Count on Me: Connection

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – November 5, 2023

Count on Me: Connection – Matthew 22: 34-40

It’s pretty easy to see meanness in the world today. It seems like its own pandemic. There’s the horrific violence wrought in Israel and Gaza. There are the mass shootings in the US, most recently in Maine. There are instances of domestic violence throughout the Fox Valley and all too close to home. Then there’s just the meanness that’s all too common among folks who used to be friends, all over social media, or even at the checkout counter. I think it’s understandable that many of us would often feel overwhelmed and discouraged, maybe even to the point of despair.

Things weren’t all sunshine and roses in Jesus’s day either. Rome violently occupied his country. And the religious leaders could be downright mean to each other, to the people, and to him - as we see, violently mean, too. 

Today’s passage from Matthew begins with infighting:

“When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.”

Given the vast array of religious law and its history of interpretation, it was basically an impossible question. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus quotes Deuteronomy and Leviticus but then he turns the question on its head, declaring:

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The commandments? Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

The Greek here for love is the big one. It’s agape love that is big enough even for enemies. It’s the kind of love we can practice even when we don’t agree. It’s the kind of love we can practice even when we don’t much like each other right now. It’s the kind of love we can practice cultivating even in a world of violence and meanness. Because agape isn’t about returning an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. That big love is not about being kind and gracious to people who are already kind and gracious to us. No, that agape love is next level love. It’s the kind of love that changes the math. It refuses to return meanness for meanness. Instead, it returns meanness with a focus on what we really mean to each other.

I don’t know about you but I love Halloween. I love Halloween because it begins the season I like to call the Season of Great American Folk Art when so many of us trick out our houses, our vehicles, our workplaces, and ourselves with festive decorations or costumes. I love Halloween because we get to pretend to be someone else if we want. It’s a playfulness even adults can join in on. But most of all I love Halloween because it’s the one night a year that neighbors open their doors to strangers with a wide, wide welcome. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing weird clothes, too much make-up, or if you are actually a little scary, the idea is you will be welcomed to the door and given good things.

Growing up, I lived in a close-knit rural community, where it was common for my sister, my Dad, and me as a merry band of trick-or-treaters, to go all the way into the house of the person whose door we knocked on. Then the adult with the candy was supposed to guess who was under the costumes. We were related to a lot of them. Others we saw at church or on a softball field or at school. So, they were pretty good at guessing. But if they didn’t know our names, it was an opportunity to reintroduce ourselves to our neighbors. Too often and for too long to my candy-focused brain, my Dad would then sit and visit before we could move on to the next house. I have never experienced trick-or-treating like this in any other place I have lived. But I think it’s just a more intense and deliberate version of what Halloween can be: a night of community-building and connection-making, especially for the kids. It can be an opportunity for children to learn their community is a place where they are known and cared for. It can be a night of abundant neighborliness.

Jesus has a pretty broad definition of neighbor in the gospels. In Luke, a similar interaction with a “lawyer” leads to the story of the Good Samaritan and the understanding that neighborly actions can come from unexpected people. In the Sermon on the Mount in this Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. I feel fairly confident that Jesus would welcome all the ghouls, goblins, and fairy tale princesses at the door with whatever delicious things and the warmest neighborliness he could afford.

What if we could greet each other with that expectation of good things and with that wide, wide welcome all year round? What kind of neighborly, agape love-connections would we make? How might we affect the meanness of the world?

That’s the hope I know I have to carry. It’s the hope that loving big will do some big good – maybe not in all the ways I’d like or on the timetable I’d prefer, but in ways that could not possibly be estimated to be insignificant. That big neighbor love to which Christians are called gives me hope in this too often too mean world.

What Jesus teaches though is to “love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s a teaching predicated on the assumption that we love ourselves. Some of us clearly do. Others of us struggle for many different reasons.

There’s a strand of folks in the movement we call the Church of the Brethren and beyond who were taught to always put others before ourselves. For some of us, this meant we always put ourselves last, we learned to ignore our own needs, and we maybe even feel that talk of “loving ourselves” is self-serving drivel rather than something Jesus assumed we were already doing. Many of us who feel this way would be appalled to realize we were treating our neighbors in this fashion. But I don’t know how we get good at genuinely loving other people when we are so very unkind to ourselves. I can’t believe that’s what Jesus meant in this passage. I can’t believe that does much to undo the meanness in the world. My experience is that it only adds to it.

Extending neighborly, loving connection to ourselves can be hard though when we don’t have a lot of practice. It takes baby steps, and it can feel very vulnerable. For me, this year I’ve been practicing loving myself by allowing myself to make more friends and spend time with them. That can be pretty vulnerable, just being with someone for fun instead of for pastoral, therapeutic, or business reasons. Maybe some of you can relate, but I have found that cultivating a loving connection with myself has helped me tremendously to cultivate loving connections with others, too.

It’s weird how all these avenues of love seem connected. It’s like it’s all one big river, soup, or super highway. Because my experience of trying to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength has led me to be able to better experience love and to love others, too. And the reverse has also been true, at least for me. Maybe it’s more like electricity. Maybe it’s like God is the ultimate source of love, and we can plug into that love and share it with others – sometimes, yes, in shockingly unexpected ways. Because when we live out our call as followers of Christ to practice loving connection to God, to self, and to neighbor, we may just be surprised at what may happen.

This weekend at the IL/WI district conference I ate lunch with people who didn’t look like me and didn’t believe like me. I sang other people’s songs and some of my favorites, too. I heard about church clothing closets and dinners for teachers and food pantries and after-school ministries. I didn’t really want to go, to be honest. In the past it’s felt more like an all-day infomercial than anything spiritually uplifting. But this year I was touched by moving tributes to churches that had closed, generous purchases of homemade pie, and connections made across difference and distance. When the most controversial question of the day rose to the floor, the discussion ended quickly, and the paper ballot was decisive. That doesn’t always happen. I was surprised. But I wondered did connection have something to do with it? Have we learned something about how to be with each other just as we are? Maybe so. Maybe not. Maybe time will tell.

But I believe there’s a lot of healing that can happen when we practice agape love-connection with others, ourselves, and God. It’s the only antidote to violence and meanness that I know of. I think it’s how we build the kind of beloved communities God wants to see. I think it’s how we become the kind of people who can say with integrity, you can count on me.

I give thanks to God that I can count on so many of you.

May we all learn to count on God, too.

                                                                                            May it be so. Amen.

Emerge: Letting Go

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – October 29, 2023

Emerge: Letting Go – Exodus 16: 9-12

I had never rock-climbed before this past weekend. I was the only person in my family who hadn’t. My 11 and 9 year-olds scurried up the artificial rock face at the indoor gym and expertly belayed back down before I had even figured out how to clip in my harness. I was relieved to find that going up, while a workout for my under-used arms, wasn’t too bad on the beginner climbs I was trying. For me, it was the auto-belaying back down that was the problem.

If you’ve never rock-climbed before like me, let me explain. There’s a harness that goes around your waist and around each leg that you have to tighten securely around you. Then there’s a sturdy loop that clips into what’s called a belay line. In our case that Friday it went up the 10-30 foot wall to attach to a sort of mechanical pulley system called an auto-belay. Its job is not to hold you in place on the wall but rather to slow your fall to something safe and supposedly controlled. But the control part, it turns out, does depend somewhat on your keeping your body oriented to the wall and landing, if possible, on your feet.

Maybe you’re already imagining the movie montage some producers could have made of me landing haphazardly on my butt over and over again and then scraping the side of my body pathetically down the wall a few times, too. In fact I didn’t land successfully on my feet without falling down until the very last attempt of the day when I was so gassed I was barely making it up ten feet. But that one successful landing felt incredible after all I’d been through.

What didn’t feel incredible was the first time I realized I was 30 feet in the air and now, somehow, I needed to get back down. I started cheating, down-climbing, which you’re not supposed to do. The kids, watching of course, called me out. So, I stopped, and I froze. I clung to the holds in front of me, and I felt the sweat start to eke out. My heartbeat thumped through my whole body like someone had turned the bass up to 11 on my internal stereo.

I knew what I needed to do next. I needed to take both hands off the wall holds and let the belay slow my plummet to the ground. But I couldn’t. I didn’t trust it. Suddenly, in the air, that wall was my only means of salvation. I started wondering how long my arms would hold out, and if someone would bring me a snack, if I just stayed up there the rest of the time.

I don’t know that I was up there a long time but it felt like a long time. I heard my kids call up from the ground, “You can do it, Mom! Let go! Just let go!” I don’t know if it was my love for them or my spite at not wanting to be shown up by my preteens but those were the words that did it for me. “You can do it, Mom. Just. Let go.” 

It wasn’t pretty how I got down from there. But I did then. And of course, being my overly analytic self, I saw the metaphor pretty clearly. Because there are a lot of other things in my life that I’m clinging to that aren’t actually helping me. Sometimes it’s obvious and sometimes it’s less obvious that what I’m depending on to save me is actually my very undoing.

Maybe you’ve got your own walls you’re clinging to. Whether it’s overwork, over worry, perfectionism, people pleasing, judgmental attitudes, hoarding of any kind, control over a certain situation, or the last illusion of your independence, so many of us have so many things we’d rather trust than God. 

The ancient Hebrew people in today’s story were not in a well-lit gym with remixed 90s music cheerfully playing from the speakers, their worst concern losing face in front of their children. They were in the wilderness, and their worst concern was starvation. They had fled Egyptian slavery, but they were starting to reconsider the wisdom of all that, given their situation of being far from civilization and any obvious source of food or water.  

They complained to their human leaders, Aaron and Moses, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

They were understandably afraid, upset, and unsure if they were safe. What kind of God would put them in such a situation? What kind of God indeed?

In Exodus God is a very interesting character with wide-ranging human emotions, including jealousy and wrath. In Exodus, God hardens Pharaoh's heart and either plans or allows for the deaths of many Egyptian babies. In Exodus 15, God is even described as a warrior. That was a common motif at the time with the variation that this God was a warrior for the impoverished rather than the powerful. It’s an important distinction but still this God is the one who makes things happen for good or for ill. In this understanding of God there’s a pretty strong correlation between things going well for you and God taking a shine to you, as well as the reverse. If life is hard for you then you can be sure you’ve done something wrong by God. It’s an ancient idea of a higher power, and it’s one that’s still very prevalent today among various religious traditions.

I understand why humans would write about such a God. It’s a way to give life meaning, to explain the unexplainable, and maybe a way even to control each other if you can be convinced that I have lots of power because God loves me more than you. But I don’t believe in that God. Or at the very least I can’t trust that God. If that God is my belay line, no thank you. I will find another way off this wall.

But there are other understandings of God in Exodus and throughout the Bible. God describes Godself to Moses as the Great I AM who always has been and always will be. God is very concerned about the enslaved Hebrew people. God longs for their freedom. God hears the complaints of the people in this story and provides them with the food and water they need.

One common interpretation of this story is that God is one on whom we can depend. God is the one we can trust no matter what. I wonder how true that is for you, and what kind of God it is you’re depending on.

Personally, I no longer depend on a God who will make everything go my way. I’ve let go of that. That kind of God certainly hasn’t earned my trust. Because the world, while not too terribly unkind to me, is not nearly kind enough to too many people I love. No, the only God I can practice trusting in would be the ineffable heartbeat of this incredibly blessed and broken creation. That heartbeat always has been and always will be. That God is more a force of nature than something humanoid, but it looks like us in that we bear the unbearable image of its inexhaustible, overwhelming love.

What else is there really to trust in? Nothing else remains. Even these bones that bear us up will rot in the ground before that well of love that ties the universe together will ever run dry. That’s what there will always be enough of. Even when the well dries up and the bread runs out, the universe will be made of love, and despite the reality of all that troubles us, we can trust in the rhythm of that eternal heartbeat.

About the mysterious manna in the wilderness, Moses told them what to gather: only enough for each day. Some of the people, being people, of course tried to gather more than they needed. Because what’s safer than having enough for today but having enough for tomorrow, too? I can’t fault the logic. But guess what? It got wormy and moldy like the rice and beans I thought I so smartly hoarded in 2020. 

They had to learn the hard way how to trust that tomorrow there would be enough and the day after and the day after and the day after there would be enough. What does that mean to us in a country where affluence and lack live side-by-side? What if tomorrow there’s not enough regardless of how much I have today?

At least if that’s our question we’re starting to talk about the things that really matter. Who has enough to eat and how can we make it so that more people are included in that? Who is it that knows they are loved and how can we make it so that more of us know that, too? What keeps us from having enough and sharing enough and loving enough? Maybe that’s what we can let go of. Maybe that holds us back from what we don’t really need any more. Maybe that’s what we can set down. Maybe that’s what we can ask forgiveness for. Maybe that’s what we can let go of and find ourselves free to trust in what really matters and in the one who will really keep us safe in the end. 

Like a hermit crab putting down a too tight old shell

like a craftsperson turning old t-shirts into a new quilt,

like a butterfly breaking free of its bonds,

or like a rock climber safely falling to the ground,

maybe we too can practice trusting

that letting go of all we do not need

and opening up instead to the sweet grace and love of God

is what will really set us free now and evermore.           

May it be so. Amen.

Unwrap: Waking Up

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – October 15, 2023

Unwrap: Waking Up – John 11: 38-44

I don’t know about you but I learned to dehumanize people pretty early in life. I remember my first grade teacher made a big deal about this one boy, we’ll call him Dale, and how Dale’s fingernails always had dirt under them. Dale lived on a farm. He got free lunch. His clothes didn’t fit. He had holes in his shoes. He stunk. No one would sit near him.

Where we all could hear, the teacher would check Dale’s fingernails every day to see if they had dirt under them. When they did, she would tsk, tsk, tsk and send him to the sink to wash while berating him for his lack of hygiene skills. We all heard. We all saw. We all learned.

We didn’t learn good hygiene. We learned that Dale was less than the rest of us. He was less than the rest of us all through elementary school and middle school and high school. He was mocked and bullied and ostracized like every other kid whose poverty was visible at school.

The term at my school for those kids was “scruff.” It was the bottom of the bottom rung. It was, socially, worse than death. It was as if those students were invisible to the rest of us.

If I had to give you a definition of sin, I would tell you it was what the students and some of the teachers both did to the Dales of our school. It was what we did to each other. It was a little taste of hell on earth, and though I think picturing God with human characteristics is just what our mortal minds like to do to wrap our heads around a concept that our words can never fully explain, I imagine that kind of sin does “reek in the nostrils of the almighty God.”

That’s how Martin Luther King Jr. once described “peace” that meant a quiet acquiescence to violently enforced racial segregation. He said that kind of peace “reeks in the nostrils of the almighty God.”

“Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’” 

There are a lot of places in our world that plainly have a stench. We could, I suppose, point to actual landfills and their toll on the earth. But I’m thinking more about the stench that’s coming off our human hearts.

I’m not talking about people who are poor or who have to go to school still with the manure smell of their family farm on their clothes. I’m talking about all the little ways we make each other less than.

We like to make poor people less than. It makes the rest of us feel a little insulated from the dangers of poverty. But there are a hundred other ways we decide all the someone elses or even our own selves are less than good for anything.

We set up hierarchies and call some people good and other people bad. Then we spend the rest of our time making sure we look good and no one ever confuses us for those less than human bad people or finds out that we are anything less than “good” all of the time.   

The bad news is we’re all the same in the sense that we all live, we all die, we all make mistakes, we all hurt, we all love, we’re all healing from something whether or not we care to admit it. No amount of posturing or hierarchy or money is going to change that, although a minimum amount of money in this life, it turns out, makes it a lot easier to bear a lot of things.

I don’t always see it these days though. I see a lot more hate and a lot more rage. I see people driving like their own lives don’t mean very much to them–let alone the lives of other people walking, biking, or driving nearby.

I have pretty much quit social media because that seems like a place people go just to hate each other.

The news is full of states passing laws to remove healthcare from women and trans people who need it. The news is full of wars and the necessary dehumanization it takes to launch one.

Do you know I actually had someone tell me this week they prayed to God that Israel would kill as many people as possible on the Palestinian side. People of all ages. As many as possible because they are, this person said, “the wrong kind of people.” This person told me those are all people God wants dead.

Meanwhile, I led an online workshop not a month ago with one of the smartest, funniest, most-committed-to-other-people’s-welfare young women I ever met who lives in Palestine. I don’t know how she’s doing. But I pray for her every day.

So, I’ll tell you, I find it very easy to sympathize with Martha in this story. Her brother is dead. There’s not a lot of hope here. If Jesus had come earlier that would be one story. But now it’s too little too late. Why crack open the tomb? Whether it’s a tomb or our hardened hearts, we know what’s inside has a stench.

But Jesus does it anyway.

“Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

I wish I could say there was a time when I stopped dehumanizing other people. But I’m still guilty of it all the time. Judgment is a hard habit to break. And the thing is it does a lot of breaking to the person doing the judgment, too.

But I can tell you about one of the times I started to learn that even I was doing it. I was working at a church in San Francisco. I was the Christian Ed Director. The person who was running the church’s meal assistance and homeless outreach program was named Megan Rohrer, who would go on to be the first openly transgender minister and bishop in the Lutheran tradition and be profiled by national and international media outlets.

At the time, the people benefitting from this program became famous to me for schooling me in my ignorance. I would maybe stop by and say hi at meals with the Welcome ministry. But I would never sit down, and I would especially never eat. I didn’t want anyone to think I needed the meals. One day they stopped me and invited me in. When I wouldn’t eat and Megan asked why, that’s what I told them, I didn’t need the food as much as everyone else there. One man actually dropped his plate. Megan sighed a deep sigh then looked up at me and said, “You obviously don’t know what we’re doing here.”

What they were doing there wasn’t just dishing up food. It was dishing up dignity. It was breaking bread and sharing a little humanity. I was embarrassed. But I got it. Eventually. Well, I’m still working on it anyway.  

“So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said [to our shared Holy Parent], I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’”

As people living in this current stage of scientific advancement, I think you would be well within your rights to ask me, “Pastor, do you believe this actually happened this way? Did Jesus really raise his friend from the dead?”

And I would have to tell you I don’t know.

I know the world is a lot bigger and more ancient and more mysterious than I know. Any really good scientist will agree. And it’s hard to rule out something that happened so long ago that anyone who saw it has been dead for two millennia.

What I do know is that whether or not it happened just like this would have been of much less consequence to the people who first wrote it down. What mattered most to them was not journalistic veracity but the deeper meaning they were trying to impart with any given story.

You can take your own meaning from Lazarus rising from the dead. You can believe what you will. Today, the meaning that rises to the surface for me is the extraordinary power of one person paying attention to another person. I have witnessed that extraordinary power turn lives around. I would say it has brought many from a dark, stinking tomb. I would call it the love of God and I know that sometimes, inexplicably, we discover it outside of human actions, but very often we need other humans for us to realize that the universe is actually made up of this extraordinarily powerful love.

I have come to believe in the power of that love to meet us and change us in every hurt and stinking place in our lives. I have come to believe that love unbinds us from all the messed up things we’ve done and the messed up things that have been done to us, allowing us to heal and to trust that we can experience wholeness and holiness anyway. I have come to believe that love is big. It is bigger than big.

My mother’s name is Robin. R-O-B-I-N like the bird. They say a baby learns to recognize their mother’s voice in the womb. I would recognize hers anywhere. It used to make me jump when I heard her call me by my middle name. In a crowd at church I could pick out her strong soprano no matter where she sat. If I want to get goosebumps all over, I can still close my eyes and hear her sing, “You are my sunshine.”    

Her father sang her the same song when she was small. Once, I protested when she sang it for my sister. I thought the song was for me alone. (Her only sunshine!) That day she told me that her love was big. She said her love was more than big enough for both my sister and I.

God’s love too, I believe, is big.  Her love is more than big enough for the lot of us--for all her creation.

For Israel and Palestine. For Democrats and Republicans.

For rich and poor. For you and for me.

For the parts of you that you hope no one ever sees.

God’s big love still calls into those tomb places, unbind him, unbind her, unbind them, let us all go.

Let us be together. Loved.

And like those freshly emerged, unbound butterflies, flying free.

May it be so. Amen. 

Coming Out: Leaving Comfortable Places

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – October 1, 2023

Coming Out: Leaving Comfortable Places – Hebrews 11: 1-3

I think it might be fair to say there were as many different experiences of the pandemic lockdowns as there were humans. Some of us never completely locked ourselves away whether by choice or due to being deemed an essential worker. Some of us welcomed the break from doing and peopling, at least initially. Some of us descended into close quarters chaos because we were working from home and supervising children doing school at home all at the same time. Some of us were stuck at home in an abusive situation. Some of us didn’t have much of a home to be stuck in and found resources growing scarcer. Some of us experienced profound loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and depression that wreaked havoc on our health in myriad ways.

So, maybe it should be no surprise that ending or transitioning those lockdown protocols happened differently for different people, too. What many of us shared though was an awkwardness to transitioning those protocols. Late night shows joked about the too true reality of Americans struggling to remember how to talk to each other in person.

I know there were some people who I knew for months if not years before I saw the bottom half of their face or the rest of their body not confined by a Zoom screen. I just would never have imagined that experience pre-2020.

And there were awkward parts to picking things up in a different way. I wonder if we’d gotten comfortable with our pandemic cocoons even if we didn’t particularly like why we were stuck in them. I wonder, too, how much we’re still in a place of transition as individuals, as families, and as a faith community, navigating the awkwardness of living into this new reality together.

There are likely many other reasons among us today, too, for finding ourselves in a time of transition and for feeling maybe not unlike a cautious caterpillar turned butterfly starting to pry open our cocoons. Emerging into new realities and new identities is difficult work often filled with anxiety and unknowing.

The writer of this book of the Bible we call Hebrews seemed to understand that predicament, imparting this lovely, encouraging bit of poetry that the NRSV renders: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is what it takes to face the anxiety and unknowing of any change.

The audience of this book of the Bible were in a time of enormous change. They were at the forefront of a diverging faith movement that saw them persecuted by Rome and at odds with their own cultural and religious hierarchies. It seems to me they wondered: is it even worth it? As much as we believe in the truth and good news of Christ, is it worth all the effort and struggle we’re undergoing to live out this new reality and new identity?

Into that question the writer speaks of the conviction of things not yet seen and encourages them to believe in and to live out the good news of God’s love in Christ as they have come to know it. “Indeed, by faith,” the writer goes on, “our ancestors received approval.” Nearly the rest of the chapter continues to cover the story of Abraham and Moses and other ancient Israelite ancestors who put their faith in God to live into a new reality and a new identity.

It even turns out the Greek for approval could also be translated as testimony, bear record, or report. Maybe the writer means to convey that the faith of the ancestors was rewarded.

Looking back, we can see how those who have come before us took risks that bore tremendous outcomes. We don’t always know when we’re living through it what risks and ventures of faith that we take now will one day lead to the world we want to see. But neither did our forebears know. Yet, we are the recipients of so much risk taking that has come before.

Standing in this pulpit before you today, I am the recipient of so many women preachers and their allies who broke open the way when others would have kept it closed to men only.

These days, I am moved by the Pacific Northwest District’s intention to ordain my friend and colleague Elizabeth Ullery Swenson this month despite her identity as an openly queer woman and the denomination’s lack of official support for her full inclusion as a church member and as a gifted, faith leader.

My prayer is that young people in our congregation and everywhere would have the opportunity to be part of a larger community of faith that welcomes them with open arms in the fullness of who God has made them to be.

I am willing to keep faith in that yet coming wider church reality even though it is too often not the one I currently see before me.

What is the reality and the identity God has put on your heart to imagine into being? What is it you pray for faith in even when it is not yet what you can see?

I believe every step we take toward that new reality is a way of our bearing testimony to all that God is yet bringing to be in our world and in our hearts. We may not live to see all that our efforts will bring to bear but we can trust that like those who have come before us, God will use the risks we take and the effort we put forth to help something new and wonderful emerge.

“By faith,” the writer of Hebrews claims, “we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”

So many of us already believe in so much that we cannot see –at least not with our naked eyes. We wash our hands to free ourselves from germs. We take medicines and vaccines to fight off invisible viruses. We trust that the sun will come up in the morning and the spring will come after the winter even when the hour is still cold and dark.

So many of us here believe in this invisible thing called love.

So many of us here believe in the invisible presence of God.

Maybe we have seen love in action.

Maybe we have felt God in those loving actions and beyond them, too.

However we have practiced faith in what we cannot see has prepared us for the next step in continuing to grow that muscle of faith.

However we have practiced faith has prepared us a little more to support each other when our faith wanes or to have the humility to ask for support when we need it, too.

However we have practiced faith has been an inoculation, preparing us so that whatever we go through, we can have a better chance of trusting that whatever the future holds the God of love will meet us there, too.

A caterpillar turning into a butterfly is one of the most amazing processes of the natural world. But if you’ve ever watched it happen up close. You may know that it doesn’t happen all at once. There has to be a hungry little caterpillar. Then the long cocoon or chrysalis stage. Then even when it’s time to start emerging, that doesn’t happen fast. It’s slow and awkward.

As a child, I remember a few times my mom adopted Monarchs for us to protect indoors through their growing stages. We would walk along the railroad near my grandparents’ house, looking for the teeny-tiny eggs on the undersides of the broad Milkweed leaves. We must have harvested plenty of Milkweed to feed those voracious growing yellow, black, and white wormy things because I remember vividly the green chrysalises they eventually formed. As a child it seemed an interminable wait for that butterfly to come out. Do you think it will be today, Mom? What about today? I must have asked her a million times. I don’t know, it looks a little a different today. Don’t you think? And it happened. Eventually it happened.

But there was a lot of waiting involved. For a young, growing me, it took a lot of faith to believe everything my mom said would happen was true. And there was no guarantee every little one would make it either. I think that made the waiting even worse. But it was good practice because I have found there is so much awkward, uncomfortable, anxious waiting in life.

Change is guaranteed, and it’s not guaranteed to be comfortable nor to come with clear instructions.

Whether we are growing up or growing old,

Whether we are starting something new or ending something else,

Whether we are hopeful or discouraged, change is with us.

One way or another we will have to leave our comfortable places.

The good news is that even when we cannot be sure what the future holds and however we are being called to emerge into something new, the God who calls forth the butterfly and who called Christ forth from the tomb, will meet us on the other side of our emergence, too.  

For as the writer of Hebrews proclaims, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”

May you go forth trusting in yet invisible things, too.

May it be so. Amen.

Tombs and Cocoons: Trusting the Darkness

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – September 24, 2023

Tombs and Cocoons: Trusting the Darkness – John 20: 1-2

Folks like me who have grown up with the Easter story already know how today’s chapter of the gospel of John ends. We know that even though Jesus is crucified on Friday he rises on Sunday. But Mary hadn’t lived that part of the story yet when she arrived at the tomb early on the first day of the week while it was still dark. She had been present at Golgotha. She had seen the horrors of her dear teacher being brutally executed by officers of the Roman empire.

The gospel of John doesn’t exactly say why she came to the tomb but I imagine that it was a place where the outer reality of her grief matched the inner reality of her grief. There have been times in my life where I wanted to numb the pain but there have been times in my life where I needed to go to be with the pain and know how real it is–where I needed someone to say yeah that hurts and that hurt is going to change you but you are not alone.

In 2016, Heather Harper suffered the loss of a dear loved one. She told an interviewer later that “the weeks that followed were the hardest weeks of her life.” When Harper eventually forced herself to leave the house, one of the first places she went was church. She found that folks there struggled to know how to respond to her profound grief.

One Sunday, Harper was so overwhelmed that she stepped out of the sanctuary to be alone. Not long after, an older woman she didn't know very well joined her. They didn't speak or even look at each other. Then the woman said in a loud, clear voice, “My [dearest love] died 35 years ago and not a day has gone by that I haven't thought of [them.] Don't ever let anyone tell you that you are grieving for too long.'"

"Her words were what I needed to hear in that moment of my life," said Harper. "I needed to know that I would never be the same again. And that it was normal to be that way. And that I wasn't broken, that there was nothing wrong with grief, no matter how long it lasted. And most of all, she let me know that I wasn't alone.”

Life is full of opportunities to experience deep grief. Life will inevitably serve up to us some share of challenge or pain. That grief is real, and it is perfectly faithful to let yourself feel it. You don’t have to know what happens next or have any answers to simply come to that place of grief just as Mary came to the tomb.

I don’t know who here needs to hear this besides me, but as a reminder, when Mary came to the tomb she pretty much fell to pieces. She was no picture of stoicism. She was pretty much a wreck. She saw that the stone had been rolled away and ran. She ran and got Peter and the “other disciple whom Jesus loved.” I don’t know what to hear in her words if not panic when she says, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’” Then they all looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there.

She saw the angels. And still, still she grieved. She kept on grieving, even when someone she didn’t recognize cluelessly asked her why she was weeping. I think it’s pretty fair to say Mary went to pieces.

I try not to go to pieces. I’m way too proud. But sometimes I do anyway. And when I do, I often find, I probably would have been a lot farther ahead if I hadn’t tried so hard and so long to hold all the pieces together when they were meant to fall apart. 

That’s one of the things I love about caterpillars. They curl up in their cocoons and their chrysalises, and when they come out they’re beautiful moths and butterflies. But in between some wild stuff happens. Scientists tell us that during that unseen metamorphosis these creatures go to pieces. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say they turn into goo. It is only in the goo stage that what scientists have labeled the creature’s imaginal cells take over and lead all the growth that comes next.  

If Mary can do it and caterpillars can do it, maybe we don’t have to be so afraid to go to pieces, too. Maybe that’s the very place where whatever comes next begins.

It seems to me that’s how it works in nature. There are cycles of death and resurrection. It seems to me that’s a big part of the Christian story, too. There’s always a transformation, always an emergence, in the works.

That’s what Mary encountered after all–after she went to pieces. She encountered the impossible. She encountered the risen Christ.

Transformation, resurrection, emergence, these things don’t always happen like I’d like. They don’t always happen when I want them to happen or how I want them to happen either. But they happen pretty often.

Love–the big love–the love we call agape or even God, that Love actually outlives death. That Love remains. That Love changes us if we let it.

We’ve been through some hard things these past few years. In some ways it’s hard to believe what’s happened has actually happened. In some ways it’s hard to comprehend how exactly things are different now. And yet, they’re not exactly the same. They’re not the same at church. They’re not the same at lots of workplaces or schools across the country. They’re probably not exactly the same even in your home.  

Whatever you’ve been through or whatever you’re going through now, come to the darkness with trust.

The way I see it, Mary Magdalene is the first ever preacher of the good news of Christ rising on that Sunday morning. The way I see it she had to grieve and grieve and cry her eyes out          until she could see him, the risen Christ, standing right before her.

I can’t see the future, but I do know that grief takes time. I do know that recovering our health can take time. I do know that adjusting to any real change can take time.

Like Mary Magdalene, we so often come to the tomb places of life while it is yet dark and our way ahead is hard to see. None of us remembers what it was like to be born. None of us remembers that waiting--at least not from the inside.

Maybe if we did, we would be better prepared for such times of uncertainty. Maybe if we did, we would remember that we do have practice waiting in the dark, while a change we cannot yet understand is being worked all around us.

To quote the Sikh, activist, and mother Valerie Kaur, “What if this [uncertain time] is not the darkness of the tomb but the darkness of the womb?”

Yes, the shadow of death has passed over us all in the form of a global pandemic but what if something has also been born?  What if our job now is only to wait as patiently as we can, attending to our challenges and our grief with as much kindness as we can? What if our job is not to over plan or over worry or to rush ourselves past our very real feelings but rather to come to the darkness with trust that it is okay to go to pieces as we wait for the new life that is emerging even now.

                                                                                      May it be so. Amen.

Drawn In: Listen

Sometimes I have big ideas that don’t work out. For example, for several summers I have grown tomatoes with the hopes of canning them and eating them all winter long. I love this idea for me and my family. But for several summers, I have collected tomatoes on my counter daily only to have them rot before I can set aside the time required to blanch them and cool them and cut them and can them.

This year, I gave up on my big idea–sort of. I still grew a lot of tomatoes. But this year when they come into the house, they go into a pot after some light dicing that ignores the skins. They’re not bound for beautiful jars on the shelf either. They’re bound for simmering on my stovetop while I do other things. By the time I come back they’re already a thick sauce I’ll be throwing on top of pasta within the week. It’s not such a profound act of creation maybe, but it’s one that has taught me the power of listening and of adapting my big ideas to the situation before me.  

In the Book of Acts, the Apostle Paul had some big ideas, too. It sounds to me like he had thought to go to Asia and other far-flung places to spread the gospel. But according to the text, the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus barred his way. I’d really like to know more about what that meant. The Book of Acts is full of miraculous signs and stories. Maybe it was one of those. But since it spares us the details, it makes me wonder, if the Spirit acted in more mundane ways on this occasion. Like maybe Paul and Silas ran out of funds or they decided there was some great language barrier or one of them fell ill. The text doesn’t tell us. It does seem to relate that they struck out with big ideas to bring about a great creative work but listened to the Holy Spirit and adapted their plans along the way.

Isn’t that how life so often goes? Our big ideas don’t always work out just how we expect. But sometimes, if we listen, we may find God at work in the changes we make along the way. I find there’s something to keeping a focus on what it is we are called toward while remaining flexible as we listen to the needs of the moment.

In today’s text, Paul has a vision that convinces him to go to Macedonia instead. He becomes convinced that’s where God has called him to proclaim the good news. In his vision, it's a man from Macedonia who pleads with Paul to come. But once there we don’t hear about any major male figure that converts to Christianity because of the work of Paul and Silas. Instead, there’s a woman, who the scripture calls Lydia. We’re told she’s a “worshiper of God.” That likely means she’s not someone who is officially Jewish but rather sympathetic to the ideas of Judaism. She’s also designated as a trader of “purple cloth,” which makes her not exactly a member of an elite class but likely connected to a circle of higher status folks by trade. She is the one who is moved by the good news and who leads her whole household to be baptized as well.

She wasn’t what they expected. But wasn’t her conversion and leadership the heart of what they hoped to achieve on their gospel-spreading journey? I might argue things turned out even better than in Paul’s vision.

Early 16th century artistic great Michelangelo, whose famous fresco adorns the Sistine Chapel and whose sculptures of Pieta and David have remained much revered across the centuries, is reported to have once said: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”

Not all of us have the gift of putting our hand to an immense block of stone and hearing the sculpture that wants to be unbound from it. But most of us can learn to listen to the call of God amidst our unique and changing circumstances in ways that help us achieve the wholeness and well-being God would have us seek.

In today’s story, Lydia is actually the star listener. The text tells us, “the Lord opened her heart to listen.” 

The Lord opened her heart. Lines like these in the Bible often catch my attention. How does that work exactly?

Centuries of air and ink have been spent trying to win arguments around the accurate mix of free will and predestination we operate with in the world. I’m not entirely keen to wade into that morass. But what I can say is that I have experienced times when my powers of perception are heightened or when something ordinary takes on extraordinary significance and understanding dawns on me in a way that seems it must be owing to something outside my own limited power. 

I have to wonder if that’s anything like what Lydia experienced. Did she have goose bumps? Did her blood run cold? Was her heart strangely warmed? Whatever the details, it’s clear she was drawn in. This woman who knew the value of labor and was familiar with markets, was drawn toward this good news Paul and Silas shared.

I highly doubt she calculated that it would be good for business. If anything, I expect it was more likely to cost her business. But she listened, and she was drawn in anyway.

What draws us? What draws us not because it’s easy or addictive or obligatory but because when we listen, we hear the voice of the holy calling us in?

Sometimes it’s hard to hear that voice in the world of the driven isn’t it? I think so at least.

In a world where play and aimless creativity are often unvalued, and where clear goals and answers are valued highly, listening to what draws us in or gives us joy may not come easily. But play and aimless creativity are the very things that can allow us to be ready to listen and adapt when things don’t go the way we expect.

In the thick of the pandemic lockdown, one of the things that drew me in were long, aimless walks. I would just set off without much plan except the knowledge that I needed to exercise and feel some modicum of freedom. So, I walked, and as I did, I listened to my curiosity about my neighborhood, discovering fascinating nooks and crannies and new routes to old favorite places. 

I found myself often walking around St. Mary’s Catholic Church near my home. I have still never gone inside but on those walks I discovered the statue of Mary perched above the Fulton Street entrance. She was always there, immovable, and yet always opening her arms to welcome me in. Stopping under her arms grew to be a ritual on my walks that took on a certain healing nature. Her smiling stone face still being there somehow reminded me I was still here in this life and God was still with me, too. That was the message I dearly needed in those days and many days since.

I never met the artist who designed and sculpted that piece above the church door. But I hope they understand somehow what their art has meant to others. I hope they understand the power our creativity has. When we listen to what draws us in and nurture our own God-given creativity, we in turn nurture the spirits of others.

Our creative ventures don’t always take the shape we may expect, but when we listen to the Creative Spirit of God calling us in, we may well have the joyful opportunity to be co-creators in spreading holy love, grace, and joy.

                                   May it be so. Amen.

Drawn In: Risk

The word talent stands out to me in today’s scripture. Although we are in the middle of a worship series on holy creativity, the word talent in today’s scripture does not refer to the natural or refined skills of any particular individual. Rather, it was the “largest unit of currency in the Hellenistic world. A single talent was equivalent to fifteen years of wages for a laborer.”  

Even without any precise mathematical calculations for what that would mean for any of our households, I think we can agree it was an amount of currency that would be a great deal of responsibility for all but the most wealthy. Indeed, it was enough currency that the householder did not want to see it sitting idle but wanted his money making more money while he was away.

So, as the bits of the story before the passage we read today tell us, the wealthy man summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them while he was gone. “To one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, each according to his ability.” Both of the first two invested the money and doubled it, but the one who one who was given only one talent buried it in the ground and gave it back untouched. 

Most interpreters agree we are meant to understand God as the wealthy one and we humans as the slaves entrusted with that wealth. What is that wealth? Is it money? Is it time? Is it indeed our passion and our skill? I think the answer is yes to all of the above, and that we may justifiably respond to this scripture passage by asking ourselves, how is it we are using our God-given talents? Are we sharing them for the expansion of God’s love and grace in the world? Or are we burying them in the ground rather than avoid the risks that come with letting those talents loose from our hands?

I have a lot of compassion for the slave who hid his one talent out of fear. Sharing our God-given talents does not come without risk. Sharing our God-given talents, whatever they may be, quite often makes us vulnerable.

In her book, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, researcher Brené Brown coins the term “vulnerability hangover” for the experience that happens after we’ve risked sharing our gifts and we wonder if we shared too much or if it will have the intended effect. Brown’s research shows this is a common human experience, and she encourages readers to take risks anyway, especially in service of the happiness and well-being of ourselves and others.

When asked in an interview what she would put in a “Museum of Daring Greatly,” she responded she would never found such a project. Instead she would start a “Museum of Epic Failure,” so that we could all see how even the people who we think of as successful also experienced failure and found a way to persevere through the risk. They chose to try again.

There’s another word that catches my attention in this story, and that’s the word slave. I’m not keen on the ways this story sets God up as a slave master and we humans as slaves. I think it comes too close to endorsing the practice of humans owning other humans or the idea that humans are completely depraved, worthless creatures–neither of which I can agree to. But I also don’t love this word because slaves have very little choice about what they risk.

Elsewhere Jesus taught about the love and blessing God shares with all of us. In this series we have read the scripture in which he reads from the prophet Isaiah in claiming Jesus’ own call to “proclaim release to the captives and… to set free those who are oppressed.”

No, Jesus does not condone slavery. Rather, he is using real images of his time to help followers understand what God wants from them and for them. It is our choice how we will respond.

Whoever we are, God has gifted us with something to share, the story claims. It doesn’t seem very important what value our unjust world places on our gifts. We are called to share them just the same, whether the world says that’s worth five talents or only one. What we have to share matters.

We are not at all worthless. Who we are and what we bring matters to God. What’s more, we are called to share those gifts with the world in spite of the very real and often justifiable fear of failure. There’s no guarantee that what we share will be doubled in value, but there is every guarantee that the gifts we never share will never grow –for our good or anyone else’s. For me the story is very clear. God calls us to risk sharing vulnerably of our gifts with the world.

Maybe that idea excites some of us. Maybe there’s someone among us here today who is on the verge of launching a great creative work. If so, I hope you hear the bone deep encouragement of this passage.

For others of us, maybe that idea brings out our skepticism. Maybe some of us are feeling way too exhausted to get excited about being creative, much less taking a vulnerable risk with that effort. Maybe we’ve already risked quite enough. If that’s you, maybe the vulnerable risk you're called to take is one that is oriented toward creative ways of finding rest and releasing yourself from undue obligation.

However, we come today, I wonder if we may agree that even small risks can expand God’s love and grace in the world in creative ways. Psychologist Gillian Sandstrom became interested in the big pay out of the small risk of developing “weak ties” with strangers and acquaintances. For psychologists, “weak ties” are the ones that we have with the checkout clerk we talk to about the weather or the neighbor we don’t know well but who always waves.

Sandstrom became interested in this idea when she went back to school to become a psychologist instead of a computer programmer, her original career. She was ten years older than most of the students around her, and she had a hard time shaking the feeling that she didn’t belong there.

Enter the hot dog lady. On her daily walk from one university building to another, Sandstrom would pass a hot dog stand. “I never bought a hot dog,” relates Sandstrom, “but every time I walked past, I would smile and wave at her and she’d smile and wave at me.”

Sandstrom remembers looking forward to seeing the hot dog lady daily, and she found herself disappointed on the days she wasn’t there. This brief interaction broke the isolation for Sandstrom even though she and the hot dog lady never developed a deeper relationship.

Years later, remembering this recurring interaction, Sandstrom designed a study that investigated the benefits of social connections, including brief encounters with strangers, acquaintances, and anyone outside our close circle of family, friends, and colleagues. While much of the growing research on social connection focuses on the closest relationships in people’s lives, “Sandstrom and other scientists are now learning that even the most casual contacts with strangers and acquaintances can be tremendously beneficial to our mental health.”

Sandstrom’s 2014 study asked 50 participants to carry two clicker counters each and count every time they talked to someone during the day. One clicker counted “strong ties” or close relationships. The other counted “weak ties” with strangers and acquaintances. Sandstrom found people who tended to have more weak ties tended to be a little happier than people who had fewer of those kinds of interactions on a day-to-day basis. 

Sandstrom admits she was never fond of talking to strangers before. It made her uncomfortable not knowing how someone else would respond. Even when it wasn’t necessarily dangerous to talk to strangers, she avoided that risk. Now, she makes a point, when she can, of cultivating those weak ties and recommends others looking for a little more happiness try it, too, especially since she knows how much one of those weak ties once meant to her.

What risks are we called to take big or small? What might those risks we take create in our world?

I believe God calls us to risk sharing vulnerably of our gifts in service of expanding the experience of holy love and grace in the world. When we share of our own passion and creative gifts, not only do we serve our own joy and well-being, but we serve, as the lintel over the Highland Avenue church building door reads: “the glory of God and our neighbors’ good.”

Wherever we go, may we have the courage to risk sharing our passion, joy, and talent with the world.

                                                                                           May it be so. Amen.

Drawn In: Hover

Chapter 4 of the Gospel of Luke begins, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.”

For centuries, Christians have taken this scripture as a basis for their own spiritual practice of fasting in order to feel closer to God. I’m not particularly good at fasting, especially not from food. Neither my body nor my mind takes to it very well at all. But I can appreciate the idea that stepping back from something for a while might help us feel better, feel closer to God, and even feel ready for some new creative undertaking.

Over long years of practice, I have learned to love sitting in silent contemplative prayer as a means of stepping back from the torrent of my own thoughts. In the silence, I have learned to seek the presence of God that remains beyond those thoughts, like the presence of the clear blue sky behind the clouds. I have also known the renewal that comes just from resting from certain things, like how much difference a lunch break, a sabbath day, a week of vacation, or a whole summer off can make. And, since I’ve been a child, I’ve enjoyed the strange sensation of pushing my arms out to either side against a narrow door jamb as far and hard as I can for as long as I can until finally stepping out and letting my arms raise up effortlessly in sweet relief.

But Jesus didn’t just fast in today’s story. He was also tempted by the devil. Three times the devil tempted Jesus to throw off his human finitude and to use the ultimate cosmic power that was his birthright. Three times Jesus refused.

Today the world is still full of temptations for us to try to outrun our own human finitude. I often think there’s some arrogance and greed to our striving to pretend we’re anything we’re not, but I also know that pushing past our own human limits often comes from a place of noble intention.

The world is full of sorrow and heartbreak. We don’t have to look far in the news or down the block to find something we’d give anything to fix. Indeed, so many of us would very much like to fix everything.

Don’t misunderstand me. I do believe that when we work together we can do a lot of good. With God’s help, we can move mountains and do things once thought impossible. But we, personally, can’t do everything, as much as we may be tempted to believe and to act otherwise.

I’m still fond of those oft-quoted lines from last century’s Trappist Monk Thomas Merton’s book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, in which he writes, “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy… neutralizes [our] work…” he continues. “It destroys the fruitfulness of [that]…work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.” 

I love and hate those lines of Merton wisdom because I find them both so freeing and so convicting. Maybe some of you do, too. Maybe that’s also why I was so taken with the story of Simone Biles from the last summer Olympics. In case you somehow missed it, the unmatched queen of gymnastics struggled uncharacteristically in her events in Tokyo and revealed that she was experiencing “the twisties,” a very dangerous condition that sometimes afflicts gymnasts and keeps them from accessing their highly refined sense of orientation to their bodies in space.  

What she did next shook the orientation of athletes to the long idolized code of honor in suffering. When Simone Biles pulled herself from events in the 2021 Olympics, rather than risk doing significant harm to herself, she told everyone watching, a different kind of story– a story in which even the gravity-defying greatest gymnast of all time can still respect her own human limitations.

Two years later and two weeks ago at the Now Centre in nearby Hoffman Estates, Biles came soaring back in her first competition after a significant hiatus from the sport. She even performed with success a fourth unprecedented move in women’s gymnastics that will forever bear her name once she successfully performs it in international competition. When interviewed, Biles was quick to credit her successful return to all the mental health support she sought and to the step back she took when she did.

I don’t know that anyone here is planning to make a run at competing in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, but I do know that all of us are endowed by our Creator with our own creative spark. All of us here are creating something even now whether that is the art of a new floor routine to be performed on a world stage, the art of a carefully cultivated classroom, the art of a well-cared for relationship, the art of a well-lived life, or any other creative thing.

What greater joy and justice may we co-create with God when we allow ourselves to be drawn in not by the temptation of being everything to everyone but by doing well the few things that are ours to do?

What greater joy and justice may we co-create with God when we allow ourselves to step back for a moment and get some dearly needed perspective on our lives?  

Personally, I am too often not nearly as good as Jesus was in this story at knowing, naming, and respecting my limitations. And I know Merton’s not wrong about the violence part. Because more often than I’d like, my lack of limit-setting has caused harm to myself or others.

Maybe there’s something to that big pause Jesus took when he even let himself be tested some. Maybe we, too, can learn more to step back, to take a look at the big picture, and to get our priorities straight before doing, giving, or creating.

Maybe we could even think of this as a practice of holy “hovering” or taking a bird’s eye view before jumping into action.   

It is a dove after all in which the Holy Spirit descends in bodily form at Jesus' baptism in the chapter of Luke just before the one we read today, signifying Jesus’ identity as God’s divine child. Quickly then the story is interrupted by a long list of Jesus’ human heritage as if to underline the belief that Jesus is both human and divine at the same time.

We’re not Jesus, but I do think we’re also beloved children of God, infused with the divine spark of creativity unleashed on Creation by the Creator. We’re also so very clearly human, too.

If Jesus paused to take time with God and to know his own limitations before allowing himself to be drawn deeply to the work of loving people and setting the world more free, then there is no shame in our learning to pause humbly before God’s creative call, too.                 

Thank God it is so. Amen.

Drawn In: Dream

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – August 13, 2023

Drawn In: Dream – Luke 4: 14-21

I know I’m biased but I think of sermons as a kind of sacred art. I like writing sermons. I like preaching them, too, usually. Even more, I like hearing a really moving sermon from someone else.

 And most of all I am enamored with the experience of sitting in little circles of preachers talking about their preaching and about the nature of preaching itself. It’s super nerdy but it’s one of the things that really makes me feel alive. In affirming, Spirit-infused circles like those, I have seen folks come to profound new insights about their faith, their identity, and their art. For me, these circles have included big laughter, ugly tears, and oh so many goosebumps.

 No matter how many formal or informal circles like these I visit, I find there is one question that inevitably rises to the surface: what does it mean to be a good preacher?

Some of you here are preachers. After all, we have an unusual number of ordained ministers per capita around here, and we’re welcoming two more of our membership into the ordained ministry this afternoon. So, maybe the question of what makes a good preacher has crossed many of your minds before.

Others of us may be more familiar with different but related questions like:

What makes a good parent?

What makes a good teacher?

What makes a good employee or organizational leader?

What makes a good sculptor, writer, musician, painter, handy-man, cook, or baseball player?

What makes a good... person?

In the Creation story in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, we find God spoke life into being and then called it good. Regardless of whether you prefer an anthropomorphic, literal understanding of God’s act of Creation or you prefer an interpretation of the Creation myth that is much informed by science, I think you may agree there is a creative impulse at work here. There’s a force that brought life into being and that yet moves through all that makes up the universe. The same creative force that moves in you moves in me.

I would go so far as to call it our birthright to imagine and to create. So many of us though so often deny ourselves a license to create. Or, we deny that what we’re already doing is an act of creation. Are we afraid of whether or not what we will create is good?

What makes a sermon or a song or a parent or a teacher good anyway?

This week I caught an interview with Matthew Lopez who just directed the romantic comedy Red, White, and Royal Blue for Amazon Prime. The movie was originally a well-loved novel, especially in LGBTQ circles as it centers around the romance of two men.

Director Matthew Lopez told interviewer Juana Summers that he felt the pressure of the book’s popularity.

“Every reader of a novel is a film director while they're reading the book,” notes Lopez. “They have control over everything: costume, design, casting. As you're reading a book, it's your little movie in your head. And with a book as popular as this one, you've got millions and millions of people with their own versions of it in their heads. And then there's one person who makes the movie, right?”

Lopez continues, " ‘How do I take a very popular bit of literature and make a movie of it?’ And the answer I really came to was, I have to make the movie that is inside my head. I have to make the movie that is personal to me. I have to make the movie that I'm capable of making — my response to the book, in many ways.”

I’ve never directed a movie but I have had the opportunity to preach in front of some really large groups of people from time to time, and those opportunities have often come with ample lead time to feel the pressure.

I remember asking a friend once, what should I say that everyone would like to hear?

I remember she asked, what could I say that I myself would like to hear? What could I say that meant something important to me? Maybe that’s closer to the word God would like us to hear.

Well, if you have a tendency toward self-consciousness, you don’t love hearing your recorded or amplified self say anything. But you still may be able to discern what matters to you. You still may be able to connect with what makes you feel most alive.

I like to believe that’s where the creative spirit of God beckons us to dwell as often as possible–not in the place of obligation and should and have to and other people’s good opinions–but in the place where our souls are moved in the deepest way. I think that’s the place from which we best connect to God’s unfolding and ongoing dream of a Creation and a creativity that can be called good.

I think that’s what Jesus beckoned us all toward when he picked up the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and read:

“ ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

     because he has anointed me

     to bring good news to the poor.

  God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

     and recovery of sight to the blind,

     to let the oppressed go free,

     to proclaim the year of God’s favor…’ ”

 and “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus was the incarnation of God in the flesh. We’re not quite the same but I believe as followers of Jesus and as inheritors of the blessing of Creation, the Spirit of the Lord can fall upon us, too. And when we allow ourselves to be drawn in by the Spirit of the Lord,

I believe we often end up serving not only ourselves but the well-being of the world as well.

In the beginning of the 2020 Disney/Pixar movie Soul, middle school band teacher Joe, who still harbors dreams of making it big as a professional performer, explains to his band students how he fell in love with Jazz music as a young boy when he watched a piano player being carried away by the music. He goes on to explain throughout the movie that he loves Jazz because it’s music that lets the “you” out.

Through a series of unfortunate events, just before Joe gets his unexpected big break to play piano with a well-known saxophonist, his soul is sent to “the great beyond” and then “the great before,” where he meets a soul looking for her spark before getting her pass to go to earth.

Joe assumes that a soul’s spark is their purpose. And as soon as possible he finds a way to get his soul back into his body so that he can fulfill what he believes to be his purpose: getting his big break as a professional performer.

He has an incredible night but finds that once the show is over, he doesn’t feel any different. He doesn’t feel as though he’s fulfilled any prescribed purpose or that life is really much different than before.

The spark that brings souls to earth it turns out is not necessarily some prescribed purpose or achievement. Rather, in the movie, the spark that those yet to be embodied souls in the “great before” are looking for is what lights up inside them when they’re ready to come and be fully alive. When Joe finds his spark, it doesn’t just help him. It also draws his new found friend to find her spark, too, and the two of them bring enormous beauty to the world together.

At the end of the movie, when Joe gets a second chance at life on earth, someone asks what he’s going to do with his life this time. He replies, “I don’t known but I do know I’m going to live every minute of it.”

Rather than being driven to be, do, and create what we think others will call “good,” what would happen if we let ourselves be more deeply drawn-in to what moves us, brings us joy, and sets us free? 

I trust that the Creative and still Creating Spirit of God will meet us there and use our spark to serve the dream of a whole Creation twinkling with vitality, well-being, beauty, and joy.

                                                                                           May it be so. Amen.

Forever Kindness

Sometimes I suffer because I’m too proud to ask for help. I submit to you this story as Exhibit A: -Heather Ford image (soil)

In May of 2020, like so many, I was expanding my vegetable garden.

And to do so, I needed big bags of soil. I nearly scoffed at the checkout clerk when he asked if I would like help. Of course not. I’m relatively young and able-bodied. I’ve got this. But when I got to the bags of soil in the parking lot, which were soaking wet with rain, I found I could hardly budge them. Still too proud to ask for help, I started grabbing one corner and pulling, making tiny grudging progress despite my grunts and groaning muscles. I nearly jumped out of my skin when a car pulled up right beside me and a person younger and stronger than me asked if they could help. Still too proud, I wanted to say no, but I was pretty sure they had seen how pathetically mismatched I was to the task. So, I finally swallowed my pride and said, “That would be great!”

Before I knew it two more younger, stronger people had jumped out of the car and loaded up my several big, heavy bags of garden soil. Then they jumped right back in their car and pulled away with a wave, barely stopping to acknowledge my profuse gratitude.

Much as I want to always be the Good Samaritan, sometimes I can’t help but end up the person in the ditch. And I have to admit, it’s not my favorite place to be. It’s vulnerable and sometimes vulnerable in much more profound ways than being stuck in a parking lot with bags that are too heavy for me.

Is there a reason Jesus doesn’t name the person in the ditch or give him very many descriptors besides where he was headed? Is it so the lawyer–and us would-be lawyers listening in–would be able to picture ourselves in the vulnerable spot? And if so, what does that have to do with eternal life?

That’s the question after all that kicks off this whole famous section of Luke.

In the NRSV the lawyer’s question is phrased, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Many interpreters are dubious about the questioner’s intentions but being a question-loving person, I want to assume genuine curiosity and a love of learning, if coming from a shrewdly analytical source.

After all, the lawyer and Jesus agree on the basics of the Levitical code: to love God and to love our neighbor as yourself. The lawyer pushes it further then and wants the specifics about neighbors. What’s the ruling there? Who is it Jesus thinks we ought to love like neighbors? What are the limits?

Well, the limits are seen in a whole new light, are they not, when it’s you in the ditch, looking for the kindness? Well played, Jesus.

But this time reading the story, I imagine myself on the outer circle of this conversation, hanging on to the question that started this whole piece. What does the story have to do with “inheriting eternal life”? 

In Downtown Elgin, on the side of a building occupied by Side Street Studio Arts there is a huge mural that says, “Activate Daily Kindness.”        -image

According to a Side Street Facebook Post, the mural is the work of Sara Peak Convery, a Chicago-based artist who enjoys working in a variety of media. Says Convery, “The use of words in art has powerful implications for encouragement and guidance.” She also shares that her “vision for her work and the world has enlarged and she embraces the possibility of expanding her work into the realm of public art.”

Since its installation in June, I have passed by this mural with frequency and it rarely fails to capture my attention. Daily kindness seems doable. It also seems like a practice–something that can become a habit, the kind of thing I do without much thought, day after day, forever and ever.

The word activating is also encouraging to me. It makes me imagine kindness like water in a pipe, as though all I have to do is activate the spigot and let it flow.

That’s my favorite image for understanding eternal life, too. It’s like a stream of water that goes before us and after us and that we are somehow standing in right now, too. Sometimes, like fish, we forget the water is even there. It’s just a part of us. But sometimes we are overcome with the realization that we are part of eternity even as each moment passes into the next. Sometimes we experience individual shining moments that I can only explain as a taste of forever–a taste of the everlasting love that I have come from and that I trust I will return to and that despite all the trouble and trial of this world is yet a part of drawing breath here on planet Earth.

Jesus illustrates that ancient instruction to love God and love our neighbor with this story about love in action. A story is something we experience. It’s not always clear what it means but it gives us some clues as to what the shape of the thing is we’re trying to describe. What does it feel like? What are its height and depth? A story is not playing instructions to a game. It’s not a math equation with one right answer. And it seems to me, neither is experiencing eternal life. It’s nothing we win. It’s nothing we earn. It’s nothing we solve. No. But I think it is something we can practice experiencing whenever we let ourselves be vulnerable enough to give and to receive acts of loving kindness.

Ya know, the one weird thing I realized this week–after I had already chosen this scripture to conclude our series on kindness–is that this scripture doesn’t include the word kindness. Mercy and compassion are there and they’re close. But neither Jesus nor the lawyer talk about kindness per se. They talk about love and the Greek word translated as love in English is agape. That’s the big love, the one we can cultivate for neighbors, for enemies, and even for our imperfect selves. It seems to me a wide, gracious, merciful love. It’s a love that is big enough to go around, to offer reciprocally, to teach us how to give it with grace, and to teach us how to receive it with grace every time we experience that agape love acted out in ways we may even call kind.          -Craig Whitehead image (car in rain)

One Sunday morning, I was driving to church from my home on Elgin’s east side. It was raining and as I pulled up to the stoplight at 31, I saw Star, a friend of many of us from Soup Kettle and other community gatherings. He was getting wet and looking a little lost. I thought, maybe Star is coming to Highland Avenue for worship. He does come, after all, from time to time. So, I rolled down the window and told him he could get in. It turned out of course that he wasn’t trying to go to Highland Avenue that morning but instead, he was headed to St. Hugh’s Episcopal Church, quite a bit farther west down the road.

I had been running on time but now I was going to be late for the mic check, and I hate being late. It was inconvenient but it wasn’t dangerous or really very hard. And it made me happy. So, I gave Star a ride all the way to St. Hugh. He, as usual, was an absolute delight to spend a few minutes with. Indeed, I wished it was a much longer car ride to hear more of his life story. -Markus Spiske image (kids from behind)

And what I remember most was how gracious he was. He was grateful but also not embarrassed out of some sense of pride. I got the feeling we were family and if I ever needed his help and he could give it, he would be there in a heartbeat.

It wasn’t anything nearly as sacrificial or generous as what the Samaritan did in Jesus’ story. But that feeling of connection is precious to me. It makes me want to experience it again and again. It makes me want to practice giving and receiving kindness. It makes me want to lean into that gift of eternal life which we all may inherit,

where we are awash in that agape love and find it easy to be

forever kind.

                                                                               May it be so. Amen.

Loving Kindness

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – 7/23/23

Loving Kindness – Micah 6: 6-8

I wish I could say it was my idea, but it wasn’t. It was my neighbor Toni’s. She’s got to be one of the most observant, thoughtful, and kind people I know. I’m glad she moved onto my block.

You see, she heard our neighbor Val one day, when she sighed and said how much she loved the porch swings three of the rest of us have on Rugby Place. She laughed then and said it was probably because she didn’t have one herself. But she hoped maybe she could get one.

It was a comment that could have been overlooked but Toni took action. She got on our neighborhood text thread and coordinated the financing, purchasing, shipping, and hanging of a swing to surprise Val. It took weeks to get it done. But one day there was a knock on Val’s door. Her husband, two children, and as many of us neighbors as could be mustered stood in her front yard with mischievous smiles on our faces, as her brand new porch swing rocked in the breeze. Later that night, I could spy Val across the street, still swinging late into the evening, a blanket wrapped around her, and a contented smile filling her face.

This act of kindness didn’t stop Val’s breast cancer from taking her from us less than a year later. But it made her heart glad in a way we might even call healing.

The Hebrew word for kindness in today’s scripture is hesed. It can mean kindness between two people. It can mean piety toward God, and it can also mean a favor, a good deed, or beauty. That’s the definition that most catches my attention when I think of Val sitting on her new porch swing, awash in contentment that sparkled like the sun. Kindness can be so very beautiful. Kindness can be easy to love.

There are other words in this scripture selection that I find less beautiful and less easy to love. In this scripture selection those words include sin and transgression.

To be sure, many of us have benefited from the honest if hard-to-hear words of a loved one that helped us change and grow. But I think it’s also true that many of us carry an unhelpfully heavy knapsack of judgment that we fill with the harsh words of marketing campaigns or unkind others or our own too often unkind thoughts.

At their best, words like sin and transgression help us to name and lament harm that we have either caused or experienced. But at their worst, those words can cause harm, especially when leveled like weapons against others or ourselves.

The biggest sins the book of Micah calls out are sins of people with wealth or power neglecting the well-being of others. It’s a lack of kindness and compassion that God is concerned about.

The weird thing I have learned about being kind to others is that it’s actually hard to do that with authenticity, if we are really awful to ourselves and vice versa. Perhaps it has to do with the way we are part of one another as last week’s scripture selection from Ephesians attested. But whatever the reason, it’s not just Christians who understand that true kindness is predicated on loving others as well as we love ourselves.

The mindfulness movement that is largely rooted in the practices of Buddhist meditation has made popular something I have heard called Metta or Loving Kindness meditation. It involves sending loving words or feelings to those dearest to us, then sending loving words or feelings to those about whom we feel ambivalent, and finally sending loving words or feelings to those with whom we have challenges or conflicts. It’s a practice that is meant to grow our compassion muscles. But the first step, before we send loving words or feelings to anyone else, is to send loving words and feelings to ourselves. This is because self-compassion is understood to be the root of compassion toward others. 

If we are going to learn how to name the harm in our lives and to truly love kindness, as we are asked to do in Micah and elsewhere in the Bible, I think we would do well to begin by offering that kindness to ourselves. When we can love ourselves as we are, accept ourselves as we are, and be at ease with who we are, then kindness can flow from us with genuine generosity. And when we can love ourselves as we are, accept ourselves as we are, and be at ease with who we are, then we can be brave enough to see any shortcomings with the kind of compassion that will bring healing and growth.

Sometimes though I think kindness can be hard to notice. We may ignore it or trivialize it as unimportant. But that’s not what the prophet Micah reports as the way to win God’s favor. It’s not sacrificing our first born or our suffering for suffering’s sake that God is after. No, it’s a way of living our lives that includes loving kindness. 

In this scripture, so familiar to me, I have often skipped over this part. I’ve been more interested in the doing justice and walking humbly bits. What does it mean to love kindness and why would we do that?

Well, for one thing cultivating affection for kindness can “raise its capital,” according to one NPR Life Kit episode on “How to Raise Kind Kids.” Any method for practicing gratitude for kindness like a journal, a way of praying at the end of the day, or a time at the dinner table or in the car to share the kindnesses witnessed or acted out, are all opportunities that celebrate kindness and let its effects linger in ways that will make all of us of any age more likely to want to perform those celebrated acts ourselves.

Today we are making a kindness wall together as one means of doing that, but I hope you will consider how you celebrate kindness every day in your own lives and households, too. Noticing it when it happens seems to me like an important step, if we are going to truly love kindness and to let it make a difference in our lives.

And what of those other instructions? Micah tells us God wants us to love kindness, to do justice and to walk humbly with God, understanding all of these as a means of living that is the worship that God truly desires. What does that look like when someone lives in a way that does justice, loves kindness, and moves humbly through the world? What good might that do?

Maybe you’ve witnessed it. Maybe you know someone who used their power or influence to right a wrong. Maybe you know someone who went out of their way to make a difference for you or someone you loved. Maybe you can think of someone who lived their life in a way that inspires you to fill yours with justice, kindness, and a quiet trust in their worthiness to be loved and everyone else’s worthiness, too.

A podcast I love called Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantum has a spinoff series called Unsung Heroes about people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. One that I recently discovered came from Dorothy Tiernan who sat by her father’s bed in 1986 as he lay dying of cancer. Her father was unable to communicate but his family sensed he was in pain because he was writing around in this bed. Dorothy begged the nurse to do something to make him comfortable, but the nurse told her there was nothing she could do. He had only been prescribed so much morphine every four hours. The whole family felt helpless and in despair.

That evening the nurse manager, in charge of the entire hospital, stuck her head in the father’s room to see how he was doing. Upon seeing his pain, she found the nurse attending the father and told her to “Medicate this man now.” 

“But I don’t have an order,” the nurse replied.

But her superior answered, “You go ahead and medicate him now, I will take responsibility for it.”

The nurse came back quickly and medicated Dorothy’s father. He appeared to finally get comfortable, and within the next 24 hours or so, he died.

Dorothy can’t remember the nurse manager’s name, but for decades she has remembered with gratitude the way the head nurse used her authority to do what she could to ease her father’s suffering. After that day, Teirnan decided to go to nursing school, and for 20 years, she was a hospice nurse. Often, when she was helping a patient in distress, she thought about that nurse’s act of compassion for her father.

Dear ones, there are so many things we cannot do. We cannot fix all the world’s pain. But there are things that are within our power to do justly, kindly, and humbly. When we do, we never know the effect it may have on others. But I believe we can trust that we are worshiping God and bringing healing to the world every time we practice loving kindness.

                                                                                          May it be so. Amen.

Hearing the Voice of God

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Jeff Jenkins, Guest Preacher – July 9, 2023

Hearing the Voice of God – John 12: 20-30

About 10 years ago I had the opportunity to meet Jennifer Knapp. If you are not familiar with that name, let me give you some background. She was kind of a big deal in the world of contemporary Christian music. Knapp started her career in 1994, selling over a million records between 1998 and 2002, but then in 2010 she came out as a gay woman and many fans shunned her. Christian music stations stopped playing her music. Christian bookstores took her albums off the shelves.

I was not familiar with Jennifer or her story until one of the younger members of the congregation where I was serving asked if I would go with her and another friend to the concert. She was in her late 20s at the time and had been impacted by Jennifer and her music. The concert was sponsored by a local UCC church.

Now remember, this was an artist who routinely sold out 3,000 seat venues, but when we saw her she was playing a concert for about 15 people. After the show we had a chance to talk to her and asked her why after all of the hurt and damage that the church had done to her, why she continued to identify as a Christian and perform in churches. Her answer was very revealing and has stuck with me until this day.

She said that although she doesn’t like hanging around in churches or with most Christians, she still identifies with Christianity and has a relationship with God, because when she was a teenager, she had an encounter with God and heard God speaking to her. She can’t deny that. She can’t explain it away, and it changed her life forever. Now she didn’t give us a lot of the details about what this encounter was like, but on some level it involved someone that she identified as Jesus giving her a message that she was loved and accepted by God.

And here is what I took away from that. Jennifer’s youth group leader or her pastor or her many adoring fans, could have all told her that she was loved and accepted by God, and that may have made her feel good, but it would have all collapsed and become just so much cheap talk the moment she revealed her sexual identity and these same people turned their backs on her. But hearing that directly from God made all the difference. It became real and true and something she could build her life around.

And that’s the point. Hearing the voice of God, in whatever shape or form that comes in for you as an individual, changes everything. It gives us confidence – freedom – power to make a difference in our lives and to make a difference in the lives of people around us.

God is still speaking to us today. I believe that or I wouldn’t be standing here today, but it’s tricky, right? We are not always sure of what we’ve heard and don’t always do a good job of discerning the message we think we are hearing. So I have some thoughts on how we can do a better job, but first let’s talk about the scripture.

We know from the 3 synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that even for Jesus hearing the voice of God was important. It happens twice in the synoptic gospels, at his baptism and at the transfiguration, and both times it confirms Jesus’ identity as the son of God, and that he is beloved of God.

But in John we only get one account of God speaking, and it’s a little different. It’s the Passover, and all of the Jews from around the Mediterranean have come into Jerusalem. And we have some in from Greece, and they tap Phillip, probably because Phillip is a Greek name, and say “Hey, can you get us in to see this Jesus guy?” “They wanted to see Jesus.”

And when they get there, instead of what we might expect as a normal greeting or conversation, Jesus goes off about how he is going to die and then prays to God about glorifying his name. Then God speaks. It’s an Odd passage and John has a certain agenda he wants to pursue with all of that, so I am not going to try an unpack what that may all mean. Instead it’s these last 2 verses that interest me and where I want to land:

29 When the crowd heard the voice, some thought it was thunder, while others declared an angel had spoken to him. 30 Then Jesus told them, “The voice was for your benefit, not mine.”

Here’s my first take-away from this: right from the beginning people had a hard time discerning the voice of God. “I thought I heard this.” “Well, that’s interesting. I thought I heard this.” “No, I am sure it was this.” And while they are debating, Jesus says, “Yeah, it was the voice of God, and it was for your benefit. You were meant to hear this so that it could be a blessing to your life.”

The second thing that I am seeing in this is that the crowd was falling into the same trap that we do today. We try to divide the world into the sacred and the secular. We say that here is God’s domain (maybe the church, mission work, classic hymns), and over here is the secular world (fashion, science, politics, and rock and roll). Listen. If the incarnation of Jesus shows us nothing else, it tells me that this sacred/secular divide is a man-made construct. God inhabits creation. God speaks to us through creation, through art, science, politics, maybe even through rock and roll. But like I said earlier, it’s tricky. We second-guess what we experience.

“What did I just hear. What did I just feel? Was that the universe trying to send me a message? Was it a reaction to my childhood trauma, or was it just my imagination?”

How do we know when God is speaking to us and how do we correctly discern the message?

So that brings me to my main point this morning, that the best way to hear the voice of God is in community.

Our scriptures are the record of how people struggled over the course of 2,000 years to figure out what they think God was saying to them. So how did they do it? They did it in community. They wrestled together, over time, with what they thought the message was. And even after a consensus was reached, and it was written down as “The Word of God”, guess what? The next generation comes along and says “You know, I kind of read this a little bit differently. How about you?”

Let’s be honest here. There are things that you know, that I don’t know. And there are things that I know things, that you don’t know. And there are things that neither one of us knows, and the only way we can get any clarity or understanding is to work through it together, in love, in community, and with patience and grace.

Listen. I say this in all humility, that I feel as if I have heard God speaking to me on many occasions. And I bet you have too, but... none of those messages – none – zero – ever made sense until I worked them out in community. I had to talk to other people about what I thought I had heard. I had to work closely with other people to test whether there was truth there, or whether it was my own ego speaking.

So how does this apply to us today? And I am thinking specifically in the next couple of months to a year.

As a pastor and a prison minister I used to mentor new Christians, and when I met with them, I always asked “Do you feel like you’ve heard from God since the last time we talked?” This is a great question to start conversations, but more importantly for me, if someone knows they are going to be asked, they start to listen more closely for God’s voice.

I think this is a question we need to ask each other more often. And then, not be afraid to wrestle with the answers that we hear. And we need to listen to each other and ask ourselves, “Do I hear God speaking through that conversation, or that artwork, or the tree in my backyard?” God has no limits or boundaries so let’s not limit the ways that God can speak to us.

So in the spirit of “Physician, heal thyself,” I decided to try and experiment with this idea a few Sundays ago when Ralph preached. I tried to be open to what God was saying through Ralph. Here’s what I did: I prepared my heart to listen. I sat in a different pew. I wore sandals. Hey, it worked for Jesus! I thought. And Ralph said 2 things that resonated with me. The first I still haven’t fully processed yet, so I’ll set it aside, but the other gave clarity to something I had already been thinking about.

Here is what I heard:

“How will we prepare to live faithfully and courageously in the future in light of an ever-expanding understanding of who God is? (Repeat) How will we prepare to live faithfully and courageously in the future in light of an ever-expanding understanding of who God is?”

I thought to myself that even if I have nothing else to add, I still need to include it in this sermon today because I truly felt that it was something important, a question that God wanted me to answer and more importantly maybe wants all of us to answer. So now I am throwing it out there to you. How do you hear that? Does it sound to you like a question that God may be asking you or maybe this congregation as a whole?

Three weeks later that question still resonates with me. And I think the answer to that question is important, especially as it concerns what the kingdom of God looks like in this community. Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren has a unique role to play in building the kingdom of God. God’s beautiful and beloved community here on earth and each of us has a role to play in that, and maybe in that question God is asking us to prepare for the next act.

So let me close with a shameless plug for some work that your church board is trying to do this summer. During our Restorative Conversation with the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center last February, the board heard stories of isolation, loss, and sadness as our congregation emerges from the pandemic. The congregation seemed to hunger for more connection and a return to normal. So the consensus was that we need to hear more about this from each other. We need to know where you sense God is calling our congregation.

Several focus groups will be held in July and August to which you are invited to share your input on where we go from here. Please give some serious thought to how you can be a part of these focus groups. Be in prayer. Be listening. Be fearless. And be blessed to know that you are part of a community that values your unique place and perspective within the body of Christ.

I’ll be praying for you all this week, that you will consider being a part of these focus groups and that you will be hearing the voice of God in some way that is unique and meaningful to you. And if you think that maybe God is speaking to you, don’t write it off as an angel or thunder or that spicy pizza you had last night. Write it down, tell a friend,  talk to your family about it, or call the church office and set up an appointment. We want to know what you heard. Because maybe someone else heard the same thing, too.

Amen? Amen.

Being Kind

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – July 16, 2023

Being Kind – Ephesians 4: 25-32

I do the bulk of my grocery shopping at the east side Elgin Aldi. I’m partial to their low prices and their competent, friendly staff. But more than that I shop there to watch the miracle of the cart quarter exchange chain.

Maybe you know just what I mean but in case you don’t, allow me to explain that at Aldi, shoppers must bring a quarter to retrieve a shopping cart. This is a job often fought over in my family: who gets to put the quarter in the cart slot and remove the chain that connects it to all the other carts before triumphantly wheeling it away. It’s the small pleasures that move us.

This system reduces costs for the grocery store by incentivizing the return of the cart back into position in a neat line at the front of the store, since it’s the only way to get your quarter back.

If you’re not a regular Aldi shopper, please know that it’s common etiquette upon entering the store to offer someone your quarter and to take their empty cart from them on their way back from unloading groceries or vice versa. It’s okay to get your own cart but if you’re able, this can be a sweet exchange that saves each other a few steps.

Quite often though someone will forget their quarter or a cart will get stuck or someone will just get a twinkle in their eye and the great cart exchange chain begins. You will know you are part of it when you offer your neighbor your quarter but are waved off and told to keep it. Now you have both a cart and a quarter! Maybe it’s a small thing, but at least for me it feels like it’s my lucky day and that I’m that much more clearly connected to my neighbors. Plus, I spend the whole shopping trip looking forward to continuing the chain by surprising the next person I meet in the parking lot with their own free cart. 

Today’s selection of the letter to the ancient church in Ephesus instructs Christ followers to “be kind to one another.” Surely greater kindnesses exist, or at least ones that cost more to the giver than a mere quarter. But I have come to see even these small kindnesses as vitally important, for they are part of the fabric that connects us all. I would go so far as to say for followers of Christ, these small acts of kindness can be a means of living out our convictions in everyday doable and delightful ways that remind us how much indeed we are connected, even as the letter says, “members of one another,” called to treat each other with “tenderheartedness and compassion.”

Yes, I think being kind to strangers is a great way to follow Christ. Being kind to strangers can grow our muscles, too, for the heavier lifts of kindness: the times when we are angered or even harmed.

At the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference, which I attended last week, I found myself unexpectedly reading the Desmond Tutu book God’s Dream to a group of third through fifth graders. There was still time left when we were done, so I began to ask them how we live out God’s Dream as Archbishop Tutu writes of it in the book: “that every one of us will see that we are all [family–all siblings to each other], yes, even you and me…”

I do find Tutu’s words in keeping with so much of what I read in the Bible, including today’s scripture passage, which instructs Christ followers to “be angry but do not sin… [and] not to let the sun go down on your anger.”

I was overwhelmed by the wise and earnest sharing in that room of young people. They knew more than many adults I know about feeling our anger but not letting it lead us to violence. They even had strategies like punching pillows or counting to ten or an exercise I know as box breathing. Useful in many situations, it involves breathing in for four, holding the breath for four, breathing out for four, and finally, holding the bottom of the breath for four.

This is one example of a tool that helps us do the important thing, the group agreed, which is to take in the information the anger gives us but not to let it alone be what drives our decisions. Anger can tell us something hurts us or others. Anger deserves some sort of expression whether it leads us to stand up for ourselves or for others or just to vent it out in private. Personally, I do not believe anger is entirely bad. I believe the danger with anger is in how quickly it can lead us to hurt others or ourselves, the very opposite of God’s dream for us. The trick is in finding the space between our anger and our action. And I think many of the children I talked with are well on their way to outpacing their elders in this respect. Indeed, I pray it is so for I fear they will need it as much if not more than we do.

When we were done talking about anger. There was still more unexpected time in that conference room of bright, engaged children. So, I asked them about how we say we’re sorry and about how to forgive. We agreed that both could be very hard to do. And I think that’s true no matter our age.

I don’t know exactly how the ancient church members in Ephesus were treating each other but whatever they were up to it caused to Paul to write to them about the rules for living a new life in Christ as he saw them. According to Paul, it should make a difference in our lives that we are trying to follow Jesus, and I tend to agree. I haven’t yet seen that it can make any of us perfect. But I have seen that it has the power to put us on a life-long path of transformation. Taking Christ as the model, Paul writes to the Ephesians, “be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

If you’ve ever tried it, maybe you know that forgiveness is not for the faint of heart–not when the hurt has been deep enough. Sometimes forgiveness can be a long, hard process but it is one that leads to healing. 

If revenge is a poison we drink hoping it will hurt someone else, forgiveness is a kindness we perform that opens the way to healing for everyone involved. Forgiveness is what we do to emulate Christ. It’s also a kindness to ourselves. For when we forgive, we begin to let go of our tight grip on the hurt and we turn our hearts over to holy healing. 

The last gift I want to bring you today from Annual Conference is an excerpt from Ruthann Knechel Johansen’s Bible study, which she presented one morning to the delegate body. Ruthann is an interdisciplinary teacher and scholar. She’s professor emerita at the University of Notre Dame and president emerita of Bethany Theological Seminary. She’s also someone with whom I count myself privileged to spend any time in her presence which exudes kindness, grace, and wisdom.

“Some years ago,” begins Ruthann, “I gave a lecture at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary on Japanese linked poetry (known as Renga or collaborative poetry). I explained how poets from the same area, even from different areas, across generations or centuries would take a line from an earlier poet’s poem and carry it into his or her own. They created an almost endless linking in verse. In the middle of my explanation,” Ruthann continues, “an international student from Somalia interrupted enthusiastically saying, “That’s what we do in my village. We have a tree in the center of the village. We call it the storytelling tree. When there is a conflict, everyone gathers under the tree to listen and link everyone’s view of the conflict until we see it more clearly or it is transformed.”

I know very little of the life story of the stranger at Aldi who swaps a cart for my quarter. But that’s not the only place where my knowledge of other people’s stories fails. In conflict, so often I have found that much of our pain comes from a lack of understanding of each other’s stories. Sharing our side of the story doesn’t change the past or erase harm or even necessarily mean we don’t need to make changes that mitigate the harm from happening again in the same way. But sharing our side of the story and listening to the other multi-faceted sides of any story can lead to better understanding. It can open the way for forgiveness, for grace, and maybe even for kindness.

What stories do you carry today?

What acts of kindness have you witnessed or been a part of?

How will you welcome the new life in Christ that transforms us, heals us, and leads us to be as kind as we can to one another and to ourselves?

Archbishop Tutu closes his children’s book with these words:

“Dear Child of God, do you know how to make God’s dream come true?

It’s really quite easy.

As easy as sharing, loving, caring.

As easy as holding, playing, laughing.

As easy as knowing we are family

because we are all God’s children.

Will you help God’s dream come true?

Let me tell you a secret,” writes Tutu,

“God smiles like a rainbow when you do.”

                                                                                             May it be so. Amen.

Cosmos: It was, it is, it will be.

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Ralph McFadden, Guest Preacher – 6/18/23

Cosmos: It was, it is, it will be – Exodus 3: 1-15, Isaiah 65: 17-25

Cosmos: It was,  it is,  ֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה. it will be.

As you know, I am 90 (ninety) years old. I remember conversations over the years with Martha Bartholomew, who said, “we are not only aging, but we are also sagging.’ Which means, as we grow older, we grow wiser. I can only hope that is true.

It is a privilege to be here with you today. I have been in and out and about this congregation since I was a senior in high school. I am indebted to you for you have frequently supported me and you have enriched my life.

I was thinking about writing these thoughts of today when I ran headlong into the new and fascinating creations of the James Webb Space Telescope. I have had some interest in the past in astronomy: – the stars, planets, and constellations. Then the James Webb Space Telescope, and it’s views. Absolutely amazing and astounding.

Not only have I begun to marvel and wonder at the vastness of this cosmos, but, as a searcher, seeker of truth, of reality, I began to think more about creation, my belief, history, and the promise of the future. I really think that this new – this very new view of the universes that are way beyond our planet, changes radically our perspective, not only of how/when this cosmos came into being, but unequivocally to a thinking being, it must change how we view our own individual lives: our breathing, living being in a fundamentally and profoundly different setting and milieu. At least, it certainly changes my observation and assessment of living today.

“Pastor Katie said something in her sermon this past October. She said in considering Exodus Chapter 3: “The divine voice speaks in this chapter, telling us “I am the Lord, that is my name.”

Pastor Katie said, “God tells Moses ‘I am who I am’, but I have told this church before, how I love the interpretation that those same letters, along with I am who I am, could also be translated as I have been, who I am, and I will be.”

The Exodus verse and Pastor Katie’s comments reminded me about the James Webb Space Telescope – and what I/we continue to sort out and try to understand about the Universe. It is, it was, it will be. For eons and ages. Immense. Unbelievably enormous and outside of my understanding.

(Jim puts pictures on the screen from the Webb camera.)

I think that the enormity of this discovery is, frankly, beyond the capacity of most folks to grasp. The Space Telescope and its fantastic pictures of the Cosmos opens our view and perspective in a way that I cannot comprehend. I can see the pictures, I can read the information, but it is, nonetheless, almost unimaginable.

With the findings of the Space Telescope, I want to understand more, to take it all in. I want to learn more. I may and probably will live a few more years. Why not soak up more?  Breathe in this beautiful, immense, enormous, colossal, massive, gigantic vast cosmos and universe. And as I consider this cosmos, I have decided to reflect, and be thankful for my life: what it has been, is, and will be. And, at 90 years of age, it just seems like a great idea to be open to this new perception.

If you want to check into this amazing cosmos view… google James Webb Space Telescope. I am now on their list of eyewitnesses, and I get occasional updates on what the telescope is seeing.

About the time of Christ, the Earth was the center of the Universe according to Claudius Ptolemy, whose view of the cosmos persisted for 1400 years until it was overturned — with controversy — by findings from Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Ptolemy, about 50 AD, posited that the Moon, Mercury, Venus, and the Sun all revolved around Earth.

Through the following centuries, there were thousands of discoveries, inventions, and new developments in astronomy. That was an astronomical past.

And for me …  and you, there was also a past.

I have been thinking about my past as I have been preparing for this Sunday. I have remembered some significant events and beliefs of my life. And while I will not share those memories, it is of enough importance to encourage you, if you have not done so recently, to ask yourself, in light of the very unusual and dynamic cosmos enlightenment, what have you believed and what have I believed and how has my belief been challenged.

And so, It Was. And It Is and It Will Be.

Let us concentrate for a moment on the Space Telescope and on our beliefs.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest optical telescope in space, its high resolution and sensitivity allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST was launched December 25, 2021, at 6:20 AM CST. It weighs 13,580 lbs. and was built at the cost of 10 billion USD (2016).

The James Webb Space Telescope is not in orbit around the Earth, like the Hubble Space Telescope is - it actually orbits the Sun, 1.5 million kilometers (1 million miles) away from the Earth at what is called the second Lagrange point or L2. What is special about this orbit is that it lets the telescope stay in line with the Earth as it moves around the Sun. This allows the satellite's large sunshield to protect the telescope from the light and heat of the Sun and Earth (and Moon).

What is JWST doing now? “NASA's Space Telescope is on a mission to study the earliest stars and peer back farther into the universe's past than ever before.” The James Webb Space Telescope can see 13.6 billion light years. Webb's cameras can look deep into space and far into the past — which will be the farthest we've ever seen into space.

For me, facts and figures such as seeing 13.6 billion light years deep into the past certainly causes me – encourages me – to at least wonder about the nature and reality of God – and of creation.

One writer says, “With the first images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the universe has gotten bigger and more beautiful than we’d ever imagined. Naturally that beauty and vastness was already there before the JWST trained its infrared eye on it, waiting to be discovered. But from time to time, God loves to pull back the veil, allowing us to see new wonders of his cosmos.”

And new wonders there are. Looking at these spectacular images, we’re led to wonder: Just how vast is our universe? How many stars and galaxies does it contain? What kinds of variety and grandeur are yet to be revealed? Most crucial of all for religious people, what does it say about our God who created such a cosmos?”

I have wondered if I could find comments that take a different religious point of view, one that examines this new perspective of the cosmos from a truly and genuinely insightful innovative reality. In general, it seems to me, as I review some of the comments on-line, that those who have considered the vastly new cosmos details have not changed their opinions, their views. Their wonderment, if they do indeed, wonder, has not changed their understanding or view of God.

The religious community uses the Old Testament verses to continue to underscore their beliefs that there is a Creator…. It matters not how vast the universe is.  Or matters not if there is life of some sort on other globes somewhere.

I want to underscore this. The vastly new understanding of the cosmos, as we see the possibilities, would seem to dictate that there should be a broadened understanding of what we believe. My thought is that this enormous new perspective, perception, outlook, would demand a different and altered understanding of God and of creation. But I find little effort on the part of theologians to expand their religious perspective.

Some other thoughts to add and to consider for a moment.

There are other elements of this earth that amaze, inspire, and frighten me. As I have been very amazed by the cosmos, way beyond our earth, I am also amazed and frightened about what is happening on and to our earth. I mention this briefly.

In demographics the world population - number of humans currently living - was estimated to have exceeded 8.1 billion as of November 2021. In 1800 the population was 100 million. In 1950 - 2, 557,000,000. In other words, the world population is staggering. The result of more population growth: malnutrition of hundreds of thousands, increasingly less water, homelessness and endless diseases, evil dictators and uncompromising leaders of nations, very mean-spirited followers of evil leadership.

I need only mention Climate Change  and the horrific changes that are likely in the future. In an unwelcoming and an inhospitable juxtaposition to the above quote …… the future climate report is devastating, distressing, demoralizing, and overwhelming.  Two writers wrote an article entitled: “What the World Will Look Like in 2050 If We Don’t Cut Carbon Emissions in Half.” 2050. They wrote in 2020, 3 ½ years ago. 2050 is only 27 years in the future. It is a terrifying article. And it makes sense.”

Personally, I still clarify my point of view as being a searcher. Kind of a searcher, hunter, explorer, inquirer, seeker.

We are in what I call a Juxtaposition.

As we view our planet – and our universe, for me there is nothing more astounding and extraordinary than the view of the cosmos by the James Webb Space Telescope. And at the same time, the coming catastrophic devastation of what is happening in our climate forecasts a tragic and cataclysmic future for our planet.

Where does that leave me? Personally? We state and acknowledge ‘what was, is, will be.” Now, particularly, will be.

Of course, I have no prophecy of future events or times. I am 90. That’s wonderful and sort of fantastic. I think that I may have a few more years of living – and despite the fearful future I have predicted, I want to live what life I have fully. And of importance, today and tomorrow, I want to take in the exceptional new and fresh pictures of the very ancient and ageless cosmos.

At the same time, I have one other note:  we as people of faith MUST prepare ourselves for the future by asking  ..... how do we anticipate we will live/be faithful/be courageous in the coming inevitable times of disaster?

Courage and Comfort

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – June 4, 2023

Comfort and Courage – Matthew 6: 25-34

Jesus’ admonition in today’s scripture against worrying “about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear,” is well-known but difficult to follow, particularly if the circumstances of your life present real and justifiable reason to worry. Those of us who identify as LGBTQ may experience quite warranted worry.

According to a 2022 study by UCLA’s Williams Institute, “LGBTQ people experience four times more interpersonal violence than non-LGBTQ people.” Many members of the LGBTQ community also face discrimination and isolation from their family members, friends, employers, or schools for being open about their identity. In an NPR interview, Elena Redfield of the Williams Institute also named the policy conversations and actions happening at the state legislature level as contributing to a culture of negativity and anti-LGBTQ sentiment in our society. Many churches contribute to this culture by either implicitly or explicitly stoking the fires of discrimination and violence against members of the LGBTQ community.

As much progress as has been made on LGBTQ human rights and acceptance in recent years, there is still a long way to go in pursuit of equity and equality. Especially in a world where followers of Jesus have so often inflicted pain on LGBTQ people, this admonition of Jesus’s not to worry may ring quite hollow in many ears. Does Jesus not understand the reality of those of us who face injustice, those of us who face suffering, or those of us for whom there is real reason to worry?

While it may sound that way on the lips of a Jesus follower who refuses to acknowledge life’s hardships or who assigns hardships to a lack of God’s favor, I don’t think the original giver of this teaching trivialized human suffering, injustice, or worry. I think he knew all about it. As a member of a socio-religious group being violently subjugated by the Roman Empire and who would eventually be crucified, I think Jesus and his followers were quite in touch with suffering, injustice, and worry. Remember that his followers had left behind livelihood, home, and family. Remember that in the chapter of Matthew that comes before this one, Jesus lays out the Beatitudes, offering blessing and comfort for all who suffer and for all who seek a world where the well-being of all in our community is attended to and held valuable.

No, I think Jesus understands that worry is real. But I think Jesus also understands that worry only takes us so far, and worry will never be what heals us or makes us whole. The only thing that can do that in a real and lasting way is the holy Source of Love that moves the universe.

Jesus teaches “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? … Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.”

You are loved. You are as loved as the glorious, shining lilies. Grounding ourselves in that reality–in the reality of how much we are loved and cared for by God just as we are–can give us the hope and trust we need to set aside the excessive worry and overthinking that drains and depletes us.

That’s at least part of what Pride month is all about. Its history goes back to the riot of Stonewall and continues today in protests, parades, parties, and more. It’s not a time when all discrimination and violence completely disappear but it is a time to come together and to celebrate all that is wonderful about being LGBTQ. It’s a time for LGBTQ folks to take up visible space and to claim their own beauty and belovedness as they so choose.   

I think that’s a vision of the kingdom of God among us that Jesus calls us in these verses to seek. I believe every time we encourage, accept, and celebrate each other as we are, we are living out a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

The Church of the Brethren has often failed LGBTQ folks but what the Church of the Brethren and this particular congregation has that may be helpful to all manner of folks experiencing injustice, is a strong tradition of living out our values even in the face of opposition. We get this ethos directly from Jesus, who in these verses and elsewhere in the gospels encourages followers not to place their faith in public opinion or full bank accounts but in the unwavering love of God.

To me God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness look like being who God made us to be and celebrating each other just as God made us, whether or not it fits someone else’s expectations. To this end, I came across a song this week by the musician corook titled “if i were a fish.” It’s sweet. It’s silly. It’s celebratory of not having to fit into someone else’s prescribed norms, and it’s a response to the very serious question, “why’s everybody on the internet so mean?”

It was inspired by a bad day. “After reading a slew of hate comments online directed at their gender identity, body shape, and how they dressed, the 28-year-old Nashville-based musician needed cheering up, so they and their partner turned to what they do best: music.”

Reports corook, "my girlfriend was supporting me and wanted to do something to make me feel better and decided: 'Let's write a song about it, let's make like a really weird song. Because you know, I love that you're weird and it's wonderful that you're weird. So what's the weirdest idea that you can come up with?'”

corook answered,  “'I think if I were a fish I think that all of the weird things about me would be cool,' and she was like, 'that's weird, let's do it.'" The lyrics of the song that’s now had over 7 million streams on the music platform Spotify go like this:

If I were a fish and you caught me

You'd say, “Look at that fish”

Shimmering in the sun

Such a rare one

Can't believe that you caught one

If I were a fish and you caught me

You'd say, “Look at that fish”

Heaviest in the sea

You'd win first prize

If you caught me

Why's everybody on the internet so mean?

Why's everybody so afraid of what they've never seen?...

…How lucky are we?

Of all the fish in the sea?

You get to be you

And I get to be me

Just let 'em be mean

We're as free as can be

To be the you-est of you

And the me-est of me.

In an interview, corook reflected "I think it's an interesting thing that I wrote the song from a place of like, I don't fit in, I don't have a community, I don't feel like people get me' and then to have a response of millions of people say, 'I get you and I want more of this, and I feel this way, too.' "

I think God smiles every time you are the you-est of you and I am the me-est of me. I think when we build communities where we can practice loving each other into the fullness of who we are, that we are doing the work God yearns for us to do. 

I give thanks to God for each one of you here and online. Whoever you are and wherever you are today, I pray that you take comfort and courage to be the you-est you that you can be. That’s who God made you to be.

So, as best you can, do not worry. Remember you are loved. And let that love bring the healing and the wholeness that lasts for all time.

                      May it be so. Amen.   

Gumbo, Chicago Mix, and Mincemeat Pie

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – May 28, 2023

Gumbo, Chicago Mix, and Mincemeat Pie – Acts 2: 1-12

If you have already read today’s sermon title you may be wondering, what do Gumbo, Chicago Mix popcorn, and mincemeat pie have in common? Well, first, I for one would welcome all those things at a Memorial Day weekend picnic, although I’ve already heard that not all the people in this room would join me in enjoying the mincemeat pie.

Second, If you ask me, although each of those dishes has different flavors, the magic in each one of them is the mix of different ingredients that complements each other while remaining distinctly present rather than blending into sameness. It’s the sweet and savory combination. It’s the way the caramel popcorn makes me want the cheddar cheese popcorn and the way the cheddar cheese popcorn makes me want another bite of the caramel popcorn and vice versa until before I know it I’ve eaten way more popcorn than I intended to eat.  

Maybe you can already see where I’m going and what I want to say today, which is that the church at its best is like a delicious potluck picnic, full of lots of different flavors and gifts and perspectives and life experiences. The Holy Spirit did not flow into the room on that first Pentecost to ensure sameness among Christ followers. Rather, I understand that she came to inspire us to oneness across our individuality. 

Today’s scripture text is sometimes interpreted as the reverse of what happened at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, when God quells the would-be skyscraper builders by confusing their language. Today’s story then is interpreted as one in which unity is restored.

I do find that interpretation somewhat appealing. But what I find even more appealing is the caution from Acts scholar Eric Barreto, who points out that such an interpretation sees difference as a problem to be solved, which is an assumption that may lead us to overlook the fact that no restoration of a common language occurs in this chapter of Acts. “Instead, the Galilean disciples are heard in all the dialects represented by their audiences. What we witness, then, is the Holy Spirit validating difference and working through it.”

I believe the theological wavelength this congregation generally occupies is one that sets us up well to be just that kind of delicious, difference-celebrating potluck of a church. That’s not to say we’re always perfect at it or that we can’t get better. But I do believe our congregation’s and our denomination’s historic commitment to non-coercion in religion–that is refusing to demand that we all believe exactly the same thing–is a gift, especially in a world that often seems keen to sift and sort us by our differences.

As you may well know, it’s not always easy to maintain unity across differences. Conflicts inevitably arise and must be navigated with compassion and care if we hope to maintain community.

One skill I wish the Holy Spirit had poured out a bit more liberally on the church and society at large would be the ability to notice and check our assumptions about each other, because they can be the source of so much harm and disunity. Yet, the ability to check those assumptions is sometimes in woefully short supply.

 I may see what you’re wearing, what bumper stickers are on your car, your age, your lack or presence of tattoos, your race, your gender expression, and I may be tempted to assume I know a lot about you. But I find that the more I can check those assumptions and respect that I don’t know something about you until you trust me enough to tell me, the more I am delightfully surprised by each person’s remarkable uniqueness and giftedness. Every time that happens to me I for one feel like the church and the world get a little bit bigger in my understanding, and I feel a little more like God, the church, and the world have room for all that makes me me, too. The more I am able to check my assumptions, the more I find that people are generally not one thing or another, but a complex combination of feelings, stories, and experiences from which I can learn if I have the capacity that day to try.

For me, Memorial Day weekend brings up a boatload of assumptions. One assumption I hope is not true about our congregation is that because we are part of a peace tradition, we have no compassion for the trauma veterans experience, no space to hear their stories, and no time to join in mourning with those who have lost loved ones to the horrors of war. I hope, too, that I can speak of the reality of that pain from this pulpit without it being assumed that I am uncommitted to peace and the end of all wars.

I know though that it often makes us humans uncomfortable to wade into the complexity of human reality. It can be so tempting to assign labels like good and bad or in and out. It’s often a stretch to really, respectfully consider a point of view that is not our own while being honest about our disagreement. I believe, however, that when we make that stretch we are stretching toward a lifestyle of community building that is full of Spirit-infused vitality and deep belonging for us all.

One assumption Christians sometimes make in reading today’s text is that it is a story about the good inclusiveness of Christianity beyond the bad exclusiveness of first century Judaism. I do believe that Christ followers are called to build inclusive, loving communities. And, as I read today’s text, I read that “there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.” That leads me to believe that an inclusive strain of Christianity is a descendant of an inclusive strain of Judaism. Rather than one being superior to the other, the traditions are a kind of closely related kin. What’s more, the conversation about who God loves, who belongs, and who receives the Spirit is an ancient debate that reverberates throughout the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible and that is still with us today.

We are still making the church. We have two millennia of tradition to draw on but with the Holy Spirit’s help we are called to continue knitting together the ties that bind us into one inclusive body of Christ, serving the particular time and place in which we live.

I would be honored to hear of your respectful disagreement but it is my deeply held belief that we can practice Spirit-filled oneness in Christ without us all being, acting, or believing the same way. We can embrace the beautiful diversity with which we were created as well as the diversity of experience through which we have lived. I believe it is that very embrace that allows us to do our best to love one another into being the beloved community God calls us to be–a place where we all know we are loved, where we feel deep belonging, and where we are enlivened with a holy passion to serve our neighbors’ good and bring glory to God.                                     

May it be so. Amen.

Still with Us

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – May 21, 2023

Still with Us – John 14: 15-21

Today’s scripture text is part of the Farewell Discourse Jesus gives his disciples in John 14, and it takes place at the last supper after Jesus has just washed his disciples’ feet and commanded them to love one another as he has loved them.

The disciples do not yet know the grief of seeing their Lord and teacher crucified. But that is the grief for which Jesus is trying to prepare them. What’s more the early hearers of the Gospel of John had experienced their own grief as a community. They had experienced a painful expulsion from the Jewish community of which they had still considered themselves a part.

When Jesus tells the disciples “I will not leave you orphaned,” those words may well have fallen on ears and hearts in grief–on those who did wonder if they had been or would be abandoned by God.

My friend Gary is good at reminding folks they are not alone. He texts me every Tuesday at 7:00 am. I like to think I’m special, but I also know that I’m part of Gary’s list of Tuesday text messages and that Gary has a list of folks he texts on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, too. He told me he takes Saturday and Sunday off.

He just sends a simple message like “How you doin’?” “Show some love today.” or “Have a great day.” Things like that. I always write something simple and kind back, but I know that if ever I text back “And how are you doing, Gary?” he will reply “Blessed and Grateful!” Blessed and Grateful.

Now, I’ve been on Gary’s text message list since at least 2019. So, I got Tuesday morning text messages all through these last three pandemic- altered years. And there were Tuesdays when I wanted to write back and say, “Are you sure, Gary? How blessed and grateful are you today, Gary?”

Because there have been some hard times for so many of us. And even now that the World Health Organization has declared an end to the emergency part of the COVID-19 pandemic, we know that the virus is still with us and our lives are still different than they were before.

Our churches are still different than they were before. It’s not just Second Baptist Church or Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren. It’s most churches across the country that are experiencing challenges that the pandemic only hastened. In our personal lives, too, many of us have suffered stress and grief either related to the pandemic or experienced alongside of and on top of it. There may well have been some days, weeks, or months when we wondered if we had been left to fend for ourselves all on our own. 

I think Jesus knew about that feeling. If we believe that he was fully God and fully human, I think we can entertain the idea that there were times Jesus felt alone and afraid, too. I think he knew those days come for all of us in this life.

I think those are the days he is speaking to in today’s text when he tells his followers they will not be alone. He will not always be with them in the flesh as he was then, but his spirit will be among them, and he will send another to be with us forever.

This one we know in many Christian traditions as the Holy Spirit. In John 14 though, Jesus uses a word for this one that has been translated as Advocate, Friend, Counselor, Helper, and Comforter. The Greek word is parakletos or paraclete, and the English definition of this word I most appreciate is “one who goes with.”

Lutheran Biblical scholar Karoline Lewis writes about the power of God with us in her teachings and book and blog. She tells a story about the difference it makes not to feel alone and the ways we can embody God’s love by being with each other–not fixing each other, not ignoring each other but, like God, being with each other.

Karoline has a friend and colleague she talks to about life and ministry, and in the years since Karoline lost her dad and her friend lost her husband, they talk increasingly about grief. One of the things they have noticed is how even well-meaning Christians don’t often like talking about or dealing with grief.

Grief can be uncomfortable –our own and other people’s. A lot of us would rather move past it as quickly as possible or explain it away or ignore it altogether. 

Karoline’s friend recounted to her an experience of being at a larger church conference that included time for sharing, learning, and offering mutual support with pastoral colleagues. For Karoline’s friend it was too many times when she was asked to tell her still too raw story of losing her husband and too many times of needing to care for how uncomfortable that grief made other people.

Her friend ended up crying a lot that day. She thought about going home early. After one of the sessions, she went outside to sit on a bench alone. A woman she didn’t really know came over to her and asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” Karoline’s friend responded, “Just sit with me.” And the fellow pastor did. No words. No touching. Just sitting. Just being with.

I think I would like it if I could fix other people’s pain. But what I have found is that’s not my job. My job as a pastor and a Christian is being the kind of person who will do what I can to help, sure, but my job is also not being afraid to just be with other people in their joy and in their pain just the same way God is with us. For God is still with us. Even when we feel alone. Even when the grief closes in. Even when other people let us down. Even when nothing seems to be going our way, God is still with us.

As Jesus says, the world may not see it, know it, or perceive it--we, too, may sometimes feel our faith tested–but God is with us whatever we go through. God will never leave us abandoned. God is with us, and because God is with us we know we are loved and we can love others. Because God is with us we can say all is well not because everything is easy or right or just or good, but all is well because through Jesus Christ we are loved, known, saved, and made whole by the God of all Creation. Yes, grief will come our way, but even so we can say we are blessed and grateful. Because God is with us, we can still know ourselves blessed and grateful every day of the week. 

My friend Gary says sometimes he thinks about giving up his texting regimen. Some people don’t text back. Sometimes so many people text back or call back that it becomes a major time burden. But he told me every time he thinks about quitting this ministry, he remembers one story in particular. There was a time he got a call from someone in tears–grateful tears. He had been texting this man religiously every Wednesday for three months or more. The man had never once written back. When they got on the phone together the man explained that for the last three months he had been in jail.

His mother had had his phone, and she never turned it off. She even kept it charged. So, every Wednesday morning at 7:00 am she would hear the son’s phone ding, and it would be another text message from Gary–always something uplifting and kind. Every Wednesday without fail for three months the son’s phone dinged even though no one ever wrote back.

When the son got home, the mother told him where he could find his phone. And she said, I don’t know who Gary is, but you better text him back because he obviously loves you and cares about you. When the man picked up his phone and found three months of Wednesday messages, he was overwhelmed to know that anyone was still thinking about him, especially after all he had been through. He felt grateful and blessed and better able to start the new chapter of life in front of him. So, my friend Gary keeps texting because he knows it matters. 

It matters when we live out Jesus’ commandment to love one another as he has loved us. It matters when we take action to be with each other. We won’t always see the change it brings but we can trust that God will do something with our loving action, because we know how much it matters when someone will take the time just to be with us.

I give thanks for all the ways our two churches have been with each other for all these years. We have crossed lines of race and specifics of belief and the historic dividing line of the Fox River to be with each other. I believe it matters. I believe it has made a difference. I believe God is praised every time we dare to be with each other. Every time we do so, I believe we declare God is still with us. God is still with all of us.

                                                                                           May it be so. Amen.

At Home in God

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – May 14, 2023

At Home in God – John 14: 1-3

Today’s scripture selection takes place directly after Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet in the Gospel of John’s version of the last supper. Even though we’re reading from chapter 14, the setting hasn’t changed since chapter 13. Those chapter breaks were added long after the work of the original scribe. So, it is in that immediate context that Jesus teaches about the dwelling place he prepares for the disciples whose feet he has just washed.  

That context adds something to my understanding of what kind of dwelling place Jesus may be talking about. The feetwashing Jesus, I imagine, prepares any place with a vulnerable feetwashing love and hospitality. It’s a place where sandals can be removed, where we give and receive care, and where we feel we belong and we are loved. It’s a place we can truly call home.

Maybe it’s a home that will never be fully perfected in this life, but if what Jesus says about the disciples knowing God because Jesus has been known by them is to be believed, then it seems this place Jesus prepares is a home we can experience at least fleetingly, in the here and now, too.

Personally, I can be guilty of wishing I could control a lot more things in my life in order to feel at home more often. But I am trying to continue learning how to find myself at home in that feetwashing presence of God even amidst all that is outside my control.

The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron gives a great lesson in a video still available on YouTube called Lousy World.[1] Brene Brown also excerpts it in Braving the Wilderness, which some of us read together last fall.[2]

Chodron starts by imitating the way so many of us walk through life bemoaning everything around us: “This lousy world, these lousy people, this lousy government, this lousy everything… lousy weather… It’s too hot... It’s too cold. I don’t like the smell. The person in front is too tall and the person next to me is wearing perfume that I’m allergic to.”

Pema continues: “It’s like being barefoot and walking across blazing-hot sand or across cut glass or a field of thorns. But then you have a great idea! You’re just going to cover everywhere you go with leather. Just pave it all in leather. Of course some things and some people will be in the way. So, we’ll just get rid of them. Get rid of her. Get rid of him. Get rid of them. Things we don’t like will be much easier to ignore paved in leather, too. And while we’re at it, we’ll get the temperature just right–and the weather,too. And we’ll ban perfume (Pema seems to really not like perfume) and we’ll ban anything else that bothers us–including and especially mosquitoes. (Soon here in Northern IL we’ll remember the bane that is mosquitoes. It just has to get warm enough first.) Once we’ve banned everything we don’t like and covered everything else in leather, we won’t have to be in pain anymore. Life will be just right. And we can walk barefoot everywhere.

Or instead, Pema quotes the classic Buddhist teacher Shantideva, we could just put the leather on our feet. We could just wear shoes to walk across the boiling sand and the cut glass and the field of thorns. It’s a metaphor, of course, for the way we can practice knowing ourselves to be at home in this heart and head and skin of ours wherever we go and whatever we encounter. It doesn’t mean we’ll always be happy or that we can’t say ouch. But it’s a different way–maybe a more accessible way–of being at home without having to fix the whole world first. It’s something we can practice as individual Christ-followers. And it’s a way of being at home in God that we can practice as a collective church body, too.

In fact, New Testament scholar Angela N. Parker[3] points out that the Greek behind Jesus' word of comfort to his disciples is actually “Do not let your (plural) heart (singular) be troubled.” In other words, “Jesus’ statement in the Gospel of John highlights the idea of the disciples possessing one singular heart as a collective group of people.”

In the 2022 Tom Hanks film, A Man Called Otto, the title character’s main physical problem is that his heart is too big. His emotional problem is that he lost his wife six months ago and the grief is too big. He wants to join her but people–mainly his neighbors–keep getting in the way of his attempts.

He’s not what you’d call a friendly guy. But if you can get past the gruff exterior, he is the guy who will bleed his neighbor’s radiators to get the heat going, who will teach another neighbor how to drive and then babysit that same neighbor’s children, and take in a trans neighbor who’s been kicked out by his own dad. 

I don’t want to spoil too much of the movie for you. But I will say that although Otto’s grief doesn’t go away, as he renews relationships with longtime neighbors and begins new relationships with brand new neighbors, he begins to find a way to live with the grief and to enjoy the community he creates with them.

The movie brought me to tears several times but one of my favorite scenes is near the end when Otto and his neighbors’ have just celebrated a big win together. They’ve just exposed the corruption of the company that was trying to force senior residents from their homes and in doing so, saved two neighbors from eviction.

It happens in the background. A journalist asks if neighborly neighbors aren’t just a thing of the past. She asks Jimmy what he meant when he said he would take care of his neighbors Anita and Reuben, because they are like family to him and Jimmy answers, “Well, I have dinner at their house almost every night.” It’s a glimpse of the collective heart and the collective community home we can make when we share the sacred gift of connection with each other.

Imperfect as it may be, our collective heart when we knit it together in our homes and neighborhoods and here in church can better withstand the trouble that comes our way, because together we are the body of Christ. Together, and with God’s help, we prepare a place that we can call home in the collective here and now.

It’s only a glimpse of the one that is to come but it is one in which, at its best, we can dwell and find sustenance even now. That’s what we do together here. We remind each other that we are loved and that we belong in a sacred story.

Baptism is one way of claiming that sacred story as our own. It’s one way of responding to the love God has for all of us and the way that love was embodied by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Baptism is one way of saying my home is in God now and forever, and these people in this church are a kind of home for me, too. Whatever comes my way I know I am loved, and I will do my best to live out that love in the world so that others, too, can come to dwell in the place that Jesus has prepared.

As Eugene Peterson’s Message version of the Bible renders this scripture, Jesus tells his disciples, “There is plenty of room for you in my Holy Parent’s home. If that weren’t so, would I have told you that I’m on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I’m on my way to get your room ready, I’ll come back and get you so you can live where I live. And you already know the road I’m taking.”

There’s some confusion that follows next. Thomas wants a literal road map. But Jesus is being metaphorical again. He is the road map. If you follow him, the teacher who has just humbly knelt to wash the feet of his disciples–if you love others as Jesus loves you–then you’ll get there. You’ll experience it. You’ll learn how to dwell now fleetingly and then forever in this love that wraps us all up and calls us all home.

May it be so. Amen.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buTrsK_ZkvA

[2] Brene Brown, Braving the Wilderness, (Random House: New York, 2017), 118-120.

[3] Accessed 5-12-23. Angela N. Parker. Working Preacher Commentary. John 14: 1-14. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-141-14-6

The Church at the Corner of Wonder and Awe

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – May 7, 2023

The Church at the Corner of Wonder and Awe – Acts 2: 42-47

Today’s scripture text describes the early church in the season directly following the moment of Pentecost where the Holy Spirit arrived in palpable wind, fire, and miraculous connections of communication. If we read just this section, we get a picture of the church at its highest level of community cooperation and miraculous togetherness. If I close my eyes, I can smell the pots of food being passed and hear the collective whisper of Kumbaya. 

This is the church I’d like to be a part of, where you can taste belonging in every bite of bread, and where there are no worries about finances because everyone’s got each other’s back. Surely this is a vision of the kin-dom of heaven, the reign of God, Jesus talked and taught about and what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the Beloved Community. Unfortunately, we don’t have to zoom out too far to pop this utopian bubble in today’s text or in our own experience of community life.

After all, the story of Acts picks up where the story of Luke left off. Yes, the disciples have witnessed the resurrected Christ, but they have also witnessed Jesus’s crucifixion and have real reason to fear their own violent persecution. Not long after this blessed scene of early Christian community living, the book of Acts will describe community betrayal, painful community conflict, and horrific violence from the wider world.

Our own Christian community can also be far from utopian. We experience conflicts, sometimes deep, painful ones that even if not intended as betrayal can make it difficult to trust or even talk to each other. We, too, live in a world of horrific violence. Even in the richest country in the world, the violence of neglect and poverty is commonplace. Even in a country with the world’s largest military, we are unsafe from gun violence in schools and stores and neighborhoods. Even in a country where many of us pledge allegiance to a flag that stands for an indivisible nation with liberty and justice for all, the machinations of our government, our economy, and our social fabric are still far from that dream.    

In the face of such violence and the reality of human failing, what good is the practice of Christian community? An answer to that question came to me from an unlikely place this week.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Surgeon General released a report titled "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation." Its findings include this statement, “that even before the COVID-19 pandemic, about half of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness, ...the physical consequences [of which have been found to include] a 29% increased risk of heart disease; a 32% increased risk of stroke; and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults.”[1] According to this new advisory, the United State’s “epidemic of loneliness… can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”

US Surgeon General Murthy noted “loneliness isn't a uniquely American problem, but instead a feature of modern life around the globe. Yet, he noted that in the U.S. participation in community organizations — from faith groups to recreational leagues — has declined in recent decades.” He also noted that while social media can provide an important sense of connection, it can also give us a false sense of connection that takes the place of time spent building quality relationships through in-person interaction.

After also naming economic challenges, heightened social division, the fast pace of modern life, and the lack of mental health care access, Murthy concluded, “we're seeing more forces that take us away from one another and fewer of the forces that used to bring us together.”

Did you catch what I caught in that report? There’s a lot to digest there. But one of the things that stood out to me was the US Surgeon General, the government leader whose own website describes their responsibility as “providing Americans with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury,” named faith groups among forces that bring us together and noted their decline contributes to a culture of loneliness that is hazardous to our health.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making a Christian supremacist argument. You won’t hear me say that the diversity of religious or non-religious expression in the United States will be its downfall. What I will say is that co-creating loving and non-coercive Christian community can be a vehicle for changing and yes, even saving lives.

I’m not talking about getting a certain number of folks to say the sinner’s prayer. I’m talking about the difference it makes in our lives and in our communities to have quality connections, to know that somebody has your back, and that there is a place and a people you can go to when you need to celebrate or lament.

It will never be perfect. It will never look like that early Acts vision at every moment or in every season. But at its best, church does have the power to strengthen our connection to God, the holy source of all life and love. At its best, church even has the power to challenge us to continue the lifelong work of expanding our hearts and our love to include imperfect others and our imperfect selves. Yes, the church has made 2 millennia of mistakes but it also has 2 millennia of practice and experience to meet the needs of this moment in which we are living. 

Today’s vision from Acts proclaims that “And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” That is no inconsequential description, and if we take this vision of Beloved Community as a model, it will be no inconsequential promise.

That description from Acts also tells us that “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” Another way of describing the irresistible wholeness and health of this community might be with the Hebrew word shalom. Many of you will recall that shalom means peace but not just the absence of violence. Shalom is a peace with justice where all are made whole and well–where everyone has what they need.

In her first book, Shalom Sistas, New Orleans-bred pastor and accomplished cook Osheta Moore describes shalom as the “breadth, depth, climate, and smell of the kingdom of God.” It’s like the dish Osheta most loves to make for building community: a good pot of gumbo we can all gather around.

It occurred to me reading Osheta’s flavor-filled description of the Beloved Community this week that we don’t have to constantly be eating to be nourished. It’s a rhythm. We eat. We work. We rest. We mourn. We celebrate. We eat some more.

Glimmers of the reign of God among us may seem fleeting, but that doesn’t mean they can’t provide us with the sustenance we need along the way. 

In that earliest Christ-following community, we are told “awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.” We may think that awe-filled wonders and signs may have happened only a long time ago. But if I stop and think about it, I can say I have witnessed these awe-filled miracles in churches from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to California to Indiana to Iowa to here in Elgin, IL. Yes, including all of you, especially all of you.

It was special for me to see so many of you gathered for a Table Grace meal one Sunday this Lent. I tasted soup made with love, and I heard your joyful conversations. I have to tell you though what touched me most was when I turned around at just the right moment to witness an adult in the congregation teaching one of my children how to fold up the table and carry it across the fellowship hall to put away. There was so much patience and camaraderie in that moment that it nearly moved me to tears. Maybe you don’t consider that a miracle. In some ways, it was perfectly normal, but gathering together hasn’t been normal for nearly three years. It’s been enough time that I’ve stopped taking for granted the little gestures of community we make when we’re together, the way it knits together relationships, the way it tells us we’re loved and we belong, and the way it embodies the gentle, patient, life-changing love of Christ. I give thanks for the miracles large and small that I have been privileged to witness this far while creating Beloved Community with all of you.

With God’s help, the Holy Spirit’s leading, and the love of Christ, we can still today create a circle of community, a nourishing neighborhood at the corner of wonder and awe, where lives are transformed and even if for a moment all is made well.

                                                                                         May it be so. Amen.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173418268/loneliness-connection-mental-health-dementia-surgeon-general

Holy Ground

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – April 23, 2023

Holy Ground – Exodus 3: 1-12

After I had preached a few sermons at my first pastorate in rural Iowa, one of the many farmers in the congregation pulled me aside to share what he impressed upon me was extremely important information for an Iowa preacher to understand.

That was the important difference for a farmer between the words: dirt and soil.

Dirt is dead and unwanted. It’s a good word for what you clean off your clothes, hands, or boots at the end of the day. Soil on the other hand is a precious resource from which food and crops may grow. It requires careful cultivation, and its health is an increasing focus of many farmers. If I wanted to continue using agricultural references in my sermons, he kindly underlined for me, that was a distinction I’d want to start getting right.

Moses is employed in the field of agriculture in today’s story. At the beginning of Exodus chapter 3, he is out tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, leading them, the text says, beyond the wilderness to Horeb, understood as the mountain of God. 

In Exodus chapter 2, just before the chapter we read today, Moses left Egypt in trouble. He was on the run after murdering an Egyptian slave master. But I suspect he was also on the run from a feeling of rage and helplessness in the face of the overwhelming suffering of his people: the enslaved ancient Israelites.

We live in a time of overwhelming trouble, too. Racism and violence are still far too prevalent. What’s more, human actions have now imperiled the health of our planet in ways that many of us often feel helpless to address.

Since 1750, humans have pumped 1,000 gigatons of carbon into the air. To put it mildly, we’ve discovered that’s a bad thing for the health of the planet. It’s warming up our atmosphere at a rate that is causing glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise, mass species extinction, mass famine for human populations, and severe weather patterns. We are already experiencing a climate in chaos, and unless we take effective collective action, the worst is yet to come.  

Climate scientists are clear that effective collective action includes reducing our emissions or the amount of carbon we continue to pump into the air through the use of fossil fuels. But most climate scientists are also clear that reducing emissions globally is very complicated and that reducing emissions alone still leaves a legacy load of carbon in the atmosphere. We’ve put it there over the course of centuries, and left unaddressed, it will continue to cause problems for decades if not centuries to come.

God called Moses to action from a burning bush. If you ask me, I’d say our call to faithful action today is coming in the form of massive increasingly destructive wildfires among other disasters. We may wish we could hide, too, but unfortunately for us there is no metaphorical Midian we can escape to–unless of course you count one billionaire’s still far off dream of populating Mars.

No, I’m afraid we’re stuck with this atmosphere and with this earth under our feet. In the wilderness on the mountain of Horeb from a burning bush God calls to Moses: “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” How holy do we consider the ground on which we stand?

Most farmers I know are convinced of the importance of soil. But these days the stuff has a whole new fan base, as evidenced in the documentary I recently finished watching called “Kiss the Ground,” available now on Netflix. In it, celebrities, scientists, and farmers wax emotional while sharing the good news of this one big, long word: biosequestration. If you’ve never heard that one before, you might want to practice saying it with me: biosequestration.

So, the word bio means life. And if you sequester something you trap it. This documentary makes the claim that since reducing carbon emissions is not enough on its own, what we need is technology that will take that legacy load of carbon out of the atmosphere and put it back in the ground where it came from. The good news is that the technology we need to do this is actually millions of years old. Biosequestration is what trees and other plants, especially plants with good long roots, already do. They take the carbon out of the air and put it back in the ground to feed the micro-organisms living in the soil.

Like my dear Iowa farmer told me. Dirt is dead. It’s been exposed to air so much those precious micro-organisms have all died off. The rain runs right off dirt. If it’s going to grow anything, new micro-organisms need to be pumped back into it–often in the form of fertilizer.  But keeping a live root in the ground can transform dirt into soil. It can capture carbon and feed the micro-organisms and draw the rain down into the underground water table. Healthy, rich soil is the fertile ground from which food and crops can grow. Now, we are learning, it can also be the fertile ground that keeps our air clean and our planet livable.

It may be easy to consider majestic mountains, soaring eagles, leaping dolphins, or dramatic sunsets and be moved by the beauty of Creation. But for those of us who believe that this earth is a gift from God that sustains life and is worthy of our faithful stewardship then we may want to take seriously how holy is the very ground on which we walk.

From that holy ground, God called Moses to action. But Moses needed convincing. If you read chapter 4, you may come to the conclusion that Moses was afraid to do what God asked. He makes excuses and finally simply asks God to send someone else. But God doesn’t let Moses off the hook. God says, no, I am sending you. But God doesn’t send Moses alone and God sends with Moses miraculous powers.

In the United States today, those of us who want to take collective action on climate change are far from alone. Studies have shown that the vast majority or 66-80% of US citizens favor climate policies and action.[1] If you wonder where all those people are, you should see how busy the Earth Day Celebration at Hawthorne Hill Nature Center gets. And if you don’t want to feel alone, you can make plans to visit the Earth Summit to be held at Elgin Community College this coming Saturday, April 29th. Or you could join Elgin’s Sustainability Commission which is working on a number of local projects. Or join another local community organization focused on the health of the planet, including our own Highland Avenue Green Team.

God isn’t going to send someone else. It’s going to take individual and collective action to turn around the damage humans have caused to our planet. But I trust that God does not call faithful people to action alone and that God is still working wonders with us.

·       Those wonders include the natural processes of our planet and the simple miracle of a tree.

·       Those wonders include the simple miracle of farmer after farmer planting cover crops or taking up whole systems of regenerative agriculture, which not only produce more but draw down carbon in the process.

·       Those wonders include the simple miracle of backyard gardeners choosing native plants with deep roots that they know support the health of the planet by supporting the health of the soil and actually pulling carbon out of the air right here where they live.

·       Those wonders include any one of us who will dare to take off our shoes and sink our toes into this holy ground we call earth.

I hold close to my heart the morning over breakfast when my son Noam told me, “Mom, I can’t wait for the time when we have a national holiday celebrating how we fixed the planet and overcame climate change.” I can’t wait for that day either. I won’t sit on my hands expecting it to come. But I do trust that God is still doing wonders and God is still calling faithful people to action, including you and me.                                    

 May it be so. Amen.

[1]  “Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half”, Nature Communications, August 2022. As shared by Kane County Climate Action Plan’s consulting team: Pale Blue Dot LLC.