Today I begin a study week. I am very grateful to my congregation, which sees fit to give me a nice amount of time each year for study and reading and writing.
This week my two best buddies are coming down from Canada to join me. We three will take rooms at the St. Hilda's House, a convent and retreat center of the (very high and spiky) Episcopal Sisters of the Holy Spirit up in Morningside Heights.
We have been given library privileges at Union Theological Seminary.
In case you want to know, my companions will be Rev. Dr. Orville James, of Wellington Square United Church, Burlington, Ontario, and Rev. Robert Ripley, of Metropolitan United Church, London, Ontario. Not bad company, what.
Orville will bring a bunch of books. Rip will bring his materials to move ahead on his doctorate from Fuller.
I will bring my books for the course I'm teaching on Reformed Church History and Missions.
I will also bring the very lovely cigar I was given as a Christmas present by my favorite druid, one Jack Gavin, of Park Slope.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Sermon # 2 on Spiritual Formation: No Affinity
Epiphany 3, January 27, 2008
Isaiah 9:1-4, Psalm 27, 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, Matthew 4:12-23
This is the second sermon in a series on Spiritual Formation Groups. Let me review the purpose of this series, for those of you who were not here last week.
As you know, the governing body of our church is called the “consistory”, and the consistory has been working a long-term program called NCD, for Natural Church Development. NCD offers tools to improve our collective spiritual health as a congregation. We took a diagnostic test last June, which revealed that we are weakest in “holistic small groups.” Not just groups, not just small groups, but holistic small groups.
So the consistory made this our priority, and we established a Church Health Team to work on it. One of the Church Health Team’s decisions is to sharpen the focus to “Spiritual Formation Groups.” Spiritual Formation Groups. So in this series of sermons, I am asking our weekly scripture lessons what they might have to say about Spiritual Formation Groups, and then I’m telling you what they tell me.
Maybe you’ve heard this story (and it may be apocryphal) about what happened once in the Special Olympics. They were running the 100-yard dash, and the runner out in front suddenly noticed that one of the other runners had fallen down, so he turned around and helped him get back up and they crossed the finished line together, sharing last place.
Can I say that Christianity is the Special Olympics among religions? When you compare the religion we practice to other religions it can seem like that. In other religions, there is a greater emphasis on the spiritual advancement of particular individuals. When do you hear Christians really talk about enlightenment? We tend not to get that close to God, we tend to be pedestrian in our spirituality.
Even compared to Psalm 27, which says, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.” I know it’s a metaphor, even for Psalm 27, but for who among us is it driving metaphor? How many among us got up this Sunday morning with the driving thought, I want to go today and seek God’s face?
I don’t think in other religions they even have committees. I know Buddhism doesn’t have committees. Christianity is less about individual spiritual advancement and more about your neighbor. It’s about the group. It’s not that you don’t want the face of God, it’s not that you don’t want to advance in spirituality, but for most of us it’s more about belonging to a community.
But that is also the wonderful thing about Christianity. It’s the formation of new and even apparently unnatural communities. What I mean by “unnatural” communities is not that they’re unhealthy or artificial, but that but that they’re not the ordinary anthropological groups in which we find ourselves.
Contrast us to Judaism. The positive power of Judaism is in how it sanctifies those very basic anthropological groups we call the family, the tribe, and the nation. Judaism assumes ethnicity.
Islam, in principle, is the opposite, its vision is for humanity as a single whole, a universal unity. And so its strategy is to superimpose a single authority and discipline above the various ethnicities and tribes and nations which both submit and also maintain themselves.
Hinduism gives spiritual meaning to social class, it gives religious virtue to the separation of people into upper and lower castes and theological justification for prejudice and poverty. Now what this acceptance of organic human groupings seems to allow for is that within it, individuals can concentrate on their own private spiritual advancement. While we Christians are so busy on committees.
Christianity, according to its founder, is meant be the religion of love, love of God and love of neighbor. That you can’t love God unless you love your neighbor as yourself, and that means crossing the lines of caste and class and color and family and tribe and nation, to establish new communities hitherto unthinkable, side by side and face to face.
Oh yes, the post-Biblical systems of Christianity have well developed strategies for affirming such groups as family, tribe, and nation. And yes, Christianity has certainly found ways to keep intact the stratification of social class and the preservation of prejudice and poverty. You’ve heard that 11 AM on Sunday morning is called the most segregated hour of the week. But this is how Christianity also keeps on crucifying its founder.
What Jesus taught and modeled and what St. Paul practiced in the expansion of the church was calling people out of their natural groupings into new communities based on no affinity at all but their common commitment to Jesus the Messiah. Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female, Roman soldiers and Jewish patriots, meeting each other face to face, eating from each other’s hands and drinking from a common cup. That’s tough. That feels unnatural. Birds of a feather flock together.
That’s why Jesus compared it to fishing, which for fish, is, well, if not unnatural, certainly not healthy. When Jesus saw Peter and Andrew fishing, they were removing the fish from their native environment (and I might add, without the consent of the fished). He told them he’d make them do the same for people (though generally with a different attitude towards their consent).
So even today, when we gather into the community of Jesus, we are consenting, that what counts here is not our normal native paradigms of family and color and class, but we are all of us just a mess of fish.
Of course the church tends to fall back into affinity groups, and we’ll invent new divisions if we have to. As in Corinth: “I’m in Paul’s group, I follow Apollos, I go with Peter.” The guy who says, “I follow Jesus,” pretends to be above it all but is really the most resistant to community of any sort.
It’s natural for us to associate with people with similar backgrounds and experience because we feel cozy and at home with them, they understand us. Singles with singles, parents with other parents, gay folks with gay folks, and me with those very few other people who like both opera and baseball.
We call these natural groups and interest groups affinity groups, and look, it’s okay to have affinity groups. But those kind of groups are not what are most challenging for Spiritual Formation. If you think about it, Spiritual Formation should feel as cozy and natural as walking on water.
Jesus says, “Follow me,” to James and John, and he doesn’t tell them where. Spiritual Formation means territory new and unfamiliar, and seeing our own experience in a whole new light. It’s not about your background and where you’ve come from but where you are going.
So now here’s my special message today for Spiritual Formation Groups: Let’s expect that they shall have no more affinity than who can meet on Tuesday and who can meet on Thursday, etc. In principle, at random, with no identity but a common approach to Jesus. Some of you might be flounders and some of you porgies and some of you bluefish, but now you’ll all be lying side by side on the ice. Let me challenge us to try it. What a challenge that will be for me. Do I have to be in a Spiritual Formation Group myself?
The Old First congregation is a coalition. Our backgrounds are diverse: Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic, etc. We are black and white, rich and poor, straight and gay, young and old, conservative and liberal. So St. Paul challenges us like he challenged the Old First Church in Corinth, to be of the same mind and the same purpose.
Don’t get him wrong. He doesn’t mean the mind at rest but the mind in motion. It’s not about agreement but purpose. It’s about moving together and seeking the face of God. Side by side and face to face.
Will you seek the face of God with me? I will seek the face of God with you, and I will see God’s face reflected on your own, whatever color and share you face may be.
Can you and I step together into this same light? I was sitting in my own private darkness and you were sitting in your own, and when we step together into this it might shine on different things in you than what gets seen in me, but I’m willing to walk into this light with you. I’m willing to judge myself by the same criteria by which you judge yourself. We don’t know where this is going to take us, but isn’t that the point? Doesn’t that always happen when what you are doing is for love?
Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
Isaiah 9:1-4, Psalm 27, 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, Matthew 4:12-23
This is the second sermon in a series on Spiritual Formation Groups. Let me review the purpose of this series, for those of you who were not here last week.
As you know, the governing body of our church is called the “consistory”, and the consistory has been working a long-term program called NCD, for Natural Church Development. NCD offers tools to improve our collective spiritual health as a congregation. We took a diagnostic test last June, which revealed that we are weakest in “holistic small groups.” Not just groups, not just small groups, but holistic small groups.
So the consistory made this our priority, and we established a Church Health Team to work on it. One of the Church Health Team’s decisions is to sharpen the focus to “Spiritual Formation Groups.” Spiritual Formation Groups. So in this series of sermons, I am asking our weekly scripture lessons what they might have to say about Spiritual Formation Groups, and then I’m telling you what they tell me.
Maybe you’ve heard this story (and it may be apocryphal) about what happened once in the Special Olympics. They were running the 100-yard dash, and the runner out in front suddenly noticed that one of the other runners had fallen down, so he turned around and helped him get back up and they crossed the finished line together, sharing last place.
Can I say that Christianity is the Special Olympics among religions? When you compare the religion we practice to other religions it can seem like that. In other religions, there is a greater emphasis on the spiritual advancement of particular individuals. When do you hear Christians really talk about enlightenment? We tend not to get that close to God, we tend to be pedestrian in our spirituality.
Even compared to Psalm 27, which says, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.” I know it’s a metaphor, even for Psalm 27, but for who among us is it driving metaphor? How many among us got up this Sunday morning with the driving thought, I want to go today and seek God’s face?
I don’t think in other religions they even have committees. I know Buddhism doesn’t have committees. Christianity is less about individual spiritual advancement and more about your neighbor. It’s about the group. It’s not that you don’t want the face of God, it’s not that you don’t want to advance in spirituality, but for most of us it’s more about belonging to a community.
But that is also the wonderful thing about Christianity. It’s the formation of new and even apparently unnatural communities. What I mean by “unnatural” communities is not that they’re unhealthy or artificial, but that but that they’re not the ordinary anthropological groups in which we find ourselves.
Contrast us to Judaism. The positive power of Judaism is in how it sanctifies those very basic anthropological groups we call the family, the tribe, and the nation. Judaism assumes ethnicity.
Islam, in principle, is the opposite, its vision is for humanity as a single whole, a universal unity. And so its strategy is to superimpose a single authority and discipline above the various ethnicities and tribes and nations which both submit and also maintain themselves.
Hinduism gives spiritual meaning to social class, it gives religious virtue to the separation of people into upper and lower castes and theological justification for prejudice and poverty. Now what this acceptance of organic human groupings seems to allow for is that within it, individuals can concentrate on their own private spiritual advancement. While we Christians are so busy on committees.
Christianity, according to its founder, is meant be the religion of love, love of God and love of neighbor. That you can’t love God unless you love your neighbor as yourself, and that means crossing the lines of caste and class and color and family and tribe and nation, to establish new communities hitherto unthinkable, side by side and face to face.
Oh yes, the post-Biblical systems of Christianity have well developed strategies for affirming such groups as family, tribe, and nation. And yes, Christianity has certainly found ways to keep intact the stratification of social class and the preservation of prejudice and poverty. You’ve heard that 11 AM on Sunday morning is called the most segregated hour of the week. But this is how Christianity also keeps on crucifying its founder.
What Jesus taught and modeled and what St. Paul practiced in the expansion of the church was calling people out of their natural groupings into new communities based on no affinity at all but their common commitment to Jesus the Messiah. Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female, Roman soldiers and Jewish patriots, meeting each other face to face, eating from each other’s hands and drinking from a common cup. That’s tough. That feels unnatural. Birds of a feather flock together.
That’s why Jesus compared it to fishing, which for fish, is, well, if not unnatural, certainly not healthy. When Jesus saw Peter and Andrew fishing, they were removing the fish from their native environment (and I might add, without the consent of the fished). He told them he’d make them do the same for people (though generally with a different attitude towards their consent).
So even today, when we gather into the community of Jesus, we are consenting, that what counts here is not our normal native paradigms of family and color and class, but we are all of us just a mess of fish.
Of course the church tends to fall back into affinity groups, and we’ll invent new divisions if we have to. As in Corinth: “I’m in Paul’s group, I follow Apollos, I go with Peter.” The guy who says, “I follow Jesus,” pretends to be above it all but is really the most resistant to community of any sort.
It’s natural for us to associate with people with similar backgrounds and experience because we feel cozy and at home with them, they understand us. Singles with singles, parents with other parents, gay folks with gay folks, and me with those very few other people who like both opera and baseball.
We call these natural groups and interest groups affinity groups, and look, it’s okay to have affinity groups. But those kind of groups are not what are most challenging for Spiritual Formation. If you think about it, Spiritual Formation should feel as cozy and natural as walking on water.
Jesus says, “Follow me,” to James and John, and he doesn’t tell them where. Spiritual Formation means territory new and unfamiliar, and seeing our own experience in a whole new light. It’s not about your background and where you’ve come from but where you are going.
So now here’s my special message today for Spiritual Formation Groups: Let’s expect that they shall have no more affinity than who can meet on Tuesday and who can meet on Thursday, etc. In principle, at random, with no identity but a common approach to Jesus. Some of you might be flounders and some of you porgies and some of you bluefish, but now you’ll all be lying side by side on the ice. Let me challenge us to try it. What a challenge that will be for me. Do I have to be in a Spiritual Formation Group myself?
The Old First congregation is a coalition. Our backgrounds are diverse: Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic, etc. We are black and white, rich and poor, straight and gay, young and old, conservative and liberal. So St. Paul challenges us like he challenged the Old First Church in Corinth, to be of the same mind and the same purpose.
Don’t get him wrong. He doesn’t mean the mind at rest but the mind in motion. It’s not about agreement but purpose. It’s about moving together and seeking the face of God. Side by side and face to face.
Will you seek the face of God with me? I will seek the face of God with you, and I will see God’s face reflected on your own, whatever color and share you face may be.
Can you and I step together into this same light? I was sitting in my own private darkness and you were sitting in your own, and when we step together into this it might shine on different things in you than what gets seen in me, but I’m willing to walk into this light with you. I’m willing to judge myself by the same criteria by which you judge yourself. We don’t know where this is going to take us, but isn’t that the point? Doesn’t that always happen when what you are doing is for love?
Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
Sermon # 1 On Spiritual Formation: Small Groups
January 20, 2008, Ephiphany 2
Isaiah 49:1-7, Psalm 40, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, John 1:29-42, 01/20/08
Spiritual Formation 1: Small Groups
Some sermons are public proclamations, but this sermon is what I call pastoral speech. It’s for this particular congregation right now. I need to guide you into something outward and then into something inward. Going out and coming in. Like breathing. First, the outward.
We have two big days ahead of us. Three big things in just two days. Martin Luther King, the Home Team homeless fair, and the Jim Wallis book event. Boom, boom, boom. I’m still looking for a few more volunteers for each of them. You have the chance for doing real service in the name of God. If you can’t volunteer, then please come anyway and participate.
These three events are excellent expressions of our outreach, and they bear witness to what we believe the Kingdom of God is like. These events express our Mission Statement, specifically Missions number Three and Four. Our Third Mission is sanctuary for anyone seeking spirituality and hope. Our Fourth Mission is hospitality to community groups and the arts.
A church is called to be God’s servant in the world, to be a light to the nations. You heard those words in the reading from Isaiah. "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified."
Well, how does that apply to us? We’re not Israel, we’re the church. But look at the Isaiah reading, and see that the servant is double: first, the whole nation of Israel, and second, the Messiah. The Messiah is needed because Israel had failed in its mission. Israel laments that it labored in vain, and spent itself in nothingness and vanity. The Messiah is the servant who restores Israel to its mission to be a light to the nations, that God’s salvation might reach the ends of the earth.
The Messiah, the servant who would do all that, was introduced by John the Baptist. And we, the church, are in the Messiah’s fellowship, according to First Corinthians. That means we share his servanthood, and we let Isaiah speak to us. We repeat the words of Psalm 40, "Here I am, in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O my God." I hope that you can say this too, and that tomorrow and Tuesday you can delight to do God’s will.
Tuesday evening we’re partnering with the Community Bookstore and hosting Jim Wallis, with his new book, The Great Awakening. We’re the second stop in the national tour. Jim Wallis proposes a positive relationship of faith and politics for a secular nation, appropriate to the separation of church and state. He’s talking about the Kingdom of God in real live terms. I need two more volunteers to be ushers and helpers. If you could show up at 6:30, that would be nice.
Tuesday morning we’re partnering with city’s Department of Homeless Services and the Common Ground agency for the "Home Team" event. It’s like a farmer’s market of services for the homeless. We’ll have breakfast and medicine and health care and house-keys and room-keys. Our goal is twenty-five homeless people walking out of our sanctuary with keys to housing in their hands, and it’s a wonderful thing. This is what the Kingdom of God is like.
It can be scary for the homeless folks, so we need volunteers to act as their buddies and their guides. We still need some volunteers. Plan to say two hours. If you could show up at 7:00, that would be great, but you can come later, and we need a couple to help clean up from noon to 1:00 pm.
Tomorrow we’re partnering with Spoke the Hub to host all kinds of peacemaking activities in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This building will be full of groups and classes doing all sorts of things. I’ll be leading a group in the morning and so will Jenny Burrill. Then, in the afternoon, in the sanctuary, we’ll have six different chapels for six religions, for silent prayer, all of us praying quietly for peace. We’re still looking for some volunteers to help serve the meal at 6 pm and to do dishes afterwards. I also need some volunteers to come and pray.
Don’t think of yourselves as volunteers. Think of yourselves as servants. It’s paradoxical how that might help. For this is what the servants hear God telling them: "I will send you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth." Only we’re bringing the nations into our building, so you don’t have to go to very far.
Now let me address the inward, and our souls, our congregation, breathing in.
The consistory has been working a program we call NCD, for Natural Church Development. NCD offers us tools to improve our congregation’s health, and the healthier we are, the better we grow. We got started with a diagnostic test last June. The test revealed that one of our weaknesses is the area of holistic small groups. Not just any groups, not just any small groups, but holistic small groups.
So our consistory has made this our priority this coming year. You’ll be hearing more about it. A committee called the Church Health Team bas been working on it. One of the Church Health Team’s decisions has been to focus the terminology on Spiritual Formation Groups. Spiritual Formation Groups. And the next seven sermons, I will ask our scripture lessons about Spiritual Formation Groups, and we’ll listen to what our scripture lessons tell us.
Today it’s rather obvious. According to John’s Gospel, after Jesus’ baptism, the first thing he does is gather a small group. Four guys. They spend the evening at his house with him, and drink their tea, and talk. Jesus is beginning to work on their spiritual formation.
This is basic to Christianity, especially when you compare it to its sister religions. In Judaism the basic group is the family. Not a group of individuals. In Islam the basic group is the whole public, the whole population. But if you look at both the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, it’s almost always small groups of voluntary individuals. As Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them."
This small group emphasis is not just pragmatic. It’s the inevitable implication of the Incarnation of God for us in Jesus Christ. Because in Jesus God comes very close, very close indeed, even uncomfortably close. Religions prefer to keep God at some distance, up in heaven, which lets us keep our space. But if God really gets so close, that means personal interaction, and that means transformation.
When those first two disciples started to follow Jesus, he turned around and said, "What are you looking for?" Well, that’s rather direct. They back off a bit. They don’t reveal what they are looking for, that they’re looking for the Messiah, they parry with a question of their own. "Rabbi, where are you staying." Calling him Rabbi means they're holding back their cards.
There is reason to be hesitant. Look what happened to Simon. When they brought him close to Jesus, Jesus gave him a new name. I’ll bet that shook him up a bit, altering his identity. "What’s wrong with what my mother called me?" That’s not what Simon bargained for.
You see, if you get this close, you get more than you bargained for, and there are costs and benefits. When you get involved in spiritual formation, that also means transformation. Transformation can be scary.
On Tuesday morning, you might get close to a homeless person as they get some help. Janet Phillips volunteered for this last time, and she told us she found it a little scary, but she wants very much to do it again. Tomorrow, you might get close to a Hindu or a Buddhist as they pray. If you find it a little uncomfortable you’ll also find it transformational. You’ll be doing this as God’s servant. The servant is called to do God’s will. And the servant can expect God’s faithfulness and God’s love. You will discover the depths of God’s faithfulness and love only when you test them and require them.
I can promise you all of this. And I invite you to this all, in the Spiritual Formation Groups in the months ahead, and in the outreach activities in the next two days. You will recover the truth of the old morning prayer, that the service of God is perfect freedom.
Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
Isaiah 49:1-7, Psalm 40, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, John 1:29-42, 01/20/08
Spiritual Formation 1: Small Groups
Some sermons are public proclamations, but this sermon is what I call pastoral speech. It’s for this particular congregation right now. I need to guide you into something outward and then into something inward. Going out and coming in. Like breathing. First, the outward.
We have two big days ahead of us. Three big things in just two days. Martin Luther King, the Home Team homeless fair, and the Jim Wallis book event. Boom, boom, boom. I’m still looking for a few more volunteers for each of them. You have the chance for doing real service in the name of God. If you can’t volunteer, then please come anyway and participate.
These three events are excellent expressions of our outreach, and they bear witness to what we believe the Kingdom of God is like. These events express our Mission Statement, specifically Missions number Three and Four. Our Third Mission is sanctuary for anyone seeking spirituality and hope. Our Fourth Mission is hospitality to community groups and the arts.
A church is called to be God’s servant in the world, to be a light to the nations. You heard those words in the reading from Isaiah. "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified."
Well, how does that apply to us? We’re not Israel, we’re the church. But look at the Isaiah reading, and see that the servant is double: first, the whole nation of Israel, and second, the Messiah. The Messiah is needed because Israel had failed in its mission. Israel laments that it labored in vain, and spent itself in nothingness and vanity. The Messiah is the servant who restores Israel to its mission to be a light to the nations, that God’s salvation might reach the ends of the earth.
The Messiah, the servant who would do all that, was introduced by John the Baptist. And we, the church, are in the Messiah’s fellowship, according to First Corinthians. That means we share his servanthood, and we let Isaiah speak to us. We repeat the words of Psalm 40, "Here I am, in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O my God." I hope that you can say this too, and that tomorrow and Tuesday you can delight to do God’s will.
Tuesday evening we’re partnering with the Community Bookstore and hosting Jim Wallis, with his new book, The Great Awakening. We’re the second stop in the national tour. Jim Wallis proposes a positive relationship of faith and politics for a secular nation, appropriate to the separation of church and state. He’s talking about the Kingdom of God in real live terms. I need two more volunteers to be ushers and helpers. If you could show up at 6:30, that would be nice.
Tuesday morning we’re partnering with city’s Department of Homeless Services and the Common Ground agency for the "Home Team" event. It’s like a farmer’s market of services for the homeless. We’ll have breakfast and medicine and health care and house-keys and room-keys. Our goal is twenty-five homeless people walking out of our sanctuary with keys to housing in their hands, and it’s a wonderful thing. This is what the Kingdom of God is like.
It can be scary for the homeless folks, so we need volunteers to act as their buddies and their guides. We still need some volunteers. Plan to say two hours. If you could show up at 7:00, that would be great, but you can come later, and we need a couple to help clean up from noon to 1:00 pm.
Tomorrow we’re partnering with Spoke the Hub to host all kinds of peacemaking activities in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This building will be full of groups and classes doing all sorts of things. I’ll be leading a group in the morning and so will Jenny Burrill. Then, in the afternoon, in the sanctuary, we’ll have six different chapels for six religions, for silent prayer, all of us praying quietly for peace. We’re still looking for some volunteers to help serve the meal at 6 pm and to do dishes afterwards. I also need some volunteers to come and pray.
Don’t think of yourselves as volunteers. Think of yourselves as servants. It’s paradoxical how that might help. For this is what the servants hear God telling them: "I will send you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth." Only we’re bringing the nations into our building, so you don’t have to go to very far.
Now let me address the inward, and our souls, our congregation, breathing in.
The consistory has been working a program we call NCD, for Natural Church Development. NCD offers us tools to improve our congregation’s health, and the healthier we are, the better we grow. We got started with a diagnostic test last June. The test revealed that one of our weaknesses is the area of holistic small groups. Not just any groups, not just any small groups, but holistic small groups.
So our consistory has made this our priority this coming year. You’ll be hearing more about it. A committee called the Church Health Team bas been working on it. One of the Church Health Team’s decisions has been to focus the terminology on Spiritual Formation Groups. Spiritual Formation Groups. And the next seven sermons, I will ask our scripture lessons about Spiritual Formation Groups, and we’ll listen to what our scripture lessons tell us.
Today it’s rather obvious. According to John’s Gospel, after Jesus’ baptism, the first thing he does is gather a small group. Four guys. They spend the evening at his house with him, and drink their tea, and talk. Jesus is beginning to work on their spiritual formation.
This is basic to Christianity, especially when you compare it to its sister religions. In Judaism the basic group is the family. Not a group of individuals. In Islam the basic group is the whole public, the whole population. But if you look at both the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, it’s almost always small groups of voluntary individuals. As Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them."
This small group emphasis is not just pragmatic. It’s the inevitable implication of the Incarnation of God for us in Jesus Christ. Because in Jesus God comes very close, very close indeed, even uncomfortably close. Religions prefer to keep God at some distance, up in heaven, which lets us keep our space. But if God really gets so close, that means personal interaction, and that means transformation.
When those first two disciples started to follow Jesus, he turned around and said, "What are you looking for?" Well, that’s rather direct. They back off a bit. They don’t reveal what they are looking for, that they’re looking for the Messiah, they parry with a question of their own. "Rabbi, where are you staying." Calling him Rabbi means they're holding back their cards.
There is reason to be hesitant. Look what happened to Simon. When they brought him close to Jesus, Jesus gave him a new name. I’ll bet that shook him up a bit, altering his identity. "What’s wrong with what my mother called me?" That’s not what Simon bargained for.
You see, if you get this close, you get more than you bargained for, and there are costs and benefits. When you get involved in spiritual formation, that also means transformation. Transformation can be scary.
On Tuesday morning, you might get close to a homeless person as they get some help. Janet Phillips volunteered for this last time, and she told us she found it a little scary, but she wants very much to do it again. Tomorrow, you might get close to a Hindu or a Buddhist as they pray. If you find it a little uncomfortable you’ll also find it transformational. You’ll be doing this as God’s servant. The servant is called to do God’s will. And the servant can expect God’s faithfulness and God’s love. You will discover the depths of God’s faithfulness and love only when you test them and require them.
I can promise you all of this. And I invite you to this all, in the Spiritual Formation Groups in the months ahead, and in the outreach activities in the next two days. You will recover the truth of the old morning prayer, that the service of God is perfect freedom.
Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
Monday, January 14, 2008
From Three Years Ago: Second Sunday After Epiphany
Note: I will be taking a different tack this year, looking at the texts for coming weeks through the lens of "small groups." But here is what came out of the box three years ago.
Isaiah 49:1-7, Psalm 40, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, John 1:29-42
Epiphany 2, 01/16/05
If You Follow Jesus, Do You Get Close to God?
This passage is the source of the chorus from Handel’s Messiah, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." John the Baptist said it first, a new combination of words, an advance in the definition of the Messiah.
Wasn’t the Messiah to be the royal Son of David, mighty in battle, awful in justice, powerful and victorious. But a lamb is meek and mild, passive and vulnerable, a sacrificial victim. What’s more, this lamb would take away the sin of the world. Wasn’t the lamb for Israel, not for the Egyptians, not for the Canaanites, not for the world. Wasn’t the Messiah for Israel? This is a new kind of Messiah that John is announcing here. (But which is clearly rooted in Isaiah.)
He points him out to his disciples. Two of them decide to follow Jesus. He notices them. He turns around. "What are you looking for?"
The very first words spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of John. "What are you seeking, what are you after?" The first thing Jesus says is a question, a very basic one. "What do you want?"
Good question, a question we all find difficult to answer. What do I want? Not the constant wanting that consumes us all day, do I want a salad for lunch, do I want a pair of shoes, do I want to quit smoking, but what most deeply do I want, what am I really looking for?
I’m not sure. Maybe I won’t know until I find it. Or if I tell you what I really want you’ll know too much about me and you’ll have power over me. Or I’m ashamed of what I want and if you find out you’ll be mad at me. I’ll just tell you a little bit, and as for what I really want, well, that I’m keeping to myself.
"What are you looking for?" It’s an invitation. It’s a challenge. It’s what you ask the person you’ve just found looking through your stuff. It’s also the natural question you’d ask of any two guys you saw following you, "You looking for something?" It’s a perfectly human and natural question, but in Jesus, whatever is perfectly human also perfectly reveals the fullness of God. And isn’t that God’s constant question to us all: "What are you looking for, what are you after?"
"You talkin' to me? 'What am I after?' Hey God, aren’t you supposed to know that already? O God, aren’t we supposed to be figuring out what are you after, what you desire?" Maybe we find it easier to debate what God desires than to answer what we ourselves desire deep inside. We don’t like to answer such self-revealing questions. Neither do the disciples.
And so they respond to his question with their own question, "Rabbi, where are you staying?" Why don’t they say, "We are looking for the Messiah, and we think you are he." Why don’t they say, "We are looking for the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, and we hope you’re the one."
Do they think it smart to be cagey? Are they diplomatic, that these things are too important to speak of out in public, but more privately? Are they afraid of King Herod’s police, who would not like to hear of any such Messiah talk? Or does the fact that they call him Rabbi suggest they are not sure they understand, so they want to learn?
"Rabbi, where are you staying?" Translated more literally, "Where are you abiding?" Where can you keep on being found? The word "abiding" is the word Jesus uses three years later in the Upper Room, when he tells his disciples to "abide in me, and I in you. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me, and I in them, will bear much fruit." To abide is to stay, and to be stayed.
Abiding is the word in their question, and the gospel puts extra meaning into it. It’s an ordinary question they are asking of another guy, but in the technique of the gospel, the question is one that we all ask of God. "Where are you God, where are you abiding, where can I find you, so that tomorrow I can find you there as well, and the next day, too, that you’ll be there? And if I find you, how can I get close to you? Not just to know where you are, but to abide with you?
I want to be close to God. I want to live my life in God’s presence. I don’t want God to be distant from me. I want to be in 24/7 fellowship with God. Not in the way that I hear others speak of it, that God is inside of me, or that I am always in touch with the universe.
I want more than that, I want to have a God who is outside of me, who is other than me, distinct and different from the universe, yet present in it, present to me, alive to me, so that I might be alive to God, and always in God’s presence. So what I want to know is, where is God abiding?
And I want God to be my Rabbi, I want God to be my teacher. That’s another reason I want God to be someone outside me, something other than the spirit that is within us all, because I want God to be my teacher. God wants to be your teacher, as you can see in Jesus, who is a teacher.
This teacher is not just some lecturer, not a tutorial, this teacher knows you by your name, this teacher invites you to sit down in his rooms, and drink tea in the afternoon, and speak of many things. And he will ask you questions, and make you think, and learn, and grow. When it comes to God, we ask the same question as the disciples, "Rabbi, where are you abiding?"
And his answer is very simple, "Come and see."
This is the very second thing that Jesus says within John’s Gospel. Come and see. It is an invitation, it tells of his style. Once again it is both an invitation and a challenge. Because to accept this invitation we have to move, and that tells us of his expectation. We have to get up from where we’re sitting now, we have to be walking, we will not see anything if we stay put, nice and cozy where we are.
Seeing is a privilege, yet anyone can see, provided you are willing to get up from where you are. And you will find that in your movement you yourself have changed, so much that you might get a new name, as Simon Peter did, or maybe it’s discovering what all along your true name was.
Maybe you just saw yourself for the first time. Maybe you just discovered your true self after all this time. To know yourself is one half of true religion, the other half is knowing God. They have to come together, to know yourself in knowing God, and in knowing God to know yourself. Come and see, come and see God, come and see yourself.
What are you looking for? What do you want out of life? What do you want from God? What do you want from Jesus? Maybe you don’t know, maybe you’re uncertain, maybe these questions are very open questions. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, to keep us moving, to keep us coming to the Rabbi, to keep us seeking the presence of the Lord.
But what you discover is that your seeking is actually your being sought, and that your coming to see is your being seen. In your getting up and moving, you discover yourself at rest, securely within the presence of God. In your seeking is your being found. In your looking for the Messiah is your being found by God. In your contemplation of the lamb whom God has offered us, you discover that God has come to meet with you.
These two disciples thought that they had found the Messiah. What they realized afterwards was that the Messiah was gathering them.
I want to close with an example. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was able to do what he did because of his abiding in God. Every step he took in every march he led, he had to abide in God. He believed God’s word, even against all opposition, and he depended upon God’s Spirit to keep him going through exhaustion and adversity.
He was not a lion, but a lamb, because he preached non-violence, even against the evidence. He knew his own short-comings, but he just kept placing his faith in the Lamb "that taketh away the sin of the world."
And in Memphis, Tennessee, the night before he died, you know what he said. "I’m not worried about that now. Like everyone, I’d like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not worried about that now. I just want to do God’s will."
Martin, what are you looking for, what are you after? I just want to do God’s will. Let this one disciple's testimony encourage us all to abide in God in order to engage the world.
Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
Isaiah 49:1-7, Psalm 40, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, John 1:29-42
Epiphany 2, 01/16/05
If You Follow Jesus, Do You Get Close to God?
This passage is the source of the chorus from Handel’s Messiah, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." John the Baptist said it first, a new combination of words, an advance in the definition of the Messiah.
Wasn’t the Messiah to be the royal Son of David, mighty in battle, awful in justice, powerful and victorious. But a lamb is meek and mild, passive and vulnerable, a sacrificial victim. What’s more, this lamb would take away the sin of the world. Wasn’t the lamb for Israel, not for the Egyptians, not for the Canaanites, not for the world. Wasn’t the Messiah for Israel? This is a new kind of Messiah that John is announcing here. (But which is clearly rooted in Isaiah.)
He points him out to his disciples. Two of them decide to follow Jesus. He notices them. He turns around. "What are you looking for?"
The very first words spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of John. "What are you seeking, what are you after?" The first thing Jesus says is a question, a very basic one. "What do you want?"
Good question, a question we all find difficult to answer. What do I want? Not the constant wanting that consumes us all day, do I want a salad for lunch, do I want a pair of shoes, do I want to quit smoking, but what most deeply do I want, what am I really looking for?
I’m not sure. Maybe I won’t know until I find it. Or if I tell you what I really want you’ll know too much about me and you’ll have power over me. Or I’m ashamed of what I want and if you find out you’ll be mad at me. I’ll just tell you a little bit, and as for what I really want, well, that I’m keeping to myself.
"What are you looking for?" It’s an invitation. It’s a challenge. It’s what you ask the person you’ve just found looking through your stuff. It’s also the natural question you’d ask of any two guys you saw following you, "You looking for something?" It’s a perfectly human and natural question, but in Jesus, whatever is perfectly human also perfectly reveals the fullness of God. And isn’t that God’s constant question to us all: "What are you looking for, what are you after?"
"You talkin' to me? 'What am I after?' Hey God, aren’t you supposed to know that already? O God, aren’t we supposed to be figuring out what are you after, what you desire?" Maybe we find it easier to debate what God desires than to answer what we ourselves desire deep inside. We don’t like to answer such self-revealing questions. Neither do the disciples.
And so they respond to his question with their own question, "Rabbi, where are you staying?" Why don’t they say, "We are looking for the Messiah, and we think you are he." Why don’t they say, "We are looking for the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, and we hope you’re the one."
Do they think it smart to be cagey? Are they diplomatic, that these things are too important to speak of out in public, but more privately? Are they afraid of King Herod’s police, who would not like to hear of any such Messiah talk? Or does the fact that they call him Rabbi suggest they are not sure they understand, so they want to learn?
"Rabbi, where are you staying?" Translated more literally, "Where are you abiding?" Where can you keep on being found? The word "abiding" is the word Jesus uses three years later in the Upper Room, when he tells his disciples to "abide in me, and I in you. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me, and I in them, will bear much fruit." To abide is to stay, and to be stayed.
Abiding is the word in their question, and the gospel puts extra meaning into it. It’s an ordinary question they are asking of another guy, but in the technique of the gospel, the question is one that we all ask of God. "Where are you God, where are you abiding, where can I find you, so that tomorrow I can find you there as well, and the next day, too, that you’ll be there? And if I find you, how can I get close to you? Not just to know where you are, but to abide with you?
I want to be close to God. I want to live my life in God’s presence. I don’t want God to be distant from me. I want to be in 24/7 fellowship with God. Not in the way that I hear others speak of it, that God is inside of me, or that I am always in touch with the universe.
I want more than that, I want to have a God who is outside of me, who is other than me, distinct and different from the universe, yet present in it, present to me, alive to me, so that I might be alive to God, and always in God’s presence. So what I want to know is, where is God abiding?
And I want God to be my Rabbi, I want God to be my teacher. That’s another reason I want God to be someone outside me, something other than the spirit that is within us all, because I want God to be my teacher. God wants to be your teacher, as you can see in Jesus, who is a teacher.
This teacher is not just some lecturer, not a tutorial, this teacher knows you by your name, this teacher invites you to sit down in his rooms, and drink tea in the afternoon, and speak of many things. And he will ask you questions, and make you think, and learn, and grow. When it comes to God, we ask the same question as the disciples, "Rabbi, where are you abiding?"
And his answer is very simple, "Come and see."
This is the very second thing that Jesus says within John’s Gospel. Come and see. It is an invitation, it tells of his style. Once again it is both an invitation and a challenge. Because to accept this invitation we have to move, and that tells us of his expectation. We have to get up from where we’re sitting now, we have to be walking, we will not see anything if we stay put, nice and cozy where we are.
Seeing is a privilege, yet anyone can see, provided you are willing to get up from where you are. And you will find that in your movement you yourself have changed, so much that you might get a new name, as Simon Peter did, or maybe it’s discovering what all along your true name was.
Maybe you just saw yourself for the first time. Maybe you just discovered your true self after all this time. To know yourself is one half of true religion, the other half is knowing God. They have to come together, to know yourself in knowing God, and in knowing God to know yourself. Come and see, come and see God, come and see yourself.
What are you looking for? What do you want out of life? What do you want from God? What do you want from Jesus? Maybe you don’t know, maybe you’re uncertain, maybe these questions are very open questions. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, to keep us moving, to keep us coming to the Rabbi, to keep us seeking the presence of the Lord.
But what you discover is that your seeking is actually your being sought, and that your coming to see is your being seen. In your getting up and moving, you discover yourself at rest, securely within the presence of God. In your seeking is your being found. In your looking for the Messiah is your being found by God. In your contemplation of the lamb whom God has offered us, you discover that God has come to meet with you.
These two disciples thought that they had found the Messiah. What they realized afterwards was that the Messiah was gathering them.
I want to close with an example. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was able to do what he did because of his abiding in God. Every step he took in every march he led, he had to abide in God. He believed God’s word, even against all opposition, and he depended upon God’s Spirit to keep him going through exhaustion and adversity.
He was not a lion, but a lamb, because he preached non-violence, even against the evidence. He knew his own short-comings, but he just kept placing his faith in the Lamb "that taketh away the sin of the world."
And in Memphis, Tennessee, the night before he died, you know what he said. "I’m not worried about that now. Like everyone, I’d like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not worried about that now. I just want to do God’s will."
Martin, what are you looking for, what are you after? I just want to do God’s will. Let this one disciple's testimony encourage us all to abide in God in order to engage the world.
Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
The Seed is the Word photos
The Seed is the Word is our summer arts / Bible program. These are some photos.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
UCC and UMC
Watching the New Hampshire debate on Sunday night, I thought, how true to type they are.
Hillary Clinton stands for actions, not words.
Barack Obama stands for the power of words.
It's fitting that Hillary is a Methodist (UMC), and that Obama is Reformed (UCC).
The Methodists are the great pragmatists of Protestantism, the quintessential pragmatic traditionalists. The Reformed are all about the Word, sometimes even obstinately so.
Hillary Clinton stands for actions, not words.
Barack Obama stands for the power of words.
It's fitting that Hillary is a Methodist (UMC), and that Obama is Reformed (UCC).
The Methodists are the great pragmatists of Protestantism, the quintessential pragmatic traditionalists. The Reformed are all about the Word, sometimes even obstinately so.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Sermon for Epiphany, January 6 2008: A New Model King
Isaiah 60:1-6, Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12
As Hillary and Romney feel about Obama and Huckabee, so King Herod feels about this baby in Bethlehem. An upstart, a rival, a threat, a supplanter. Herod is King of the Jews already, and his own son after him, thank you very much. But King Herod has reason to be troubled by this news.
As Hillary and Romney feel about Obama and Huckabee, so King Herod feels about this baby in Bethlehem. An upstart, a rival, a threat, a supplanter. Herod is King of the Jews already, and his own son after him, thank you very much. But King Herod has reason to be troubled by this news.
King Herod was not descended from the House of David. He was not even ethnically Judean, his family was Idumean, from across the Jordan River. They had converted to Judaism when they were conquered by the Maccabees, during that short period of Jewish independence between the decline of the Greeks and the rise of the Romans.
When the Romans conquered the Maccabees, Herod’s family went for the Romans, and Julius Caesar made his father governor of Judea. Mark Antony made Herod King of Judea, and Caesar Augustus confirmed it.
King Herod was in a sensitive position, he was King of the Jews because of his loyalty to Caesar, and as long as he behaved, and served the Roman interests. But he dare not try to expand his sway beyond the Jews. And that’s the first reason he was troubled by these Wise Men. They were Gentiles, and the interest of other Gentiles in Judea would not please the Romans.
Herod was troubled because his lack of Davidic lineage made his position illegitimate in strictly Jewish terms. It didn’t really help that he married a princess of the Maccabees, for neither were the Maccabees of David’s line. He won the grudging admiration of the people and the loyalty of the Sadducees by rebuilding the Temple, lavishly, making it a wonder of the ancient world, but for this he had to tax the people heavily, and he never won their hearts.
"Where is he that is born the king of the Jews?" There is no question what King Herod must do. He was used to power and he was not averse to brutality. He had ordered the murder of his own sons when he suspected their intentions. He was Herod the Great, and great kings do what great kings have to do.
Of course, Judea was an especially unruly province, and it needed a firm hand, and no doubt King Herod could tell himself that a rival to his throne would start a civil war, which the Romans would not tolerate, and we’ll lose everything. Which is exactly what happened some decades thereafter, when more conventional claimants to the Messiahship sought political power, and the Romans responded brutally.
King Herod knew the Romans very well. And he reckoned the interest of his country and the interest of his own power to be the same, just like Musharraf, and Vladimir Putin, and Hugo Chavez, and Dick Cheney, and everyone else, I guess.
You have to wonder, didn’t the Wise Men see it coming? Could they really have thought that King Herod was telling the truth, that he would also go and pay homage to the new-born king? Were these Wise Men so unwise in the realities of politics, were they so lost in the stars?
Well, the so-called realities of politics are exactly what’s in question here. There was a whole new reality represented by this baby of Bethlehem. A reality King Herod could not imagine. King Herod had nothing to fear, and yet he had everything to fear. This baby was not his enemy, nor of the Romans, not immediately, at least.
He is the enemy of the higher powers of the world to which King Herod and Caesar and every other ruler were subservient. This child will rise against the spiritual powers in high places, the ideologies that govern human expectations, the iron laws of human civilization, the iron laws which even the most powerful dictators dare not disobey.
Our reading from Ephesians tells us that these powers have held humanity in their sway through human history. From the beginning, human beings have bowed down to the powers of the world and made them gods and goddesses —the physical powers of the sun and moon and stars, of fire and of water, and the spiritual powers of war and intellect and sexuality, to which we put ourselves in bondage. All the Gentiles of the world were under them, and to these powers even the emperors and generals were subservient.
In our own day, they are not gods and goddesses but ideologies and propagandas, and the assumed necessities of fear and greed and wealth and power and success.
Dearly beloved, you understand that the way the Lord Jesus overcomes these powers is by means of the gospel, the proclamation of the good news. Ephesians 3:10: so that through the church the wisdom of God in all its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. And by "heavenly places" he doesn’t mean far off but over-arching and widely-reaching and everywhere pressing down upon us.
Dearly beloved, you understand that the gospel is not just something narrowly personal, it’s also cultural and civilizational. It’s not conventionally political, but it certainly questions all the ideologies of politics and the so-called realities of power. And the gospel has been doing that for two thousand years.
You understand that the Lord Jesus is very patient, he is willing to take his time, to let the gospel work its way beneath the surfaces for centuries. And you understand when I say it’s through the proclamation of the gospel I don’t mean broadcasting it, but that we repeat it to each other together as communities of Jesus, looking for its wisdom, and we support each in trying to live it out in our own lives and homes and our relationships and our activities in the world.
But at the same time it is also personal. His kingdom is extended one person at a time. He seeks to be your king, he seeks your loyalty. Listen to the testimony of someone who gave him his loyalty:
"One Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to Trinity United Church of Christ . . . I heard the Reverend . . . deliver a sermon. . . . During the course of that sermon he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, he would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in him.
"And in time I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life. It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity Church one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn’t suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross . . . I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to his will, and dedicated myself to discovering his truth and carrying out his works."
(As quoted in Andrew Sullivan, "Goodby to All That," Atlantic Monthly, December 2007.)
That’s the testimony of one of the presidential candidates, but it doesn’t matter who. My point is that still today, that this new kind of king is inviting you to give him your homage.
He asks to be your king. Offer him the gift of your gold, your power and your substance, that he may direct it to justice and righteousness, and the healing of the world.
He asks to be your priest. Offer him your frankincense, your prayers, your praise, your intercessions for the world, your confession of your sins and your shortcomings and your fears.
He asks to be your prophet. Offer him your myrrh, the ointment of your burial. He will take away the fear of death and makes sense of your life. He tells the truth about the world against the reigning lies and ideologies that would make their claim on us.
He asks to be your prophet, priest, and king, and I can tell you that in him has the fulness of the Spirit of God been focused for the salvation of the world, including you.
Copyright © 2008, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Jim Wallis at Old First
Jim Wallis is the author of the book God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, and most recently of The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America.
Thanks to Wallis' organization Sojourners, and Park Slope's own Community Bookstore, Wallis will be reading from The Great Awakening at Old First on Tuesday, January 22, at 7:30 PM.
Click here for more information about the event, and for the opportunity to RSVP. It's important to RSVP as a large crowd is expected. There will be a permanent link in the sidebar of this blog for RSVPs as well.
Thanks to Wallis' organization Sojourners, and Park Slope's own Community Bookstore, Wallis will be reading from The Great Awakening at Old First on Tuesday, January 22, at 7:30 PM.
Click here for more information about the event, and for the opportunity to RSVP. It's important to RSVP as a large crowd is expected. There will be a permanent link in the sidebar of this blog for RSVPs as well.
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