How it's supposed to go

Daily Devotion - April 9

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays) while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

Maundy Thursday

The English word "Maundy" comes from the Latin 'mandatum,' which means "commandment." As recorded in John's gospel, on his last night before his betrayal and arrest, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and then gave them a new commandment to love one another as he had loved them (John 13:34). This is why services on this night generally include the washing of feet or other acts of physical care as an integral part of the celebration.

Today Jesus gathers with his disciples for the Passover meal in the upper room. It's tense. Lazarus is a week out of the tomb. The palm parade is four days past and the fallout is real - the authorities are after Jesus.  Gathered in that room, their nerves must have been positively vibrating with anticipation and dread.

This meal they've come to share remembers God delivering the people out of slavery.  But instead of claiming his power and pronouncing his intention to do the same, this One they expect to overturn the order and lead the people to freedom stands from the table and strips down to his skivvies, ties a towel around himself, gets on his hands and knees like a slave, and washes the filth off their feet.

"This is not how this is supposed to go!" Peter protests.  

But Jesus insists it is. 

Then he tells them to do the same for each other.

Right now the world feels turned upside down. We are all filled with anticipation and dread. Our nerves are frayed.  Perhaps we're feeling annoyed at our increased dependence on others, eager to get back to our independent, self-sufficient kind of life. We're connected but cut off; isolated and helpless, unsure what any of this will come to mean. We'd like to be delivered from this ASAP.

Every fiber of us may be saying, "This is not how it's supposed to go!"  

But Jesus insists it is.

And now we are having our feet washed in ways we can't have anticipated.  And we are also washing each other's feet.  Kind words.  Forwarded messages of inspiration.  Holding those in our own homes when the tears come. Gifts, letters and phone calls. Offers to help. Checking in. Cheering on. Grieving together, apart. Laughing together, apart.  All over the world and in our own neighborhoods and homes, we are tenderly lifting the parts of one another that are bruised and tired and caring for each other.

We are ministers; this is ministry.

This is how it's supposed to go.

We have all our powerful, compelling idea of how our freedom ought to look, and then we have reality in front of us.  And we have a God who comes not to fulfill our ideas, but to share our reality.  Right inside this thing. Right alongside us.  Not judging, critiquing and instructing us how we should be acting or thinking, but getting down and washing the dirt and ache off of our feet. 

And telling us to do likewise.

God brings a different freedom than we think we should have.  

We are not made free from each other, but free for each other.

We are ministers; this is ministry.

This is how it's supposed to go.

How are your feet being washed this week?

Whose feet are you washing?

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps, tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might pause, reflect, and pray in this way, and so join our hearts:

May I receive the blessings you gave me this day
through the hands and words and acts of others,
blessings like...

May I receive the blessings you gave me this day
in the moments you used me to bless others,
moments like...

Thank you for the freedom I discover in giving.
Thank you for the freedom I embrace when I receive.
Thank you that in all things, and no matter what, I
belong to you, God, and to all others.
Amen.

Don't be afraid

Luke 1:26-38

Mary

This is the famous scene, the angel’s pronouncement, which the church has called, “The Annunciation.” 

Denise Levertov’s poem, Annunciation, asks,

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?

        Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.

More often
those moments,
      when roads of light and storm
      open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

The suggestion that we all have moments of divine invitation to be part of something more feels like a stretch sometimes. In a week where I have spent more time than I care to admit being, as my kids call me, a “Karen,” (which apparently means someone who always asks to speak to a manager), in my case, trying to sort out delivery issues for a bed that has twice been in a truck on its way to my house but still has not arrived, between fighting a head cold, scraping my windshield and shoveling my driveway, juggling work, and parenting, and making dinner, and Christmas shopping, and ending most evenings watching the news in open-mouthed horror, this week it feels a bit farfetched for me to imagine being invited by the divine into something extraordinary.  

But imagine this is true. Imagine that we are. (Because it is. We are). 

Imagine for a moment how we might greet these annunciations.

Lots of people, this poem suggests, do great and valuable things in life without any awareness of or appreciation for it. They go through life unaffected, oblivious to the conspiracy of redemption unfolding around, and indeed even sometimes through, their own lives.

Others come to their annunciation moments with definite awareness, and so also fear and trembling at the terrible toll that risking will likely take on their equilibrium.  They back slowly away from the moment of change and choice, turn away and sit back down in their perpetual risklessness, preferring the delusion of safety, the illusion of inertia, to reckless trust.  And those people don’t get to be part of the marvelous things beckoning them to life.

But Mary.  She was open and ready when God’s Yes came. 

God said, I am about to do the unfathomable.  You, Mary, will be in this with me. And she met the moment with her heart open. She saw it for what it was, and she heard the Angel Gabriel when he told her, “Do not be afraid.” 

What is it to say Yes to God’s yes? 

To meet your annunciations when they come? 

To allow yourself to take them in - to be taken in - with bewilderment, curiosity, willingness, and courage?

How can this be? Mary asks, explaining to her celestial visitor the biological impossibility of the thing he is announcing.  It is impossible.

But impossibility is how God always chooses to come. 

So the angel tells her about Elizabeth. 

He could have told her about any of the barren wombs or stuttering spokespeople, dead seas or impenetrable walls, invincible armies or lions’ dens, enormous giants, weak-minded monarchs, messed up protagonists, or hopeless, impossible situations through which God had been bringing salvation and hope to the world since the world began. But he doesn’t look back for his stories.  Instead, he says, Right now, even while we are speaking, God is doing this impossible thing. 

And then the angel tells her about old Elizabeth, whose prayers had dried up, who is even now already bearing this great in-breaking of salvation.  

Nothing is impossible for God, Gabriel answers Mary.

And Mary says Yes. She says Yes to becoming the Mother of God.

There’s a saying in NVC – non-violent communication, that we’ve studied a bit around here – that every No is a Yes to something else. When someone tells you No, they are saying yes to another thing – whether they are needing space, or autonomy, or agency or have made other plans with someone else - there is always a Yes somewhere inside the No.  

I want to suggest the opposite is true as well, for us finite creatures.  There is always a No inside our Yeses. When we say Yes to something, we are saying No to other things – every other option, in fact.  Yes to chicken means we’re not having chili. Yes to marrying this person means No more living life completely on my own terms.  

When we say Yes, especially to God, we are called to renounce something. We must let something go. That’s how love works.  Something we’ve thought our life would be or already was, some illusions about control and invincibility, we must sacrifice something of ourselves, something must die. 

Most often what dies was not really giving us life to begin with, we only thought it was. But sometimes we are called to let go of good things. Things that are giving us a good life, making us happy and stable.  

Mary was engaged to a kind and decent man, about to start her life. A good life. A happy, ordinary, stable life. And when she says Yes to God, all that disappears. Like Elizabeth whose retirement will be invaded by a fiery prophet child, like Hannah long before them, who gave up her own child to God and Samuel became the prophet who lead God’s people, Mary is being pulled into God’s redemption of the world, and it means she is no longer going to be who she was. The Annunciation could very well be called The Renunciation. Gone is the life she had embraced for herself, the path so neatly laid out before her, she renounces it here.  

Jan Richardson’s poem, Gabriel’s Annunciation, begins with these words, 
For a moment,
I hesitated,
on the threshold,
For the space
of a breath
I paused
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step,
would cleave her life,
that this day,
would slice her story
in two
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come

How vulnerable it is to let go of all that gave your life meaning and purpose and order and jump into the unknown like this!  But she does, she lets all of it go in order to participate with God in something bigger. 

Hannah went in eyes wide open and offered her renunciation before even the gift arrived.  But Mary, perhaps she didn’t fully grasp all that she was letting go of, the predictable and most likely mostly pleasant life she would never live from then on out.  

She traded it away without knowing, because how can we know what our Yeses will mean until we’ve already been changed by them?  What she traded it for was a life fully alive, she traded it to see God, to be disciple of Jesus.  Mary and his brothers were there among the disciples and followers of Christ, listening to him tell about God’s salvation, watching people be healed, seeing the power of God at work in the world.  Mary watched her child die a terrible death, and she spoke to the angels sitting aside an empty tomb. She was in the room when the Holy Spirit came, and she was a leader in the early church.

Don’t be afraid, the angel says. Not because suddenly everything will be steady and safe. It’s decidedly not safe, and it’s most certainly not steady. It’s absolutely risky and will for sure change everything.  Don’t be afraid because the one who calls you is God.  You are held in God’s love, joined in God’s purposes. 

But Mary is not the only one vulnerable here.  Imagine also the vulnerability of God, not only to come into the human experience, weak and helpless, at the mercy and in the hands of those you’ve created, preparing to live, and die as they do.  But God also takes on the vulnerability inherent in love, the possibility of rejection. Mary could have said No. 

We’re at something of a deficit here, when it comes to our own annunciations. Before we even get to the question of renunciation and trust, we must first accept that God is real, that God is doing something greater, and that God might interrupt our lives and call us into it.

So perhaps the word for you this week is simply this, What would it be to go through your week assuming God is alive and active in the world?  

What if you lived this week like this is true?  

And certainly, this is enough for any of us, because most of us, most of the time, either deny, ignore, or forget that God is real. What if this week you sought to consciously remember?

But let’s go one step farther, if you’re willing, and say, not only is God alive and active in the world, God is inviting you – specifically you – to participate in God’s schemes.  You don’t know when or how the invitation will come, but your annunciation, that is, your belovedness and chosenness in God for a purpose, is as real for you as it was for Mary.  Greetings favored one; the Lord is with you!

You won’t be called to carry the actual Christ-child; that role has been taken. But to live a God-bearing life? That is a role you share with Mary.  There will be specific callings just for you within that role.  People who come across your path, a phone call, a question, an opportunity you will recognize, a vulnerability you’re invited to share.  

More than Mary, even, we are drawn into the very life of Christ – we are invited to life in Christ, a life, C.S. Lewis reminds us, that is “begotten, not made, that has always existed and always will exist.”  We will be drawn into life that doesn't end, life inside the love and connection between Jesus and the Father; and life with the Holy Spirit interfering and leading.  The God-bearing life is Jesus’ life lived through ours, our hands and feet and voice, our words and actions.

Will your moments be lived be grudgingly or unaware? Will you recognize the cost and back away from the invitation? Or will you open your heart and life and join in what God is wanting to do through you?  

Most likely, and most often, it will be to see another person in their humanity and minister to them, or to receive ministry from another person. This is who God is and how God comes, as a minister, and as one in need of ministry, and so it is how we experience God in our lives as well. We bear each other’s burdens and share each others joys, knowing that when we do so, we are joining in what God is already doing – we are where God is.

Immediately after the Angel’s annunciation to Mary, she goes to Elizabeth. When Mary hears that Elizabeth too is pregnant with an impossibility, she makes a beeline for the one person who will understand and can share this with her. And when Elizabeth sees Mary, little fetus John the Prophet in her womb does joyful summersaults, and Elizabeth just knows, without Mary saying a thing, what it means. So Elizabeth prophesies, saying, “Who am I that the Mother of God should come to me?” 

 And then Mary, having been seen, having had this whole crazy thing confirmed right to her face, breaks out in a prophesy of her own, that has come to be known as the Magnificat,which we sang earlier, about what God is doing to set the world right. 

It is not until they share this mystery with each other that they can live into it fully themselves, and I think that’s what it means to be Church.  

We do not say Yes to God alone – we are given each other, given to each other, and there we find God – in words and acts of healing and hope that pull us out of ourselves and the minutia of our self-absorbed worlds, or out of our fear about the general state of things, and into action, along with the God who is already always acting.

So, perhaps your call this week is to imagine God is alive and active. 

Or perhaps it is to anticipate annunciation and say Yes when it comes.  Or maybe, it is to step into your own renunciations and let go of what keeps you from Yes.  In any case, you are held in God’s love, joined in God’s purposes. 

Just a few months after the annunciation, when she delivers this baby and brings God into the world as a tiny, needy, human child – before priests from a far off land come to meet the baby, before she and Joseph flee to Egypt with the baby, before the potty-training, and the talkback, and the teen years – that night, lying in the hay with Joseph by her side, just after placing the sleeping child into the manger, the stable, already crowded with animals, is suddenly invaded by a group of shepherds from a nearby hillside. 

They tell Mary about their own annunciation.  They tell her about a sky full of music and light, about the Angel’s pronouncement that God has come into the human story; God’s Yes to the world is embodied, “Do not be afraid!” the angel had told them, “This is good news of great joy for all people!” 

They tell her this when they’ve said Yes to God themselves, and set out to find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And then, when they share their story and are received, together they all bear this mystery, they are Church.

And Mary, we are told, treasures their words, and ponders them in her heart.  Their words become for her another annunciation, just like Elizabeth’s before them.  Mary continues, her whole life long, to open her heart to God’s pronouncements of love and invitations to involvement.  And the rest of her life she keeps agreeing to be in this with God.  And for the rest of her life, she is.

The God who does impossible things is even now, right this moment, doing impossible things in the world.  This God wants to do impossible things through you.  It’s absolutely risky and will for sure change everything. You will be vulnerable, and you will have to let things go that you thought you needed.  

But, Don’t be afraid, because the one who calls you is God. And what you’re saying Yes to is to see God, to be disciple of Jesus, to live a life fully alive. And this mystery is lived by sharing it, so you wont be asked to do it alone. 

Amen.

This is part of a series, journeying with some of our Biblical ancestors: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John, Samuel, David*, The Samaritan Woman, 

(*This is an older message about David, in this series, we had a wonderful performance of 'David" by Theater for the Thirsty)

Time to Celebrate: Vulnerability & Ministry

(aka, LNPC State of the Union)

Mark 1:29-39

Nine years ago on Pentecost Sunday, we pulled out a big piece of chart paper in worship, and we asked ourselves a question together, that it was a new one for us.  The question led to a kind of a counting exercise.  

In a world of measuring and comparing, churches have felt compelled to calculate how successful they are by what some call, “butts and bucks,” that is, they count butts in the pews and bucks in the bank.  If their attendance is climbing and their financials look good, then they must be doing well. 

But Church isn’t a business we are building and it isn’t somewhere we go. It’s who we are. So on that day nine years ago we asked ourselves a different question, How are we being church?  and we started counting people.

We began by counting the obvious – butts in the pews.  Then we thought of some of the groups that used our space and counted them. We branched out and counted the Meals on Wheels volunteers and the people they delivered food to.  We counted the place we volunteered to serve meals and the people we serve them to.  Then we hit a kind of lull, and there was a pause.

And then someone said, “Dee has keys to all her neighbor’s houses, she lets their dogs out and maintenance people in.” Aaah. So we counted Dee, and her neighbors, and the kids she watched over on the bus stop corner every morning, and then the floodgates opened. Meals for a neighbor who was sick with cancer. Rides to treatment.  Tea with a lonely neighbor. A congregation on the other side of the country using a prayer practice we’d developed, we were on a roll.  It was a lucky month to do this in, because General Assembly was in town with a couple thousand Presbyterians in attendance, and our PW had sewn waterfall banners to be hung around a labyrinth there, and our worship team had set up a prayer chapel for the delegates to find respite in the midst of their work.  So when all was said and done, we had, in one month, well over three thousand people that we counted as “being church.”

It was an eye-opening, life-changing moment for our congregation, because it helped us to see that God was doing something here, right now, and we were already participating.

Comparing ourselves to bigger, more “successful” churches with extensive children’s programs and way more butts and bucks, or looking back longingly at the days we more closely resembled those churches, was missing where Jesus was: Here. Now. Instead, we suddenly discovered the gratitude, energy and calling of paying attention to who we already are, where God is already ministering in and through us, and joining in on that ministry on purpose.

It’s nine years later, and I want to bring you back to that focus today.

You all are followers of Jesus, trusters of God, participants in Love. You know that about yourselves, we remind each other of that, we look for ways to join in. That is Church. You are Church. It’s who you are.  Today is for celebrating that.

In our scripture today, Jesus had recently called the disciples to follow him.  The time is right now, he says, the kingdom of God is here, wrap your mind around this and trust in it. Join me and be part of it with me.

But if you were one the disciples that had walked away from your father and fishing business and thought you were going to go adventuring far away, you would be mistaken. Because almost the very next stop on this journey was back home to Peter’s house. 

His mother-in-law was very sick. As soon as Jesus got there they told him about her and he went and took her by the hand and she stood up and was healed.

Where Jesus goes, healing happens. And he begins in our ordinary lives and our own vulnerability. It starts with sharing our own needs and worries and joys, with seeing people and being willing to be seen.

And then the whole town arrives on the doorstep. With Jesus, the sick and demon-possessed are not hidden away somewhere else.  When Jesus shows up, the most vulnerable are brought out of hiding to the center of the community.

And the vulnerable become ministers.  When Peter’s mother in law was healed she got up from bed and reached out to serve them. They didn’t ask her to, she just did it; because in the Kingdom of God we all have a part to play in both receiving and in giving.

You, Lake Nokomis, disciples of Jesus, welcome the vulnerable to the center of the community, and you invite everyone to both receive and give. 

The disciples are about to discover, when Jesus hustles them right out of town and onto the next place, that they are not about to build a career right here at home dispensing Christ’s ministry to others, just like pastors are not actually the main ministers, and church buildings are not the main place ministry happens.  The disciples are called to invite and empower others to do it, because everyone is a minister, and our whole lives are for ministry. We are all meant to receive and to give ministry.

This kind of receiving and giving, this life of ministry, requires courage and vulnerability, which always go hand in hand.  Brene Brown found in her research with over 2,000 people, that no experience of courage ever comes without vulnerability.  

One of the most powerful moments of courage and vulnerability I have ever witnessed happened this year through you.  Marty had been ordained the year before to a Ministry of Dying – and in his vulnerability became a minister to the rest of us.

The moment I am thinking of happened at his Goodbye Service in March.  Just before the service began, Marty told me to please announce that he had been having stomach troubles during the day, and he may need to get up and go to the bathroom during the service, so that if that happened people could just sit tight and pause the service until he returned.

The courageous and deeply vulnerable act of admitting this and not hiding his weakness, and then asking me to tell everyone, and then when I did, feeling the whole room immediately move into that space on the other side of courage where things that scare us become no big deal, was astounding to me.

And then, we all got vulnerable and brave together.  We said outloud that Marty was dying, and it felt so awful and helpless, all of us crying through “what a wonderful world,” that I thought I might not make it, to be honest. 

We tell ourselves that being vulnerable can kill us.  But we stuck it out.  And when the song ended, we were all still sitting there, perfectly alive, with our wadded-up tissues in our hands. We had made it to that space on the other side of courage, and there fearlessness, humor, joy, and even peace, filled us and held us as we shared stories of Marty’s life.

Through courage and vulnerability, we entered into the Kingdom of God, where love is the biggest and truest thing, and all of the demons and ailments that keep us from real life are rendered powerless.  And his friends came there with us! Like the whole village gathered in the doorway that night at Peter’s house to watch what Jesus can do. 

In this community the vulnerable are ministers. 

Children are ministers.  Shy people are ministers.  Artists are ministers, and people with dementia are ministers. In this community the grieving are ministers and the rejoicing are ministers, those who feel settled and sure, and those in upheaval and transition are ministers.  Those of us with extra time on our hands, and those without a second to spare are all ministers.  Those in the prime of their lives and those who know their deaths are near are ministers.  Because we are all vulnerable, and we can be brave together, to bear each other’s burdens and share each other’s joys, and go out from here into our lives to do the same in the world. That is ministry. And we are all ministers. 

On the disciples’ first big gig, things went late into the night, with everyone gathered around watching Jesus do his thing.  But when the disciples woke up the next morning, Jesus was gone.  They hunted for him everywhere – is he in the bathroom? Did he go for a coffee?

No - went away to rest and pray alone.

This is the inhale to ministry’s exhale.  And we are learning it too – we call it Sabbath.  When we practice stepping away to rest and refill, to reconnect with God so we can reconnect with each other, we’re learning how to inhale so we can exhale.  

This makes no sense in a world, or a church, that wants to keep exhaling all the time, do more, help more, save more, say more.

But Jesus never hesitated to step away. 

This is God’s show, God’s world, God’s ministry we are sharing in.  Keeping it all going is not our job. The main thing here is love, and God is moving everything in that direction. Our job is to stay human, to come back to whose we are and who we are.  And then our job is to seek Jesus and join him in that love.

On Saturday Evenings you come in here with your babies and your worries and you set them down and let the music and the candlelight hold you.  You let yourself pray in whatever ways you feel led.  You inhale.  Meals to new parents, Prayer for the Nation, two Sundays a month to stop and be, we have woven it into our life together – watching for ways to inhale, and helping each other inhale too.

But the disciples don’t quite get it yet, so they hunt him down and throw a fit at him for disappearing right when things were going gangbusters.  Everyone is looking for you!  Because, of course, Jesus should stay put and set up shop, right? Build some pews and put butts to count in them? Establish a successful healing and demon-casting out business that grows bigger every year? People will come from miles around! 

But this isn’t about something you can build, compare and measure; this is about participating in the Kingdom of God. The whole village is now filled with ministers. So it’s time to go invite others into this reality too.

Here’s the thing, it simply will not work to try to make Jesus stay in the last place he brought healing and hope to continue doing the same thing in the same way. 

So often the church looks back and says, That was amazing! That is who we will be from now on! And then we try to recapture the magic, and bottle the formula, and sell enough of that idea or program to at least break even.  Everyone is looking for you, Jesus, where did you go? Come back to where we are!

But Jesus doesn’t play that game – he’s on the move!  And so we have to keep asking – Where are you now, Lord? What are you doing in our lives right now, God? What are you doing in and through this community right now? Where are we being called to join you in the world right now?

Already in this new year, your session has spent upwards of 15 hours in discernment together, asking those questions, seeking God’s will, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. And on the other side of this process came the gratitude, energy and confidence that God is calling us this year to deeper caring, sharing and community, in three ways:

The first is in our area of WORSHIP:

Worship returns us to trust in God, and reconnects us in belonging to others. It turns out that this practice we’ve been doing of giving 10% of our income to other expressions of God’s ministry in the world is significant and transformative, and can be an act of true worship. We believe God is calling us to deepen our tithing practice - there is much more potential there than we have realized, acknowledged, or tapped into.  How can we connect more with the communities we are giving to?  How can the tithe money be merely the “practice run” that opens us to deeper ministry with and alongside others in the world?  How can we share more widely as a congregation the joy of choosing recipients and giving?  How might God use this act of tithing to continue to change us and call us to generosity in our own lives, opening our hearts more widely to trusting God and belonging to others?

The second calling is in our HOSPITALITY:

Providing a place of hospitality and a community of welcome is central to our calling right now. Session believes God is calling us to invest in this building as an important resource for ministry. Our building has more groups meeting in it than ever, but the roof will need to be replaced soon, and for decades we’ve lamented inaccessible bathrooms, and gathering room doorways too narrow to fit a wheelchair through.  More than a decade ago, the lack of an elevator is all that kept us from housing after school tutoring program, and without one now our space is a barrier to people and groups fully participating in activities here.  Session determined that it is time to begin dreaming and planning for the future ministry in this place, by beginning a capital campaign to upgrade and improve the building.  How can we prepare for who God wants to bring to this place and be ready for the ministry God will do here?

The third calling is, of course, our SABBATH calling:

God is calling us to deeper connection through Sabbath, and particularly this year, through Sabbatical – it’s the inhale that fuels the exhale of ministry.  It’s meant to reground us and reconnect us to God and to each other. As we ponder the three months we have set aside for this, the question to you all is, What would make your hearts sing?

While my family and I are off inhaling and heartsinging, you will be here with each other doing the same.  Today in our annual meeting, you will get to do some initial brainstorming about that. What would feed this community with play, fun rest?  What might deepen your relationships with each other and grow your trust in God’s care? How can you use those three months for renewal and joy?  Really taking this time to inhale as a congregation makes us ready for all that God wants to do in and through us as ministers!

We are not going to do a counting exercise today, because it turns out ministry is not an addition problem that originates with us, it’s multiplication that begins in God, and spreads infinitely through our lives, always inviting us to join Jesus where he is right here and now.  It can only be measured in, of all things, fruit – like joy and peace and patience, generosity and kindness.  And it is encountered in the intangible but most real things, like vulnerability and courage, inhaling and exhaling, trust, and love. The disciples in our story today are just are beginning to learn that, and we are learning it to.

So let’s celebrate today, Church! Let’s share the stories of where God is already ministering in and through us, and let’s join in the Kingdom of God on purpose once again! 

(PS - Perhaps many of you might not think of annual reports as particularly interesting, let alone utterly delightful documents. But I will tell you, this year, our annual report is utterly delightful. Because in addition to sharing some of the ways we are joining Jesus in ministry, it has messages from some of the people who have gathered in the doorway. 

There is a message from a pastor in New Zealand who came to learn from us, an author who wrote about Sabbath and included our story, and a few of the folks who use this building for ministry we might never see.  There are stories about our “Pentecost Practice-run” inspiring the same in Central, and maybe even another one in England!  Prayers we’ve written spread far and wide, and thank you notes came back to us from people in the places we’ve tithed.  When you live in the way of love and trust, it draws others to be part of the Kingdom of God too. Read the report. You'll love it.).

LNPC 2017 ANNUAL REPORT

Our Pentecost Practice Run

Acts 2:1-21, 38-47

Pentecost has been called the birthday of the Church, because it is when the church first formed, but first and foremost, this is the Holy Spirit’s day.

The Holy Spirit is ruah in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek: breath, wind, life force. The Spirit is the outflowing of the dynamic connection between Father and Son  - the verb of the Trinity’s relationship, love in action, the energy of life that binds us to God and each other. The Spirit comforts, leads, inspires, and animates. 

The Spirit of God is has always been here, behind the scenes, under the surface – hovering over the waters at creation, filling the lungs of the Adam, the first earth creature, inspiring of the Psalms of David, quickening the womb of Mary, descending like a dove to claim Jesus as Beloved in the river of  John’s baptism. 

But on Pentecost the Spirit comes out from behind the scenes; the stage manager takes center stage.

Jesus told the disciples to wait, that the Spirit was coming – and they waited, unsure what was coming, wondering how they would become the so-called Witnesses Jesus had told them they were. 

They waited in that liminal space between the end of their following and the beginning of their sent-ness, in the place where their witness-hood began to take shape. 

Jesus had embodied in himself complete unity with God and humanity, he was the person in whom divine and human came together and spilled out as love verbed in the world, and they had followed in his shadow and soaked in its rays.  Then he died, and rose, breaking the barrier between heaven and earth, life and death.  And when the Spirit came at Pentecost, the power of that verbed love was released onto the disciples, and they were suddenly drawn into the dynamic relationship Jesus had with the Father, and into the life and mission of God.  The energy of the Trinity now draws us into God, and fuels us out with the breath, life force, creativity and activity of God. 

These disciples now become the very Body of Christ in the world. They are no longer followers of Jesus on earth, as students to a teacher. Now they embody the relationship and mission of God in their own bodies:  Their words, their own quirks and accents, their struggles and delights, their very hands and feet and voice!

And God’s Spirit that moves through them is also in that space between them – that is, this body they become when they come together with all their different needs and gifts and fears and hopes, and they trust together that God is God and the world is claimed in God’s love.  They’ve become Church.  

But they don’t know yet what they are.

They’re just experiencing things and sharing about them. They are witnessing.

And notice that when the crowd gathers as they speak, all who listen hear in their own language – no matter how distant their homeland is from that place or how few of them are in that crowd – each one hears exactly what they need to hear from God, through the words and actions of these surprised disciples, caught up in God’s love. The Spirit reaches out and draws each of these listeners into the inner dynamic of God’s love, where life originates and abounds forever, where Jesus brought death to die.

Today is the Holy Spirit’s day. 

Today is the day the Church was born.

Remember, last time I said the disciples and the early church throughout the book of Acts were bouncing back and forth between beautiful encounters of supernatural healing and transcendent hope, and the ordinary struggles about housekeeping and money, how to share, and how to listen to each other without fighting?  And they sought to do all of it as Christ’s Body – the place on earth where divine and human come together and spill out as love verbed in the world.

That meant not separating out the holy from the mundane, but recognizing all of it as God’s ministry, and learning to see themselves as stewards of the mysteries of God, as sharers in the life of God for the world. 

They were figuring it out as they went along – listening to the Spirit, seeking direction, using their intellect and their cooperation, and watching God work through all of it.  They were figuring out how to be the people who are with and for each other just as Christ is with and for us, because that is where the Spirit of God is found.  This is what Church means.

This little congregation gathered here today all these centuries later is part of that, a legacy of that group, an embodiment of that same continuing mission.  

And I love this community for the fervent and truthful way we try to be with and for each other and the world.  For the way we try to recognize God’s presence in both the obviously holy and the so-called mundane.  

I love how we believe we meet Jesus when we share each other’s suffering and bear each other’s joy.   And how we seek to honor each person as a minister, tiny or full-grown, with their needs, gifts, fears and hopes, and how our ministry changes with each new person who comes to share in this life together with all their quirks and accents, struggles and delights. 

And I love we learn from our mistakes, and we take risks, and we seek the Spirit’s guidance in the midst of each new hurdle and opportunity that comes our way. And through it all, we try to trust together that God is God and the world is claimed in God’s love.

One of the ways we live out this trust every month is that we give 10% of our income to other expressions of God’s love in the world - other organizations or congregations or ministries where we see people sharing life together, breaking down walls between people, reaching out in hope.  The list of those we’ve given to in the last two years is inspiring:

This congregation has shared with folks who offer people Sabbath rest and retreat, those who resettle refugees, and those who empower conversations and build community across barriers. We’ve shared with people who help communities heal after violence, those who help neighborhoods rebuild after tragedy, those who provide support and care for people who can no longer care for themselves as they used to, and those who provide housing and food for people without.  I’ve hung a complete list on the back wall, and put a few copies in the Gathering Room, so that you can see the amazing things we’ve been part of these past two years. The ministry God does in us spreads far beyond us; we are connected to God’s work in the world in lots of ways.

But as session reflected on Pentecost, and this moment when the mission went from centralized in the person of Jesus, to embodied by all these people who make up the Body of Christ, we decided to do something different with the tithe money for a month. 

What must it have been like to suddenly have the mission in your hands?

To pray to the Spirit for guidance and trust the Spirit to use you to bless someone else?

To learn to let God work through you?

We talk all the time here about noticing God, seeking to join in what God is doing, and coming alongside others in suffering and joy, and that is what we are called to do. To give and receive the ministry of God.  But that can feel abstract. We wanted to make it concrete.

So May’s tithe is right here – 17 envelopes with $100 each inside them. 

This month the tithe is not to be given to an organization, but is meant for personal connections with people.

We trust that in Jesus Christ, we all belong to God and we all belong to each other.  This is a chance to live that out in a creative way. Seventeen of us today will leave here with an envelope in our pocket and the job of praying and asking the Holy Spirit to show us who it might be meant for.

Here is how this will work: First, we will pray over this money – setting it aside, like we do the bread and the cup at communion, asking God to make it something holy, something that God will use to bless people, a tool of the Holy Spirit in the hands of witnesses and ministers, (that’s you). 

And then, we will draw names.  Adults and kids, members and visitors, 17 of you will be representing this whole community, the gifts we’ve all contributed, and blessed, and sent out, will be in your hands in the world.

If your name is drawn, your assignment is: Watch for God. See what God is doing. Join in.  Ministry is sharing each other’s suffering, and holding each other’s joy. How might God be calling you to use this money to do that with someone? This might mean finding someone to whom you’d like to give an unexpected blessing, or someone you’d like to say, “I see you. I am here,” or someone you want to express gratitude to for the blessing they are to you or others.  It could be someone you know well, or someone you’ve never met.

Step 1: Pray about it.  Ask God who to give it to, and how.

Maybe you have someone in mind right away. Maybe you need to sit on it for a while and ask God for direction.  Trust God to show you. (This is God's money. You are God's too. So is whoever will receive it).

Step 2: Give it to that person. 

It might be uncomfortable. That’s ok. Notice the discomfort; God is in that too.

Are there words you’d like to say? Gratitude, Empathy, Love you’d like to express? Pray about that too. Maybe there is something God would like to tell that person through you.  Maybe no words are needed.  Listen with your heart; speak from your heart. 

Step 3: Share about it

Remember, we are witnesses: We encounter Christ and we share about it. Come back and tell us what it was like. Was it awkward? Uncomfortable? Thrilling? Joyful?  How did you choose who to give it to?  What happened afterwards? How did you encounter Christ through this experience? 

We will share about this in worship on Sunday, June 18. 

Those who are comfortable sharing aloud can do so, and those who would rather write a note and have Lisa or me read it, can share that way. Between now and then, the rest of us will be holding you in prayer, that God will arrange the circumstances and the Spirit will guide you.

Kids- your grown up will help you however you need as you pray about it and ask God who to give this money to. Babies, your parents will decide for you and tell you all about it when you’re older. (And Pastor Lisa wanted me to remind you not to eat it).

A word to anyone who feels absolutely paralyzed with terror, or even just extremely uncomfortable about this. If your name gets drawn, and you feel you cannot do this alone- bring in another person. Ask someone else here (or even at home or work) to do it with you, to think, and pray, and reach out to give it away, along with you. You are not in this alone. This whole practice is meant to remind us that we all belong to God and we all belong to each other. 

Finally, this is the practice run, you guys. 

With that money in your pocket you have a specific assignment, something concrete to do.  It’s the training wheels.  The harder thing is to watch and respond in the world with the gifts God has already entrusted to us that we can’t see or don’t recognize as gifts.  Our hands and voice, our words and touch. Our presence, our own needs, hopes, fears, doubts, weaknesses, and joys. God wants to use it all to draw us and others into God’s love.  And through us, the Holy Spirit can speak to each person just what they need to hear, meet them just how they need to be met.

This is our Pentecost jump-start, a reminder that we are Church –the people who watch for Jesus and join him where he is – in the midst of it all, sharing joy and suffering alongside others.  Learning to watch for God’s ministry and join in is a lifelong endeavor that we do together.

So we witness to how hard it is and we celebrate how life-giving it is. We encourage each other to seek God’s presence and share God’s ministry every day in ordinary and extraordinary ways.  And today, specifically, we welcome and celebrate the life-force of God that binds us to Christ’s love and sends us out in that love. 

Today is the Holy Spirit’s Day!  

What marvelous things will the Spirit do with us, I wonder? 

Happy Pentecost, Church!