What Is Truth?

John 18:28-40

Psalm 145:10-13

3/27/22

 

Truth.  What is truth?  Today we are swamped with extreme stories in our news on both ends of the spectrum.  The tales become more and more wild, and what is real becomes harder and harder to determine.  As a result, people don’t know what to believe anymore.  We don’t know what is true, we don’t know what is TRUTH.  And it feels important, desperately important to know what is real, what is FACTUAL, what is historical, what is TRUE. 

As people try to navigate what is real, what is true, we are impacted by many who are actively trying to hide truth, thinking that truth will be damaging.  I think about what happened in our own Presbytery at Cameron house in San Francisco.  When the stories started to come out that the pastor who had led Cameron house for forty years had been molesting the boys he worked with the entire time he was there, the first response of the Presbytery was to hide it, to shut it down, believing that the truth would create more damage, would divide the church, would effectively stop important programs.  Of course, the opposite was true.  In trying to hide the truth, instead, they did much greater damage to those who had been harmed.  And this led to greater damage to the church because the stories did come out, despite the attempts at hiding them. The appearance of duplicity, the attempts to hide the stories are what made the church look bad and what drove people from it.  Truth matters, and the facts matter.  Telling the truth matters. 

But still, in a world where everyone sees things differently, what is truth?  What is it really? 

The “truths” that we are told, and our determinations of what is real, what is not, who to believe, who not to believe: these are tearing us apart as a country, as a people, as a nation.  And I would say that this is because under all the historical truths, under the facts, under the histories, we have forgotten the deeper meaning of what is really TRUE.  We have gotten so caught up in what is factual, what is historical, that we have forgotten what is true with a capital T. 

I realize that may sound complicated and confusing.  We come to know our world by what we believe to be true.  It determines our actions, it determines our friendships, it determines our lives.  But we also know that there is always more than one way to see any and every event.  Depending on where you stand, what preconceived understandings you already come with, and your core beliefs, you will see each event differently.  There are very few “facts” when it comes down to it.  Let me give you an example.  In front of you right now you see me, a solid.  You see me standing here as a solid person.  But when you dig a little deeper you find that we are all made of atoms and atoms are mostly space.  What you are seeing is not a solid, but mostly space at a core molecular level. 

Let me give you another example.  We see color all around us, but what is color?  To quote scientific Britannica: “color is simply the range of visible light that humans can see. Different colors, such as red and orange, and other invisible spectrums such as infrared light, move around in waves of electromagnetic energy. The human eye is capable of seeing only light with wavelengths between 380 and 750 nanometers. For example, the visible spectrum begins with the wavelengths that we call violet, between 380 and 450 nm, then moves on to blue, green, yellow, and orange, and ends with what we call red, between 590 and 750 nm. When you look at someone’s red shirt, for instance, that shirt will be absorbing or scattering wavelengths of light lower than 590 nm, so those waves will not reach your eyes. But a red shirt will be reflecting some wavelength between 590 and 750 nm, which your eyes process as red.” 

These two examples are just scientific examples.  But I could easily give you human examples too.  When we see other people’s behavior, we ascribe to each person motivations, “agendas” and feelings.  But if you ever think about why someone does something and then ask them why they did it, you will find that our ideas about people’s behaviors and their ideas about their own behaviors do not match.  And to be fair, people don’t see everything about themselves, let alone about other people.  Our motivations for every behavior are complex and are made up of our histories, our perceptions, and our values.  Each action builds on past actions, and our motivations for any one behavior will never be completely determined.

Even at a more basic level, interpreting what we hear and see others DO can be difficult.  I shared in a blog about a church where I had worked as organist/choir director during seminary.  After I graduated, the church hired another young woman to take my place.  One week that new young woman called me extremely upset and said that the pastor’s wife (who sang in the choir) was mean to her and didn’t like her at all.  I found this very hard to believe since the woman had been so kind and sweet to me.  But I listened and tried to encourage her to talk directly to the pastor’s wife.  A week later the pastor’s wife called me, explaining that she didn’t know what to do about the new choir director who misinterpreted everything she said.  She tried to joke with her and the director heard it as attacking.  She tried to offer care and the choir director heard it as telling her what to do.  Neither of them heard each other.  And neither of them could understand very well what was going on.

I remember watching a TV episode on sight.  They ran a bunch of tests on people on their sight, but it was also on their understandings.  One of the tests they ran was to have a group of 100 people watch a small video clip and then each of them wrote about what they saw.  None of what they wrote matched.  After sharing with the group each person’s memory of what had happened, they then had the same group rewatch the video.  And then had them once again write down what they saw.  And while each person’s vision of what had happened had changed a bit, each person had, at some level, incorporated what they heard the others had also seen into their descriptions, none the less, the descriptions still did not match.  What was fact here?  What was historical?  If all of this added up into what was “truth”, “truth” itself was more confusing and unclear than ever. 

In faith matters this becomes even more complex.  I can guarantee that if we were to spell out each one of our beliefs in this room, no two of us would agree 100%.  We are all worshiping in the same church, in the same denomination, in the same town and same building.  And yet even here, no two of us would be 100% in agreement in terms of faith beliefs.   If we define “truth” then in this way, we will find that no two of us can agree on what is true, what is real, or even what is factual. 

Bishop Michael Curry said it in his book, Love is the Way: page 221: “If you are only getting stories from people who look like you, you aren’t getting the truth.” And since Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week, our reach for “truth” needs some help.  When I talk to my brothers, sisters and siblings of color, for example, most of them have a depth of faith, an experience of God, that we can only imagine, that we can only hope to attain, hope to reach for.  And that should tell us something.  We, with our intellectualism and our cynicism and our skepticism are missing out on some very deep truths about God’s presence, God’s actions, and God’s movements.

Paul Kalanithi in his book, When Breath Becomes Air, said it this way, “In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture.  The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth.  Human knowledge is never contained in one person.  It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.  And Truth comes somewhere above all of them…”

But still, what is Truth?  One of my favorite movies is Second Hand Lions.  And there is a wonderful scene towards the end of the movie that I want to share with you.  The main character is a kid who has come to stay with his uncles over the summer.  His mother is horrible and has basically abandoned him to two old men she really doesn’t even know.  But these men tell the boy these huge, fantastic tales of their time as young men.  Truly the tales are outrageous, but at the same time, possibly true.  And at one point, the boy confronts one of the men with these words, “Those stories about Africa, about you, they are true aren’t they?”  The old uncle responds, “It doesn’t matter.” 

The boy continues, “It does too!  Around my mom all I hear is lies.  I don’t know what to believe.”

The man responds, “Son, if you want to believe in something, believe in it.  Just because something isn’t true, that’s no reason you can’t believe in it.  …  Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a [person] needs to believe in the most.  That people are basically good.  That honor, courage and virtue are everything, that money and power are nothing.  That good always triumphs over evil and that love, and I want you to remember this, that true love never dies.  I want you to remember that, boy.  Remember that.  It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.  You see, a [person] should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.”  C.S. Lewis in his Narnia series similarly said that it is better to believe in a lie that is wonderful than a “real” world that is hell.

William Faulkner has been quoted as saying, “Facts and Truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”

So what am I saying?  That “facts” don’t matter?  No.  What I’m saying is that we are part of creating what is real, and what is true.  And part of that start with our beliefs, with our visions and with our understandings of the world.  What is true is impacted by our faith.  A belief, for example, in love means that you will behave in ways that are loving, that you will trust your love and that will make a difference to all those you encounter.

Today we come to the story of Jesus’ trial before Pilate.  I wonder, when you think about Jesus, what you think his primary purpose here was?  We can think of many purposes.  A mirror into God, a model for how to live as faithful people, an example of what Love really looks like.  Many of our fundamentalist, evangelical, and even mainstream brothers and sisters would say Jesus’ purpose is death, or resurrection, or salvation from sins.  But this is not what Jesus himself says.  He doesn’t tell us his purpose is any of the theological reasons we might suppose.  No, instead, in this discussion with Pilate, he states very clearly and very simply that his purpose in coming is to testify to the truth.   Pilate then ends today’s readings with the simple question, “What is truth?”

And as we know, this “simple” question is anything but simple.

Frederick Buechner says this about Truth in his book Wishful Thinking: a theological ABC: “When Jesus says that he has come to bear witness to the truth, Pilate asks, ‘What is truth?’  Contrary to the traditional view that his question is cynical, it is possible that he asks it with a lump in his throat.  Instead of Truth, Pilate has only expedience.  His decision to throw Jesus to the wolves is expedient.  Pilate views [humanity] as alone in the universe with nothing but [our] own courage and ingenuity to see [us] through.  It is enough to choke up anybody.  Pilate asks What is truth?  And for years there have been politicians, scientists, theologians, philosophers, poets, and so on to tell him.  The sound they make is like the sound of empty pails falling down the cellar stairs.  Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question.  He just stands there.  Stands, and stands there.”

Jesus stands there.  The one who has declared over and over “I am” stands there.  “I am” stands there.  And that is the truth that he presents.  His truth is that he is.  The truth to which he testifies is that God IS.

God is present in the heavens, and God is present in this person.  God is present in the very air we breathe, and, dare I say, God is present in YOU.  That is the truth that stands there.  That is the truth that Jesus presents by his very body, by his very being.  That is Truth.  And it is on that that we can base our faith, our determination, our lives.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Come and See

 John 9:1-41

In the gospel of John, Jesus’ first words of his ministry are those we hear today. The first words we hear from his mouth in the gospel of John are “What are you looking for?” followed by “Come and see.”  They are the first words in his ministry according to the gospel of John and so we know they are important.  So I ask you today, “What is it that you are looking for?”  When you come to this place, when you come to God in prayer, when you come forward for communion or to be baptized or to join the church or serve as a leader in this church in some capacity or other, what are you looking for?

             Whatever it is that you are looking for, Jesus’ response is “come and see.”  And so we are invited to read the rest of the gospel, we are invited to look at his life, a life of service to God’s people, we are invited to see how God acts in the world through Jesus.  This is more than just an abstract idea and it is more than just looking with our eyes.  We are invited to “come” and to “see.”  The coming means stepping forward, stepping out, following Jesus.  That begins with the action of understanding what Jesus did with his life, but it also involves following Jesus in his ministry, doing what he did, serving God with all of our being.  It is only through that following of him that we will see, that we will be witnesses to God’s presence in this place.  We follow Jesus through healing and offering compassion for the sick, for the oppressed, for the poor; we follow Jesus by feeding the hungry.  We follow Jesus by lifting up and offering the good news to God’s people.  In following Jesus, we will experience God hear and now.  We will see through those around us, and through the act of following, we will find what we are looking for.

             Today we celebrate epiphany where we remember the visit of the magi bringing their gifts to Jesus.  The beauty in this story is that they came: they stepped forward on this long journey to find the Christ child, the promised king.  They did the work of taking the long, arduous journey.  They came.  And then they saw.  We change this story in our heads.  We make them powerful kings, but they weren’t.  They had to “return a different way” and avoid Herod because they were NOT powerful kings.  They saw that the Christ child was not what they expected, and they were convicted by their seeing him to avoid Herod, to not return in the same way, to not betray the child or give away his whereabouts.  They came, they saw, and then they followed the call to protect, to hide, to save this baby.

This month we also celebrate the life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..  And we see in him a man who embodied this message of following Jesus, of coming to see where God is in the world and what God offers to us.  In looking at his life, we remember that a life of service to God is not easy.  We also remember that no servant of God is perfect, and that this is okay.  It is the journey of following and looking that will lead us forward into those things that we are looking for.  For each of us this will look a little different as we discern in what ways God is calling us to follow.  But we are invited to respond with a “yes” to Jesus’ call for us to “come and see,” knowing that what we will see will be God and God’s action in our lives.

In the movie, Keeping the Faith, there is a wonderful conversation between a young priest and an older priest.  The young priest doubts his call into the priesthood after falling in love with a woman who is his friend.  Nothing happened between the two, but he found that the very fact of falling in love made him doubt a call that included celibacy.  He said to his older priest mentor, “If she had kissed me back, I would have given it all up.  She didn’t, but I keep thinking about what you said in the seminary that the life of a priest is hard and if you can see yourself doing anything else you should do that.”

The older priest responded, “Well that’s my recruitment speech which is good when you are starting out because it makes you feel like a marine!  But the truth is you can never tell yourself there is only one that you could be.  If you’re a priest or if you marry a woman, it is the same challenge.  You cannot make a real commitment unless you accept that it is a choice that you make again and again and again.  I’ve been a priest over 40 years, and I fall in love at least once every decade.”

             Following Christ is not easy.  And it is a choice we are called to make every day, sometimes every hour.  How will we respond to the call?  How will we choose to serve God today?  How will we be a Godly presence in the world?

Today’s Isaiah passage says, “And now the LORD says— he who formed me in the womb to be his servant ….I will also make you a light” 

These are words for and from Isaiah.  They are also words spoken, again, to us.  God has formed you, each of you to be God’s action in the world, to be God’s light in the world, to be God’s child.  You are called.  Choosing to follow Jesus, choosing to “come and see,” that will lead you into whatever it is you are seeking, that will lead you to life.

             And there is more good news.  Because God will make that call clear by what God puts in front of us each day.  I love the words to Amy Grant’s song “All I ever have to be” and I’d like to read those words for you now:

When the weight of all my dreams
Is resting heavy on my head,
And the thoughtful words of health and hope
Have all been nicely said.

But I'm still hurting,
Wondering if I'll ever be
The one I think I am.

I think I am.

Then you gently re-remind me
That you've made me from the first,
And the more I try to be the best
The more I get the worst.

And I realize the good in me,
Is only there because of who you are.

Who you are...

And all I ever have to be
Is what you've made me.
Any more or less would be a step
Out of your plan.

As you daily recreate me,
Help me always keep in mind
That I only have to do
What I can find.

And all I ever have to be
All I have to be
All I ever have to be
Is what you've made me.

 

In one episode of Joan of Arcadia, Joan comes to a point at which she feels she is being asked by God to save another, very lost, person.  Joan realizes that she can’t do it, she can’t save this other person, and she confronts God, saying, “But I’m no hero.  I’m just me.” The response of the God character in the episode is very, very simply, “Yes.  Maybe that is enough.”

             Jesus tells us, “Come and see”, and so we are invited to follow in the way of Jesus, to act with love and compassion to all we meet, to answer the call for our lives to be God’s people.  But as with the Magi, as with MLK, as with all people who truly follow the star that God creates to guide us, it all begins with those first verbs that Jesus utters in the book of John, “Come and see”.  We are called to start by taking the first step forward.  To answer the call as Moses did when he saw the burning bush and chose to step aside to see.  “Come and see”.  Have curiosity about what God puts in front of you.  Have curiosity about the challenges that are there.  Have curiosity and then see.  Come and see, my friends.  For God has amazing plans laid out for you.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Christmas All Year

Luke 2:1-20

Every year we celebrate Christmas on December 25^th.  Does anyone know how we came to pick this date to celebrate Christmas?   It was not picked because people actually believed Jesus was born on December 25^th.  We don’t know when Jesus was actually born, but the historical guesses range from spring to late fall.  We do know that the birth of Jesus is an important event and worth our celebration.  And we know that Advent, too, is a time worth our attention, a time of focus, preparation and waiting.  But December 25^th is a random date, picked originally to compete with the Winter Solstice celebration, and later this date was emphasized as an important time for the stimulation of our economies.  Because there are these other reasons for the December date, when we do celebrate Jesus’ birth on December 25^th, the celebration is often confused and complicated by other factors vying for our attention – buying gifts, decorating our houses, planning parties, putting up lights.  And we therefore miss the true and focused celebration of this incredible and miraculous event of God coming to be with us, incarnate among us as a helpless baby.

The truth is, Christmas is a celebration that can take place any time of the year.  We should be able to celebrate the wonder and miracle of God incarnate with us all year round.  Just as we celebrate the resurrection of our Christ, the overcoming of death, every Sunday of the year, any time is a good time to remember the wonder and gift in God coming to be with us as one of us, as a helpless baby, as a vulnerable human being who lived and loved and celebrated and suffered just as we do. 

Even so, even so, we don’t want to forget or miss the fact that God coming to be with us incarnate is amazing and surprising every single time.  The gift of the good, arriving in the midst of the darkness – the gift of God showing up in unexpected ways and with unexpected gifts for us in the midst of despair, depression, and night – this is just a part of what Jesus’ birth means for us, but it is what I would like to focus on today.

I’d like to start by asking you to remember a time when you received a wonderful and unexpected gift. I encourage you to think about something that might not have seemed like a gift at the time that none the less brought you wisdom, growth, new friendships, greater insight: a gift that at first was not a gift, but has become one in hindsight.

Gifts in the unexpected:

I walked a mile with Pleasure;

She chatted all the way;

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,

And ne’er a word said she;

But oh! The things I learned from her,

When Sorrow walked with me.” – Robert Browning Hamilton

            Sometimes the greatest gifts we receive are things we don’t want, don’t like, don’t value at the time, but in hindsight they bring us the greatest learning, and the greatest growth.  They often bring other unexpected gifts too: friendships in unexpected ways, support in unexpected ways, insights into ourselves that we didn’t have before.  Jesus’ coming as a baby, to a poor and unwed mother in the middle of a time of chaos, the tax census, was such a gift.  Not looked for because all chaos was happening.  Not expected in this way because, well, we expect God to be among the mighty.  But within all of that this great gift came. 

The greatest gift of Christmas is the understanding that God loved us so much that God came to be with us, as one of us, walking with us, talking with us, taking time to be WITH us in this place, here and now.  That God loves us so much that this continues to be the case. 

From Tattoos on the Heart (Gregory Boyle. (New York: Free Press, 2010) p19)

“My touchstone image of God comes by way of my friend and spiritual director, Bill Cain, S.J.  Years ago he took a break from his own ministry to care for his father as he died of cancer.  His father had become a frail man, dependent on Bill to do everything for him.  Though he was physically not what he had been, and the disease was wasting him away, his mind remained alert and lively.  In the role reversal common to adult children who care for their dying parents, Bill would put his father to bed and then read him to sleep, exactly as his father had done for him in childhood.  Bill would read from some novel, and his father would lie there, staring at his son, smiling.  Bill was exhausted from the day’s care and work and would plead with his dad, ‘Look, here’s the idea.  I read to you, you fall asleep.’  Bill’s father would impishly apologize and dutifully close his eyes.  But his wouldn’t last long.  Soon enough, Bill’s father would pop one eye open and smile at his son.  Bill would catch him and whine, ‘Now, come on.’ The father would, again, oblige, until he couldn’t anymore, and the other eye would open to catch a glimpse of his son.  This went on and on, and after his father’s death, Bill knew that his evening ritual was really a story of a father who just couldn’t take his eyes off his kid.  How much more so God?  Anthony de Mello writes, “Behold the One beholding you, and smiling.’  God would seem to be too occupied in being unable to take Her eyes off of us to spend any time raising an eyebrow in disapproval.  What’s true of Jesus is true for us, and so this voice breaks through the clouds and comes straight at us.  ‘You are my Beloved, in whom I am wonderfully pleased.’  There is not much ‘tiny’ in that.”

God cannot take God’s eyes off of us.  The greatest gift anyone could ever give us is time.  

And God gives that eternally, endlessly, always.  The friend, Ben, didn’t want his dad to stay awake: and yet, the gift of that memory: of being loved so deeply and so dearly, that is a gift indeed. 

Richard Rohr, “The Lord comes to us disguised as ourselves.”

That is Christmas.  Christmas began with a hardship  – an unwed pregnant girl, forced to travel in this last stage of her pregnancy, finally going into labor with no place to stay or give birth except a stable.  There in the darkness, there in the tragedy, there in the unimaginable, Jesus is born.  God comes, incarnate among us, where it is least expected.  We encounter the miracle of incarnation, the gift out of the dark, the presence of God fully and vulnerably among us and as one of us when we look with eyes open, when we stay open to the unexpected and amazing, when we keep a true Christmas spirit within us.  Amen.

All in a Word

Acts 10:34-43
John 20:1-18

“Mary”.  That’s all he said to turn her world completely around. 
         “Mary”.         
          One word.
          THE one word that would get her to stop her angst, to stop her grief, to stop her despair - to stop all those things that blocked her ability to see, to hear, to grasp that all was not left in darkness, all was not done, all was not over, all was not to end in pain… and loss… and despair…  and grief. 
C.S. Lewis said, in his book A Grief Observed, “The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.”…“You can’t see anything properly when your eyes are blurred with tears.”
          But Jesus broke through that with one word:
         “Mary.”
          And in that word, her world was made new.  Everything she had known, all that she understood, all the rules that life laid before her were undone. 
         Death, the only thing that one can absolutely count on – death itself had been overcome. 
        “Mary”. 
        Can you imagine?  It’s like the song “Rainbow Connection” – “Have you been half asleep, and have you heard voices?  I’ve heard them calling my name.”  It is that voice that calls your name.  That calls you by name.  It is that voice that sees you for exactly who you are, and names you, calling you out of whatever illusions, visions, and blocks you have about life, about your life, about your experiences, about your path, your journey, and instead sees right through you, to you, to what you are most really, deeply, most truly about.  It is that voice that when it says your name makes everything okay, makes everything different.  And unlike us, Mary didn’t hear it when she was half asleep. She heard it fully awake, fully in the midst of her angst and pain and torture and despair.
           “Mary”.
         Have you ever had those moments occasionally between sleep and waking in which you’ve heard your name being called?  I have, and it usually has been in those times of despair, times of doubt, times of dry lifelessness.  My name being called in those moments has felt like the voice of God – Barbara, I call you by name.  I see you.  I love you.  I call YOU because I love you.  But again, for Mary, she heard it so much more fully.  So much more tangibly.  Jesus, her Lord, speaking her name.
        “Mary.”
        I saw this quote a while back that said something like, “the best hugs are the ones that make all the stress in the world just melt away.”  Jesus’ word to Mary was like that.  A single word that made it all okay.  No, darkness had not won.  No, Death had not had the final word.  No, the body had not been taken, evil had not extended so far as to take everything that she valued, that she trusted, that she loved from her.  It sometimes felt that it had, and Jesus owned that with the single word, too.  With that word, he recognized her grief for what it was and had compassion for it.  With that word, he let her know that he knew her suffering.  With that word, he proclaimed that she need suffer no longer, that he was there, no longer dead, but there. Beside her.  With her.  With that word, he reminded her that she was LOVED by a God who would not take away her Lord from her, but would ALWAYS be with her, in her grief, in her pain, and in her joy.
       “Mary”.
        With a word he offered new life.  Not just the vision of Jesus raised, but new life for Mary as well.  With his resurrection, he offered her new life as well. 
        Today we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.  We celebrate that death has been overcome.  And that Jesus, God, Emmanuel, Christ with us, is with us even beyond death, even after death.  We celebrate that Jesus lives.  And we celebrate that we are given that same resurrection through him. 
        How does that manifest for you today?  This day?  How does Jesus’ resurrection come for you today? 
         As I prepared for today, I found myself remembering so many resurrection moments, so many times when I have been able to glimpse the promise of the final resurrection through the day to day fulfillment of the promise of new life after death.  For me, each one, each and every one of those moments, those glimpses into eternity, into new life, into resurrection has been a gift, a profound, amazing gift. 
          I was talking recently to a good friend of mine who was sharing with me that after years of struggling in her marriage, she and her husband, for the last few months have really been doing well.  With counseling and hard work, they have been able to start again in some deeply healed and resurrected ways.  Two years ago she was planning the end of her marriage.  Today she is excited to be able to tell me that she is truly married to her best friend, and they are happy together after a long time of disappointment and angst.
         An acquaintance shared with me that after several years of being out of work and looking hard for a job, he had finally found not only a job, but had been offered his dream job.  He is not just working, but working in a job he loves, for people he likes to be around, doing work that he feels good about. The job he had lost had not been a happy place for him, and while being out of work was hard, he also owned that it allowed him time with his family and time to really do a lot of soul searching and training to be in a job that he is now so happy with.
        More personally, a few years ago I attended a national stewardship conference where I ran into a person I had not seen in 20 years.  We had been close, we had dated, all those years ago, and the relationship had ended badly, painfully.  But seeing him in this place, so far away from our pasts and our present lives, we were able to talk and to create healing and reconciliation that many might have said was long overdue.  I don’t know that it could have happened any sooner.  I don’t know that either of us had grown enough or learned enough before to heal those rifts. But I was deeply grateful for the gift of being able to work that through with him, finally finding closure and healing.  Resurrection moment.  Healing moment after a painful loss, a painful death.
        Coming here to this church was a resurrection for me: after having gone through such a difficult time in my life, to be able to come back to beautiful, sunny, Ca: to be near my mountain, and in a church that is open and inclusive and loving…  To be here in this place is a resurrection for me!
         And finally - David, my David, is another resurrection for me.  I didn’t think there would be someone to be close to me again. I thought that was done. That too much trust had been broken.  Too many hurts for me and my kids. But he sits here, in this place, a man who is good with my kids, a man who is calm and grounded, a man who is loyal and deeply loving - a sign of God’s love that goes beyond any of the challenging and difficult things that have been a part of my life.  A resurrection for me that I know was a gift from God.  Not sought, not expected.  But here, grace, a gift given, none the less.
        When Jesus called Mary’s name, her world was resurrected.  And while he then went on to say to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” None the less, she knew then that she would never again be without him.  And she knew that she would see him again and be with him again.  That he WAS alive and IS alive.
        All of that was communicated in one Word. 
        “Mary”.
         God calls your name too.  Jesus calls your name too.  By Jesus life, death and resurrection we experience the reality of new life.  But our relationship with God, with the divine is personal.  Very, very personal. And our experience of life, of resurrection, is all encompassed in that one word.  We are called by name.  We are loved into being by name.
         “Mary”, he said, and she, and we, came to know resurrection.  Amen.

In Through the Gate

Acts 2:42-47

John 10:1-10

In today’s passage from John, Jesus describes himself as the gate, the gate by which we, as sheep “come in and go out and find pasture”.  Later in John, Jesus says he is “the way, the truth and the life”.  These passages have a depth of meaning for each of us.  Christ is both the way to life (the gate) and Christ leads the way to life (the good shepherd).  One commentator said, “Both of these are intensely relational, which means that these statements tell us who Jesus is in relationship to those who follow him.  Who Jesus is and who the community around him are – these two things are inextricably linked.” 

Jesus calls us to be in relationship with him, and he calls us to follow him, to recognize that his is the way.  We do that by following in the way. 

What does it mean, then, to follow Jesus as the way and in the way?  What does it mean to you that Jesus is the way?  Following Jesus means knowing what he did and how he behaved.  So what are some of the things that Jesus did and things that strike you as important about how he behaved?

He fed the hungry, he visited the sick and imprisoned, he healed the sick, he welcomed the stranger and the outcast.  And when we follow Jesus, these are all important things for us to do.  As the passage in Acts describes the disciples after Jesus’ death saying, “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles,” so, too, we are called to do the same.  In Matthew 25 we are told that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,” and so we are reminded to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe those without and visit those in need.  In seeing Jesus as the way, we are called to walk this way and this path in care for others.  As we read in passages such as James 2:14-26, “as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”  We are called to enact our faith in concrete loving and caring ways.

But, we also have to look towards Jesus as the way by looking at all of what Jesus did and there are other parts to Jesus besides his caring for those around him.  He spent forty days in the wilderness by himself.   He fasted, he went away to pray by himself and with his disciples.  He renewed himself by going apart and through prayer, most of all.

We, too, are called to find that balance in our Christian lives and in our Christian faith.  Yes, we are called in the way of Jesus to do as he did in caring for God’s people.  But that must be grounded and supported.  As Glenna Beauchamp wrote in an article from  These Days: Daily Devotions for Living by Faith, “Our faith, like every part of our lives, needs balance.  If I focus only on nurturing my spiritual life, my faith will become disconnected from Jesus’ prayer to bring God’s kingdom on earth.  If I focus only on helping others, I will suffer compassion fatigue.  The prophet Micah sums it up well:  ‘to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.’  Here is the balance we need to live faithfully as God’s people.”

Father Chacour, the archbishop of Galilee and Jerusalem puts it another way, “Vision without action is just a daydream, but action without vision is a nightmare.”  We are called to start with a relationship, our relationship with God.  It is from that relationship then that we are given the gift of vision.  Only then, with our relationship with God supporting us, guiding us, giving us vision can we be inspired to follow Jesus as the way into loving God’s people through the concrete actions of feeding, healing, comforting, visiting and praying with and for one another.

Balance.  I’m reminded of a story: One day, a professor entered the classroom and asked the students to prepare for a surprise test.  They all waited anxiously at their desks for the test to begin.  The professor handed out the exams with the text facing down as usual.  Once he handed them out, he asked the students to turn over the paper.  To everyone’s surprise, there were no questions – just a black dot at the center of the white sheet of paper.

The professor, seeing the expression on everyone’s faces, told them the following:    “I want you to write about what you see there.”  The students, confused, got started on the inexplicable task.  At the end of the class, the professor took all the exams and started reading each one out loud in front of all the students.  All of them, without exception, defined the black dot, trying to explain its position in the center of the sheet.

After all had been read, the classroom was silent, and the professor started to explain.  “I’m not going to grade you on this, I just wanted to give you something to think about.  No one wrote about the white sheet of paper.  Everyone focused on the black dot – the same thing happens in our lives.  We have a white piece of paper to observe and enjoy, while we always focus on the dark spots.” In the story, he goes on to explain that we do this with the bad and good things that happen in our lives.  We are surrounded by good but we tend to focus on the negative little dots that show up.  But for me, this is also a good illustration of other ways in which we fail to seek and find balance, especially in our faith.  Jesus calls us to follow, he is the way, the gate, the shepherd – all of it showing us how to be in this life.  As I’ve said before and as I will say again and again, everything God calls us to do we are asked to do because God loves us, wants wholeness for us.  But we lose balance.  We focus on our own needs and forget about others. We feel that just being ‘nice’ is what it’s about and forget that Jesus wasn’t always nice, instead he was just and confronted oppression. Or we focus on service to others, but forget to pray. Or we focus on coming to church and serving on committees, but forget about making time for the relationship that we are called to have with God. We focus on whatever our eyes travel to first, the black dots in the middle of the paper and forget about the white, the presence of God all the time, every time, with every breath we take. We forget about building the relationship with that whiteness that makes up most of our lives.

It is the putting together of all of these things that make us people on the way, people following Jesus, people striving to be who God calls us to be.  Like with music, which is putting all the notes together along with rests, spaces, silences: it is working together with all the pieces, not just one note, that makes the music, so too our lives need that balance to be whole.

I came across a poem that I’d like to share with you this morning:

YOU ASK WHY I FOLLOW THIS JESUS?

You ask why I follow this Jesus?

Why I love Him the way I do?

When the world's turned away from His teachings

And the people who serve Him are few.

It's not the rewards I'm after

Or gifts that I hope to receive

It's the Presence that calls for commitment

It's the Spirit I trust and believe.

The Lord doesn't shelter His faithful

Or spare them all suffering and pain,

Like everyone else I have burdens,

And walk through my share of rain.

Yet He gives me a plan and a purpose,

And that joy only Christians have known,

I never know what comes tomorrow,

But I do know I'm never alone.

It's the love always there when you need it;

It's the words that redeem and inspire,

It's the longing to ever be with Him

That burns in my heart like a fire.

So you ask why I love my Lord Jesus?

Well, friend, that's so easy to see,

But the one thing that fills me with wonder is

Why Jesus loves someone like me.

Yes, we follow in the way that is Jesus by doing what he did, lifting up our arms and using them to serve God by serving God’s people.  But we must begin by having a ground to stand upon.  And that ground is our relationship with God, a relationship that needs to begin with time together, with conversation or prayer, with faith.  Amen.

Sermon - Fishing for People

Isaiah 9:1-4
1st Cor. 1:10-18
Matt. 4:12-23

Two people were talking about fishing. One said to the other, "I am NEVER going to take my son fishing with me, ever again!"

"That bad, huh?"

"He did everything wrong! He did everything wrong! He talked too much, made the boat rock constantly, tried to stand up in the boat, baited the hook wrong, used the wrong lures and WORST of all he caught more fish than me!"

What do we imagine when we think of the disciples fishing before Jesus called them?  What do you think of when you think of fishing?  When we go fishing, it is to be a relaxing time of sitting, thinking, maybe talking with a couple close friends.  It is usually not too strenuous and it is enjoyable, a “get away”.  But the reality of fishing as a livelihood is very, very different.  Fishing was extremely unpredictable work, and hard, work.  It was also very dangerous as storms could arise, especially in those days before we had satellite weather systems, with very little warning.  If any of you have read Ernest Hemingway’s book, The Old Man and the Sea, you’ve had a glimpse of just how deadly and dangerous fishing really can be.  While this portrays fishing in a different part of the world than in our biblical story, we none the less gain from this story a picture of what a fisherman’s life can really be like.  The story opens with the old man, Santiago, who is a professional fisherman, having gone 84 days without catching a fish.  He lives on the fish that he catches and so to go 84 days, or nearly three months, without having caught anything is very serious and very scary.  It is so scary that the parents of the boy who has been apprenticed to Santiago refuse to let their son work with him any longer, believing him to be bad luck.  The rest of the story involves Santiago’s struggle with a single fish, a marlin.  He struggles day and night with the Marlin for over three days.  Much of his fishing equipment is destroyed in the struggle.  When the fish finally dies, sharks come and eat every useful piece of the marlin, leaving Santiago with nothing but the skeleton, head and tail.  While this is a story, it is also an accurate portrayal of some of the challenges that fishermen face.  And while the struggles of those in the Biblical stories would be different, for one thing, it was a different type of fishing, the fact remains that the lives of fisher-folk are extremely difficult, and extremely dangerous.
It is to people who lived this dangerous, day-to-day subsistence living that Jesus came.  It is to these hardworking, courageous folk that Jesus said, “come with me and I will make you fishers of people.”  They are being asked to leave a very difficult existence.  But what are they being asked to do instead?  Is it easier, do we suppose, to fish for people than to fish for fish?
Matthew begins today’s passage by referring to the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali.  These were cities that had suffered a great deal.  Jesus begins his preaching ministry in a place where the need is greatest, where there is deep pain.  Matthew then continues by quoting the passage we read today from Isaiah.  While he only quotes the beginning of the passage, the part that proclaims the light that comes into the great darkness, the rest of the passage from Isaiah offers an even more clear example of how that light might shine.  It continues, as we read in today’s passage from Isaiah, by reminding the people that Gideon defeated the hordes of Midian and broke their domination over Israel with a very small army.  God had told Gideon to send back most of his troops so that God might show that with a very small group, with a very few faithful people, God was yet powerful enough to defeat great armies and to overcome oppression.   Matthew begins to quote this passage from Isaiah that his readers would have known well, “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light”.  The readers of the time would have known how this passage in Isaiah continues by talking about the day that Midian was defeated by this small group of God’s people.  Oppression had been halted by these few for the Israelities.  By quoting this passage, Matthew is laying out right away that Jesus will succeed, that God’s people will see the light in this time of great darkness, even against all odds, and even with just a very few faithful people.  But he is also assuring them in no uncertain terms that the work will be hard, will be a challenge against all odds, will lead to crucifixion before it leads to resurrection and life.
This is the work of fishing for people into which Jesus invited those who became his disciples.  This is the difficult road to which they have been called.
We, too, are invited to be part of this journey.  To lay aside our focus on the hard work of surviving, and instead enter into the hard work of doing God’s will, defeating oppression, bringing people to a deeper sense of God’s presence and God’s light, fishing for people, or rather, being a light in the darkness of the lives around us, bringing light and hope to all we encounter.
But as we know it can be very difficult to continue to shine that light when the darkness is strong, and when it feels like we are not getting anywhere by shining the light.  I mentioned a couple weeks ago the 12 step wisdom of the saying “act as if”.  This means that even when it is hard to see the good that is coming out of the work we do for God, we have to keep acting as if it is doing good.  We have to keep acting as if we believe even when we don’t have the faith.  Being a light in the darkness takes practice, and it often takes hindsight to see that we have successfully been that light in the darkness. The call to “act as if” encourages us to keep on keeping on, to keep on reaching out to people in love, to keep on embodying the good news, even when we don’t feel like it, even when we don’t see that it is doing any good, even when it feels really hard.
        How this actually manifests in terms of AA is that people who sponsor other people, who act as support folk for other people, have a much higher success rate in any of the 12 step programs than people who feel that they “have to get themselves together first” before they can help others.
        A while back our family went to visit the National Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati.   While I was there I was struck with the amazing faithfulness of those people who participated, despite the incredible dangers, in the underground railroad, in the rescuing of people who had been enslaved, despite the fact that they had many around them disagreeing with them, despite the fact that their own lives were threatened by these actions as well.  They took their faith, a faith that calls us to care for the oppressed and to lift up the down trodden, to love those others use and abuse and reject – they took all of that very, very seriously, as we, too are called to do.  At times I’m sure they struggled, wondering what they were risking everything for. There were always more slaves coming to the United States.  It must have felt like there would always be more to help than they could possibly handle, and that the danger was increasingly large for those who chose to be part of helping.  But they chose to be a light in the darkness, even when the darkness was so very intense that it must have seemed light would never again shine.  And they became a part of changing the situation in the United States permanently with regards to slavery.  It took time, but the light did shine; through their work, they were able to fish for people and change the way we look at slavery.
        But we can make a difference on a much smaller scale as well.
        When we lived in Ohio, my kids and I lived about a half mile from church, as we do now, and we walked to church as much as we could. At one point during our time there, my kids began the practice of picking up any garbage they found on their way, so after a while we would walk equipped with bags in which they could put the garbage. While I was very proud of them for taking on this particular endeavor, I have to admit that the cynical part of me did not participate in this event with much enthusiasm. The garbage was dirty, the kids would end up dirty, much of the garbage really reflected the seedier or less appealing parts of human behavior (cigarette butts, beer cans, and sometimes even nastier objects), and I really found myself wondering WHAT was the point of picking up all of that when the next day there would undoubtedly be still more garbage that others expected someone else to clean up for them. But the kids chose to take on this particular activity without any suggestion on my part, and I found myself eventually reflecting on the story of the starfish:
      Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work. One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up. As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean. He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"
      The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."
      "I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.
      To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."
      Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"
        At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean.   As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that starfish."
        My kids may not have been saving the world, and yes, there would always be more garbage the next day. But they were making that one place on the walk to church a little more beautiful, a little more pleasant. They were letting the sun shine on a few more blades of grass that were no longer covered by the litter, they were feeling that they could do something to contribute in this world, and they were enjoying doing it! What more could I ask?
       I know in this point of time in our history there is a great deal of darkness.  There is so much anger and hatred and violence especially being aimed at the “least of these” – at the people that society rejects, at the kind of people Jesus especially worked hard to embrace.  Interestingly many are not that different.  Jesus embraced the Samaritans – who were people of a similar religious ancestry but came out in a different place theologically.  Others rejected them as evil, as wrong.  But Jesus embraced them and included them.  Jesus embraced women, who were also rejected, seen as property, objects – belonging to their men.  Jesus embraced the poor and the disabled, healing them and not blaming them for their own problems.  He embraced the Syrophoenicians: again, people from different races, ethnicities, backgrounds. And he calls us to do the same.  To stand with them and to stand for them.
When Eldest was about 2 years old, my little messenger from God one day proclaimed to me, “We are God’s car.”  While that may sound funny, I think it is actually very insightful.  We are God’s car.  We carry around the Spirit of God, we do the work of God, we transport God’s love and light to those around us.
         The work of fishing for people, or bringing light to the people, light into the darkest places of life and of humanity, is not easy.  But when we reach out, when we shine our light, even when it is hard, we are assured that light will come back to us and shine for us as well.

Sermon from last Sunday in July - Lord's Prayer

7/31/16

Luke 11:1-4

Matt 6:9-13

An interviewer approached a Jewish man who was praying at the wailing wall in Jerusalem.  This wall is the only part of the temple that remained after the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 A.D. and to this day remains a place where faithful Jews can gather to lift up their prayers to God.  The interviewer asked the Jewish man to tell him about his praying.  The man told the interviewer that he had been coming to the wailing wall every day for 60 years.  When asked what he prayed for he responded that he prayed to God to bring peace to the world, to end war, oppression and poverty.  This man spent at least an hour a day praying with every fiber of his being that God’s kingdom of Shalom, of wholeness, of peace would come to earth.  The interviewer was moved deeply by this man’s profession of faith and dedication to prayer.  After a moment of awed silence he finally asked the faithful man how he felt coming to the wailing wall day after day.  The faithful man replied, “I feel,” and he paused, struggling to find the words to express his feelings.  “I feel,” he started again and as the tears began to course down his face he finally choked out, “I feel... like I’m talking to a wall.”

               This morning we read to you both gospels that contain versions of the Lord’s Prayer.  What we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer is not in all four gospels, but only in Luke and Matthew. Did anything strike you during the reading of these two versions of the Lord’s Prayer? 

               Let me share with you one more translation – this is another translation of the Matthew version:

Our Daddy in Heaven,

Reveal who you are.

Set the world right;

Do what’s best – as above, so below.

Keep us alive with three square meals.

Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.

Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.

You’re in charge!

You can do anything you want!

You’re ablaze in beauty!

Yes. Yes. Yes!

               Again, anything strike you?

               The bottom line, and what I want to talk about with you today, is that there are several problems with the way we say the Lord’s Prayer now.  First of all, and most importantly, our current way of saying the Lord’s prayer is just plain inaccurate.  And there are a few things I want to highlight about that.  First, the word we translate “Father” which is a very formal word of address, should be properly translated from the Greek as “Daddy”, which is a word of intimacy and closeness.  The word is actually Abba, and it is a word that young children would have used to talk to a close parent.  This word is not just one of familiarity, of closeness, it is also a word of trust, of dependence, of recognition that God as our Daddy, as our Mommy, is someone we rely on, someone we need for our very being, someone we love dearly and who loves us dearly as well.  Same with the word “thy” and “thine”.  These have become very formal words.  And again, that is a mistranslation.  Originally, the words “thine, thou, thy” were actually words of intimacy, proclaiming a closer relationship than the word “you”.  It was at the time when they were words of closer intimacy that they were placed into this prayer to make the translation right.  But now that those words are actually “distancing” or “formal” words, they make the translation inaccurate.  Jesus was making a very strong, clear and, frankly, a very scandalous statement at that time.  I think judging by how we say the Lord’s Prayer now, it is scandalous in our own time as well, by telling us we should pray in an intimate way with God.  Address God as Daddy, (or Mommy – words of intimacy and closeness), use words that indicate an extremely close relationship such as “thy” or “thine” used to do.  We are not following what Jesus asks us to do when we use terms that distance God rather than pulling God closer.

               Secondly, words like debt or trespasses are old, confusing, unclear, and again inaccurate.  What Jesus is calling us to do is to pray to God to forgive us when we mess up.  Debts and trespasses imply mostly monetary and space misuses.  Both of those are part of the “messing up” umbrella, certainly, but not all of it by any means.  We shorten and also obscure the prayer by using those words.

Thirdly, as I have mentioned before, a large part of the Protestant reformation was an insistence that God gave the scriptures to ALL people and that therefore they should be written in our own language, the language of the people.  Our scriptures have become written in our own language now.  However, at the same time, we have hung on to old language that is no longer the language of the people in things like the way we say the Lord’s Prayer.  As we read in today’s scriptures, the way we say the Lord’s Prayer is NOT an accurate translation into today’s language of the people.  But we have become used to the way we do it.  It brings comfort at some level to say it in the words our parents used and our parents’ parents used.  There is value in that.  But there is also a cost.  Part of the cost is inaccuracy in understanding.  But a bigger cost is that the children do not know what they are saying.  How can it truly be a prayer for them if they have no idea of the words they are using?  We’ve all heard the jokes of children’s hearing of this prayer, “Our Father, whose art is heaven, Howard be thy name.”  And I have to ask if leaving our children out of this prayer is worth the value we find in the tradition of saying the prayer in a familiar way.  We are failing to pass it down to them in a meaningful way, which means it probably won’t stay in their lives.  Is that really what we want?  The prayer does not have the same meaning for them that it does for us, though frankly, I wonder if it has the same meaning for us as well when we rotely say words that are not part of our current speech.  And while we can talk about what these words mean with the kids, saying our most common prayers in THEIR language, in the language they use also sends an important message that God is not so lofty as to not want to hear from children.  God is here, and accessible and open to hearing even from our kids.  And again, while speaking to God formally may have a message of respect towards God that has value, it also sends a message of inaccessibility.  The very message, in other words, that the protestant reformation was working to challenge.  More importantly, the very message that Jesus was trying to confront.

            Another problem with the way we say the Lord’s Prayer is that by saying it together the same way every week, we also miss the larger message of the story and of the prayer.  The paragraph right before the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew, again using the Message translation reads: “The word is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant.  They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God.  Don’t fall for that nonsense.  This is your parent you are dealing with, who knows better than you what you need.  With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply.  Like this…”

Did you hear that?  We aren’t supposed to use a formula or program when we pray.  Instead we are to pray “like” the Lord’s Prayer.  Jesus didn’t say, “pray using these exact words.”  In both gospels a most accurate translation is “pray like this” or “pray in this way”.  “Pray in this way” means, these are the ideas and things about praying that are important for us to do.  And there is much in the Lord’s Prayer that is important. 

            Someone once pointed out that if you want to know what to pray for you could use the acronym ACTS I. 

Those letters then stand for

Adoration

Confession

Thanksgiving

Supplication

               And

Intercession.

In other words, just as in the Lord’s Prayer, we are called to

adore or express our love, “Holy is your name, Yours is the kingdom, power and glory”,

Confess: “forgive our sins as we forgive others”

Offer Thanksgiving,

Lift up prayers for the world, “Your kingdom come, your will be done.”

And pray for our own needs “Give us this day our daily bread, don’t lead us into temptation, deliver us from evil”

Another way to say this is that in our prayers, as in everything else we do in life, we are called to do three things:  Love God, love others and love ourselves. 

The passage in Luke goes on to tell us to pray with all urgency, to pray continually, to pray as if your life depended on it, which of course it does.

               That is the message of the Lord’s Prayer.  Jean asked me a couple weeks ago why I begin the Lord’s Prayer with all of you but then mute my mic for most of it.  I do that because I recognize that you need to say the prayer in the way that is most meaningful to you.  Prayer really is about our relationships with God, and if your relationship with God calls you to pray it in the way you always have, I honor and respect that.  For me, my relationship with God calls me to pray it slightly differently, using words that are in the language of my children and connect me more intimately with God.  I therefore use “you” instead of ‘thy and thine”.  I use “holy” instead of “hallowed” and I use “sins” instead of debts.  I pray what has become known as the Ecumenical Version of the Lord’s Prayer and that more and more of our congregations use for exactly the reasons I have outlined.

Our Father/Mother/Creator who is in heaven, Holy is your name.

Your kindom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread

Forgive us our sins
   as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
   and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
   now and for ever. Amen.

But again, I recognize and honor that your relationships must be your own.  I encourage you to think on these things, but you must ultimately be guided by your relationship with God. 

               I want to end today by sharing with you a prayer written by the Rev. Dewane Zimmerman.  He wrote

The Lord’s prayer (as it might be prayed by God to us):

(I encourage you to listen differently and to ponder these in your hearts):

My children who are on earth:

You reverence my name

But you do not celebrate my will for you.

You pray my kingdom come,

But how can it

When you ARE what I mean by my kingdom?

You pray for your daily bread,

But you have enough-and to spare.

You pray for forgiveness of your sins,

But how often you will not forgive each other.

You ask me not to lead you into temptation,

But what can I do for you

That I am not already doing?

Use the gifts I am giving you

And you will know my power and glory

Forever and ever.  Amen.