Rev. Martin Luther King also emerged from.


Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, director of the black church studies program at Brite, said that the controversy over Dr. Wright's sermons is an indication of how little many whites know about what happens routinely at many black churches.

"It's news to you," she said. "Black America has long known about the tradition of religious formation within mainline white congregations. Now, for the very first time in history, mainline America, white America is finding out something about its black church."

“Mr. Wright has been cited by Mr. Obama as his longtime pastor and spiritual mentor. In the last couple of weeks, parts of some of Mr. Wright's sermons have been repeatedly rebroadcast. In the sound bites, he attacks the Iraq war, says that AIDS was produced by the U.S. government and calls for God's condemnation of the U.S. for its policies on illegal drugs.”

But that needs to be set into the context of preachers like Dr. King, who once called America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," Dr. Floyd-Thomas said. And he had been scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled "Why America May Go to Hell" on the Sunday after he was assassinated in 1968, she added.

That is some of what I read at ucc.org. Here is what I read in the gospel of John this week.

“When it was evening of that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the authorities, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his wounded hands, his wounded side.”
And Jesus said to his disciples. As God has sent me, so I send you. When he said this he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

The healing begins and peace enters our hearts when we forgive one another the sins of our frightened forefathers who taught us to fear someone because they were different than us; whether the difference was race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, age, nationality, political party, or denomination.
The healing begins and peace enters into our communities when we move from the safety of our familiar homes and move out into the wider world and see how the other half lives, to walk a mile in their shoes.
The healing begins and peace enters our world when receive the blessing of the Holy Spirit that unites all of humanity with all of creation and with the understanding that peace and reconciliation can only come through our commitment to:
Sacrifice – Sacrifice that is spiritual; that is courageous and steadfast in its willingness to endure great hardship for others. Service to Others – Service that is predicated on empowering others; engendering self-help, self-determination, and self-sufficiency versus charity.
Acceptance of all People – An essential ingredient for success in organizing diverse forces to achieve social change, create community, and actualize democracy is the acceptance of all people; an absolutely indispensable necessity to the well-being of this country.

By the way, those three commitments to Sacrifice, Service, and Acceptance come from the Core Values of Non-violence of Cesar Chavez, who birthday was today. Happy birthday Cesar Chavez. Another prophet like Jeremiah Wright whose complaint about what is wrong in our society and his commitment to the foundational values of this nation caused him to do something …right.
Also, in the Gospel reading for today we read that Thomas needed to touch the wounds of Jesus in order to believe that he was the risen Christ. The wound that we in America need to touch is the wound of racism, that in spite of all the distance we have come, including a black American, possibly becoming the next President, too many Americans of color are treated as second-class citizens in this great nation. It is not an excuse for violence or victimhood, but it is an illness that needs to be treated with peace, with honesty, with forgiveness and reconciliation.
Finally, as a sign of life coming out of death, the United Church of Christ is currently raising funds to buy a full page ad in the New York Times to explain to the nation who we are as a nation and what we truly stand for.
In the meantime, you can be a part of this work by simply telling one another what you know and love about this church where it is said, every Sunday, “No matter who you are and where you on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”

Spread the Love

Spread the Love
Rev. Alan Claassen
Pentecost Sunday May 11, 2008
Acts 2: 1-13 John 4: 7-21

Four weeks ago I began a sermon series on the “E” word. Acknowledging that many people are uncomfortable with the idea of evangelism, I suggested that our “E” word be “Enthusiasm.” Which is a perfectly good replacement of a word, because enthusiasm comes from the Greek words , en theos, en-god-ed.
The source of actions, the source of our mission in life, in church, in work, in family, in retirement, is God. Our enthusiasm comes from experiencing being loved by God.
Beginning in the love of God, we see that our mission is to bring more kindness, love and honesty into every action and choice that we make. When we practice the presence of God in our actions and choices we begin to deepen our experience of God, our trust in God, and we also deepen our knowledge of ourselves. We gain in self-confidence as we gain in God confidence.
We realize what it means to be called children of God, as in said in the first letter of John, we are called children of God because that is what we are.
We are children of God, when we love one another. We abide in God when we abide in active love for our fellow human beings and for all of God’s creation. So the mission of the church is not to get more more people to join the church. The mission of the church is not to convert or to save others.
The mission of the church is that we become a spiritual community, abiding in God, seeking to live lives of compassion for one another and for our community. Where our actions are grounded in, planted in, nourished in God. And so we can grow in love, with confidence, in faith. The mission of the church is to receive God’s love for us so that we create a spiritual home where we feel safe and en-God-ed.
Now, today, in this final sermon in the enthusiasm series, we focus our attention on the third part of our mission, which is to
exercise that Talent which you particularly came to Earth to use,
in those places which God has caused to appeal to you the most,
for the purposes which God most needs to have done in the world.

So far we have been talking about the mission that we all share, grounded in the presence of God we make the world a better place. The third part of the mission is to ask where you are particularly called to be God’s active verb of love in the world.

We affirm in the church why Jesus came to earth, to be God’s word of love to humanity and to restore our broken relationship with God.
Well God had a reason for sending each one of us to Earth too. Can we remember what that reason was? What if we thought of people like Carroll Lang for a moment and thought about this, it wasn’t that he was that extraordinary, he just had a good memory, he remembered why God put him on this Earth.
Carroll’s purpose was to push the earth with his bulldozer and to people with challenging questions.
We all have a reason for being here. We just suffer from amnesia.
Let these words of Psalm 139 help remind you,
“For you formed my inward being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for you are to be reverenced and adored. Your mysteries fill me wonder! More than I know myself do you know me; my essence was not hidden from You, when I was being formed in secret intricately fashioned from the elements of the earth.”
Remember?
Let these words of Jesus from the Gospel of John help remind you,
“As the Father has loved me, so I love have loved you; abide in my love. Keep my commandments, and you will in abide in my love, just as I have kept my father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
Ringing any bells, yet?
Let these words from the first letter of John remind help remind you,
“Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as Jesus is, so re we in this world. There is no fear in love...”
We love because God loved us first.”
There is our source and our mission, because John goes on to connect the love and the commandment to love.
We cannot say that we love God if we are not bringing more kindness, more truth, more gratitude, more love into the world.

Now that we are reminded of our purpose as disciples of Christ, what is our particular mission, in the place that God has caused to appeal to us the most, for the purposes which God most needs to have done in the world?

“God has written this into our hearts, first in the talents given to us and secondly in the guidance given to us in our hearts.” “Even as an anthropologist can examine ancient inscriptions, and divine from them the daily life of a long lost people, so we by examining our talents and our heart can more often than we dream divine the will of the Living God.”
(pg 43, Richard Bolles, "Your Mission in Life.")

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

Where?

Let these words from the great writer, Frederick Buechner, guide us.
“ There are different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than the voice of society, or the hyper-critical ego, or self-interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this:
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (pg 48, Richard Bolles, "Your Mission in Life")
In other words, abiding in the love of God, who knows you better than you know yourself, how can you bring more love, kindness, truth, beauty, gratitude into the world and have a good time doing it?
To be connected to de-vine of God’s love and having complete joy.

The place that God calls you to is that place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
The world hungers for a kind word. The world hungers for a kind heart. The world hungers for a kind teacher. The world hungers for a well played soccer game. The world hungers for a beautifully stitched quilt. The world hungers for a sharpened pencil, good food, justice, a loving home, a repaired fence, a painted house. The world hungers for happiness and compassion in times of grief.
The world hungers for peace based upon economic justice not brute force.
Our mission, is where we meet God in confidence and joy. Our mission is where we remember what God fashioned us to do.

Remembering I think is the difficult trick.
Remembering why we are here. And then remembering what we remembered.
I have so many times made great self-discoveries only to have forgotten them a few weeks later. Then coming back to my old notes, journals, or sermons, and saying, “Oh I already knew that, how could I forget.”
Some missions that we embark on require diligent attention because the goal is not achieved in a day, but it is achieved by daly practice and remembering.
And I see in the passage from the letter of John to helpful suggestions for our spiritual practice, for our enthusiasm campaign, in which we seek to make this church and our lives a place where God’s love is experienced.
It’s in verses 19 and 20 of the fourth chapter of John’s letter.
First, We love because God first loved us.
Secondly, Those who say, “I love God” and hate their brothers and sisters are liars.”
To help us stay the course we need to begin and end the day in prayerful rememberance of God’s love. What we focus our attention on we become. If we focus our attention on God’s love and grace and desire for all of creation then we can hep make that real.
The first step of our mission is to be grounded in the presence of God.
How else can we do that without daily prayer or medititation. Done in whatever way suits you best. There are many different approaches to prayer, the approach doesn’t matter as much as the fact we each decide to begin and end the day in dialogue with a love and power greater than ourselves. Approaches to prayer include reading scripture or it may be walking in nature or it may be listening to music. It may be silence or reading devotional literature. Regardless of the path chosen, the central meditation is, God’s love is in me.
The second source of remembrance is to keep the commandment to love one another. Our love is known in our actions, our compassion for those less fortunate than ourselves. It is also known in being aware of our feelings when we are angry or feeling hateful to someone else. To remember God’s self-giving and forgiving love as we seek to let go of our hatred and find the source of love as best we are able with guidance of the strength of the Holy Spirit.
When we engage in acts of love for our brothers and sisters, and we do this from a place of remembering God’s love, we begin to take risks. And in taking risks, in moving out of our comfort zones, we begin to experience God’s love.
In praying and in loving, we know God’s love.
In loving and praying, we gain the strength and confidence that is beyond our own imagination.
In loving and praying, we see a course of our lives that brings joy to humanity and to ourselves.
When we pray as if everything depends on God, and act as if everything depends on us, we are getting at the heart of this mission.
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Where can I be of service and be joyful?
What form of prayer is right for me in the morning and in the evening?
Who do I know that needs the kindness that God has given me the gift to offer? How can I bring my prayer life into the world and show my brother or sister a little bit of love, a little bit of God?

God is love. and we love because God loved us first.
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
God loves us into loving one another. No force of will. Self-giving, self-sacrificing love. As Jesus said, I gave my life because it was mine to give. We were each given a life to give.
And as Jesus also said, If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love, my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete.
Connected to God, doing what were called to do, no matter big or small, doing what brings us more happiness and the world more kindness,
that is something to be enthused about.

To be spiritually borne is to remember why God brought you here to life.
How will you choose to pray?
How will you choose to love your brother and sister?
How will your great desire help serve the needs of this church, which seeks to meet the needs of this community?
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

I think that there is a need for a spiritual community where people are encouraged to make a personal connection with God that gives them the confidence to serve humanity.
A community centered around the words,
“Do this in remembrance of me.”
Pentecost is the moment when we realize, when we make real, that we are called to Spread the Love that God placed on this earth in Jesus Christ.

Are you ready to be the First Congregational Church of Murphys, United Church of Christ?
Are you ready to be yourself in this community?

Let the people say,
Amen

Yes, It's Possible: An Easter Sermon

Yes, It’s Possible
Easter Sermon
March 23, 2008
Rev. Alan Claassen

I have three resurrection stories that I want to share with you this morning.
You decide if you think they are possible, or not. The stories come from a bus driver, a dear friend of Jesus, and a woman in an airport.

A middle-aged school bus driver won the praise of her local police department because she had remained calm when a deranged man took her bus full of mentally ill handicapped children hostage.
When asked by reporters how she managed to talk the man out of using the gun he was waving in he air she said,
“I pray a lot.”
Her answer to the reporter’s was not, “I prayed a lot.”
She said I pray a lot.
In other words she wasn’t asking God to intervene at that moment in her life, God had already intervened in her life and was present even before she stepped on the bus that morning.
It makes me think of Jesus and how, I believe, that he was raised from the dead even before he was crucified.
Christian tradition teaches the trust that faith depends on, is learned in practicing it, both through the discipline of prayer and through trying it out in our daily lives. This is something that this bus driver knew.
The bus driver was immersed in God because she prays a lot. She was abiding in Christ. She was in touch with a place of peace in the midst of crisis.
Just as Jesus abided in God, because he prayed a lot. Not asking for anything in particular to happen, but instead having a living relationship with God, so that in complete trust he could say to God, while deep in anguish and in prayer, “Thy will be done.”

That story came from a book by Kathleen Norris, called Amazing Grace.
Kathleen Norris had a life changing experience when she spent some time in a Benedictine monastery and learned this kind of praying from the monks. From one Benedictine friend, a gentle, thoughtful man who had been in constant physical pain for years and then confined to a wheel chair she learned how he prayed.
From him, Kathleen Norris learned that prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine.

How do we live into the resurrection, not as an after life experience, but as a this life experience?
How can we be raised from the fear of death, the death that comes from fear, fear of failure, the fear of conflict, fear of being lost without knowing our way home. How can we live our lives in a way that are now beyond our imagination?
Which brings us to our second story.
As the Gospel reading this morning said, Mary went looking for Jesus in the tomb. Wrong place.
When she found the tomb empty she began to weep. As she was crying she looked into the tomb and saw two angels. They said to her, “Why are you weeping?” “Because they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him.”
And then she turned around. We need to remember that this phrase “to turn around” is significant in the Bible. To turn around is another way of saying, look at life another way, look at life from the point of view of your neighbor, look at life from the point of view of the stranger, look at life from God’s point of view
When she turned and saw Jesus she didn’t recognize him. She thought he was the gardener.
First Jesus said to her, “Whom do you seek?”
Very interesting first words to hear from the Risen Christ. Especially when you remember the first words that Jesus speaks in the Gospel of John.
The day after Jesus was baptized he was walking near John the Baptist and two of John’s disciples, Peter and Andrew. John calls out saying, “Behold the Lamb of God.” The disciples then left John and began walking behind Jesus. Jesus saw them and said, “What do you seek?” They want to know where Jesus is staying.
They want to know the same thing that Mary wants to know standing beside the empty tomb.
Where is Jesus? Where is he going? Where has he gone?
To the disciples, Peter and Andrew Jesus said, “Come and see.” And then Jesus took them on a journey like they have never been on before. A journey of healing and teaching and loneliness and great crowds of people.
Jesus answered their question with a lifetime.
Mary was a part of that journey with Jesus and the disciples but she didn’t recognize Jesus until he said her name.
The one that we seek is the one who knows who we are. The one that we seek is the one who created us. The one that we seek is not limited to a particular time or place. The one that we seek knows that we get consumed by jealousies, fears, regrets over mistakes we have made. The one that we seek knows that we hurt sometimes. Knows that we face moments of crisis sometimes. The one that we seek is the one who says, “When you were a child I loved you, it was I who taught you to walk, it was I who lifted you as a little child to my cheek, it was I who fed you.
No matter what you do, no matter what happens to you, no matter who you hang around with, no matter who you lose, I know who you are really, and I love you.
And when Mary hears this from Jesus, when she is recognized, then she recognizes Jesus. The one we seek, is also seeking us, to show us who we are, most truly.


The “Come and see,” at the beginning of the Gospel has now turned into “Go and tell.” The invitation to see the presence of God becomes the desire to tell others what you have seen. Even if it is all a mystery, that we cannot explain how it happened to us, how we came to a deeper trust in God’s presence.
But we know how to love. We know what kind of world we want to live in. And we have an insight onto what kind of world God wants us to live in.
Jesus referred to it often as the kingdom of heaven. Not as a place we go to after we die, but a place that we pray for and work toward, on earth as it is in heaven. A place where we work and pray for reconciliation. A place where we are not afraid. A place all basic needs are met because we share what we have with one another. A place where we can respond to a crisis as the bus driver did --no fear, no-violence, but instead a calm strength that came from a life of prayer and service to others.
To me, this is what Easter is all about, when we let God raise us up to a new understanding of what is possible for humanity, if we would only support one another in living out the commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples, that we love one another.
I have one more story to tell you about this daily resurrection I am talking about. It comes to us from an American author, from Texas, She writes books for children, high school students, and adults. Her mother is American and her father is Palestinian. Her name is Naomi Shihab Nye and the title of this story is Gate 4-A

“Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been detained four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate 4-A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”
Well – one pauses these days.
Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
“Help,” said the Flight Service Person. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”
I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly in Arabic.
The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. It turned out that she thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day.
I said, “You’re fine, you’ll get there, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.” We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for fun. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours. She was laughing a lot by then.
Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies – little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts – out of her bag – and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament.
The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo – we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie. And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they were covered with powdered sugar too.
And I noticed my new best friend – by now we were holding hands – had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate – once the crying of confusion stopped – seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate, or on this earth, afraid of any other person.
Is it possible?
Yes! If we carry within our hearts the teachings of Jesus like a plant that keeps us rooted in God.
Will there be resistance and struggle?
Yes! As there was for Jesus.
Will there be others who will carry on the hopeful work, the prayerful practice and dedicated service that Jesus called his disciples to carry on?
The answer is yes! And --- that would be us.
When our believing in Jesus becomes the be-loving of Jesus we become the original blessing that God intended us to be.
This happened in the garden that Mary entered on Sunday morning.
This happened to Naomi Shihab Nye at Gate-4 in the Albuquerque Airport.
This happened to the fearless bus driver.

This can still happen anywhere.
All is not lost.
Christ is risen. Christ is risen in- deed!




The source for the story by Naomi Shihab Nye is a wonderful web site: www.gratefulness.org

Peace is the Way

Peace is the Way
Isaiah 11:1-9 John 29:29-42
Alan Claassen January 19, 2008

JB didn’t get what he wanted for Christmas. Jesus wasn’t the powerful, wipe out all the bad guys type of Messiah he thought God was sending.
JB had good reason to expect something, he just forgot that it was going to come from something small. Something as small a new shoot that grows from a fallen tree.
That’s where it all begins, with God’s eternally creative spirit. It cannot be stopped. It is genetically wired into creation.
John the Baptist knew this. He lived very close to creation. And undoubtedly he knew his prophets, including this very passage we just heard read this morning. And he also could see evidence all around him, in the actions of the Romans, and his own religious leaders, that the intentions of God were not being carried out.
And so he gave these most amazing, upsetting, impolite, set of speeches and performed the symbolically rich act of purifying people in the Jordan River, in nature, rather than in the corrupted Temple, and he told everyone that something is big is going to come and wipe away all the bad and lift up the good.
And this is exactly what Jesus did not do.
John didn’t get what he wanted; a powerful new ruler who would annihilate all evil.
Because the fact is that Jesus did not have coercive power. Jesus did not have financial or military power. In the ways of the world Jesus was incredibly poor and weak. And it is so helpful, I believe, to remember this, when trying to make sense of what Jesus said.
I want to talk about this power that Jesus had, this power that I want to call lamb-power, in light of today’s passage from Isaiah.
Isaiah
The Wolf and the lamb lay down together.
This is very good news for the wolf.


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I can imagine a wolf family sitting around the breakfast table eating breakfast and reading the morning paper.
Headline reads, Prophet Isaiah says, Lambs and wolves to lay down together.
Papa wolf says, “Great news family. No more hunting.”
“According to this Isaiah guy the lambs are just going to come and lay down with us, when they do, we’ll eat them.”
The lamb and the wolf laying down together means some basic so-called laws of nature are going to have to be changed. Or else we have some very well-fed wolves on our hands.
And if you read on in the passage, not only are the wolves going to be well fed, but the lions are going to become vegetarian? What was Isaiah thinking?
This is ridiculous naive pie-in-the sky garden-of-Eden thinking that won’t get us anywhere.
And what is the Papa Lamb thinking as he reads the same headlines?
The situation in Jesus’ time was that Israel was the lamb and Roman empire was the wolf, and a great number of the religious authorities, to save their own hides, wore the wolves clothing.
Jesus came onto the scene, a tender branch, a shoot from a once and mighty family, but without any power, and began talking about the power of the lamb.
Let me tell you what I mean.
Part of the problem we have in understanding Jesus is that we read the lamb’s teaching from the point of view of the wolf, and we think it is naive, idealistic, not helpful.
Jesus’ teaching on nonviolence have been perverted into injunctions to passive non-resistance, which is the very opposite of active non-violence.
Reading from the new Scholars Bible, Jesus said, “Don’t react violently against the one who is evil.” The meaning is clear: don’t react in kind, don’t mirror your enemy, don’t turn into the very thing you hate. Jesus is telling us to resist evil, non-violently.



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Many years later there was a Christian organization in this country that understood this injunction to resist non-violently. The Fellowship of Reconciliation devised a non-violent plan when they sent the Freedom Riders to the south, to sit, black and white together, in restaurants, and then to sit together black and white in jails, and there to refuse bail. To stand with strength and say we will not be humiliated. And we will not resist violently. We will bring the pain ourselves in an act of courage that is meant to awaken a nation and heal the curse of racism.
That’s lamb power.
Gandhi had lamb power. He couldn’t violently oppose the British, though many of his countrymen were trying.
ML King had lamb power. He couldn’t violently oppose the racism in this country, though many of his countrymen were trying that method.
Nelson Mandela had lamb power and the whole world took part in the non-violent revolution that took place in South Africa.
Each of those leaders used great force to achieve their goals, but they didn’t use violence.
But what do we as a nation do in our relations with other nations that can be in keeping with the wisdom and teaching of the Bible?
We need to balance the wolf and the lamb.
The first section of the Isaiah passage describes this.
It describes how the king shall act and the results of his reign.
The future king would resemble David’s son Solomon, renowned for the wisdom of his judgments. No “appearance” or “hearsay” would mar his ability to judge, instead, he would go to the heart of any matter brought before him. He would not rule by deceit.
The poor would find in him a friend, and the ruthless an enemy. So strong would this ideal king be that the justice he meted out, and his “faithfulness” to God’s law, would be as readily seen as the royal sash he wore in public to signify his authority.
Being filled and guided by the spirit of God this ruler will act on behalf of the poor, the weak. In other words, the wolf cares for the lamb to have a world of peace.


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The wolf acting alone can think that power is all that is needed. He can fool himself into thinking, “I can have my way and not ask any tough questions or be responsible to other nations or to the law or the earth itself because I have all the power.”
But it will not last.
The wolf and the lamb in balance with one another, can create a situation where evil is stopped in its track because there is justice in the land.
The wolf and the lamb in balance with one another realize that my well-being cannot be at the expense of another’s basic needs.
The wolf and the lamb in balance with one another. The only way for that to happen is for both of them to be well fed.
I can give you an example from US history when the wolf did lie down with the lamb.
I wonder if any of you can remember these words of advice from a senior U.S. military officer and statesman recommending how the people of the United States should deal with a part of the world torn by war, poverty, disease, and hunger:

"...it is of vast importance that our people reach some general understanding of what the complications really are, rather than react from a passion or a prejudice or an emotion of the moment....It is virtually impossible at this distance merely by reading, or listening, or even seeing photographs or motion pictures, to grasp at all the real significance of the situation. And yet the whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment."

The speaker was General George C. Marshall, outlining the Marshall Plan in an address at Harvard University on June 5, 1947. Surveying the wrecked economies of Europe, Marshall noted the "possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned." He said that there could be "no political stability and no assured peace" without economic security, and that U.S. policy was "directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.


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As Marshall's words so plainly suggest, stopping the terrorism that exists in our day will should include a much more ambitious campaign, one in which the rich countries approach the appalling inequities of the world with the same boldness and determination that the United States brought to bear in Europe under the Marshall Plan.
The United States and the other industrial nations should launch a global "Marshall Plan" to provide everyone on earth with a decent standard of living.
We can already hear the cries of people claiming that such a global plan would "cost too much." But let's look at the numbers.
A 1998 report by the United Nations Development Programm estimated the annual cost to achieve universal access to a number of basic social services in all developing countries:
$9 billion would provide water and sanitation for all; $12 billion would cover reproductive health for all women; $13 billion would give every person on Earth basic health and nutrition; and $6 billion would provide basic education for all. 40 billion dollars in all.

Too much? Military expenditures by all nations? $780 billion each year.
(Source Dick Bell and Michael Renner, World Watch Institute)

What would it sound like for a President to think like this? Well, I can tell you, here are some words actually said by a former President of the United States.

“There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can easily bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that goal through arms alone.”
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”
"There can be no enduring peace for any nation while other nations suffer privation, oppression, and a sense of injustice and despair. In our modern world, it is madness to suppose that there could be an island of tranquility and prosperity in a sea of wretchedness and frustration." Dwight D.Eisenhower

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This is the kind of thinking and acting that plants the seeds of peace and thinks for generations and generations not just for today. This is the kind of thinking and action that has a chance of resisting evil without becoming evil.
And as we know this is the kind of connections that Martin Luther King was making in the years that followed his I have a dream speech, namely that the end of war, the end of poverty, the end of racism are linked together.

This is the wolf and the lamb acting together. This isn’t idealism, this is spiritual, practical, earth-friendly, and the intention of creation that was planted in us by God.

What can we do, in the part of the world that we can touch, that will convince the wolf of his need to change his diet?
In my January newsletter column I made a couple of suggestions for what we can do to bring peace into our lives. One of those suggestions was to read a book called, Non-Violent Communication, A Way of Life, written by Marshall Rosenberg.
This book describes and teaches non-violent communication and it is filled with stories of when Marshall Rosenbergy has applied these tools himself in conflicts that range from parents trying to get their children to clean their rooms to resolving conflicts between warring tribes in Africa. I would like to share with you a story that comes from the book that I would describe as lamb power.

See pg 13-14, Non-Violent Communication- A Way of Life, by Marshall Rosenberg

Using the tools of non-violent communication, which in this case meant listening to another human being’s pain without judgment but with compassion, Marshall Rosenberg was able to move this enemy into a host, and they shared a sacred meal together, a Jew and a Muslim.
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There were men who were followers of John the Baptist who left John and caught up with Jesus who was on the move, making the road of peace by walking it. Jesus turned, looked over his shoulder at the disciples, and asked “What are you looking for?”
“What are you looking for?”
Can you imagine what it would feel like to have Jesus ask you, “What are you looking for?”
The men replied:
“Where do you live, Jesus?”
“Come and see,” was the reply.
To see where Jesus lives we need to walk the path of justice and peace.
We need to follow in love.
We need to trust that when we walk together we have a strength far beyond our imaginations.
And when we use that strength, not for ourselves, but to heal the fractures in the world, then we become stronger still.
Even when are in prison we are free.
Even if we die the truth lives on.
We learn by following. We learn by acting, doing, resisting without violence.
We make the road to peace by walking in peace, peace is the way.

As Martin Luther King Jr would say years later, “ Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved country to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.”
One cannot doubt that Martin Luther King Jr., like Jesus, was baptized in the spirit and was alive past the point of death. And that spirit gave him the courage to speak the truth, with the power of a lamb who has made friends with the wolf next door.


I wonder where Jesus is living, today?
I wonder where the power of Christian love, peace and social justice is most powerfully present in our world today?
Do we need to know what that would look like?
Jesus, rising from the Jordan River, from the blessing of God, found some men standing by the side of the road, and he said to them, Come and See.
And over the centuries some men and some women have seen power of non-violence. And Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was one of them, because his eyes saw the glory of the coming of the Lord, and he saw the spirit of the Lord coming right at him,
and our country, his beloved country, was changed forever.
What is Jesus inviting you to Come and See today?
How would you answer Jesus, “What are you looking for?”
And how will that change your life?
How will it change the life of a stranger?
Or the wolf next door.

The Way of the Wise

The Way of the Wise
Isaiah 60:1-6 Matthew 2:1-12
Rev. Alan Claassen
January 6, 2007

Good morning. I am one of the men that visited the newborn baby Jesus when he as lying in a manger. I am also one the men wise enough not to go back to King Herod as he had instructed us to do. Once I saw Jesus I saw a new authority that deserved my deepest allegiance.
I am here this morning to clear up a misconception that has developed of the years since I first saw the baby Jesus. I also want to share some things that I and other wise men and women have been thinking about over the last century. We like to stay current.

So first, the misconception: I am not a king, my two friends were not kings. I know that you all just sang the chorus from the song, We Three Kings. I know the song has a wonderful melody, and I love the words of the chorus just as much as you,

Star of wonder, star of light,
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us with thy perfect light.

I would have no problem with the song if the words were about the wisdom of the stars... but we were not kings. We were magi, astrologers, star-watchers, and wise men from the east. Over time the stories got a bit expanded and people wrote hymns calling us kings and so it goes.
The significance of our being there, as the gospel writer, Matthew, rightly understood it, was that we came from a long way away, from a different country, from a different culture, from a different way of thinking, to see this who this star was guiding us towards.


We came from Persia, Babylon, and the place where the ancestors of Jesus, were exiled hundreds of years before. Our ancestors were affected by their ideas and we also had a hope for someone who would come and set the world back on its proper course. ; a course that is in line with the universe, in line with the stars, in line with creation.

Our being there said, and still says, something about Jesus, something about God. Which is, that God is not the property of any one nation, any one people, any one culture. This was an entirely new way of thinking about God. It's a way of thinking about God that seems to be forgotten quite often, it's a way of thinking about God that seems hard to understand.
And it's not because it's a difficult concept; it's because it's just such an other way of thinking from others that we also get taught as we grow up. This is the way that Jesus would later teach his followers when he grew up.
Jesus says in his society there is a new way for people to live:
You show wisdom by trusting people
You handle leadership by serving
You handle offenders by forgiving
You handle money by sharing
you handle enemies by loving

In fact you have a new attitude toward everything, everybody. Toward nature, toward the place you live, toward women and men, toward the poor, toward every single living thing.

Now this isn't the way of the world at large is it? In fact if you start talking about trusting people and serving people and forgiving, sharing, and loving people you're likely to be considered foolish,....or dangerous.


And you know that's what happened to us. To us wise guys I mean. We were so profoundly moved and changed by seeing a vision of God in the form of a human baby that we understood why this new child was a threat to King Herod. So we didn't go back to him as we said we would when we first came into town. We went home by another way. Another way. Being a disciple of Christ means looking for and following another way. Sometimes this requires a lot of imagination; sometimes it just takes freeing up your God given common sense.
And so we have been traveling the world ever since that day, passing along the story of being guided by a light to the village of Bethlehem, to see the perfect light of a child. And that light is still proceeding, and that brings me to other thing that I wanted to share with you this morning.
When we sent to see that Baby Jesus two thousand years ago we were guided by a light and a prediction, a hope, of the birth of someone who be a light for all humanity. Do you all know what's going on in science these days? The scientists of your day are actually looking at the birth of stars and galaxies!
And they are looking at nothing, emptiness. When they use those tools they have nowadays to look at atoms and into atoms the physicists are seeing elementary particles fluctuate in and out of existence. Elementary particles, leap into existence and then leap out. A proton emerges suddenly- where did it come from? Who made it? How did it sneak into reality all of a sudden? Particles come out of nothingness. That's the way the universe works. That's the way it worked in the beginning. Physicists are just seeing this now but it's the way that the spiritually wise have always seen the universe.
We three wise men, from the Orient were, ahead of our time.
May I recite a quote familiar to you all? In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. The God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light."


Scientists from a couple of hundred years ago wanted to reduce the universe to a machine that followed certain logical rules. Well to a great extent it does. But now they are also seeing the mystery of the universe and consequently seeing the universe and the earth as a living entity that is held together by mutual attraction, which we can either call gravity or we can call allurement or we can call love.
May I recite a verse from a hymn? "Bless be the tie that binds." That is true not just for communities but for all of creation. God’s blessing ties everything in the universe together.

Please excuse me for going on so long about these scientific discoveries, but I just love talking about stars. The elements, such as carbon and iron that were made in the explosions of supernovas billions of years ago are what make us, and the earth, and just about everything we know. We are stardust. We wise men knew that centuries ago. But thanks to the discoveries of modern science you all have seen it with your own eyes.
Thank God for Evolution.
But I hope that you see that when we begin our thoughts with the way of creation it has a profound affect upon how we view our world, our little place. And remember that this is the perspective that Jesus taught from.
There are many indications that Humanity has forgotten its connection with creation because we have so many ways in which we can destroy it. Whether it's the slow destruction of pollution or the mismanagement of limited resources or the immediate destruction that we can inflict with our weapons we have come upon a power that we do not seem to know how to control. Our ability to destroy has made some members of the human community aware of our need for healing and living our lives in another way.
When we don't realize the source of our life we stumble in confusion and sorrow. But when we realize where we came from, we become naturally tolerant, amused, and kind-hearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of God we can deal with whatever life brings us. For our strength, our wisdom comes from God.

Another way: We came to see Jesus as the Prince of Peace not of a nation but of all creation. And how does this prince rule his kingdom? Just as the Psalmist sang in Psalm 72: His power is felt as naturally as the rain that nourishes the earth. He does not stand with the powerful but with the poor and the needy. He comes to the aid of those who have no helper. His people are precious to him.

It's as if, like those elementary particles that come out of nowhere, there is someone or something that comes to our aid when we are knocked down. We are in a period in history where there is great potential for uniting the parts of ourselves that have been separated, such as science and religion, such as men and women, such as people of different cultures.
But sad to say, what was true in 2,000 years ago is still true today; this way of partnership with God, the stars and humanity is a threat to those who would rule by domination over others. This way of peace is still a threat to some kings and presidents. But you have also had visionary leaders, such as Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel who understood that there is an other way to lead, based upon truth and reconciliation. As far as I can see it, that is the light that is still proceeding. That is the light that will not be overcome by darkness, not matter how strong the darkness might appear.
I'll leave you with one last thought. I hope that you consider it wise.
Another wise man, his name was, ... let me see, Caspar, Bathalsar, Melchior, that’s me!, …Galileo, Copernicus,..Einstein, that’s it! Einstein had a theory of relativity that's hard for a lot of people to understand.
Well Melchior’s Theory of Relativity is easy to understand, and it is, simply, that everything is related. We are all relatives. We are all made of the same stuff. We all came from that moment when God said, "Let there be light.” You can't separate us from each other, human from nature, body from mind and spirit, poor from rich, Muslim from Christian.
So many of our problems come from believing that we are separate from God. When you see God in the face of a baby all notions of separation just go away.
So when your intended route seems to be taking a turn for the worse; take a word from the wise; try another way.
I know that isn’t easy, in fact I wouldn’t suggest trying it by yourself.
My two buddies and I, we are still proceeding on that journey. Making our choices based upon the vision of a star, the vision of the kingdom of heaven. Sometimes it’s all a question of who are you following. Are you following in love? If you are then you will learn and understand the mystery of life and learn what you are meant to do and be. (Howard Thurman/Jim Strathdee, I Am the Light of the World)

Think of your life as a gift that you take to God, the one who gave us the gift of life in the beginning. Everything we do is giving gifts back to God.
Each one of us can choose right now to go another way. It’s not the way of the crowd. It is, what Jesus called the narrow way. When we make that choice, be ready for some elementary particle to pop out of nowhere and say,
I care about you. I will walk with you if you will walk with me.
Come; follow the star, the light of the world.
In my journeys I have discovered you don’t need to look to the stars to see bright lights shining, you just need to look into someone’s eyes and see the magnificence of the universe.
Well, being a wise man, I know when it is time to stop talking, and that time is now.

People Get Ready

People Get Ready
Isaiah 2:1-5 Matthew 24:36-44
December 2, 2007 Alan Claassen
First Sunday of Advent

My family celebrated Thanksgiving at our favorite place in the Columbia River Gorge, Skamania Lodge. It is a grand place with a fantastic view of the river, a large stone fireplace, and excellent food. Our memories in that place go back to when our children were in grade school. One year our daughter, Lauryn, even wore her Halloween costume, which happened to be a Pilgrim outfit, to the Thanksgiving Dinner.
I am always amazed and yet not surprised that every time we travel in the Gorge we hear the sound of trains, the whistles, the roll of the iron wheels along the tracks, and the serpentine of cars connecting east to west, west to east.
And thinking of trains reminds of a line from Will Rogers, a story from Oliver Wendell Holmes, and a song. And fortunately for me they all tie in with Advent.
Will Rogers’ line:
“Even if you are on the right track, if you are not moving, you are going to get run over.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes’ story.
As Justice Holmes saw the train conductor approaching asking for passengers’ tickets, he began to search his pockets for his own train ticket. By the time the conductor got to his seat, Justice Holmes he was quite flustered saying, “I am sorry, Mr. Conductor, but I can’t seem to find my ticket.”
“Oh, Justice Holmes, that’s quite alright. I can trust you.”
To which Justice Holmes replied,” I appreciate your trust, Mr. Conductor, but you see the problem is, without that train ticket, I don’t know where I am going. My destination is printed on the ticket.”
And the song?
People get ready, there’s a train a’coming. Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord.”

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Christmas, like a train, is approaching, is a’coming. The journey we take to get to Christmas is the Season of Advent. The literal meaning of Advent is “toward the coming.”
What is coming?
Which track are we on this year? How are we going to balance
the switching back and forth from the sacred to the commercial dimensions,
switching back and forth from the joyful and the sad dimensions,
switching back and forth from the desire for peace in a time of war and the never ending and never resolved desire for peace in the Middle east,
switching back and forth between the Biblical call to wait for the Lord, and the commercial call to buy it all now.
Do we know ahead of time what our destination is, and can we stay on track through all the temptations and opportunities that this season presents to us?
Are we moving forward on the track or are we going to get run over by the huge machinery of media advertising telling us how concerned they are about retailers having a good year, as if it’s our patriotic duty to go buy things.

To put all of that in a positive light,
this is the season of ever-increasing light,
as we gather each Sunday of this season, light another candle, seeking God’s kingdom first, we choose a destination that places us by a manger, a mother, and an anticipated Messiah. With that destination in mind we can keep moving on the right track, we can make this a time of continuing the gratitude that helps us rest in the grace of the world.
Let that be our prayer and our intention as we begin this season.
But I want to get back to that anticipated Messiah.
A few years ago I was teaching Comparative Religions at Clackamas Community College. One day we had a young Oregon State Student as our guest speaker. His long-range plan was to become a rabbi, and it was very interesting to hear what he had to say.

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One of the new concepts I found most interesting was the idea of tikkun olam, the earth in balance. An imagined time when the entire world will be in a state of peace and justice.
We need not look to any distant past to see a time when the earth was so out of balance and in need of divine intervention as these days we are living in now.
From this young pre-rabbinical student I learned there are two ideas related to the anticipation of the coming of the Messiah and this tikkun olam or earth in balance, this peaceable kingdom.
One is that the Messiah will make the peaceable kingdom happen.
The other is that the Messiah will come when we have achieved it, arriving saying, “At last, you got it. You did it.”
Well, who’s it going to be, God or us?
O Come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, ransom captive Palestine, captive Darfur, captive Afghanistan, captive United States of America
O Come, O come Desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of all humankind.
Bid thou our sad divisions cease and be thyself our King of peace.
This, this is the destination of this hopeful train. Have we forgotten where we are going? Do we, like Justice Holmes need to look at our ticket again?
Well, how would we act if we really thought the Messiah was going to come at any moment? Wouldn’t we clean up our act? Heavens, we clean up our house when we have company coming over, what would we do if we thought the Messiah was coming to dinner? Wouldn’t we treat one another as we want to be treated? Even in our disagreements? Is the anticipation of the Messiah enough to cause us to radically evaluate our choices, actions, and intentions? If only we could get enough people to anticipate and change at the same time, what a glorious world this would be.
If only I could live me life, keep my life on the track whose destination is the peaceable kingdom, the earth in balance, if only I could beat the life-denying swords of my life into plowshares that turn over the soil to plant seeds of new life.
Who is it going to be, God or me? How can I make it God and Me?

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People get ready, there’s a train a’coming. Don’t need no ticket. Just Thank the Lord.
And get on board.
This is what Advent is for me. It is a time of switching back and forth from the tracks of already and not yet, of ultimate dependence and humble responsibility, of worrying about what I am going to give, and just being grateful for what I have been given.
Jesus has come, we know what he said and did, we know we what are supposed to do, and we know the program. And yet, we look around and see the violence and the injustice and we know this is not the destination God had in mind.
Globally we are on the wrong track. And so we long for something different than what we see. How will lay down our weapons, our fears, our ignorance and find solutions to end hunger and homelessness? Is that a dream like a child wishing for a shiny red bike?
Advent is a time for asking, deeply asking, what is it that we long for?
Advent is a time of asking, “What are we waiting for?”
And the question has a couple of meanings depending where the emphasis is placed.
What are we waiting for?
Just listen to some of the passages from the Book of Isaiah that are read and heard during the season of Advent.
Isaiah 2: 1-5: waiting for peace with the call to learn war no more.
Isaiah 11: 1-10: waiting for an ideal King who will rule with justice and equity for the poor
Isaiah 40: 1-11: waiting for a way to end the exile and return home and find joy again
Isaiah 61: 1-11: waiting for the Spirit of God’s anointed one who will bring good news to the poor, bind up the broken-hearted, proclaim liberty to the captives and release to prisoners.
If this is what we are waiting for it will greatly influence the decisions we make.

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What are waiting for? We are on the right track, but let’s get moving! Let’s get on Christ’s Express and fill Santa’s sack for the poor. Let’s share our wealth with others. Let’s make peace. Let’s be compassion. “Don’t have a cow, buy one!” “Kick that consumer habit buy a little bunny rabbit.” (For the Heifer Project) Whatever you can do, do it now. Boldness has hope in it.
Advent is a time of living out the wise saying,
“Act as if everything depends on you, pray as if everything depends on God.”

I want to commend you for coming to this station this morning.
It is a most amazing thing that you all are doing by simply being here this morning.
Waiting. Hoping. Singing. Praying. Taking action to bring the peaceable kingdom a little closer to home
You know, and you desire something sacred about this time of year. Even though this is the darkest hour, you see and desire to be, the returning light, because nothing can hold back the dawn. You affirm in the place, in this season your hope for humanity.
You have your seats on the Advent train.
This journey is going to take us by some most amazing and incredible sights.
The anticipation of God being with us and eradicating all injustice.
The prophets warning that when we mistreat the poor we break the covenant we made with God.
The vision of the lion laying down with the lamb,
the angelic visits to a pregnant-peasant-girl, to an old couple,
to shepherds.
In the midst of poverty, God chooses to be born.
And for us it begins today, with the Lord’s Supper. The Great Thanksgiving. The Great Gratitude.
As we come to the table of grace in the world I would like to ask you to think about this. It is something written by a friend of a friend of mine, Esther Armstrong.
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“This year I am struggling. This year I am troubled. For I believe that this season of Advent is calling me into that which feels absurd, impossible, and even dangerous.
This year...
I am not waiting for the baby Jesus, though that would be a lot more comfortable and safer. But baby Jesus has already been born. He grew up, died, and is risen.
I am not waiting for the Kingdom of God to come, though it would be easier if waiting was all that is asked of me. But it isn’t.
This year...
The Kingdom of God is waiting for me, and I suspect for you, to take on more fully the character of Jesus.
This means I will: Voluntarily relinquish my need to control and my sense of entitlement.
Let go and be delivered of my insatiable appetite for more and my need for security.
I will seek to
Bring justice to all nations
Live in harmony with all God’s creation,
Set the captives free,
Shine a light in the darkness
Put my life on the line for peace.
This year...
The kingdom of God is waiting for me, and all God’s people, to be non-violent, forgiving, honest, humble, compassionate, and loving.
God is waiting.
And so this Advent I will pray for courage to “live” Jesus, while I hold onto the promises that God has come, God will come again, God will bring deliverance and justice, and the world will be born anew through God’s people.”
And so we say to Will Rogers, we are on the right track and we are moving.
And we say to Oliver Wendell Holmes, we know the destination.
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And we sing along with Curtis Mayfield, People get ready, there’s a train a’coming.
Don’t need no ticket, you just jump on board.
And our Advent train is going to make a lot of stops this season:
it began when the little elves of the church began decorating our sanctuary,
and it will continue through our worship services and the lighting of our Advent Candles,
this afternoon’s workshop when we will decorate the Christmas tree and sing carols,
ringing the Bell for Peace on Wednesday,
next Sunday’s focus on empowering people around the world to care for themselves through the work of the Heifer Project,
caroling for our homebound members next Sunday evening,
listening the beautiful music that the Choir will present on the third Sunday of Advent, hearing the children present to us a Christmas Story produced by our own resident storyteller, Cynthia Restivo, on the fourth Sunday of Advent,
and I hear that we may be having a special guest on Christmas Eve.
We have received word that one of the shepherds who was watching his flocks by night is going to be visiting us THIS Christmas Eve.
People get ready there is a train a coming.
Don’t need no ticket, just Thank the Lord.
What are we waiting for?
Let’s sing!
Come, thou long expected Jesus.