“Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13)

So today, I am grateful for all that I have, for family and amazing friends, for my work which calls me to join those huddled at the foot of the cross and to the garden where Christ speaks our names, and, for a life time’s graces of stewarding hounds and horses and kitty’s of many sorts.

Today, I am grateful for all those I have lost, for the graces of the journeys of grieving them, and, for that which was mine but is no longer and for gifted strengths that lay beyond.

Today, I am grateful that my strength is not mine but is in Christ who offers new life and hope beyond all that I am and all that I have. Amen.

And, well, I have to be grateful this Thanksgiving morning that Foxhound Kelly is happily occupied scrubbing the very last molecule for peanut butter out of the empty jar.

In weakness we are strong

 

“The basic obstacle, however, to overcoming our anger towards our enemies is our thought that, unless we have the strength of anger, they will trample us. Anger, to this way of thinking is protective. It gives strength to resist. Without it we are weak.” (Robert Thurman, Love Your Enemies, p. 10).

“….but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” (St Paul, 2 Cor. 12:9).

Today, I pray the Holy Spirit to help me to become more and more awaere of how much I am caught up in the illusion that my anger is protective and makes me strong. I ask that Christ show me the grace of the strength of His weakness so that I increase in love. Amen.

Introducing God

A thoughtful post on the blog Liberation Lutheran Theology, tells the delicate story of the Lutheran author’s yoga teacher introducing her to the Gods and Goddesses of her Hindu faith in their shrines in a space adjacent the place of yoga practice. The post goes on to explore how its author might introduce “the God I worship” to someone from another culture, someone as unfamiliar with Christianity in the cultural setting of 21st Century America as she with Hinduism. The author concludes: “If I said, ‘Come meet my God,’ where would we go? To my church? Perhaps. To some spot in nature? Perhaps. To the downtown church, when my suburban church brings dinner to the homeless and stays for chapel? I'd probably start with that option and work out from there.”

I think her’s is a fine starting point, one at which many of us who might consider ourselves “thoughtful, progressive mainline-Protestants” begin. But, as I too consider this most thought provoking question—how I might introduce the God who invites me, and us all, into deeper and more intimate relationship with each passing day, to one who is completely estranged from him —I think I might chose another starting point. I think it might be a good introduction to have the person join me as I sit with family members of patients who are dying doing not much of anything but sharing in their sorrow and their grief. Or have them present as I struggle to hold the holy words a young woman uses to describe her experiences of sexual abuse for the first time to another living soul. Or even bring them along to a group therapy session where I sit and wait and pray on Something bigger than myself to once again weave sacred strands into a compassionate container for the holding of the shattered fragments of the broken lives gathered there in search of hope.

The God I would introduce them to meets me in the Christ event, in the broken lives of people and in the brokenness of my own life. This is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). Borrowing from Moltmann (The Crucified God), “this is God, and God is like this” I would say; the suffering, betrayed, abandoned, convicted God; never more glorious and powerful and divine than he is in his humiliation, self-surrender, helplessness, at the most dehumanizing moments of his humanity. This is my God crucified hanging there, God on the cross, the risen Christ. Here is the depth of the love of his entire being for us, come closer to us than we come even to ourselves.Here is the love which changed the history of the world and here is the love which can change our personal history too, if we would only accept the invitation.

How would you introduce "your God"? Amen.

Same Geek Different Outfit: The Codex Sinaiticus is Now Online

When I was a kid, long before computers, one of my dad’s favorite hobbies, especially after heart disease ended his golf “career”, was accounting. He owned a multinational manufacturing company, and thought I know he employed bookkeepers, accountants and financial officers to do this for him; he liked to keep books himself. So he did on large, long sheets of impossibly fine lined ledger paper. He loved it. It always made my eyes role back in my head and my insides go numb when he dragged the stuff out. He did it often. You would never catch me dead doing that. In the thirty-plus years since his death it is one of my strongest memories of him.

Despite the strong association, you won’t ever catch me dead doing that. What can catch me doing is reading about things religious or philosophy or psychology. I need to read in these areas for a living but I also read them in my spare time too, like for a hobby. Humm… not unlike keeping books for your own company in your free time.… Same geek, different outfit.

This week geekdom for me seems to have reached a level unimagined by my dad who never even saw a computer to my knowledge: The Codex Sinaiticus is available online.

According to the website: “Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. Its heavily corrected text is of outstanding importance for the history of the Bible and the manuscript – the oldest substantial book to survive Antiquity – is of supreme importance for the history of the book.”

I entered the site, it’s quite intuitive. I got chills; it is truly amazing to be looking at this manuscript—not at a copy—so foundational to the faith. I poked about a bit and came to Galatians, “Bear the griefs of one another, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (6:2). Isn’t that what Christ is doing in these moments as I marvel not only at this document, but also at how, in doing so I am like my dad. Somehow across time and space, continents and technology Christ leads me tenderly to a place in memory and in heart where this piece of my father, dead for so long, lives within me. Such is the power of the resurrection. In turn, I will know the grace of sitting with others as they grieve and holding theirs on tender hope that time and space, continents and technology, memory and heart will fulfill the law of Christ within them as well. Amen.

It's county fair time and I have the honor of leading worship tomorrow morning in the Sheep Barn. I purposely stayed way from the obvious theme.

Psalm 104

Selected verses read responsively

Prayer of Thanksgiving and Dedication

Creator God,

We come before you this day to celebrate this holy life you have called us to. Each day we join with you in the mystery and the majesty your creation bringing forth the bounty of this earth you created for our home and to propagate and tend animals of every sort, entrusted to our care by you for the good of your people here and through the world. We give you thanks for calling into sacred partnership with you.

Yet this calling of our lives is not without difficulty and strain. Prices are often too low and expenses only seem to rise. Sun and rain, wind and snow, can offer blessing as well as curses. Work is hard and days are long and, as blessed as we are, the dark small hours of the morning can make all that worries seem beyond even your good and tender care; that even your face is turned away.

We whose lives are daily dependant on the great mystery of your creation, can do nothing before it but turn again to you and ask your blessing upon our souls and the work of our hands. Into your hands we deliver all that causes us worry and concern, uncertainty and pain. We offer you all our griefs and sorrows, all our emptiness and fears; everything that weighs heavy upon our hearts and causes worry to our souls.

Before these we only recall that it is you who causes the sun to rise, golden-pink in the morning over dew glazed fields and set into latent mystery of creation hidden of the deep-orange horizon beyond the trees. By your hand ours bring lamb and calf, piglet and hatchling into being and by it we are led safely home when our day’s work is done. Your breath offers cool breeze to cool sweaty backs in the hay field, sows new life in the pollen that it spreads.

It is you who brought us to this place of great bounty and set us among good neighbors, family and friends. We remember that it is in the bounty of their love and fellowship that we labor and that we share with them a holy life and heart in you.

May all that we do at home and in the field, in the barn and in our community as well, show the glory of your working in our labors and your joy in the hearts of our loves. Amen.

Blessing Psalm 37: 7a, 5, 3 & 4

My sisters and brothers the Psalmist reminds: Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will act. Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land and enjoy security. Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Amen.

Blessed Return to the Water and Land

I was honored last Sunday to preside at the internment of cremains of a couple married over sixty years who never had a fight that their family can remember. She died about five years ago and he just in April. Their middle son combined their cremains and we gathered to interr them in the rock garden he built overlooking the pond on his property, just as his father requested.

On a beautiful, sun-filled summer day the family gathered—sons and their wives and partners, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, cousins and in-laws of every sort. The golden retriever came carrying a big stick in his mouth chasing the yellow lab in and out of the pond. They shared memories and tended babies, cried and swapped stories about their aging parents. Everything was as it should be to honor the loves and lives which had passed from their midst.

We read some scripture too and prayed a bit…

"The days of man are but as grass; he flourishes like the flower of the field;. When the wind goes over it, it is gone: and its place will know it no more. But the merciful goodness of the Lord endures for ever and ever toward those that fear him. "
(Ps 103:15--17)

"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" ….Deep calls to deep… By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life. " (Ps. 42:1-3, 7a, 8)

Almighty God, Creator and Sustainer of all that life, we come this beautiful day, in this gentle place of your creation, amid the warm embrace of family and friends to give you thanks, to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of A and to commit him and his beloved B to this earth of yours and to your eternal and tender care. It is at times like these and in places and gatherings like this that we feel strongly how small and fragile are lives truly are; but a hand full of dust and nothing more. But we come knowing that you love us even in our fragility, and in that love we rest secure.

Eternal One, you alone can alone can bring the sorrow and pain of our frail and fading hearts into beauty and compassion—flowering with new life. In these hours, turn hurting hearts once again toward you. In your Word may we know the beauty of this place, among the bonds of love shared here, before the awe and silence of death, speak to each heart gathered, the words of new life for which they long. In the face of death, re-kindle hope and love and bonds of family into the promise of new life. Lift us above all our distress into the beauty and joy and hope of your presence.

In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection and its promise of Living Water through Jesus Christ our Lord, in this place of water and earth, we give back to our God who created them, and us all from the dust of the earth, A and B. We give them back to the elements from which they were formed—ashes to ashes, dust to dust and trust them to the Living Water, entrusting them for all eternity to their Creator’s tender care. Today A and B rest from their labors. There good works follow them to the glory of God and in the lives and loves of all they leave behind. Amen.