tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82219167324776688122024-03-12T19:29:57.045-07:00Around the Table at the CA Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-36197059801974384182016-04-26T12:21:00.002-07:002016-04-26T12:21:49.401-07:00"I Need You to Survive" by Joshua ButlerScripture - 1 Thessalonians 5:11-15<br />
Sermon given on April 20, 2016<br />
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I just wanted to give you a brief history of this text. 1
Thessalonians is the oldest book in the New Testament, written around AD 52. It
was written by Paul the Apostle and intended for the people of Thessalonica.
This particular passage speaks on how Christian should behave. What I like
about this particular text is that your behavior shown through how you treat
others. We see that we are supposed to treat people this way and that way. We
are supposed to look at each other as brothers and sisters of Christ. We are
supposed to do good for each other and for everyone else. Of course that’s hard
to do. I’m a witness that it is hard to do. However, we should look past the
wrong of others and not fight fire with fire. Instead, we should build up one
another.<br />
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The question becomes <i>how </i>do
we build up one another? We should acknowledge and encourage one another. I
want to provide an illustration of what I’m talking about.</div>
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The summer after my sophomore year, I worked in an youth
enrichment program and worked with a group of about 20 children. I don’t know
if you know this or not, but I don’t play when it comes to children. Back then,
although my policies have changed, I adopted a “one bad apple spoils the bunch”
rule, meaning that one (or some) children’s bad behavior could possibly ruin a
good time for everyone. One day, the group was supposed to go on a field trip
to a museum at noon, but they needed to do their assignments first. At around
8am, 5 of the kids decided to act a fool, being defiant and even encouraging
others to misbehave. After several warnings, I decided to call off the field
trip. But then I noticed the discouragement in the faces of those who had great
behavior. I didn’t acknowledge
those who did behave, those who did their work, and those who did everything
right. I didn’t acknowledge how hard they have worked. I didn’t acknowledge
some of the learning challenges that they have to overcome. I didn’t
acknowledge the fact that there may be reasons outside of this program that
explain why some of these kids are misbehaving. I acknowledged the bad without
acknowledging the good and with this system in-play, I was not encouraging at
all. In fact, some of them began to act worse. </div>
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We have to acknowledge things for what they are, whether it’s
good or bad. To acknowledge means to accept the existence or truth of
something. The scripture says that we acknowledge those who work hard and love
them for their work.We can accomplish this by appreciating and utilizing the
fruits of their labor. A reward, a “good job”, “I appreciate you”, and even a
smile can suffice from time to time. Many times it’s hard to acknowledge the
good in others because unless it’s something huge, they are doing the things
that they’re supposed to do! But what happens if we don’t acknowledge the work
of others? Some people may keep working and some people may stop but let’s be
real, the most of us would stop working, especially if we are working with the
intent of supporting and helping one another. Some acknowledgement can go a
long way and I know it worked for my students! After I called off the field
trip, I did some thinking and thought “I should give credit to those who did
what I asked them too”. I began to acknowledge those who did their work in a
decent manner and those who behaved well by complimenting on their efforts. I
acknowledged those who misbehaved and asked them if anything was wrong. For a
few of them, issues at home led them to be disheartened, and the smallest
things could trigger their bad behavior. Once we acknowledge the good works of
people, then everything is..well, good! But then we have to acknowledge some of
the negative things that we experience. Without acknowledgement, things cannot
be fixed. The idle will not be moved. The disruptive will not be silenced, and
the disheartened will not be enlightened. Acknowledging things for what they
are can be hard and uncomfortable, or perhaps humbling like my experience with
my children, but acknowledgement is how things get better. </div>
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Once we acknowledge the good or the bad, that gives us an
opportunity to encourage one another. To encourage means to support and uplift.
Sometimes we acknowledge something for what it is but we have little
reinforcement or solutions. What do we do when we acknowledge the disheartened?
What do we do when we acknowledge the weak? Encouragement is the key to
mitigating the issues that surrounds us. Acts of encouragement can be the same
as acts of acknowledgement, such as a “good job” or a smile, but the difference
is that encouragement comes with the intent of pushing people to move forward.
With my children, I encouraged them to remain positive (by this point I hope
you realize that we actually did go on the field trip) and for those who had
not completed their work, I encouraged them to keep pressing. By this time, the
nerves of everyone in the room has calmed down. After I assessed the work of
every student, I decided that it was okay for the entire group to go on the
field trip.</div>
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I wish my illustration could stress more the importance of
acknowledgement and encouragement, although I did think you could get the
point. But in all seriousness, this walk that we have called “life” is not an
easy one. The tragedy last week still resides in my mind and it made me realize
as human beings, we deal with a lot. A lot. In this walk, we deal with bumpy
terrain, worn shoes, twisted ankles, and many other distractions. Some of us
deal with things that no one else could fathom. Some of us walk as if we are
invisible, as if we cannot be heard, as if we do not matter. I’m here to tell
you today that you are not invisible as you are a light among the darkness. You
can be heard as God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power.
And as God’s children, you always have and will always matter. As I look around
and acknowledge the presence of every person in this room, I hope these words
of encouragement mean something to you. I hope that you will be able to see and
acknowledge the light or the sadness in others so that they can be encouraged.
With acknowledgement and encouragement, you will never know the magnitude of
the power that you have, all by the grace of God. As you acknowledge and encourage the people that have been
placed in your path, you’re saying “I Need You To Survive”. My friends, you are
more than you think. You have a capacity that exceeds your expectations. You
are important to me. I Need You to Survive. In Jesus’ name. Amen.</div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-35045720048526043172016-04-17T19:23:00.000-07:002016-04-17T19:23:39.259-07:00Wisdom by Catalina Mullis<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sermon given on April 13, 2016</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Scripture - James 3:13-18</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I first read this passage, the word that stuck out to me the most was disorder. </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Disorder. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s probably because I have been feeling like my life has been in disorder for the past couple </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">of weeks. I am graduating next month, so, as you can imagine, my life has been filled </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">with thoughts about the future. In addition to thinking things like, “What will I do after Penn? </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">What will my career be?” And “ Who will I become?,” I have been working two jobs to save up </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">for the summer, while trying to stay on top of work for my five classes, while preparing for </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">my dance show that is coming up for my dance troupe, African Rhythms, while </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fulfilling my board duties at the CA, while trying to stay on top of my friendships </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">and familial relationships, while trying to find time to care for myself and sleep. Fewwww. Just </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">getting all of that out was a lot. Sounds like a lot of disorder right?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And yet, at a place like Penn, what I just described is unfortunately </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">very </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">normal. Almost everyone here is overcommitted; you will see most of us trying to do it all and be it all and know it all because we feel like we have to; because we are told, either directly or indirectly, that doing this is what makes us valuable by our institution, by our society, and by each other; We must be the best in class, we must have the best internships and jobs, we must be involved in the most clubs and extracurriculars, and we must be the most popular; the more we have to write on our resume, the more we have done and accomplished, and the more people we know, the more likely we will be successful and the more likely an employer will choose us. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But in the process of trying to fulfill what is expected of us, we inevitably lose sight of ourselves and others; we forget to take care of ourselves; we don’t sleep, we don’t eat right and we don’t do things just because we enjoy them; we lose sight of how to pick up on how others are feeling and we stop hanging out with them and sharing quality time with them, and they with us; we become so consumed with what we have to do that we forget about the others around us and they forget about us; we stop checking in with our friends and family, they stop checking in with us, and pretty soon, we all start feeling alone, really alone. We start leading pretty bad, disconnected lives, instead of the good lives that James talks about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this passage, James tells us that when we, either individually or as a whole, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">choose to follow these earthly ways, or what he calls the “ways of selfish ambition”, disorder, suffering, and chaos ensues. He even goes as far as to say that selfish ambition is demonic and evil mainly because of the tragic repercussions this way of life has for a lot of people: anxiety, depression (something I am all too familiar with), exhaustion and the list goes on and on. He tells </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">us that selfish ambition makes us unstable, like “a wave of the sea, driven and tossed </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">by the wind.” I know that this happens to me when I succumb to this culture. I feel </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">disconnected from everything and I tend to get very existential. I question the meaning of life, I wonder why life has to be so hard, and I doubt God. Let me just emphasize that: I doubt God A LOT. I start to question if life really does conquer death, if this world can be restored, and if </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">good can actually prevail. A culture of selfish ambition really is demoralizing and alienating, and everything seems pretty dim.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But James tells us that when we, individually and especially as a society, choose to follow the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre-wrap;">ways of God, something remarkable happens. Disorder disappears and is replaced by peace, love, mercy, compassion, and righteousness. When we follow God’s ways, we are filled with </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His wisdom, and so we are liberated from the pressures of the world and from the belief that we have to be perfect in every academic, co-curricular, and social endeavor in order to be valuable. God’s wisdom tells us that we are valuable independent of what we do, because we are God’s children; God’s wisdom tells us that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of us matter, that </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of us must be taken care of, and it propels us towards the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">right </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">action, towards selfless action; it propels us to focus first on our communities, on each other, and to do whatever it takes to restore our world and to make sure that everyone feels safe, whole and loved. In God’s world, righteousness and justice reign, and doubt disappears, because we can visibly see God’s world through our actions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So how can we follow God’s ways? Where can we find this wisdom? Well, I personally think that God’s ways and wisdom can be accessed in faith communities like the Christian Association, which are countercultural, and which exist to remind students that they are never alone and that they don’t have to pursue a life of selfish ambition to be valuable. On our own, it can sometimes be very hard to break free from the messages that surround us, but in community, we are fueled with strength and Truth, the Truth with a capital T, which rings louder because we have people that love us to keep us grounded and balanced. In my case, I found the CA because I sought it out, and I never looked back. But not everyone finds what they are looking for; and so that is why at places like the CA, we seek to live out God’s call to care for and love each other, to reach out to those in need, relying on his wisdom to guide us in that process and slowly but surely, restore the world around us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amen. </span>Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-35334914437940088422016-04-11T08:04:00.000-07:002016-04-11T08:04:18.279-07:00"Imagining Redemption" by Peter Hawisher-Faul <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Sermon given on April 6, 2016</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Scripture - Romans 8:22-27</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Have
you ever watched a movie and wondered why the characters can’t think of a
better way to act? Do you sit on the edge of your seat saying or thinking “Why
would you open that door? Don’t open that door!” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">or maybe “Don’t go out into the jungle! You know the clever
raptors hunt in packs.” Or have you ever finished the end of a movie or tv show
and looked back and thought of ten ways the characters could have had a better
ending? I know I have. Maybe if the hero had been just a little more suspicious
of the villain, or if a character could have just stayed home, everything would
have worked out better. There is a whole youtube series called “How it Should
Have Ended” that looks at movies and finds a better way to resolve the plot.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> The
thing is, it’s a lot different to watch a movie than it would to be a character
in a movie. Can you imagine being put in some of the intense situations that
characters are put in? It’s easy to say they should have known better, but if
you were placed under the same pressures you might not be able to see the best
way forward. Like, when you go through a bad breakup, when you chose whose
advice to take, or when you are placed under pressure of deciding your future,
it’s not always clear what the best choice is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Our
choices are limited by our imagination. When we are living the story, we can only
see so far and anticipate so much. In the midst of a crisis it can be hard
event o put our hopes into words. We might not be able to name what exactly is
wrong, much less see how to make it right. Our imagination could even be filled
with everything that could get worse, making imagining hope not only difficult,
but impossible. There are so many ways that our imagination can stop us from
finding what we are looking for; after all, we might not even be looking for
the right thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> This
is why Paul says that we are groaning. We experience suffering and much of the
time it feels like there is no way to make it right. Whether that pain be from
damaged relationships, the pressure to put on “Penn face” and be an all-star
student, or from the anxiety of facing an uncertain future with poor job
prospects and broken political system, whatever our personal source of pain, we
are left waiting for more and hoping for change that we don’t know how to name
and might not even be able to imagine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
are not groaning and suffering alone, Paul says, but with all of creation. This
in fact is the focus of the story of redemption that God is working out. It is
not just humans that need to be reconciled with God, but all of creation must
be reconciled with her Creator. Where we might normally think of the life of
the world as a macrocosm of our lives as individuals, Paul speaks of the
redemption of our bodies through adoption by God as a microcosm of the
redemption of creation. Our salvation is tied to the salvation of creation
because our sin has impacted all of creation. When humanity was cursed after
disobeying God in the garden of Eden, the ground was cursed with us;
cultivation of life on the earth becomes a difficult task because of our sin. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">While
we might not experience the thorns, thistles, and toil of farming, we don’t
have to look far to see how humans have hurt the world. There is an “island” of
decomposing plastic bottles the size of Texas in the Pacific ocean. Pollution
has yet to be kept in check by our governments and corporations. We might hope
for peace, but it is all we can do to imagine a world with less violence. So
many species have gone extinct in recent history that many scientists claim
that humans are responsible for starting a mass-extinction. “<span class="text"><span style="background: white;">We know that the whole creation has been
groaning in labor pains until now;</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white;"><b><sup>23 </sup></b></span><span style="background: white;">and not only the creation, but we
ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we
wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;">”</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">But
these groanings are labor pains, birth pangs. As characters in this story, we
may not be able to imagine what the redemption of creation will look like, but
God is creating new life. Jesus shared in our suffering and in the suffering of
the world, living a life that is not silenced by death with love that surpasses
all boundaries. Paul says that we are adopted as children of God and co-heirs
of Christ and we live by the Spirit that filled Jesus in his ministry. We may
not be able to imagine what redemption of all of creation will look like, but
we have hope in the Spirit, who intercedes on our behalf with “sighs too deep
for words.” </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">The
Spirit is the source of our hope, not our imagination or the world we see. Paul
says “</span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who
hopes<sup>[</sup></span></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%208&version=NRSV#fen-NRSV-28126p" title="See footnote p"><span style="color: #b34b2c; font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><sup>p</sup></span></a></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><sup>]</sup></span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">for
what is seen?</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">” Paul
looks around at his world at sees nothing worth hoping for. His hope is not in
the peace and supremacy of Rome or the success of his tent-making business,
which I’m guessing was not a terribly lucrative field. We look for hope in our
world, but creation cannot redeem itself; it must be redeemed by the Creator.
We may look for a political revolution, a career filled with meaning, a
lucrative job on Wall Street, a loving family, or recognition of our personal
accomplishments, but none of the things we long for will ultimately satisfy our
yearning for a better world. We long for good things in the world, but we don’t
need to give up on our dreams and settle for what we see in the world. We are
unsatisfied for a reason, because our true hope is the new life that only God
can bring, the new life that Jesus embodies and the Spirit breathes into our
world to redeem all of creation. </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Where
we are weak and unable to bring change or even to properly imagine it, the Holy
Spirit intercedes on our behalf. We long for change, but we don’t know what it
would even look like. We cry out, but we cannot really grasp the cause of our
suffering. We don’t know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit hears our
groaning and the groaning of creation as prayer. The Spirit hears our cries,
and God knows what our hearts long for, working for the good of creation in our
lives beyond what we could imagine for ourselves.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">When we
look at the stories told by movies and tv, some of the struggles that
characters face can feel meaningless because the authors of the stories are not
writing just out of love for the characters. Characters may be killed off, take
bad advice, or betray their own values as it suits the authors’ interests. When
we look at our lives and the world and see no signs of hope, we might wonder if
we can trust God’s creative work in our lives. We know that God’s love is
sincere and that God’s love has the power to set the world right because of the
love Jesus showed for his disciples and the world, the love that not even death
or Roman power could silence. That love is our true hope. </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">We long
for a better world, but we cannot see the way. With all of creation we groan in
labor pains, and the Spirit hears our longing and intercedes for us with sighs
too deep for words. We wait for the redemption of all creation, placing our
hope in God’s plans, which surpass anything we could plan for ourselves.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Wendell
Berry wrote a poem that I think expresses what he hears in the groaning in
labor pains of all creation. Read it, and reflect on what is the new life you
long to see in the world. The poem is called “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer
Liberation <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>Front.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">Manifesto:<br />
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">by
Wendell Berry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">Love
the quick profit, the annual raise,<br />
vacation with pay. Want more<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
of everything ready-made. Be afraid<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
to know your neighbors and to die.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">And
you will have a window in your head.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Not even your future will be a mystery<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
and shut away in a little drawer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">When
they want you to buy something<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
they will call you. When they want you<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
to die for profit they will let you know.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
So, friends, every day do something<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
that won't compute. Love the Lord.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Love the world. Work for nothing.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Take all that you have and be poor.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Love someone who does not deserve it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">Denounce
the government and embrace<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
the flag. Hope to live in that free<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
republic for which it stands.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Give your approval to all you cannot<br />
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
has not encountered he has not destroyed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">Ask
the questions that have no answers.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Say that your main crop is the forest<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
that you did not plant,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
that you will not live to harvest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">Say
that the leaves are harvested<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
when they have rotted into the mold.<br />
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Put your faith in the two inches of humus<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
that will build under the trees<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
every thousand years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">Listen
to carrion -- put your ear<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
close, and hear the faint chattering<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
of the songs that are to come.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
though you have considered all the facts.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
So long as women do not go cheap<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
for power, please women more than men.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">Ask
yourself: Will this satisfy<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
a woman satisfied to bear a child?<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Will this disturb the sleep<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
of a woman near to giving birth?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">Go
with your love to the fields.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
in her lap. Swear allegiance<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
to what is nighest your thoughts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">As
soon as the generals and the politicos<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
can predict the motions of your mind,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
lose it. Leave it as a sign<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
to mark the false trail, the way<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
you didn't go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">Be
like the fox<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
who makes more tracks than necessary,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
some in the wrong direction.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
Practice resurrection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial;">"Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" from The Country of Marriage, copyright ®
1973 by Wendell Berry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-33492194430037581132016-04-04T11:36:00.000-07:002016-04-04T11:36:02.429-07:00"Is God Dead?" by Scott Sprunger<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sermon given on March 29, 2016</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Scripture: John 20:1-18</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We Christians have been taking death seriously lately. But it’s so easy to avoid the reality of death in the world. It’s easy to avoid death by turning off the television. But death is always surprising and always devastating, especially when it happens to people we love. In the Christian calendar, last week was Holy Week. But at the same time, terror attacks killed dozens in Syria and Belgium and Iraq. In the United States, people die every day from lack of access to quality health care, poverty and homelessness, and senseless police violence. But God takes death seriously too. God takes death so seriously that God took on a human body and participated in death alongside us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But today’s story is about resurrection. Life after death. This story is </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> perfect. It raises more questions than it answers. And this story asks a lot of us. It asks us to believe in something we can’t see. It asks us to hope when hope seems impossible. So that is what we’re doing together tonight in this room, wrestling with hope while surrounded by hopelessness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 19th century, there was a famous German philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche once boldly proclaimed, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?” And we as Christians agree with Nietzsche, at least, for two days out of every year. Last friday we commemorated Good Friday, remembering Jesus’ death on the cross. Growing up, my parents took me to a Good Friday service every year. And I </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hated</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> them. They were always so somber and morbid. I never left feeling good. And that’s kinda the point. Two days later we celebrated Easter, remembering Jesus coming back to life. I don’t know why but the season of lent and the celebration of Easter is always the most spiritual and reflective time for me. And even though Easter always felt like a big celebration, it seemed like there was something heavy - something transformative - about Easter, and Jesus coming back to life. That’s what I want to talk about tonight.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I was in high school, I worked at a family-owned ice cream shop. This particular ice cream shop had a tip jar. Now while tips were by no means mandatory, they were deeply, deeply appreciated. On summer weekends, the line could stretch out the door and around the block so the tips we received made our long hours of grueling work worth the effort. On one such summer night, I remember a middle-aged couple that came into our shop. After serving them a few samples and scooping their orders, I saw them slip a ten dollar bill into the tip jar. So after they left I reached into the jar to get a better look at it. But after picking it up, I realized that it was fake. On the back were the words: “Disappointed? Some things are better than money. Like your eternal salvation that was bought and paid for by Jesus going to the cross.” Now I was a little ticked off at the time. But in fairness, these people thought they were giving me a gift much greater than money could buy, access to eternal salvation. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is a strand of Christian faith is deeply concerned with the afterlife. You have heaven and hell. And when you die, your soul leaves its body so that God can judge it and send it to the appropriate location for the rest of eternity. This style of living one’s faith is pretty common today, you don’t have to look any further than Penn’s campus to find it. Every year the nice spring weather brings preachers to locust walk who call on us to leave behind our secular academy because it’s leading us on the road to damnation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also, I went to the religion section of the Penn Bookstore to see what kind of Christian books it had. Here are a few of the ones I found: </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proof of Heaven</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My Journey to Heaven</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flight to Heaven</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Heaven is for Real</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Now a Major Motion Picture), </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Touching Heaven</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To Heaven and Back</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and finally </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Getting to Heaven: Departing Instructions for Your Life Now</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My dad likes to call this fire-insurance Christianity because even if everything goes wrong in your life - if your metaphorical house burns down - you have the promise compensation after death. The story of fire-insurance Christianity goes like this: God created the world. Then God made humans. And after about two minutes we started sinning, and we haven’t stopped since. Sin is bad because it separates us from God so we can’t get into heaven. So God sent God’s only son to earth to receive the punishment for our sins. Now, if we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, our sins are forgiven and we go to heaven when we die. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You’ve probably heard that story or something like it before. The thing that I notice every time I hear it is this: there is no resurrection in it. The story wraps itself up nicely. You could tack a resurrection on at the end, but it’s more of a happy afterthought than a major turning point in the plot. My dad might call this fire insurance Christianity. Karl Marx called it the “opium of the masses.” But I prefer to call it “God is dead” theology. By “God is dead” theology, I don’t mean that God is literally dead, but that God is trapped beyond the veil of death, powerless to intervene in the affairs of this world. In “dead-God theology,” Christianity is also dead. Christianity is dead in two ways. Christianity is dead because it deals almost exclusively with things that happen after we die. But Christianity is also dead because it fails speak to the suffering and injustice of this world. And religions die when they are no longer capable of telling the truth about our lives. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is what Harper Lee was talking about in </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To Kill a Mockingbird</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> when she wrote that, “Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another. There are some kind of men who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one.” The important thing I want to tell you tonight is that Jesus’ resurrection disrupts this narrative. Jesus’ death is not the end of the story. But Jesus’ resurrection is a new beginning. And when we embrace that new beginning, it challenges us to change not only how we think about Christianity, but how we live our lives. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So let’s go back to the original Easter morning, some two thousand years ago. The disciples are scared. They are hiding in a room in Galilee and they are scared. You see they had left behind their jobs and their families and their lives to follow this revolutionary of love, Jesus. And they’ve seen him do some pretty amazing things. And they’re just starting to think that this guy might be the real deal. He might be the Messiah. But then he gets himself killed. The political and religious leaders of the day decided that they could not abide this Jesus guy or his message of love and justice. So they torture and kill him. And the disciples are scared because just as they were beginning to hope and believe, the light of the world was snuffed out. They were scared because they were not in on the divine secret. A secret that would turn the world upside down. So on the very first Easter, under the cover of darkness, Mary Magdalene and two disciples visit the tomb where Jesus is buried. To their surprise and horror, they find the tomb open and the body missing. Who could have done this to their God?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Two of the disciples leave but Mary stays behind to mourn. And it is precisely at this moment, in the darkest hour, on the darkest day that Jesus appears. Not dead, but alive. Not a ghost but a flesh-and-blood human body. The very same human body he was born and buried with. The body that carries the wounds of crucifixion. Mary becomes the first disciple to “get it.” The world is different than she thought. Life and death are different than she thought. The Christian story itself is different than she thought. Because Jesus is back. Life has conquered death. But Jesus is not content to stay there. He tells Mary to go tell others the good news. I’m used to hearing this phrase often but it’s worth repeating over and over again: In a time when a woman’s testimony is not even admissible in the court of law, Jesus picks Mary to be the world’s first evangelist. Mary is the first Jesus-follower entrusted with the Easter-secret. And shortly after, the rest of the disciples receive the Easter-secret as well. Because the Easter secret is too good to keep to ourselves.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Easter-secret is this: This world matters to God. You matter to God. Your body matters to God. This city matters to God. All people - from every corner of the Earth - matter to God. Black Lives matter to God. The people of this world matter so much to God that anything that stands in the way of the full dignity of their humanity </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">also</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> matters to God. Therefore white-supremacy matters to God. Poverty and homelessness matter to God. Violence and war matter to God. Relationship abuse matters to God. Homophobia and transphobia matter to God. Sexism against women matters to God. Imperialism and colonialism matter to God. And the increased xenophobia and islamophobia that we’re seeing in this country, particularly from Donald Trump, also matters to God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After Jesus did his work on the cross, he came back to this world because this world is important to God. And what is important to God should be important to us. Christianity does not end with the promise of heaven, it </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">begins</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with that promise. It is not simply the promise that we will see heaven we die, but that we will see it </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">before</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> we die. That is “God is alive” theology. This is the Easter-secret.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When Jesus came back from the dead and revealed himself to his disciples, he was letting them in on the divine secret. And we, two thousand later, follow in the footsteps of those disciples. We are in on the secret too. In I Corinthians, Paul says that we are coworkers with God. But tonight I would prefer to call us co-conspirators with God. Something is happening in the world. It started on the cross but continues to this very moment. It began with Jesus but continues in us. We are conspiring with God to build heaven on Earth. In many ways, this puts as at odds with the pattern of this world. But we as Christians reject domination in favor of love. And we reject injustice in favor of liberation because we are called to follow the example of Christ instead of the ways of oppression. So we are conspiring with God to build a new world inside of this one. That world is the kingdom of God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Put another way, The resurrection of Jesus is still going on. The work is started but it is not finished.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus was restored to life on Easter morning but there are communities around the world and in this city waiting for restoration. What does resurrection look like for ongoing generations of families forced into poverty and homelessness? What does resurrection look like for those who have experienced abuse at the hands of the church? What does resurrection look like for Syrian refugees? What does resurrection look like for the people of color who live in constant fear of police brutality? We are agents of the resurrection. We are conspiring with God to build life where there is only death. In an empire where death and domination are the norm, we pledge our allegiance to a different world order. Because we know the Easter-secret. God is bigger than death. Death</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> itself</span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is dying. Christ is arisen!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of my favorite things about Jesus’ resurrection is that it doesn’t just happen once. Jesus keeps coming back. He keeps bursting into the lives of his followers at the least expected moments. And if I may be so bold, I would say that Jesus continues to burst into the world and disrupts business as usual. That is my prayer for you tonight, that you would encounter Jesus in new places and at unexpected moments, in ways that bring love and justice and draw the world a little closer to the kingdom of God.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Amen</span></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-32218256676497830932016-03-21T10:26:00.002-07:002016-03-21T10:26:30.221-07:00"Just as I am" - Catalina Mullis <div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yesterday I came across this quote on my way to Old City:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Go and love someone exactly as they are. And then watch how quickly they transform into the greatest, truest version of themselves. When one feels seen and appreciated in their own essence, one is instantly empowered." ~wes angelozzi</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wes' words instantly struck a chord with me because they reminded me of the transformation that I went through when I rediscovered Jesus at the Christian Association. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Before entering that place, I always thought of Jesus as a God that did not love me as I was. Instead, I thought He saw me as a creature tainted by sin, one that needed to be reformed through punishment and guilt. I was afraid of Jesus and to be honest, I didn't really like Him very much. It really just didn't seem like it would be all that fun to be His child if I was constantly going to be reminded that I wasn't good enough to actually receive His love. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But when I joined the Christian Association, I discovered a Jesus that loves me as I am. I discovered a Jesus that accepts every part of me, that thinks that I am beautiful, and that wants me to be whole. I discovered a Jesus that views sin as the injustice that permeates our world, not as an innate condition of humanity, and as something that can and should be restored now. I discovered a Jesus that invites me to follow His example; to privilege the marginalized, to oppose systemic inequality non-violently, and to rely on community as my strength in this process. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I discovered<i> that </i>Jesus, when I learned that Jesus appreciated me in my own essence, I was instantly empowered, I was instantly sold on Christianity, and I never looked back.</span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-67128179044498915102016-03-21T10:22:00.000-07:002016-03-21T10:22:33.311-07:00"Martha's Tale" by Megan LeCluyse<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sermon given March 16, 2016</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Scripture John 11:17-27</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mary has always been the one
of us who truly gets it, who understands what ultimately matters. It makes me
envy her actually, in the way the siblings always envy the parts of their
brothers and sisters they wish they had. I’ve always been the responsible big
sister, the one who would take care of all the practical things. Mary is always
in the present moment, she’s thoughtful and smart, but maybe a little too
willing to go wherever the Spirit leads her, though this means she is truly led
by the Spirit, who guides her to sit at the feet of our Savior.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’m Martha, by the way. It’s
wonderful to be here with all of you, to tell you about the experiences,
challenging, tragic, and wonderful, that Mary and our brother Lazarus and I had
with Jesus. You probably know us best from the story that Luke told, the story
of Mary and Martha. We had been following Jesus and his teachings as best we
could, when one day we received word that he was soon to be arriving in town!
We figured that of course we should invite him to our house. Now, we tended to
keep things in order, but you know, there is always work to be down to keep
things picked up. And this wasn’t just any guest we were about to host. I mean,
what were we going to feed him? And not just Jesus, but his disciples as well.
“Was there enough food in the house?” I wondered. I got to work straight away,
but before I knew it, he arrived, and there was still so much to be done, plus
they brought in a whole new wave of dust with them. Mary had been helping,
don’t get me wrong, but as soon as Jesus arrived, she just went and sat by him,
listening. This was quite bold of her, I thought, sitting in a place normally
only a man would sit in. I kept right on working, the work had to get done
right? And I was listening to the conversation as much as I could. But after
awhile, I started getting frustrated, here I was doing all the work while Mary
acted just like the guests. But when I mentioned this to Jesus, who spent so
much time teaching us how to live, he responded that Mary had the better way
figured out! He gently asked why I was distracted and worried by so many
things, while my sister had the one most important thing figured out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I tried to change, to be less
worried about the daily tasks of life and pay more attention to my faith and
trying to just learn from Jesus. Some of the time we were able to follow him,
and watch and listen to what he did and said. I tried to trust him and what he
taught us. We got to know him pretty well, he came by our house when possible,
and we enjoyed the fellowship and laughter that we shared. A year or so after
that first dinner, our brother Lazarus, who is between Mary and I age-wise,
took seriously ill. We had seen Jesus heal others, and Jesus and Lazarus were
close, so Mary and I sent Jesus a message telling him that the one whom he
loved was sick. One of the disciples later told me that when Jesus heard the
message, he said something that at the time seemed fairly cryptic, something
about this illness not leading to death but to the glory of God. You see, at
the time it did not make sense because Lazarus died. Jesus had stayed where he
was for a couple days more, and by the time we received word he was coming, our
brother had died four days earlier. We had even performed the ritual of opening
the tomb on the third day to confirm that he was dead. Family and friends were
at the house with us, mourning. When they were close enough, I left to go meet
Jesus, but Mary did not want to go with me – I think part of her was hurt that
Jesus had not come more quickly. I felt that too, but I also felt that a
miracle was still possible, and so I told Jesus this. Jesus told me he is the
resurrection and the life, and asked if I believed this. I did, with all of my
being. I went and told Mary that Jesus wanted to see her, and she came, tears
still streaming down her face. As she approached Jesus, she once again sat at
Jesus feet, this time saying had Jesus come, Lazarus would not have died. Jesus
began to cry, too, and asked where he had been buried. Then he asked that the
stone be rolled back. Now, I told you I’m working on the whole trust thing,
because while I trust Jesus, I couldn’t help but exclaim that our brother had
been dead for four days, and if they rolled back the stone, the stench would be
horrible! Jesus reminded me of what he had said, that he is the resurrection
and the life, and he raised our brother from the dead. Even now it’s hard to
believe! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Unfortunately, you don’t
raise somebody from the dead without making some people suspicious of you,
people who were already looking for a way to get rid of Jesus. They feared that
the way people were now following Jesus might upset the Romans, and there were
rumors spreading that they were going to try to have him killed. Jesus and his
disciples went to Ephraim, and then, six days before Passover, came to our
house one last time for dinner. We all sensed it would be the last time, felt
it in our gut. But we also wanted to make the most of it, and so, as had
happened in times before, I prepared a meal and served the dinner, though this
time I was not stressed or anxious, but present to the moment. Lazarus sat at
the table with them, and Mary, once again, fell at Jesus’ feet. This time was
different though, this time was about what she could give to Jesus. After Jesus
had raised Lazarus, we felt we wanted to do something to express our gratitude
and sheer amazement, so we had bought some nard, a very expensive perfume. Mary
now took the nard, and poured it over Jesus’ feet, and then wiped them with he
hair. I could see in his face that
evening that Jesus knew what lay before him, and this act of love, which Jesus
said was for the day of his burial, gave him a brief moment of being cared for,
of being ministered to. Yes, it upset some of those there, who saw it as a
waste of money, but it was an offering, an offering for someone who had given
us so much and was about to give us so much more. And it was an anointing, of a
man who was prophet, priest, and king, the man who was our savior. It was an
incredible moment, one that I’ll forever remember, but it also was just that, a
moment, one I could have so easily missed had I been more concerned about the
evening’s chores as I once would have been. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When Jesus left, he was
headed toward Jerusalem. But as we stood watching them go, Mary and I standing
with out brother who had so recently been dead and was now alive, we knew that
whatever might happen, with Jesus, death would not have the final word. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So I urge you to be present,
present to the moment and to those you are with and who are around you. Be
present when Jesus calls, and know that Jesus is with us always. Learn to serve
Jesus, to love Jesus, to listen to Jesus, for in doing so, you’ll find yourself
fully alive. Be present to this table, where God’s love in shared with us, but
where we also celebrate our Savior, who laughed with us and cried with us. Be
present to the this season of Lent that we are in, to the next days that lead
to the cross, and be present to the one who is the resurrection and the Life,
and the season of resurrection that will follow. Mary always got it, she has
the gift of being present. I had to learn, but I learned that it makes life so
much richer. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-67815200414697663362016-03-07T09:49:00.001-08:002016-03-07T09:49:29.468-08:00"This Year for Lent" by Megan LeCluyse <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last fall, my sister came
home from working at the orchard one day and suggested that we pick a month
where we buy only local or fair trade food or items. As we were approaching
Lent, we decided that would become our Lenten discipline. While we have by no means
done it perfectly (ie things involving Penny don’t count), and while choosing
this also has its own flaws, it has been a wonderful exercise, and created some
great bi-products of living in this way:</span><br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">Saturday mornings start
out the way they normally do, taking Penny out for a walk, and then enjoying
breakfast while catching up on Words with Friends or doing some reading. By 10
, we are ready to head out to do our food shopping. We’ll walk over three miles
as we head to the Rittenhouse Square farmers market, and to Reading Terminal
Market. It’s been great to get outside, do some walking, and spend time
shopping for our food not in any kind of rush.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">Since we now have been
doing the bulk of our food purchasing once a week, more intentionality is
required to determine what food we need for the week. We’ll actually do what
all those articles suggest and plan out several meals for the week ahead of
time. As a result, we have found that we not only waste less food , but have
had less trash in general. We also have done a better job about using what is
in the freezer or cupboard, instead of letting things sit there until they go
bad. Plus, the food often tastes better. We just made our first batch of mashed
potatoes from potatoes bought at the farmers market, and my comment was, “They
taste earthy." </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">We also have found that
we are spending less money, and we aren’t even sure how or why! Maybe it’s
because there are fewer trips to the store where you end up buying things you
don’t need. I also can’t just hop online and buy that thing that looks cool.
Overall, we’re finding that this is not more expensive, but is actually saving
us money.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">Physically, I’ve been
feeling great! Now, to be fair, I’m also training for my first 10-mile race,
and am probably in the best, or close to the best, shape I’ve ever been in. So
that’s obviously part of it. But I also feel like the fact that I’m putting
good food into my body is probably helping, too.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yes, when Lent is over, we
will lift the restrictions on what we can purchase, but I’m hoping will
continue a lot of the practices we have established. As we are moving into
spring and then summer, there will be a lot more fresh produce available! And
it’s been good for us, both to think about our purchasing and buying habits and
choices, but also to try to live a little closer to God’s creation, and enjoy
the benefits that brings. I hope this Lenten season has brought something
meaningful for you as well, whatever that might be. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-59148119217888548722016-02-29T09:17:00.001-08:002016-02-29T09:17:39.349-08:00Reflections on the Spring Retreat by Daniel Yan<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Over the weekend of Feb.12<sup>th</sup>, the Christian Association at the University of Pennsylvania went to the Poconos Mountains for its annual winter
retreat. We left campus at 7:30pm and arrived at the retreat house around 10pm.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Leaving
the overwhelming University City is always refreshing because it reminds you
that there is something on Earth that is other than Huntsman, Van Pelt or
Smokes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> During
the retreat, as the retreat theme stated, we had a lot of discussions about
what it means to relax with God and to live freely and happily following God’s
guidance. However, implementing them in life is way harder than you think. We
are always carried away by the materialistic things in this world. And most of time we are chasing after
those things not because we are selfish, but because we were born with
responsibilities. We have seen our family members sacrificing their dreams and
money so that we can chase ours. It will be hard to choose when your
responsibilities are not resonating with God’s calling. When that time comes, please pray and
open your ears up to God, and listen to what he thinks you should do. As Sco<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>tt said during the discussion, “Mother Teresa’s life is not
for everyone.” For most of us, committing our entire life to love and help
people is not a feasible option but that is not the only way you can help to
make this word a more loving place. Tell your family that you love them every
day; ask the people walking next to you how they are. Anything counts and
everything matters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Another
discussion I felt mind blown was when Catalina and Arianna brought up that no
matter how many times they try to help others, they never felt satisfied afterwards.
In mother Teresa’s 1971 Nobel Peace Prize reception speech, she said, “<span style="background: white;">And we read that in the Gospel very
clearly - love as I have loved you - as I love you - as the Father has loved
me, I love you - and the harder the Father loved him, he gave him to us, and
how much we love one another, <b>we, too, must give each other until it hurts.</b></span><span style="background: white;">” I guess it is pretty self-explanatory
that’s why someone has never felt satisfied after helping others. It also works
with everything else in the world that fulfilling satisfaction is never
together with comfort. As to whether we should commit our life to finding this
particular satisfaction, as discussed above, is another story.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Every
time I walk into the Christian Association house and see the slogan of “At the
CA, you get to be whoever the heck you are,” I can’t help think of how blessed
I am to be around this diverse, engaging community which, instead of telling
you what is right, constantly guides you to find the truth. The Christian
Association is showing the campus that you can have it both ways this time –
your faith and your identity.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-67501506779549638472016-02-29T09:08:00.004-08:002016-02-29T09:08:42.337-08:00"Abiding to Bear Fruit" by Megan LeCluyse<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sermon given February 24, 2016</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Scripture: John 15:1-17</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This passages is normally
separated into two chunks, one being verses 1-8, the other being 9-17. In some
ways, this makes sense, because there is a ton of stuff here, and there is
absolutely no way to touch on it all, even if we only were to look at half. So
just so you know, we aren’t going to talk about the branches that get removed,
but there is a lot we can discuss there later if you want. It involves digging
into some horticultural learning about vines and what it means to tend vines.
Good stuff actually, and yes, it is a vine the passage talks about, like what
grapes grow on, and not a tree, which is what I tend to picture in my head. And
while will talk about what it means to love one another, we’re also not going
to dig into Jesus saying, “Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s
life for a friend.” But, it is important to know that this whole speech happens
while they are gathered for the Last Supper. We’re reading in John, so two
chapters earlier, at this same meal, Jesus had washed the disciples feet, which
was normally a servant’s task. Jesus has shown his disciples and friends that
he loves them. There is so much here, and it is so rich, we could go in any
number of directions. But what we are going to focus on, and why we read this
whole passage, is what does it mean to abide in Jesus, and how this is
absolutely necessary if we are going to be able to bear good fruit and truly
love one another. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Jesus makes it clear that we
are meant to abide in him, and there is no way around that this means making
time for Jesus and God in our lives. Jesus doesn’t specify what this looks
like, but that it is critical to our ability to bear good fruit. Using the vine
metaphor Jesus uses hear, in order to produce fruit, the branches literally have
to be connected to the vine, or they die. And this will probably look like a
whole bunch of different things for each of us, from prayer, to worship, to
serving, to retreating from normal life to be with God, it can and does look
like a lot of things, and part of that is because abiding in God provides us
with many different things. We abide in Christ to find rest, which was part of
what we talked about at our retreat this past weekend. We looked at Matthew
11:28-30, where Jesus says, <span class="textmatt-11-28"><span style="background: white;"><b><sup>28 </sup></b></span><span style="background: white;">“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy
burdens, and I will give you rest.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span class="textmatt-11-29"><span style="background: white;"><b><sup>29 </sup></b></span><span style="background: white;">Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span class="textmatt-11-30"><span style="background: white;"><b><sup>30 </sup></b></span><span style="background: white;">For my yoke is easy, and my burden is
light.” When we abide in Jesus, we are given rest, a chance to trade in a heavy
yoke for one that is light and easy. </span></span>But we also abide in Jesus
because in doing so, we are challenged, challenged to live into who God wants
for us to be, challenged to not be complacent about the injustices of the
world, challenged to live life as a disciple of Christ. When we abide in
Christ, we are able to be sure of our identity as Children of God, and we have
knowledge of who we truly are. Sure, we will experience seasons of doubt, and even
dark nights of the soul, but even in the midst of those we can seek to abide,
to rest, to dwell, to live in and with Christ. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The
passage tells us that if we abide in Christ, we will bear much fruit. And this
is true. When we live into the life that Jesus offers us and calls us to, we
enter a space in which we can thrive, in which as Frederich Buechner said, our
greatest passion meets the world’s deepest needs. Jesus also commands us to
live one another. Which is, in many ways, what makes life worth living, have
community, family and friends, and even strangers, who we are called to love.
But we all know that while fulfilling, this also is demanding, and requires
energy, patience, strength, service, a willingness to put others ahead of
ourselves, or to lay down our life for a friend. That’s not always easy to do,
and in fact, we can’t do it on our own. Loving one another is part of the fruit
that we bear, and that we can produce only when we remain close to the vine.
There’s a poem by poet Ann Weems, talks about living love, and what it really
looks like. She writes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Living love is a
complicated, painstaking, patient path.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">An all-the-time, every time,
watch-where-you’re-going<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Living love means making decisions all day long
to <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> love,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Living love means patience with those who don’t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> care about living love,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
Living love means watching our words <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
as well as our actions,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
Living love means treating others as we <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
ourselves want to be treated,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Living love means not hitting
back,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Living love means loving our enemies,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Living love means loving
those who speak all <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> manner of evil against
us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And these things are just the
beginning of living Love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Living Love means forgiving,
means forgetting,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Living Love means there is no room for <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> self-righteousness,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Living Love means being
the people of God <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> together,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">a community of those who love
one another<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and who love all the one
anothers that God created.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
Living Love means understanding those <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
who hate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Living Love means going into
all the world and telling <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> God’s story.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This living love she
describes isn’t going to be easy, but it is what God calls us to. And we can
only do so when we abide in Jesus, who gives us the strength to do so. So may
you abide in the vine, and be branches that bear good fruit. Amen. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-59655824365576926742016-02-22T12:01:00.000-08:002016-02-22T12:01:58.140-08:00"Struggling with Religion" by Scott Sprunger <div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“What religion are you?” </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That’s a question I’ve been asked more times than I can count. And I’ve asked it myself once or twice as well. Sometimes, among Christians, we ask each other “What denomination are you?” as though by naming the particular historical group in which you find yourself, you are naming something deeply true about your identity.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’ve answered this question many times. I tell people that I’m a “Christian” (and I tell other Christians that I’m a “Mennonite”). But more often than not, it feels like a lie. Because there are a lot of ways I don’t feel at home in a “Christian” identity.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I much prefer the question, “What religion do you </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">struggle</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with?” To that, I can unequivocally respond, “Christianity.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is some gravity to Christianity that I can’t ignore. Sometimes I hate it and sometimes I love it. I was born in a Christian family. I attended church, and Sunday school, and church camps, and conventions, and youth group meetings. At times in my life when my belief system would best be described as “Agnostic” or “Atheist,” I still took comfort in Christian rituals and hymns and traditions. Sometimes I attended church just to be around warm, caring people. Even when I had left Christianity behind, I still remained in its orbit.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since then, I’ve made the return trip to Christianity. And sometimes I really miss the warm nostalgia I experienced in my agnostic days. There are times when I can’t stand church and church people. There are days when I want to wash my hands of organized religion altogether. Jesus and I can go off to our own private island, just the two of us. But I know it doesn’t work that way.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I believe in God, I am also placing my belief in the church. I’m placing my belief in the idea that complex, messy people from all stations in life can come together and follow Jesus by making positive change in the world. So to believe in God also means to </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hope</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. But hope comes with the risk of vulnerability. To hope means to look at the world as it </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and imagine what it </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">could</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> be. But the churches I’ve known have rarely lived up to the dream that hope has given me the power to imagine. And when that happens, it is a powerful reminder that the dominant social order is often more powerful than our ability to imagine a better world.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One such moment was last summer, when my denomination voted to make permanent a temporary agreement that aimed at excluding LGBTQ people, as well as silence all dialogue on the issue for four more years. As a gay Mennonite, I have often struggled over questions about whether I can be loved and welcomed by the religious community that raised me. To be honest, I still don’t know the answer. After that vote, I thought that I may have lost the strength to remain in a religious community.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is the virtue of daring to hope? Of loving something so much that you are willing to struggle </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">against </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it? For me, giving up on Christianity is the same thing as giving up on hope. And for some reason, God will not let me give up on hope. The Bible is filled with stories of hopelessness. Of marginalized people who see no way out of an oppressive social order. Then God intervenes. God breaks the rules. God tells the truth. God delivers hope in the midst of hopelessness. God is a God of </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hope</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I can’t give up on Christianity because I need to help move it (and I need it to help move me) toward a better reality. A reality of love, and of liberation, and of hope. There are days when I’m not sure I can call myself a “Christian.” But I can always honestly say that “Christianity” is the thing I choose to struggle with.</span></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-26305741351888774302016-02-22T11:41:00.001-08:002016-02-22T12:03:37.248-08:00"Bread of Life" by Peter Hawisher-Faul<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Sermon given on February 17, 2016</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Scripture: John 6:35-51</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">The crowd that Jesus is
speaking to followed him hoping he would perform another miracle. The day
before, Jesus used five loaves of bread and two fish to feed five thousand
people. Then Jesus snuck away from the crowd, walking on water to join his
disciples on a boat. Jesus and the
disciples went to the other side of the local sea, but the crowd got in boats
and followed Jesus the next day. They were looking for another miracle, maybe
some more bread and fish, but Jesus doesn’t give them another miracle. Instead,
he says “<i>I am</i>
the bread of life.” “<span class="text">Whoever comes
to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Jesus is saying, you think want bread, you think you want a miracle, but what
you are really looking for is me. Jesus feeds people not just for their
survival, but that they might know the Creator through the Son. </span><span class="text"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span class="text"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Here at the
CA, a lot of people first come for the food and community. People hunger and
thirst for food and fellowship, but that alone will not satisfy our desire to
know God and our place in the world. We long for food and community for the
sake of survival, but we also have many other needs that capture our attention.
We might not be longing to see God feed five thousand people. We may be thirsty
for God to show us a career path that will lead us to success and a meaningful
impact on the world. We may be hungry for a sense of belonging in a community where
our voices are recognized and heard. We may be looking for hope in a nation
where power is misused. I think we all have miracles we pray for, ways that we
want God to feed our hunger and thirst for life. When we pray “give us our
daily bread,” it means much more than providing food for us to eat. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span class="text">When we
think of Jesus as the bread of life, it might be tempting to think of Jesus as
spiritual food that fulfills disembodied needs rather than an answer to earthly
problems. But I think it is no coincidence that Jesus says “I am the bread of
life” the day after feeding bread to five thousand people. Jesus feeds people <i>because</i></span><span class="text"> he is the bread of life. Jesus cares for our hungers and thirsts,
but they will never be satisfied. We will always be hungry for more. No matter
how full or satisfying a meal is, we’ll still be hungry again in a matter of
hours. It is not enough to find meaning by satisfying our own needs. We have to
look beyond ourselves, toward the needs of others, and ultimately toward God.
We were created by God and we will only find true fulfillment directly from
God.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span class="text"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Jesus says he is the bread of life because as God’s son, only he
can satisfy our existential need to find ultimate meaning in God. Jesus is
saying that the only way our hungers and thirsts will truly be satisfied is if
we understand our lives to be fulfilled in him. Jesus says that he will receive
everyone his Father sends to him, he will never drive them away, and he will
raise them up on the last day. In Christ our hunger is satisfied because it
doesn’t have the last word. For as long as we live, we will have needs that we
cannot survive without, but Christ calls us beyond our individual needs. Because
Jesus is the bread of life, we can always come to Christ, we will never be
turned away, and our lives will have meaning beyond our own needs. Jesus is “food”
for us because he fulfills our needs, but unlike any other food the bread of
life satisfies our eternal and existential needs. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span class="text"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">This might seem pretty philosophical, but I hope to make clear
that having faith in Jesus as the bread of life changes the way we approach our
other needs. First, it puts our needs in perspective. Our hunger and thirst do
not provide ultimate meaning beyond survival. Second, the bread of life uses
our hunger and thirst to call us beyond our own needs. While hunger itself does
not give our lives meaning, it make us aware of our dependence on God and each
other, pointing us toward dependence on God. This is part of why Jesus feeds
the five thousand, to call attention to what God has done. Jesus feeds people
so that the crowd may see and believe that he is the bread of life. Jesus also compares
himself to the manna that came from heaven to feed the Israelites in the
wilderness. Just as manna sustained the people of Israel when nothing else
could, Jesus, the bread of life, gives our lives meaning beyond our needs and
limits. Our hunger for food shows our dependence on the earth, farmers, and the
environment, each of them calling us beyond self-sufficiency and toward
dependence of God in Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span class="text"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Every
Wednesday night at the CA we share an experience of what it means to receive
Jesus as the bread of life. When Jesus says “I am the bread of life” he calls
us from the meal we just shared to the meal we are about to share. Much like
when Jesus feeds the 5000, we share a meal together. While this meal satisfies
our hunger for food and community, the meal we had anticipates the meal we are
about to have, communion, sometimes called the Eucharist which means “thanksgiving.”
The Eucharist is a celebration of Christ as the bread of life, that Christ’s
life was given for the world and we share in Christ’s life in gratitude. In
gratitude, we give our lives for the world as an extension of Jesus’s work.
This is why the church is sometimes called the body of Christ. Martin Luther
once described eating the Eucharist like a wolf that devoured a sheep, but the
sheep was so powerful that it turned the wolf into a sheep. The bread of life
is food for us that turns us back toward the world that we might feed others. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span class="text"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">As followers of Christ, we meet other’s needs, feeding the hungry
as Christ did. Sometimes we feed the hungry on Wednesday nights, but we also
look beyond our community. We may not feed 5000 people with five loaves and two
fish, but at the CA we serve at places like Broad Street Ministries and UniLU’s
Feast Incarnate. When we feed others, we not only meet immediate needs but
extend Christ’s invitation to receive the bread of life to others as we have
received it from Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
<span class="text"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Jesus said “I am the bread of life.” He is food for us and for
others. He is food that satisfies a hunger for meaning that could only be
satisfied by God. This calls us beyond our own needs into community as the body
of Christ, turning our hungers and needs into symbols of desire for God.</span></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-22568675548992120812016-02-04T13:36:00.002-08:002016-02-04T13:36:56.745-08:00"Trust" by Megan LeCluyse Sermon given on February 3, 2016<br />
Scripture: Luke 5:1-11<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">There’s a chance that some of
you have heard me say this before, but growing up, I could never do a trust
fall. Like where someone stands behind you to catch you, and you lean back,
trusting the will catch you and not let you hit the floor. It didn’t matter if
your hands were 6 inches behind me or halfway to the floor, I couldn’t do it.
It didn’t matter who it was, even when it was my own mother standing behind me,
I didn’t budge. As soon as I tried to lean back, I took a step back, catching
myself, not allowing someone else to help me out. Which is kind of ironic,
because in some ways I am the product of an act of trust that led to many other
acts of trust. My parents’ first real interaction involved trust – they shared
a boss, Lou, with whom my mom was supposed to have a lunch meeting, but she
also had a paper that had to be turned in, and it had to be hand delivered in
those pre-e-mail days. My dad was just finishing up a meeting with Lou, and
when my mom said she needed to get this paper turned in, their boss said,
“Don’t worry, Joe can turn it in for you.” So my mom handed this person who
she’d just met her paper, wondering if it would really get turned in or not,
and if she should contact the professor to check. 8 months later, the paper
writer and deliverer were married. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I think this is one of the
places where our faith and our culture rub against each other, in ways
reflected by the two examples above. My unwillingness to let myself depend upon
another person to catch me reflects so much of what American individualism
seems to praise – pull yourself up by the boot straps, rely on your own hard
work, and believe that asking for help, or admitting you can’t do something,
can be viewed as a sign of weakness. Doing what you need to do to get to the
top is praised. Trust and vulnerability are too often seen as things that could
damage you, not help you. Trust and you could be betrayed, show vulnerability
and you could be exploited. True. But the blind trust of handing your paper to
a stranger reflects what God says would be best for us, to trust one another,
but more so to trust God, and that what God has in store for us is better than
we can even fathom. And trusting God means also accepting that we are not in
control of everything, including our own lives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Now I’ll admit understanding
what it means to trust God, in correlation with what we are still supposed to
do, can be tricky. And even what it means to trust God can seem a little hard
to understand. Too often, God has been portrayed as a vending machine God, pray
for X, and God provides X. Now some say X could be whatever, including a
Porsche, and that if you pray hard enough, God will provide you a Porsche. Now
most would say that’s a bit too far, God doesn’t provide luxury items. But what
if we’re praying for God to heal someone, to make somebody’s cancer go away.
I’ve known really good people, faithful people who had lots of people praying
for them, who have died from illness. I struggle with what I think it means
when people say, “God answers prayer,” or trust that God hears you, and prayer
is a topic that deserves it’s own conversation. Because I do believe that
prayer is important, and it’s meant to be a conversation, and I do believe that
we can trust that God is present with us no matter what happens, that God wants
to be in conversation with us, and that we probably need to spend more time
listening than we do talking, more time thinking maybe we ourselves don’t have
all the answers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In tonight’s Scripture, Jesus
is early in his ministry, but has already developed a crowd that is following
him around. It seems like it’s morning, and Jesus wants to speak to the crowd.
The fishermen have come in from being out at night fishing, and have not had a
good catch. As they stand at the shore cleaning their nets, Jesus borrows a
boat so he can go out to sea a little, creating an amphitheater-like effect.
You have to wonder what these fishermen, who would soon be disciples, were
thinking as they listened to Jesus talk.
They were clearly influenced, and though Simon Peter wanted to rely on
his own knowledge that there were not a lot of fish to be caught this day, they
trusted enough to take their boats back out, and drop their nets down. The
number of fish soon started breaking the net, and they had to use both boats to
get their catch back to shore! And then they trusted this guy enough that they
gave up their career, and went to follow him and be disciples, fishing for
people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Trusting God means living our
lives in a conversation with God, and choosing to trust the voice of God when
we hear it, in whatever form that might take. And then it means acting on what
you have been told. It means depending on God instead of depending on yourself,
relying on God and others to get you through each day. It doesn’t mean sitting
around praying for God to do life for you, Jesus didn’t put the nets down for
Simon Peter, James, and John. But they listened when he told them, against all
conventional and situational wisdom, to put their boat back out to sea. If
fishing, and leaving their work to follow Jesus was their version of the trust
fall, they leaned back, trusting that God would be their support, and through
their actions call us as disciples to do the same. Amen. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-59849531939374469742016-02-04T13:22:00.002-08:002016-02-04T13:22:21.662-08:00"Are we ready to Follow Christ?" by Megan LeCluyseSermon given January 27, 2016<br />
Scripture: Luke 4:14-21<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Let me tell you the story of
a young man, who was given the name Giovanni at his baptism. Giovanni was born
into a wealthy and large family; he had 6 siblings. His mother came from a
well-to-do family herself, and his father sold high-end fabric, specializing in
silk. His father was away in France when Giovanni was born, and when he arrived
home he decided he wanted his new son to be called Francesco, which means the
Frenchman, possibly because of what had happened during his business trip.
Francesco embraced the life of luxury that he had been born into. Had there
been tabloids at the time, his picture would probably have been in them. Then,
around the age of 18 or 19, he decided to join the military. Sent out on a
military expedition, he ended up being captured, and spent a year as a prisoner
of war. Some say it was during this year that Francesco began to change. Yet
when he returned home after his release, there was no real discernable
difference in how he chose to live his life. Before going back off to fight
again, he became seriously ill, and this illness also created a spiritual
crisis for him. After recovering, as he went back off with the military, he had
a strange vision, in which he returned to his hometown, but had lost his taste
for the extravagant life he had led. A year later, as he once again set out, he
had another vision, directing him to return home once again, which this time he
did. He took a pilgrimage to Rome, and there he spent time with some beggars.
He returned home from his pilgrimage, began living a very simple life, and
started to preach on the streets, soon developing a following. Any guesses as
to who this young man was? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> Hopefully some of you have heard of Francis of Assisi, the
founder of the Franciscan order of the Catholic Church. Francis spent this rest
of his life living in very simple conditions, having no more than the bare
minimum of what he needed. He lived in tune with nature, and is often portrayed
with animals. He restored several chapels in the area around where he lived. He
and his followers, which included women, some of whom formed the Order of Poor
Clares, served the poor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Part of the story is that
many of those who knew Francis growing up were not happy with the changes they
saw take place, as he went from a carefree wealthy party boy who did his duty
by going off to fight, to a young man who literally dropped the life he had
known, shedding his fancy garments, and was radically transformed. While we
have no evidence that Jesus was ever a party boy, the scene is today’s reading
is a similar situation. Jesus is returning to his hometown, and with some
pretty bold things to say. People were expecting that when the Messiah came, he
would look like the knight-in-shining-armor, leading the Jewish people to a military
victory over Rome. So it’s one thing to proclaim that the Spirit of the Lord is
upon him, but then he also rubs salt into that by saying that what he will do
is care about the poor and oppressed, the blind and the captives. Let’s just
say that this doesn’t go so well, I mean, who is Joseph’s son to be talking
like this. He says a few more things, and next thing you know, the people are
trying to throw him off a cliff, so he heads out of town. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">As we do our survey of the
Bible, there are a few themes that stand out, and that show up again and again
and again. One is what we looked at last week, that God has claimed you as a
beloved child of your creator. Another is that God isn’t focused on, and didn’t
become human primarily for, the wealthy and privileged. No, God came for those
on the margins of society, for those not welcomed at the fancy dinner parties,
for those who nobody wanted to talk to, for those who were broken, for those
who needed healing. When God made the Israelites the chosen people, God wasn’t
choosing a military powerhouse. No, the Israelites were a small, minority
group, not very powerful, and soon enslaved. The wealthy and the popular are
welcome to join in the party, but the party isn’t about them. That’s the kind
of God we have.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Not many of us will have the
radical transformation that St. Francis had, or return to our hometown only to
be driven to the edge of a cliff. And while I think asking questions about how
we chose to live and what we chose to buy is important, I don’t think we are
all supposed to live in poverty either. But Jesus’ proclamation about why he
came is still something we are supposed to hear and act upon. We have a new
Francis, one who can helps us see both the complexity and the calling of
following Christ today. A year after Francis became Pope, Jim Wallis wrote a
piece for Sojourners on the new Pope. He looks at how Francis is trying to make
it not about him but about the Christ he follows, and poses these questions to
Christians today: “Are we
Christians ready and willing to follow Jesus? Are we ready to love, embrace,
forgive, and show mercy as Jesus would have us do? Are we ready to stand with
and give our lives for the poor and call the global economy not just to
charity, but to justice? Are we willing to take “a preferential option for the
poor,” and apply it to both our personal and public lives?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">These are big questions, and
ones we will spend our lives figuring out, especially as you graduate and begin
careers from one of the most prestigious universities in the country. But the
fact that they are big, daunting questions doesn’t give us an excuse to ignore
them. So are you ready and willing to follow Christ? Amen. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-31192677233403295462016-01-18T12:28:00.001-08:002016-01-18T12:30:51.587-08:00"A Place to Belong" by Scott Sprunger <div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For queer people looking to join Christian communities, it can feel like a game of Minesweeper. You try your best to feel your way around the board. But if you make a mistake and say the wrong thing to the wrong person, it’s game over. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That’s why I was so lucky to find the Queer Christian Fellowship, a constituent group of the Christian Association.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For the first half of my college career, I wanted nothing to do with the Christianity that I had been raised in. But after a while, I found I had spiritual needs that weren’t being met. I wanted to look for a Christian community on campus but I didn’t know where I would be welcomed.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Finally, during a student activities fair, I discovered QCF. Through QCF, I’ve found a community where I know I’m not alone. And more importantly, a community where I know I’m loved for who I am.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I’ve been a member of QCF for over a year now. We do a lot of activities together. We hold Bible studies and group prayers. We eat at restaurants together and attend worship services with each other. But the most important thing I’ve found in QCF and the larger CA community is unconditional support. Whether I’m stressed about something as small as <span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT292_com_zimbra_date" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer;">tonight</span>’s homework or as big as my plans after graduation, I know that I can bring my worries to the CA and find people who support me.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">QCF has inspired me because I’ve seen how each of its members choose to live out their faith. It’s a blessing to be around people who haven’t given up on God, even when they were mistreated by their religious communities. QCF has taught me that God’s love is bigger than hate of those religious bullies who would shut us out. Everyone is invited to God’s party.</span></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-22059760411081718492016-01-18T12:25:00.000-08:002016-01-18T12:25:25.420-08:00"Baptized and Claimed" by Megan LeCluyse<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sermon given January 13, 2016</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Scripture: Matthew 3:13-17</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Back in December, someone I
know wrote a post on Facebook cautioning people against using the term
“adopt-a-family” for the holiday season. As the mother of adopted children, she
explained that adoption isn’t something you do for a brief time, such as buying
gifts for a family who may have less than you, and that hearing these terms can
be confusing for kids who are adopted.
Adoption, she stated, is something that is for life. Adoption is a
relationship, one in which you bind yourself to another being. In adoption you
are claimed. Although she is not a human, this would describe how I feel about
my own puppy, Penny. In adopting her, Annie and I have claimed her as our dog,
and I think by now she knows that, and while she may test our patience, also
wants to be close to us. When we first got her, she hadn’t been wearing a
collar, and didn’t like having one on. But now, she does not like not having her
collar on, which she may or may not be aware has the tags that identify her as
ours. Her collar is like the permanent marker that writes “Andy” on the feet of
the toys in <i>Toy Story</i></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">, and the
toys know to whom they belong because they have been claimed. If they forget,
they only need to look at their foot. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This year, we have been
looking at a fast-paced arc of the Bible, and some of it’s major themes, as we
fill in the blank. One of the major themes we find throughout the Bible is
culminated in tonight’s Scripture, and in each of our own baptisms. God claims
us, just as God has always claimed God’s children. That’s what we see so much
of in the Old Testament. We see that God has claimed God’s people, and loves
them no matter what they do. And trust me, they test God’s patience more than a
little bit, screwing up big time again and again, straying for the goodness
that God offers, chasing shiny idols and running after their own foolish ideas.
But God is faithful, and when the people remember to look at the foot,
metaphorically speaking, or when the remember to look to God in prayer, or
whatever it is that reminds them of their creator, they remember they have been
claimed, and repent, and turn back to God. Did you know that’s literally what
repent means, to turn 180 degrees. They turned from wherever they had strayed
off to, and God is there waiting. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The beginning of Jesus’
public ministry is God announcing that Jesus is claimed by God in a pretty
undeniable fashion. Jesus goes to his cousin, John the Baptist, in order to be
baptized. And for those of you who are from traditions like my own that
practice infant baptism, we aren’t talking about putting a handful of water on
his head, we are talking about dunking Jesus down into the Jordan River. As he
comes out of the water, a dove descends, and a voice says, “this is my son, the
beloved.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We too are claimed by God,
and this is one of the reasons we are baptized, as a sign and seal of this
identity as God’s child. Paul talks about us being adopted as children of God,
and that is something that lasts forever. One of the major themes of the Bible,
one we see from Abraham though the early Christian disciples, is God saying,
Remember Who and Whose You Are. Although it may not literally be written on our
skin, we bear the image of God within ourselves. You are God’s sons and
daughters, beloved Children of the most high God. Amen.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I invite you to write God's name somewhen on yourself, as a reminder that God has claimed you as God's own. </span></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-69363303689412509972015-12-30T08:28:00.001-08:002015-12-30T08:28:46.030-08:00"Home" by Catalina Mullis<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the year comes to an end, I, like many others, begin to reflect on the past year of my life, the things I experienced, and the things that I would like to experience in the upcoming year. </span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My year, like most of my life really, has been filled with extensive travel. I spent January-June studying abroad in Salvador, Brazil. In June, I returned to my home in Los Angeles. In August I left to go back to Philadelphia for school. And now, I find myself once again in Los Angeles. Like a nomad, I've never really stayed in one place; I just keep moving and moving and moving. </span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's why, in the past, when people asked me where "home" is, I didn't really know how to respond because in many ways, I never felt like I had a "home," and just when I started feeling fully comfortable in one place, I'd have to leave again. </span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was discouraging, to say the least, and at times, it left me with an incredible sense of loneliness. </span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, when I arrived at the Christian Association as a freshman in 2013 and read that it was "a home away from home," I wondered if that could be true for me; Could this place really offer me something I never felt that I had?</span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While at Penn, I have left the Christian Association many times; for winter and summer breaks, for study abroad, and soon (sniffle), for life as I prepare to graduate. </span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But I can honestly say that the CA has indeed offered me a "home," not really in a physical sense (don't get me wrong, the CA is one of the coziest places to be and I LOVE it), but more so in a spiritual sense; the CA has shown me that my "home" is always with me, that my "home" is my God, my Savior Jesus, the Lord I didn't know before Penn but whom I came to love throughout my time at Penn. </span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, when I find myself traveling the world without a physical place to call home, the CA has helped me see that all I have to do is be still, and <i>know</i> that Jesus is<i>always </i>with me. </span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He is my "home" forever and ever and ever. </span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hallelujah!!!</span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Merry <span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT238_com_zimbra_date" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer;">Christmas</span> and a Happy New Year, and may you be filled with joy, because the Lord has come! </span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="" style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amen. </span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-83109217938342167812015-12-04T08:53:00.000-08:002015-12-04T08:53:41.936-08:00Swords to Plowshares by Peter Hawisher-Faul<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sermon delivered December 2, 2015</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In many of his sermons, Martin Luther
King Jr. imagined a future for our world he liked to call “the beloved
community.” The beloved community is a future where we have used non-violent
principles to abolish racism and poverty. Reverend Doctor King believed that
all peoples could get past the differences which segregate, divide, and
stratify our societies. He knew it would never be easy, but he thought that we
needed that kind of optimism to strive for real justice in our communities. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The prophecy in Isaiah we read points
Israel to a similar hope. Isaiah gives all kinds of warnings later in the book;
warnings that God will condemn Israel to be conquered by other nations;
warnings that much of Israel will live in exile; warnings that God’s people
must learn to live justly and follow God. In spite of all the hardship, Isaiah
tells the people that one day, God will come and build a house on a mountain,
and all the peoples of all the nations will come to it and seek God’s
instruction. When this happens, God will mediate conflicts so that war will no
longer be necessary. Weapons will be recycled into farming equipment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In their history, the people of Israel
did find glimpses of peace. Many of the people were eventually able to return
from exile and Solomon’s temple, which had been destroyed, was eventually
rebuilt. But history moved on, wars returned, and the prophecy of Isaiah still
urges us to wait for the day that God will abolish war. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As Christians, we see the fulfillment of
the establishment of God’s house in the incarnation of God in Christ and the
sending of the Spirit. Jesus may not have built a house on a mountain, but
Jesus proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God, healed the sick, lived in
non-violence, and taught us to forgive and love one another. Jesus commissioned
his followers to spread his gospel and the early Christians began to understand
themselves as the body of Christ, continuing the work of Christ by the power of
the Holy Spirit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But history moves on, wars return, and
the prophecy of Isaiah still urges me to wait for the day that God will finally
abolish war. This waiting is sometimes called the “already but not yet” of
Christian hope. God has already brought salvation in Christ, but that salvation
is not yet done being worked out in the world. We live between the times. This
waiting is part of the meaning of advent. We decorate with evergreens in winter
because we look for signs of renewal in the world around us. We wait in advent for
the celebration of birth of Christ, but we are also are waiting for the end of
a world sustained by violence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But where does this leave us? It is
tempting to think that it leaves us as the keepers of God’s teachings.
Sometimes Christians like to think of the church as God’s city on a hill, where
we wait expectantly for all nations and people to stream into our sanctuaries
in search of God’s truth. This is the temptation to believe that if all the
unbelievers would just become Christians, then violence would cease in the
world. If we look at Isaiah, however, I don’t think we get off the hook that
easy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Right after the image of all the nations
streaming to Zion, the scripture pleads to its audience “O house of
Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Lord</span>!” This is our task: to walk in the light of God’s
teachings, the teachings that will make war unnecessary and transform the tools
of destruction into tools for growth and life. We are not a city on a hill that
is above reproach and immune to failure. We resort to violence and perpetuate
injustice just as easily as the people of Israel did. Rather than hoping for
non-violent solutions to conflict, we have often looked for the next war to be
the solution. There was a war that was supposed to end all religious wars.
There was a war that was called “the war to end all war.” There was a “Cold”
War with proxy wars to end the arms race. And now we seem to have wars to end
the threat of terror. I don’t know that these wars could have been prevented,
but these wars show even Christians are far from beating their guns into
trowels. Rather than being in the position of Zion as teachers of God’s
instruction, Christians are right alongside all the nations and peoples who
seek God’s instruction at the house of God. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We may have some knowledge through Christ that helps us
to live in non-violent love with each other, but that knowledge is not a
privilege---it’s a responsibility. If we have heard God’s instruction, we are
responsible to obey. We who claim to follow Christ should know better, making
it all the more convicting when we fail. We do not wait sitting down in idleness,
but walking in the light of the Lord and seeking to follow God’s instructions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Because we walk in the light of the Lord, we do not wait
passively but actively, working and praying for a more peaceful world. In the light
of the Lord, we may find hope in the potential for peace. One day, the United
Nations and the international community may reach a point where all of its
conflicts are resolved nonviolently. One day, the work that began in nuclear
disarmament might be completed as total disarmament. As Martin Luther King Jr.
looked for paths of peace and reconciliation, we look for ways to follow God
rather than assume that violence is a necessity. Rev. Dr. King might have been
optimistic, but he was not unrealistic. He knew there would always be conflict
both locally and internationally, but he believed that it could be resolved
non-violently. Isaiah affirms that with God’s help this is possible. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We may not live in a world without war,
but we are still called to imagine such a world and to work for it. We walk in
the light of the Lord, following God’s instruction as we have been taught by
Jesus. This advent you are likely to sing or hear “O Come O Come Emmanuel”
again, whether it be in the supermarket or in your home church. When you hear
or sing it, I challenge you to pray not only with expectation of Christ being
born in Bethlehem, but to pray in hope for this world and its leaders. Pray
that all the nations would hear and heed the instructions of the Lord. Pray
with Mr. Luther King Jr. that one day, maybe even in our lifetime, God would
lead all peoples to resolve conflicts without violence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Sometimes it is difficult to even imagine a world without
violence. Creative and life-giving imagination takes work. It might be
difficult to imagine a world without violence altogether, but should it be so
hard to imagine a world without public shootings or murders in the street? To
help us imagine a more peaceful world, there is a group of Mennonite welders in
Colorado who formed an organization called “rawtools.” In the spirit of our
passage in Isaiah, these welders take guns and weld them into farm tools. They
hope that confiscated illegal guns can be recycled into tools of cultivation,
creating a powerful and embodied symbol. As our responsive activity, I would
like each of you to describe or draw a way that you can imagine the world
without violence.</span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-33750423287966573772015-11-17T20:03:00.004-08:002015-11-20T11:48:52.258-08:00“God’s Call in Music” by Peter Hawisher-Faul<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i>Then Jesus</i></span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i> </i></span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i>called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases,</i></span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i> </i></span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9pt;"><b><i><sup> </sup></i></b></span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i>and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.</i></span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i> </i></span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i>He said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic.</i></span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i> </i></span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i>Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there.</i></span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i> </i></span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i>Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.”</i></span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9pt;"><b><i><sup> </sup></i></b></span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";"><i>They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.</i></span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="text" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";">Last week at the CA we had the pleasure of hosting Adam and Andrea, a young married couple who travel around performing in a folk duo as “Adam and I.” Andrea and Adam shared with us their music as well as some of their story. Their story helped me to see how God’s call can reorient our goals.</span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span class="text" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";">They started writing music in Nashville, a city filled with inspired artists trying to find a way to turn their art into success. Adam and Andrea told us about a time when they had to decide for themselves not to chase after what brought success to others, but they instead decided to pave their own path to success on their own terms. For them, this means that they are willing to play music only in exchange for food and lodging if that’s what it takes to share their music with others.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="text" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";">Their identity as artists is shaped by their faith. They chose not to prioritize worldl<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>y success because their success in the eyes of God is more important to them. They choose to center their lyrics on hope and love because of their experience of Jesus’s love. While they may not be living as pastors preaching on the Bible, I think their lives serve as an example of ministry.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";">Most Christians may only go to church one day a week, but their faith can impact their whole lives. This might just mean sharing a love of neighbors through kindness towards coworkers. It could mean using personal gifts and resources to provide for those who are needy or to encourage a more just society. Sometimes we talk about this as “answering God’s call.” The intersection of faith and personal work can be what separates a <i>career </i></span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";">from <i>vocation. </i></span></span><span class="text"><span style="background: white; font-family: "verdana";">For Andrea and Adam, they understand their vocation to be traveling and sharing their music while starting a family together.</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="text"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As society changes, Christians must always stop and think about how their faith changes the way they go about their personal work. It could be, as it was with Adam and Andrea, that understanding our work as vocation can create a dramatically different vision than what is usually understood as “success.” For students at the CA and for all who experience God’s call on our lives, we have to think about how following Christ changes how we go about our lives.</span></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-58847960922526156292015-11-17T20:02:00.002-08:002015-11-17T20:04:19.032-08:00Halloween and Resurrection by Megan LeCluyse<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">Given on October 28, 2015</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">“Bones, bones, bones.” That was pretty much how I translated verse 7 as I rushed to finish my final exam in Introduction to Biblical Hebrew during my first year of seminary. While not exactly the right translation, we certainly do have a lot of bones in this passage, but we also have so much more than that. In what several commentators referred to as a passage that captures the imagination, we read a vivid depiction of dry bones literally coming back to life. It’s the perfect Halloween passage; complete with skeletons and something that kind of resembles some type of zombie creature! What is going on here?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Well, first, let me place where we are at in our Biblical arc. After spending some time looking at the early history of the people of Israel and the Psalms, we have moved into looking at the prophets. The prophets play many different roles for the people of Israel, serving as both a voice of challenge and speaking hard truths, as well as a voice of comfort, pointing toward a future that is different from the present. Ezekiel did both of these things – first prophesying about the destruction of Jerusalem, and then as an exile, prophesying words of comfort, words of life, like we find here in this passage. We find here one of the major themes of the Bible – as one commentator puts it: “At the core of the Biblical narrative is the story of displacement – of having wandered a long way from home, and longing to return. This is the underlying plot of being cast out of Eden, of being foreigners in Egypt, of the journey to the promised land, of the longing of the exiles in Babylon to return to the land of their [ancestors].”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">It is in Babylon that Ezekiel shares the vision that he has that we read tonight. The Israelites are in exile and wondering what their future will be. The Temple lays in ruins in Jerusalem. Spiritually the people were dry – if you want to get a sense of how in despair they were read Psalm 137 sometime. We too can find ourselves with dry bones, maybe from exhaustion, maybe from overuse, maybe from not taking care of our souls. For both the Israelites and us, “Can these bones live again?” can feel like a very real question. The same can be said when we look around our world today – in part I think due to some of the dark side of our technology and connectedness. Statistics show that we are living in a safer time than any recent time, and yet we believe it’s the opposite. Children are not allowed to play outside on their own, and we fear a random mass shooting. Climate change seems unstoppable. The world’s challenges can quickly make us feel like we are in a valley of bones.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">What happens next is not zombie-ism. It is resurrection. What we have here is one of my absolute favorite Hebrew words – if you’ve heard me talk about it before, it’s still an awesome word and concept, if you haven’t, listen up. The word is “ruah”, and why I love it is that it means spirit, wind, and breath. And it doesn’t mean just one of these at a time, it can be all three intertwined. So when God says “I will cause breath to enter them,” what is really being said is, “I will cause spirit/breath/wind to enter them.” All three are one and the same, a life force, restoring not just breath, but flesh and being to these dry bones. This is also why I love the Hebrew Scriptures – I mean, talk about an image of hope and resurrection. In a valley of grim despair and death, God breathes a life-force that restores the dead to life. This is powerful stuff. For ourselves and for the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Do you ever have times where it seems like all your classes randomly come together, where some topic seems to just keep showing up in everything you read? The prophets talk about justice, and how we can bring hope to the world. One of the great places to find a prophetic voice in our time is Sojourners, a non-partisan organization that challenges us to think first about what it means to be Christian. In last week’s weekly e-mail, Jim Wallis talked about extreme poverty is being reduced, in powerful ways. The efforts of individuals and organizations are working. In 2000, the UN put out its Millennium Development Goals, which had a goal date of 2015, and they have made significant achievements. The number of children who die before age 5 has been cut in half. In the 1980s only half of girls in developing countries completed elementary school; that is now up to 80%. There is still work to be done, but change is really happening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">And you do make a difference. I read a daily Richard Rohr devotional, and right now he is talking about those individuals who have shown him what active non-violent resistance and change looks like. But he took the first day of this week to not talk about an individual, but to acknowledge that behind every great individual, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Dorothy Day being those he has looked at so far this week, our countless individuals also contributing to the work, who make it all actually work. We are those individuals. <span style="background: white; color: #363636;">Aung San Suu Kyi<i>, </i></span><span style="background: white; color: #363636;">the leader of the opposition movement in what was Burma, and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, </span>said, “<em><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-style: normal;">Every thought, every word, and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a contribution to peace. Each and every one of us is capable of making such a contribution. Let us join hands to try to create a peaceful world where we can sleep in security and wake in happiness.”</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #363636;"><i> <o:p></o:p></i></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">When you are in the valley of dry bones, may you let God’s ruah restore life to you. And may you let yourself be God’s instrument to breath ruah into others and into this world. These bones will live again. Amen.</span></span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-10278816811884189072015-11-17T20:01:00.002-08:002015-11-17T20:01:33.221-08:00God's Presence in Job's and our Incomplete Wisdom by Peter Hawisher-Faul Delivered September 30, 2015<br />
Text: Job 38<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Before we get into the scripture for today, I think we need to lay out Job’s perspective at this point in the book. Job was a man who did everything right. He feared God and he turned away from evil. He even offered sacrifices on behalf of his family just in case one of them sinned. He was pious and hard working. He was an accomplished businessman for his time, owning thousands of livestock. If he was a student, he would have worked his hardest to become valedictorian and get involved in an impressive array of extracurricular activities. If this story was set today Job might have cured a disease, been a master of invention, or maybe a political reformer. Whatever your picture of success is, Job had it. Job was a man who got everything you might hope for out of life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">At least, until it was all taken away from him. All in one day, thieves stole his livestock and killed his servants, fire came from the sky and killed servants and livestock the thieves didn’t take, and his house collapsed on his children, killing them all. Job still worshipped God even after that. Then Job’s body started to suffer. He got boils and blisters all over his body. From all appearances, Job went from being God’s favorite to being God’s enemy. Job began to question why this had happened to him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Throughout the book of Job, three of his friends try to find any reason why Job might have angered God. Maybe Job did something wrong. Maybe, he was <i>about</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> to do something wrong. Maybe Job’s family had angered God. Maybe Job unintentionally or accidentally committed a grievous sin he wasn’t even aware of. Job’s friends use their best understanding of God to try to help their friend. From everything they knew about God, Job looked like sinner that had to be guilty of some<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Think of how you might react to a friend who starts to struggle with addiction of some kind. You might empathize with their pain, but you might still want them to recognize that they have a role in their own recovery. That’s what Job’s friends thought of him. They thought, surely there must be some reason Job has been punished. If Job could just find the reason and work harder, they were certain his life would improve.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Job however, defiantly assured them that he had done nothing wrong, and he surely hadn’t done anything that would deserve such a harsh punishment. What could he possibly have done that would justify killing his family, taking his possessions, and striking him with disease? As the book goes on, Job begins to demand a trial, between him and God. If Job is at fault, he wants to know what he has done. If God is at fault, Job wants to know why. Job is no longer certain of anything and he demands answers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Eventually God shows up, which is where the scripture we read begins. God gives the personal audience Job demanded, but it’s not quite the trial Job imagined. God questions Job with questions he can’t possible answer. He asks (in my paraphrase), Where were you when I built the earth? Who laid the boundaries of the oceans? Have you been to their deepest depths? Do you even grasp how <i>big</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> the world is? I bet you couldn’t even imagine the universe. Do you know how water came to this planet? Do you know who birthed the ecosystem? Did you cultivate the planet with rivers as irrigation? Do you have the power to move the stars through space? Could you harness nature as a weapon? Do you have the power to sustain life on this planet?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">What would you answer? What <i>could</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> you answer?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It might be tempting to list some of the impressive accomplishments of modern science, but every scientist knows we still have much to learn. We might be able to find some really good theories on the formation of the planet and the evolution of life, but we weren’t there. It’s not observable and repeatable. We can’t claim to have the knowledge and power of the creator of the universe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">God asks the questions rhetorically because the answers are clear. We are dependent on the tools, resources, and knowledge we have available. We are dependent on what we have been <i>given</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">. It’s part of the human experience. Part of faith is recognizing that we are dependent on God. We can only know so much, and that which we know is by the grace and creative work of God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Using the image of a trial, God cross-examined Job and undercut his credibility as a witness against God, but God did not declare a verdict. God doesn’t judge Job for his anger, only his lack of understanding. Job may be innocent of wrongdoing, but that doesn’t put him on equal footing with God. Because Job does not understand everything that God does, he is not able to cast judgment on God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">But did God recount the awesome power of creation just to put Job in his place? I don’t think Job is the only audience of God’s speech. When God finally declares a verdict, it is cast upon Job’s friends. God declares, “My wrath is kindled against you, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” Job was angry with God and demanded answers from God, but that’s an appropriate response to the suffering he experienced. Job’s friends on the other hand used their theology to try to <i>speak for GOD</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> and find a way to blame Job, the suffering victim.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Job receives the audience from God and it is Job whom God addresses, but Job’s friends must also ask themselves, “Were you there at the creation of the world? Do you claim mastery over life and death?” Job’s friends claimed to know with certainty that fault must lie with Job, but that claim was beyond their understanding. Job was right to seek another answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s easy to criticize Job’s friends, but we come up with all kinds of ways to explain success or failure while claiming knowledge of divine or natural law. Sometimes we use God to blame someone for their own suffering through theology, but sometimes we use some understanding of the natural order. We might explain that some suffer because of the survival of the fittest, and we might say that others suffer because they did not work hard enough to deserve a better future, it’s still the same kind of thing Job’s friends were doing. When we do this we might need someone to ask us, “Where were you at the creation of the world?” Just as Job had insufficient understanding to judge God, we have insufficient understanding to judge others. Human wisdom has its limits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Life isn’t always fair. So where is God in unjust suffering? According to the book of Job, God hears our cries for justice and can even find our anger to be righteous. God doesn’t need defending. Rather than claiming understanding of God’s plans or the natural order we ought to acknowledge our ignorance and the frailty of human wisdom. When faced with the power of our creator, our understanding will always be incomplete, but God hears us and shows up nonetheless. Thanks be to God.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">For our response, I would like you to choose one or both: With Job’s friends in mind, Name one of the ways humans claim to have a complete understanding of God or the world. With Job in mind, Name a tough question you want God to answer for.</span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-20666647255377646052015-11-17T20:00:00.004-08:002015-11-17T20:00:48.991-08:00Listening for the Answer to the Blanks by Megan LeCluyse <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Delivered September 23, 2015</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Text: 1 Samuel 3:1-10</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In the past couple of weeks, we’ve started exploring the topic of filling in the blank by looking at a couple of major ideas. We looked at God as creator and artist, who created us in God’s image and invited us to be a part of creation. Then we looked at who God is, exploring Moses’ encounter with a burning bush from which God tells him to say “I am” sent me, I am who I am. As we work through the Bible and Hebrew Scriptures, we are going to go from the macro – God, to the micro, us, tonight. Similar to Moses, we are going to look at a passage where God comes and calls someone, but now we will focus on the individual.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Tonight’s story is about a young man named Samuel. Samuel had been a child incredibly desired by his mother, Hannah. Hannah had struggled to conceive, and had prayed to God, saying that if she had a child, she would dedicate the baby to the Lord. Which is what she did, she took her son as a toddler to the house of the Lord, where he became the student of Eli, who was priest. Samuel grew up there. So Samuel is sleeping one night, and he’s woken up by hearing his name called in the dark. He runs to Eli, thinking that’s who called him. Eli, probably wondering why he has now also been woken up, sends the boy back to sleep. This keeps happening, and on the third time, Eli understands that it’s actually God speaking to the boy, and instructs him what to say when it happens again. When God next calls Samuel’s name, Samuel responds, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">When we look at the blanks of what we are supposed to do with our lives, in both the big and the small sense, we find ourselves confronted with the reality that sometimes we are not the ones who will provide the answer, even though these blanks intimately impact our reality. As Christians, we believe that God gives us vocations, ways to use our lives that see added meaning to what we do. Instead of talking about your profession as a job, we’ll use the term vocation, but we also use it to encompass who you are in all aspects of your life. When is the last time you’ve sat, and waited for the voice of the Lord, and said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening?” as you figure out what career to pursue, or what to do with your weekend?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Now there is another important thing to note here – Samuel doesn’t understand what is happening at first. He only understands through the wisdom of Eli. When it comes to listening for God’s call, we also need to seek the advice of others, to ask for wisdom from those we trust, who may be further down the path of faith than ourselves. This external affirmation can also act as a “check” of sorts, helping us to more fully know and believe we are really hearing the call of God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I’m now going to invite you to spend the next 10 minutes in silence. It may feel like a long time, and your mind may want to wander. That is why there are pens and index cards, if something comes up in your mid, write it down and then let it go. Try to posture yourself for listening, saying “Speak, O Lord, for your servant is listening.” Try to be open, and listen. Maybe God has something, big or small, to say to you tonight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-24735210521494523532015-11-17T19:59:00.003-08:002015-11-17T19:59:45.122-08:00"Backpacks and God's Love" by Kathryn Dewitt<div>
There's a certain symphony to entering to the Christian Association that always makes me smile. The way the keys jangle or doorbell rings. The way the door creaks open. The way the CA steps creak as i make my way up the stairs to the Kitchen. But i don't notice the symphony today.</div>
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I'm here with one thing in mind, all the work that I haven't done yet for the week--the projects, presentations, readings, emails. These worries of the world weigh heavy in the form of my backpack. I don't go anywhere without my back pack, which has accompanied me since 3rd grade. Although it is no longer decorated with stuffed animal key chains, my back pack is the one thing that I know will hold all the things that I need throughout the day in classes, activities, and work. Notebooks? Check. Pens and pencils? Check. Charger? Check. Snacks? Check. Everything is where it should be, and correctly in order. No matter what, I can rely on my backpack because I packed it each morning with precision.</div>
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But my relying on my backpack is haphazard, because sometimes I forget to bring the assignment I labored hours for or the banner that everyone was counting on me to bring. Relying on backpack is relying on myself and forgetting the one who guides my steps. Yes, I have been given this backpack to carry the things. But God has given me something much greater that I can rely upon: God's Love. God's Love doesn't falter when I forget my notebook. God's Love is there when a zipper jams and I can't reach my PennCard.</div>
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And God's Love is letting others help me carry my backpack because I can't do it alone. God's Love remains when I ask to borrow a pen because I forgot one. God's Love envelopes me when I ask for help for the different mental health initiatives I care about so passionately. I cannot rely on myself alone (or my backpack for that matter) because I will fail. But God's Love never fails, and the CA is a community based on God's Love.</div>
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The CA's new seminarian, Peter, and Megan, the campus minister, recently mentioned that Princeton Theological Seminary has a tradition where students leave their backpacks outside the chapel. (Although I don't know if Philly is the place to experiment with leaving my backpack outside) this week, this month, this semester, I will leave the worries of my backpack outside of the CA. That way I can enjoy the symphony of entering the CA and take each moment to rely more on God's Love. </div>
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Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-31259345494644255062015-11-17T19:59:00.000-08:002015-11-17T19:59:00.629-08:00"God is ______" by Megan LeCluyse<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Delivered on </span><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">September 16, 2015.</span></div>
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Text: Exodus 3:1-15<br />
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(Light match) You’ve probably heard the saying that if you play with fire, you’re going to get burned. Now there are a couple different meanings of burned, and this phrase can imply either. One is being burned by other people – someone who you thought you could trust stabs you in the back. The second is much more literal – if I let this match burn long enough, it could burn the skin of my fingers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When it comes to our faith and being disciples, it is the second kind of burning, the really literal kind, that I am talking about, the kind that implies a kind of danger, but a danger that many of us are drawn towards. Following God is not supposed to be safe – I think it supposed to be a little bit like playing with fire. Fire is beautiful, it is exciting, it is mesmerizing. These are all things faith is meant to be. But fire is also dangerous, and the reality is, our faith can lead us to some unexpected, and sometimes unpopular or counter-cultural, places. When Moses encounters this burning bush, he is given some pretty challenging instructions!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But first, who is this God who Moses encounters, and why is this God so dangerous? Our passage tells us this is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, of Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel. In our overview of the Bible we are going to have to go through the Old Testament fairly quickly, but as we explore the identity of God, we can look at a few key points from the book of Genesis. The God of Abraham asked Abraham to leave his homeland and his former gods. There is a rabbinic story about this that depicts a young Abraham, maybe your age, going and smashing with some type of hammer the idols of his father, as he gave them up to worship Yahweh. That was not a safe or easy ask. The God of Sarah allowed her to conceive a child when she was about 90 years old. The God of Jacob came down and spent an entire night wrestling with Jacob, and when at dawn Jacob was still fighting, struck Jacob on the hip socket and gave him a limp. I’m not sure entirely what we are supposed to do with that, but clearly, following God has it’s dangers!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And so we get to Moses, a baby born and not meant to survive, put into a basket covered with pitch and floated down the river, his mother seeing this as his only chance for survival. Raised by Pharaoh’s daughter, he wound up killing an Egyptian who he saw beating a Hebrew slave. He fled the country, going to Median, where he married Mariam, the daughter of Jethro, and worked as a shepherd of Jethro’s flocks. Jethro is again an example of how this God works in some pretty unexpected ways, because Jethro plays several critical roles in the Moses story, and Jethro was not an Israelite. So Moses is out tending the flocks, when he sees a bush on fire, but not being consumed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Obviously, this catches Moses’ attention. God speaks to Moses through a burning bush, and this will change Moses’ life, in exciting and incredibly dangerous ways. It will shape the entirety of his life. God is aware of the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt, and God has chosen Moses to go and free them. Ok, so let’s pause there for a moment, because that’s not like saying, “hey, can you run to the store and get me some milk?” This is a huge ask! First, we find out in the next chapter, Moses has a speech impediment, probably a stutter. Moses, who is spending his time pretty much alone, maybe with another shepherd or two in the hills, who isn’t confident in his ability to speak, is being asked to go to Pharaoh. Moses will make a bigger deal of this point in Chapter 4, so God tells him Aaron will do the speaking. And what is the demand? To set the Israelites free. To change the entire economy of the country, to challenge a practice that has been going on for generations, and that the Egyptians see as the norm. Is it an ask about pursuing justice. Yes, it is. But one that would be terrifying to be the guy whose supposed to ask for it!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So Moses asks who should I say sent me? Give me something here God, something about your power, something intimidating. And what’s the response? “I am who I am,” sometimes translated “I will be what I will be” or “I am that I am.” When we ask who God is, the response is “I am.” How are we supposed to understand who God is then? In part, by looking to the past, and seeing who God has been. But I also think this statement is so broad because we aren’t supposed to have a full grasp on who God is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I am. I am not captive to your limited understandings, to your notions of who I am supposed to be, not going to fit in the God-box that you want me to fit into, I am not created in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your </i>image. I am not a God who wants blood sacrifice, I want you and your life. I am forgiveness and mercy. I am love, I am hope, I am liberation, I am joy, I am peace. I am the spirit that hovered over the waters of the deep, the spirit that gives you life and breath. I am the one whose image<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> you</i> are created in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</i>,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">the Susan asks Mr. Beaver who Aslan is. <span style="color: #181818;">“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good.”<br /><o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I am. I am the God who appears in a burning bush, calling you on an exciting and dangerous journey, and promising to be present with you every step of the way. Amen. </span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-1497701039505036312015-11-17T19:58:00.001-08:002015-11-17T19:58:13.397-08:00"In the beginning, God created" by Megan LeCluyse <div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Pretend you’re in an art museum. Only, it’s your art museum, so maybe it’s in your house, and you get to pick exactly what works of art are in it , even if they are already in museums. Maybe you even get to define the word “art” when it comes to your museum. What would you have in your museum? Maybe you would have some classics – I know in my art museum I’d like to have a Da Vinci or Michelangelo, and I’d also like to have a Caravaggio, who works often have a source of light that isn’t in the painting. I’d want to have a Vermeer, whose brushstrokes were so refined that they are virtually impossible to detect. My favorites would be the Impressionists – the vibrant colors of the thick globs of paint giving the Van Gogh’s their texture, a more refined Renoir or Degas, and I would have lots of Monet’s works – they would be in places I could sit with a cup of tea and a book. I’d probably go a little more recent too – Picasso and Dali would be great conversation starters. I’d also find some female painters along the way to highlight their work. I’m not big into Modern Art, but maybe some of you are – and would include some more recent works, a Warhol or Jackson Pollock. Maybe some of you would go way back, and have pieces from antiquity, artifacts from ancient cultures. Maybe some of you would venture into the current age of art, and have photography, or maybe even a Lego sculpture. Do you have some of the pieces that would be in your museum in mind?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“In the beginning, when God created.” God is an artist, and we see the works of art all around us, including each of ourselves. The creation poem we find in Genesis 1 is beautiful, itself a form of art one might say. I say this because it wasn’t written as a historical document, but as a poem, which meter and repetition, with symmetry. All of which we find in creation. All of which are explored in art. When we understand creation as God’s creative work of art, it doesn’t matter if it took place in 7 days or several billion years. Either way, God’s creative works range from awe-inspiring to “what??” I am grateful to have had many opportunities to encounter God’s creation, and one highlights both the majestic and the extra creative. I was on the Masaii Mara, or Serengeti, and got to look at the night sky. Very close to the equator and with no light pollution, the sky exploded with stars, and from a different vantage point than I’d ever seen them. We stood ducked behind a building – and started to worry about being bitten by bats, listening to the herds of wildebeests out on the plains, an ugly and unintelligent creature. I get the role both these animals play – but they are both more than kind of weird! God is a very creative artist is all I can say.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And God has invited us to be a part of the ongoing work of creation. When God created humankind, it was unique – instead of being just “good,” humanity is “very good.” God created you, and called you very good. And then God gave us a role, to be over everything else, not to dominate, but to steward. Then God rested, but that doesn’t mean creation is done, and in the creativity of humankind we see that indeed it is not. God filled in the big blank with creation, including you. You are invited to be a part of the ongoing work of creation. So now we get to look at how we are doing that. As we respond, I invite you to fill in two different blanks as you reflect on your life and faith: God created ________ and I am creating _________. Part of our journey is continuing to find the ways we fill in the blanks. Amen.</span></div>
Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221916732477668812.post-57941593889298641262015-11-17T19:55:00.002-08:002015-11-17T19:55:52.652-08:00Fill in the Blank by Megan LeCluyse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Christian Association’s theme for the year is “Fill in the Blank.” Over the coming year, there are a lot of different ways we are going to explore this concept. In worship we will be working through an overview of the Bible. On Monday nights, we’ll have a small group series where we can explore specific topics and “blanks” in greater depth and with more conversation. As we join with Penn’s <i>Year of Discovery</i>, exploring how we fill in the blank will allow us to go on our own journeys of discovery, discovering new things about God and the Bible, about our faith, about each other, and about ourselves. We’ll look at some of the blanks that are blanks because they are things we don’t often talk about. Some of these will be Bible passages that we don’t often look at, while others may be topics that we seem to avoid talking about in church. Some will be blanks that we don’t talk about in society in general, or maybe things that are taboo to talk about here at Penn. We will also look at the blanks that the Bible leaves for us to fill in, and how we can go about the process of filling those spaces.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We’ll look at the blanks in our own lives, and what some of those blanks might be. Most people are probably able to fill out forms with their basic info relatively quickly, name, age, address, etc. - they’ve got those blanks down. But what about when the blanks follow questions that probe a little deeper. How do we open ourselves up to examining those lines, and figuring out what we would write on them? How do you decide which voices in your life will be the ones that help you to define yourself and how you not only want the world to see you, but who you believe you truly are. How do we get to know other people in a way we get beyond the surface level identities?<o:p></o:p></div>
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And how do we know when a blank line really isn’t that important? Or is important, but is not as life defining as we think it might be. There are places in Scripture where Biblical scholars and theologians have spent tons of time and effort trying to figure out how best to translate something to be most accurate compared to the best of the oldest manuscripts we have to compare them with. I remember learning in Hebrew about a place where some manuscripts have a vav, the Hebrew character used for “the” or “and,” and some don’t, and we don’t know whether or not it was added in or left out by accident. Will the answer actually have a huge impact on our faith – highly unlikely. But how often do we obsess like that over the wrong blanks, the ones that we want to get filled in even though we may not be able to, and that won’t have all that big of impact even if we were able to. We do this both with our faith and with our lives. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So we’ll look at blanks that are very important, blanks that define our faith and our own identities. We’ll look at what might be some of the blanks that we need to not hold as tightly too, that we need to let fall into their proper place. We may even explore some blanks that are not meant to be filled in. Filling in the blanks of our lives is part of the exciting work we get to do, and we need community in which to do so. Whether you are a Penn student who can come by the CA, or an alum or friend of the CA who will be connected to us via our blog and listserv, I hope you’ll join us on this adventure! </div>
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Christian Associationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06356791318762529513noreply@blogger.com0