tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-269509592024-03-07T07:56:08.497-08:00The Welcome TableA non-creedal missional community in a progressive ecumenical universalist christian way, 5920 N. Owasso Ave, Turley, OK 74126 918-691-3223, 794-4637, 430-1150. Service. Community. Discipleship. Worship. All are Welcome. See below or Write to revronrobinson@aol.com for the latest gatherings. We often worship with others on Sunday. We hope you respond to the call to service to and with others in an Abandoned Place of the American Dream Marketplace Empire. Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.comBlogger482125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-88484526824313896572017-01-22T12:45:00.002-08:002017-01-22T12:45:36.113-08:00Rejoice and Resist: A Post-Inaugural Sermon<div class="MsoNormal">
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rejoice and Resist<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sermon at Unitarian Universalist Church of Bartlesville,
Jan. 22, 2017<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rev. Ron Robinson<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So here we are. I
started writing this sermon at noon on Friday as the inauguration was underway,
but in some ways I have been writing it for the 42 years I have identified as a
Unitarian Universalist, living all of that time in Oklahoma except for four
years in Kansas. Now is the best time for our message of all having worth, all
being welcome, all needed at the table, and all of us guests on this planet,
and forour commitment to deeds of love and justice superseding creeds, creeds
of all kinds, for relying on our capacities for kindness and goodness superseding
the powers and principalities that try to act as if they are Ultimate in our
lives and communities and even, if we let them, in our hearts. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now is the right time
for us to remember what my mentor the Rev. Carl Scovel said in his Berry Street
lecture, the annual Unitarian Universalist lecture that dates back to 1820, the
oldest continuous lecture series in the United States. Carl received the
distinquished service award from our Association, its highest award, and as a
child he was raised in a Chinese concentration camp during World War Two and in
his lecture he said: <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “At the heart of all creation lies a good
intent, a purposeful goodness, from which we come, by which we live our
fullest, to which we shall at last return. And this is the supreme reality of
our lives. This goodness is ultimate—not fate nor freedom, not mystery, energy,
order nor finitude, but this good intent in creation is our source, our center,
and our destiny. And with everything else we know in life, the strategies and
schedules, the technology and tasks, with all we must know of freedom, fate and
finitude, of energy and order and mystery, we must know this, first of all, the
love from which we were born, which bears us now, and which will receive us at
the end. Our work on earth is to explore, enjoy, and share this goodness, to
know it without reserve or hesitation….Neither duty nor suffering nor progress
nor conflict—not even survival—is the aim of life, but joy. Deep, abiding,
uncompromised joy.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which is often, right, So
hard to find. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But then I finished
writing this sermon after yesterday’s day of marches for women’s and human
rights which filled the streets of big and small cities, with people showing up
for their values, and for people who are afraid. Showing up to say: We are
still here, we want you to still be here, and together we must turn this moment
into a movement, one very local and very connected.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is why this sermon
is titled Rejoice and Resist. Rejoice first. Actually the title comes from the
theme of our upcoming annual General Assembly which will be held this summer in
New Orleans. It was a theme that was picked long before any election outcome.
It was tied to the spirit and struggle and history in New Orleans—a place known
for both much rejoicing, and the needs to struggle and resist great inequities
of race, ethnicity, class, gender. But it is a theme that is universal as well,
needed everywhere. It reminds us that one of the first tasks of mourning is to
seek out, find, and share the joy that eventually cometh in the morning after
the long night of loss. It is why the feast accompanies the funeral. We need
spaces for our stories of loss and love. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People of liberation
around the world have always shown us that oppressors sought first silence and
isolation, and the first act of resistance has been to fight against that with
rejoicing, with community solidarity--show up and dance and sing and conspire.
And find ways to eat together. We know the power of the sacredness of the
shared supper at times of loss and fear; for the appetite is often the first
casualty, and the path back to health. And so finding ways to gather together,
to sing and share stories and supper together, and to always invite, invite,
invite to our gatherings those who so often receive no invitations. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let me stress this: Our
rejoicing, as well as our resisting, needs communal forms. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is why, for
example, in our missional community in north tulsa one of our four main focuses
is simply Party. The other three are justice food and art. But for a people
with few opportunities and means for paid entertainment or to get across town
where the major free festivals are held, just to throw parties is to disrupt
the status quo of lives that feel, rightly and unfortunately, that they must
work or seek work everyday to just get by. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rejoice and Resist is
an interconnected spiritual practice. And We are bearers of the tradition that
says there are many spiritual practices that can grow your soul and the soul of
the world; just as there are many ways to engage politically and socially to
make this world one that aligns more with the principles we affirm. Our
communities are the places where those paths and practices can cross, enrich
one another, learn from one another. I should say some of my best companions in
the 42 years I have been a Unitarian Universalist have been those who, for
example, were liberally religious but conservative politically, as well as those
who shared different theological orientations than I do. What held us together
was not only our commitment to a deep essence of love in life, and humor and
humility, and a desire to see that love shape a more just world (though our
means to that end differed), but most importantly of all it was also over time simply
our shared community space, the rituals of life and death of friends and
families. These acts of showing up for one another, and extending that into the
world around us, create the real forms of our life, forms that hold us and mold
us and change the world around us, even moreso than slogans and messages and
memes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To do this, create
these forms, to be this kind of spiritual maker space, we need to develop our paths
and practices, to learn from others and extend ours to others. I see Rejoice and
Resist as two poles on the spectrum of such paths and practices. For example, If
we find ourselves mostly living in the resistance end of things, taking to the
barricades whether they be on the streets or timelines of facebook, living in
the sharing of ideas and arguments and policy statements, in the meetings after
meetings and rallies after rallies (and I am living proof of much of that end
of the spectrum, and we need to honor this way of deepening our life and
engaging with the world), but now is the time for those of us who gravitate to
this response to look over at the other horizon and learn how to Rejoice, and
savor the world we seek to save.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I remind myself often of the words of the
great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, too, who said that we let our dreams of
community too often kill actual community. We forget our sense of being finite
creatures unable to single-handedly create the world we seek; we forget to
forgive ourselves and one another when our communities, small and large, fail
to live up to our expectations. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Developing practices of
prayer and meditation, of dance and of staying in touch with our bodily selves,
of learning to risk vulnerability and raise our voices in song--not to have
perfect pitch but to be fully human, to learn to sit in nature and listen to
soothing stories the earth has to tell about all it has seen, to feel the
network of life moving through us and upholding us the same as that splendid life
lessons of the moss and lichens on the ancient boulders that continue to grow,
season after season, slowly soaking up all that life offers so they will share
their beauty and comfort for the generations to come. Doing all this is a way
to live against the grain of much of the culture that seeks to shape us and our
world into being lives of reaction, of angst, of despair, and most of all to be
lives lived in isolation so that we can be more easily manipulated for market
purposes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Conversely, if our
paths and practice have kept us perpetually in retreat—even in a good sense—and
kept us in our echo chambers too long; if we have moved through our lives
trying to keep ourselves shored up especially while those whose lives are not
so easily protected have been increasingly marginalized and suffering, with
fewer and fewer resources for themselves and their families, then we too need
to risk moving along the spectrum toward engaging with others in justice work to
grow more resilience and resistance in our communities. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I will say that since
the election in November didn’t go the way I so wanted it to go, I have been
nurtured not only by more deepening of prayer life but also by an explosion of
community organizing being done. New organizing being done. New relationships forming.
Some people are worried because there are so many new groups forming, but I see
them as connecting and multiplying in ways no single group could do. We are
becoming a network like that fungi that connects the trees in a forest, a
living network helping one another to breathe and grow. And that is often
unseen. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In one such group, we stood
on a recent freezing night, hundreds of us, and held signs of welcome outside a
cathedral for our Hispanic community after its youth had been bullied. In
another group, we shared stories of the effects of state cuts on mental health
in our families, to the damage of rising student loan debt, to how wild stray
animals in our low income neighborhoods were keeping children from playing
outside and keeping others from being able to walk and exercise, and we formed
action teams to begin responding to these stories. In another group we have
been advocating for our community policing and better training for law
enforcement officers. In another group we have been working on our own systemic
racial biases and privileges. In another group we have begun six task forces
that each address a key part of the social determinants of health that have
caused our side of town to have such a high disproportionate mortality rate. In
another we had the highest turnout for a community meeting in a few years as
people sought ways to create a neighborhood watch and protect themselves and
their property. In another group we pledged to turn our city from an example of
poor health to one of greater health access and education. In another group we
are working to plant free food forests around the city. In another group both
planning meetings and candidate forums have been held to keep before us the
problem of too low education outcomes for our poor and especially minority students.
And in an on-going group, the struggle continues to work on voting disparities,
reform, and apathy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am seeing people get
more involved as mentors, reading tutors, and we hope soon as community
gardeners too; we have more people volunteering with us to help us keep growing
our community food store, which does unfortunately keep growing in numbers of
those in need, but we are working on ways to turn those numbers of hungry folks
into advocates for policies and budgets that don’t rely on survival of the
fittest, the wealthiest. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are so many ways
that a spirit of resistance to the status quo is emerging that it in itself is
a cause of rejoicing. And the refusal to stay under the covers---oh I sooo know
that desire---is perhaps the most subversive and simple act of all. To actually
smile and live “as if” this world were still on its way to the freedomland, as
the old gospel in our hymnal says, and know it is still full of more people who
want to build bridges than walls, to be able to say confidently there are
enough resources in this world that we can share them with those without,
enough ordinary love and extraordinary goodwill that we don’t have to fear, to do
all this is the way movements of justice pass from one generation to the next. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, I am reminded
of the long arc of the movements against oppressive powers, and how losses of
leaders are often followed by new leaders picking up mantles. Today in churches
around the world people are hearing the story from the Gospel of Matthew of
when Jesus finds out that John the Baptizer, who was leading a popular opposition
based on prophetic action has been arrested by the government. It motivates
Jesus into public ministry and mission, and for him to draw also from the
ancient prophets like Isaiah whose words guide him immediately to a region of
Galilee where, as scripture says, the people had sat in darkness. To them and
throughout the region, it says, Jesus carried the message that God’s world was actually
near, was here; he lived “as if” it were so; even with all of Caeser’s world’s
proof to the contrary, and with the great mourning of the loss of John the
Baptist, Jesus begins by inviting others to the party, the moveable feast, to that
worldview of resisting and rejoicing. The story says he simply also began
healing people as he went among them, healing all their sicknesses, turning
none away, and as he did so those who had sat in darkness saw a great light. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I know this: You too
are a great light, and there are many great lights of justice in the community
beyond. That good news is worth rejoicing. That is worth sharing. We are
breathing again. Like the prairie earth after a fire we are sending up a
million green shoots of new life. And Those who are afraid may be a little less
fearful today. Those who are disheartened may be a little more encouraged today.
Those who despair may find a few more companions today ready to not give in to
hate but to keep working toward hope. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In our neck of the
struggling world, we say everything matters, no matter how small the act; so we
are called to keep acting. In love. For all. Always. </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-163029393960015162016-10-09T12:57:00.001-07:002016-10-09T12:57:31.207-07:00Freely Following Jesus: A sermon on Unitarian Universalist Christianity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Freely Following Jesus” UU Church of
Bartlesville, Oct. 9, 2016<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron Robinson<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A week ago today I spoke to the Atheist Community of Tulsa.
It was about our area of north Tulsa and its struggles and strengths and ways
they could be a part of our renewal work. We didn’t spend any time talking
about theology or church, but they knew where we were coming from—our
ever-transforming church is a covenanted community in the Unitarian
Universalist Association, and a member of the Council of Christian Churches
within the UUA, and a member of the Christian Community Development Association.
And I began by thanking them for their presence and their mission in our
community. I couldn’t think of a more “Christian” thing for me to do, just as
they, by inviting me, supporting us, were being true to their deepest identity
and purpose. We were in a small way creating a welcome table, intersections, a
border, an edge where new life sprouts. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I did so I thought of a time when I was visiting
Massachusetts and worshipping for the first time at the UU First Parish of
Worcester. Their minister’s sermon was titled “Why The Church Needs Atheists”
and in it she talked about her own deep conversion to Theism through a mystical
encounter, a theism that needs the witness of atheists. And right before the
sermon, as it does each week, the church recited the Lord’s Prayer. I thought
of that as the parable of the power of the free church. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And for 13 years I was privileged to serve the UU Christian
Fellowship as Executive Director and to talk to churches about why UU
Christians, or those who simply preferred to call themselves Jesus Followers,
needed to be in right relationship with the many others on different paths
among us in order to actually grow into the life of Christ we desired, and why
the churches and others in them on different paths than ours needed us too in
order to grow in their own way. There is nothing like having a loving and
liberation oriented Christian in healing covenant with someone who has been
spiritually, and sometimes physically, hurt by someone else using the name of
Jesus or Christianity. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This coming Friday evening and Saturday we are hosting a
retreat, free for any donation, that will be open to all of any theological
orientation who want to meet with others to celebrate and explore this kind of
progressive freely following Jesus spirit, to go deeper into its challenges and
its promise, and though it is part of multi state gatherings hosted by the UU
Christian Fellowship we will have conversation and workshop partners from other
progressive churches too. I hope that it is a chance for others to learn about
a part of UUism, as well as focusing on not letting Christian orthodoxy claim
to be the one true Christianity. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the books we will have available is one published by
the UUA a few years ago called Christian Voices in Unitarian Universalism. I am
getting ready to share some of the various voices from it to lift up what it
means to freely follow Jesus, but I want to say that even in the many essays in
the book there are many of our diversity of voices still left out. I would also
include more of the voices of the Unitarian Universalist Christian who worships
in a UU Christian church and for whom it is commonplace to think of UUism and
Christianity as one thing. But also the voices of non-Christian UUs who are
nevertheless a part of the UU Christian Fellowship, those who love to learn
with us in bible study and even worship with us. These include atheists and
agnostics and many others who do not claim to freely follow Jesus, but who find
their own spiritual lives deepened by being around those who do; and I would
include the progressive Christians who are not UUs who are a part of us too,
who like what we bring to the Christian table and are sometimes amazed to find
that what they think have been new discoveries in biblical and theological
studies have actually existed for centuries, among us. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Here are some of the diverse perspectives and accounts in the
book in their own words: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From Dave Dawson: --“I
share a desire for the freedom to test the outer limits of my Christian faith.
Within my church I am not told I am wrong, just looked at quizzically when I
say I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ…I remain a UU Christian as
a witness to those in mainline Christianity that, yes, universal salvation is
alive and well, and it is a beautiful option for those people mired in
shame-based churches.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> From Anita Farber-Robertson: --“It was not,
however, going to be enough to want Jesus in my life. I was going to have to
claim him, and let him claim me. I was going to have to say, “Yes, this is my
path. You are my guide, my teacher, and my savior, for without you my soul
would get brittle, my mouth grow bitter, my heart hard.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> From the late Terry Burke: --“My baptism
remains central to my religious self-understanding. As part of the confession
of faith that Carl Scovel had me write, I said, “I believe that God seeks a
loving, dialogical relationship with humanity, and that the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ calls us to reflect that sacrificial love in our
lives. The cross and the faithful community proclaim that it is more important
to love than to survive and that love is stronger than death.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From Robert Fabre:
--“So Unitarian Universalism was, for me, the pathway back to Christianity. No
doubt I wouldn’t be where I am today, wouldn’t be the person I am today,
without it. Ironically, the longer I’ve been associated with this liberal
religious community, the more conservative I’ve become on a personal level. So
now I can say, I believe that Jesus was the son of God (not God but the son of
God); I believe in the resurrection (not the resuscitation of a dead body but
the resurrection); and I believe that I am saved by grace (not because I accept
Jesus as my personal savior but because, despite my confusion and my unbelief,
despite my shortcomings and mistakes, in a mysterious way, beyond my
comprehension and explanation, God accepts me).<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> From Victoria Weinstein: --“Who is Jesus
Christ to me? He is both a teacher of the Way, and the Way itself. For one who
has always had a hard time grasping the concept of God, let alone developing a
working definition of God, Jesus both points me toward a definition of God and
then lives that definition. Jesus Christ is the freedom that laughs
uproariously at the things of this world, while loving me dearly for being
human enough to lust after them. He is my soul’s safety from all harm. He is
the avatar of aloneness, a compassionate and unsentimental narrator of the
soul’s exile on earth, and proof of the soul’s triumphant homecoming at the end
of the incarnational struggle. He is not afraid to put his hands anywhere to
affect healing. He mourns, and weeps, and scolds, and invites. He is life more
abundant and conqueror of the existential condition of fear.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And From the late
Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley: “Today, Jesus remains a central figure of my
religious identity. And yet I don’t often call myself a Christian because there
is no agreement on what the term Christian means, either within Unitarian
Universalism or without…There are conservative and liberal understandings of
the Jesus story and Christian witness, and none of these has any exclusive
claim on Jesus or those who seek to follow him. In my Christian witness, no
one’s soul (or spiritual salvation) is dependent on a particular ritual,
obligation, or statement of belief. There is no giant cop up in the sky
dictating who will go up and who will go down. And yet I have been moved to
tears by liturgical expressions of the story of Jesus and his work as a
mystical teacher. It’s most accurate to say that I am a nominal Christian who
has also found truth and wisdom in pre-Christian and mystical religions,
earth-centered spiritualities, religious humanism, womanism, and other
theologies of liberation. I have embraced the spiritual practice of Thai Chi
and the wisdom of Buddhist philosophy. I am a Unitarian Universalist because I
do not exclude any particular theology. As the spiritual says, there is “plenty
of good room” at the banquet table.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The religious landscape
in America has changed vastly since 1945 when the UUCF began. In UUism, in
Christianity, and in UU Christianity. These UU Christian voices now are more
diverse than you would have found when the UUCF began. Surprise, surprise, they
are still changing. For a faith that roots itself in the theological belief
that revelation is not sealed and cannot be sealed, we do, though, seem to
still resist change. On the other hand, when we talk about ongoing revelation
as a core value of our tradition, it doesn’t mean continually throwing the baby
out with the bathwater in every successive generation, as if that is the mark
of a progressive faith. Sometimes, often, ongoing revelation means returning to
our touchstones and knowing them more fully because of where we have been, and
being touched and supported by them even more deeply and strongly because of
it.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once upon a time to
speak of Christian voices in our movement would have been a commonplace thing,
as redundant as saying Methodist or Baptist Christian voices. To really grasp
the notion of how commonplace Christianity is in our roots, we should look at
the statement of belief approved in 1853 by the American Unitarian Association.
This was more than a decade after Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker, both
of whom still saw themselves as being in the Christian tradition even if heretics
within it, began planting seeds that would grow our church to being a “more
than Christian, more than any one path” church. In 1853 the Unitarian
Association, the radicals in their days, described themselves (not prescribed
themselves) this way: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> “WE BELIEVE in
Jesus Christ, the everlasting Son of God, the express image of the Father, in
whom dwelt all the fullness of the God-head bodily, and who to us is the Way
and the Truth and the Life. WE BELIEVE in the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the
Father and the Son, the teacher, renewer, and guide of mankind. WE BELIEVE in
the Holy Catholic Church as the body and form of the Holy Spirit, and the
presence of Christ in all ages. WE BELIEVE in the Regeneration of the human
heart, which, being created upright, but corrupted by sin, is renewed and
restored by the power of Christian truth. WE BELIEVE in the constant Atonement
whereby God in Christ is reconciling the world to himself. WE BELIEVE in the
Resurrection from mortal to immortality, in a future judgment and Eternal Life.
WE BELIEVE in the coming of the Kingdom of God, and the final triumph of
Christian Truth.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is important in
understanding Unitarian Universalism to remember that we never voted not to
believe that statement, to proscribe it, or any other; we don’t do that sort of
thing; we only voted in the future on new language and new descriptions for new
times, but not as official replacements that negated what came before; to some
Trinitarian Universalists like me that 1853 language still in large part might
resonate pretty well. And remember it was those very Christians in both the
Unitarian and Universalist churches who helped to create a faith community that
that would inherently be open to others different from them; in large measure
because of the kind of Christians they were, they helped form an association
where they could, and would be, in the minority. It is not a bad cultural place for a follower
of Jesus to be. And, as we are
discovering in other arenas, when we are all minorities of one sort or another,
we need those intersections, borders, edge places even more where we meet and
grow from one another. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Especially after 1945, the year the UU Christian
Fellowship began, there arose in many places, especially in new lay led fellowships,
Unitarian Universalism as the opposite of Christianity, and it was considered a
contradiction of terms to be a UU Christian. Not I might say here in
Bartlesville when the Unitarian fellowship was formed here and in its original
bylaws said it existed to promote “practical Christianity”, language evocative
of the 1825 American Unitarian Association purpose of promoting what it called
“pure Christianity” as opposed to creedal based Christianity. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Over time though, and as Christianity liberalized itself in many of its
denominations, UUs began to see how they were a more than tradition, rather
than an anti this or that tradition, and that moved us into the conundrum phase
with lots of questions about how one could be this or that, and what was it
about UUism that Christians liked and what was it about Christianity that UUs
were drawn to, for a prominent path of UU Christians was to be a UU but not UU
Christian first. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Then it seems what we
have morphed into in UU Christianity is that in some places and some churches it
is still commonplace to think of UU and Christian in the same way, and some
places it is seen as still a contradiction, and some where it is still just a conundrum
to think about, but more and more we are in a place of Convergence, that intersection
or border or edge or welcome table place. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In one way of
convergence are those who converge different ways of primarily following Jesus
or practicing their Christian faith. We have classic UU Christians who see
Jesus as a teacher, who seek to follow his lessons. We have small c catholic UU
Christians who experience Jesus in the traditions and rituals of the church
over the centuries. And we have liberationist UU Christians who know Jesus in
the actions of healing and liberating and being with the oppressed and
marginalized and suffering. (You can read more about these types in the
pamphlet Who Are The UU Christians by the Rev. Tom Wintle online). But more and
more UU Christians are converging even within themselves these different ways
of expressing their faith.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Add to that the
convergence we also now have of UU Christians who are converging their UU Christian
faith with say UU Buddhism, or UU neo-paganism, UU humanism, UU Jewish roots, UU
mysticism. And finally among us are those who converge the UU part of their
faith, whichever form or forms it might take, with their regular attendance and
membership in a non-UU Christian community (or non-UU other form of spiritual
community). And, to top the convergence all off, we do have UU Christian
churches who are also affiliated with other denominations the same as they are
with the UUA. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This progressive spirit
of convergence is alive and well then, and, as we often say, we don’t think
Jesus would have it any other way. In fact contemporary UU Christianity, and
UUism in general, at its best, is like a living example of the way of Jesus. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Look no further than in
the story from the Bible, from Luke 17, being read today in worship services by
many Christian churches, and some UU churches, we find Jesus right where we
often find him, at an intersection, moving along the borderlines between
different peoples with different faiths. In this case between Galilee and
Samaria, often enemy cousins so to speak of culture and faith, and both seeking
to exist within the culture of the Hellenistic and Roman Empire occupying them.
In this place, he encountered other outcasts, extreme outcasts from all of the
cultures; he comes across ten lepers. They are supposed to act out of shame and
go hide themselves (think of all kinds of people and conditions our cultures
seek to shame today). But they speak up and though they don’t draw physically
close, they shout out for mercy, for healing, for connection, for wholeness. And
it is as if that alone was the healing. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For Jesus sees them,
pays attention, and doesn’t ask what culture they are from, or what they
believe, doesn’t try to determine their eligibility and if they deserve
anything or not. He just tells them to go see the priests, which is what the
routine was for one who had been healed, to get checked out so to speak, ready
to re-enter the community that had shunned them. Even there, where they had
retreated to a place on the edge of cultures away from all the powers that be,
and from the usual sources of healing, they found healing, because Jesus was
there too. And, the story ends with one of the ten healed lepers returning to
the place and finding Jesus still there; returning to give thanks, for which
Jesus says the leper has exhibited the deepest, fullest kind of wholeness. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But I suspect the leper
also returned to find ways to give back healing too, to turn that place of
shame into a place of grace, and of new community for all those outcasts and
misfits who would keep coming, keep converging, to the borderlands, the
intersecting paths, to find home. May we go and do likewise. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
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Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-68107927640519649382016-09-01T12:09:00.000-07:002016-09-01T12:10:15.297-07:00When The World Heals The Church<span class="fullpost"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When The World Heals The Church</span></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rev. Ron Robinson, preaching Sunday,
Aug. 21, 2016, at The Welcome Table Christian Church, Arlington, TX</span></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Reading: Luke 13:10-17</span></span></b><br />
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Now he was teaching in
one of the synagogues on the sabbath. <sup>11</sup>And just then there
appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She
was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. <sup>12</sup>When
Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your
ailment.” <sup>13</sup>When he laid his hands on her, immediately she
stood up straight and began praising God. <sup>14</sup>But the leader of
the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to
the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those
days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” <sup>15</sup>But the Lord
answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath
untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it
water? <sup>16</sup>And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom
Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the
sabbath day?” <sup>17</sup>When he said this, all his opponents were put
to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that
he was doing</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">.</span></b></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sermon:</span></span></b></div>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Thanks for the
invitation and privilege to be here with you this weekend and in worship today.
My debt to The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is deep; it is the church
in which my mother was raised; it is the church which built an amazing seminary
in which I was educated, and where I am now blessed to teach, and where I was
inspired by so much that has led to the ministries of our own Welcome Table in
north Tulsa today. And I have been promoting for more than a decade the wisdom
of one of your denominational Vision Commitments—one thousand new congregations
in one thousand new ways by 2020; one thousand new ways, which reflects the
missional bigger bandwidth of being church in new environments that our hurting
world needs. </span></span></b><br />
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At The Welcome Table
church where we are, in and for the high poverty, low life expectancy, beautiful far northside of Tulsa, one of our favorite
mottos and mission statements and tee-shirts is that we are there to “love the
hell out of this world.” I like to think something like it was Jesus’ mission
too, since there certainly was in the gospel accounts like in Luke today a lot
of pain and struggle and hurt and oppression all around him, and which he
entered into. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This motto I think even
resonates with some of the theological tradition of Jesus’ birth and death as
well as the way he lived his life. For God <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">so
loved</i> the world, says John 3:16, Jesus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was
sent into</i> it, and so, therefore, we are to go and do likewise, to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a sent people</i>. And in some of our
Christian traditions on Holy Saturday, which comes between Good Friday death and
Easter Sunday resurrection, we commemorate the stories and speculations that
grew up that Jesus’ loving and liberating spirit would have even gone into Hell
to set free the souls there. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So, Loving the hell out
of this world is something the church across the millennia has done when at its
best, when it is living out its reason for being, which is to make Jesus
continually visible in and through our lives and the world right around us,
particularly visible in those places within us, within our communities, which
seem the most hellish, in the places and with the people others abandon,
neglect. </span></span></b></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But let me say here that when we talk about Loving the Hell out of this world it really means we first have to let the world love the hell out of the church. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When I was growing up
in the north Tulsa zipcode where we have returned to live, it was anything but
hellish to me or to many around me, at least in outside appearances. We were the
poorer working class side of town, but we were baby boomers and the Great
Depression and the Great Wars of our parents and grandparents seemed like
ancient history already, and society and its funding seemed made for us. And It
was a segregated area back then, and we were white. It was a blatantly sexist
and heterosexist time. Many of us just did not, could not, see the hell around
us that others were going through. And our nostalgia often blinds us still to
today’s struggles. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That is why in the scripture
today, leaping out at us that before anything else, it says Jesus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sees</i> the woman in pain, in pain for so
many years, so important to make a point of the number of years, because others
had probably grown so accustomed to her sight that they no longer actually saw
her and paid attention. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Today in my
neighborhood, my zipcode, it is a lot easier to see the death and destruction
and struggles around us. It has deteriorated as the businesses, population,
government supports all left with white flight when the area was at first
integrated, then redlined and re-segregated. As it has become poorer and filled
with people with darker skin, the life expectancy of our folks has shrunk, even
as medical advances have grown. When our church began our missional transformation,
to become not the best church in our community, but the best church For our
community, the life expectancy gap between our zipcode and one just six miles
away from us on the other side of town was 14 years. After nine years, and
thanks to work on many fronts by many partners and others, this year the life
expectancy gap shrunk to some 11 years. It is still an outrageous injustice
that we die so much younger; and for us, those deaths are not just statistics
but have names; but we are seeing that living out our faith and putting our
limited resources and energy into community transformation rather than trying
to grow more of us church members, has made a real difference—we often hear
talk about being a life-saving faith, and in our area we have the data to prove
it, with much to do. And because of the continuing deepening poverty, and the
failure of the state government to do its part, we are never sure if the data
is going to show us continuing to narrow the gap, or if it is growing again.
Faithful Justice is being committed to a place and a people even if, especially
if, things are not changing for the better. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">With all of the
decline, the visibly fraying infrastructure and abandonment, still people even in
our area have trouble seeing the wounds of others in our area; and if they
never come to our side of town, and spend time with us, they will for sure not
know so many do not have water or electricity in their homes, or that their
homes are tents, campers, cars, boarded up homes, floors of friends or family,
that as our surveys in our free food store have found 52 percent have high food
insecurity, hunger pains when they come to see us, that so many have skipped
days regularly from eating, eat spoiled food, that 47 percent are anxious and
depressed, that 33 percent have diabetes, have chronic nutrition-related
diseases, that 60 percent cannot afford healthy food and don’t have access to
it. That we, a relatively small group all volunteer most all neighbors who also
receive as well as help give, that we give out all told some 20 tons of food a
month through our free food store, our gardenpark and orchard, and our meals. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Even I have trouble
seeing, and I am continually being taught to see the struggles of my neighbors.
This is especially true of residents who have lived in our area all their life
and have remained through all the changes, but they still are often looking at
our neighborhoods with yesterday’s sight and even they can’t fathom, until they
have come face to face with it, the hunger and the sickness; that some of our
children are growing up never having experienced a sit down family meal cooked
at home, but only have eaten from packages. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In many ways, I think
too often the church is like those life-long residents of our area—not seeing how
the people around us have changed; our so-called blind side is thinking church
can remain fundamentally unchanged and still connect with them the same as
before, not seeing how they can help heal us, help us discover the depths of
the gospel and of our purpose as the church. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But Seeing is
liberating. Over and over in scripture, Jesus sees things and people others do
not. And learning to see as Jesus sees changes everything. Who does Jesus
serve, hang out with, take risks with? Who does Jesus’ heart break for? </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">To follow Jesus is to
walk toward the wounded, the shamed, the oppressed, and to love the hell out of
them. To follow Jesus is to know we are the wounded, the shamed, the outcast.
Especially for the church to see itself as needing to have Jesus lay hands on
us again, as he does the ailing woman, for us to be charged up again with the
healing spirit and reminded who we are and who we are for. I like to think that
instead of reflecting Jesus in the story this morning, as so many sermons have
traditionally taught us to see ourselves, that the church is the long ailing
woman, and the world around us is Jesus, the world healing the church of its
isolation. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Even in biblical
stories when it isn’t Jesus doing the hands-on ministry, it is someone else
tracking him down to touch his garment, or going out and physically bringing
friends to him. Risking rejection and scorn and failure. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some, like those in the
story today, of course, will want to make religion all about their rules and preserving
the status quo. And I will say it was very important for the Sabbath to be
observed; it was then as ever under pressure by the Empire; it was a way for
the people following the God of Israel to be counter-culture and to fight back
against their oppressors and their occupation. But even the good we can be
about, maybe especially the good we are about, can become a barrier to what we
are called to do. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So easily can the how
of church, this or that practice or tradition or success even, such as the
Sabbath keeping in our story today, can take the place of the Why. Jesus was
reminding them, and us, of the Why of the Sabbath, the why of our being here,
of responding to the felt needs and pains right before us, right around us,
among us, and within us. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We believe we can best
see one another, see those we would not otherwise see, when we sit with one
another at the Welcome Table in our many church settings beyond the worship
time—at our free food store events, or at meals at our community gardenpark and
orchard, or in the community holiday festivals we sponsor, when someone is
waiting to use our washing machine or shower, or browsing books in the free
bookstore, or outside in the chairs we place by the outdoors electric outlet
where people stop to charge up their phones or connect to our free wifi when we
are not open inside. All of these encounters become the Welcome Table. And we
are reminded by the community that The Welcome Table is not a place people come
to; but is a place we create together, anywhere, anytime, by anyone, for
everyone. And, most importantly, they are places where the world can teach the church to see, to love, to be changed. The old missionaries went into the world to convert them; today's church needs to be a missionary church going into the world to be converted and changed and charged up by it. We would not have accomplished anything in our area if we hadn't learned to fail to what we thought needed to be done, failed at what we wanted to do, so that God could show us what really needed to be done. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As I said yesterday in
our time together in our workshop, I am inspired by your embodiment of The
Welcome Table, and the potential you have for helping create welcome tables in
a myriad of ways wherever you may be, in the myriad ways of being and becoming yourself,
carrying the spirit of your gatherings with you throughout the week, a sent
people in the loving and liberating spirit of Jesus,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>laying hands on the world, yes, but never forget to let
the ever-changing, ever-hurting, ever-teaching world, where God is already
present, lay healing hands on you. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span></b></div>
<br /></span><br />Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-43616827644901002812016-09-01T11:56:00.002-07:002016-09-01T11:59:42.838-07:00Visions of Liberation: A Lesson on Freedom <span class="fullpost"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Visions</span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> of Liberation: A Lesson For Politicians on Freedom, and A Call to Civic Engagement for those of us who complain about them</span></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sermon to Unitarian Universalist
Church of Bartlesville, OK July 24, 2016</span></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rev. Ron Robinson</span></span></b><br />
<br /><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It seems to be a custom
for me to preach the Sunday before our denominational church camp begins, and
to tie my sermon into it in some way. This year the theme speaker at the camp
now called The Point (</span></span></b><a href="http://www.thepointuu.org/"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">www.thepointuu.org</span></span></b></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> open to all) will be the Rev. George
Kimmich Beach. He is known for much among our UU movement, especially as an
author, and especially as an editor of collections of essays by our renowned 20<sup>th</sup>
century theologian James Luther Adams who was his teacher. James Luther Adams
was known as “the smiling prophet” and it is no wonder that the theme talks are
on both the “savoring and saving” of the world. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So this Sunday, instead
of giving you a preview of what my workshop will be about at The Point—missional
church as you have heard from me before-- I want to preach about the lessons on
liberation from JLA, as he is known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I have also been moved
this week to preach on James Luther Adams theology because of how in political
circles especially, and in some political circles more than others, the word
Freedom is thrown around too freely, you might say, and how community is
constructed in such a way as to foster a disunity at its core, and anything but
a sense of vastness or greatness to its reality; how the concept of freedom is
misunderstood to the point of it being twisted to very opposite ends, along
with the perversion of what it means, in a religious sense, to be strong. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Free Community is our tradition’s
historic territory; Lord knows we have struggled with it and learned about it
more than most, and so we better have something to say about it these days. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Yes, Our religious
history, our tradition, our faith communities that go back to the very
beginnings of this nation’s history, and in fact back before that into the
church dissent for congregational freedom in England, our central force as a
movement has been about upholding and embodying the depths of what it truly
means to live in freedom. Our debt is to the Cambridge Platform of 1648, a
synod attended by some of our oldest churches among the Unitarian Universalist
Association, as it spelled out in the first document of radical congregational
freedom how one actually lives in the depths of freedom, and that is through
covenant. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You want to secure
freedom? Then it only exists as you become members of a free community, one
based on covenant more than creed, and you form a series of other relationships
also built on freedom’s other names—love and responsibility—such as covenants
between churches, between the church and its leaders, especially ordained ones,
between the leaders, between the church and its wider community, and between
the church and how it understands and experiences the Sacred. All of these are
associational realities, and Associating was at the heart of James Luther Adams
life and theology. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">James Luther Adams—who
taught at Meadville Lombard and Harvard and Andover Newton seminaries—was not
our only theologian of freedom, but he was living and working before and after
World War Two, with its very challenges to freedom, and also during the liberation
revolutions of the Sixties and Seventies on up to his death in the 90s. In fact
he was inspired by our process theologians with whom he was pretty much
contemporaneous, like Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne and Henry
Nelson Wieman, whose views were about the whole of cosmology and God as exhibiting
both Freedom and Relationship and Novelty and Risk, especially Risk, not
safety, at the core of existence itself. Existence which risks to be and become.
</span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But JLA, a parish
minister before professor, an always social justice activist and organizer beyond
the academy, was the most connected to Unitarianism and then Unitarian
Universalism. He rose to prominence among us for leading the very first Commission
on Appraisal review and report, critique and challenge, of the American
Unitarian Association in 1936 called Unitarians Face A New Age; it was really
the beginning of his constant critique of religious liberalism as a whole; the
report called for stronger association within our churches, between our
churches, and with our wider communities, particularly those in our communities
whose very freedoms were being most endangered by those in power. He always called
for us to be more powerful to challenge others in power, and to share our power
in solidarity with those struggling to claim and live out theirs. Make America
Powerful Again, by amplifying the power of the powerless, not by concentrating
it in fewer hands. In voluntary association is freedom born and strengthened;
freedom is a reality only in relationship (all else is simply loneliness and
license not true liberty); freedom requires the presence of others in order for
it to freedom. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">His personal story also
mirrored many among us in our churches, at least those born in the first two
thirds of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. His father was a fundamentalist preacher
in the Pacific Northwest; JLA worked for a railroad that sent him to college in
Minnesota. There, away from his family and in a higher education setting, he
left the faith of his childhood and became a vehement opponent of religion,
writing and speaking constantly in his assignments against religion, until one
of his liberal arts professors commented back that JLA should be a preacher
because religion was obviously the passion of his life, and introduced JLA to
the humanist Unitarian tradition at First Unitarian of Minneapolis. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Not six months later he
was a student at Harvard Divinity School. And his free to change theology
didn’t end there either. He became one of the leading Unitarian Christians
among us, and in connecting us ecumenically to other faith communities and
other Christian theologians, especially his introduction to American audiences
of the major German Protestant theology of Paul Tillich. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he is also remembered for his pivotal work
for us re-shaping us again coming out on the tail-end of World War Two, as he
had going into it with the Commission on Appraisal. He was an author and
advocate in the late Forties of Unitarian Advance which led to a greater room
for theological pluralism, more communities, more commitment, more growth, and helped
to quell the humanist-theist divide (or to make it a constant marginal rather
than front and center issue among us) and which gave us some of the language
that continues to be reflected in our current principles language. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Through it all, this
pre-eminent theologian of freedom insisted that “freedom from” is secondary;
that “freedom to” is primary. Freedom’s reason to be is to work and live toward
liberation, toward a more just and loving community around us. A “freedom from”
various risks can simply lead to the continuing of a status quo that oppresses
those without status in society. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">There is in this vein
the famous anecdote he tells of his time in a Unitarian church in Chicago while
he was a nearby professor. It was during the Sixties and the civil rights movement
and the struggle to end segregation and its legacy of poverty that had children
of Chicago living with rat bites. And during church board meetings there were
debates about how visible the church as the church, as an association itself
existing only in and for its wider relationships, should be in trying to end
these racial injustices. One particular Board member insisted it was not why he
went to church and what the church was about, that church was only for
cultivating personal spirituality, the freedom of the individual mind—what our
20<sup>th</sup> century pre-eminent church historian and Harvard professor
Conrad wright called such church as mainly being “a collection of
religiously-oriented individuals” rather than church as a freely covenanted
body, which has been our way, and our struggle, for centuries. JLA says the
discussion on action the Chicago church should take went on for hours, into the
night. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then at one point when pressed by
others to say not what he thought the purpose of the church was not for, but
what it was for, the Board member thought and said: “I guess it is to get ahold
of people like me, and change us.” </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Conversion from
“freedom from” to “freedom for.” Especially, for JLA, “freedom for excluded
people.”</span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the splendid trilogy
called “The Making of American Liberal Theology”, which runs from the 1805
Unitarian theological takeover of Harvard University up to 2005, Gary Dorrien
highlights the work of James Luther Adams and says acts of conversion are key
to JLA’s understanding of the religious enterprise, even and especially for
liberals. That is, Conversions that pivot us away from our own concerns,
especially those middle class concerns that have tended to shape and reflect
us, and toward the plight of others. Conversion even away from liberalism,
which has tended he says to keep us focused on providing “religious sanctions
for the values of middle class respectability” while the forces of oppression
rise. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dorrien treats JLA in
the same group of theologians as he does Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, JLA
leads off that chapter devoted to “Visions of Liberation”. JLA’s critique of
liberals is similar to that MLK gave in his Epistle from the Birmingham jail. It
is about liberalism’s lukewarm nature, its posture of passivity, what today we
might call its captivity by its own (now waning) privilege. JLA’s conversion
toward what would be known as liberation theology came in his early travels to
Germany and Europe before World War Two, but after the rise of power of
fascists. He witnessed both the timid capitulation of the liberal German church
to the Nazis and met with leading members of another way of being church
relating to society, the Confessing Church of Germany struggling against the
power and values of those controlling the state, struggling even unto death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Historically, the roots
of religious liberalism for Dorrien, and which he finds Adams critiquing, is a
drive for the “third way” or middle ground of response to the Enlightenment.
Religious liberals did not want to reject religion or reject the Enlightenment
so they are always tempted to remain in the middle critiquing both extremes of
each, and that makes them {us) susceptible to being a people who live in
critique only, and who think it freedom, whose religious DNA or default mode is
intellectual argument (religion is not this perspective or that perspective but
this other perspective) which makes religion tilt toward emphasizing the mind
and reason, and makes it about identity (who are we?) rather than about the
“powers and principalities” within and among and around us creating and
sustaining sufferings and injustices. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Adams came of a
theological age in the wake of the deflating of the social gospel movement
that, for all its strengths of compassion, had its overly optimistic view of
“progress and brotherhood onward and upward forever” dashed by so many forces
that culminated in World War One and the rise of fascism that led to World War
Two. Adams, like many theologians of his era, had a more tragic view of
history. It is why, for him, the deeper forms of freedom that come through
voluntary associations and commitments to and for others especially “the
excluded” the so-called “least of these” are so vital to the Common Good. Something
we need to remind the nation of today. After all, it is the Common Good which
binds us not the Common Great.</span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he were here today, JLA might say: we can’t
just say we are going to make a country great again by the sheer power of our
personal will, and beware of those who claim and ask for your trust to let them
do it especially by themselves alone, and quickly, even if you might agree with
what greatness might mean, because history shows, millenias of history shows,
where such hubris, especially in the form of rampant nationalism, leads: to rubble.
</span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Instead, as another
theologian summarized JLA’s theology, “free [people] put their faith in a
creative reality that is re-creative.” And for him, it is the very fact that “humans
possess the…power to participate in the divine creativity” that warrants our
faith in humanity. After all, he noted, freedom itself can also be used to
dominate and oppress; it is only when it is rooted “in a will to mutuality that
it is redemptive.” </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dorrien describes
Adams’ belief that we are fated to be free, and that freedom and responsibility
[how does your freedom lead you to respond, and where, and for whom?] are
intertwined; “every attempt to escape from freedom and its responsibilities is
an act of freedom; thus the burden of moral responsibility can not be relinquished…every
faith is a faith of the free, but many faiths are unworthy of being chosen.” </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For Adams, first, God
is that kind of freely creative responding in love power that is a “commanding
reality that sustains and transforms all life.” Second, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>freedom “rightly used seeks freedom and social
justice for others”—not for excluding the vulnerable so some can have more
supposed safety, and more supposed freedom and choices and resources. True
freedom is a liberating love, then, for all. And third, It is also a community
forming power, and has a moral content and character and orientation to
justice. It is more than just about freedom of belief and how one believes
differently from others. Liberty is not simply license; that is a false sense
that has more to do with being alone with a selfish will. It is instead a
vision and action of liberation, and is inherently relational, associational.</span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Freedom “cannot abide a
social evil such as racial discrimination,” he said, “and be genuinely free.” Such
limited understandings of freedom as we encounter, that are not part and parcel
with the Common Good, are masks, he says, “for a hidden idolatry of blood or
state or economic interest, a protection for some kind of tyranny.” </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">These days, just as
Adams experienced in pre-war Germany and in segregated America, there is the
temptation to cultural pessimism and retreat; as I suspect Kim Beach might tell
us this week there is always the temptation to only savor or only save, to lose
oneself in the Is—ness of being or the ought-ness of doing, instead of letting
the one lead us into the other as we see our freedom bound up in the freedom of
others, particularly of “excluded others.” And pessimism and retreat is often a
characteristic of those with the privilege to do so. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Instead, We need to
resist the calls to a false freedom that would have us retreat from the risks
of suffering, ours and others, and that would wall us off from the experience
of deeper conversion to love and justice that happens when we open ourselves and
embrace the radical associating with one another, especially those different
from us, which the prophets of many ages have called us to do. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We need to remind our
communities of the soul of our communities, that we need one another in order
to experience real freedom, and commit to making such soul greater. </span></span></b></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We need to restore one
another, not repel one another; let in to our communal lives that creative
reality of love and liberation that can re-create us, that moves forward not
back, that can make all things new, and truly great, for all. </span></span></b></div>
<br /></span><br />Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-49170930775131850342016-04-17T12:06:00.002-07:002016-04-17T17:02:44.940-07:00A Missional Charge To Church: Hope Unitarian Church<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Charge to
the Congregation, Hope Unitarian Church, <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">installation
of the Rev. Cathey Edwards, Sunday, April 17, Tulsa, OK<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron
Robinson<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is a special privilege to be asked to charge THIS
congregation today because for close to 40 years you have CHARGED me up. <o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I remember as a fairly new UU and journalist for a state
magazine sitting in the minister’s office of the Rev. Bill Gold, one of your first
ministers, interviewing him, and learning about, his views on church and the
community and why Tulsa had the highest per capita percentage of UUs outside of
Boston and what a difference it made for the community beyond these beautiful
walls. <o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> I remember the Rev.
Jim Eller’s worship services here as we were coming into Tulsa being inspired
to start a new church in our then home in Tahlequah, and his promoting a
culture of abundance and not scarcity here over the idea that a Hope family
might shift to our new church closer to their home, an early lesson in
remembering why church exists in the first place as a movement of
transformation beyond itself.<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I remember particularly joining the Rev. Gary Blaine and Hope
members at a weekend retreat at Western Hills Lodge with Professor Brandon
Scott studying the counter cultural power of the parables of Jesus challenging us
with new default modes for our lives committed to transforming the world, and
how on the short drive back home I felt my call to seminary and ministry become
urgent. And ever since then, you and your subsequent ministers, my colleagues,
have supported my peculiar ministry journey and our new missional work on the
northside. <o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My FIRST charge then is that you continue to CHARGE UP people
to change the world--not just charge up one another, but more importantly do it
for the one like I was, who will never be a member of your church, never
pledge, never serve on a committee, who you may never know how they are changed
because of what you do incarnating your mission beyond yourself. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Trust it will happen. Trust that when it happens it is more
important than anything else. Particularly more important than how you might
feel on any given Sunday about your minister, or one another. </span><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In order to practice that kind of radical trust, though, to
give yourself away, or as it is said, to get over yourself, for good, requires
my SECOND charge to you: for trust grows only in the soil of VULNERABILITY. TO
BE VULNERABLE is to risk hurting and being hurt and yet not letting that hurt DEFINE
you, but REMIND you that you are alive and in community, and that your life here,
like all life in many different ways, is meant to grow and seed and die, and it
hurts to do all of that; <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">to be vulnerable is to risk disillusionment and
disappointment and not letting that become despair, to be vulnerable is to risk,
to actually court, failing at what you want to do and accomplish (and in that
very failing perhaps discovering what the Spirit of Life and Love and Liberation
needs you to really be and do); <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">to be vulnerable is to risk being led, by those you elect to
lead you and by the ONE you have called to lead you even through uncertain and
anxious and hurting times, and most importantly even to be led by those you
exist to serve. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In fact, the only growth you should really be concerned about
is the growth of vulnerability and risk-taking. Those make up the soil, the
soul, of community for the community. They should be the first measure of your
success.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is difficult to be a church these days, which is a good
thing. When it has been easy to be church church has lost its way and lost its
mission of making its understanding of the Sacred visible in the world,
especially with those who feel disconnected from the Sacredness of and in the
world. We are I believe in a post-denominational, post-congregational culture,
as congregations are finding that they are not, as they once were, the central
place and way people seek to become connected and engaged in a spiritual or
meaningful life. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That doesn’t mean congregations are not still vitally
important for today’s world; they are. I wouldn’t bother being here today if I
thought otherwise. But it takes more and more resources from smaller and
smaller wells to try to keep up with life AS IT USED TO BE. The good news is
that when you give up trying to maintain life as it used to be, or as you want
it to be, a whole universe of new possibilities of life and of church opens up
to you, as you become a part of a bigger bandwidth of what it means to be church.
Your very fragility becomes your hope.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So my THIRD and perhaps most radical charge for you today is to
give up any anxieties surrounding being A church, and all the angst of survival
that congregations find themselves in, and become a part, your own part, of THE
church, that is of the movement of the liberal and liberating, free and freeing
spirit known by many names and many traditions and many kinds of relationships,
one that is being manifested in many forms in our world today, religiously,
culturally, economically, politically. We are not in competition with these
forms of the Spirit, with these groups. I repeat. We are not in competition
with them. We have acted like we are way
too often. We are to be collaborators, co-conspirators, servants of and with
them in the wider movement of the wider Spirit. Bring our gifts and
perspectives to them, and let them help connect us to the world outside our own
experience. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is this wider movement of the liberating spirit emerging
in this moment, and the suffering people being lifted up by this movement of
movements, who are the ones truly CHARGING you today, beckoning to you today to
take this turning point in your community history to come join fully in the
transformation of the world wherever it is underway, and in doing so find
lives, and YOUR life, transformed. Because
we know this to be true: the covenant we celebrate today between church and
minister will grow stronger only as you strengthen your other covenants of the
free church: the one between member and church, yes, and the one between
churches and between ministers, even more, but especially as you strengthen
your commitment to the covenant between church and the place around you and the
mission to it that has called you into being in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We ARE in uncertain, fearful, hurting times when people are
shrinking their vision, their generosity, their values, their connections with
others, and linking God, linking the Good Life, to convenience and comfort
instead of to conscience and community, to those who have MADE it instead of to
those who have LOST it. When you may feel yourself as a congregation most
uncertain, most fearful, most hurting, just turn the focus of your attention
inside out and you’ll turn your own lights back on. </span></b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A few years ago I preached the ministerial installation
sermon at the oldest continuous church in our Unitarian Universalist
association, the church of the Pilgrims, First Parish in Plymouth, Mass, begun
in Scrooby England in 1606 and landed on this continent in 1620. (You know I
have to get a little history in somewhere). At that installation, my colleague The
Rev. Tom Schade gave the charge to that historic congregation, and among the
things he said was this:</span></b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“</span></b><b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">There is a profound spiritual,
religious, political, social and economic crisis in our country today. I won’t
go through the list of problems. But the crisis lies in the fact that we cannot
seem to get our hands around them; we cannot focus. Huge shifts and
transformations going on all around us, but the country and the culture cannot
keep up, that our thinking is skittering along the surface, distracted, like a kid
… in a comic book store. And here we are, Liberal Religion, and we have
not yet found our voice. We stand for some timeless truths and some rock-solid
values and some fundamental commitments, (and) we have not found our voice – a
way to speak clearly to the people about how to live in these times. We
will find our voice only through trial and error, and that is the work of our
ministry, and to do it, our ministers must be willing to take risks. My
Question to you (he added to them, and I add to you), is this: Do you conduct
your congregational life in a way that makes your minister brave? Or do you
conduct your congregational life in ways that will make your minister more
cautious, more nervous, more anxious and more afraid?” <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">So today may my charge to you
find its FIRST recipient in your minister: Charge Her Up and turn her loose to
charge up the world. Create the space and energy for her to be as Vulnerable as
all get out so she can be a witness for the vulnerability so needed in the
world receiving the lie that vulnerability and compassion are bad. And COVENANT
with her today Not For Your Sake alone, so HOPE will HAVE a minister, but
ultimately for the WORLD’s sake, for all those without hope. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">We are One, but know that the We
is not just this congregation, especially not just this gathered people today
who become a people. WE includes all those who have gone before you in this
space, and all those who will inherit what you do here today in all the spaces
in which you may become church. Both those past and those to come whom you have
never and will never meet should have voices at your table, charging you to
carry deep within you this truth: you do not ultimately exist for one another
alone, or for the perpetuation of this institution or its beautiful place, or
even for our faith’s tradition; instead WE exist FOR the ONE, as the old hymn
says, FOR the Earth made fair and ALL her people One. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-74267406080276718002016-04-10T13:27:00.001-07:002016-04-10T13:27:29.653-07:00Seeing and Believing and Doing<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Seeing and Believing and Doing<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sermon to Unitarian Universalist
Church of Bartlesville, April 3, 2016<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron Robinson, The Welcome Table,
serving North Tulsa and Turley<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The 19<sup>th</sup>
Century minister, the Rev. William Ellery Channing, one of the founders, albeit
reluctantly, of the American Unitarian Association, used to sum up his
ordination sermons for new ministers with this admonition: “Teach them to see.”
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">By that he meant not only
to bring new knowledge and new understandings of religion to the communities,
the whole communities, they served--though he did mean that, and that was, then
and now, an important role of religion and religious leaders, especially of
liberal religion that seeks to be liberating—but what he ultimately was getting
at as their ministry duty was to help people cultivate a newer, broader, deeper
way of seeing life. To see the extraordinary in the ordinary. To see one
another, and each person seeing themselves as being, in the title of one of his
famous sermons taken from the Book of Genesis, likenesses of God; not the same
as, he would have hastened to explain, but as bearers of the spark, the
possibility, of the divine. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Teach them to see, as fully as possible, because we can so readily become
in our way blinded to limited narrow perspectives; in some ways that is an
inevitable blessed truth of our finite lives; it is a blessing because it pulls
us toward community. It is a problem only when we think we see it all, that
everyone’s perspective must be the same as ours. And it is a problem when we don’t
even fully see our own perspective; when we don’t go deep enough right where we
are and see, as William Blake famously said, a world in a grain of sand. I so
admire the naturalists who, for example, study life as it is revealed writ
small, like David George Haskell’s book The Forest Unseen on nature revealed in
a single square meter of forest floor. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Haskell said in his study he was
“applying the contemplative approach of narrowing down our gaze to a tiny,
little window and thereby hoping to perhaps see more than we could by
running around the whole continent just trying to see it all and do it
all. And that's the contemplative gambit, narrow your gaze down to one
breath, to one image, to one tiny, little patch of forest. And then from
that, perhaps you can, like a pinhole camera, you can see further into the
universe and the focus of the universe becomes crisper for you. (on the
Diane Rheem show, NPR)<o:p></o:p></span></b></li>
</ul>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Haskell did his study
on a small patch of old growth forest. That’s a cool place to do it. It is, though,
where you might expect to see a lot going on in a little. But I believe we can
and need to learn to see life most fully in the places where we are often
taught it is the hardest to find, and in the people where we are taught there
is nothing new or more to see, and in the times of life to see them too,
especially the bad times, as not all in all bad and so miss the way they may
open toward goodness. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Because if we don’t
learn and teach people to see life and life’s spirit where others may not, then
we will shrivel not only our powers of sight but our world too, and further
divide it up between the full and the empty, the worthy and the unworthy, the
good and the bad. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And that leads to
seeing life as irrevocable, irredeemable, as fixed. Which takes all the
creativity and transformation out of it. Which takes all the love out of it. Which
takes all the justice out of it. Which kills it. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In our hymnal we have a
reading taken from the Book of Genesis chapter 28 that says “Surely the Lord is
in this place, and I did not know it. How awesome is this place. This is none
other than the House of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” It is powerful
because it refers to a place that Genesis describes as just “a certain place”
where Jacob came to in his journeys; it was a stony place, for he took a stone
and used it as a pillow for his head as he slept, and in his dream he received
a vision from God, and when he woke he was grateful for the gift of this
certain, stony place. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The place where I live and work is like that. A place where others see
only bad statistics, and some of them are bad—we rejoiced that in the eight
years of our missional ministry there we have seen the life expectancy gap
narrow from fourteen to eleven years, and of course followed that with
continued outrage at such a continuing discrepancy, especially as the longer we
are there the more an abstract term like life expectancy takes on real names of
real people who have died among us too soon. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I get to talk with lots of people about our place, mostly in their own
places but also when some come to work with us, and I tell them we are more
than our statistics, though it is important to know them, and we are more than
our stories of struggle with injustices and neglect; that we are most of all a
place and people of spirit and that’s a story that doesn’t get told enough,
even by our own folks who too often feel ashamed for living where they do—that
if they had only been better, smarter, stronger, they and their kids would be
able to move away like so many have done. That the good life, as it comes to be
seen by them, is only possible somewhere else, and for someone else. That
attitude seeps into the soul and as much as anything else affects that shorter
life expectancy just as much or moreso even than the travesties of not having health
insurance, of being too poor for Obamacare because of our state government
refusal to accept Medicaid extension. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In fact one of the things we try to get people to see more fully is about
health and life expectancy in our area itself. It is more than meets the eye
that watches TV news or reads the newspaper. As much as we need more medical
care access, more culturally competent medical care access, like having medical
professionals that you see around you in your life and trust because they know
you and live among you, and we desperately need more of that, even with that
clinic access alone will still be a minor part of increasing life expectancy.
Genetics accounts for some 20 percent; medical care access accounts for only
ten percent; 50 percent of a longer life expectancy comes from lifestyle
choices, and 20 percent, twice as much as from clinic access, comes from our
environment, the social determinants like how much blight we live around and
crime and stress and hunger, all of the things which in fact tilt people away
from the very healthier choices when they are available. (OU Community Medicine Report, see my report
on the presentation and the report at http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-view-from-74126-on-health-care-after.html)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Seeing this, and seeing
what often prevents people from making these choices, is hard when you are not
where you can see and hear and learn from the people themselves. I just had a
conversation with a good intelligent liberal friend and colleague who was
trying to learn why people might not take advantage of the medical options that
were available to them. He couldn’t see their whole life, just the choices they
were making as if in a vacuum. I began to show him, to teach him to see, how
the stresses of subsistence living, where your life is structured in smaller
increments, meal to meal, day to day, opportunity to work hour by hour, perhaps
with the addition of addictive self medication to supposedly help you cope with
the stresses, and with how you see your own self worth, all of this means that
you are not going to take the time to make appointments, for example, for
preventive health. You are going to get by until you can’t get by, and then you
are going to go to the place that has to take you, the ER, and not worry about
the expense because you know you are never going to pay it anyway. And you
don’t have the social network with the skills to help you overcome all that. If
the hospital tries to shame you into better behavior it instead keeps you more
mired in the attitude that is self-defeating. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We set up our clinics, our classrooms, our nonprofit helping agencies,
our churches, our civic meetings, our elections, so much around the perspective
of those with resources and without so many stresses, and then blame people, as
one suburban progressive banker did to me at a regional event, for more of the
folks from my area “not being at the table.” Talk about wanting to teach him to
see; his privilege of having time and means and the kind of job that set him at
the table, not to mention the way we run so many of our public meetings comes
from a model that is based on higher education or even the classroom, a model
that is a trigger to so many people who struggled in school for so many
reasons. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I get to teach people to see in person, I tell them I see my place
with three sets of eyes. I am trying to get them to see it that way too. I see
our area as I saw it growing up until the time I was graduated from high
school, seeing it both as it was in a negative way, the legacy of racism and
segregation, and in a positive way, the way there was so much social capital,
connections among people, a more income integrated neighborhood, and more
common resources put into the area in schools, parks, infrastructure; how you
went to school together for example as my wife and I did from kindergarden
through high school, which made it so much easier to communicate with the
community than now when any neighborhood the kids of the same age might go to
five to ten different schools, including home and online. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And I tell them I see our place as it is now, with its abandonment and
isolation and ill health, its prison culture attitude as a place where people with
felonies often come to live. But that I also see it with eyes of the future,
and in some ways the future of transformation is happening also for those with
eyes to see, in small ways not only in our Welcome table undertakings but in
what some of our partners and neighbors are doing. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If I am rushed and can only take people on a tour of one part of our area
beyond our properties, I take them to one three block stretch in our area. If I
can to teach them to see I have them drive from one end of Peoria avenue in
Tulsa to the other and observe carefully the disparities. But at least I take
them to 53<sup>rd</sup> Street from Peoria to Utica and ask them to count the
number of boarded up abandoned houses where families used to live, where
dollars used to turn over into the community, and I tell them to also look at
how right in the midst of that abandonment there are people putting extra
energy into making their certain place a gate of heaven, and I tell them not to
miss the small house with one of the best yards that is Sarah’s Residential
Living where one of the houses that would have been abandoned is now a small
intimate living space for seniors who need monitoring but not assisted living,
keeping them in a homelike environment; a wonderful vision and response to a deep
need, and how three more houses along that street are now owned by Sarah’s just
waiting for volunteers to help transform them too. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Being able to see this way, these things, is to see more fully. And that
is what we need. And when we can see a place more fully, we see the people more
fully, and we see our connection to them. We can begin to believe more fully
that another world is possible; yea, it is even already here and yet to come. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today in many churches of many traditions across the world sermons will
be preached about a classic story of this form of teaching to see, about seeing
and believing in change. It is the story in the gospel of John about so called
Doubting Thomas. No surprise that many will see it not as fully as it was meant
to be seen, and will come away from it with a too limited perspective. It has
much to teach us I think about how to see life. It was considered an extremely
important story to the Johannine community that produced the gospel of John
several decades after Jesus death; it was the story of the original ending to
John’s gospel. It sums up so much of the wisdom the whole book was trying to
make over and over that life and truth and the truth about people is more than
what we see, that understanding comes from grasping the spiritual, the poetic,
the metaphorical, that we can give ourselves and our lives to a story that can
be more than real, it can be true. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Here are the highlights
of the story and I comment on it, and we can see many places where John’s
overall themes of spiritual truth, as opposed to literal truths, are
resonating. The story picks up after the first resurrection appearance of Jesus
to Mary of Magdala soon after the crucifixion. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">19</span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors
of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the authorities,
Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Right here we are to
see how times of fear and anxiety present us with the option to respond out of
scarcity, to lock the doors and hide inside because of what has been taken away
from us and what might at any moment it is felt be taken away from us; or to
respond as jesus does, to see the situation with peace and ignoring the locked
doors. The story goes on:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">20</span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Apparently being there
somewhat miraculously and speaking peace to them wasn’t enough even for them
for he felt the need to show them his wounds to signal who he was. Meeting them
where they are, you might say, one of the first lessons of chaplaincy, of
ministry, of truly seeing people. Only then it says the disciples rejoiced when
they saw the Lord. <sup>21</sup>Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with
you.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Over and over John stresses peace, wants his listener readers to focus on
it, see its need. John is composed at a time of great conflict, but wants the
reader hearer to be reminded of peace. See that we should savor the world even
as we see where it is in need of saving, as the famous John 3:16 points out
that God first loved the world, all of it, no exceptions as we say, with all
its hellishness, and because of that sent a Savior to love the hell out of the
world. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Jesus goes on to say: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I love that phrase
because it fits in with our missional faith mandate to not set back and wait
for people to come to us, to come see us, but to go be sent, the original meaning
of the Greek word missio, to be sent to be with them. Here the disciples have
been seeing themselves as a fortress kind of group, inside a locked room,
retreating from the world, but Jesus is again articulating that to be one of
his followers means not to be locked up at home but to be out serving the
people. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the
Holy Spirit. <sup>23</sup>If you forgive the sins of any, they are
forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Again
Jesus is trying to get them to get over themselves for good, to live in a state
of mercy and trust at a time and place when they more naturally would see their
plight very differently, full of fear and blame. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now we get to Thomas and the heart of the story and of the whole gospel
of John. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with
them when Jesus came. <sup>25</sup>So the other disciples told him, “We
have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails
in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his
side, I will not believe.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A week later his
disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors
were shut [What again? They are slow learners; they have still locked their
doors.] Jesus came and stood among them again and said, “Peace be with
you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands.
Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas
answered him, “My Lord and my God!” <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Unfortunately that is where too many tellings of this story and in
popular parlance end, with Thomas’ conversion so to speak, coming to belief.
But the ending is not quite here. For Jesus then said to him, “Have you
believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet
have come to believe.” Thomas is to be remembered not only for the change of
mind, but the whole point is not his belief; it is his admonishment by Jesus
that his way of believing is too limited; his sight too narrow. There is more
than physical sight, touch, experience, all external to one’s self; there is
also the internal way of knowing, of deeper sight and truths than by those who
have to have all things nailed down, and there is trust in what you can not yet
see. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I trust even though I can’t yet see or show easily to someone else that
another world is possible, a resurrected
world if you will, even in my place and even in so many people others are quick
to give up on, and in myself. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .25in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This has meaning for us too in how our religion can help transform the
world around us into a more generous and just world. It means seeing ourselves
anew, and also getting over ourselves for good too. My colleague Tom Schade
writes about this often in his blog The Lively Tradition. Recently he has
written about how what we take often for granted, it has become so rote and
ordinary to us, the 7 Principles statement in the UUA bylaws, that it is often
denigrated and dismissed, but how when we see them as not something whose
purpose is to define who we are but as our mission steps for how the world
should be, and guides for taking action in the world, we can transform
ourselves from a small religious institution to part of a large and emerging
progressive social spiritual movement. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is a facebook meme that
connects each of the 7 principles with what is pulling people together out
in the streets. <br />
The inherent worth and dignity of each person with the black lives matter and
trans rights movement; justice equity and compassion with the income
inequality movement; acceptance and encouragement to spiritual growth with
the immigrant movement, including the response to islamophobia; the free
and responsible search for truth and meaning with the climate change
movement and fighting for science education; the democratic process in
society at large with the voter rights movement; world community with
peace and justice with the anti-war and acting like an Empire movement;
the interdependent web of all existence with the fight against
environmental classism and racism, for example, ala the Flint Michigan
water crisis, the way natural disasters affect the poor and the vulnerable
so much harder. <o:p></o:p></span></b></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Rev. Schade says “People are
fighting for the principles we have named as the Seven Principles in the
streets everyday. They may have never heard of Unitarian
Universalism. We are not their leaders. The question is whether we will
see them as our leaders.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We need to see our
principles, and our institutions, as ultimately about more than just ourselves
in our own locked rooms, just getting by. In a book called The Small Church At
Large, author Robin Trebilcock writes it well, saying that the only thing that
it not good about a small church is when it is has a small vision. As another
author frames it, Shane Claiborne in The Irresistible Revolution, we need to
grow smaller to do bigger things in the world. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And we need to see our mission as being about the world and helping
others to see themselves as more, and capable of more, than they see themselves
now. That is what being a liberal religion, in all its manifestations, has
always been about. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tom says, “It is as though we think that our congregation is the Beloved
Community, rather thinking of the Beloved Community as all humanity made fair
and the people one.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The virtues of how liberal religion
is lived is the best way for people to see our faith and to see the
possibilities for their own lives and their own places and times. These virtues
are reverence, self-possession, gratitude and generosity, honesty, humility, solidarity, and openness.
We live in a time particularly it seems when it is hard to see these as
blooming all around us, but that is because we are letting ourselves be
blinded. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">After our tornado in our area this
week, it has been easy to focus on the destruction and the interruption in
lives that are already struggling, and how the official response is so slow and
so limited and the fears that the effects will linger and add to our
abandonment, but what I kept seeing the past few days was, what we also should
expect, and that is the ways people opened their lives and their homes to one
another, in a place that so many people see differently, where they think it is
not even live and let live but die and
let die. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tom writes:</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
“The well-being of the planet and all who live on it depends on each of us
making these values the cornerstones of our lives. These virtues are the
ethical implications of the way we religious liberals understand the
world. Our mission is to embody these virtues, persuade others of their
necessity, and convert the world to living in accordance with them.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I hope if nothing else we might see anew the value and vision and
possibilities of what we do deep down when we come together on Sunday mornings
and, most importantly, what we do when we carry our Sundays vision with us into
our Mondays. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-61550506055397347102015-12-24T06:05:00.000-08:002015-12-24T06:05:06.514-08:00Christmas 2015 in the 74126: "They Made Known To Others What They Had Seen"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><br /></b>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Christmas 2015 Common Meal and Candlelight Worship: Lessons and Carols and Communion<br />The
Welcome Table: A Free Universalist Christian Missional
Community</b><br />We eat our meal together, and worship together, around the same table</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><b>INVOCATION</b><br />Today is the day which God has made: <b>Let us
rejoice and be glad therein.</b> What is required of us? <b>To live justly, love mercy,
and walk humbly with our God.</b> This is our covenant as we walk together in life
in the ways of God known and to be made known: <b>In the light of truth, and the
loving and liberating spirit of Jesus, we gather in freedom, to worship God, and
serve others</b><br /><br /><b>INVITATION</b><br />from "Christmas Beatitudes" by David Rhys
Williams<br />On this blessed day let us worship at the altar of joy, for to miss
the joy of Christmas is to miss its holiest secret. Let us enter into the
spiritual delights which are the natural heritage of child-like hearts. Let us
withdraw from the cold and barren world of prosaic fact if only for a season.
That we may warm ourselves by the fireside of fancy, and take counsel of the
wisdom of poetry and legend.<br />Blessed are they who have vision enough to
behold a guiding star in the dark mystery which girdles the earth; Blessed are
they who have imagination enough to detect the music of celestial voices in the
midnight hours of life. Blessed are they who have faith enough to contemplate a
world of peace and justice in the midst of present wrongs and strife. Blessed
are they who have greatness enough to become at times as a little child. Blessed
are they who have zest enough to take delight in simple things; Blessed are they
who have wisdom enough to know that the kingdom of heaven is very close at hand,
and that all may enter in who have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to
understand.<br /><br /><b>"O COME, ALL YE FAITHFUL"</b><br /><br />O Come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant<br />O Come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem,<br />Come and behold
him, Born the King of angels<br />O Come, let us adore him, O come let us adore
him, <br />O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.<br /><br />Sing choirs of angels,
Sing in exultation,<br />O Sing, all ye citizens, of heaven above<br />Glory to God,
In the highest<br />O Come let us adore him, O come, let us adore him<br />O
come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.<br /><br /><b>LIGHTING THE ADVENT & CHRIST
CANDLES</b><br />In Advent season each week we point the way to Christmas. Peace, Joy,
Love, and Hope, these are the touchstones in our journey preparing our hearts
for this holy day when we begin again in the spirit of the Child. And so we come
to Christmas once again, as have those before us through the centuries, the
mighty cloud of witnesses who have lighted our way with their lives of faith,
hope and unconditional love. <br />May the lights we burn tonight warm us with
memories of their inspiration and their aspirations.<br />In miracle and mystery,
Jesus was born, light shining in the darkness. In miracle and mystery, all are
born, new lights of life full of hope. May our lives be the Light of this Good
News.<br />Peace and joy and hope and love---which never come easy and are easily
lost—all come together in the liberating spirit of God. <br /><b>May God’s light heal
our lives and world.</b><br />And may this light, on this special day of birth, remind
us that to be in the spirit of Christmas we must be where peace needs to be
born, Where joy needs to be sung, Where hope needs to be found, And where love
needs to be shared. <br />We light these candles once again in this Season which
reminds us how to live most fully all our days. <b>We light these candles to
proclaim the coming of the light of God into the world.</b><br />With the coming of
this light let there be peace. <b>Blessed are the peacemakers</b>.<br />With the coming
of this light let there be joy. <b>Blessed are those who mourn and who suffer in
this special time, that their hearts be lifted.</b><br />With the coming of this light
let there be love. <b>Such great love helps us to love God and one another,
especially our enemies.</b><br />With the coming of this light let there be hope, that
goodness will prevail in our lives and world, that oppression will end, that
what unites us is stronger than what divides us, <b>that we will find our way in
the light of God and fear not.</b><br />With the coming of this light let there be
born once again the simple transforming freedom the Christ Child brings to the
world, through which the light of God shines in all, that we may be God’s people
every day, and care for one another and for all of God’s Creation, with our
hearts, minds, souls, and our hands.<br /><b>We light these candles to proclaim the
coming of the light of the loving and liberating spirit of God into the
world.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br />PRAYER</b> <br />O God, who hast brought us again to the glad season when we
remember the birth of Jesus, grant that his spirit may be born anew in us. Open
our ears that we may hear the angel songs, open our lips that we may sing with
hearts uplifted, Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, goodwill
toward all. Amen. (King's Chapel Book of Common Prayer)<br /><br /><b>FIRST LESSON:
Luke 2:1-7</b><br />In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the
world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while
Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.
Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of
David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of
David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was
expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her
child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of
cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the
inn.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><b>"AWAY IN A MANGER"</b><br />Away in a manger, no crib for his bed,<br />The
little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head;<br />The stars in the sky looked down
where he lay,<br />The little Lord Jesus, asleep in the hay.<br />The cattle are
lowing, the baby awakes<br />But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes<br />I love
thee, Lord Jesus! Look down from the sky,<br />And stay by my cradle, till morning
is nigh<br /><br /><b>SECOND LESSON: Luke 2: 8-12</b><br />8In that region there were
shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.9Then an
angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around
them, and they were terrified.10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid;
for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:11to you is
born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.12This
will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and
lying in a manger.”<br /><br /><b>"THE FIRST NOWELL"</b><br />The first Nowell, the angels
did say,<br />was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay<br />In fields
where they lay keeping their sheep<br />On a cold winter's night that was so
deep.<br />Nowell, nowell, nowell, nowell,<br />Born is the king of Israel.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><b>Third
Lesson: Luke 2: 13-20</b><br />And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of
the heavenly host, praising God and saying,14“Glory to God in the highest
heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”15When the angels had
left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go
now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has
made known to us.”16So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the
child lying in the manger.17When they saw this, they made known what had been
told them about this child;18and all who heard it were amazed at what the
shepherds told them.19But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in
her heart.20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had
heard and seen, as it had been told them.<br /><br /><b>"ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON
HIGH"</b><br />Angels we have heard on high sweetly singing o'er the plains<br />and the
mountains in reply echoing their joyous strain<br />Gloria, In excelsis Deo;
Gloria, In Excelsis Deo.<br />Shepherds why this jubilee? Why these songs of happy
cheer?<br />What great brightness did you see? What glad tidings did you
hear?<br />Gloria, In Excelsis Deo; Gloria, In Excelsis Deo.<br />Come to Bethlehem
and see, Him whose birth the angels sing<br />Come adore on bended knee, Christ,
the Lord, the newborn King.<br />Gloria, In Excelsis Deo. Gloria, In Excelsis
Deo.<br /><br /><b>PRAYER OF PEACE AND JUSTICE</b><br />"The Work of Christmas" by Howard
Thurman<br />When the star in the sky is gone, When the Kings and Princes are
home, When the shepherds are back with their flocks, The work of Christmas
begins. To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the
prisoner, To teach the nations, To bring Christ to all, to make music in the
heart.<br /><br /><b>HOMILY: Far North Tulsa and The New Nazareth</b><br />"and when they
had seen this, they made known to others....." each year my christmas homily
takes off from one of the words or phrases in Luke's nativity of Jesus gospel.
this year it will be this phrase. <br />So much of what Christmas is about is how
to see, what to see, anew. So much of what we do here in the 74126 is help
people, whether residents or from other parts, to see our place and people anew,
deeper, as God sees us. For us to see ourselves anew too, full of possibilities.
We are small, like Nazareth, like Bethlehem, but we have and are enough. And,
just as with the Christmas lessons and story, at the same time as we are enough
we know More is to come, more truth light love liberation, and that in living in
our world of simple enough we ourselves are part of the More in the lives of our
neighbors. Enough and More, the inhaling and exhaling of the Spirit of Life, the way God incarnates in and through us. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />For we are one of the "new Nazareths" where it is said nothing
good will come, so no one invests, where all attention and power goes to the
Sephorris of the world, those commercial cool places where money flows like the
Empire built city of Sephorris of old just a few miles from Nazareth. <br />But
because God with Christmas said Nazareth Lives Matter! Nazareth is known today
and Sephorris is not. <br />Christmas is about seeing the Nazareths of the world
right around us and within us, for that is where Incarnation happens. <br />God
comes again and again as the candle of light where the powers keep extinquishing
them. <br />Just as we have helped to narrow the life expectancy gap here from the
outrageous 14 years we died earlier than those in south Tulsa to the still
unjust 11 year difference, we are part of God's candlelighting here.
<br /><br />Finally Christmas reminds us that it is not our projects of food, art,
justice, and parties that truly give birth to an emerging world of resistance
and resiliency here; it is the way we as people of peace connect with other
people, learn from our neighbors lives, and together love the hell out of this
world. <br /><br />It is always about people, about others, especially about loving our enemies, about "those people." In this time when much in the public life is about making enemies, maintaining enemies, being afraid of enemies, Christmas calls us to move in love toward our enemies; they are the world into which our Emmanuel will come, our salvation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is about people not projects because Christ came as a person and not as a project. As we near the beginning of Christmas
time, remembering Christmastide begins not ends Dec. 25, this is our lesson to remember
and share: Christ came/comes not as an Idea, as a philosophy or theology, not as
a Principle, not as A Set Of Great Teachings, or Creed, not for God's sake as
Bylaws, Buildings, Budgets and Bottom Lines, not as a Mission Vision Values
Statement, not as a source of money or status (and so neither should the
church). Christ came/comes as a defenseless living being, hungry, in a violent
oppressed impoverished place, into a loving but out of the norm family, and into
a community of resistance (and so should be the church's location and mission).
<br /><br />So it is how we dedicate ourselves to practice Christmas, incarnation,
all year round: to keep moving into the neighborhood, as God did with the birth
of Jesus and does still, waiting each day for us to go join in the party.<br /><br /><b>PASTORAL PRAYERS</b><br /><br /><b>READING: “The Christmas We Are Waiting For”
Sister Joan Chittister</b><br />The waiting time for Christmas is almost over. But so
what? After all, there is nothing special about waiting. It's what we're waiting
for that matters.<br />One of my favorite Christmas scripture readings takes place
when John is in prison. It is a gospel that confronts us with the need to make a
choice about what we are waiting for.<br />John is no small figure in scripture.
He bellows to peasant and king alike across the land that the world cannot
continue as it has been, that we have to learn to think differently, to live
differently, to see life differently. And for those actions John paid the price.
He is in prison in this scripture, for confronting the King. <br />John has
unmasked the evil of the system, he has called both synagogue and empire to
repent their abandonment of the Torah, their substitution of Roman law for
Jewish law. John, in other words, is a strong and thunderous voice. He calls in
no uncertain terms for repentance. He announces the coming of the Messiah who
would -- like Moses -- free the Hebrew people again.<br />But in prison, John,
weary from trying, disheartened by failure, surely depressed, maybe even
struggling with his own faith, sends a messenger to ask Jesus what surely must
be more than a rhetorical question: Are you the one who is to come or shall we
wait for another?<br />Are you the one for whom I have spent my life preparing?
Are you the one I gave up everything to announce? Are you the one who shall free
Israel -- or have I wasted my time? Has it all been for nothing? "Are you the
one?" John pleads.<br />But if John's question is bad, Jesus' answer is even
worse. Tell John, who has lived to banish the empire, that the blind see, the
lame walk and the poor have the gospel preached to them....<br />Not a single
mention of an army to rout the garrisons, no talk of thunderbolts and falling
thrones, no designation of the leader who would overthrow the emperor. No great
religious crusade, even. No new outburst of religious enthusiasm, no
embellishment of the temple, or the sacrifices, or the processions. No great
blinding political or religious action at all. What John was waiting for, what
John expected -- the rise of Judaism to new glory -- did not come.<br />The answer
was searingly, astoundingly, clear. John had spent his life doing church, but
Jesus did not come to do church; Jesus came to do justice. The Messiah was not
about either destroying or renewing the old order. The Messiah was about
building a new one where, as Isaiah said, the desert would bloom, the wilderness
would rejoice, sorrow and sighing would flee away and the good news of creation
would be for everyone.<br />On Christmas the question becomes ours to
answer.<br />For what have we waited? For what have we given our lives? For
religious symbolism or for gospel enlightenment? For the restoration of the old
order or for the creation of the new?<br />Think carefully about the answer
because on it may well depend the authenticity of our own lives and the
happiness of many who are even now crippled by unjust systems, blinded by their
untruths and fooled into believing that, for them, God wants it that
way.<br />Merry Christmas to you all. And may, where you are, the desert be
brought to bloom.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><b>HYMN FOR CHRISTMAS EVE COMMUNION</b><br />"O LITTLE TOWN OF
BETHLEHEM"<br />O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie<br />Above thy
deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by<br />Yet in thy dark streets
shineth the everlasting light<br />The hopes and fears of all the years are met in
thee tonight.<br /><br />How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is
given<br />So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven<br />No ear
may hear his coming, but in this world of sin<br />Where meek souls will receive
him, still the dear Christ enters in.<br /><br /><b>COMMUNION </b><br />We lift up our hearts
in God for the gifts of Life given for all.<br /><b>Thanks be to God.</b><br />As Christmas
reminds us of how the Divine came into the world in one so small, young, and
fragile, so the Gifts of Life Abundant are in the ordinary made extraordinary,
in the bread of the earth and the juice of the grape becoming food of the
Spirit, incarnations of the Sacred.<br /><b>Thanks be to God.</b><br />As Christmas calls
us to be mindful of all those in need, all without a room, all with grief and
fear, and to work for a world more just, so may this token of our daily bread,
and this token of our cup of forgiveness which quenches the thirst of the soul,
call us to go feed others.<br /><b>Thanks be to God. </b><br />As Christmas offers us peace
and light in times of darkness, may the sacred offering of this small meal, one
to another, inspire us to acts of lovingkindness, all in the Spirit of the One
born upon this night who showed us faithfulness without fear, preparing a
welcome table for all.<br /><b>Thanks be to God.</b><br />And so we join together in saying
the prayer Jesus taught to those who would follow in his radically inclusive
hospitable and justice-seeking way of the Spirit.<br /><b>Our Father, who art in
Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it
is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as
we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
forever, and ever. Amen.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br />BREAD OF NEW LIFE, CUP OF NEW HOPE</b><br />From the
beginning of the community gathered around Jesus, it is a community at its
truest when it is a community that goes to the manger instead of gathering
people into the inn; it is a church that is where those are who have been left
out; we become our community when we go to the mangers, and we can trust that
the star of Christmas will shine over us there, a greater light than all inside
the inn, that we will have a community that reflects the diversity of God's
world just like the diversity that gathered around the manger. Our communion is
where we re-enact the manger, week after week, Christmas after Christmas,
letting Christ be born anew within us so we can be born anew for the world and
help it be born anew.<br />All are worthy and all are welcome in this free and
open communion. We follow the practice of intinction, or dipping of the bread
into the cup before eating.<br />May we remember that in our times of hunger and
brokenness, of sadness even in holiday season, that God provides wholeness and
abundant gifts of Creation all around us, among us, and within us all, more than
enough to share with others. There is always enough of what all need if we all
share and take no more than we need. That is the way it is in God’s inn called
the manger, God’s welcome table, open to all regardless of who they are, what
they believed, especially for those who are suffering, and oppressed. Come let
us celebrate at the table the birth of the one who would make table gatherings
in the midst of strangers and enemies, in the abandoned places of the Empire,
reminding all there of God‘s healing presence.<br />The gifts of bread and juice,
of plate and cup passed one to the other, are Christmas gifts from God that
remind us of the gift given to the world on that first Christmas morning, and
remind us of the gifts we ourselves are as we too, as all are, children of
God. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><b>SHARING CANDLELIGHT FROM THE CHRIST CANDLE<br />"SILENT
NIGHT"</b><br />Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright<br />Round yon
virgin mother and child, Holy infant so tender and mild<br />Sleep in heavenly
peace, sleep in heavenly peace.<br /><br />Silent night, holy night, shepherds quake
at the sight<br />Glories stream from heaven afar, Heavenly hosts sing
Al-le-lu-ia<br />Christ the Savior is born, Christ the Savior is
born<br /><br />Silent night, holy night, Son of God, love's pure light<br />Radiant
beams from thy holy face, With the dawn of redeeming grace<br />Jesus, Lord at thy
birth, Jesus Lord at thy birth.<br /><br /><b>BENEDICTION</b><br />Go now in peace, and may
the peace of God go with you all the days of your life. Go now in joy, finding
the deepest spirit in the simplest of things. Go now in love, dedicated to
making it visible as justice for all. Go now in hope, the spirit of the Christ
Child bringing light into your life and world.</span>Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-81551011017658374212015-12-04T10:27:00.002-08:002015-12-04T10:27:52.802-08:00Advent Is More Than Passive Waiting; Advent is Active "Hearing Others Into Speech" To Birth A More Peaceful World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Second Sunday of Advent Homily: The Candle of Peace, Yes Peace, More Peace, Especially Now</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Rev. Ron Robinson</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>This Advent Season in particular it seems I feel closer to constant "fight or flight" responses than ever before. Maybe you do too. Maybe it is the merchants at the fear-mongering shop, or maybe it is the way evil is accentuated in a time of goodness (hope, peace, joy, love, and all that), the way the so-called culture wars and clashes of civilizations drumbeat seeps into our consciousness and drowns out the little drummer boy, or just social media culture I immerse myself in while doing good and trying out of necessity to raise money for good. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Pro and con and making points, garnering likes?, seem the air we breathe in. Guns, of course. But now prayer. Happy Holidays, of course. Blacklives/alllives. Free speech/hate speech. Your "timeline" your "daily feed" will fill in others. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>For me it is often, on the surface, over words. Words are our lands, providing our refuge as connecting us to the stories and people that have nurtured us. But not everyone experiences our words, our worlds, the way we do. Putting up a wall between our words can seem like an insult, like an invasion taking away our land, our words, when it is really just a way to say your words are not my words. Ideally, any walls between our wordworlds might be more like those windows you can see out of but others can't see in. And much of this, of course, has to do with the history of the owners of the words; which ones have always had protected status, were seen as normal or the right words for all (so much so I might add that this very given status for the words and symbols back-fires and takes away the power of them). </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Here are some examples on smaller more personal scales than the above, but in some ways have been just or more challenging for me because they are personal, and as i believe theologian James Luther Adams said in something of this way, what gets under your skin is your God; what gets you to react is what you treat as Ultimate. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>So you probably know I am a deep dweller in the world of the "missional church" (redundancy though I see and wish that phrase was, and oxymoron as i too often experience it). I remember bristling, though, when someone else bristled and offered up the critique of the word missional and how they could not use it, and didn't like to hear it, because of the connections with missionaries and missionary culture and violence of many kinds. And, at least in my religious association (but like most things I wouldn't be surprised if it was found in other denominations too, though perhaps for varying reasons) there is also the bristling at the word "church" for much the same reason, either its connection being "too Christian" for those of other faiths among us, or for its semantic baggage (too institutional in an anti-institutional age, etc). I bristle, and am quick to jump into defensive posture, at such things. Taking away my land where missional is the very opposite of the missionary stereotype/reality? Where the Greek word missio meaning Sent is at the very heart of my experience of God? Or trying to take away my literal "church" which forms the visible real embodiment of what I find sacred and is where i find "my people" and my history/identity? Lately, it is over they hymn I love and constantly use, for missional church reasons besides its beauty, "We'll build a land" by Carolyn McDade, critiqued for creating images and evoking realities of colonizing, taking away lands and cultures. All of which is ironic because that is what I feel happens in taking away my sacred texts and scriptures that are in the hymn, reflecting not colonizers but an oppressed people seeking liberation and committing to co-creating with God a place among the ruins of Empire where another world of love and justice is possible. For some of us the scriptures, the hymns, the traditions of this and other church seasons are not places we "liturgically visit" but live in. </b></span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so I bristle, when I get defensive and see the critiques. I bristle. I am human. It is okay. But if I turn bristling into debate, or blocking and turning away from the other, then we don't have the chance to create the real sacred edge between our wordworlds where God really is incarnated and dwells and is born. And when I jump to debate mode, or block mode, which is fight or flight, then i am missing out on the real opportunity to go even deeper into my own words I am so bristly about. It is because of the critiques others give based on their own wordworlds of the word missional, the word church, the hymn (and there are soooo many hymns critiqued; I just chose one that recently has me bristling the most) that I learn and grow more in my understandings. With the hymn, for example, the critique helps me to see the realities of different contexts, reminds me that not everyone shares my scriptural waters I swim in, that in some congregations in some locales among some peoples singing the hymn might not only evoke colonizing but in the way the scriptures are sung, used, but not understood in their own life and context, might be more appropriating of cultures in the moment itself. I will still love, still sing the hymn, as still using and promoting "missional church" but I do it all in a deeper, more generous way for having dwelled in the edge place between the wordworlds and affirming others in their different decisions just as heartfelt, mindful and sacred. And my perspective is enriched by having let others know I have been enriched by theirs. (As biology shows us, it is the "edge effect", the spots between diverse eco-regions, the disturbed places, where the most growth occurs. It is the same thing sociologically as what is referred to, and what our local foundation here is named, "a third place." www.athirdplace.org). </b><br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Advent, then, this very time when the edges in our cultures seem more with us, and when depression and sadness dwell with us more deeply too, Advent gives us the opportunity, the mandate even, to experience the edge effect. For Advent is the season when we should shut up and ride along with Miriam and Joseph on the road to Bethlehem, and be a quiet presence, attentive to the needs of the most vulnerable right around us, within us. Advent, and Christmas, is the season when we are reminded that life is not about us, at least not about us as individuals with personal likes and dislikes, but about getting over ourselves, our bristles, our own skins, for good. Christmas, as author and pastor Michael Slaughter titles his book, is not about our birthday, what we are given, but about Jesus and giving to the world. </b><br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And what we can give to the world this particular Advent is to recast Advent time, these weeks intentionally marking the time up to Christmas, from a stereotype of just waiting for something big to happen, from a sense of retreat even where we block off all others for a time and dwell within our wordworld, and make Advent instead into a time of active listening and learning, quiet engaging with others, in order to "hear into speech" as feminists taught us. Hear into Speech is a way to bring about new worlds, incarnations of God. This is the life of Advent. The angelic presence leads Miriam into her Magnificat speech of liberation and praise. Zacharias literally goes speechless then to speech with the pregnancy of Elizabeth and the birth of John the Baptist. Miriam's pregnancy presence leads Elizabeth from her seclusion into speech, and even her son John in the womb expresses himself with his leap of joy. </b><br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The angels in Advent remind us this is not easy work. Angels it is said were of such a frightful countenance as understood in the ancient times of the stories (not the "angelic" presences depicted in so much art) that it prompted the storytellers to introduce them with the familiar speech first from their lips: Be Not Afraid. So we shouldn't be afraid, though we will be, to go into edges of the wordworlds that divide us, and there to hold up our mirrors to ourselves and with others to see things more clearly. To do so takes generosity, but it builds up our resources of generosity too. And if we are not growing in generosity, then what are we doing anyway, particularly this Advent season. </b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>All one more way we conspire against the Empire this Season with the meaning of Advent itself. The www.adventconspiracy.org movement focuses on spending less on things, worshipping and loving more, being more generous with our presence and support for the common good. We can add to that the conspiracy of acting as if there really is more room in the inn for another person and their experience, particularly for those who have been historically silenced. Like the ancient stories, it might catch on. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-70296173569341699462015-12-01T15:49:00.001-08:002015-12-01T15:49:08.925-08:00Advent and The Story of My Faith<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>I love Advent for many reasons but the biggest is because each year it begins replanting me in the Story of my faith. For me everything begins with Story. What story is my story a part of? Each day that answer provides my mission for the day.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>(As a member and minister in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, that denominational part of the story is only part of the story of my faith, for my faith is rooted deeper than the beginnings of the associations in 1793 and 1825, deeper than the start of the very first churches that led up to those associations, back before 1648 Cambridge Platform and back before 1620 in Plymouth and 1606 in Scrooby, back before the Protestant Reformation that gave rise to the movements that would lead to the start of those churches, back through the years and communities both triumphant and heretical and martyred, back to before it was an Empire, back before it was named, a Story with even more ancient roots but planted in the hopes of a few people on the margins of the Roman Empire who still experienced the love of one killed by the Empire. That is why all of the Christian tradition, the scriptures that comfort and discomfort, the hymns based on those scriptures that comfort and discomfort, speak to me and is my struggle, and blessing.)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Advent is the opening chapter of that Story for me; the songs of this season, and the great Christmas hymns plant this story in me again each year too just like the stories in the Bible do that are told this time of year, and just like the stories of the lives of the great, known and unknown, ancestors who also were a part of the Story and have carried it and shaped it down the centuries for me. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>A story of liberation and resistance in a place of oppression, of hope that comes on the margins of society's power, of the Ultimate in the Intimate, God in the most vulnerable. Advent reminds me where to incarnate my life each day. It reminds me why, though God knows there are so many reasons not to be, I am a Christian.</b></span>Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-71285279676269641362015-11-25T20:47:00.001-08:002015-11-25T20:47:07.662-08:00Thanksgiving 2015: A holy day for Grace's Vision of Another World Possible, Here, Now, Coming<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZLeBTgy2dO5ulhMvnq2GqJgBoWND4UjsiW1CtlxrLuUSulYtvWDEE3u5tUHaEmb0lEKufIYNDd3n4gllYjLw9fpoWiT8XY3-Kn5cJb8MTdrEaeWBdcLncNrp97mLIQYq4JS5x/s1600/grace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZLeBTgy2dO5ulhMvnq2GqJgBoWND4UjsiW1CtlxrLuUSulYtvWDEE3u5tUHaEmb0lEKufIYNDd3n4gllYjLw9fpoWiT8XY3-Kn5cJb8MTdrEaeWBdcLncNrp97mLIQYq4JS5x/s320/grace.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Words from our Thanksgiving Service at The Welcome Table: Community In Mission To Show God's Love...:</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rev. Ron Robinson</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are inheritors, for good and ill, of the very 1620 religious community who fled Empire but brought it with them, survived, celebrated thanks in New England, but we also know the evil that comes from thinking we are doing good without mutual community, and so Thanksgiving is now for us mostly a holiday of celebrating Grace. </span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Grace, that abundance and the sacred are found where and when we least expect it. Grace, which traces its word history back to the Greek charis, used in Homer's Odyssey for that moment when Ulysses shipwrecked washes up naked and helpless on the island's shore but in his vulnerability receives a gift from the Gods of a covering over his body so at his weakest he is at his strongest. </span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanksgiving reminds us that Grace comes from anywhere, anytime, through anyone, particularly the ones without power and privilege. In the book of Genesis, Jacob discovers this when alone, exiled, weakened, sleeping on a stone and yet it is right then that he has his dream of God's vision and wakes to realize the sacredness was right there all along and he did not know it, as a place like ours abandoned is also the place of sacredness.</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Kathleen Norris writes, about Grace through the eyes of a baby:</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"One morning this past spring I noticed a young couple with an infant at an airport departure gate. The baby was staring intently at other people, and as soon as he recognized a human face, no matter whose it was, no matte if it was young or old, pretty or ugly, bored or happy or worried-looking he would respond with absolute delight. It was beautiful to see. Our drab departure gate had become the gate to heaven.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"And as I watrched the baby play with any adult who would allow it, I felt as awe-struck as Jacob because I realized that this is how God looks at us, staring into our faces in order to be delighted, to see the creature he made and called good, along with the rest of creation. And as Psalm 139 puts it, darkness is as nothing to God.who can look right through whatever evil we've done in our lives to the creature made in the divine image.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"...And maybe that's one reason we worship--to respond to grace. We praise God not to celebrate our own faith but to give thanks for the faith God has in us."</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We see grace in the story from the bible that is being read all over the world by churches today, of when Jesus is arrested by the Roman Empire; at that moment of helplessness and vulnerability, his response is one of grace, to embody the God who reacts not in fear and violence and retribution, even in and out of his innocence, but responds by reminding all that his power was not like the Empire's power, and that it might be able to control his body but not his soul, and when Peter responds as the Empire would respond, striking out in violence against violence, Jesus bestows the gift of grace upon his captor and restores the severed ear, a moment of grace embodying the kind of real power that changes the world and captures our hearts still, an important moment in how one who follows him is to live and respond--as if another world is possible, is here right now, and is coming, and calling us to participate in it. A world of grace. </span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even centuries later, communities who follow Jesus are continuing to be guided by his Gethsamane Garden vision. We lift up this week the community of resistance to the Nazis, the Bruderhof, the radical reformers, who refused to blend church and state together and were persecuted and in November of 1933 were virtually destroyed by the Nazis and their leader Eberhard Arnold died soon after. Before he died, he wrote: "Life in community is no less necessary for us--it is an inescapable must that determines everything we do and think...We must live in community because all life created by God exists in a communal order and works toward community." Grace continues to lift up the truth of those who were silenced in their time by Empire. In community we experience such Grace. </span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our final word before communion, before eucharist, that Greek word for thanksgiving that we participate in each time we gather, comes from Frederick Buechner on Grace. Our Thanksgiving benediction:</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Grace is something you can never get but only be given. The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach and take it is a gift too." </span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now for the gift we pass to one another, the gift of the bread of life, broken as all is broken, and the cup of hope which makes all whole. </span></b>Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-58573697950611073032015-09-06T08:11:00.002-07:002015-09-06T08:11:48.252-07:00Trading Places--From Host To Guest: Radical Hospitality Is About More Than Welcome, or How Jesus Was Reminded What God's Love Looks Like <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmViJ4e58wORP_wFHI33th0T1ik364n9aJ_pX3gt17D8AXIfVoGu8EjNoEKQBFHqk5yjqOYUZbN1QAAwrO7UcYL9nQ2ZPxnBN4uaxuuRm1a0KcGEDE7JMLYajWUOXJBTs_lLVT/s1600/hospitality-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmViJ4e58wORP_wFHI33th0T1ik364n9aJ_pX3gt17D8AXIfVoGu8EjNoEKQBFHqk5yjqOYUZbN1QAAwrO7UcYL9nQ2ZPxnBN4uaxuuRm1a0KcGEDE7JMLYajWUOXJBTs_lLVT/s320/hospitality-1.jpg" width="222" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In a time, again, of broken communities and lives creating widespread refugees and those without houses or places of their own, when great gaps of inequality are growing wider, when mercy is seen as weakness, we need reminded, as Jesus did once, that offering radical hospitality is more than having a big fancy welcome mat and sign out front of your church, your home, your country. It is about more than providing for strangers. More than what the photo above, as nice as it is, says. It is, at heart, about what God is about---trading places, moving from places of privilege to oppression, becoming a guest in your own world, the way in the biblical story God becomes a refugee from Heaven and becomes a poor helpless infant without a home whose family is forced to leave their country to go to another one. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When our small church decided in 2007
to move across the street into a vacant space three times as big, and when in
2011 to move again a half mile away into another space three times bigger
again, and also at the same time to transform a block of rundown properties
into a community garden, we did it so we could become more hospitable to the
community around us and so we could help our community become more hospitable
itself. We didn’t do it so we could become bigger; in fact we became smaller.
But we did it so the heart of the community could grow bigger, and to save
lives. (speaking of which, It is wonderful to celebrate this week the news that in the 8 years since we made that missional move that the life expectancy gap in our zip code has been reduced from almost 14 years to 10.7 years, between us and the highest life expectancy zipcode on the other side of Tulsa; still outrageous, but shows that radical hospitality and partnerships can indeed save lives.)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We did it in a radical hospitable
way, by becoming a guest in our own place. We took down the signs that we used
to have up that labeled our space as a church. This leads many of those who then
come into the community center or gardens we created---to use the health clinic
or get food, clothes, to use the computers they don’t have at home, to get free
books, to watch television, to get cool in the summer or warm in the winter, to
make art, to attend a community meeting, to party---to often not know that a
church worships at times in that space too, or that a church started it all. That
is fine with us. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We connect with people first, and as
our relationship grows, so does our knowledge about one another; then, if one
is needed, an invitation grows from that to serve with us, to party with us, to
learn with us, and to worship with us, right around the same tables or on the
same sofas, or at the same garden deck and tables, as we use for all our other
gatherings.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Becoming a guest in our own place.
This mantra grew for us from two related sources.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One is the powerful spiritual
connection to place, to the scandal of the particular, to an ecological truth
that we are all guests of this place we call our home. Others prepared our
place for us; others will tend it after us. We do not so much own what the law
says we own as we are owned by this place that calls us into being and puts us
into mission to make it a more loving just hospitable place in our time. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We first understood this in our own
yards and homes. When we have a healthy place, the soil, the insects, the
birds, the animals that come and go through our places, all remind us that
fences and buildings and lot lines do not define our place. What we set down
amidst the place is what is transient. We are the guests. Nature’s corridor for
all that is seen, and most often unseen, is the permanent. Our church’s mission
is to create and protect and make visible such corridors for the healing of the
land, the people, and the community---all of which here in the 74126 has been
damaged by the intersections themselves of racism, environmental neglect,
classism, greed and fear. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is no wonder, in an acknowledgment
of this source of our radical hospitality, that our very first act of
transformation when we bought an abandoned church building for the latest incarnation of the
community center was to have a community art day and to paint over boarded up
windows with a part of a Wendell Berry poem used as a reading in the Singing
the Living Tradition hymnal: “the abundance of this place” is painted on one
board; “the songs of its people and its birds, will be health and wisdom
and indwelling light” is
painted on another. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The other source is connected to the two
main names we are known by: A Third Place, and The Welcome Table. Booth are
grounded in our mission of radical hospitality. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Our community center was first known
as A Third Place, and the foundation we created is now called that. It comes
from the global movement to reclaim free common spaces where people who are
different can meet to make a difference. The first place is your home; the
second place is your work or church or friends or affinity group where you are
with people who share common values or experiences with you. But we need the
“third places/spaces” where, as the bumper sticker on our front door says, “the
most radical thing we can do is to introduce people to one another.” Our
mission is to create such third places, especially in the places and with the
people where others do not wish to go, or to hang out with, and where there has
been a decimation of gathering places. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We now call our community center, our
gardenpark and orchard, and our church The Welcome Table. We commission people
to go create welcome tables in their lives and neighborhoods. The other boarded
up windows in front of our building are now painted with signs that also come
from our hymnal, that say “We’re gonna sit at the welcome table” and “All kinds
of people”. Our source for this is the radical hospitable way of Jesus, who
time and time again creates in a variety of ways welcome where welcome has been
denied. From birth to death, from manger to cross, with the despised, the sick,
the powerful, the oppressed, making a welcome space and offering all the bread
of life and the spirit of the Beloved. Whether in a home, on the road, by the
sea, in synagogue, making visible what the Empire sought to hide: God’s radical
love for all. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Jesus himself will fail at
hospitality. He forgets he is a guest too. The power of the Empire’s way of
hospitality based on influence and honor is ever-present and corruptive. In the biblical reading for today in the revised common lectionary used by many churches like ours, we encounter this story, which is itself like Jesus encountering the woman; we often try to turn away from the story and what it means. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">While
travelling as a guest himself in her land, with the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark
7:24-30), he acts more like a racist, sexist bouncer outside a nightclub than the
one who turned toward all those whom others would not touch. But though we fail
at hospitality, we are still welcomed back by the hospitality of others, even
especially those we have turned away. So it was with that desperate mother seeking
healing for her daughter. She did not take her emotional slap in the face and
turn away, but became the true teacher and the healer, the true host, and reminded Jesus in word and deed of the
kind of God of radical abundance he himself made room for within himself and
sought to share with others. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The purpose of hospitality is for the
mutual transformation of ourselves, for the transformation of the world into
one Welcome Table. We can only do so by turning toward and responding to the
inhospitable within ourselves and within our communities. Wherever we do not
wish to go we need to go. Whomever we do not wish to hang out with we need to
hang out with. Only by becoming guests, do we discover our true place, and from
it our true mission. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-59843063747765264912015-09-05T16:05:00.001-07:002015-09-05T16:05:48.260-07:00Risking Theology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7oa3KX5Nk9Sp9GHZE4vbR8nJaNAUjzTRPS4ayGmDIbD5huYD5QAroBcu2AiQs-pM9rVZr6LOqd0ylySmA4yMZpcQ4nl-5Mu819KGJtvP1BXehBv2IKelKiu_zmRGvHAUvecxT/s1600/peanutstheology.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7oa3KX5Nk9Sp9GHZE4vbR8nJaNAUjzTRPS4ayGmDIbD5huYD5QAroBcu2AiQs-pM9rVZr6LOqd0ylySmA4yMZpcQ4nl-5Mu819KGJtvP1BXehBv2IKelKiu_zmRGvHAUvecxT/s1600/peanutstheology.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbx763OxczFJRquB1DPkAUL-BXzUwfABnXGVpRZkQUNBPlkyNdEco6M2dNOpJ8YRqI_0N8bNX5fyA9A1nL-HQXylsN2qpAPh7q-Msqy-lmycyht30B3hPvlm-ROp1hHO8RhHBw/s1600/practicaltheology1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbx763OxczFJRquB1DPkAUL-BXzUwfABnXGVpRZkQUNBPlkyNdEco6M2dNOpJ8YRqI_0N8bNX5fyA9A1nL-HQXylsN2qpAPh7q-Msqy-lmycyht30B3hPvlm-ROp1hHO8RhHBw/s320/practicaltheology1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;"><br /></b>
<b style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;">Weaving together the web and issues of theological touchstones; each is embedded in one another. Imagine it as a sphere not a chart. Imagine these as points of departure, as collections of questions more than, or not only, of responses and answers. They help us to see and frame life. They are not the only lens. </b><br />
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="line-height: 18.7112px;"><b>theology=study of God, and the Image of God</b></span></span></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="line-height: 18.7112px;"><b>cosmology=study of Creation/Universe/Nature</b></span></span></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<b>theological anthropology: study of humanity</b></div>
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<b>hamartiology: study of evil, suffering</b></div>
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<b>soteriology: study of healing, salvation</b></div>
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<b>Christology: study of a particular form of soteriology, views of Jesus as/and The Christ</b></div>
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<b>missiology: study of the mission of lives and communities growing from soteriology</b></div>
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<b>ecclesiology: study of the church, a product of missiology</b></div>
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<b>eschatology: the vision of the ends, be it of beloved community, of death and life eternal in God. </b></div>
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<b style="font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;">This is my beginning lecture to supervised ministry students in first semester of their field work. It is about applying "the theological map" to the practice of ministry. Our text for these beginning semesters is Laurie Green's Let's Do Theology, so there is some reference to that, and in subsequent lectures I bounce off of Green's work. But here it is about how constructive theology illuminates the practices of ministry, and vice versa. </b></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_48048" style="color: black;"><span id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_48047" style="line-height: 18.7112px;"><b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1492">As a foundation for ways that I will be helping you "connect the dots" of your theological reflection on your ministry this year is to refer back often to the "theological map" of constructive or systematic theology which you got a glimpse into during your first theological courses. It is a way of reading the world and particular conflicts. It seeks to lift up and make visible the theological default modes we operate with, and which others are often operating out of, or in rejection to. So it is good to take an early break to refresh about the map and how it shows theology at work in the small and large ways.</b></span></span></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_4537" style="color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;"><b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1419">Supervised ministry is a course that will enable you to put into practice and further reflection the theological learnings from your introduction to theological work from the first year of seminary, and any other theological courses since then. Among the many lens we will look at, and look through, this semester, this one lens of "the map" is one of the ones that will grow and develop your ministerial skills and will be revisited often during your theological education. </b></span></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;"><b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_5001">Professor Joe Bessler of Phillips Seminary is of course noted for the use of the map and its language to illuminate various ways theology is used. I was fortunate in my studies to have 27 credit hours studying with Prof. Bessler, and so whatever shortcomings there are in this synopsis they are mine, and whatever is useful in it is credited to his thought. </b></span></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_8391" style="color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;"><b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_8387">In short, specific particular issues in church and world and within ourselves, and tension points and questions that come up in ministerial settings can be “diagnosed” by thinking about them as points on the theological “roadmap” and considering ways they are connected to other points on the map. </b></span></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_8913" style="color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;"><b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_8910">How people in a given situation may differ or employ the imago Dei will affect how they “read” and “interpret” and “respond” differently in the same situations. It is good at this point in the semester to remember the learnings you have gleaned up to this point in seminary education and how to use them, rethink them, when brought to bear in practice so reflect back to your entry level theological. By the way, the way the map works, is that the imago Dei is also a part of this web of touchstones, and so issues and reflections of any of the map sites, such as evil and suffering, or human nature, nature itself, of the church responding to suffering, or of ethical issues, or conflicts over church and its mission and what it should focus on, or issues of the ends and the end, of heaven and hell, all the eschatological issues, all of these as we work in them will also often affect and change ours and others Imago Dei. </b></span></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<span id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_8932" style="color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;"><b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_8929">The issues of church life that we focus on particularly in this course, and there are legion of them, fall under the point on the map called ecclesiology and missiology (the being and the mission of the church; or the mission that calls the church into being) and they are often connected back to what we find salvific, to soteriology and Christology views. When there are differences of soteriology (what brings healing) between people, for example, there will often be differences in how churches are seen by different people. Same for how they view Jesus as the Christ. </b></span></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_9512" style="color: black; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;">And so dealing with ecclesial issues this semester, what the church should be doing and how, what ministry is, and how we are as ministers, on a variety of issues, is often more about other theological issues than just the issue at hand. As many of you have noted already, you understand that there are systems at work. </b></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_36352" style="color: black; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;">Keep in mind that what some find salvific is connected to what they often see as the "major wrong” in the world, especially in what they see as where suffering is, to how we view evil and sin, and "what needs saving." Classic case is those who see sin mostly as a personal issue, or those who see it mostly as a social issue. But our understandings then of that point on the map called hamartiology, of sin and suffering and evil, and what we find amiss and in need of salvation, is itself connected to our views of human nature and its essence and goals, to what is called theological anthropology; this in turn is connected to our view of Nature and Creation itself, out of which humanity comes and is connected, and how humanity is seen as part of the universe and life itself, which of course is connected with our images and ways of describing and understanding God. Which brings us back to the Imago Dei. </b></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_44027" style="color: black; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;">And on the other side of the ecclesial point on the theological map, the issues of how we see and do and be the church affect and are connected to outcomes of lives of faithfulness and grace and praxis and ethics, all of which contributes to one's overall eschatological understanding, to what we picture as beloved ultimate community, toward the ends or aims or end of life in God. </b></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_44083" style="color: black; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;">So there you have the sphere of the theological map (more sphere than linear).</b></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_44052" style="color: black; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;">All questions, conflicts, issues on any of the theological map points, or stations or doctrinal points, are shaped by how we view and see and experience the other points, and how we respond to the issues at any one constructive theological point will have a bearing on the others in the web or weave of the fabric of our theological world. </b></div>
<div id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_1399" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_47841" style="color: black; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;">When there is a specific issue "within" the church it often has its deeper roots "without" with how different understandings of salvation, christology, or missiology are viewed; often differences "within" church mask differences of other theological stations and responses. Conversely, how we resolve issues within the church and in the church's relationship with the world has effects in other theological ways. Be attuned, again, as you encounter questions, issues, conflicts (healthy or not) to how the theological map might be running throughout even though it is not at all part of the explicit issue at hand. In this way this year can be seen as another continuous step in connecting the dots of theology and of your own ministerial formation and theological reflection.</b></div>
<b id="yui_3_17_2_2_1441487401969_50470" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.2px; line-height: 18.7112px;">And as we will be seeing throughout the semester by reflecting out of Green's text, Let's Do Theology, and out of our practices of ministry, there are many other models and ways of engaging in this important work of reflection. Reflection itself is often a word that can come with baggage, I might add; it has a passive air about it, as something that comes received if we just still our minds and meditate on it; there is some truth to this of course, and mindfulness is key in discernment. But I will end by saying that doing theology, applying different lens and being conversant in their use, is also about risk. It is, as Greene says, an activity. I would say in this age it is a risky activity, and one we should take and help others risk taking too. </b>ype your summary here
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</span>Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-65168164805272516072015-07-18T19:14:00.002-07:002015-07-18T19:14:54.511-07:00What Feeds Us: Miracles in the 74126, Meditation on The Loaves and Fishes, The Parables of the Whole Wheat Rotini, The Stevia and the Strawberries, The Halloween Nachoes and the 80 Year Old Woman, Sermon July 19, 2015 Unitarian Universalist Church of Bartlesville<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What Feeds Us<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron Robinson,
Unitarian Universalist Church of Bartlesville, Sunday, July 19<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Reading:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If we will have the wisdom to
survive,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">to stand like slow growing trees<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">on a ruined place, renewing,
enriching it...<br />
If we will make our seasons welcome here, <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">asking not too much of earth or
heaven, <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">then a long time after we are dead<br />
the lives our lives prepare will live<br />
here, their houses strongly placed<br />
upon the valley sides...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Fields and gardens rich in the
windows. <br />
The river will run<br />
clear, as we will never know it...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And over it, birdsong like a canopy.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows,<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Stock bells in noon shade.<br />
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down<br />
the old forest, an old forest will stand,<br />
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.<br />
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.<br />
Families will be singing in the fields...<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">They will take nothing from the
ground they will not return<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Whatever he grief at parting. <br />
Memory,<br />
native to this valley, will spread over it<br />
like a grove, and memory will grow<br />
into legend, legend into song, song<br />
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,<br />
the songs of its people and its birds,<br />
will be health and wisdom and indwelling<br />
light. This is no paradisal dream.<br />
Its hardship is its possibility.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">- Wendell Berry<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sermon:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today we will be off
for the annual church camp east of Tulsa called the Southwest UU Summer
Institute. I first heard about it at a person’s house for a newcomers party
when I started attending my first UU church in 1977 in Oklahoma City. Except
for one or two years, I have been going to SWUUSI ever since. This year’s theme
is Food and Justice and Faith, something dear to our hearts in our church, or
missional community, in far north Tulsa. My wife Bonnie will be doing a
workshop on planting a garden and harvesting community; I will be doing a
workshop on church as a garden, as a meal, as a store, and as a shelter. This
sermon grows out of preparing for the workshop. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">First, a few facts,
then a few parables, or miracle stories, on what really feeds us. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In 2009, the University of Oklahoma did a nutrition study
with us that found in our area of far north Tulsa 60 percent can't afford
healthy food even if there was access to it; 55 percent worry about the amount
of food they have; 29 percent skip meals. In 2013 we did another study with OU
of those who came to our free cornerstore pantry. It showed that 52.6 percent
of those who come to us have high food insecurity; and 42.1 percent have very
high food insecurity, experiencing hunger symptoms when surveyed; 68.4 percent
of households have at least one member with a nutrition-related chronic
disease; 53 percent suffer depression and admit it; 47 percent with anxiety; 53
percent have high blood pressure; 32 percent high cholesterol; 47 percent
obese. 63 percent have under $10,000 annual household income, meaning they are
part of the couple hundred thousand Oklahomans who are too poor for Obamacare
because our state didn’t expand Medicaid. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Getting people food then is just a small part of what is
needed, but for many it is what is needed right at that moment they come; it
takes a little bit of the hunger and anxiety edge off that makes it just a
little bit easier to make better daily life choices and responses, to move, if
just for a little while, from deep to light survival mode. In our zipcode that
dies 14 years sooner than those on the other side of town, the matter of food
is a matter of physical and mental health, and from those, a matter of civic health,
the ability to participate in society, which itself feeds back to better
overall physical and mental health. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Food is part of the social determinants of health that along
with genetics accounts for 80 percent of that life expectancy, and yet as a society
we only spend 20 percent of health dollars on those social determinants, like
food projects and neighborhood environments, which contribute to 80 percent of
health outcomes. Our zipcode has the worst health care access of any zipcode in
Tulsa, but as important as that is to life expectancy, and we need better
access, we need even more the shift to resourcing the social determinants. Community matters, above all. It is why we
repeat, and repeat, that we do not aim to give out food, as much as we strive
to give out community opportunities. It is funny though that so many people
want to fund food; they believe helping us give food, which is vitally needed,
will affect those statistics; but what doesn’t get funded, and what would
really affect those statistics, is to fund community opportunities, increasing portals
of relationships. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now for the parables and miracles. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">First, The parable of the Whole Wheat Rotini. In ordering
food from the Food Bank for our free grocery store, we had a chance to order
boxes of whole wheat rotini pasta without having to pay a shared fee for them;
we thought, pretty healthy, pretty easy to cook, win win. Now, our store is
like a store by design—people shop in it for what they want; we don’t just hand
out bags of groceries (we do that a few times a year as we did this past
Thursday when we give out four or five tons in one hour, but that is an outside
event and not in the store). And week after week the rotini sat virtually
untouched. We kept upping how many bags they could to count as one item; kept
getting untouched. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So we started carefully asking how come—the first response
was often that it being whole wheat, looking brown, was just too different from
the noodles they were used to and their family wouldn’t eat it and so they didn’t
want to waste one of their precious number of allowed items for something that
wouldn’t be eaten by their family. Well, that’s why we do the store the way it
is; people’s choices empower them which creates capacity within them which
brings hope which brings change. That was a good familiar lesson to be reminded
of—how to work in relationship as an ally, and not as “a provider”. Allies “don’t
know best”. End of parable, I thought. But the good parables, like good
relationships, keep opening up more truth. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As we were asking and prompting about the Rotini, a few brave
souls opened up to us that it would do no good to take the pasta home because
they didn’t have water turned on in their home. Once we started asking about
that, more and more said the same. Choosing between electricity and food and
medicine and water, water usually was the first to go. The Rotini sitting on
the shelves then led us into a more intense water ministry; we were able to get
a lot of tornado leftover bottled water from Oklahoma City, giving out double
cases to those without water at home, and we got other donations of water in
bigger jugs, and told people to keep the jugs and come back and use our hydrant
out back of the community center, or the hydrant at our gardenpark and orchard.
This summer the water donations have dried up, the tornado water all gone, and
it is one of the most requested items. And now, thanks to a failure of being
able to give away whole wheat Rotini, we are tracking the prevalence of a lack
of water in homes, which is allowing us to get a better understanding of what
home consists of in our neighborhoods, where campers, RVs, shipping crates,
tents, cars that don’t run, abandoned houses, abandoned trailers, someone’s
garage, campsites and more are homes; and we have learned more about what it
takes for someone to be fed, which is more than food. As always, we, who live
in the neighborhoods too, are taught by our neighbors, and in return we can be
a more effective partner shining a light on realities and walking toward the
suffering. The parable also teaches me that we should have a right to at least
a base amount of water in the home for free; over a certain amount, charge; but
allow a set amount for free. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Next, the parable of the Stevia and the Strawberry. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So five summers ago we were busy at this time trying and
trying to raise the funds to buy a block of abandoned houses and trashed out
properties up on a hill in our area in order to turn it into a gardenpark and
orchard. We did it. Four years ago this summer we planted the orchard. For
three years after that we had the spiritual lesson of having, in our healthy
food desert, to pick off the fruit as it was coming on in order for the energy
of the trees to go into the roots and help establish the tree for its future
yield. It is actually a law from Leviticus that we like. And at the garden we
have planted successful herb beds full of basils, rosemary, lavender, fennel, dill,
several mints, and stevia. It is the bed that we use to show how you can eat
right from the beds, while you are working on other beds or just to feed
yourself while enjoying the park and the view of downtown Tulsa or Turley Hill
or the Bird Creek bottomland. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Stevia is a sweet tasting plant. When the neighborhood kids
come into the garden, tentatively, we always try to get them to eat straight
from the garden beds. We follow a recipe of Taste, Learn to Cook, then grow. We
learned early on that some community gardens in some places may grow out of
community first; it seems to be the original typical way, for an urban
apartment complex or neighborhood for example where people already know they
want to grow their own food for taste and health and pockebook, and have the
skills, and all they need is land and organization. But in many places, like
ours, there is no community first, the social capital is gone, and there isn’t much
experience with tasting or much knowledge about cooking, let alone growing. The
garden has to come first, we have learned, and community is one of the things
it grows; sometimes there is drought and little harvest of community; sometimes
the yield is amazing. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We get a few schools that bring their young people out to see
and help in the gardenpark; usually these are from across town and not from our
own area, and part of that is because for more than a few years more than a few
of our school buildings were closed because of education cuts. Their visits to
us are fund, a little chaotic of course, sometimes the work that gets done is
not too proportional to the time organizing and helping them, but they are
always worth it because we tell them that a little bit goes a long way in a
poverty area, but even moreso that they are now the storytellers and
ambassadors for us, and what they learn they can teach others about us and
places like ours. But there is always some heartbreak when these students
travel from across town to be with us; first, it is because for most of them it
is the first time they have been north or into north neighborhoods and not just
travelling through on a highway; the stories they tell of what people say to
them before they come north, about watching out, being scared, is sad. It is
even more heartbreaking, though, when the students run straight to the garden
bed full of the mints and stevia and start in eating them; they recognize them,
they have them in their beds at home. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Heartbreaking because the very same day we might have youth
from our neighborhood come by and not only can we not get them to try eating
out of the bed with the stevia, we sometimes can’t get them to pick and eat the
strawberries. They may not be safe or taste good because they haven’t come from
the store, from 1500 miles away. They often do not know what cucumbers are,
where pickles come from. The executive director of the Food Bank says that more
and more students are growing up without ever having experienced a sit-down
family meal around a table with food cooked at home; at school, at home, meals
come in a box. This parable teaches me that a 21<sup>st</sup> century home
economics course for all students should be required. And it has motivated us
more to create a future greenhouse at the park for teaching as well as growing
year round, and to use the park as a social place, as an outside café; feeding
people from the garden so they will see not only how the food tastes better
than anything you can buy at a store, but as gardening social activist Ron
Finley says, Growing your own food is like printing your own money. And it has
spurred us on to create five gallon buckets full of tomato and pepper plants from
the garden to get to people from our free grocery store who want practice growing
food at home. We know that the vision isn’t to get people to come and use our
community garden, even to come and find community with us, but the vision for
deeper health is to go to them and get them growing at home, across different
yards, developing the free food movement where they have their vegetables out
front by the curb along with other neighbors growing other vegetables out by
their curbs, where people know they can walk from house to house sampling. Food
as portal to relationships in an era when the old front porch or stoop has
often been lost. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We are speaking of what the bumper sticker says: The most
radical thing we can do is introduce people to one another. Especially people
who don’t look, act, think alike. One way we do that in our place where there
are no venues for entertainment, no movie houses, is to put on community
festivals, and usually we do that at holiday times. This leads me to the miracle
of the Halloween Nachos and the 80 Year Old Woman. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once we made our missional church transformation and moved on
faith into a rented commercial space twice as big as our original rented space,
we held our second annual Halloween festival for the community and whereas
before when we invited people to our Halloween party inside the space we called
church we had about 20 people who all looked and thought pretty much like us,
now in our new space, not knowing who all would show up, we had more than 200. And
they showed up not just to have fun in costumes and get prizes and treats, but
to eat. We had prepared food in special scary presentation styles, but we also
had just chips and nacho sauce. After the special food was gone in a few
minutes, the chips and nachos were too. Bonnie went to the store and got more
and came back and they were gone. She went to the store and got even more and
came back and they were gone. Our party only was to last two hours too. She
went to the store again and got even more and came back and it was gone too.
That was three trips she had made to the store getting more each time and it
was all gone and the party was half over and people were still coming in for
the first time. Back she went. Three more times each time getting more than
before and it was still all gone by the end of the two hour event. And of the
200 or so people who came, at least half were of different ethnicities than the
majority of us anyway who were putting on the party for the community. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of those who came, though, was an 80 year old white
woman, who had lived in the community all her life. She sat and watched the
party, and the people feeding on the Halloween nachos, and she was amazed.
Those she saw were her neighbors, living on the street she had literally lived
on for 80 years, all her life; these neighbors had lived around her for
probably five to ten to twenty years, and she was seeing them for real for the
first time. She kept saying afterwards: they were hungry; they were hungry. I
didn’t know we had so many hungry people in our town. She is herself an amazing
person; she is now 88 years old and is still working in child care at her home.
But she is a different person ever since that night. And she talks about when
she does retire how she is going to come volunteer at our free grocery store to
help the neighbors she really met for the first time that Halloween night in
our community center. In fact, this past Thursday at the Grocery Giveaway
Event, in the 100 plus degree heat, she was there, handing out sacks of
tomatoes. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">She had not seen the reality of the world around her, and how
her world had changed right around her, as the neighborhood went from the employed
working poor to the unemployed self-working poorer, sicker, and less resourced
people. So, who was fed that night, really? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I close with the ancient miracle story, parable of sorts, one
that is being read and studied in churches all over the world on this day. The loaves
and fishes, or as it is called in The Message version, Supper For Five
Thousand. Interestingly, in the Gospel of Mark, the oldest gospel, the story of
this feeding comes right after a story of the feeding of what today we might
call the One Percent. Herod’s kind of party that was all about the wants and
desires of those few powerful ones who were there in the palace and ended with
the execution of John the Baptist. Right after that, Mark tells the story of
Jesus’ party, his kind of feeding. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The story says: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“The apostles then rendezvoused with Jesus and reported on
all that they had done and taught. Jesus said, “Come off by yourselves; let’s
take a break and get a little rest.” For there was constant coming and going.
They didn’t even have time to eat.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">[We know that feeling; often we set the worst examples for
those we wish to serve; we need to remind one another, as Jesus did and as we
try to do, that what we really are feeding one another with is not food and
water, etc., but it is presence of one another which is blessedness enough and
from which all else can grow and flow. We need, as here, to first feed
ourselves with rest and renewal and reflection.]<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">32-34 </span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So they got in the boat and went off to a remote place
by themselves (the story continues; in most translations it says they go to a
deserted place, an abandoned place of Empire as we might say; not to the
coolest part of town, not to the overserved.] Someone saw them going and the
word got around. [Oh man! There goes the rest. Everytime, it seems, we try to
step away for a day, a week, there is a crisis that seeks to pull us back; we
know that so well.] And yes, From the surrounding towns people went out on
foot, running, and got there ahead of them. When Jesus arrived, he saw this
huge crowd. At the sight of them, his heart broke—like sheep with no shepherd
they were. He went right to work teaching them. [one of the key questions of
the missional church is for whom does your heart break, or for whom would it
break except our society keeps from focusing on them as it should? And let
church be grown in response to that question.]<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">35-36 </span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When his disciples thought this had gone on long
enough—it was now quite late in the day—they interrupted: “We are a long way
out in the country, and it’s very late. Pronounce a benediction and send these
folks off so they can get some supper.” [probably more concerned about their
own supper, though, their own interruption in their plans, their jealousy that
Jesus wasn’t spending enough time caring about their needs; after all they were
the leaders, the insiders?]<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">37 </span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Jesus said, “You do it. Fix supper for them.” [There
is the big difference. To the disciples, the crowd was not a community; they
were not neighbors, but needs; the disciples saw them as individuals who should
go eat by themselves, in their own homes. Reminds me, of what another 80 year
old long time member of our community once said about all the meals we held,
all the community connections we sought to create: What’s with them? She said,
of the people coming; Don’t they have homes of their own?” Jesus sees them as
one people, as part of the group, not as us and them. We feed our own because
they are our own.]<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The disciples replied, “Are you serious? You want us to go
spend a fortune on food for their supper?” [It is always about what it will
cost us; and the disciples are thinking they have to do a feeding more like in
the mode of Herod than Jesus, to spend a fortune; there is only way to feed
that many, they think; and there is if you keep within the same framework, same
default mode, as the Empire, that it has to be big and impressive, well done,
orderly. To do less might be to shame Jesus, they’d be thinking.]<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">38 </span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But he was quite serious. “How many loaves of bread do
you have? Take an inventory.” [See, he says, you don’t have to look elsewhere
for your food, your resources; don’t have to bring in food from a thousand
miles away; feeding, church, relationships are really simpler than all that.
There is always Enough. The theology of Enough. The church of the Enough, we
say. For our needs, not our greeds.]<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That didn’t take long, they discovered. “Five,” they said,
“plus two fish.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Jesus got them all to sit down in groups of fifty or a
hundred—they looked like a patchwork quilt of wildflowers spread out on the
green grass! [And here we see the power of growing smaller to do bigger things;
the power of connecting people with one another, in groups they are connecting
not with him as the sole teacher and leader and provider; just re-orienting the
space changes things, makes the miracle possible. Reminds me of the church of
80 that was struggling to survive to pay a full time minister and pay for its
building and programs, and the minister comes in one day, tells the people to
get in eight groups of ten based on who lived closest to whom, and he says this
is your new church; these are who you will meet with weekly and where you will
serve the neighborhoods, and we will get together as a group once a month to
share and celebrate; and what was a very vulnerable situation became a vanguard
church; the minister also took a part time job in a poorer part of town where
his less money could go further, and after awhile more and more of his members
were moving to do the same, resourcing and sustaining both their lives and the
struggling community.] <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, lifted his face to
heaven in prayer, blessed, broke, and gave the bread to the disciples, and the
disciples in turn gave it to the people. He did the same with the fish. They
all ate their fill. [Community, as the theologian Jorgen Moltmann writes, is
the opposite of both poverty and wealth; Jesus had helped to create community,
how they saw themselves as one, empowering one another; that filled much of
their need that so often without it fuels our greed; some think maybe in the
more connectioal groups formed they discovered more food among themselves; some
think it was a physical miracle of multiplication, making more of what hadn’t
been there before. Both those standard approaches to the miracle of the loaves
and fishes focuses on the wrong thing; like the disciples, the interpreters are
focusing on the physical manifestation, the bread and fish, when we should be
focusing on what has been changed in and among the people.] <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The story concludes, driving home this point: The disciples
gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. More than five thousand were at the
supper. [Some might I am sure, and I am naming no party affiliations, today
read this and think see all we have to do is cut back to five loaves and two
fishes, or the equivalency in the food programs for the poor, because the poor
don’t really need more, they just need to be more grateful for what little has
been given to them and see how that will miraculously make them feel better?
But Mark ends it, with Mark’s great irony: After all that, there were twelve
baskets of leftovers. Jesus’ way was to result with more than is needed for
those in need, not less and less. The leftovers are gathered together and will
be used to feed the community at large, those not there, just as the 99 percent
put more proportional resources into the community today than the 1 percent.]. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So, in the end, who is fed in the story of the loaves and
fishes? Not only those in need and hungry there, and not only the disciples who
were fed the truth of growing relationships of love and justice, but the whole
community, including those who might have been on the sidelines mocking those
who had gone to such extremes in hopes and trust of being fed both by spirit
and by body. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What feeds us, nourishes us, helps us grow in service with
others and roots our lives in the Ground of Being itself? Love that reveals how
we ourselves are foods of the Spirit for another and for those who follow us. Love
that, as our reading from Wendell Berry said this morning, in words we have
painted outside our community center, reveals the abundance of this place which
will be the health and wisdom and indwelling Light. The very hardship, he
reminds us, the very audacity of our vision to save lives and the life of the
spirit of our community, is its possibility. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-78229307908923974322015-06-01T15:11:00.005-07:002015-06-01T20:47:35.947-07:00A People. So Bold. (charge to the congregation at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fayetteville, AR)<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0srDj-Cw_i5jWT4Q11nEQPgDpDX6bcyAFX3mFqTYrzKoHk5M-SMzdrBuDXVzIMcaRMVU7n3n2o_xYhfd-3IuoRPKMyriobPX2MTsZRLY8SJPXrbNvRKOGVG4pzkPUfrTjxksI/s1600/boldness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0srDj-Cw_i5jWT4Q11nEQPgDpDX6bcyAFX3mFqTYrzKoHk5M-SMzdrBuDXVzIMcaRMVU7n3n2o_xYhfd-3IuoRPKMyriobPX2MTsZRLY8SJPXrbNvRKOGVG4pzkPUfrTjxksI/s1600/boldness.jpg" /></a></div>
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Charge to the Congregation at the
Installation of the Rev. Jim Parrish, UU Fellowship of Fayetteville, AR,
Sunday, May 31, 2015<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Rev. Ron Robinson of The Welcome
Table Church, and Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, and Phillips
Theological Seminary<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your charge is simple.
In the words of one of our hymns, you are charged to be “a people so bold.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I should be bold and
just sit down now and let that soak in….but let me go into a little more about
that charge. And before I get to the boldness part, let me start with your
charge “to be a people…” Before you can act, before you can do, you must know
what it means to be, together, especially in our tradition of covenant not
creedalism. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To be a congregation is
to be “a people”. But not just any people who happen to gather together and
sign a membership book and vote on things and generally believe in the same
things or same method of believing in things. That, as our church historian and late Harvard professor
Conrad Wright used to say, is not a church, not a congregation, “but a
collection of religiously-oriented individuals.” We, who honor individual conscience, must
always struggle not to be a collection, but to be a congregation; for a
collection of individuals will always be turned inward, anxious about each
individual, making one another, our likes, dislikes, feelings, opinions, into our
mission, our default mode for church. However, the more we find ourselves
rooted in being a people, something more than our individual selves that will
move us into mission to serve beyond ourselves--to get over ourselves, for
good. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A church is at heart
not a 501c3 non profit organization with religious aims; that may be what it
uses to help fulfill its reason for being, but never forget that the mere perpetuation
of the organization recognized by the state is not the end itself but only a
means to the deeper identity and purpose, that of making its view of the Sacred
incarnate, visible, in and to the world.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So now onto the charge
to be bold. Our times today of so much change, change and injustice in the
world around us, change of religious landscape, requires us to be bold in order
to survive and to thrive. Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, in his
ordination sermon of 1841 called The Transient and the Permanent in
Christianity, said the church of the first century did not do for the fifth
century, and the church of the fifth century did not do for the fifteenth
century, and the church of the fifteenth century did not do for his nineteenth
century. Only a boldness of spirit that relies on something deeper and more
permanent than church forms and personal likes and ideas can re-create the church
needed for its times. And the church that did for his nineteenth century, and
the church that did for our 20<sup>th</sup> century, even late 20<sup>th</sup>
century, is not doing for our 21<sup>st</sup> century. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is a privilege to be
standing with you here again today, saying these things which in some ways are
a variation on what I have said over the past few decades here. It has been my
joy to know to some degree all of your ministers. It dawned on me that perhaps
I know something of your history even moreso than many of you who might be new
here these past few decades.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So my first part of the
Boldness charge is to be bold and know your history, your stories for good or
ill, and to know our tradition’s history of faith, for good and ill, to open up
and see yourself as a People that is more than just you who are here, or you,
including those not here, who are members based on bylaws. You are those who
have gone before you, here and elsewhere; their presence is here; give them a
voice. Knowing this about the past helps us not only to get over ourselves, but
is the first step in opening ourselves up to see ourselves as part of those
beyond us in the here and now, to hear their stories, and of those who may be a
part of our future. Be Bold and Be vulnerable to Change. Know that Story
counts, history matters. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Next, Be Bold and
Encourage, Support, Require Your Leadership, and Your new Minister, to be Bold,
to Lead. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This covenant we lift
up today, between congregation and minister, is vital in order for you to be
able to nurture and grow the other covenants we have also in the free church
which you are also charged with keeping.
All of these covenant relationships remind us we are a people, are more
than those who gather for worship. Conrad Wright said that ever since the
Cambridge Platform of 1648, we have had these relationships, roles and
responsibilities, covenants that make up a free church. 1. that between a
person and the church (symbolized today by Jim and Theresa joining the church)
2. between the church and its elected leadership, including its called minister,
which we celebrate today; 3. Between that called minister and other ministers,
in one’s tradition and beyond (which Phil Douglas brought on behalf of the
Ministers Association); 4. Between the church and other churches in one’s own
tradition and beyond (which Susan Smith brought in her greetings); But also,
also, 5. Between the church and its parish, or the world around it; and 6.
Between the church and God, or that Experience of the Sacred or Ultimacy which
calls the church into being in the first place and gives it direction. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These covenants are
themselves an interdependent web that enable our existence. When any one of
them is neglected, when the bonds of any of them are severed, there is a ripple
effect of added stress and fragility that reverberates into the other
covenants. But the good news is that it works the other way too. Strengthen any
of them, and you strengthen all of them. The more boldness and trust and
leadership you put into any of them, the more the others inherently will grow.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So notice how much of
what we celebrate here today will have its success depend not just on how you
commit to your minister, but on how you commit to one another, to other
churches, to the world around you, and to the Spirit that gives you life. And
let me say it will be so easy, so tempting to just focus on the first four of
those, for they are the most visible, they are the ones we try to write codes
of ethics and bylaws and right relationship covenants around. They are the ones
that reigned supreme when we lived in a Churched Culture. But the church that
only focuses on those four will not be living its fullest, will mistake the
urgent for the important, and will spend its wheels, will relive its past, will
not be able to be a people so bold, especially for our new Unchurched Culture,
our post-modern, post-denominational, post-congregational culture. No, it is
the last two, the more externally focused covenants, which, in fact, the other
four are for. Serving The presence of
the Sacred in the World is what calls the church into existence and gives it
its shape. And when the world changes around it, the church must change to keep
serving the Sacred in it. That takes Boldness. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So, be a people so bold,
but Not for your sake--for the world’s sake. We are in uncertain, fearful,
hurting times when people are shrinking their vision, their generosity, their
values, their connections with others, and linking God to convenience and
comfort instead of to conscience and community, to those who have made it
instead of the least, the last, the lost. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A few years ago I
preached the ministerial installation sermon at the oldest continuous church in
our Unitarian Universalist association, the church of the Pilgrims, First
Parish in Plymouth, Mass, begun in Scrooby England in 1606 and landed on this
continent in 1620. The Rev. Tom Schade gave the charge to this historic
congregation, and he captured well, as he does, some of this need to be bold,
again and again, particularly in these times. Among the things he said was this:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“</span></b><b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">There is a profound spiritual,
religious, political, social and economic crisis in our country today. I won’t
go through the list of problems. But the crisis lies in the fact that we cannot
seem to get our hands around them; we cannot focus. Huge shifts and
transformations going on all around us, but the country and the culture cannot
keep up, that our thinking is skittering along the surface, distracted, like a
kid with ADD in a comic book store. And
here we are, Liberal Religion, and we have not yet found our voice. We stand
for some timeless truths and some rock-solid values and some fundamental commitments,
we have not found our voice – a way to speak clearly to the people about how to
live in these times. We will find our
voice only through trial and error, and that is the work of our ministry, and
to do it, our ministers must be willing to take risks. My Question to you (he
added to them, and I add to you), is this: Do you conduct your congregational life in a way that makes your minister
brave? Or do you conduct your congregational life in ways that will make your
minister more cautious, more nervous, more anxious and more afraid?”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">And so I close my charge to you
by saying this: the world, right outside our doors, needs your boldness, your
trials and errors, your mistakes, your colossal failures, because the love in
them will come through and will be planted and will transform the world. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I love who you are and who we are
as a faith community, but I love the world out there and all the scared
struggling shrinking people even moreso. Let me bring this charge, these
greetings, ultimately from them. For them and from them, I say: Let your new minister lead you in being the
boldest people of them all so we have an ally in finding our boldness, and so
we, too, can be “a people.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-49935901670808261892015-04-19T16:54:00.001-07:002015-04-19T16:54:16.077-07:00A Pauline Guide For The Liberal Church: The First Century Teaches The 21st<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsj2rZYAxKo3z5lf5MJooPY86U8_xdIOAhYDOiCkv5nVm_LZ-RC57mvVZSKmPk1zGuRXtjjWGmzHuBNC4hUfP_5d6tAtQFmNsQvY28fwtzFfG375boWryGqMS0mNWxwPtipHAP/s1600/realpaul.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsj2rZYAxKo3z5lf5MJooPY86U8_xdIOAhYDOiCkv5nVm_LZ-RC57mvVZSKmPk1zGuRXtjjWGmzHuBNC4hUfP_5d6tAtQFmNsQvY28fwtzFfG375boWryGqMS0mNWxwPtipHAP/s1600/realpaul.jpg" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">An Ancient Voice, Revealed Anew, For
The 21<sup>st</sup> Century: A Guide To Faith In The Margins From St. Paul For
the Liberal Church Today<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sermon at Unitarian Universalist
Church of Stillwater, OK, April 19, 2015<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron Robinson<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Thank you loyal folks
who showed up today, especially if you knew ahead of time a little bit about the
subject of the sermon. Not often these days would a Unitarian Universalist
minister, or I dare say many others, touch on Paul of Tarsus, for fear of
preaching to an empty house. But we have a history, a heresy, of understanding
and applying new ideas and realities in religion, and there is so much new
about this ancient voice. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> A new understanding of Paul, “The Real Paul”
as the title of one new book by seminary professor Brandon Scott puts it, is
not just about setting the historical record straight on this person who back
in the time of the millennial change in 2000 was voted one of the most
influential persons of the past 2000 years; as is often cited, letters by him
or attributed to him, or stories about him, constitute the largest percent of
the officially sanctioned Christian scriptures known as The New Testament. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">No, I am mostly
interested in how what guided him can be touchstones for a transformative
spiritual life and growing communities of justice in our century. He certainly
has been this in my own life and my commitments to forming a community of
liberation in a place so many seek to abandon. And it strikes me that the kind
of fast changing world in which Paul lived, one moving from an oral to a
manuscript culture (as we are moving from print to electronic), one of great
religious diversity, one of great violence by an Empire, links much of the
pre-modern and our post-modern world. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some 15 years ago, I
stood in the pulpit here, newly graduated from seminary, and preached about the
top ten lessons I had learned during my studies. Number one was The Real Paul.
But since there were ten I covered, my number one didn’t get the full
exploration and explanation it, and you, deserved. Since then I have been
giving workshops or sermons on Paul, or weaving my continuing study of him,
into them; I will be doing so at this upcoming General Assembly of the UUA in
Portland in June in one about Faith in the Margins: what the first century
church can teach the 21<sup>st</sup> century church. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Let me start with a
little Unitarian Universalist history to let you know I am not too crazy for
preaching and looking at Paul, whom so many liberals have dismissed because
they think he steered the church from the “religion of Jesus” to the “religion
about Jesus.” <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Paul’s letters were
used by William Ellery Channing in the famous 1819 Unitarian Christianity
sermon that helped form our association. A famous quote from Paul’s first
letter to the Corinthians, “as in Adam all fell, so in Christ shall all rise”
was often used by the early American Universalist church to defend its belief
in universal salvation. Writing after the second world war, one of our famous
preachers and authors, A. Powell Davies of All Souls Unitarian in Washington,
D.C. wrote a popular and controversial book about the Apostle Paul called “The
First Christian.” <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Davies was radical for
its time because back then, and in some places still today, people would think
of Jesus as the First Christian, and Rev. Davies was sharing the news, in that
immediate post-Holocaust era, that Jesus was a Jew, and how important for
Christianity that fact was, and is, but also how much it was really Paul who
shaped Christianity. What I am going to share today though updates much of Rev.
Davies contemporary scholarship of his time; we no longer think of Paul as the
First Christian, or even as a Christian in the way we commonly think of that
term today. Rather Paul lived, wrote, perhaps was killed because he was a
follower and leader of one of the several strands of what we might call first
century Judaism or ways of following the God of Israel, back when the Second
Temple still stood in Jerusalem, back before it and the city itself was
destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 of the Common Era, a pivotal year for
the development and continuation of both Judaism and eventually of its
troublesome sect turned then into separate church turned then in its major
manifestation as Empire of Christianity, far from the anti-Empire revolutionary
life and writing of Paul. And we know better now that Paul was only one of the
major shapers of what became later as the early church. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In his latest book,
“The Real Paul” Professor Brandon Scott of Tulsa’s Phillips Theological
Seminary, summarizes the four decades of the emerging picture of Paul, who was the
one who does provide us the oldest, first actual writing we have anyway, about
Jesus, itself dating more than a decade after the crucifixion. Paul himself
probably wrote earlier letters, but we don’t have them. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are seven letters
in the Bible considered authentic Paul, half of the ones attributed to him.
Those who read about Paul in the Acts of the Apostles—half of it is devoted to
him---before reading his own letters will greatly misunderstand him. Acts was
likely written some three or more decades after Paul died. One scholar, Scott
says, maintains the differences are so great that Acts may have been written by
an opponent of Paul. Take away Acts and you don’t have Saul converting to Paul,
converting from Judaism to Christianity on the road to Damascus; instead his
own language and story is about being called, about coming to know his purpose
that he, who always names himself Paul, felt was instilled in him from the time
he was in his mother’s womb. How much of religious history in the West might
have been altered if one of our formative narratives had not been about
conversion, but about, as our tradition over the centuries has sought to make
ultimate instead, honoring and discovering ours and others’ inherent worth and
calling? In Paul’s own writing, in fact,
we have his depiction of his previous life as a religious zealot, persecuting
others, but then after his mysterious encounter with what he calls the Risen
Anointed One of the God of Israel, he writes that even he is worthy of
receiving, as the Blues Brother put it, a Mission from God. And if he is, he
maintains, everyone is. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So conversion becomes
calling, and that is one of the touchstones for our lives and communities
today; how are we all, not just ordained ministers, being called into mission?
One of Paul’s first conflicts was over whether he had authority to do what he
was doing, and reliance on what we would say is the role of personal experience
in religion; he is a forerunner of our own theologian James Luther Adams who
calls all to understand themselves as part of the priesthood and prophethood of
all. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But Paul’s specific mission
is to be, he says, an Apostle, literally an Envoy, to be Sent. And to whom is
he sent? This is the critical step. To the nations, “the gentiles”, to those
who are not already a part of Israel, who are not, like his fellow ethnic
people, already in covenant with Israel’s God. Everything flows from this for
Paul. Far from having left Judaism behind, he takes for granted that they are
part of God’s covenant and what he sees as the imminent future transformation
of the world by God’s loving and liberating justice for those Rome has
vanquished (For him the world equaled the Roman Empire.) True Paul had his
disputes with Jewish authorities, and of course most of them did not share his
experience of the crucified Anointed One, but he is not an apostle to them, to
try to get them to necessarily change in order to be a part of God’s future, as
so much of the tradition has cast his thought. Rather, he is concerned about
the gentiles, the nations, the peoples under and following Caeser’s oppressive
rule and values, and he isn’t writing either for a universal self or about what
God is doing for this or that person. His concern is about peoples, and not
about what centuries later would become notions of individual, personal
salvation. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So that is the next
touchstone from Paul: our concern and commitments should be with and for
communities, especially with communities that have been oppressed, left out of
power; and our understanding of our self should be understood as being communal beings, part of
one another, in community, and even, as he writes in his theoloy, as being part
of God’s New Anointing. He has an expansive sense of this community too: he
says Jew and Greek, meaning Jew and notJew, slave and free, male and female. No
one is left out. And those with this new communal identity, while being
different in the eyes of the Empire, and with their differences maintained and
their own special gifts of difference acknowledged and honored, now can have,
he says, a new deeper, more liberating, common identity apart from the Empire’s.
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An aside on how we have
come to these new understandings; with the rise of non-dogmatic independent
academic and inter-disciplinary study in particular, we not only were able to
come to a broad consensus on the seven letters—1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1<sup>st</sup>
and 2<sup>nd</sup> Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, and Romans, but also how
to read these ancient texts written as other ancient texts, often not as single
arguments like a newspaper editorial, but what are called diatribes, dialogues
and debates within them like Socratic interrogations. Recast in this light,
Paul’s thought begins to emerge from seeming major inconsistencies. Of course
important to note too that Paul is not writing to us, or even to an Empire-wide
audience, but to specific groups in specific places about specific problems,
many of which we don’t fully understand because we only have one side of the
correspondence. And even in the authentic letters are woven other letters, and
later additions that are trying to tame down the original radical Paul. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So exactly what is his
good news he is sent to share with the nations, and that calls forth these new
egalitarian-inspired communities? Communities of vulnerability and conflict of
all sorts, but communities who, beyond their own existence, have had a lasting
legacy. This good news from Paul, after centuries of misreadings, is where,
then and especially now I think, he is at his most radical. In some ways all of
this is why Professor Scott calls Paul even more radical than Jesus. And it
leads to one of the most crucial touchstones for churches today. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We can see it most
clearly in Paul’s letter to the gathered ones in Rome, his last one written
that we have, and the one that has long been considered the most theologically
concerned of all the letters and so is the one used to make statements of
belief. Origen did so before the Empire took over the Christian way. Augustine
after it did after. Luther used Romans extensively in the Reformation. Barth
used Romans in the 20<sup>th</sup> century rise of neo-orthodoxy after the
destruction of world war one. And this is still true with the New Perspective.
It is in Romans that we have this groundbreaking new way of looking at Paul and
the other anti-Empire Christians. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you pick up most
Bibles today, which by the way are mostly published by religious associations, you
are going to read something like the following in Romans, third chapter: “The
righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For
there is no distinction.” See how that seems to emphasize first righteousness,
which to our ears might conjure up a narrow sense of morality and even
self-righteousness; to emphasize next “faith in Jesus” as a kind of mental act
of thought giving allegiance to a certain object of that thought, in this case
Jesus; and finally, to drive it home, to emphasize “for all who believe”, as if
already here there is the creed; what one does to receive righteousness is to
believe in Jesus. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How widespread now and
through the years has been that kind of translation and interpretation? It has
been what many see as the essence of their faith, and it has been what has
driven many from their faith, or from being drawn to Jesus, the Bible, the
church. Religion is about what you think, so you better think the right thing,
and if that is what religion is about then the church better be focused on
enforcing that right thinking. Orthodoxy. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But that hasn’t always
been the translation of that writing of Paul’s in Romans. Even the King James
Version, in all its poetic beauty, captured some of the ambiguity in the Greek
by translating it as “faith of Jesus.” Just with that slight change we begin to
sense some major theological shifts. Even when faith was still seen as a
synonym for belief, and belief was seen as all about a mental proposition and
affirmation, even then we could read the King James Version from the 1600s and
see the difference between a focus on what Jesus believed and a belief in
Jesus. But the scholars of the New Perspective, freed from the dogmatic
restraints that shaped so much of the earlier translations of Greek, have
helped us see the full impact of Paul’s revolutionary thought. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In “The Real Paul”
Professor Scott gives us the following Scholars Version of this passage, this
key central passage of the scriptural foundations of much of Christian theology
[for the full Scholars Version see The Authentic Letters of Paul; the NRSV uses
something close to the Scholars Version but puts it in a footnote, not in a new
translation): “God’s reliability has now been made clear through the unconditional
confidence in God of Jesus, God’s Anointed, for the benefit of all who come to
have such confidence—no exceptions!” It is not <i>faith or belief IN Jesus</i> as some object of faith, but rather Paul
says God’s spirit of right relations, of being in right alignment with God’s
justice, comes to all those who have the confidence or faithfulness <i>that Jesus had</i>. And how was Jesus
faithful? Not by what he thought, but by what he did, how he was faithful not
to Caesar and his Empire and what it valued, violence and wealth and
power-over, but to the God of the oppressed and that God’s Empire, or Kingdom
which was in fact the opposite of an Empire or Kingdom, being instead a beloved
community, a kin-dom. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Think what a difference
this better freer translation would have made had it been the dominant
cornerstone of Christian theology from the time of Paul to ours today? We
wouldn’t have been heretics, we who stressed character and deeds over creeds.
Think what a difference it would make now if this were adopted, to shift
religion from a competitiveness over ideas and right thinking, to a cooperation
in bringing about living justice. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That is the next
Pauline touchstone for our spiritual lives and church today: live your God,
your ultimate concern, if you love your God, your ultimate concern. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">All else of the real
Paul flows from this radical stance. In fact, in 1988 a biblical scholar, not a
Unitarian Universalist, wrote an essay called “A Paul for Unitarian
Universalists” (Robin Scroggs in the UU Christian Journal) that talked about
how small u unitarian and small u universalist Paul was. Paul was a monotheist.
He was also what became known as an adoptionist, understanding that God adopted
Jesus, or Anointed him, Christed him, made or revealed him as Messiah when God
raised him, he who had been faithful even in the depths of the Empire’s effort of shaming him with weakness
and crucifixion. And that what God did in and for Jesus he would soon do for
all, transforming the world. And, with Earth Day coming up this week, let me
emphasize that it is <i>this</i> world that
Paul believed would be the place of the new, as the old, paradise, not some
ethereal region known as Heaven. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Paul ties together Jesus’s
death and raising, and the future of the nations, with the story in the Hebrew
scriptures of Abraham, saying that even as God chose Abraham because of his
faithfulness even before there were the Mosaic commandments, so too the
nations, as Abraham’s children too had become part of the covenant with God now
because of God’s valuing Jesus’ life and message through the raising of
him. We can obviously disagree, from our
vantage point if we wish, with Paul on the specifics of his experience and
theology, but give him credit especially for its spirit. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For Paul, Jesus’ death
had not been to atone for anything either, though, or to be a substitute for
anyone’s else death. Scott says that Paul saw the death as one of the long line
of particularly Jewish faithful martyrs “suffering noble deaths”, that Jesus
died because he had challenged the Empire through trying to show the nations that
God wanted them to be righteous and faithful to God’s way and not Caeser’s way.
And so in raising Jesus and Christing him, Paul felt God was rewarding Jesus and
also revealing this truth to the nations, that they too were now part of the
God of Israel’s new promised life. It is a very different understanding or
theology of the cross then the one the Empire Christian culture later produced.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> It leads to our next touchstone from Paul,
that God favors those who have been shamed, God in fact favors the ones the
Empire considers ungodly, he writes in Romans, and God favors non-violence and
will act to restore those who have been violated. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Paul thought, wrongly,
that this new social transformation would happen in his lifetime, but he sought
to create communities, in the very midst of the Empire, that would imitate and
help initiate this social transformation, as a testament to its power and
truth, while living in the in-between time. Imitating and initiating social
transformation of the world. It is a good mission and way of being for
communities today. Perhaps we need a sense of urgency about creating free
communities for growing justice around us, particularly in places and peoples
and ways we don’t have. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether or not Paul
actually wrote the great love hymn in First Corinthians or borrowed and placed
it in from an earlier poet is debatable, but it captures much of this ultimate
focus of his for how to stress the essentials in community. Faith is important--what
you trust, or believe; hope is important--how you feel and approach the world
and sustain yourself; but the greatest is Love--how you act, how you relate,
how you open up to vulnerability and risk and cooperation and a honor diversity
of gifts (1 Corinthians 12) and see yourself in others, and them in you, and
see your community as part of the movement of God’s way, not Caeser’s in whatever
guise Caeser comes, even one that comes in the name of God, Christ, and the
church. That too is a healthy reminder for our communities today in a world
looking for authenticity. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What about Paul and sexuality,
Paul and women, Paul and slavery? Each are worthy of sermons on their own. While
Paul, like all of us, is a product of his time, limited in his understanding,
in most cases the way he has been used for the exact opposite of what he stood
for has come again from bad translations, from the later letters much after his
death attributed to him that are actually against the real Paul, and by
insertions into the actual letters by later scribes, or by not understanding
that the sins he lifts up are again characteristics of sins of the Empire and not
about individuals. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About much of Paul’s
context and ideas, Scott says we will likely always be uncertain from the
mystery in the evidence of the letters we have. But, he wraps up his book by
talking about how for Paul God sides with the losers. And if that is the case,
as he believes it to be, then all such striving to be right and mighty in the
eyes of God is the wrong kind of faithfulness. And it is a challenge to us
today to see whose side we are on, who are we spending time and support with. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So much of the Empire
way and values that shaped Christianity long after Paul have also tremendously shaped
today much of our culture, way beyond Christianity as well. Recapturing the
real Paul, and revealing his good news message again---that real active
responsive liberating and justice-making love, not wealth or power or
achievements or knowledge or feeling good, is how the Sacred is made real--- that
this good news from Paul and about Paul, this new news, will, if adopted, not
only lead to what Scott calls the needed “fundamental reconstruction of
Christianity,” as important as that is, but it will lead to the reconstruction,
the social transformation, of the world itself—ironically, that is what Paul
himself envisioned two thousand years ago. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About time. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And Amen. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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</span>Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-28800355420221622782015-04-03T07:43:00.002-07:002015-04-03T07:43:32.535-07:00Good Friday Homily<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Good Friday service, All Souls, April
3, 2015<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">traditional reading: Mark 15: 16-41<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then the soldiers led him into the
courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters<sup>[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015&version=NRSV#fen-NRSV-24836c" title="See footnote c">c</a>]</sup>); and they called together the whole
cohort. <sup>17 </sup>And
they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a
crown, they put it on him. <sup>18 </sup>And
they began saluting him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” <sup>19 </sup>They struck his head
with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. <sup>20 </sup>After mocking him, they
stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led
him out to crucify him.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">They compelled a passer-by, who was
coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the
father of Alexander and Rufus. <sup>22 </sup>Then they brought Jesus<sup>[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015&version=NRSV#fen-NRSV-24842d" title="See footnote d">d</a>]</sup> to the place called Golgotha (which
means the place of a skull). <sup>23 </sup>And
they offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it. <sup>24 </sup>And they crucified him,
and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should
take.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">25 </span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. <sup>26 </sup>The inscription of the
charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” <sup>27 </sup>And with him they
crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left.<sup>[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015&version=NRSV#fen-NRSV-24847e" title="See footnote e">e</a>]</sup> <sup>29 </sup>Those who passed by derided<sup>[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015&version=NRSV#fen-NRSV-24848f" title="See footnote f">f</a>]</sup> him, shaking their heads and saying,
“Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, <sup>30 </sup>save yourself, and come
down from the cross!” <sup>31 </sup>In
the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him
among themselves and saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. <sup>32 </sup>Let the Messiah,<sup>[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015&version=NRSV#fen-NRSV-24851g" title="See footnote g">g</a>]</sup> the King of Israel, come down from the
cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him
also taunted him.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">33 </span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land<sup>[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015&version=NRSV#fen-NRSV-24852h" title="See footnote h">h</a>]</sup> until three in the afternoon. <sup>34 </sup>At three o’clock Jesus
cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”<sup>[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015&version=NRSV#fen-NRSV-24853i" title="See footnote i">i</a>]</sup> <sup>35 </sup>When some of the bystanders heard it, they said,
“Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” <sup>36 </sup>And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put
it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether
Elijah will come to take him down.” <sup>37 </sup>Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. <sup>38 </sup>And the curtain of the temple
was torn in two, from top to bottom. <sup>39 </sup>Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw
that in this way he<sup>[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015&version=NRSV#fen-NRSV-24858j" title="See footnote j">j</a>]</sup> breathed his last, he said, “Truly
this man was God’s Son!”<sup>[<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015&version=NRSV#fen-NRSV-24858k" title="See footnote k">k</a>]</sup><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">40 </span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary
Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. <sup>41 </sup>These used to follow him
and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who
had come up with him to Jerusalem.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Good Friday Homily: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Crosses and Conversions”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron Robinson<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We are here today not
just because of what happened some two thousand years ago, as momentous as that
turned out to be; we are here because it keeps happening, keeps happening. Think
of all that has occurred of unjust suffering since we were here just one year
ago, far away and close at hand, in headlines and heartbreak, incident after
incident across the country, execution after execution, until it becomes
almost, almost as unremarkable and as forgettable as all those many many Roman
crosses that lined the roads leading up to Jerusalem at Passover time. What one scholar (Dom Crossan) calls “the
normalcy of civilization.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An oppressed community
torn asunder, leaders killed, potential leaders killed, dispersed, reacting in
fear, turning on themselves; the living “as if” another world of love and
justice and plenty for all is possible, is met by those living for power and
position and the status quo which gives status to a chosen few. Keeps Happening,
keeps happening. The victims of so much domestic violence, of terrorism, of
sudden acts of insanity. Headlines and Heartbreak all around us. The temples of
our lives, of our communities, ripped in two. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And Beyond our personal
losses, our fears, our never too deeply buried pains and shames that we carry
Good Friday to Good Friday, beyond the tragedies that make Breaking News become
ho hum, will there ever be a time when Good Friday for us does not remind us of
the race-based Good Friday killings three years ago? Or maybe for some it
already is fading? Is something that doesn’t just spring to mind with every
mention and thought of the holiday? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Oh how we might long
for a centurion’s conversion of our society? Maybe his statement of belief was
more mocking at Jesus’s death; scholars debate that point; but maybe being up
close and personal to the cross, having it all confront him, something about
this particular minor nobody, in the eyes of the Empire, turning still to his
God, this nobody unashamed to cry out to his God, seeking his God and not
Caeser even at that moment when it would seem Caeser was in control, maybe it
was a conversion moment when the suffering so common in the world couldn’t any
longer be put out of sight and out of mind. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am reminded of the
phrase that Sister Simone Campbell uses to describe the mission of her
progressive Catholic nuns travelling the country on buses seeking to, as she
puts it, “walk toward the wounded; walk with the wounded.” It is turning toward
the cross, as did Jesus as he taught and healed and liberated people in the
shadows of all those Empire crosses. It calls to us today to walk that way too.
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The recent documentary
on the Good Friday killings in north Tulsa, Hate Crimes in the Heartland, helps
us to keep the wounds and sufferings of our community in front of us. It is
shown every so often here in Tulsa and I believe will be shown again next
month. It is a way to walk toward and with the wounded. As quickly as was the
response by law enforcement, as much as the community leaders sought solidarity
and helped maintain a calming presence, in the zipcode where most of the
killings and woundings took place, and where the killers also lived, the wounds
still run deep, as does the fear and the shame and the anger and desperation.
As long as Good Friday is happening every day for people who die 14 years
sooner than others in our community the wounds still need witness. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There was a centurion’s
conversion of a sort I was witness to that Holy Weekend three years ago. Much
of my family and I still live in that zipcode; my father among them. Two days
before that Good Friday he had turned 80 years old; we were taking him out to
dinner that Wednesday night to celebrate but first I talked him into being a
guest presenter with me to a class of graduate social work students who worked
with us in our neighborhoods. That night we talked about the history of racism,
segregation, abandonment of our area by business and government and schools
just as soon as it was integrated, about white flight and redlining. My father’s
father, a machinist working near Greenwood, had moved our family to north Tulsa
at the time of world war one. My grandfather was a member of the Ku Klux Klan
as so many were in Tulsa and Oklahoma, of all social classes; his own grandfather
had owned a slave; I hear very few other
families owning their past, though, from that time, and when we don’t we let
shame and guilt still give those days and racism power; to do so, though, is to
turn a little bit toward the cross. I have a photograph of the 1921 Tulsa Race
Massacre, shot from a distance of the burning and smoke, that I found that had been
hidden in old photos in my grandparents’ attic, right alongside all kinds of
other family photos. But those days weren’t the last word. And so my father, growing up and living all
his life so far in our northside zipcode was determined that even though he had
been raised racist, that he wouldn’t raise us the same way if he could help it.
He didn’t flee from the conflict of integration but stayed and was among the volunteer
first basketball coaches of an integrated junior high in 1967 in North Tulsa,
forming relationships that last to this day. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And yet, when at age
80, he met with that class of social work students and we talked about race and
history of north Tulsa, he told them that most of the racists had all moved
away, that it was nothing like what it had been. It was a common refrain; it
does no good to keep looking at the past, my white neighbors and family would
say; that’s not a cross we need to keep bearing. (of course my American indian
neighbors and family have a different take, as do many of my African American
neighbors). And then two days later the race-based killings on Good Friday
happened. And my father had a conversion of sorts. He said he was wrong to have
told the students that. Like many people, maybe the centurion too, he was
learning the difference that the cross of racism, and the many other sins among
us, is more than something that bad people do to good people; it is in the very
Empire itself, and so things Keep Happening, Keep Happening. And that the one
hanging from the cross, with so very little on his suffering lips besides a
lament, he has spoken volumes through the years about the clash of worldly power
and Divine Love that does not let the cross have the last word. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And I love that the
documentary is also not letting the daily media narrative of the killings have
the last word either, to make it old news. For in the documentary you also get
glimpses into the lives of the killers, and they too become a part of a Greater
Story. The teenager, of American Indian and European American ethnicity, whom
my aunt had babysat for when he was a toddler and who had seen first hand the
violence of his own upbringing, violence that continued throughout his life and
up to the week of the killings; and the documentary shows how the older killer
too was from a family with multiple races and ethnicities, with a black
half-brother. The documentary of the Good Friday killings invites us to walk
toward the wounds all around, to wonder at how the Empire’s white supremacy, the
struggle to maintain white normativeness, might have shaped deep down some of
the hate on that Good Friday. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But the last word is
not for today. No word holds the truth of this day, then or now. Today we enter
into the world of silent witness. The world of the mothers, the women, the
scandalous supporters, maybe their presence was part of the centurion’s
conversion too, all those women left behind by the violence who followed Jesus
underneath those crosses meant for them too, and who did not turn away from the
suffering, but who stayed, who stood nearby, like centurions in their own
right, centurions on behalf of a vulnerable God, a silent presence with their
bodies, against an Empire breaking bodies, and in whom we see the presence and
spark of that spirit that reminds us that although Good Friday keeps happening
in so many ways and places, in headlines and heartbreak and horror, so too we
keep happening, we keep forming community, coming together, to be silent
together, to open up together at the foot of our cross to our own prayerful potential
conversion. </span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-51148983889826385132015-01-24T17:51:00.004-08:002015-01-24T17:51:56.088-08:00The Promise of Unitarian Universalism: Reviving The World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Promise of Unitarian
Universalism: Reviving The World<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Revival Fort Worth Thur. Jan. 22,
2015 <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron Robinson<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[The original text from which the
talk was given, accompanied by our Miracle Among the Ruins Slideshow, which you
can see at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8ALvs8vyo">www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE8ALvs8vyo</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Revival. Such a scary
word, for many of us, but Revival literally means Life Again. And what could be
more progressive than that. Life so
abundant and generous in spirit that it will always find a way to come back, be
made new. Life Again is another way of saying one of our foundational
beliefs—that more truth and light is yet to come, and will come, that
revelation is unsealable, semper reformanda, we are always being reformed and
reforming, revived and reviving. Not only the culture, not only ourselves, but
the church as well, always in need of revival. As Unitarian minister Theodore
Parker preached in 1841: the church that did for the first century did not do
for the fifth century, and the church that did for the fifth century did not do
for the fifteenth century, and the church that did for the fifteenth century
was not doing for his 19<sup>th</sup> century, and the church of the 19<sup>th</sup>
century, and 20<sup>th</sup> century, does not always do for the 21<sup>st</sup>
century. It is also a part of ongoing
revelation that the old can take on new life again too; we aren’t creating out
of nothing; today we often hear, for example, about ancient-future faith, the
revival of old practices in new settings. And Life Again for All is a core theological
position; Glory is for all. All are revivable. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So with our minds maybe
we can connect Revivals and Unitarian Universalism, but I know for many it is
still hard to connect them in the heart and soul. Now I was raised a Methodist
in my small community on the edge of Tulsa and I remember Revivals, and how I
led a march for Jesus from our church to the local high school. For 40 years,
however, almost all of my adult life, I have been a Unitarian Universalist and
I know the revival spirit can be a challenge to our once dominant culture of
looking at the hymnal and keeping in our designated places with little movement
while we sing the Amen chorus, as if we were going to forget the words. But we
should strive for a holistic faith; we know that a spirit of revival and reason
can go together. I also know that at the
church that ordained me, one of the largest if not the largest UU church (being
in the smallest I tend not to keep up with such things) at All Souls Tulsa
there is now weekly as one of its three Sunday morning services a revival-style
worship (the humanist non-revivalist one is growing too, btw) and under the
church’s umbrella on another day than Sunday there is charismatic worship where
I’m told speaking in tongues by a few might occasionally happen. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the most promising gifts of Unitarian Universalism to the world
(though it can also for some be the most frustrating and challenging) is that
in our tradition no one could come in from outside and tell the Tulsa church it
couldn’t do that, follow its truth, embody Unitarian Universalism in that new
way. Local people discerning together, risking together, is our way. It is why
we have such a theological bigger bandwidth among us; non-creedal but with many
liturgical expressions for a world of such pluralism. Churches where in worship
God and Jesus are rarely mentioned liturgically, to our Trinitarian Universalists,
to places like First Church of Christ, Unitarian. Alleluia for that! <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And no one in authority came to me in Tulsa seven years ago and said that
we couldn’t transform our small church, by small I mean 7 leaders and maybe a
dozen in worship, that we couldn’t go missional and incarnational when we moved
and took down the church sign and put up a sign for our newly-created community
center and health clinic and food pantry and clothing room and library and art
room, in which the church finds space for some of our worship; or when we
started a nonprofit to partner with many in the community in order to buy and
reclaim abandoned properties to improve the community health of our high
poverty, lowest life expectancy, multi-ethnic neighborhood, nor did anyone stop
us from going organic as well as missional, from following the saying that you
don’t attend church, you become it, and so we could become it even without a building,
bylaws, board, budget. We still worship though not just with ourselves and for
ourselves, but with others often too, and with others not just UU, being church
in ways that existed for centuries before 501c3s. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Unitarian Universalism is built for Revival. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We have a freedom in our movement, at our very heart, perhaps a calling even
as well, to foster the spirit of revival, to experiment and make major changes;
we believe in abundance spirituality, that the diversity of Creation is a good
thing, that scarcity mentality and fear lead to spiritual dis-ease. And yet we
too often it seems recoil from risk. Or we are great at thinking radical new
ideas, but not at creating radical new forms of community for them. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But this too is changing. Halleluia. For we are in an emerging one kind
does not fit all world, and that goes for church too. Many expressions of UUism
are trying to sprout in our UU garden. They need to be watered right now in
their early phases. Thank you for lifting them up here and for being one of
their “master gardeners of their spirit.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This year marks my 40<sup>th</sup>
Year as a Unitarian Universalist and In some ways I have been a poster boy for
one of the promises of Unitarian Universalism--that you can change without
having to change churches or religious affiliation; in fact at our best we
should count on changing people; it should be one of our markers for success,
on changing communities, and on how much our own communities can change to be
able to do so. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Between the time I was
18, not long after having led that march for Jesus through my part of North
Tulsa, and the time I was 20, I had come close to Mormonism, Bahais, Eastern
Religion, and still kept enough of a tie with Methodism that I was married at
20 in the Methodist church. And then in college literature classes I kept
seeing the term Unitarian applied to these major literary figures I was
studying and loving so I studied it. I felt at home so I went looking for its actual
home in my small college town in Oklahoma, where mind you the Mormons and the
Bahais had a presence, and where I knew Muslims as well, but no Unitarian
Universalists. Could Unitarianism have been a 19<sup>th</sup> century religious
movement that had gone the way of the 19<sup>th</sup> century political
movements I was also studying, the Whigs, the Know Nothings? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I soon found a UU
church for real—when All Souls Tulsa hosted a meeting for activists working on
the Equal Rights Amendment--and then I moved to Oklahoma City and joined my
first UU church. I was a kind of social action interested agnostic humanist
with my own “cross cringe.” Here, back then, the promise of UUism said to me, I
could still be in church and think what I thought. Yes, I soon had a bumper
sticker on a 1976 Datsun B210 that said To Question Is The Answer. Unitarian
universalism. But the first UU sermon I ever heard was one on Christology based
on a book published by the UU Christian Fellowship, so that should have been a
sign that this was a Church where Change and Transformation Lay Ahead for me. And
one Sunday morning a small Texan, a UU from Austin, whose grandfather had a
small town in Oklahoma named after him, stood at the pulpit and guest preached
a sermon called Taking Freedom Seriously, which was really about taking God
seriously, in a revived way called Process Theology, and in doing so the great
theologian, and not bad ornithologist, Charles Hartshorne, launched me on a
path as a new Theist, giving the word God back to me. It most likely would not
have happened without Unitarian Universalism in that mostly at the time humanist
congregation. And, importantly, I have faith that my story happened in reverse
for another; that they entered that free church on another spiritual trajectory
and found there a different launching pad to the depths of the Spirit of Life
and Love and Liberation. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What we often forget is
that just as we change within our churches, and because of it, so too our
churches change. Talking about this once during my student ministry years, a
woman had a puzzled and then eureka look on her face as she said “I just
thought when I joined the church that it had always been the way it is, and
that it would always be the way it is now (it hadn’t been, and wouldn’t be, and
she added], but I really don’t want a church or life to be like that.” She was
realizing that a church shouldn’t be ultimately about us, us as individuals or
as a community, particularly one set apart from the past or from the future or
from other ones; it should welcome us, grow us, but be about us getting over
ourselves and our egos so we can get into the lives around us and beyond us. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For many years growing up and for much of my time as a UU, religion for
me was something I thought about; it was questions and conclusions, and being
in a circle of people that supported that process and had fun doing so, with a
little bit of service to others thrown in. In some ways, sadly I think now, Unitarian
Universalism’s promise was that it promised to leave me alone in my pursuits of
the good life and upward mobility, measured by my accomplishments and affluence
and appearances. I was still involved in social justice movements and the
church did help with those, but primarily only with issues and connecting with
people who were a lot like me. It might have been about the personal freedom to
think and act, but in many ways it was still about freedom from—freedom from
the covenants of transformative community, especially from the covenants with
the least of these, freedom from radical commitments of justice living that
call us to live with those without justice. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Things got a bit more real, church was revived for me again and the
movement incarnated and embodied in more communal ways when we moved back to
that same small college town, still then without a UU church, and so, to
abbreviate the story, we started a church. Unitarian Universalism’s spirit said
go for it, but other UUs who knew about our town said “you are starting one
where?” and those not UU in our town, knowing I wasn’t a minister, asked “Can
you just do that?”…We found that there were liberal religious voices in our
community but they needed a presence, a form, to amplify them. For many the
risks of community’s downsides were too great for them to get involved, or
their closets were too comfortable, but for those who did take the risk
suddenly we emerged as a body among other bodies, a force in the community. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A couple of years after we started, when the lone black church in town
was firebombed on Martin Luther King, Jr. day, our church took the lead in the
response and hosted the gatherings for the wider community to take action. And
on a Christmas Day when it fell on a Sunday, ours was the only church to be
open in the morning for worship, about the only place open back then at all
except for the police station across the street—ten of us showed up to worship—but
because we were open, a man travelling alone from Iowa with all his belongings
in a truck and looking for companionship on that morning of all mornings had a
place to go. He said just the words Unitarian Universalism sounded welcoming.
Now I am one who still finds that group of syllables problematic in many ways,
and I did then, but that day it worked and I was grateful for the blessing he
bestowed upon us. Because he was there, our own presents could wait we told the kids, we visited with him longer
than we would have after the service, long enough for another man to drop by
who said he’d only been to the twelve-step group in the church but he was
nervously out for a walk to get out of his head, so to speak, and needed a
place to be that day and was glad to see a few cars still parked outside, while
other churches and businesses were closed.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> So The missional lesson came early
to me and I did not know it; as the reading from Genesis printed in our hymnal
says, Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it. Church happened
as much or more after the worship service that day as it did during it. I would
say even Christ was surely born again as well among us that Christmas day,
there inside a building where many other faiths in town, through their closed
doors, thought Christ could never be experienced without being named in
specific ways.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I will say here that one of the many different challenges for us today
than it was back then in the early to mid 1990s is that no matter how well we
do as congregations, how much we get our message out, more and more people aren’t
looking for, or waiting for, or reading about, religious congregations. There
are alternatives to form their spiritual communities and social justice actions
or to even think about religious things freely; online and in many places and
ways these needs are met that once upon a time were the domain of
congregations. And it takes more and more resources to connect with folks than
it did back then. We are feeling that stress in our Association, and we are not
alone. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But the promise of Unitarian Universalism is that Life Again can come,
and will come as we open ourselves up to the Spirit that is now creating a
wider and wider, bigger bandwidth of forms of churches that together make up
the Church Universal. Even Unitarian Universalism can be revived, and can be
transformed as it seeks the transformation of the world. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But here is where I want to revive our history as an heretical faith and
say heretically that all this talk I have been doing about Unitarian
Universalism and its gifts and promise is not what I ultimately came here to
preach, and that if we only hear this good news about ourselves then we will
not be heard by the world today, and it will ironically keep us from becoming
our most promising selves and realizing the vision and mission that calls us
into being Unitarian Universalists in the first place, and the ends toward
which we aim, and the why we are here. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I love the theme for this Revival: The Promise of Unitarian Universalism.
But what I love most about it is the power and layers of meaning in that word
Promise. For me the promise of the movement is not ultimately about what the
movement can become, what the future holds for it. For me it is about the promise
the movement makes to the world. The promise of UUism is its promise, its
faithfulness, its covenant to the world. Covenant is that great other word of
promise; in our relationship to the world, which is one of the great covenants
of our tradition that makes us a church and not just a collection of religiously
oriented individuals (as UU historian Conrad Wright wrote). <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We are a covenant making, promise making, covenant breaking, promise
breaking, covenant remaking, promise remaking, people—this is because we are
The Love People, siding with love, loving the hell out of this world, doing
small acts of justice with great love, love beyond belief, or like St. Paul
wrote, faith hope and love these three, but the greatest of these, greater than
what we think, believe and have faith in, greater than how we feel, hopeful or
not, greatest is love, that is how we live, commit, respond to the world, and I
would say especially to parts of the world so desperate in need of someone
making and keeping promises, faithfulness, and being in covenant with them. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And so I am only interested in the revival of the church if it leads to
the revival of the world, bringing life again to the dead and dying parts and
people of the world, for that is where the real mutual transformation and
blessing will happen. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Here is a glimpse of what revival of Unitarian Universalism in the world looks
like in our Welcome Table parish, our two mile radius of far north Tulsa. We
are ever changing, so much has changed since the UU World did a cover story on
us four years ago, but this is the picture now. Come and see, the early
disciples said to those curious about Jesus, and we echo that about our place
and people, our miracles among the ruins as we call it. [come join those who
come on mission trips to stay with us; come to a missional revival life on fire
gathering may 29-31 focusing on spiritual practice in missional settings]. There is a bigger bandwidth of missional
church too, but here is our part of it, and stay tuned for more changes. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the 12 years of our existence as a church, we have met in ten
different fairly regular spaces, and have also worshipped in many more places
even then those (including at abandoned buildings, in closed school grounds,
and at our first community garden area on land owned by another church, and now
regularly we worship in the two properties that once were abandoned and are now
owned by the non profit foundation we started; in addition to that, we
regularly now worship with two non-UU churches each month as well). And during
that same time, we have had four different name changes.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Of course, four years from now, 12 years from now, sooner, or later, we
might also be non-existent as a group, that is always a part of the risk of
being an organic missional church, and of Life itself, but I trust that even were that to happen that
the relationships we have formed would continue the mission of the church and
find new forms to do that [how many of the first century Jesus follower
gatherings can you point to as continually existing, even back then beyond a
few years? Few to none, but the missional living they did continues to be
present and changes the world today]. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At heart, ours and other missional churches say that the church does not
have a mission; instead, The Mission has, creates, the church. The why of what
we now call The Welcome Table Church is what determines the how of The Welcome
Table. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And in talking about the why of our church, we always start with the
people outside of us in our zipcode. That is one of the key markers of what is
called the missional church movement. The problems of the world come before the
problems of the church because the church is a response to what ails the world.
So what is the promise of Unitarian Universalism to these people? Remember,
too, The point is not to become the Best Church In the community but the best
church For the community. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We live and have our ministry in the 74126, a zipcode that covers far
north Tulsa, we are on the edge, more ways than one, part in the city and part
outside the city limits. The main number we focus on as a church is not how
many are worshipping with us, but what drives our church is that we die 14 years
sooner than in the zipcode with the highest life expectancy just 6 miles away down
the same street we are on. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now in the revivals of old, there was a time during the sermon about here
where the general sins of the people were highlighted, reminding people of
their need for rededication and renewal in the Spirit. Here likewise are some
general sins, and they aren’t sins of the people who make up the statistics.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In 2009, the University of Oklahoma did a nutrition study with us that
found in our area 60 percent can't afford healthy food even if there was access
to it; 55 percent worry about amount of food they have; 29 percent skip meals. In
2013 we did another study with OU of those who came to our free cornerstore
pantry. It showed that 52.6 percent of those who come to us have high food
insecurity; and 42.1 percent have very high food insecurity, experiencing
hunger symptoms when surveyed; 68.4 percent of households have at least one
member with nutrition-related chronic disease; 53 percent suffer depression and
admit it; 47 percent with anxiety; 53 percent have high blood pressure; 32
percent high cholesterol; 47 percent obese. And don’t forget that almost 100
percent of our church and foundation volunteers and leaders are among the
statistics reflected here; we are grassroots; not coming in from elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Pretty much mirroring our neighborhoods, 42 percent of those we serve are
black, 36 percent white, and 63 percent have under $10,000 annual household income,
meaning they are part of the couple hundred thousand Oklahomans who are too
poor for Obamacare because our state didn’t expand Medicaid.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> I say instead of, or at least
along with trying to combat racism and classism by welcoming people inside our
sanctuaries, let’s take Unitarian Universalism to where they live; live with
them, serve with them, learn from them. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">in our area 40 percent of the vacant residences in our two mile service
area, our “parish”, have been abandoned, are not for sale or for rent. Many are
damaged, burnt. And that doesn’t count the abandoned commercial buildings. On
one short three block stretch of homes, 17 at last count were abandoned; but,
but, but, equally importantly, right in the middle of them are some well kept
homes by people refusing to let despair win, and one of our partner groups is
there transforming them into small group homes for those in need, and the best
block party in the area is thrown there each summer. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Recently our post office was closed (even though many the people in our
area don’t have computer access for email and there are no alternatives like
ups or fedex, and we have a rising aging population and there is limited public
transportation or the means to have or keep up an automobile or pay for gas;
while the government kept open post offices in wealthier zipcodes with many
resources). <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Here is what I want to emphasize too about the promise of Unitarian
Universalism and its revival in an emerging world. In our area, We do Unitarian
Universalism and we do non-creedal Christianity together; we are part of the small
Council of Christian Churches within the UUA, and we do them both together
without the ultimate aim of making more UUs or more Christians or more UU
Christians. That is not our mission; spreading God’s radical love is; if
anything else happens, great. Most people just know us as either the Welcome
Table Church or A Third Place Community Foundation. We live and serve in what
is called an Abandoned Place of Empire, and it is not just UUism that hasn’t
had much presence in it. There is only one small mainline church still in our
area, and it is the community’s very first church, and has come close to
closing in the recent past. The other mainline churches fled along with white
flight in the 60s and 70s. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The term Abandoned Place of
Empire makes reference to the early centuries of the common era as monasteries
and alternative communities left the major cities to live a different way of
life and in a different set of values than that of the Roman Empire’s dominant
culture of war and wealth and power and honor and shame. Now it is used to designate those very uncool,
unhip, under resourced high poverty low life expectancy zipcodes of the
American Empire where business investment and public investment flees, where
people who remain often feel shame for their lives because, they think and have
been told, if they were only rich enough, smart enough, had made better choices
in their lives, hadn’t gotten sick and broke, they too they often believe would
be able to move to the places where the supposed American Dream good life
happens. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The point of the mission of the
missional church, you might say, and I hope one of the promises that can be
made to them by Unitarian Universalism even if they never become UUs, is to let
these people know that the American Dream might have left them behind, in a
kind of worldly Rapture it feels like in our area, but that they are still and
can be still a part of a Loving God’s Dream of justice for all. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What would Unitarian Universalism and other progressives gain by being
present in the Abandoned Places of Empire? Well we love being in a place where
a little bit goes a long way. Where we are reminded daily that life isn’t
ultimately about how much we have, or how much we can experience and take in
and feel good about, but about how much spirit of life and love and liberation
we can grow with and for others. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is vital to know that Only after we had lived here and listened to our
neighbors did we make our missional move. Only then, as a way of relating to
those we knew and loved, did we start a center for community meetings and
holiday events and a free bookstore. A computer center. Free wifi access even
when the center is closed (people huddle up against the building to use it, as
they use our hydrants for water when we are closed, and as they use our outdoor
electic outlet to charge their phones when we are closed). Only then did we grow
our free foodstore that serves between a thousand and two thousand people
monthly. Only then start the take what you need leave what you can clothing and
household items room. Or the community art room. The recovery group. Provide
showers and laundry. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Recently we made news by giving away space heaters and coats and water during
the freezing weather to people who live in cars, campers, houses without
electricity or water; what the news didn’t show is that same woman who received
a heater gave up one of her two coats for us to give to someone without one;
she is also one of our new volunteers, as just a few days out of prison I asked
her to take on one of our most important positions, and she often worships with
us now too. Of course every worship is a part of a meal; it is how mission,
community, discipleship, and worship can all intertwine. She is like the People
who receive food who bring us food, or slip me money, when they have it. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This too is Unitarian Universalism, and much more. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As it was that our faith led us to stand in the gap for four years that we
hosted a health clinic, and now partner with the local health department which eventually
built a new medical center and clinic in our area. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And Many Unitarian Universalists joined with those of many faiths and
helped us to buy a block of abandoned houses and turn it into a community
gardenpark and orchard where events and meals are also held as well as where we
teach nutrition, health, form relationships, grow food with one another and for
our foodstore. It is in an area where hills of trash and debris and dead
animals were, and where many people from other parts of town were and are still
afraid to come to, but where this past Fourth of July three white women aged
30s, 60, and 80, stayed up by themselves, unarmed, until three in the morning talking
and watching all the fireworks gradually die out. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We worked to get more than 25 abandoned burned out houses torn down and
up to 250 pieces of property cleaned up. We partner with three of our schools
in our area and have worked behind the scenes to help get one closed school
reopened, and we helped start a foundation for support at one of them, our
public high school, my alma mater that went during white flight from 95 percent
white to 15 percent white in just one decade. We support the few other
nonprofits in our area and work together to throw community resource fairs, and
have helped provide beautification at some of our struggling local businesses.
By paying some of our local neighbors on contract at $10 an hour when they work
for us we seek to set a standard of fairer wages, and through it have helped
several to remain in their homes. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">All of this I believe is the promise of Unitarian Universalism in
reviving the world, being good for nothing you might say. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Remember We don’t have church membership (yet anyway); that no one gets
paid a salary either in the church or nonprofit we created (we are not averse
to that; we would like to see that happen but with limited resources it hasn’t
yet taken top priority). Miracle among the ruins indeed. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We have done it through partnerships with others and not caring whether
they became a part of the worshipping part of church or not, whether they
believed like us or not. We have done it by reminding ourselves and those who
come to us that all we do is just forms of what we really do, what we really
give out and redistribute, and that is community—what theologian Jorgen
Moltmann says is the real opposite of both poverty and wealth—what we really
redistribute is God’s radical peaceful Love for All. Knowing this helps when we get stolen from,
when we get vandalized, when we have our buildings burned down by people
passing through and using them; yes, we curse then we realize our blessings of
being in the right place serving the right people and getting the chance to grow
our spirit of generosity and abundance and help others experience it too.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> We have done all this with whole
new groups of people who cycle in and out of missional relationship with us.
Only a very very few have been with us from the time we started in 2003 trying
to build a normal kind of church in a fast growing suburb. Even almost all of
those who were with us when we made our missional transformation leap in 2007
and created the community center for others in which we as a group would then
gather for worship have moved or died. But there is Life Again always.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The promise of our
faith, the revival spirit, is that it call us, prompts us, guides us into Life
Again. The promise is that we can and should continually recreate ourselves as
church in order to meet our mission, the mission of making justice and love
visible in the world, especially with and for people and places that others
choose not to see or love or live with. And to bring to the world Life Again,
and Again, and Again. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-2805851103037463172014-10-02T12:48:00.002-07:002014-10-02T12:48:48.277-07:00God's Starting Point: Today's Communion Service and Homily at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbbK6aYbMGMdG_2BZVw7E7qQjrxbcaDklq2jCRtWyOQnKnbcz368vUfX_g83di4SpSI3z2vXeK0_lRVLuJaVBYvJSJKyh2qtWIMfmfChQRcTrGOsbbcZG3vhZXK0t-IA7QsDEI/s1600/welcometable.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbbK6aYbMGMdG_2BZVw7E7qQjrxbcaDklq2jCRtWyOQnKnbcz368vUfX_g83di4SpSI3z2vXeK0_lRVLuJaVBYvJSJKyh2qtWIMfmfChQRcTrGOsbbcZG3vhZXK0t-IA7QsDEI/s1600/welcometable.jpg" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">PTS Chapel Thursday,
Oct. 2, 2014<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">coming World Communion Day</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Leader: Rev. Ron
Robinson<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this
was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes”</span></i></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (Psalm 118: 22-23)</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Invocation<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the light of truth, and the loving
and liberating spirit of Jesus, we gather in freedom, to worship God and be
strengthened in community for the work of justice in the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Today is the hour which
God has made; Let us rejoice and be glad therein<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For what does the Eternal require of
us?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">To live justly, love
mercy, and walk humbly with our God.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sung Response<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Bless the Lord my soul, and bless God’s holy name.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> Bless the Lord my soul, who brings
me into life.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Prayers<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Draw us into your love, Christ Jesus<b>: and deliver us from fear.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Make me an
instrument of your peace.<b><br />
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;<br />
</b>where there is injury, pardon;<b><br />
where there is doubt, faith;<br />
</b>where there is despair, hope;<b><br />
where there is darkness, light;<br />
</b>where there is sadness, joy.<b><br />
Grant that I may not<br />
so much seek to be consoled as to console,<br />
</b>to be understood as to understand,<br />
to be loved as to love.<b><br />
For it is in giving that we receive,<br />
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,<br />
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.</b></span><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Silence and Speaking Names For Prayer</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">(respond with "God of Mercy, hear our prayer")</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Deepest Source of All, may our prayers be times of listening as well as
speaking. May we be open to what Life yet speaks to us of truth, joy, and
goodness. And as Jesus taught to all those who would follow in his
radical, inclusive, compassionate and transforming way, we pray with him: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Our
Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread, and
forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us
not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the
power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our
brothers and sisters throughout the world, who live and die in poverty and
pain. Give them today, through our hands, their daily bread and through our
understanding love, give peace and joy. Amen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Through our lives and by our prayers:
may your kingdom come!<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(parts of the above come from Common
Prayer for Ordinary Radicals)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sung Response<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dona Nobis Pacem<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Scripture:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">from Matthew 21, and this week's selections from the Revised Common Lectionary</span></sup></div>
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<sup><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">33</span></sup><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">“Listen to
another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence
around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to
tenants and went to another country.<sup>34</sup>When the harvest time had
come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. <sup>35</sup>But
the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned
another. <sup>36</sup>Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and
they treated them in the same way. <sup>37</sup>Finally he sent his son to
them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ <sup>38</sup>But when the
tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us
kill him and get his inheritance.” <sup>39</sup>So they seized him, threw
him out of the vineyard, and killed him. <sup>40</sup>Now when the owner
of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” <sup>41</sup>They
said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the
vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest
time.” <sup>42</sup>Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the
scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? <sup>43</sup>Therefore
I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a
people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. <sup>44</sup>The one who
falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom
it falls.” (Matthew 21: 33-44, NRSV)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sung Response<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We’re gonna sit at the
welcome table, we’re gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days
halleluia, we’re gonna sit at the welcome table, gonna sit at the welcome table
one of these. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">All kinds of people
around that table, all kinds of people round that table one of these days
halleluia, all kinds of people around that table, gonna sit at the welcome
table one of these days.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Communion<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Words of Invitation:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“God’s Starting Point” <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron Robinson</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I love the parables.
Parables got me into seminary. When people ask me why I am a Christian, I tell
them a parable to try to evoke how I am a Christian. The parables have an abundance of meaning that
just keeps on giving each time I return to them, much like the beloved
community they point toward. But some of them….you have to drag me kicking and
screaming….to enter into. This is one of those. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If nothing else, I
suppose it is a reminder that the hardest conversations, the most complex and
nuanced of experiences, oh the places we do not want to go, like into a
minefield of mirrors of class and ethnicity and multitudes of perspectives and
risk and triggers of many kinds, are the places we need to go, sometime in our
life, if we are to seek to put ourselves where we will catch a glimpse of God
as the White Rabbit dropping out of sight quickly down a hole daring us to
follow. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The hole in this
parable I want to take us down today—out of the numerous ones that might be
calling to us—is the one with the sign that says: Check Your Baggage Here.
Those bags of expectations we have inherited, those bags we have filled up from
our own life’s lessons, those bags to which we have held on to the tightest,
the bags of our notions of right and wrong and justice and success and honor,
and safety, and shame too, and fear too. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Down that hole we see
that: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There was a city that
built parks and schools and businesses of many kinds and churches and civic
associations and services like post offices and sidewalks and street lights and
fire protection and water lines and built homes with gardens. It was like a
vineyard. And then the city left for another country, another people. Some
called it white flight. Some called it the American Dream. Some called it
Market Forces. Soon the people who remained turned away from one another, or
upon one another, as they had been turned away from, as the vineyard dried
up…After a while, whenever the city would hear of some crime in the old
vineyard, or whenever the city had a Good Idea for the old vineyard, from the
other country where it had settled, the city would send a representative with a
new program idea, but no money for the vineyard, and the people turned on the
representatives of the city who came in from elsewhere to fix them, even though
they were just doing their job, even though they had good intentions, even
though they loved the people of the old vineyard but not enough to live with
them. The city even eventually sent in from the other country its finest,
bravest, smartest ones who would surely be able to get the most out of the old
vineyard because, after all, weren’t the old vineyard and the other country
really all one place together. But the people met these representatives as soon
as they landed and made sure they never came back…And the city wondered: what
would happen if it came back itself? And in the online comment sections of the
city, and in its high private places, the city decided enough was enough and
that the old vineyard was good for nothing but being levelled, incarcerate them
all, and start over, or just use the land for all the waste of various kinds
the city needed to get rid of. Time to move on. There was so much great stuff
going on for the city in its new country. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Then Jesus said back:
Don’t you remember how God is? The rejects are God’s fruit. God’s great stuff
happens with them right there. I tell you what. Your Gathering Places, Your
Rivers, Your Greens, Your Malls, Your Mega-Churches, Your Young Professionals
will be taken from you and given to those who get God and where and who God
starts with. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The stones that the
Empire rejects are the stones that God wants us to build our homes with. And
the Empire rejects these stones for a lot of sensible good reasons. They are
broken stones. They are mix matched. They have been in toxic places. They force
us to rethink our very homes themselves and how we have built them in the past.
They are the foundation then for a new kind of home, city, for God’s dream. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And so it is with the
Christ table. This is God’s starting point, more departure point than
destination point; our destinations should be wherever we can go create tables
with and for others without them. And it is good that we celebrate the table
for what it is come each year at World Communion Day. For here we check our
baggage, even especially our theological spiritual religious baggage and
whatever names and addresses we have attached to our baggage. Here we come
rejected and rejecting both, eating a meal that reminds us we are fed by One
who sees us as more than what we have done and more than we see of ourselves
and one another. Here we come from the vineyard and from the city and from
another country all. For here at the table, the hardest table to sit at, the
one you really don’t have to have an invitation to, we can begin again in love.
I come to the table today and I have with me on one side the spirit of that
grandfather of mine who settled in North Tulsa at the time of the first world
war and became a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and with him are the spirits of
those who used him and poor whites like him for their own gain, and I have on
my other side the spirits of all those neighbors who suffered, and suffer
still, and rage against still, the world created by those on my other side.
This is the table even for those, local and global today, who can’t physically
yet come to the table with one another, for all kinds of reasons not for me to
judge but to make space for. This is the “as if” table. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Words of Institution:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Jesus said: I was hungry and you gave
me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed
me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in
prison and you came to me. And his disciples asked him:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When did we do this? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And he said, you did this for me when
you did it to the least of these.<b> <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Here is the bread of life, food for
the spirit. Let all who hunger come and eat. Here is the fruit of the vine,
pressed and poured out for us. Let all who thirst now come and drink.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We come to break bread. We come to
drink of the fruit of the vine. We come to make peace. May we never praise God
with our mouths while denying in our hearts or by our acts the love that is our
common speech. We come to be restored in the love of God. All are worthy. All
are welcome. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Robert Eller-Isaacs,
based on Matthew 25, alt. Singing the Living Tradition hymnal) <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> Receiving From the Plate and Cup While Singing<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Let us break bread
together on our knees. Let us break bread together on our knees. When I fall on
my knees with my face to the rising sun, o lord have mercy on me<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Let us drink wine
together on our knees. Let us drink wine together on our knees. When I fall on
my knees with my face to the rising sun, O Lord have mercy on me.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Let us praise God
together on our knees. Let us praise God together on our knees. When I fall on
my knees with my face to the rising sun O lord have mercy on me. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Prayers for the Coming Hours:
Sext<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The sun is
overhead. The traveler reaches a crossroad.</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Give me courage for this hour.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The hour
when the fruit of the forbidden tree is eaten. The hour Jesus hangs upon the
cross. The dull center of ordinary time. The mid-life crisis of our day.
Tempted to lethargy and apathy and despair. Hard to hold on. We can’t look at
the sun directly. We can’t look directly at this hour. Half of life is spent
and night is coming. Still God prepares the way, and opens the door. God works
to unseal the heavy doors that we have built around our hearts. News from God
comes rushing through dark alleys into your heart<b> (Rilke).</b></span><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">O Merciful One, may we
know You more clearly, love you more
dearly, and follow you more nearly, day by day.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hour by Hour, God heals the
broken-hearted and binds up their wounds,
lifts up the downtrodden. You shall go out in joy and be led back
in peace. The mountains and the
hills before you shall burst into song and all the trees of the
field shall clap their hands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> Give me courage for this hour.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Benediction:</span></u></b><b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Draw us ever closer into your
community, O God, that we might love one another and work with one another in
ways that mirror your care and unending love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Let us go out into the highways and
byways.<br />
Let us give the people something of our new vision.<br />
We may possess a small light, but may we uncover it, and let it shine.<br />
May we use it to bring more light and understanding<br />
to the hearts and minds of men and women.<br />
May we give them not hell, but hope and courage.<br />
May we preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Amen. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(attributed to the Rev. John Murray,
an early British and American Universalist)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Going in Song<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Go now in peace, go now in peace, may
the love of God be with you, everywhere, everywhere you may go.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron Robinson is the Executive
Director of the national Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, is an
adjunct faculty in practical theology and director of ministerial formation for
Unitarian Universalists at PTS, is a church planter with The Welcome Table
missional community in far north Tulsa and is Executive Director of A Third
Place Community Foundation begun by the church. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-88078696780789165162014-09-28T19:19:00.006-07:002014-09-28T19:19:52.199-07:00Life = Mission Trip, a sermon in New Orleans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVTHLLVIOBZ7dzI6phNvH0NbfGYGpc9_EmizbKkqEkT76BGqRSVySv3qDwb3nIEhWhUZGMmD8U9KyiB3FeSnh6qCvlYPmy_-LwK_UI-x6sWV9OOcplw4zJwcjtObtatK9mSK73/s1600/lifeonfire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVTHLLVIOBZ7dzI6phNvH0NbfGYGpc9_EmizbKkqEkT76BGqRSVySv3qDwb3nIEhWhUZGMmD8U9KyiB3FeSnh6qCvlYPmy_-LwK_UI-x6sWV9OOcplw4zJwcjtObtatK9mSK73/s1600/lifeonfire.jpg" height="288" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Life =
Mission Trip<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sermon by
Rev. Ron Robinson at First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans,
Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today I will talk about what a very few people can become and
do when their lives catch on fire with mission to love who and what others find
unloveable, or as we say, when they love the hell out of this world, and how
this is part of a big revolution in the why of church, that affects the how,
the what, and the who of church. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But first let me say it is a privilege to be preaching here
today. Let me say thank you because New Orleans has played a role in my being
here, and in what I am preaching about. Twenty years ago I think this very
weekend my wife and I were here in the church for worship just having finished
a week being feted around the French Quarter from party to party up above the
Quarter (in some amazing places) and to very nice restaurants down below. I had
received that year’s Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Award for a Novella. It was one of
the rewards for the writer’s life I had dreamed about and worked toward, but at
the same time I had also recently started a UU church and was helping to start
others and was getting more and more drawn toward ministry. Soon even such enticements
as we experienced in New Orleans for the literary life couldn’t compete with
where I felt my life needed to go, into “downward mobility” with the poor and
suffering and into the stories of others whom few were paying attention to and
seemed in fact to be turning away from. For me the move into ministry also
meant going deeper into the story of radical hospitality and missional living I
found most gripping of my soul in the life of Jesus and the early communities
that were planted in his spirit.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And then again a few years later I
was back here in this church for the very first Revival of the Unitarian
Universalist Christian Fellowship, feeling the spirit moving and directing more
into the model of freely following Jesus’s model of ministry. Then a few years
after that, already through seminary and ordained and serving in ministry, I
came back to New Orleans five months after Hurricane Katrina and the federal
flood. I was only here as a witness to briefly meet community organizers who
were living amid the abandonment and destruction, living in place of those who
had lived here before amid the abandonment and destruction before the flood. I
came just to see the presence being created and re-created in what has come to
be called, about many such places of poverty and inequality, an abandoned place
of Empire. I was moved by the image I took away from the Ninth Ward, of kerosene
lamps dotting the dark no power landscape where people were staying in damaged
houses in mainly empty neighborhoods in order to show the world that these
houses were still homes, waiting for renewed life. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">By the way, the term abandoned place
of Empire originated in the early centuries of the common era as monasteries
and alternative communities left the major cities to live a different way of
life and in a different set of values than that of the Roman Empire’s dominant
culture of war and wealth and power and honor. Now it is used to designate
those very uncool, unhip, under resourced high poverty low life expectancy
zipcodes of the American Empire where business investment and public investment
flees, where people who remain often feel shame for their lives because if they
were only rich enough, smart enough, had made better choices in their lives,
hadn’t gotten sick and broke, they would be able to move to the places where
the supposed American Dream good life happens. The point of the mission of the
missional church, you might say, is the let these people know that the American
Dream might have left them behind, in a kind of worldly Rapture, but that are
still and can be still a part of God’s Dream of lovingkindness and justice for
all. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Just a few months after that time in
New Orleans I was in another such place on a global sense, witnessing the
presence and visions and dreams of our Universalists in the Philippines, seeing
how relational church can be, how committed it can be to its neighbors. And a
few months after that I was at a missional church conference and there, all
these experiences building up in me, I had an epiphany of how to turn our own
small church plant inside out in order to better connect and serve our
neighbors in our own abandoned place of Empire in Tulsa. That transformation
really kicked off our still emerging experience of being a part of the
missional church movement, which in its own way helped to launch these Life on
Fire gatherings such as we had here this weekend, here at the Center in one of
the great and few places where the missional spirit and the progressive spirit are
intersecting to change lives and the world, right here and beyond. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We are beginning to do through our
Welcome Table Church and our nonprofit organization A Third Place Community
Foundation a little of what the Center for Ethical Living and Social Justice
Renewal does in the hosting of groups on mission trips to learn contextually about
poverty, racism, classism, and hopeful struggle, to serve, and to take insights
back. The Center’s experiences and our own experiences have helped me to see
and describe church itself now, and in fact life itself now, as being a Mission
Trip. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When people ask me what our church is
like, I ask them if they have ever been on a mission trip, going to serve and
work with others perhaps on rebuilding after a disaster or just to help in a
poverty area with few resources, where you get outside of your comfort zone, go
to others instead of expecting them to come to you, where you form close bonds
as a small group in a short time, sometimes the smaller the better, and you do
this in part by eating together a lot, where the daily aspects of life can be
rough, where risks are taken and mistakes made and there is a lot of the
blessings of imperfection around, and a lot of grace and forgiveness, where the
service to and with others comes first and worship and learning fits in around
it, where you are trying to make an impact both on your life but also on a
particular area, where you have to take your clues from the folks who actually
live there or else the mission will be all about you instead and you will just
be perpetuating the disaster or conditions that sent you on the mission in the
first place. Then I say that is what our church is like, what church can be
like, all the time. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I think about lives on fire,
about missional incarnations changing church in its core, I am reminded about where
I live in the Tallgrass Prairie, an ecology that once stretched all the way
from Canada to the Gulf coast in east Texas. On the prairie there is a
phenomenon that is a metaphor for the spiritual landscape of our time, for on
the prairie, fire is a blessing, a way to keep a healthy growing diverse
environment by burning away the invasive species that seek to create a
monoculture that will eventually ruin the soil. Now in what is left of the
Tallgrass Prairie we have to do our own burnings, own clearing away of all the
underbrush that stifles diversity and new life. And after a prairie wildfire
sweeps through an area, the blackened earth doesn’t remain that way hardly at
all. In no time, green life is sprouting and the native wildflowers and the big
bluestem and other native grasses bring forth the kind of natural diversity
that feeds the wildlife and bees and butterflies that keep the earth an Eden. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In our own lives we can at times
experience this transforming power of new and renewed and abundant life coming
out of crises and scarcities. In church life we are undergoing the prairie fire
now, and have been culturally for some 50 years as modernity and churched
culture that existed for some 500 years have been burned away, swept away, from
their formerly privileged position. In this new environment we are seeing what
is called “a bigger bandwidth” of church shooting up; many diverse new or
renewed sprouts greening the landscape of spiritual community. Some remain
institutionally connected; others are independently organic. We have moved into
a post modern, post Christian, post denominational, and now post congregational
culture. From organization to organism. When I say post, it is not that any of
these elements have gone away, or should go away necessarily; it is just that
they do not have the same central place in culture as they used to have; now
they are only a part of the wider spectrum of church manifestations, only one
of the frequencies of the bigger bandwidth.
And the health of a movement we will be judged not in how strong are its
remaining traditional bodies but in how much diversity of new manifestations
and expressions it can become incarnated in a multitude of places and peoples. How
vulnerable and risky church can become will be a measure of its success. One
church of one kind for one big area is giving way to church by anyone anywhere
anytime anyhow. How it gives itself away to build up the world is its identity.
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The fire that has been sweeping
through church life is the Missional Life. Missional is different than mere
mission as purpose. Missional means a people being sent to connect and serve
with other people, going to where the most suffering and the least resources
and abilities for healing are present. One’s mission could be to take care of
people in one’s own group; that would be the opposite of missional. When we say
one of the markers of the missional church is that the church doesn’t have a
mission but the Mission has the church, creates the church, sustains the
church, that’s the difference we are talking about. Missional is also the
opposite of the old Missionary Church; the missional church goes into the world
not to convert the world to becoming like it, to grow its membership, but it
goes into the world to be converted by the world and its needs, it hurts. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some call it incarnational versus the
old attractional model of church. Incarnational as going out, making values
real in the world, embodying our message, rubbing up against the people others
flee from, who are not, also, attracted to us no matter how attractive we try
to make ourselves. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> This gets to the heart of what a church is and
is for. For example let me say upfront that the mission of our form of missional church called
The Welcome Table is not to increase the numbers in our church or in our
Association, and not even to get more people believing the way we do; if all of
that happens as a byproduct, that is fine. But the numbers I am interested in that
drive our mission are the numbers dying in my zipcode 14 years before they do
just six miles away down the same street. And The numbers we serve in our free
food store that are going up when we want to see them go down. And The numbers
without health insurance that are way too high because our area is full of
people too poor to get in on the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. And the
high percentage numbers of abandoned houses and rundown properties. And The
numbers of disabled and those with mental health difficulties and the numbers
of those with felonies and the numbers who don’t have transportation and the numbers
of children whose parents are addicts and the numbers of schools and post
offices and community pools that closed because resources for public use are
being cut to the bone and are being redirected to places where there are
numbers of people who already have other options instead of remaining in places
like ours where the need is great and few options exist, where very few
nonprofits are located and where the other churches are mostly closed through
the week too. And yes, I agree that there is suffering of many kinds in the
wealthiest of neighborhoods, but that the resources to address that suffering
varies greatly from place to place so place still matters. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The numbers I focus on as fulfilling our mission are the one
to two thousand people fed each month in our food center, not only with a
little bit of the food they need, but fed also with a place of peace and
non-anxiety and radical love for them and sense of community of neighbors
helping neighbors; the numbers of one to three hundred who will show up for our
holiday parties we throw for the community because no one else is, parties
thrown in the large abandoned church building we bought and are turning it into
a community center, serving others out of it even as it needs so much work
itself. The numbers of abandoned houses,
we are working to get to be repurposed for community and for residents who will
help in the community, as we have been helpful in getting some rundown
abandoned houses in our neighborhood torn down and open space created, and as
we bought a block of abandoned homes and illegal dump site and have turned it
into a community gardenpark and orchard where many community free events are
held and healthy food is grown and taught about and eaten by folks with few
healthy food options. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t focus so much on the numbers who worship with us
weekly, some two or three up to twenty, though more is the merrier as some of
our graffiti says in the sanctuary of the abandoned church building we use. We
worship in space we have made and given away to others; we worship all over the
place; we worship with other churches, mostly not UUs. This helps us and our
people to grow and live in a “theology of enoughness.” We never say “just two
or three or five.” We are a Church of Enough in a culture that says you can
never have enough, or you get what you deserve. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Making more Unitarian Universalists, or making more followers
of Jesus in my case, is not then the end we seek; making hurting lives in our
neighborhoods just a little easier, so those souls can perhaps become their own
green shoots out of burned soil is the end we seek and what we measure for
success; anything else might be good and be welcomed but is secondary. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> When we planted our local
faith community ten years ago, we began in a fast growing suburb ten miles from
where we are now, and with a different name, and purpose. In the past ten years
we have rented 8 different places and used more than that, and we have used
four different names, and I rather wish we had never used any name because that
so easily gets you focused on yourselves instead of others. But back then the intent was not to become
what we have become, but to be an established church that would look and feel
pretty much like other churches and like what churches both UU and otherwise
have looked and felt like since the 1950s and even the 1850s and even before. One
of my take-aways of our many radical changes as a group is that As we failed at
what we thought we wanted to be, we became what the world needed us to be.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Seven years ago, after we had failed at first trying to
be that attractional church in the suburbs and had relocated to the lowest
income lowest life expectancy zipcode in the Tulsa area, both relocating the
church and returning with our family, it became clear to us that we needed to
be able to respond better to the lives of our neighbors, and that what they
were saying they needed was not more sermons and programs. We decided we needed
to change in order to change our area. We believed that churches or any groups
should not get healthier and wealthier while the communities around them become
poorer and sicker. As one missional leader has said (Shane Claiborne, The
Irresistible Revolution) we risked becoming smaller in order to do bigger
things. We now strive to be the best church not IN the community but FOR the
community; seeing ourselves as “a people” not “a collection of religiously
oriented individuals”, a people, a very few people, all unpaid so far, who feel
called and connected to be Sent to listen and learn from others and, together
with them, to love the hell out of this world. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Be-Loved, Be Sent. That is where the word missional comes
from, out of the Greek word missio. We are to be not members of a religious
club, not even ultimately bearers of a religious message with our elevator
speeches, but to be living missives, embodiments of what we find Sacred, and
incarnating that in places and peoples deemed profane not Sacred. That is what
will make our lives catch fire, what will make them into sacraments.</span></b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In doing this We and the many new church missional
manifestations in the world today, some much more radical than we are, are shifting
from church as a What to church as a Who. Church in the new and ancient
way that didn’t require it to be a 501c3 organization, with a building of its
own, bylaws,boards, budgets. Those may be deemed helpful, but they aren’t what
makes a church a church; that is its mission. The mission is the permanent; the
church form is the transient. That is borrowing the words of Unitarian minister
Theodore Parker who reminded us in 1841 that the church of the first century
did not do for the fifth century, and the church of the fifth century did not
do for the fifteenth century, and the church of the fifteenth century did not
do for the 19<sup>th</sup> century; and we can update him to say that the
church of the late 20<sup>th</sup> century will not do for the 21<sup>st</sup>.</span></b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I teach and love church history, and it reminds me often
these thoughts and struggles are not new. We talk now of ancient-future faith
because so much of the post modern era, the 21<sup>st</sup> century, has strong
echoes in the pre modern and first century. In the very earliest centuries of
Christianity, its communities were more organic than organizational; we have
few of them intact through the centuries, but we have their legacy; they were
more of a social movement. Even in our more recent church history, back when
many of the oldest churches in our Association gathered to write the Cambridge
Platform of 1648, the founding document of our radical American
congregationalism , it grounded its covenantal nature in mission to and with
others, and not just with those who joined a particular church, or became its
leaders; for a church to be considered whole and healthy, then and now, it
needed to be in covenant with the world around it; in fact, the more it
struggles with its internal covenants with one another and its leadership, the
more it needs its core identity to be as a people on an external mission, to
and with those beyond its own circle. Often its own internal healing will
occur from seeking to be healers to and with others. We know this truth in our
own lives as well. If we waited to be whole ourselves before offering ourselves
to others, we would not only never be whole in ourselves, but we would never
help others. And yet what we do with our lives, our churches, on this grand
mission trip is to offer up the depth of our selves, and so, to paraphrase our
early Puritan ancestors, the errand into the wilderness for our faith is a
journey into the wilderness of our souls, and as we grow them alongside others
we are able to offer more to the world and receive its many surprises of
blessings in return. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is why one of the next Life on Fire gatherings will be
back in Tulsa at The Welcome Table next May 29-31 for a focus on Spiritual
Practices in Missional Settings. All of those spiritual practices we often
associate with retreats to far off places of great natural beauty and solitude?
What if we set them into abandoned places of Empire, and engaged in them with
people who live in such places? What new practices might we even develop? </span></b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The ultimate impetus is to keep turning the church inside
out, keep responding to those in need, and letting that need shape what the
church in many manifestations becomes. Our reason for being, what calls us
together, is to be sent out to make visible in the world that Sacredness of
Life that compels us to connect the disconnected and to love the hell out of
this world. To discern where hearts are breaking, and let that guide us into
how we become church, become a people so bold, and on fire to go break our
hearts together with theirs, and in doing that know the blessings for all that
will flood in when we do. </span></b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-8900850355619466262014-07-27T13:21:00.001-07:002014-07-27T13:21:26.021-07:00The Spirituality of Missional Messiness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI1ZwE6BrkYQ5ZzHzg-Da_-hidUc4F2j-hy4gc1yJwRFOI1S5rZKAAaKP1ijzadHPtLvLUgNB-mgLNkrpedfwtlqp9jafgZ6wsM93EOUupbWpMmmOZgBEOHeUZjJL_xv0qSYo-/s1600/messinesssacred.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI1ZwE6BrkYQ5ZzHzg-Da_-hidUc4F2j-hy4gc1yJwRFOI1S5rZKAAaKP1ijzadHPtLvLUgNB-mgLNkrpedfwtlqp9jafgZ6wsM93EOUupbWpMmmOZgBEOHeUZjJL_xv0qSYo-/s1600/messinesssacred.jpg" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b>
<b>By Rev. Ron Robinson</b><br />
<b>Preached in Bartlesville, OK, Sunday, July 27, 2014</b><br />
<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This past month at the
General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Providence, Rhode
Island, I led a workshop called Ministry in Abandoned Places: The 3Rs of Love
Reaching Out. There I shared much about our local all volunteer group in
community and service with neighbors on the north edge of Tulsa, and how it
reflects the missional church movement today. It was a lot like what I brought
here when I preached last October. I updated it with our current "S.O.S.", our Summer of Service
Miracle Among the Ruins projects we have going on now through the UUA www.Faithify.org
site to raise funds by Aug. 8 for our community center initiatives in the
abandoned church building and for a kitchen greenhouse in the gardenpark and
orchard where abandoned houses once stood. Both so we can serve more and
throughout the year in our part where people are dying 14 years earlier than in
other parts of town. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All very inspiring I
hoped, and hope. I try to get across the possibilities of turning church
inside out in a new culture where fewer and fewer seek church in the same ways
as before. Church as something we create, not something we go to or attend. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Before the workshop,
though, I said that what was really needed were two workshop slots, one for
sharing the information and the inspiration, but then one more for getting
real, for sharing the struggles, the frustrations, the setbacks, the constant
learnings, the personal failings, and how to sustain mission and grow the soul
in and through it all. How important it is to develop a spirituality of
messiness for our messy world and lives, especially in a place where people
often have felt shame for the mess of their lives and where there is so much physical and spiritual deterioration of the neighborhoods. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I began to hint at this
when I was here last time. Looking over my sermon from then, I found these
words near the end when I talked about how almost every month we go broke and
wonder if we might have to close or curtail a lot like so much else that has
been closed or moved from around us. I said:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“We face that abyss with each break-in, each vandalism, each
broken heart or hurt feeling, as people and finances come and go, and we have
to grow deeper in radical trust and the faith to keep making leaps into the
abyss.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That is why we need to keep stoking the fires burning within
our own lives without becoming burned out, so we can be a spark for others. It
is why mission to others is always mirrored with refreshing the spirit—why I
hope you are here this morning. It is why we say we aren’t really giving out
food or information as much as giving relationship, community, connecting the
disconnected, starting with what’s disconnected within us. Partnering with
people of peace, and promoting a sense of abundance instead of anxiety, is more
important than all the programs I have mentioned or that we might begin.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So think of this sermon as Part Two of that, or as I joke
about it as “The Anti Workshop Sermon” because it is not so much about
presenting something new and inspirational as it is about finding inspiration
and connection and hope again in the wake of things that don’t turn out the way
you hope, when you lose connection, and you run dry of inspiration. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In Providence, at General Assembly I think the part two of my
workshop came in the form of the esteemed annual Ware Lecture given this year
by Sister Simone Campbell of Nuns on the Bus fame but who has been working in
and with the poor for many years, along with those in the progressive group Leadership
Conference of Women Religious who have pushing for action on behalf of the
poorest among us. Her talk was about the calling to “Walk Toward Trouble.” To
not turn away from suffering, to acknowledge it and all its difficulties,
complexities, and conflicts. She embodies what Jesus really meant when he is
reported to have said “the poor you will always have with you,” meaning NOT
that you can then ignore the poor and their worlds, BUT that if you are a
follower of his you will always be among the poor, the hurting, those treated
unjustly. That that, and not some serene perfect feeling of detached oneness,
is what it means to live religiously. Engaging in Reality, she reminded us, is
more important than engaging in capital T Truth, and that it calls forth our
humility as a religious action more than our certainty in a religious principle.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It was a word I needed to hear because often when we open up
our doors, when we open up ourselves, we are walking toward trouble, walking
with those who are troubled, walking with those who cause trouble, who are
trying to get away from trouble, and the secret is that all of those make up
the We I am talking about. I tell those who work with us that we are going to
disappoint one another, break each other’s heart, frustrate one another, wear
each other down, abandon one another, the same as we might experience all of
that from someone who comes in the Center’s door or through the park’s gate. </span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How we learn to grow from all that will actually help us grow through the
thefts, the gossip, the vandalism, the rumors, the fires, the repairs, the
addiction to drama, all those things that are really a relatively small part of
life together where we are but that because of the messiness of life in general
make any sane person want to throw up their hands and say where’s the nearest
deserted island to flee toward, or I get enough of that from my own family and
friends why do I need to immerse in it with strangers? Especially if what I am
seeking, as so many people say, is community. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Beloved Community is a term for what we often say we wish to
offer the world. But I think that is too often a limited concept in our minds.
Community of the Beloved conjures up and is often lived out as a community of
like minded, like values, of the liked, and that tends to keep us focused
inward on those who come to become us, especially if our own family and work
connections are anything but like us, the drive for a community like us then becomes
even stronger. And it makes us want to stifle any healthy differences that
might seem to endanger that community, and as life’s ironies would have it that
of course leads to the kind of inwardness that eventually has people either
leaving out of boredom or eating each other up. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If, on the other hand, we sought to become not community but
what is called communitas, the gathering that is oriented outwards, that
gathers to help itself scatter out into the world to, as we say, love the hell
out of this world, whose Beloved are those we do not yet know, who we might not
in our normal lives come into contact with, who in fact we might want to cross
the street to avoid, then we would have the messiness of the world and our
lives in it always before us as visible reasons for why we gather in the first
place.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How to find a spiritual center while on this kind of
missional messiness? It isn’t easy.
People often ask me how I do what I do. I tell them I do it poorly and that’s
all right. That’s true, But it is more
than that. I could also do things a lot
better in my life, like most of us I believe, and I keep working on
that, most of the time, but it is still more than that awareness. I have
learned that for me the spiritual center, that place of deepest connection to
wonder and gratitude and oneness with the universe and eternity, is found in the
very places where topsy-turvy life meets us, challenges us, surprises us, and
takes us deeper. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is why I have been so sustained at the toughest and most
tired times by the unconventional wisdom of Jesus’ parables, especially two of
them which are being read today in churches around the world, including by some
of ours that follow what is called the Revised Common Lectionary, something
that the national organization I serve, the UU Christian Fellowship, helped to
start as a way to bring churches closer together. The study of these two
parables, one called The Leaven and the other The Mustard Seed, put me on the
path to seminary and ministry in the first place after I attended a workshop
put on by Hope Unitarian Church in Tulsa with the parables scholar who was soon
to be my seminary teacher and advisor, Brandon Scott whose popular book
ReImagine the World is about how the parables not only helped the followers of
Jesus to reimagine and live differently in their world of oppression and
poverty but how they later helped people to reimagine their relationship with
Jesus as well, not so much as having faith IN Jesus as having faith ALONG WITH
Jesus, having a faithfulness, a trust, in what Jesus trusted. That radical
shift that was there all along, but was buried in dogma by many for centuries,
is emerging now to help shift the foundations and the focus of church. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I was growing up in church, I rarely heard much about
the parables of Jesus. And when I did they were all about conventional wisdom
and morality tales of being good, or they were seen as allegories about the
Church, but in a way that reflected more the values of the American Dream and
society than about the challenge to those very values. You got their lessons in
Sunday School and then were supposed to not need them after that. But today the
parables are seen as the key to Jesus’ message, ministry, mission. These
parables about a revolutionary vision of God and about a counter cultural
mindset, called back then the Kingdom of God which was itself a parable since
everyone knew Kingdom was Caeser’s Roman’s, they have themselves gone through a
revolution. So much so that for many who write on them today, you can’t deeply
understand even the stories of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus
without seeing them as parables themselves, parables about Jesus told in the
spirit of the parables he himself told.<br />
<br />
The parables show us that before Jesus was considered the Anointed One, the
Messiah, the Christ, he first anointed, or Christ-ed the world itself, in all
its messiness, especially those parts of it and those people who were treated
as disposable objects. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of my favorite parables is when Jesus said: God’s Spirit,
God’s Empire, is like leaven, which a woman stole, and put into three measures
of flour, until it was all corrupted. That’s it. That seemingly simple parable
is, as Professor Scott says, about God changing sides. God’s Relocation. First
instead of evoking God as holiness, purity, as in the tradition of unleavened
bread, Jesus brings together the Sacred with leaven, yeast, something ordinary,
unholy even, something moldy that was to be kept separate and apart while
preparing your meal. Next in the parable God is likened to a woman, and as if
that isn’t bad enough in the eyes of the world, she is a woman who sneaks or
steals this leaven and mixes it in the flour, and then in another seemingly
foolish act she puts it into enough flour to feed a feast, and what naturally happens
then? It all goes bad, becomes useless, wasteful. And that’s where the parable
ends.</span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
The God, or spirituality, of this parable has relocated…from separateness to
being mixed up, from holiness to unholiness, from power and privilege and
public status to something that happens in the home, out of sight is no longer
out of mind, at least in God’s mind and sight; also the notion of Spirituality
is relocated from fullness and contentment to emptiness and waste; also from
The Spirit as A Static Being or Stoic beingness to a process, a messy movement,
one that changes and corrupts from within the dominant culture’s status quo and
beliefs in what is to be considered worthy and respectable and the good life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the ancient world there was a divinely ordered sense of
life, and it is strange that so much has changed since then and yet strong
traces remain, perhaps in some places more than others. The world was seen as
fixed and with set roles to maintain as life’s purpose, and its ultimate values
prized wealth and property, power over others, health, knowledge, strength,
beauty, achievements. The statues and art of the time reflected this as well as
the organization of relationships and community. This was the default mode of
the world, but Jesus’ parables re-imagined the world, called people to a
different default mode.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Again, he said, God is like the mustard seed which a man took
and sowed in his garden and it grew and became a great shrub and put forth
large branches so the birds of heaven could nest in its shelter. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Jesus’ hearers would have heard that and been shocked.
Mustard was illegal to use in gardens because it is an invasive plant, taking
over, spilling out of garden beds, ruining all the perfection and symmetry. If
you were going to use a horticultural image, God, in the Empire’s
understanding, was supposed to be likened to the Great Cedar Trees of Lebanon,
tall and strong and everlasting in their fixed spots with deep roots, not wild
and noxious. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The image of God became the image of the poor and powerless, the
outcast, the disruptive innovative force. And Jesus didn’t just teach this with
striking words, but he lived as if the world of the parables was the real world.
In a time of great scarcity he risked all in the spirit of abundance and
generosity, showing the possibilities of the real power that came from such a
re-imagined God. </span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But who would want to follow that kind of God, they asked? And
still do. It makes no sense. It won’t work in the world. But the parables turn
God upside down and inside out and call us to do the same with our lives and
our communities, to reimagine the world as if Caeser were not still in charge.
Caeser as unbridled affluence, appearance, achievement, security, even the
sense of coolness, consumption, fear, scarcity even in the midst of endless
options and varieties of goods that replace the Common Good.<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Spirituality that is found in what the parables point us
toward is a kind of counter dominant culture spirituality. </span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The new Empire
of Experiences, of EntertainmentMarketplace, says find our Spirit or the good
life in owning the latest gadgets, in making our personal life easier, in
separating ourself from others especially those most unlike us, in a gospel of
prosperity or perfection, in spending money to travel to faroff places or
people to find enlightenment and fulfillment, or in just turning off and tuning
out of the world across town or outside our doors? The parables spirituality
says all of that is an illusion, a treadmill that never changes you or the
world. Not like walking toward trouble, like groping in the wilderness for the
hands of others, anyone’s messy hands, and seeking a life together. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Because we are here in a Unitarian Universalist church, and
can do such things (though we aren’t alone in this of course) I will end with a
final parable of Jesus that sums up all this for me, as if a parable can ever
sum all up, when what it really does is keep breaking things open, apart. </span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This
parable isn’t found in the common lectionary because it comes from The Gospel
of Thomas, one of the important texts for part of the early church that is
still not officially by many considered as sacred text on the same level as the
ones we have gathered together in the Bibles now. It is the parable of the
Woman with A Jar.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Jesus said: “God is like
a certain woman, who was carrying a jar full of meal. While she was walking on
the road, still some distance from home, the handle of the jar broke and the
meal emptied out behind her on the road. She did not realize it; she had
noticed no accident. When she reached her house, she set the jar down and found
it empty.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am tempted, as Jesus would have,
to end on that stark abrupt note and leave us hanging with that image. </span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But talk
about messiness and the realities of life. I have said this parable in
contemporary terms is like being broke, skipping meals, getting by just waiting
for payday or for the monthly check, then once getting it you rush to the bank
or cash checking place to deposit it in order to be able to buy food for the
family for that night, and on the way the check blows out of the car, the card
is lost or stolen, and there you stand at the teller’s window realizing it. </span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The
jar full of meal the woman had likely would have fed a family for a month. And
That awful moment, Jesus seems to be saying, can become an awe-full moment.
That moment of being drained and feeling alone and empty has the possibility of
reminding us Whose we are, that we are not the controllers of all things in our
life, that we are part of others, in need of others as they are in need of us.
It is a moment when all the messiness of life and our life comes out into the
open, and we are left at a threshold, and God or life is like that, full of
opportunity and full of risk, continually opening up our lives to depth and new
beginnings, even though they be hard ones. </span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Like in the more familiar parable of the
prodigal sons, this woman, like the elder brother in that one, is left at the
end of the parable in a place of uncertainty, in his case he can either remain
out in the field in his sense of being right and just and miss out on the party
inside calling to all, in her case she can remain within her own narrow world
where she doesn’t notice the world around her and within her, remain in remorse
and shame and isolation. Or, in both cases, they can take a leap into an abyss
that is called living in and for the unknown future, living with and for others
beyond themselves even with a messiness of feelings and failures that go along
with it, and in doing so open themselves up to a Spirit that can lift them from
the depths of despair to the heights of hope. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As can we</span>. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-46621597849659397122014-06-21T22:08:00.000-07:002014-06-21T22:08:21.055-07:00What The World (and the Church) Needs Now...<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibEnOCKoN75GCLZeS-eQDze9vsY2dTwl9mEei4NNaSWrDKJsO1wYm-dVNbK0nJkQXbFJcZJuERiKXvwOlfZmq-oQsio78vVcGGE2QPe7DYVMD6VFbbiGNWeQIP72iogPr41kq9/s1600/welcometable.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibEnOCKoN75GCLZeS-eQDze9vsY2dTwl9mEei4NNaSWrDKJsO1wYm-dVNbK0nJkQXbFJcZJuERiKXvwOlfZmq-oQsio78vVcGGE2QPe7DYVMD6VFbbiGNWeQIP72iogPr41kq9/s1600/welcometable.jpg" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sermon, UU Church of Stillwater, OK
Sunday June 22, 2014<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“What The World (and the Church) Needs Now”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron Robinson<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Readings: from Isaiah 58, and from
Michael Durrall’s chapter Church as Activists not Spectators in Church Do’s and
Don’ts, and a little from Apostle Paul in First Corinthians 13. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This week I am going to
be presenting a workshop at the UUA General Assembly in Providence, Rhode
Island entitled “Ministry in Abandoned Places: The 3Rs of Reaching Out.” It
will be about the lessons of our ministry at The Welcome Table in far north
Tulsa as one example out of many of what is called these days the missional
church. The missional church is different from simply a church with a mission or
what is called sometimes a purpose-driven church; a church with a mission or
purpose can be a church that decides taking care of its own current members is
what is most important to it and to the world and is its mission or purpose. But
The mission-al church is the opposite of that. A missional church doesn’t spend
time trying to figure out or debate about a mission statement, either, or
change it every few years, because Mission, being sent to serve others, is what
brings it about, is what gives it the air for it to breathe and live and move
and have its being in the first place. The missional church may change often,
but not its language and core sense about itself; instead it will change its
very external forms in order to better respond due to the changes around it, to
keep living into its calling to be sent and to serve. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The theme of the
General Assembly itself is Love Reaches Out. It is a good theme for the various
re-orienting approaches to our purpose as congregations toward missional goals.
That theme is capturing the movement within our wider movement toward what is
called a focus on “Congregations AND Beyond”; both are needed, existing
congregations and new forms beyond congregations, but we have historically,
like most church bodies in the modern era, spent most of our resources and life
focused on congregations only. In the past they were the primary place where
spiritual community happened. Now that that is all changing, and they don’t
have a privileged place in either the landscape of religion and certainly not
anymore in the landscape of culture at large, we need to create some balance
with more attention paid to the Beyond part, to the many new ways our faith and
values are being incarnated in relationships in the world that don’t look or
feel like congregations and organizations have up to now. We need to connect with,
need to “go to” people who have little use or ability to access traditional
models of “come to us” congregations and organizations--no matter how inviting
and well run they are—people who are still hungry for connection for service to
others in a meaningful ways and worship that refreshes the spirit for that
service, and chances to reflect and learn from that service. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Congregations, even
ones who haven’t changed much fundamentally in 60 years, will continue to have
a strong potential for transforming lives and the world, but if we don’t also look
and live beyond ourselves and our own organizational needs, sometimes in
radical new ways, sometimes carried out even by existing congregations, then in
the expanding spiritual universe that requires a “bigger bandwidth” of what
church means, we will find ourselves with shrinking impact in the world. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Churches are answers, or responses, to questions, to
conditions that call them into being in the first place. We say that church
does not have a mission; but Mission has a church. There is a felt need that
church seeks to meet. Church is the response then to What The World Needs Now,
and what the world needs now might not primarily be what the world needed when
a particular congregation was begun. Especially in a time of rapid cultural
change. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the past 25 years, I
have planted, started or re-started three churches, and helped others to start.
Over that time, the questions asked in determining what church should be and do
and where it should do it and who should be in it have changed. They are not anymore
how many people like you can you gather together; how many have a college
education, how many in an area believe like you do, or even have similar values
that you do, much less, as sometimes guides our choices, who likes the same
music or who listens to the same radio stations, all those old marketing
questions that used to guide us in attracting people to start churches. It is
particularly not how many people can we get to become members so we can more
easily meet our budget to keep taking care of ourselves. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now the questions are:
Who in your community does your heart break for? Where are those most
vulnerable and what are their felt needs? Why should you exist in the first
place and for whom? To what forms are you willing to die in order that you
might live more fully in a new land? If you ceased to exist, how many in the
community beyond you would notice or be affected or care? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the many new
radical expressions and experiences of church that I will be talking about in
my workshop at General Assembly is that I no longer believe our goal as church is to create more
Unitarian Universalists, or for me as a Christian I even say it is not to
create more Christians. Becoming x, y, or z is not the end in itself we strive
for, is not the Why for our existence, but is at best a means to a greater end.
It is those greater ends we need to keep our eyes on, and our resources pointed
toward; the greater end of helping to create lives and communities of generosity
and boldness and compassion, and so they can then help create lives of
abundance and commitment to the most vulnerable and endangered in our society
who should be our ultimate concern. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Creating religious institutions is certainly one way toward
that end, but only if they do not see themselves (and their beliefs) as the end
in themselves; in fact, they may, in various ways through what they do and not
do and what they might keep people from doing, work against making the world a
better place, especially better for those beyond them (and maybe within them
too) who are suffering the most. This is what happens when a church focuses on
becoming the “best” church in a community instead of the best church for the
community. It is what happens when a church seeks to thrive while a community
around it declines. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Just becoming a church member, I believe, or even believing a
certain way, does not make the world a better place for those who struggle the
most. It is as scripture said, “by their fruits you will know them.” Are the
best fruits those of “right ideas” about the Ultimate, or is it those who form
“right relationships” with the most vulnerable, shamed, and outcast? Which
fruit is deemed the “most religious”? This is especially true in areas where
there is a lack of resources and of groups living in and with and for the poor
and marginalized, where it is not a case of “other groups” being available doing
this mission. Especially with the cutting back of public support and a sense of
a commonwealth, there are fewer and fewer others stepping into the increasing
gaps of society.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> In our area, for
example, the landscape is dotted with churches only opened on Sundays while
buildings continue to be abandoned around them, or buses that come in from the
big churches in other area who pick people up and bring them back and ignore
the neighborhoods they live in, all to focus on creating a pseudo-community
feel-good experience weekly; like a spiritual hit. Like creating another realm
of consumerism. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is important to put all this church and culture change
into a wider context. If nothing else it should help alleviate anxiety, blame,
shame, and conspiracy theories. This shift in the ultimate focus for church is
an aspect of living in the wake of the cultural move in the West from the
churched to dechurched/unchurched culture. Of going toward a post-modern,
post-Christian, post-denominational, now post-congregational world. By post I
mean not that those elements and institutions aren’t important and a current
factor, but that they do not hold the central privileged places in society the
once did. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the churched culture (that began to really lose its
privileged place throughout the USA by 1963) the point of church life was,
mistakenly I believe but still the dominant point, to continue the existence
and power of the institution of the church in a world populated by the
institutions of other churches, faiths. Church was a given so your mission was
to differentiate yourself from other churches. The church was primary, was the
center, and the mission field was secondary, was a resource for the church. (Was
often seen as far away in other lands. This is another way the new missional-church
is the opposite of the old mission-ary church; in that old culture, the church
went to the world in order to convert it to being more like the church; in the
new mission-al culture, the church goes to the world in order to serve it, be
converted by its deep needs, changed by it first so it can then truly change
the world.)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the churched world, People tended to become or return to
becoming the church-goers of their families and neighborhoods; brand loyalty
was high and clearly defined culturally and there was little stress of competitiveness
between the churches, and littler still between the churches and the culture
and its various opportunities outside the church. In this world making more
Unitarian Universalists, or Methodists, or whatever, was the way the church
realized its beingness in the churched-focused culture. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Especially so I might add if you were in a church that also
grew more and more percentage of its own coming in from other churches, then
making more UUs became increasingly important, it would be seen, for its
survival. In the dialectic of the age, the more the external community became
less focused and dependent upon the institutional church, the more the churches
became focused on themselves as institutional beings. “The mission” used to be
to perpetuate churches in a world where the “missional field” flowed toward the
church; in a world where the church as institution has been marginalized, the
missional field has shifted and it has become primary, and so too then should
“the mission.” In response the church today either flows toward the missional
field, or it dies, gradually or quickly depending on circumstances. (There are
admittedly many ways the church can flow, can empty itself, toward the
missional field; our manifestation at The Welcome Table which is always
changing itself is just one; there are exciting varied ways of being the church
happening all over the UU world. You can check out some of them and support
them on the new Faithify.org website that goes live this Wednesday at 4 pm. By
the way, we have two projects seeking support in the all or nothing
crowdsourcing site: one for a Kitchen Greenhouse at our gardenpark and orchard
where the abandoned houses used to be, so we can grow more and grow year round
and teach cooking and preserving and grow more healthy lives in our area where
we die 14 years sooner than others in Tulsa, and the other is for our Community
Room so we can use it all year, for seniors, for youth, for service learning
projects with universities, and for hospitality for those who come from around
the country to work with us and learn with us. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you see the variety of new expressions underway among
us, and there are more even than are reflected in this inaugural funding web
project, you will see that what is happening is a kind of New Fellowship
Movement focused not on creating small organizations of “us”, but on new ways
of relating with “them”, those who may never join an organization or call
themselves UU or this or that but who will walk with one another in the spirit
of love in order to share that love with those experiencing it the least. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now, Is making more Unitarian Universalists (Christian, etc.)
a bad thing then, or an unnecessary thing? Only I think if we make more
Unitarian Universalists who think that the purpose of their faith is themselves
and what they believe, and that it is more important to have and promote the right
religious beliefs instead of the right religious relationships, and those are
ones made with those different from us, and those others abandon and treat
unjustly, unmercifully. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And yet, aren’t ideas, beliefs, important and have consequences?
Yes. For example, I say that what I try to do as a leader of a missional
community among the vulnerable has all to do with how I understand and
experience my particular faith of freely following Jesus, and comes from a
theological commitment to a God of liberation and radical solidarity with the
poor and oppressed. But in reality what has been manifested at The Welcome
Table has been enriched and deepened not so much by thinking about these
things, the missional life, and holding the right ideas about it, but from
living in it and growing in response to the needs of ourselves and our neighbors.
It has come more from failing at our very own visions and endeavors and ideas,
but then being able to respond to the new openings and relationships that
happen as a result. I say often that when we have failed to be what we wanted
to be or thought we needed to be that we then grew to become what the world
needed us to be. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It has been freeing to
make not being right about theological matters the main reason for being, but instead
making the creation of more compassion and justice in the world the reason for
being, and to imagine churches who embody it. Yes, all the old theological
commitments and positions that have shaped our UU history are important to
engage with (when I was in seminary I took a third of my courses in theology;
it was a kind of graduate subspecialty of mine; and I had been studying Process
theology for almost twenty years before going to seminary, and I love church
history and teach UU history and polity at the seminary), but these positions
which had delineated us in the old decades were always just a part of a deeper
holistic religious tradition; they weren’t the be all and end all of our faith;
that also has always included spiritual practices, community life, and service
to and with others, and those three things can still move us toward being with others deeply,
spiritually, despite theological stances; all because the hurts of the world
demand it. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now I say I am more concerned with and am more urgent about
keeping alive those in my zipcode who are dying at faster rates that the
wealthier in our area are, more concerned about them than I am keeping alive
theological differences or keeping worship services filled, or churches afloat
financially. Nor do I want to grow the numbers of Unitarian Universalists so
that the democratic process in religion will flourish. Or, for that matter, so the
Seven Principles will be adopted by more people. They can be and are being
championed by any number of faith communities and more secular groups, and that
is all good. Our calling is still higher than these, and even the seven
principles are also means themselves to put to use toward the ultimate ends of making
life just a little bit easier, safer, more hopeful, more sacred for those
without those things. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Again, I believe we are experiencing a shift from the old
churched culture of people seeking and coming into, or staying in, a church
because of what they have come to believe and think already and are entering
the new unchurched culture where people are seeking and coming into or staying
in a church because it is open and nurturing to what their beliefs might still
yet become as they grow and deepen as persons through the primary religious act
of healing engagement in the world beyond themselves. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Unitarian Universalism is not the end, it is the means; I say
the same thing for myself about Christianity. And that makes a world of
difference in how to impact the world now. Yes, We matter. But Not because
there is a difference and uniqueness we must preserve in order to be ourselves
(that goes for my brother and sister Christians as well as my brother and
sister UUs). And Not so people of like minds have a place to call home and
celebrate their like minds (or like values). We matter to the extent that we
offer, or can offer what we have always offered throughout our history, a way
of radical loving covenantal freedom for people to connect with and grow with
others, others of all kinds of ideas and situations, into a more abundant generous
hope-filled justice-seeking humbled people, <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A people Whose mission is to create beyond itself more of
what the world needs now: love, sweet love. It’s the only thing there’s just
too little of.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> The Apostle Paul was
right; faith hope and love these three; yes, faith is important; yes, hope is
important, but the greatest of these, more important than what you believe to
be true, or how you happen to be feeling, is love. Love made real in our
commitments to others--not just for some, but for everyone. Lord we don’t need
another church feeling good or bad about itself and the future; there are
enough of those; what the world needs now is love, bold love, for the least the
last the losers of the American Dream. What the world needs now, more than more
church members, is church with the faith, the hope, the love, to take leaps,
leaps into the lives of those who are struggling for any faith, some hope, and
love. And the wonderful surprise, as the prophet Isaiah knew, is that when that
is the primary quest or main mission before us, then we ourselves and our
churches, our connections, our communities by whatever shape, we will grow as
well in mutual faith, hope, and love in order to be able to share what we have
in abundance. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What the world needs becomes what the church needs; we just
have to put the world’s needs first. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-35809177996737365112014-05-31T21:33:00.000-07:002014-05-31T22:01:41.065-07:00What The World Needs Now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Sermon, UU Congregation, Tahlequah,
OK Sunday June 1, 2014<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“What The World Needs Now”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">By Rev. Ron Robinson<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Readings: from Isaiah 58, and from
Michael Durrall’s chapter Church as Activists not Spectators in Church Do’s and
Don’ts. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Later this month I am
going to be presenting a workshop at the UUA General Assembly in Providence,
Rhode Island entitled “Ministry in Abandoned Places: The 3Rs of Reaching Out.” It
will be about our ministry at The Welcome Table in far north Tulsa and about
the way of the missional church. The theme of the General Assembly itself is
Love Reaches Out. It is a good theme for re-orienting our mission as
congregations. That theme is capturing the movement within our wider movement
toward what is called a focus on “Congregations and Beyond”; the beyond part is
the many new ways our faith and values are being incarnated in relationships
that don’t look or feel like congregations and organizations have up to now,
but are ways of connecting with people who have little use for traditional
models of congregations and organizations no matter how inviting and well run
they are, and connecting with those who don’t have the resources to get to and
be a part of “come to us” churches, but who are hungry for connection and
service and celebration. Congregations will continue to have a strong mission
for transforming the world, but if we don’t also look and live beyond ourselves
and our own organizational needs then we will find ourselves with little
relevance in the world. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Preparing for the workshop has me thinking
about the really three different church plants over three decades I have been
involved with and how each was a different response to what I thought the world
needed: first, during the 90s here in Tahlequah, second during the 2000s in the
suburban world of Owasso, OK and in that church’s transplant into the far
northside Tulsa neighborhood of Turley, and third now this decade as we are
morphing into more of an organic set of missional relationships and networks
and adopting some of the ways of the New Monastic movement, being shaped by
what has been described as the 3Rs of radical community development: Relocation
to abandoned places of poverty, Reconciliation of peoples across ethnic and
other lines that are driving us into re-segregated lives, and Redistribution of
goods and the Common Good to those most vulnerable among us without resources. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Those 3Rs are now guiding
the reason for creating space for church to happen in the first place, moreso
than growing the number of people who identify as members of a particular church.
They are bringing back the old prophetic voices of religious traditions that
stake out what “the good life” should really be all about. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As different as
each of these church plants have been, as I look back, I see how the seeds of
much that we do now at The Welcome Table on the northside of Tulsa is connected
with lessons first learned in the first church plant here in Tahlequah. So let
me start by pointing some of those out. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">First, in the Unitarian
Universalist world of the time in the 1980s when my family moved back to
Tahlequah, this was considered a pretty abandoned place for starting a free
church. We got a lot of “You’re trying to start a UU church where?” kind of
responses and blank looks. The UUA growth estimate statistics for the time
projected that we should be able to have a church of 11 people based, as they
did back then in a very classism way, on the percentage of people in an area
with a college degree.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Even moving back here before we thought of
starting a church got us some of the same looks and responses. We had just
finished our graduate programs in Kansas. As a doctor and a writer we could
have moved pretty much anywhere to live. We chose Tahlequah because we loved
the land, had had a good time here as undergraduates, and primarily because we
felt we were going into a place with a lot of folks in need and in poverty whom
we could work with to make a difference in the world. Still, one person told us
“Tahlequah is the kind of place you move from, once you get your education, not
move to.” It wasn’t considered a cool enough, happening kind of place for a
young couple. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Probably isn’t still in
many people’s eyes. But these past ten years when we have talked to people
about our relocating and downsizing to live in our zipcode with the lowest life
expectancy in Tulsa, and doing church in a radically different kind of way
there, and we get the blank stares, we
know, from our Tahlequah experience, that we are really at home, and in the right
place.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And Tahlequah prepared
us for rapid change that can come when you take risks and have faith in leaps.
Not only did we quadruple that expected total number of 11 people in just a few
months, but within a few years this church had seen a presence from two of the
UUA Presidents and was being preached about all over the country. One of the
reasons for that is the vision we had that we wanted to be a part of a
different kind of story for church back then. Back then most UU groups that
were being started by lay leaders were expected to follow what was called the stereotypical
Fellowship model, one that would stay small and focus on discussion of ideas more
than communal worship, and mainly be for the mutual support of its own members
rather than be a force for change in the community of which it was a part. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I say stereotypical
because that wasn’t really historically accurate for our Fellowship movement of
the 50s and 60s. But when we started here we wanted to be a part of a new
story, what was then becoming known as the new congregations extension movement
with a DNA of spirituality and service and a community voice. So now, where we
are, when we have become leaders, in an unexpected place, of a new story of
church as missional community, even as church as a network of relationships
both face to face and online, of incarnating faith in new ways in our new post
modern, post denominational, post congregational world, again it feels like we
are drawing upon our Tahlequah experience of breaking molds. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What the world needs,
though, is what guided us then, and what still guides us now. The questions though which we
now ask in determining what church should be and do and where it should do it
have changed. They are not how many people have a college education, or how
many people in an area believe like we do, or even have similar values that we
do, much less who likes the same music or who listens to the same radio
stations, all those old marketing questions that used to guide us in starting
churches. It is particularly not how many people can we get to become members
so we can easier meet our budget to keep taking care of ourselves. Now the
questions are: Who in your community does your heart break for? Why should you
exist in the first place and for whom? To what are you willing to die in order
that you might live anew? If you ceased to exist, how many in the community
beyond you would notice or be affected or care? <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the many new
radical expressions and experiences of church that I will be talking about in
my workshop at General Assembly is that I often now believe our goal is not to create more Unitarian
Universalists, or for me as a Christian also it is not to create more
Christians. Becoming Unitarian Universalist (or if I was in another church
community I would say the same about them) is not the end in itself we strive
for, is not the Why for our existence, but is at best a means to a greater end.
It is those greater ends we need to keep our eyes on, and our resources pointed
toward, and that is the end of creating neighborhoods and communities that
themselves help create lives of abundance and commitment to the most vulnerable
and endangered in our society. Creating religious institutions is certainly one
way toward that end, but only if they do not see themselves (and their beliefs)
as the end in themselves; in fact, they may, in various ways through what they
do and not do and keep people from doing, work against making the world a
better place, especially for those beyond them (and maybe within them too) who
are suffering the most. This is what happens when a church focuses on becoming
the “best” church in a community instead of the best church for the community.
It is what happens when a church seeks to thrive while a community around it
declines. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Just becoming a church member, I believe, or even believing a
certain way, does not make the world a better place. It is as scripture said, “by
their fruits you will know them”? Are the best fruits those of “right ideas”
about the Ultimate, or “right relationships” with the most vulnerable, shamed,
and outcast? Which fruit is deemed the “most religious”? This is especially
true in areas where there is a lack of any groups living in and with and for
the poor and marginalized and it is not a case of “other groups” available doing
this mission. In our area, for example, the landscape is dotted with churches
only opened on Sundays while buildings continue to be abandoned around them, or
buses that come in from the big churches in other area who pick people up and
bring them back and ignore the neighborhoods they live in, all to focus on
creating a pseudo-community feel-good experience weekly; like a spiritual hit.
These kind of abandoned areas seem to be growing in number throughout the US.
It is an ages-old situation and question and challnge, and one the Hebrew
prophets particularly, and the Christian early monks who moved away from
Empire’s influence, all kept alive in their times and point us toward the right
way now.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is important to put this all in a wider context. If
nothing else it should help alleviate anxiety, blame, shame, and conspiracy
theories. This shift in ultimate focus is an aspect of living in the wake of
the cultural move in the West from the churched to dechurched/unchurched
culture. In the churched culture (that began to really lose its privileged
place throughout the USA by 1963) the point of church life was, mistakenly, to
continue the existence and power of the institution of the church in a world
populated by the institutions of other churches, faiths. The church was
primary, was the center, and the mission field was secondary, was a resource
for the church. People tended to become or return to becoming the church-goers
of their families and neighborhoods; brand loyalty was high and clearly defined
culturally and there was little competitiveness between the churches, and
littler still between the churches and the culture and its various
opportunities outside the church. In this world making more Unitarian
Universalists, or Methodists, or whatever, was the way the church realized its
beingness in the churched-focused culture. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Especially if you were in a church that also grew more and
more percentage of its own coming in from other churches, then making more UUs
became increasingly important, it would be seen, for its survival. In the
dialectic of the age, the more the external community became less focused on
the institutional church, the more the churches became focused on themselves as
institutional beings. “The mission” used to be to perpetuate themselves in a
world where the “missional field” flowed toward the church; in a world where the
church as institution has been marginalized, the missional field has shifted
and become primary, and so too then should “the mission.” In response the
church today either flows toward the missional field, or it dies, gradually or
quickly depending on circumstances. (There are admittedly many ways the church
can flow, can empty itself, toward the missional field; our manifestation at
The Welcome Table which is always changing itself is just one; there are
exciting varied ways of being the church happening all over the UU world).</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Is making more Unitarian Universalists (Christian, etc.) a
bad thing then, or an unnecessary thing? Only I think if we make more Unitarian
Universalists who think that the purpose of their faith is themselves and what
they believe, and that it is more important to have and promote the right
religious beliefs instead of the right religious relationships. And yet, aren’t
ideas, beliefs, important and have consequences? Yes. For example, I say
that what I try to do as a leader of a missional community among the vulnerable
has all to do with how I understand and experience freely following Jesus, and
comes from a theological commitment to a God of liberation and radical
solidarity. But in reality what has been manifested at The Welcome Table has
been enriched and deepened not so much by thinking about missional life and
holding the right ideas about it but from living in it and growing in response
to the needs of my neighbors. It has come more from failing at visions and
endeavors and being able to respond to the openings and relationships that
happen as a result.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was here in this
sanctuary that I met the ecologist and philosopher and economist and pretty
good biblical interpreter Wes Jackson of The Land Institute and was moved by
his call to move from knowledge-based decisions to not-knowing decisions, to
mystery and wonder and the wisdom of community, and this has spilled over in
the missional community into theological ways too. It has been freeing to make the Divine not about being right about things, not having all knowledge about things and how to do things the right way, as the main reason for being, and okay not having a simple bumper sticker or elevator speech message about who we are and what we stand for, as long as we are committed--as the title of one of Jackson's book has it--to becoming native to our place, and through it creating more compassion and
justice in the world. Yes, all the old
theological commitments and positions are important to engage with (when I was
in seminary I took a third of my courses in theology; it was a kind of graduate
subspecialty of mine; and I had been studying Process theology for almost
twenty years before going to seminary), but these positions which had
delineated us in the old decades were always just a part of a deeper holistic
religious tradition that included spiritual practice, communal life, and
service to and with others, and these can move us toward being with others
despite theological stances; all because the hurts of the world demand it. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is true, though,
that I am now more concerned with and
am more urgent about keeping alive those in my zipcode than I am keeping alive
theological differences or keeping worship services filled. My zipcode where
there is a 14 year life expectancy gap with the zipcode just six miles away in
a wealthier area (and by extension all those imperiled by even greater
inequality and injustice today regardless where they are). That missional
focus, that our reason for being is in being sent (hence the Greek word missio)
into the places and peoples around us who have been left out and left behind,
and in doing so we come into our own more fully and grow in imitation of the
beloved community the more we attempt to initiate it in the world, is something
too that’s even greater than preserving and promoting the “how” we do church,
our polity, what we used to say was our ultimate commonality no matter the
liturgical form or covenantal language a church takes as its own. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t want to grow the numbers of Unitarian Universalists
so that the democratic process in religious will flourish. Nor, for that
matter, so any of the Seven Principles either will be adopted by more people.
They can be and are being championed by any number of faith communities and
more secular groups. Our calling is still higher than these, and the seven principles
are also means themselves to put to use toward the ends of missional
transformations in the world.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Again, I believe we are experiencing a shift from the old
churched culture of people seeking and coming into, or staying in, a church
because of what they have come to believe and think already and are entering
the new unchurched culture where people are seeking and coming into or staying
in a church because it is open and nurturing to what their beliefs might still
yet become as they grow and deepen as persons through the primary religious act
of healing engagement in the world beyond themselves. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Unitarian Universalism is not the end, it is the means; I say
the same thing for myself about Christianity. And that makes a world of
difference in how to impact the world now. We matter. But Not because there is
a difference and uniqueness we must preserve in order to be ourselves. And Not
so people of like minds have a place to call home and celebrate their like
minds (or like values). We matter because we offer, or can offer what we have
always offered in our historical inspiration, a way of radical loving covenantal
freedom for people to connect with and grow with others, of all kinds of ideas
and faiths, into a more abundant generous
hope-filled justice-seeking humbled people, </span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Whose mission is to create beyond itself more of
what the world needs: love, sweet love. It’s the </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">only thing there’s just too
little of. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The
Apostle Paul was right; faith hope and love these three; yes, faith is
important; yes, hope is important, but the greatest of these, more important
than what you believe to be true, or how you are feeling, is love. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Love made
real in our commitments to others, not just for some, but for everyone. Lord we
don’t need another church feeling good or bad about itself and the future;
there are enough of those; what the world needs now is love, bold love, for the
least the last the losers of the American Dream. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">That, not church members, is what
there’s just too little of.</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span></b></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-43411492518944484522014-04-13T15:59:00.000-07:002014-04-13T15:59:16.715-07:00Palm Sunday 2014: The Three Americas, and What Has Been Going On, and What's Coming Up Here<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Palm Sunday: Occupying The Abandoned
Temples of the American Dream Empire</span></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First, before getting to the Palm
Sunday message, it has been an exciting past month or so here in the 74126
area; we have become a center for service learning and missional trips lately. We
are gradually becoming a center where people can “come and see” the effects of
racism on many ethnic groups, economic injustice and classism, and the evil and
suffering that happens when the marketplace is not tempered with the moral
imperative, when government and other groups focus on numbers and not on need,
on individuals and not on neighborhoods. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Already this year we have hosted
groups working with us on Tulsa’s northside from Fayetteville, AR and Oklahoma
City and Dallas area and from around the country during the Life On Fire event
here, and from many places and schools around the Tulsa area who have not been
familiar with our part of town. We just finished hosting three classes of
graduate social work students from OU who have been working on research
projects with us as well as doing direct help for us. We met a lot of people
and made connection at the Tulsa Eco-Fest held near our area at the Tulsa
Community College Northeast Campus. This past Sunday I made a presentation on
our area and our work to the Adult Forum at Hope Unitarian Church in Tulsa. We
were scheduled to host a big contingent from Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity during
their conference recently but their schedule had to be changed, and we hope to
connect in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Coming up, On Wednesday afternoon,
April 23, we will have a big group of volunteers from a Tulsa company coming to
work at our gardenpark and orchard on N. Johnstown Ave. And just this weekend
at the Global Society for Arts in Health convention held in Houston, a
presentation on our area and our work was given and well received and more
connections made. On Saturday, August 26, we will host a lunch for the
Commission on Appraisal of the Unitarian Universalist Association as they “come
to see” and learn about missional church manifestations in a progressive
theological spirit. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And still so much to be done; figuring
out ways to pay and staff and continue to reach out with our neighbors on
projects even as we continue to go deep and grow our relationships and presence;
funding the big projects we are nurturing (the closed Cherokee School reopening
and repurposing; abandoned and neglected properties and low-rent “relocation” housing
possibilities; organizing for justice with the Industrial Areas Foundation) are
getting seeds planted but need a boost in effort and partners and money. And we
still struggle to stay open month after month, still trying to build up the
foundation of supporters who will give at least a nickel or dime a day to help
us with the basics of utilities and mortgage which, because we put it all into
mission and have not yet started any salaries, means every contribution is
going to direct missional work of feeding and clothing people and growing their
overall health and community. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are also trying to get the word
out about us better to more people and potential partners this year. If anyone
is able to help us produce videos about what we do and why and with whom,
please let me know. And we are hoping this year to begin the long delayed work
of fixing up our community center and creating social events at the gardenpark
and orchard. The more volunteers the more we are able to do. We would love for
this year to be the year we get great signs up at the park, and great art at
the park and outside the community center, as well as the new outside deck and
benches at the community center, the new deck and stage at the gardenpark, and
the big 20 foot table at the park. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And, before I print the message
below, Here is the list of coming events planned so far for the next few weeks;
your chance to connect with us:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Free
Breakfast</span></u></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> Second,
Third, Fourth and any Fifth <u>Saturdays 9 am</u>, weather permitting, Welcome
Table Community GardenPark and Orchard, 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. Free Supper,
First Saturday 4 pm. Growing your own food is like printing your own money. Get
a Free Garden Bed. Just come eat with us and enjoy the gardenpark. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Every
Wednesday and Saturday, 10 am to Noon</span></u></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">, Free Food and Clothing and More On <u>Community
Days</u>, Welcome Table Center, 5920 N. Owasso Ave. serving the 74126, 74130,
74073 zips. Also free books, computer center, art studio.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Community
Breakfast</span></u></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> Second
Saturdays, 7 to 10 am, $5 with Kids 10 and under free, Odd Fellows Lodge, 6227
N. Quincy Ave. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We just
finished our wonderful Community Easter Kids Celebration on Saturday with the
local United Methodist Church, 6050 N. Johnstown Ave. including kid gardening
at our gardenpark and orchard. It was so good to see the children enjoying
an actual hunt for easter eggs and surprises instead of what happens at so many
institutional egg hunts which are more like race and grabs as the eggs are just
laid out in an open field. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Palm
Sunday Worship with communion was held this morning at Turley United Methodist
Church, 6050 N. Johnstown Ave. at 10:30 am followed by free lunch afterwards. One
of our “rules of life” for our missional community is to eat together as often
as possible, at least three times a week. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Wednesday,
April 16, 12:30 pm lunch for seniors (55 plus) at our Welcome Table Center
followed by trip to Aquarium in Jenks. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thursday,
April 17, 6:30 pm free dinner and Maundy Thursday communion worship at The
Welcome Table Center</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Friday,
April 18, Good Friday worship at noon with us at All Souls Church, 2952 S.
Peoria Ave. and/or Good Friday service 6 pm at Turley United Methodist. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sat.
April 19, 10 am Our Area <u>Public Forum</u>, Rudisill Library, Pine &
Hartford Ave.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Easter
Sunday, April 20, Sunrise Prayer and Meditation Event, 6:30 to 7 am or so, on
top of the hill at The Welcome Table GardenPark and Orchard; come feel the
spirit of resurrection and renewal at our miracle among the ruins space, followed by breakfast at The Welcome Table
Center. Worship at 10:30 am at Turley United Methodist Church. Come for any or
all. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Earth Day
Tuesday, April 22, Turley Litter Pick-Up and Free Dinner for volunteers who
help, 5 pm meet at The Welcome Table Center. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Turley
Community Association, Tuesday April 29, 7 pm O'Brien Park Center, 6147 N.
Birmingham Ave.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">McLain/Turley
Area Planning and Partner Meeting, Thursday, May 1, Noon with Free Lunch, The
Welcome Table Center.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mobile
Food Pantry Day, Friday, May 16, volunteers begin at 10 am, food pickup at 11
am, The Welcome Table Center. Get vouchers at Wed. and Sat. community
days. We eat lunch together with volunteers once the event is over. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Community
Picnic on the Cherokee School playground, Sunday May 18, 11 am to 1 pm. See below
for more. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Every
Saturday 6 pm <u>12 Step Recovery Group</u>, at the Welcome Table Center.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Last
Thursday at 6:30 pm, <u>Turley Area Alliance Against Crime</u>, at the
Center.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Each
Thursday, 7 pm, <u>Turley Fire and Rescue Dept</u> meetings, 6404 N.
Peoria.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our diabetes management class and
free healthy lunch just finished up on Saturday its important six week presence
at The Welcome Table Center and we have been glad to co-host that with the
AreaWideAging Agency. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Palm Sunday Message:
The Three Americas, or Occupying The Empire’s Abandoned Places To Remind The
World That God Lives Here<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This Sunday’s meal message was about
how Jesus “occupied” the Empire’s Temple and mocked the false values of Caeser’s
Empire when and how he rode into Jerusalem for Passover, with some street
theater in the midst of a dangerous time and place to show both people and the
powerful that another world was possible, not only possible but could begin
right now, right here, with these people. Many of the most vulnerable had been
left behind both by the occupying Roman forces and by their own leaders. Jesus
was sending a signal to both the haves and the have-nots that the God of the
most vulnerable was still with them and was full of hope love and justice. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In that spirit, I talked about how
our tradition in our community was to spend Palm Sunday “occupying” one of our
abandoned places. In the past we have done it at places we eventually came to
own and renew, such as the block of abandoned houses where the park is, and the
vandalized church building where our community center is now, and we have done it
at the old closed Cherokee School and one of the first was when we put pots of
flowers along North Peoria Ave. and at our on-going gardening and
beautification project occupying 66<sup>th</sup> and N. Lewis intersection. We
talked about the Palm Sunday that we finished worship by going to an abandoned
building and sign out front, where a civic club had been that shut down and
several restaurants had been in and shut down; we “occupied” the sign and put
up messages of welcome that God is Love and that God Lives in our area, even in
such places as ours that others fear to come to, or run down, or just neglect. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And though the weather kept us
indoors this Palm Sunday, we decided to throw a picnic for our community and
any who want to join us on the playground at Cherokee School, 6001 N. Peoria
Ave. Sunday, May 18, 11 am to 1 pm. Bring potluck (no alcoholic beverages) and sports
equipment, and for former students bring yearbooks photos; the playgrounds and
basketball courts and tetherball and grounds are still there waiting to be
used. It will be our delayed Palm Sunday event. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On a deeper level, with such events
and with all our work in our four directions initiative of far north Tulsa, we
are fighting against the division of what I call the burgeoning polarization
into the Three Americas; what we see happening in our metropolitan area seems
to be found elsewhere as well. There is a dominant (always with minority
strains fighting against it) “big box store” culture in the surburban areas of
individualism, libertarianism, consumerism, and uniformity of “red-state” politics
and theology and culture. There is a growing dominant “urban cool” “blue-state”culture
in the denser populated areas of downtown and various entertainment and
restaurant and artistic districts with consumerism still strong but modified as
consuming creativity, and with a stronger “tribal” than libertarian vibe. Both
of these Americas are places where different forms of the American Dream might
attract you, but they are places where people go to, in various ways, “make it.”
They are places with growing numbers of people (but not “peoples”) and
therefore they are the places where government and businesses--both run with
marketplace mentalities--invest in with infrastructure, entrepreneuriship, and
resources. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And then there are the third
districts, the abandoned places, the boarded up places, the no sidewalks and
streetlights places, the places where post offices are closed and health
clinics are closed (with kudos to those who are fighting against this in our
area with health clinics beginning to open to reverse this trend) and schools
are closed and with community centers and community pools closed or threatened to
be closed and with shopping centers closed—even though there are the areas of
highest need for these. This is a form of America that both of the other two
zones turn away from. The Third America. While those who remain intentionally
and would not live elsewhere, or those who can’t afford to live elsewhere and
move here but are always hoping to “make it” by leaving, wrestle with growing
lack of connection with one another and with those in power. And the land
itself becomes disconnected with the people as its ownership transfers increasingly
to those who live in the other Americas and as a result of the weakening of the
power and voice of those who live here the land itself can be repurposed away
from communal needs to the needs of corporations and businesses (where environmental
injustice comes in to mirror economic and educational injustice, with landfills
and salvages dominating the landscape) owned by those who live elsewhere, and
the local businesses and nonprofits that do remain are often struggling against
the tide, or are also in some cases adding to the blight. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On Palm Sunday, and as we move into
Holy Week, with the simple meal fellowship of Maundy Thursday and the mandate
to love one another, with the all too familiar abandonment and destruction of
Good Friday, with the despair and sitting with grief of Holy Saturday and with
its story of unseen forces still at work getting ready for renewal, with its story
of Jesus relocating to Hell itself to turn it into a place not even abandoned
by the love of God, and with the story of the unexpected life and the miracles
of hope that Easter celebrates, through it all we seek to love the hell out of
this world of the Third America, to connect the disconnected on a grassroots
level and also to connect the other two Americas with the Third America, the
Third Place so to speak. Like the disciples of old, we don’t do it well. But we
too remain, or we return, or we relocate our lives because we have been the
recipients of a grace that abounds that reminds us that Love overcomes death,
injustice, neglect, helplessness, shame, failures. We do not know what the
future holds; every month brings new challenges and the same old struggles, but
Palm Sunday teaches us that the future of new life is already started. </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-24836042218197163912014-04-04T21:02:00.004-07:002014-04-04T21:33:22.673-07:00A Summary of Our History, Projects, Partners<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The Welcome Table Missional Community/</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">A Third Place Community Foundation<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Renewing The Far Northside: Volunteer Grassroots Response<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">History:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">2002-03 Epiphany Church began in Owasso, suburb of Tulsa<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">2004 moved to 6305 N. Peoria Ave. Turley/McLain School area<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">2005 </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">became The Living Room Church and began partnering with Turley Community Association and Cherokee School on beautification projects</span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">2007 Opened A Third Place Community Center at 6416 N. Peoria Ave. and moved in it and began working with OU Graduate Social Work program on community forums;<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">2008 hosted OU Health Clinic;<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">2009 created A Third Place Community Foundation and began demonstration gardening with Turley United Methodist Church and providing school gardens and landscaping for Cherokee Elementary School and helped form McLain School Foundation;<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">2010 bought a block of abandoned houses and trashed property at 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. to begin transforming into a community gardenpark;<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">2011 bought an abandoned church building at 5920 N. Owasso Ave. and moved the community center into it and planted the community orchard;<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">2012 created The Welcome Table Free Corner Store Food Pantry.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Area We Serve:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Primarily from 46<sup>th</sup> St. N. to 76<sup>th</sup> St. N. and from Highway 75 to Osage County Line; all within the McLain School boundary; far north Tulsa and Turley community area but our food store also serves the Sperry area. We are located in 74126, one of the lowest income zipcodes in the Tulsa area with a life expectancy 14 years lower than midtown Tulsa. We also serve 74130. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Current Offerings:</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Twice a Week Free Food Store;</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">4-5 times a year Mobile Pantry giving out 5 tons of food in one hour;</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">occasional Mobile Eatery from Food Bank<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Computer Center/Free Wifi</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Free Books</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Clothes and More (take what you need; leave what you can)</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Community Art Studio and Art Events</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Washer/Dryer and Shower</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Community Recycling Bin</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Weekly 12-Step Recovery<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Community Holiday Events and Festivals</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Monthly Community Planning</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Monthly Turley Area Seniors<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Community GardenPark and Orchard and Free weekly meals at the Park<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Current Community Projects<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Abandoned Properties: Demolition or Upkeep</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">66<sup>th</sup> and N. Lewis Intersection Transformation</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Welcome to Turley Sign Project</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Roadside Wildflowers/Trash Pickup</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Prairie Trails Wildflower Preservation Rest Area across from our park<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Planting Project Seeds: In Conversation or In Vision<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Cherokee School, closed in 2011, Repurposing</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Scattered Site Low Rent Housing Program, plus “Relocation Homes” transforming abandoned homes</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Osage Prairie Trail Awareness and Appreciation Event(s) and Community Info Kiosks</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Far North Main Street from 46<sup>th</sup> to 66<sup>th</sup> St. on N. Peoria Ave</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Community Lay Health Advocate Program (turning health clinics inside out)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Village Post Office to replace closed post office</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Current Partners<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">University of Oklahoma-Tulsa</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Tulsa Health Department North Regional Wellness Center</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Tulsa Food Security Council</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Tulsa Community Gardening Association</span></b></div>
<span style="font-size: 19px;"><b>Tulsa Sponsoring Committee: Industrial Areas Foundation</b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">McLain School Foundation</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Turley Community Association</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Turley United Methodist Church</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Turley Fire and Rescue Dept</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Tulsa County O’Brien Park and Recreation</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Sarah’s Residential Living Center</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Newsome Community Farms</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Oklahoma State University Extension Dept</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The LightHouse Charter School</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Gilcrease Elementary School.<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><a href="http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">www.turleyok.blogspot.com</a><a href="http://www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com</a><a href="http://www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com/" style="color: #771100; text-decoration: none;">www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com</a> Follow us on Facebook </span></b></div>
Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26950959.post-62703962114976562332014-03-22T18:59:00.000-07:002014-03-22T18:59:43.622-07:00This Is Church?<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Missional Church
Conversation<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rev. Ron Robinson<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Everyday we do church at The Welcome Table, but it is almost always with lots of different people each time in different ways, serving, connecting, listening, working together for others, sometimes praying, sometimes sharing communion....Here is part of why we do it the way we do:</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">1. We have
entered an era where we need a “bigger bandwidth” of church manifestations
because we are not in a one-size or kind fits all world any longer.</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">2. The
Church Doesn’t Have or Create A Mission; The Mission Creates and Has The Church. And The Mission is Given To Us: bring good news to the poor, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, heal the sick, free the prisoner, liberate the oppressed, end all debts. Creating communities where people don't have to think alike to love alike is a great launching pad for that mission, but it isn't the mission. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">3. Go to others; not expect others to Come to us (recognize shift from churched to
unchurched culture); Be Incarnational, and even if you have the resources and ability to be attractional use attractional to become incarnational. <br />
<br />4 Church is not to be content to be a safe home until all homes are safe. Church
is not to be content to be growing and thriving in a community that is
suffering and declining. Don’t be the best church IN your community, but be the
best church FOR your community. Shift from internal to external ministries, from
programs to people development, from church-based to world-based leadership. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">5. Be Church
of the 3Rs: </span></u></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Relocation.
Reconciliation. Redistribution. Growing teams of “remainers, returners,
relocaters” for renewal in “Abandoned Places of the Empire”. Connect The
Disconnected. Grow Faith Where Life Happens.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">6. A Mission
Statement doesn’t equal Mission. Focusing on mission as purpose is not the same
as missional, the word from which, from the Greek word missio, means to be sent. </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Missional
has turned upside down the old connotation of the missionary; now being missional
is not about the church going to convert the world, but going into the world to
be converted by it, to discover how best to serve it and transform it and
ourselves, by “meeting God already present and active in the neighborhood.”</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">7. The
Post-Modern Culture: We no longer compartmentalize; we live in a blurry yet
holistic world; boundaries of sacred and secular overlap; spiritual and
material, personal and political or social are not kept separate; no one can go
it alone in such a world; the church and non faith based nonprofits and
business and government and philanthropic groups all need to play a part in the
Mission, but they won’t inhabit completely separate realms but will be
partnering. Can’t say this problem is only for government or this role is only
for the church. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">8. Post Modern's EPIC Characteristics: Experiential trumps knowledge; Participation trumps spectators; Image-Driven trumps print/text; Communal trumps individual. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">9. Emerging Church Characteristics: Focus on three things: life of
Jesus, blurring secular/sacred spaces, and community. <br />
<br />10. Four Paths, or The Loop, of Church-ing: 1. Missional Service; 2. Community Life;
3. Discipleship/Leadership; 4. Worship that refreshes the soul for missional service. <br />
<br />11. Focus not on “a church” but on “the church” which can have many manifestations.
Church is not a what, but a who; Church anywhere, anytime, by anyone. Postcongregational.
Grow smaller to do bigger things. <br />
<br />12. Ask the questions: if your church ceased to exist, who beyond in the community would notice and who
would be affected? Who does your heart break for? Who does God's heart break for?<br />
<br />
</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Also aligning with the 12 Marks of New Monasticism:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Relocation to Abandoned Places
of Empire."<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Sharing Economic Resources with
Fellow Community Members." <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Hospitality to the
Stranger." <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">4.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Lament for Racial Divisions
Within the Church and Our Communities Combined with the Active Pursuit of a
Just Reconciliation." <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">5.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Humble Submission to Christ's
Body, the Church."<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">6.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Intentional Formation in the Way of
Christ and the Rule of the Community Along the Lines of the Old
Novitiate."<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">7.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Nurturing Common Life Among
Members of Intentional Community." <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">8.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Support for Celibate Singles
Alongside Monogamous Married Couples and Their Children." <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">9.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Geographical Proximity to
Community Members Who Share a Common Rule of Life."<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">10.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Care for the Plot of God's
Earth Given to Us Along with Support of Our Local Economies." <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">11.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Peacemaking in the Midst of
Violence and Conflict Resolution." <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">12.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Commitment to a Disciplined
Contemplative Life."</span></b>Type your summary here
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</span>Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02961769817864428015noreply@blogger.com0