I don't have to

I don’t have to, but I have to

I was thinking about this in terms of helping someone out. He said, you don’t have to. I said, I don’t have to, but I have to. No, I didn’t owe him anything, but I have a moral obligation to help when I can.

This got me thinking about large corporations and their responsibility. In an economic model or a capitalistic way of thinking corporations don’t have a responsibility to their employees, their well being or the well being of their family. In a capitalistic way of seeing the world the corporation has no obligation beyond making sure the paycheck is on time and calculated in a fair and just manner. The corporation has no obligation to the better good of all. The company has no obligation to the beloved community. The only obligation is to the bottom line of profit over loss. This is an economic centered way of life, and it literally kills people by poising the spirit, life, and environment in the name of profit over loss.

This posed a question for me. What is our moral imperative? Where do we go for our obligation guideposts if you will? Where do we go to find our moral center? From that moral center who are we obligated to? Is economics a moral center?

God pulls us back to act as curators of the beloved community in our time and place in history. Our Christian guide to the ways of God is found in Jesus Christ and Jesus not only preaches and teaches about that moral center, but He also lives from that place all the way to the cross. From a moral center as found in Jesus Christ we may understand I don’t have to, but I have to. Economics tells me I don’t have to. The God of Love implores me through empathy and compassion, I have to.

We must help when and where we are able for our own wellbeing. For in the wellbeing of others we find our own wellness.

If we operate from an economic model of morals, then we don’t have to do anything but exploit anything and everything for our own gain. Such as paying employees a less than living wage and using the profits of a worldwide, multi trillion-dollar corporation to finance billion-dollar trips to outer space. In an economic, capitalistic centered model of living this makes total sense. While there are people literally starving in the streets we finance a trip to space.

In a Christ centered understanding of a moral imperative, this is wrong. We, the American corporation, are obligated to the Beloved community, the kingdom, love, care, compassion, health, and wellbeing of each other. This is our moral center from which we all must strive to operate from.

Ubuntu is a valuable way of understanding this moral imperative we have to one another. Ubuntu is not an economic model. Ubuntu is a spiritual model that we see in Jesus and how he walked and talked while on this earth. ‘I Am Because We Are’. ‘Love as you have been love’.

If we are to be a people of the Way in our time and place in the here and now, we are obligated to our neighbors as our selves. We are morally obligated to the creation of equal opportunities for each person to thrive. Creating a model of living from that moral center, love your neighbors as yourselves as God so loved you, will help to create a more perfect union among the people who call this rock of matter and gas, home.

Adapted from a prayer by Robert Rains that first appeared in The Wittenberg Door (04 December 1971)

O God, make me discontented with things the way they are in the world and in my own life.

Make me notice the stains when people get spilled on.

Make me care about the slum child downtown,

the misfit at work,

the forgotten people in our hospitals and nursing homes,

the men, women and youth behind bars.

Jar my complacence, expose my excuses,

get me involved in the life of my city and world.

Give me integrity once more,

O God, as we seek to be changed and transformed,

with a new understanding and awareness of our common humanity

The problems of this world will only be solved when we truly see our neighbor as we see ourselves.

When we begin to listen to the truth in someone else’s story, we begin the journey towards loving as we have been loved.

Churchn'

Leslie Congregational UCC

116 W. Bellevue

When we think of church what comes to mind? Community? Potluck? God? Jesus? Coffee? Conflict? Worry? Anxiety? Relationship? Is the church only as good as it’s growing numbers for a Sunday morning worship? Is the church only as good as it’s online viewership?

What is church meant to be and what does it mean to us as members is a wonderful question that may lead to "how” do we do church. What is church can lead to the better question of how do we do church.

If you were to read any article, pre-COVID, you’d find a general notion that church growth will not happen on Sunday mornings. With very few exceptions church’s were not going to grow by concentrating on Sunday morning pew numbers. Now that we are, hopefully, God willing and the creek don’t rise, post COVID, or at least through the worst of it, that notion remains and has been amplified. More and more articles are pointing out the growing numbers of non church folk and those who fell away from their local church and a large number are not returning. For a pastor this is a difficult reality. I think most pastors were hoping, even if we said different, for a return to at least a form of normal that would bring ‘em all back in droves. Including the young adults that were part of our community.

For a pastor and church who are worried about numbers it can be anxiety inducing. For this pastor, I simply miss the non-returning folks. For whatever reason they are not returning and I miss their presence and energy.

Where does all this leave us? Sad? Worried?

What if? What if we are realizing that the church is far outside the four walls of Sunday morning, and always has been.

What if we are learning that it was never about us in the first place, it was always about God? If the God of creation and love is the expansive God of all that is, was and will become, how can we expect to contain God in the building. Now don’t get me wrong. God, when church is done good, is found within the confines of a church building.

Experiencing the Divine Love of God has been the point all along.

When church is done well people find that on Sunday mornings. When church is done well people experience the love and grace of God within us and feel that Love from us and from our churches. The question becomes how do we create sanctuary outside of the sanctuary?

I believe that people are yearning for a caring place of safety and comfort. A break from the bustle of life and conflict in our public square. People are seeking, more than anything else, a place to come and be vulnerable and know that they will be cared for. A place to lay bare their worries and find a listening ear. If that is the case then we carry church in our hearts. Don’t we? We become the sanctuary. Don’t we? We are the church. Aren’t we?

Church may be the simplest thing we can do to heal a broken world. Take the love of God with us wherever we go. Not so that people will come on Sunday mornings but so that Sunday mornings will be taken to the people.

Ooohhhh….we might be getting closer to the king/kindom of God. The place and essence of God may be closer than we think.

When we live into that Divine Love and witness to that Divine Love in others we can all do church and do it good.

Church by tiny little church contained in each of us, a little bit of our broken world may be healed.

May the hearts and doors of our church remain wide open so that people may know the Divine Presence that cannot be contained by time or place.

Lean your ear

A poem by Malcom Guite: The Triune Poet

In the Beginning, not in time or space,

But in the quick before both space and time,

In Life, in Love, in co-inherent Grace,

In three in one and one in three, in rhyme,

In music, in the whole creation story,

In His own image, His imagination,

The Triune Poet makes us for His glory,

And makes us each the other’s inspiration.

He calls us out of darkness, chaos, chance,

To improvise a music of our own,

To sing the chord that calls us to the dance,

Three notes resounding from a single tone,

To sing the End in whom we all begin;

Our God beyond, beside us and within.

I really like the poetry of Malcom Guite and I probably enjoy this one in particular because it helps me understand the relational value of the Trinity and our relationship within it: Three notes resounding from a single tone. It reminds me of the vibrations of my voice when I hum, sing or chant.

As I thought and meditated today it reminded me of the vibrations of life. When we really think about it. even the slightest sound is a vibration that disturbs the air as it resonates in our ear drum to become a sound.

I wonder if that it how it is sometimes with God. If we lean our ear towards the vibrating presence of God within all of creation we may feel the closeness of God all around. Instead of something that is far off in the distance that we cannot feel, experience or hear, we can instead feel the vibrations of creation and draw closer to the Divine.

Calling us to lean our ear

Beckoning us to hear

Asking us to feel

Vibrations of creation

Symphony of the sunrise

Crashing waves

Crescendo of the rising moon

Humming of Spring time

Fluttering of the heart of God

As the wind moves across the earth

Breathing and exhaling

Vibrating with the sound of the Eternal Spirit

Listen

Lean your ear towards the vibrations

Hum with the music of life

Do good, Now!!

The Goodness of God, now.

From the 9th chapter in Luke, the Message version, “can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.”

Kairos (Ancient Greek: καιρός) is an Ancient Greek word meaning the right, critical, or opportune moment. The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos (χρόνος) and kairos. The former refers to chronological or sequential time, while the latter signifies a proper or opportune time for action.

Richard Rohr tells us, “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better”.

Our newsfeeds are filled with all the bad that is going on. Our public and political arena are being infested with anger on the verge of hateful violence. It seems we are no longer debating or discussing. Instead, we are hating each other, and that hateful rhetoric is infecting our collective psyche.

Jesus told them then and tells us now, do the good of God now. Not later!! right now! The need to do good and put grace, compassion and love into the world is not a 5-year plan with a committee of 10 gathered to decide what is the best approach. Jesus helps us realize, now! Right now! Today! Wipe away all excuses and get on the justice road with Jesus.

Kairos time is time beyond hours in a day. Kairos time is a collective call of the clarion to the action of doing good with every moment of our lives. Instead of listening to the noise of the day we may listen to the yearning of our hearts to be loved and know that we are Divinely loved beyond measure, beyond our human ability to earn it. We are simply loved by God: unearned, unconditional. When we feel that in our hearts and know that nothing can take that away, as Paul says, not even death, then we live within the goodness of God’s love in all of creation. We can then witness that to the rest of the world because we know the goodness of God in our hearts.

Richard Rohr is helping me understand the opposite of bad is to put good into the world. The opposite of bad is not to lament and allow the seeds of anger to grow in my own heart. The opposite of bad is to realize the innate goodness of God, the Divine that I carry within.

This is the practice of better in our daily lives and Richard helps us acknowledge to criticize the bad is not to let the bad infest our hearts with anger. But to criticize the bad is to simply be about the ministry of doing good in our time and place in history.

The Kairos moment is upon us. There is no time to put off the daily task of putting good into the world. By putting good into the world, we are allowing the goodness of God to sink deeper into our spirits, souls, and hearts, both communally and personally.

There is no better time to do something good than right now!

There is no better time to criticize the presence of bad by doing good!

Putting forth

In Matthew 6:21 Jesus Christ invites us to ponder what are we putting forth into the world.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

You may have seen posts on social media that ask…If you could sit with someone who has passed, who would you choose. As many people would I’d first choose family members who were important in my life. I miss my grandpas and grandmas, uncle, aunts and so on. I would love to sit with my dad again and talk.

When my uncle passed years ago I wrote a poem that helped me express the inner grief I felt when he died. It was in the writing of that poem that I came see my uncle as my hippy worry stone. I would love to sit and talk with him about the affairs of our current world, especially the vitriol we hear and the rise of white rage once again that is infecting our society. I am sure that he and I would lament together as we did when he was alive.

One thing that has changed in the last few years since his death is my deepening faith, how much I see Jesus Christ as an important part of my life, how much I witness and experience a profound spiritual wisdom within and from Jesus Christ. I would tell him how Jesus Christ is helping me understand where my heart is there will be not only what I treasure, there will also be what I put forth into the world. I would love to wrestle with this with him. My uncle was more buddhist than Christian and I think he’d find value in our conversation, even if we come at wisdom from differing points of view.

I think of this wisdom that Jesus shares in terms of a treasure hunt. As in what do we look for in the world? What do we seek out? What do we see as important in our lives?

I wonder if an even deeper understanding may be that where our heart is, or the spiritual place that we live from is what people experience from us. What are we putting forth? What are people experiencing in us? Where is our heart?

If our heart is full of pain from past wounds and our heart is not healed we end up putting our pain into the world through anger and disfunction. If our heart is filled up and overflowing, like Jesus, with the love of God is that what we are putting forth? I wonder if that is the question that Jesus Christ is helping us ponder in Matthew.

To gaze into the world and see the beauty of creation, to gaze into the world and step into the Divine blessing of awe in our hearts is to gaze into the world and seek to experience the Divine Presence. When we discover the treasure of unearned, unbreakable Love within all of creation, experience this within our hearts, this becomes what we put forth into a world in desperate need of that Love.

For where your treasure is , there your heart will be also.

Where our hearts live, there will be also what we are putting forth.

Seek Divine Treasure

Discover Divine Love

Putting forth from a joyful heart

The Gospel is life anew

From Matthew 16 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[f] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

This passage can seem harsh and off putting to many of us. We have to die in order to follow Jesus? We have to give up our very lives, our families, our homes, friends, church? Even our children?

If we read deeper into this passage we will find the invitation to life. For the Divine Christ incarnated in Jesus can be understood as the universal invitation of God to be in healthy/right relationship with God and one another: righteousness or right relationship.

We can see and hear that life with Jesus Christ as our guide is much healthier living for us and our communities. We can hear underneath the proclamation of Jesus that life is not just better if we follow the Divine Christ found in Jesus. We can hear that a life that is lead by our ego driven, self centered way of being in the world is actually not living at all and may even be death instead of life.

We can hear the invitation to give up our worry, anxiety and fear in order to truly take on the dialy work of living as Jesus lived. What Jesus is getting at is something very profound and the disciples were missing the point of Jesus and his life. I’m reminded of that Pixar movie Cars and the line, “if you go hard enough left you’ll find yourself turning right.” If we really want to find our true selves and live a healthy life we must give up our way of life and take on the life of Jesus. It will feel like giving everything we know. It may feel as if we are giving up our self to find our true self: our fully human selves.

What Jesus Christ is helping them realize then and helping us in our realization now: to find our true selves is a journey of giving up and letting go to let Christ live deeper within our hearts. Then and in that place we will find life anew. For most of us this is the daily cross that we carry.