The Fruit of the Spirit

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control.  There is no law against such things.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the the Spirit.  Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another."  --Galatians 5:22-23, 25-26

The Spirited Community

All who believed were together, and had all things in common . . ." --Acts 2:44

Acts 2:42-47 and Acts 4:32-35 describe a community of faith born of, and living in, the power of God's Spirit.  We read these two texts together, and noted the qualities of a "spirited community:"
--daily worship together
--a devotion to learning (careful listening and applied practice)
--devotion to fellowship and a shared table
-- the celebrating of the Lord's Supper
--devoted prayer life
--glad and generous hearts
--constant praise of God
--entire community was cared for
--possessions distributed as any had need (no "absolute" private property)
--committed to spreading the good news of God's love everywhere

These were characteristic of "The Way," which is what the early church was called.  The Spirit of the Lord inspires and nourishes the community, making growth and holy surprise ever possible.  An apostolic community witnesses to the resurrection power of our God manifested in the midst of the everyday.

In what ways is our St. Andrew's Church such a community?

Do You Love Me?

On Wednesday we read the second of our post-resurrection stories, from John 21:1-19.  Simon Peter and six other disciples are back home in Galilee.  Rather than sharing the amazing good new of Jesus' resurrection with everyone they can find, they return to life as they lived it before Jesus had called them.  They "go fishing," but after a long night of labor, have "caught nothing."
As the sun comes up, Jesus is standing on the shore.  They do not recognize him. He affectionately addresses them as "Children,' and asks if they have any fish, to which they reply, "No."  He urges them to cast their nets from the other side of the boat.  When they do, they receive a huge catch of fish.  Their life with Jesus is much more fruitful than without him.  The story reminds us of the story in Luke's gospel where Jesus calls some of these very same disciples for the first time (Luke 5:1-11).  It is virtually the same story, that time at the beginning.  The crucifixion has not stopped the story  of Gods love from continuing!  The memory of the beloved disciple is stirred, and he shouts, "It's the Lord!"  Simon Peter, so anguished by his failure to stand with Jesus before, responds excitedly by jumping in the water and swimming hurriedly to the shore, leaving the other disciples to haul in the catch of fish.
When the disciples get to the shore, they find fish and bread cooking on a "charcoal fire."  We realize that we heard those words once before in the story:  when Peter was confronted in the high priest's courtyard, asking if he was with Jesus, he was warming himself by a "charcoal fire!"  At that time, he denied knowing Jesus three times.  Now, in this story, we hear Jesus ask Simon Peter if he loves him--three times!  After each time, when Peter says, "Yes, Lord, you know I love you!," Jesus commissions Peter once again:  "Feed my lambs." "Tend my sheep."  "Feed my sheep."  "Follow me."  There is new life beyond failure.  There is the healing power of forgiveness.  Simon Peter will demonstrate his love for Jesus by loving others fully. "Love one another as I have loved you."
This powerful conversation only takes place after Jesus has invited all of them to an abundant breakfast, joining their catch with what he has already prepared, in a very special communion meal.
What kinds of experiences remind us of what Jesus has already taught us?  Are there places in our lives where we recognize the presence of the risen Christ?  How does Jesus tend to our failures, and inspire us to serve him in love once again?  When we celebrate communion, will you remember this story? How do we make our love of Jesus visible?

With Burning Hearts

"Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" --Luke 24:32

The story of the Road to Emmaus is an important one.  It focuses not just on what God's resurrection power does in Jesus, but what God's power for new life does in us!
The setting is the afternoon of Easter day.  And even though Jesus has risen from the tomb, and Mary  Magdalene, Joanna, and the other women have testified to the tomb's emptiness and the good news of Jesus' rising, two of Jesus' followers are leaving town, acting as though the resurrection hasn't happened.  For them, the disappointment of Jesus being different than what they have expected him to be seems too much.  Also, they are traumatized by the awful events of Good Friday, and fear that death really has had the last word, and that their story with Jesus is over.
The risen Christ meets the men on the road and comes close to them, but they don't recognize him.  Luke writes," but their eyes were kept from recognizing him."   This is a way of saying that we don't always see Jesus' presence in our lives because he comes to us in ways we are not expecting.  He ask them about their experiences and feelings; he listens as they tell him what Jesus has meant to them.  He then takes familiar stories from the scriptures and reinterprets them in the light of his life and God;s love.  He teaches them a new way to read the Bible, and new ways to recognize him in the Bible stories and in their own lives!
When they get to Emmaus and they ask him to stay with them, he does, sharing a meal: breaking the bread, blessing it, and giving it to them,as he had done at the Last Supper.  "Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him . . ." They talk to each other excitedly, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us!" They are filled with God's inspiration as they receive the risen Jesus, and they are moved by the realization that his story is their story! Instead of continuing to move away, they change direction, go back to Jerusalem, and tell the other disciples the good news of meeting the risen Jesus!
Jesus meets us where we are.  He draws close to us.  He opens up the scriptures so that we can understand our own lives in the light of God's boundless love and mercy. He makes wherever we are into a place where we learn and grow; we don't just talk about Jesus, we talk to him! He gathers us at his table so that we might be nourished by his presence and amazed at everyone else's inclusion.  He sends us out as people whose lives are only measured by God's grace.  We change direction. And our hearts burn.

The Day of Resurrection!

Good Friday

Jesus lived, the nonviolent, self-giving love of God to its fullest.  He never compromised that love, even in the face of ridicule, punishment, and the cross.  When he calls out, "It is accomplished!," he is announcing the wholeness of that life.  In a way, it is the completion of God's original creation, because Jesus has fulfilled the life that God has intended for all of us "from the beginning", and opened a path of fulfillment for us.  This is why we call Holy Friday "Good!"  And because love is the power of God, the greatest power, death will never have the last word.

Maundy Thursday

"To allow Jesus to cleanse our feet is to remove all that prevents us from using our feet to follow him, to scrub way our insecurities, to wash away our weariness, to buff off our bitterness."
                                                                                        --Alyce McKenzie

From Hearing to Moving to Being

As we begin our Lenten Journeys, I want to remind everyone of the powerful story of Jesus calling his first disciples in Luke 5:1-11.  Jesus has been proclaiming the good news of God's love for all people; it has been a message that has excited people and begun their experience of being liberated in God's love.  But here and now, he is calling specific people not just to hear the Word but to join him in a way of life.  
Jacopo Bassano's The Miraculous Draught of Fishes is printed in your notebook.  It portrays an overwhelmed Simon Peter falling at Jesus' feet and begging him to go away, "for I am a sinful man."  This happens even as Simon's partners gather the huge catch of fish.  Of course, what is truly miraculous is not what Jesus is doing with the fish, but what Jesus is doing with them! 
Jesus does not go away, but instead tells Simon not to be afraid, for from now on he will be "catching people!"  His gifts, his personality, his hard work will be dedicated to God's glory.  When the new disciples follow Jesus, they leave the narrow limits of life as they have known it.  In the eyes and care of Jesus, they get to know themselves much better, and also the God who so loves them and continues to be creative in their lives.
Review your pages on discipleship.  And rejoice!

Good News, Release, Sight, Forgiveness

" When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, Jesus went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom.  He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.  He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."  And he rolled up the scroll, gave to back to the attendant, and sat down.  The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon him.  Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."  --Luke 4: 16-21

Sabbath Day Worship

Worship is so much more than a weekly activity that we "go to."  In class, we have been exploring how we might experience Worship as "loving God with all our hearts, and with all our souls, and with all our minds, and with all our strength!"  That's not something that is happening everywhere in town!
In our faith practice, Sabbath Day Worship is a core activity (maybe the core activity) of communal life, where we gather together weekly to love God and one another with everything we have.
The practice of "sabbath" is more than just coming to worship.  For us, worship is an essential part of sabbath, something that God includes as one of the Ten Commandments.  Here are some things you may not know, or haven't thought so much about recently.

(1)  Sabbath is a radical practice.  It honors God breaking into weekly life on our behalf, rescuing us from busyness and exhaustion and activities that do not satisfy our spirits.  It is a time of renewal, refreshment, communion with God, and celebration of life as God has always intended it to be.  Sabbath is a real-life experience of being delivered by the God who loves and saves us.  In the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8; Deuteronomy 5:12-14), Sabbath is to be "remembered" and kept holy, a gift from God.  Re-membrance is putting all broken pieces (members) of our lives back together and experiencing wholeness. In Exodus, God is described as resting on the seventh day of creation, the sabbath.  When we rest after six days of creative work we are sharing in God's wholeness.  In Deuteronomy, God's people are to remember on the sabbath that God is a God who delivers God's people from slavery to freedom.    I have called sabbath a "radical" practice.  Radical means rooted; in this case, our lives are rooted in God!!!

(2) Our Worship liturgy is a daring act of imagination.  Our worship service at St. Andrew's begins with us  declaring the peace of Christ among us and sharing it with one another.  Jesus is the one who comes to free us from anxiety, offering us a peace far beyond our present understandings!  Our Call to Worship draws us into intentional communion with God, putting God at the center of our attention rather than the million other things that dominate our attention.  Already we have an opportunity to break free, and we haven't even sung yet!  The first hymn, and those that follow, allow us to offer our voices and hearts to God in soulful praise, to "lose ourselves in order to be found!"  God's for-giveness frees us in God's eternal love for honesty, for expression, for healing, for repentance, for new starts.  The Time of Confession and Hope is an opportunity for honest expression and speech to God about our needs, our hopes, our pains, our struggles.  Liberation is realized in such honest encounter with God.  The Scriptures open up the rich story of God and God's people; the Gospels declare and show us God's astounding love for all people without exception--a loving power that never ends!!  The sermon(s) proclaims this good news and identifies where it hits ground in our lives.  We respond to the invitation to recognize ourselves as part of the holy story, and are equipped to follow Jesus in our own lives today.  This is transforming!  There are many places where we are given opportunity to offer ourselves, our gifts, our investment in these values and the new life that is embodied when we do this together.  We pray to God; very importantly, we share prayer concerns and people in need and lift them up.  We identify blessings and joys and thank God for them together, freed in our thanksgiving.  We celebrate God's abundance, rather than what the world defines as scarcity.  It is a different way of seeing!  Each month, we gather together at the Lord's Table. We leave as people whose lives and priorities have been reordered and replenished in the love of our Creator.  That's what worship is about!

(3) Our Worship expresses belief in God who is doing hands-on work to make new human futures.
When we worship we are engaging the God who is committed to our well-being and to the deliverance of all God's people.

(4) Worship is resistance to the dominant, life-flattening order.  God did not make any of us merely to "fit in" to the world's order.

(5) We explore the experience of covenant community. The real practice of community is a revolutionary practice and a sign in the world of God's new order for the world.  We are precious as individuals who are God's children, beloved, created for God's pleasure.  But we are more together than we can ever be just by ourselves.  We love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and we love our neighbor as ourselves.

(6) Worship is celebration of a world that is fruitful and generative.  Ours is a liturgy of God's abundance, not the world's myth of scarcity.

(7)  God's themes of wholeness and completion break into a world that is often half-baked and distorted. Everything about us matters to God!

(8) Our worship is rooted in the peace of Christ (an antidote to anxiety).  God is delivering us from anxious lives!

(9)  The fabric of our lives depends on fidelity, not "productivity."  The measure of our value in God's eyes is never in how "useful" we are!!  even though it can be good to be productive in life, especially when it benefits others, God did not put us in the world merely to be "useful!"  Faithfulness to God, and loving solidarity with one another, are what we are made for. We celebrate this in worship.

(10) Liturgy is an act of imagining the world differently and acting according to that inspired imagination.



(Thanks to Walter Brueggemann and all the participants in our mid-90's Kirkridge retreat!)

Worship

What is worship? We said:
--Individuals coming together sharing heart, soul, strength, and mind with each other.
--Gathering as a group: teaching, learning about Jesus.
--"Coming to church"
--Praying
--Active Listening
--Participating
--Praising God
--Teaching others about God
--Being taught
--reading the scriptures
--coming with anticipation
--singing
--fun
--Loving God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, all our strength
The soul (in Greek psuche, from which we get the English word "psyche") is the core of our being.
Perhaps our worship involves:
--praying with everything we have
--singing with everything
--bringing the fullness of ourselves, our gifts, our yearnings, our love
--connecting the stories of the scriptures with the stories of our lives (Jesus' life and our life as one)
 

Times of Decision

"In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan . And when he came up out of the water immediately he saw the heavens torn open and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased . . .Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the gospel."  --Mark 1: 9-11, 14-15
What are some of the key decisions that a person makes (or will make) in their lives?
Here are our answers:
--Career (vocation; purpose)
--College
--Clothes
--Driving, car
--Relationships with others
  (a) Who will you spend your life with?
  (b)  Who will you go out with?  Spend significant time with?
--What church do you want to go to?
--Where do you want to live?
--Decisions your parents are nervous about
--Leaving home
--How you will dedicate your time and attention, and the impact that will have on the future
--How you want to spend your money

As we prepared to revisit the story of Jesus' baptism (It is "Baptism of Christ Sunday" this week) we noted how momentous a decision that Jesus was making, leaving Nazareth for the long trek to the Jordan to join the throngs of people being baptized by John.  His life would take a powerful turn; he would return to Galilee but not to resume his old life.His ministry began; life took on new shape and purpose.
We knew that Jesus was around 30 years old when he was baptized and began his ministry.  The most recent story prior to that was the one we recently considered, of Jesus at age 12 in the Jerusalem Temple.
What was Jesus doing for the 18 years in between?
It was noted that the time spanned 6570 days.
--helping Joseph with carpentry
--serving as a carpenter himself, perhaps in the rebuilding of Sepphoris, the nearby city destroyed by the Roman army.
--continuing to learn and grow in the faith, attending a local synagogue and continuing to travel to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast.
--going to school
--Dating?  Did Jesus get married and have a family?  (while we noted that the scriptures don't discuss this specifically)
We wondered what moved Jesus at that particular time.  Did he know that he was going to the Jordan to begin his ministry?  Was he exploring God's path, plan for his life?  We know that he went to the place in the south where John the Baptist (his cousin, according to Luke) was baptizing people and calling them to get washed and ready for the coming of the Messiah.  Jesus came, and entered the water with all of the others there to be baptized.
We read the story from the Gospel of Luke.  In Luke, Jesus does not see the heavens opened and the Spirit coming upon him until after this baptism, when he is praying.
The voice from heaven gives Jesus new names:  Son; Beloved; God's Pleasure.  Exploring the meaning of these names will be to explore more deeply who Jesus is and how his life's purpose will unfold.
Did other people hear God's voice naming Jesus and see the Spirit coming upon him, someone asked?  We are not sure; in Luke it is presented as a more personal experience, the coming of the Spirit a bodily experience.  The narratives in Matthew and Mark are a bit more dramatic.
People wanted to explore further what the coming of the Holy Spirit upon him would mean.  We'll do that!
Did he know that he was the Messiah?  A great question we will also attend to.  I noted that it was more common for Jesus to refer to himself as the "Son of Man," the "Human One."
When Jesus returned home he embraced a new lifestyle, though much of it was lived out in the region and communities that he was familiar with.
Maybe this was a path of discovery, new direction, deeper purpose for Jesus as well as for the people he ministered to, that grew with each decision, with each relationship,
We went back and looked at our original list of decisions.  Which ones did Jesus also make?
--Vocation and purpose
--Relationships with others
--What faith community he wanted to be part of
--Where he wanted to live (among whom?)
--Choices his parents were nervous about
--Leaving home
--How he would dedicate his time and attention and the impact that would have on the future.

Questions From Our Listening

We examined Luke 2:41-52 further, attending to Jesus' style of learning and growing.  As we did so, we formulated some of our own questions that we wanted to explore as our relationships with God deepened and were filled with intention.
--How can God help me in my relationships with others?
--Who am I?
--What does God have planned for me? What are God's plans for the people around me?
--How do the biblical stories relate to me/us?
--How does God heal?
--How do we perceive God working in our world?
--How will God show God's love for to us in  way that will help and encourage us?
--When does God answer our prayers?
--When are the good things going to happen?
--How will our relationship with God inspire meaning in our lives?