A Prayer of Thanks

On Friday, the last procedure that removed a stent from my kidney ended a two month long struggle with a kidney stone.  Thankfully I was able to work through most of it, but always through the fog of medications.  The last procedure was like turning off a switch of pain and I could stop the pain medication at once.  I am grateful to the doctors who helped and all the health professionals that guided the process.  I am grateful to the wise souls who have been through this themselves who offered good guidance.  And I am indebted to all those who’s prayers sustained me in a very difficult time. 

The spiritual work of a kidney stone, as in many other health issues, is patience.  The preferable way for them to come out is on their own and so the best way is to wait, even if, as was the case for me, it doesn’t come out on its own.  

July 11, 2010 Luke 19 Zacchaeus

Actually, today we didn’t do Zacchaeus at all.  My kidney stone kept me from participating in the service and Gerhardt Drumm  was able to step in suddenly and preach.  I heard great things about this sermon, but it was hard not to preach.  (I expected to be doing great two days after having my kidney’s lasered, which turned out to be a long way from the truth.)  Anyway thanks to Gerhardt.

Little big theme again.  This is a short story so easy to get the whole thing.  Zacchaeus has been robbing the people of Israel for a long time, getting rich off injustice and betrayal.  But it is to him that Jesus comes and in his transformation is a transformation of the whole town.

This story is about changing our lives when we don’t like what we have become and is probably a great story for anyone who is carrying around some choice they have made that we aren’t too proud of.  

July 4, 2010 Joshua 6 Battle of Jericho Joshua and Rahab

First of all, dump what you think you know about Rahab, images colored not only in the misogyny of the time but also because this woman represents an option that the Bible will simply not choose.  Who is this spy the helps open the door to the Land of Promise to the newly and aggressively arriving Israelites?  The way that is chosen so many years ago is one of tremendous violence.  But the story tells of one person in a city which is growing more and more afraid, who overcomes fear, welcomes the aliens, gets to know them enough to help understand and help.  It suggests a very different approach than making everyone in a town an enemy and idolater and an evil that must be completely destroyed. 

We will explore the acts of faith and surprise that open the doors to a land of promise even for us.  We cannot read this story without paying attention to a conflict that is still going on in the exact same landscape, and I can’t help but wonder that the choice to demote the place and power of Rahab in this story is perhaps a part of the decisions that have created so much violence for so long. 

This also shows something of the complexity of our scriptures.  The Bible in this case just doesn’t eliminate the story, but incorporates a very different choice in with the ones that were actually made.  

June 27, 2010 1 Samuel 17 David and Goliath

Today we were treated to stories told by different members of the congregation.  Faye, as David, Chuck, as Saul, and Ginny, as Goliath, told this very familiar story from three perspectives.  We also had the kids in Sunday School making stones with words of hope and faith written on them that members of the congregation could take home. 

One of the great themes of the Bible (not the only one) is that little can be big when God is present.  The huge hero Goliath and the little tiny shepherd boy meet on the field of battle.  Is David just the dumb kid with God on his side, or is there more going on in the story?

June 20, 2010 Genesis 6 – 7 Wiping Out the Earth Noah

The world has messed itself up beyond redemption and God decides to start all over again.  One family and two of every living creature are called into the safety of an ark which will float above the waters of chaos.  From the faith of Noah, the whole world is recreated. 

This is the second of the stories that we tell from the book of Genesis this summer is about how God is in relationship to the whole world.  The old way is that everything is broken into different camps all messing with each other.  Noah recreates the world where everything starts off in “my” (my ancestor’s) boat.  If we didn’t get it the first time, then we punch it that we are all family.  But the story also says that we aren’t perfect.  We don’t start as blessed mud breathed the breath of life into us but with all our faults and failings.  We aren’t going to be perfect, we are who we are.  What does it mean to claim everyone as family in all our faults and failings.  And God in the middle of all that.  That is the rainbow, the wild diversity of color and promise right in the middle of the rainstorm. 

And in the midst of that is our responsibility to the earth, not because God set us in charge of it, but because it is part of the family too, everything coming out of the same boat. 

The ark is the image of the covenant, not the rainbow – the rainbow reminds us of the ark.  We are all in the same boat together, God, every other person, and the whole world.  Somehow or another we have to figure out how to make it all work together and God is in the midst of that.  

June 13, 2010 Genesis 2 Adam and Eve

This morning we are taking on one of the great stories of all time.  Adam and Eve are the first people created in this great story.  Placed in an ideal situation, they find themselves with one prohibition that they cannot resist.  Any idiot who has read or heard any kid’s story from the beginning of time knows what is going to happen when there is only one thing not to do.  There is no suspense and no drama.  The story is as old as time.  But the two punishments (hard work and bearing children) are  two of the very things we value most in life.  What is this story really all about?

The story is about how God is in relationship to us in the midst of crucial times in our live, this time when we have our first sexual experience.  No going back and life moves from childhood to adulthood in a big hurry.  So, in that sense, what does the story say is God’s covenant when life gets complicated and we have to face our own decisions?  

The Structure of Genesis

All Summer we are going to be telling some of the great stories in the Bible, but probably not the way you expect.  Most of us have never graduated from the kids versions of the stories and most of the time from the kid’s versions of the use of these stories.  Certainly the list will make for some great storytelling for the children, but the stories were told and compiled for adult and their meanings and uses are often very adult. 

Here is the list

• ·         June 6, 2010  Judges  6      Gideon
• ·         June 13, 2010  Genesis 2   Adam and Eve
• ·         June 20, 2010  Genesis  6 – 7   Wiping Out the Earth  Noah
• ·         June 27, 2010  1 Samuel 17   David and Goliath
• ·         July 4, 2010  Joshua 6  Battle of Jericho  Joshua and Rahab
• ·         July 11, 2010  Luke 19   Zacchaeus
• ·         July 18, 2010  Number 22   Balaam and his Donkey
• ·         July 25, 2010  Ruth
• ·         August 1, 2010  1 Kings 16-2 Kings 2    Elijah
• ·         August 8, 2010  Vacation Bible School Presentation
• ·         August 15, 2010  Esther
• ·         August 22, 2010  Daniel 6   Daniel In the Lion’s Den
• ·         August 29, 2010  Matthew 14   Peter Walks on Water, sort of.
• ·         September 5, 2021  Acts 9   Paul’s Conversion

It makes sense to say a word about the Book of Genesis because we will follow two stories in it in the next weeks. 

Genesis is not a history book nor a science lecture, but an exploration into ways and contexts that we are in covenant with God.  Over and over this covenant takes the shape of a three-fold relationship: our relationship to God, to other people, and to the earth itself.  Each context shapes this covenant a little differently.  

My own sense of this is that the first stories are about the times in our lives where God is in covenant with us:

• ·         Birth, Genesis 1
• ·         Puberty which meant getting into the world back then, Adam And Eve
• ·         Our work, Cain and Abel
• ·         Our organizing done in the middle of life:  Tower of Babel
• ·         And finally, our Death, in the story of the Akedah, Abraham sacrificing his son (which in my opinion is barbaric no matter how you look at it, unless it is looking at that way God asks for everything of value back at the end of our lives.  This story is a transition moment where it looks like Abraham loses not only everything of value to himself, but also everything that God had promised.  But, if we are lucky to live long enough, that is what happens. 

The bulk of the book is looking at the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the faith and showing the contexts of where God is in relationship to human beings.

• ·         Noah: the second creation story is about God in relationship to the whole world.
• ·         Abraham and Sarah create a new nation with God and has to deal with other nations around him. 
• ·         Isaac and Rebecca (here Rebecca is the key character, not Isaac.  She is the mover of the covenant and the one who most responds to God’s call.  This one is about family and God’s covenant in family.
• ·         Jacob -- and the story is so much about Jacob, this isn’t a “patriarch story” – is about how God is in covenant with an individual working out their own stuff inside and out.
• ·         The story of Joseph moves inward further.  How is God involved in our interior landscape, our dreams.  And in the development of covenant inside, we see connection to individual, family, nation, and among nations in the world sphere, because this will be the story that sets up a new ark (called Egypt) where the people are kept until they are recreated once again in the next story, Moses.